Morning Glories - Softcover

Bridges, Amy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691010099 ISBN 13: 9780691010090

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1999

Synopsis

George Washington Plunkitt once dismissed municipal reformers as "morning glories" who "looked lovely in the mornin' and withered up in a short time, while the regular machines went on flourishin' forever, like fine old oaks." Although this remark rings true for the Northeast in the days when Tammany Hall ruled New York City, municipal reformers have governed the big cities of the Southwest for most of this century. Obscuring this fact and ignoring the Southwest in general, familiar accounts of municipal reform have focused on small towns and suburbs as the only locations where reformers achieved their goals. Amy Bridges redresses this neglect by tracing the reform politics and government in large Southwestern cities since 1901, thereby giving a more complete account of municipal reform.

In the Southwest, municipal reformers got everything they wanted: nonpartisanship, city managers, citywide elections, civil service, and a government with few social service responsibilities. Successful at limiting popular participation and at carefully targeting amenities to their core supporters, incumbents in big cities counted on re-election as confidently as could any machine politician. Urban leaders were aggressive in their pursuit of urban growth and very popular with the people who did vote, but the political community remained small. Not until the 1970s did growth and exclusionary practices combine to uproot the vigorous "morning glories" of the Southwest.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Morning Glories is a tour de force, a book that is certain to change the literature on urban politics. Amy Bridges takes on an important topic, advances a powerful argument, and backs it up with original archival research. This superb work will be the first to comprehensively examine reform in the urban Southwest. With the publication of Morning Glories, the standard account of American urban reform will need to be substantially revised."--Dennis R. Judd, University of Missouri at Saint Louis

About the Author:

Amy Bridges is Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of A City in the Republic: Antebellum New York and the Origins of Machine Politics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0691010099
• ISBN 13: 9780691010090
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 264