Structural Conflict in Contemporary Cities

A surprising number of modern American cities are experiencing efforts to drastically alter or even abandon their forms of local government. We discuss the major perspectives on municipal structural choice and then use both survey and census data in an attempt to explain this contemporary urban conflict over governance structure. Our findings demonstrate that no single institutional, political, social, or contextual theory satisfactorily explains this evolving struggle over governing arrangements in U.S. cities. Rather, a complex array of factors such as race, ethnicity, education, economic change, governmental composition, and specific municipal design features seem to be driving these movements for institutional change.