(iPoster) There and Back Again: Wards and the Modern Era of Municipal Reform

• In Event: Poster Session: Public Policy & Urban and Local Politics
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Urban and Local Politics

Abstract

Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, across different eras, municipal reformers were successful in several changes to local governments throughout the United States. Such changes included the implementation of the initiative, council-manager governments, and nonpartisan ballots. Recent publications have sought to contextualize the current era of municipal reform in the Urban Politics literature by examining new reforms proposed in recent decades, such as term limits and voter registration. Also included in discussions of the modern era of municipal reform are analyses of the current effects of older reforms from the Progressive era, such as council-manager governments and nonpartisan elections, examining their effects on factors such as incumbency, voter turnout, and budgetary decisions.

Also, during the Progressive era, reformers succeeded in changing ward (otherwise known as district) city councils to at-large councils, a historically unidirectional reform; that is, governments with ward elections switched to at-large, and not the other way around.

In recent decades, local governments have been experiencing proposals to switch back to the ward/district format. This project presents preliminary research design and early results from a project that asks why local communities have sought to switch back. Building on prior theory and concepts established in the current era of municipal reform, the switch back to ward elections offers insight into how modern reformers seek to advance their goals and how the reform impulse functions in the twenty-first century.

Author

• Douglas M. Cantor, Rutgers University, New Brunswick