Local Politics and Decision-Making: A Hypothesis-Generating Case Study

Local Politics and Decision-Making: A Hypothesis-Generating Case StudyAuthor(s): Alan AlexanderSource: British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), pp. 112-123Published by: Cambridge University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/193277 .

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I 2 Notes and Comments I 2 Notes and Comments I 2 Notes and Comments I 2 Notes and Comments

opportunity for self-expression or advancement, they have little incentive to identify with management rather than with their parents and background. If we add this speculation to our earlier evidence about these voters' socio-economic position, it seems unrealistic to regard them as examples of 'class-political deviancy'. Rather we should ask whether one can still define the middle and working classes in strict manual/non-manual terms. We are surely dealing here with a working-class vote 'in disguise'.

Local Politics and Decision-Making: a Hypothesis-Generating Case Study

ALAN ALEXANDER*

In a recent article on the comparative method in the study of politics,' Arend Lijphart discusses the place of the case study and suggests that there are six types of case study, four of which may be characterized as theoretical, two as atheoretical. The first of the theoretical types is the hypothesis-generating case study. Of studies of this type, Lijphart says: 'They start out with a more or less vague notion of possible hypotheses, and

attempt to formulate definite hypotheses to be tested subsequently among a large number of cases.'2 The study upon which this paper is based satisfies entirely the first

part of this description in that it began with a 'more or less vague notion of possible hypotheses' and it is hoped that the more definite hypotheses which were generated will be worthy of the large-scale testing that will eventually lead to the construction of a

general theory of non-partisan civic government in Canada.

THE STUDY

On I January 1970, the cities of Port Arthur and Fort William in northwestern Ontario, were amalgamated to form the new city of Thunder Bay. The cities had been incorporated within a year of each other in I906-07 and, although they constituted a single urban

area, being fully contiguous, a deep local rivalry and separate senses of community identity had been present for most of their history.3 Superficially, also, the functioning of civic government presented striking contrasts in institutional structure, decision-

making processes and administrative efficiency. During the winter of 1968-69 interviews were conducted with all members of the city

council of Port Arthur and with seven of the twelve members of the Fort William council. The interviews were based on an open-ended questionnaire and the conversations were recorded on tape and transcribed verbatim. A full account of this study and of the data it yielded has been published elsewhere4 and it is the purpose of this paper to

* Department of Politics, University of Reading. Arend Lijphart, 'Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method', American Political

Science Review, LXV (I97I), 682-93. 2 Lijphart, 'Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method', p. 692. 3 See Elizabeth Arthur, 'The Landing and the Plot', Lakehead University Review, I (1968), I-I 7. 4 Alan Alexander, 'The Institutional and Role Perceptions of Local Aldermen', paper

presented at the Annual Meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association, Winnipeg, I970. A slightly amended version of this paper will be found in Lakehead University Review, v

(I972), 38-54, and in L. D. Feldman and M. D. Goldrick, eds., Politics and Government of Urban Canada, 2nd edn. (Toronto: Methuen, 1972), 139-52.



ALAN ALEXANDER*





THE STUDY











ALAN ALEXANDER*





THE STUDY











ALAN ALEXANDER*





THE STUDY











Notes and Comments 13 Notes and Comments 13 Notes and Comments 13 Notes and Comments 13

identify, pace Lijphart, a number of definite hypotheses, generated by the case study, which may be worthy of testing in other locations where the local factors which may have affected the results of a study that was both narrow in scope and small in scale are not present.

For even to the casual observer it is clear that the political system of the Lakehead is affected by features atypical of most Canadian cities. It is remote from other urban centres, the nearest city being over four hundred miles away and in another province; it has a history of electoral volatility in both federal and provincial contests; its population is not expanding at a rate comparable to that of Ontario generally or Canada as a whole; and its economy depends on a few basic industries: pulp and paper and the shipping of wheat from the prairies and iron ore from its own hinterland. There are, however, important features which may be found elsewhere in Canada. Among them are the following: the existence of two (or more) local authorities in a single urban area; non-partisan civic politics; councils where business is transacted through a system of sub-committees; councils where business is transacted by committees-of-the-whole; the presence of electorally significant ethnic concentrations.

The suggestion that the hypotheses generated by this study may be worth testing elsewhere is given added point by the fact that, since the interviews were conducted, there have been several additions to the literature of community politics which report on the presence in other locations of some of the political phenomena discovered in the Lakehead and which examine hypotheses similar to those generated by this study.5 Where these findings seem germane to the Lakehead data, reference is made to them in the text. However, since the hypotheses which form the major part of this paper were generated independently by the Lakehead study, it is considered appropriate to present it as a 'hypothesis-generating case study'.

THE HYPOTHESES

i When political parties do not participate in municipal elections andpolitics the system of representation will not be capable of translating citizen demands into council actions and there will be, among elected officials, an active hostility to innovations designed to improve the system of representation in such a way as to make it so capable. The councils of the Lakehead cities were representative institutions, at least in the very

limited sense that their members were freely elected by the citizenry. To say this, however, tells us very little about the form of representation and nothing about the continuing relationship between the rulers and the ruled, the representatives and those whom they represent; nor does it say anything about the linkage between citizen demands and political actions, about the process, if any, whereby the wishes of the electorate are translated into council policies.

In western democracies, the most common representative model is the 'party responsible'. This model is characterized by the existence of two or more political parties which regularly compete electorally to gain control of representative institutions.

