Research Note: Incentives and the Maintenance of Political Styles in Different Locales

Abstract

and politics is the belief that there is a considerable difference in the life styles and politics of rural and urban America. With the great migration from the cities to the suburbs, it has now become a question of whether the life and politics of suburban communities will approximate the urban life and politics more closely than the rural one. Of particular interest to the student of politics is the question of the impact of a community's life upon its political style. Banfield and Wilson, for example, contrast small-town politics with city politics by noting that the former emphasizes personal, face-to-face contacts, while the latter impersonalizes politics by placing a variety of organizations between the individual and the political system. Furthermore, town politics is seen as largely consensus-oriented, while city politics is regarded as conflict-oriented.1 The importance of the distinction between these two styles of politics is that they have considerable consequences for a variety of functions performed in the political system. One of the primary community variables believed to affect the of politics is the local party organization. The of politics said to prevail in urban communities has been labeled the professional style and coincides with a model of local party organization based upon the research of Forthal, Gosnell, Kent, and Salter.2 In this model the emphasis of the organization is upon the appeal of a variety of self-oriented incentives, including tangible ones such as jobs, patronage, and business contacts, and intangible ones such as social status and prestige, social mobility, and community recognition. Activists and voters in urban party organizations appear to be unconcerned with the variety of other-oriented incentives, either tangible or intangible, which politics offers to its partisans and participants. Rather,