ABSTRACT
Council-manager governments in the United States have been an important venue for observing the general relationship between politics and administration. Although the roles of the mayor and council members, on the one hand, and the city manager and staff, on the other, have sometimes been viewed as strictly separate, officials have blended democracy and professionalism in ways that maintain distinct but shared roles. It is possible, however, that changing conditions in local government may create pressures that alter official roles and the relative contributions of officials. This is particularly likely in large cities about which the question has perennially been asked whether the council-manager form of government is viable. Although the council-manager form has been most commonly used in moderately small to moderately large cities, only in recent decades have many cities that use council-manager government grown into “large” cities.1 Now over two-fifths of cities exceeding 200,000 in population use the council-manager form. This study focuses on these thirty-one cities.2 The group includes five cities at or near the million population mark-Dallas, Phoenix, San Antonio, San Diego, and San Jose. All of these as well as twenty-three of the other twenty-six are sunbelt cities. Although the sunbelt has been viewed as relatively placid and homogeneous, its cities have become ever more diverse places with intense interest group politics (Ehrenhalt 1991; Benest 1991).
