Untangling the Logics of Urban Service Bureaucracies the Strange Case of the San Francisco Municipal Railway

Abstract

Marxist analysts have developed theoretical propositions concerning the conflicting functions of government in advanced capitalist countries, while public policy analysts have examined the logic of public resource allocation. Through an historical analysis of a typical urban bureaucracy, the San Francisco Municipal Railway, this paper describes how bureaucratic structure and functioning relate to broader conflicts over whom government actions should benefit. It concludes that the apparent shortcomings of the organization can be traced to, and were caused by, this conflict. The argument thus draws from each of these two quite different approaches to the question of what logic motivates the public sector.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

O'Connor

The Fiscal Crisis of the State. St. Martin's Press, New York, 1973.

Offe

The state and the problem of policy formation. In Complexity and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism, edited by Lindberg

Leon

, Lexington Books, Lexington, Mass., 1975.

Offe

Berufsbildingsreform: Eine Fallstudie uber Reformpolitik. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt, 1975.

Niskanen

Bureaucracy and Representative Government. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971.

Noll

Politicians, Votes, and Bureaucrats. Public Management Program, Stanford Graduate School of Business, unpublished paper.

Wildavsky

Policy as Its Own Cause. Graduate School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, unpublished paper.

Wilson

J. Q.

Political Organizations. Basic Books, New York, 1973.

Devine

The Adoption of the 1932 Charter of San Francisco. Unpublished M.A. Thesis, Political Science Department, University of California, Berkeley, 1933.

Caro

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. Vintage Books, New York, 1975.

10.

Report on a Survey of the Government of the City and County of San Francisco. New York City Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, 1916.

11.

Eakins

The Political Ideas of Some Social Justice Reformers. Paper read to the 1972 Meetings of the American Historical Association, San Francisco.

12.

Building a New Muni. Report of a Study Committee on the San Francisco Municipal Railway, San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal Association, San Francisco, 1972.