ABSTRACT
The two main schools of thought about metropolitan reform are the scrap-the-system-and-start-over perspective and the metropolitan-governance-without-a-metropolitan-government perspective.
The strategies that have been implemented in an effort to attain metropolitan government have included central-city annexation, city-county consolidation, strengthening the urban county, and two-tier government.
Metropolitan governments have been more successful in addressing systems maintenance issues than in addressing the social access issues. Central-city African Americans have often opposed metropolitan reform on the grounds that it would dilute their voting strength.
Whatever the accomplishments of metropolitan governments, few attempts to institute them have succeeded. Campaigns for metropolitan reform have typically failed for several reasons: voter opposition in the suburbs, insufficient public discontent with the status quo, lackluster campaigns, and lack of support from minority leaders and other political elites.
The biases associated with metropolitan reform have included a bias in favor of the status quo in governmental organization and a bias of citizens toward incremental and limited change rather than drastic and far-reaching change. These biases have compounded the problems of getting metropolitan government.
