ABSTRACT

The field of American political development (APD) started as an attempt to explain “American exceptionalism”—the idea that American political culture and institutions were somehow unique when compared with Western European societies. While the field has moved on to define itself in a more sophisticated way as the study of “historical institutionalism”— the development of political institutions over time-the explicitly comparative claims at its base are in need of further examination.1 In this chapter I compare how the United States and the United Kingdom have historically attempted to integrate cities into their political structures, and I argue that we would do better to interpret the American polity as part of an Anglo-American cultural-political family than as a unique entity.