In the 20 years after 1900, municipal reformers celebrated triumph after triumph as cities across the country adopted commission and city-manager charters. The cities of the Southwest were prominent in the movement for municipal reform. In this article, the author shows how the West was won to municipal reform and argues that the adoption of reform charters was not the product of conducive local political culture but, rather, the result of region understood as strategic location and of manipulations of the rules that advantaged advocates of charter revision.
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