[429] MUNICIPAL REFORM AND THE CHANGING PATTERN OF URBAN PARTY POLITICS

This study discusses the contribution of municipal reform structures to the decline of old-style party politics and to the rise of group politics. Through an analysis of a nation-wide survey of chief executives in American cities 50,000 and over in population, a typol-ogy permits us to speculate, first, on the decline of old-style politics and the relative emergence of alternative political styles predicted in the local government literature: nonpluralist, group, or coalition politics. Second, the typology permits us to assess the relative contribution of municipal reform structures as compared with national reforms, ethos, socioeconomic, and regional factors in shaping the distribution of com-munity group influence. T he widespread diffusion of the structural reforms of citymanager governments, nonpartisan ballots, and at-large elections seems to have coincided with the decline of a style of party politics which first arose in America’s urban centers during the nineteenth century. ’ This old-style party politics tended to be characterized by the centralization of political influence in the hands of local party leaders. When effective, these party leaders exercised control over public officials and party workers through the distribution of specific material Authors ’ Note: Authorship is equal and the order of the authors ’ names was randomly determined. We thank James Danziger, Donald Rosenthal, and several anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Much of this research was conducted while bot