A tale of the cities: Urban fiscal policy, the transformation of American cities, and the influence of African-American urban representation.

Over the past fifty years American cities have developed amid a host of economic, social, and political forces--the restructuring of the American economy; the movement of employment from cities to suburbs; and the changing fiscal relationship between the federal and city governments. Undoubtedly these forces affected urban governments, their ability to collect revenue, and their provision of public services. One of the central questions of this thesis is how did the context created by these factors affect the fiscal policymaking of urban governments. One of the pivotal changes in the nation's cities has been the increase in Black urban residents. A ramification of this change, coupled with African Americans' historic struggle for political recognition and empowerment, has been the growth in the number of Black mayors and city councilmembers. Blacks' efforts to achieve political representation raises a fundamental question: How did Black urban elected officials alter the fiscal priorities of city governments in ways responsive to Black citizens within the overarching environment of the suburbanization of citizens, jobs, and industry and the federal fiscal retrenchment of the 1980s? Using data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, the author compiled a dataset of the social, economic, and political characteristics and the fiscal revenues and expenditures of 381 cities from 1972 to 1987. Pooled regression analysis was used to estimate econometric models of urban spending. An important debate in the study of urban politics has been whether economic factors, rather than political ones, are the primary ones guiding urban fiscal policy. This study revealed that important political and demographic factors were as relevant as economic ones in affecting urban spending. The strongest, most consistent predictor of urban expenditures was the percentage representation of Blacks among urban populations. Other strong predictors were median housing value and family income, federal aid to urban governments, and mayor-council governments. While descriptive analysis suggested substantial differences in urban spending between cities with Black mayors and those with white ones, the multivariate analysis revealed that Black urban representation was not a strong predictor of urban spending.PhDPolitical ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104919/1/9624576.pdfDescription of 9624576.pdf : Restricted to UM users only