ABSTRACT
The high social and geographic mobility characteristic of American life has prevented the formation of communities as traditionally defined based on stable populations or situated within a single set of political boundaries. The casual civics student knows that local governments are creatures of the state and that the states are linked in a union under a federal government whose influence is widespread and whose hand is felt in many ways in the local community. Contractual noncentralization — the structured dispersion of power among many centers whose legitimate authority is constitutionally guaranteed — is the key to the widespread and entrenched diffusion of power that remains the principal characteristic of the American federal system. A civil community is a consociation of individuals and groups within a particular locality that acquires a separate identity and the power to undertake common actions for political or civil purposes. American civil communities possess reasonably complex and actively functioning political systems of their own.
