From City Limits to City Trenches: Local Politics and the Rise of Amateur Partisanship

Abstract

Tip O’Neill, former Speaker of the House, once declared, “All politics is local.” Although a truism embraced by politicos of all stripes, political scientists have rejected this insight in both thought and deed. In fact, since Paul Peterson declared, “city politics is limited politics,” local political conflict has been relegated to the periphery of American political studies. This paper attempts to carve out a space for local politics by situating contemporary American political development within the history of de-urbanization. I argue that de-urbanization altered the terms on which national political disputes occurred: it increased, by fostering local racial conflict, national partisan competition and increased, by creating less autonomous local political systems, the influence of national interest groups in competitive local congressional races. Stuck in the vortex of this historical conjuncture, national political leaders formulate policies to appeal to their base and policies that may be opposed by segments of their political coalitions but may deter dramatic counter mobilization by their opponents. This paper concludes that by assessing the effects of these dynamics on contemporary policymaking.