This article sheds light on the relationship between municipal electoral characteristics, progressive reform adoption, and the presence of machine political systems for the period between 1910 and 1930. Machine politicians and their supporters did stand in the way of reform, but not everywhere. A two-stage model suggests that the electoral factors contributing to machine presence are not exactly the same as those contributing to resistance to reform. Ethnic factors figure prominently in the results. Cities with high and increasing percentages of Irish immigrants resisted reforms even in cities where there was no machine. Literacy rates and the availability of patronage are important to the presence of machine organization, but make no independent difference to reform resistance. Receptivity to reform was frequently exogenous to whether a city was machine dominated.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Achen, Chris, 1990. "The Polychotomous Linear Probability Model." Unpublished ms.
2.
Aldrich, John H., and Forrest D. Nelson .1984. Linear Probability. Logit and Probit ModelsBeverly Hills, CA: Sage.
3.
Banfield, Edward, and James Q. Wilson .1965. City Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
4.
Boulay, Harvey, and Alan DiGaetano.1985. "Why Did Political Machines Disappear ?" Journal of Urban History12 (November): 25-47.
5.
Bridges, Amy.1984. A City m the Republic. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
6.
—. 1986. "Becoming American: The Working Classes in the United States Before the Civil War." In I. Katznelson and A. R. Zolber, eds. Working Class Formation: Nineteenth Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States, pp. 157-96. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
7.
Brown, M. Craig and Charles N. Halaby .1987. "Machine Politics in America, 1870-1945." Journal of Interdisciplinary History18 (Winter): 272-82.
8.
Buenker, John, 1973. Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform. New York: Scribner's.
Clark, Terry N.1975. "The Irish Ethic and the Spirit of Patronage." Ethnicity2: 305-59.
11.
DiGaetano, Alan.1988. "The Rise and Development of Urban Political Machines ." Urban Affairs Quarterly24 (December): 242-67.
12.
Erie, Steven.1978. "Politics, The Public Sector and Irish Social Mobility: San Francisco, 1870-1900." Western Political Quarterly31 (June): 274-89.
13.
—. 1988. Rainbow's End: Irish Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1840-1985. Berkeley: University of California Press.
14.
Glazer, Nathan, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan.1963. Beyond the Melting Pot. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
15.
Gordon, Daniel N.1968. "Immigrants and Urban Governmental Form in American Cities, 1933-1960." American Journal of Sociology74 (No. 2): 158-71.
16.
Handlin, Oscar.1951. The Uprooted. Boston: Little, Brown.
17.
Hichborn, Franklin.1959. "The Party, The Machine and The Vote: The Story of Crossfiling in California Politics, Part 1." California Historical Society Quarterly38 (December): 349-57.
18.
—. 1960. "The Party, The Machine and The Vote: The Story of Crossfiling in California Politics, Part 2." California Historical Society Quarterly39 (March): 19-34.
19.
Janowitz, Morris.1978. The Last Half-Century. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
20.
Katznelson, Ira.City Trenches. 1981. New York: Pantheon.
21.
Kessel, John H.1962. "Governmental Structures and Political Environments: A Statistical Note." American Political Science Review56 (September) 615-20.
22.
Key, V.O.1956. Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups. New York: Crowell.
23.
Kleppner, Paul1983. "Voters and Parties in the Western States: 1876-1900 ," Western Historical Quarterly (January) 47-68.
24.
Leighton, G.R.1939. Five Cities: The Story of Their Youth and Old Age . New York: Harper & Row.
25.
Mayhew, David R.1986. Placing Parties in American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
26.
Mushkat, Jerome.1971. Tammany. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
27.
Pomeroy, Earl.1965. The Pacific Slope. New York : Knopf.
28.
Pratt, John W.1961. "Boss Tweed's Public Welfare Progam" New York Historical Society Quarterly45 (October) 396-411.
29.
Shefter, Martin.1975. "The Emergence of a Political Machine: An Alternative View." Theoretical Perspectives on Urban PoliticsEnglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc.
30.
—. 1983. "Regional Receptivity to Reform: The Legacy of the Progressive Era," Political Science Quarterly98: 459-83.
31.
Stone, Harold A., Don K. Price and Kathryn H. Stone .1940. City Manager Government in the United States: A Review After Twenty Years. Chicago, IL: Social Science Research Council, Committee on Public Administration.
32.
Tufte, Edward R.1974. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
33.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Thirteenth Census of the United States. 1910. Vols. 1-5.
34.
U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. Fifteenth Census of the United States. 1930. Vols. 1-3.
35.
James P. Walsh.1972. "Abe Ruef Was No Boss: Machine Politics, Reform and San Francisco." California Historical Quarterly51 (Spring): 3-16.
36.
Wilson, James Q.1962. The Amateur Democrat, Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
37.
—. 1961. "The Economy of Patronage."Journal of Political Economy69 (August) 369-80.
38.
Wolfinger, Raymond.1972. "Why Political Machines Have not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts." Journal of Politics34: 365-98.
39.
Wolfinger, Raymond, and John Osgood Field .1966. "Political Ethos and the Structure of City Government." American Political Science Review60 (June): 306-26.
40.
Zink, Harold.1930. City Bosses in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
