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Institutional Structure and Mayoral Success in Three California Cities

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Institutional Structure and Mayoral Success in Three California Cities 10.1177/1078087404265391Mullin et al. / CITY CAESARS?URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / September 2004 ARTICLE CITY CAESARS? Institutional Structure and Mayoral Success in Three California Cities MEGAN MULLIN University of California, Berkeley GILLIAN PEELE Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, United Kingdom BRUCE E. CAIN University of California, Berkeley Recently, voters in many large cities have approved charter reforms that strengthen the power of the executive, suggesting that big city residents and mayors themselves view the formal authority of the office as an important influence on whether a mayor will be successful in solving urban problems. This article employs qualitative data from three California cities to specify how struc- tural characteristics interact with personal factors to facilitate mayoral leadership. The authors find that city structure does not directly determine a mayor’s goals and leadership style, but it does create constraints and opportunities that influence whether a mayor’s personal strategies will succeed. Keywords: mayors; city structure; city charter; leadership; reform In the past 20 years, several large California cities have adopted charter reforms that enhanced the formal authority of the mayor’s office. San Jose started the trend in 1986 by increasing the mayor’s powers within the existing council-manager form of government. In 1993, Fresno decided to abandon the council-manager system altogether, and its mayor became the city’s chief AUTHORS’NOTE: A previous version of this article was presented at the 2001 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco. We are grateful to Rachel Goldbrenner for her valuable research assistance on this project. URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW, Vol. 40, No. 1, September 2004 19-43 DOI: 10.1177/1078087404265391 © 2004 Sage Publications 19 20 URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / September 2004 executive officer. Oakland voters rejected proposals in 1984 and 1996 to shift from a council-manager structure to a system with a stronger mayor, but they reconsidered in 1998 and approved such a measure overwhelmingly. Even San Francisco and Los Angeles, cities that already provided for strong ex- ecutives, opted to strengthen their top posts. And although Modesto, San Bernardino, San Diego, and Riverside so far have maintained their weak- mayor systems, these cities have seen proposals to increase the mayor’s authority. This wave of charter reforms has important consequences for our under- standing of municipal institutions. First, it suggests that the governance needs of cities might vary based on city size. Because the council-manager form of government is still predominant for small and medium-sized Califor- nia cities, the movement toward stronger elected mayors in the largest cities indicates a contrasting perception that big city mayors need concentrated authority to address urban problems. Demands for accountability in some large cities are beginning to outweigh the Progressive ideals of decentralized power and professional management that still dominate in smaller jurisdic- tions. Second, many of these recent charter reforms depart from the simple structural dichotomy of mayor-council and council-manager forms of gov- ernment. Cities are making incremental changes to formal governing institu- tions based on local needs and preferences, creating a diverse set of structural arrangements among the state’s largest municipalities. Finally, all of this attention to governmental structure suggests that big city residents and may- ors themselves view the formal power granted to the mayor’s office as an important influence on whether a mayor will be successful in solving urban problems. There appears to be growing agreement among political actors within big cities that institutional constraints on the formal authority of the mayor’s office are an important obstacle to getting things done. This article evaluates the implicit claim by contemporary urban reformers that a mayor needs strong formal authority to be effective. We employ quali- tative data from three northern California cities to specify how structural and personal factors interact to facilitate mayoral leadership. Mayors vary in their goals and ambitions and in the types of political and management strategies they bring to their jobs. We argue that the formal powers bestowed by the city charter help to determine whether a mayor’s strategies will be effective for achieving his or her policy goals. Governmental institutions do not directly affect a mayor’s policy agenda and leadership style, but they do create con- straints and opportunities that influence whether a mayor’s personal strate- gies will succeed. Mullin et al. / CITY CAESARS? 21 MAYORS AND CITY STRUCTURE Most existing models of mayoral leadership treat city structure as a con- stant and attempt to identify the personal factors and political conditions that explain mayoral success within a given set of institutional arrangements. Some observers find that limitations on executive authority only detract from mayoral leadership, arguing that to be effective, a mayor must use politi- cal skills to overcome structural barriers to the consolidation of power (Pressman 1972; Stein 2002). Svara (1987, 1990) contends that this type of leadership model is not appropriate for mayors in council-manager systems and offers an alternative framework that is based on facilitating action and cooperating with other members of city government rather than controlling them. These models provide different prescriptions for executive success, but they all assume that there is an ideal set of strategies that mayors should employ to be effective in an institutional setting that limits their formal authority. Kotter and Lawrence (1974) make this approach explicit by treat- ing the structure of city government as a contextual variable that primarily operates to limit the range of a mayor’s responsibilities and potential strate- gies. Ferman (1985) makes a rare departure from this approach in her study of mayoral leadership in Boston and San Francisco. Here, structure is neither static nor exogenous; when a city’s institutions create too great a hindrance on executive flexibility, mayors can attempt to reform the charter and in- crease the authority of their office. Where leadership models acknowledge the importance of city structure in determining mayoral success, its role remains unspecified. Most analyses attribute mayors’ effectiveness to their political skills and the strategies they use to build and maintain support for their initiatives. The formal institutions of city government make up the context in which a mayor operates, either promoting or hindering a mayor’s flexibility. Only comparative analysis across different governing structures can provide insight about which formal institutions matter the most or the means by which they influence political outcomes. In a study of fiscal policy in Chicago and New York City, Fuchs (1992) is able to trace Chicago’s stronger fiscal position to specific differ- ences between the two cities in mayoral control over the budgetary process. Even among strong-mayor cities, there can be important variation in the powers granted to the executive. 22 URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / September 2004 RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DESIGN In this article, we explore how the formal institutions of the mayoralty affect an individual mayor’s opportunity to demonstrate leadership. By selecting cases based on the structural features of city government, we seek to specify how institutional arrangements influence the relationship between leadership style and political outcomes. A stronger office might have the potential to produce stronger mayors, but within a given structural context, leaders vary in their effectiveness. A mayor whose personal skills fit the requirements of a more constrained office can have greater success than one with extensive formal authority but a style that does not match the office. We depart from the traditional conception of structure as a package of institutions making up a city’s form of government. This conception is reflected in a long string of urban politics scholarship on reform structures and election systems adopted by cities early in the twentieth century. Schol- ars have sought to explain the adoption and persistence of reform institutions (Banfield and Wilson 1963; Wolfinger and Field 1966; Bridges 1997) and the effects on city spending (Lineberry and Fowler 1967; Morgan and Pelissero 1980) and a variety of other policy outcomes. In general, this literature has treated the organization of large cities as a dichotomous variable—citieshave either a mayor-council or a council-manager system.1 However, we see many cities departing from the pure mayor-council and council-manager models by making incremental adjustments that change the mayor’s relationship to the council and redistribute authority over the budget, contracts, and appoint- ments (DeSantis and Renner 2002; Frederickson, Johnson, and Wood 2004). The effect of many of these reforms is to expand the flexibility of a mayor in employing leadership and management strategies even as the overall govern- mental structure remains unchanged. Mayors operating in cities with the same form of government may have very different tools and powers available to them. We believe that the traditional form of government dichotomy over- simplifies the institutional complexity of contemporary American cities, and we are interested in examining the consequences of individual structural elements on mayoral
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