ABSTRACT
What has this mini-essay on the nature of man and society to do with the reform of metropolitan governance? It is only to suggest that the conscious modification of the institutions and processes of government-or “reform”— can come about as a result of two kinds of change. How governmental institutions perform may change as a result of how those institutions relate to objective characteristics of the real world. As Margolis points out, for example, the rich may segregate themselves from the poor, thus reducing the resources by which the public needs of the poor are met and so creating a serious political demand for institutional changes to prevent such unilateral decisions; growth may create such intolerable burdens of congestion and may so erode the quality of public goods produced that a large share of the constituency will insist on some other allocation of the burden; or new financial resources 'may become available, thus enlarging the potential role of government. Melvin Levin’s evaluation of metropolitan Boston’s experience in confronting new responsibilities to produce a new bundle of public goods-an amenable environment-is an illuminating analysis of how the government of a great metropolitan region has responded to a new set of roles.However, another source of reform involves change in dominant constituency views about the appropriate role and responsibility of government in the lives of men. Hence, reform involves not only assessment of the performance of a system of government and a search for means of improving it, but also redefinition of performance and a reordering of the criteria against which it is to be measured. In these terms, Letwin sees the Royal Commission on Local Government challenged to find some arrangement of governmental institutions that can strike a new balance between the principles of efficiency and democratic participation; so Hanson sees governmental reform as “an exercise in the goring of oxen” which greatly need goring if larger public purposes are to be served. Ideally, the question reformers with the long view should be trying to answer is not only how objective characteristics of governmental activities are likely to change in a definable future, but also how people’s expectations of government are likely to evolve. And, indeed, they do evolve.The New Federalism, with its fiscal impedimenta of general and special revenue sharing, suggests the emergence of a new view of the relationship of a
citizen to his society. While it seems to return the initiatives in the political system to the citizen in his relationship to his state and local governments, other considerations vitiate this view. First, local discretion in the disposition of local fiscal resources appears to be enhanced, but at the expense of the coherence of legislatively declared national policies to alleviate poverty, to disseminate civil rights, and to distribute more equally the benefits of economic growth and change. Second, the renewed emphasis on extant civil jurisdictions of the municipal corporation and the state tends to ignore the growing host of issues we have come to call collectively “the metropolitan problem.” Finally, the emerging field organization of the federal government suggests not a weakening, but a strengthening, of the capacity of the executive branch of the national government to leave its imprint on local policy. The new view of the relationship of the local citizen to his political environment, hence, sees him as ultimately parochial, indulged (or deprived) by the faceless formulas of revenue sharing administered by a conservative, if not inert, governmental system. Reform and change will become increasingly the responsibility of the courts, until, and unless, they too succumb to the proposition that the American system of governance has no responsibility for foresight, equity, or the claims of the disadvantaged. Although it is not clear how widely such a view is understood or held, recent trends seem to be in that direction.In the longer run, those efforts toward governmental reform are most likely to succeed which take into account the demands emerging in the political constituency; it is in this context that the following essays should be read. They do offer suggestions for change, but in each case we must deal with the underlying question of consistency, not only with the analytics of the metropolitan problem but also with the expectations and aspirations of men in their relations with each other in the United States in this last third of the twentieth century.If the reform of metropolitan governance is fundamentally a process of discovering a more fruitful relationship between a political ideal and the realities of integrating what public goods constituencies desire with production possibilities, such a relationship will be expressed in the way in which governmental institutions are organized to do what constituencies want them to do. The politically sophisticated often maintain that reshuffling organizational tables creates the illusion without the fact of reform; certainly much of our experience at governmental reform bears this out. Will the housing code really be better enforced by the city inspection department than by the public health office? Does it make any difference to anyone whether a regional planning agency is responsible to or associated with the council of governments instead of constituent local planning organizations? Are there welfare gains to the larger community to be realized by transferring the
National Forest Service from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of the Interior?Obviously the answers to such questions range from “yes” through “maybe” to “no.” In some cases an affirmative answer must be based on the prospects for better management, in others on more effective implementation of a particular substantive policy, in still others on the capacity of a change to embody a new definition of government. Only the last case emerges from, and is affirmed by, a true sentiment for reform, in which the aspirations of citizens who perceive new, more rewarding relationships with their collective institutions are creatively expressed in the realignment of the institutions of governance, and a reallocation of collective responsibility and resources. Thus, although reorganization does not necessarily mean reform, there will be no reform without a creative restructuring of the institutions of governance.