5 See, for example, I. Budge et al., Political Stratification and Democracy (London: Macmillan, 1972); K. Prewitt, The Recruitment of Political Leaders: A Study of Citizen-Politicians (India- napolis: Bobbs-Merrill, I970); I. Budge and C. O'Leary, Belfast: Approach to Crisis (London: Macmillan, 1972); K. Prewitt and H. Eulau, 'Social Bias and Leadership Selection, Political Recruitment, and Electoral Context', Journal of Politics, xxxIII (197I), 293-315; K. Prewitt and W. Nowlin, 'Political Ambitions and the Behaviour of Incumbent Politicians', Western Political Quarterly, xxii (I969), 298-308.




THE HYPOTHESES








THE HYPOTHESES








THE HYPOTHESES







114 Notes and Comments 114 Notes and Comments 114 Notes and Comments 114 Notes and Comments

The major advantages of this model are: (i) that it presents the electorate with a choice between groups of individuals who offer different policies and thus promotes the discussion of issues, and (ii) that the existence of the party is in itself a mechanism through which citizen demands can be articulated and translated into action. The major disadvantages are: (i) that those who voted for the unsuccessful party may feel un- represented, (ii) that the commitment to particular policies which partisan competition implies may vitiate the capacity of the representative institution to act as an arbiter (or broker) between conflicting claims that arise between elections, and (iii) that partisan domination of the representative process, and hence of the selection process, may exclude from office potentially able and valuable individuals. An additional disadvantage, peculiar to local politics, might also be added: that party competition may introduce extraneous issues to the local situation and so distort demand. It is perhaps because of a wish to avoid this possible disadvantage that some support is found in the Lakehead and elsewhere in Canada for the idea of civic parties. Whether such parties could for long maintain their independence of the 'established' parties is another question.

Underlying the research upon which this paper is based is the belief that the advantages of party government outweigh the disadvantages and the conviction that the reason for the high incidence of the 'party responsible' model is the fact that, in theory at least, it fulfils the major function of representation, which is to produce an acceptable linear relationship between the demands of the citizens and the actions of their rulers.

As part of their analysis and description of the nature of representation discovered in their study of Glasgow city politics, Budge et al. examine their findings against a number of models of representation.6 Taking these models as a theoretical framework within which to analyse the Lakehead case, it is found that the perceptions of respondents indicate that they view the system of representation as being essentially Burkean. The Burkean model depends upon the representation of constituents interests as these interests are perceived by the representatives: it does not depend upon regular communication between the rulers and the ruled or on the articulation of citizen demands provoking actions by representatives. It sees the interests of constituents as having 'an

objective, impersonal, unattached reality',7 and such a view, of course, obviates the need to seek and consider the opinions of constituents. Burkean representation is essentially paternalistic and non-participatory.

But, although Lakehead aldermen perceive the system of representation in Burkean

terms, it must be admitted that such perceptions are impressionistic and intuitive.8 In view of this, we must examine the possibility that the system of representation as perceived by respondents is modified in practice by the unacknowledged superimposition upon it of another model of representation.

The essentially Burkean system which, in the perceptions of respondents, existed in

6 Budge et al., Political Stratification, esp. Chap. 3. The models considered are Burkean, microcosmic, geographical or areal, party responsible and stratification. The present paper does not consider the areal model because all elections in the Lakehead before amalgamation were city wide and not based on wards. The possibility of the existence of a stratification model is admitted, but the data do not permit the examination of it.

7 H. F. Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), p. I68.

8 There is much evidence to suggest that such perceptions are unreliable as predictors of behaviour. See, for example, Budge et al., Political Stratification, and Budge and O'Leary, Belfast. See also the differences found in the effects of such perceptions in the discussion of Hypotheses ii (a) and iin (b), below.

































Notes and Comments I 15 Notes and Comments I 15 Notes and Comments I 15 Notes and Comments I 15

the Lakehead is prone to produce misperceptions of the citizens' interests.9 From the data, the one constant which was found in the perceptions of the councils' role was a vague notion of responsibility to the community and an awareness of the related broker- age function of the council as an arbiter between conflicting claims within the community. What was not clear, however, was the process whereby the existence of such claims came to the attention of aldermen. None admitted to having any systematic method of assessing constituents' views on public issues. It is possible, however, that the potentiality for misperception may be reduced if the council is found to be representative, in microcosm, of the social, occupational and educational composition of the community.

TABLE I Educational Level of Electorate and Councillors

Electorate Councillors Education Ended (%) (%)

Grades I-5 4-3 Grades 6-9 25-8 23'5 Grades 10-13 58-5 23'5 Beyond Grade 13 II12 53'0

Source: Davies Survey, 1968.

Table I shows the comparison between the educational level of members of the councils and the educational level of the electorate.'0 It is clear from these figures that the educational level of councillors is substantially higher than that of the community at large, and it is particularly significant that more than half of the councillors interviewed had had formal education beyond high school. Similarly, when the occupational composition of the council is compared with that of the community at large (Table 2), the absence of microcosmic representativeness is obvious.

TABLE 2 Occupational Classification of Electorate and Councillors

Electorate Councillors Occupational Type (%) (%)

Professional II15 4I'0 Managerial 5-4 35.3 Clerical 23-8 5.9 Skilled Manual 12-9 Semi-Skilled Manual 5 4 5.9 Unskilled 31-2 Retired 7-5 I-8


9 See, for example, R. S. Sigel and H. P. Friesema, 'Urban Community Leaders' Knowledge of Public Opinion', Western Political Quarterly, xviii (I965), 881-95. 10 For statistics on the social, educational and occupational composition of the electorate, I am indebted to Professor Ivor G. Davies, formerly of the Department of Geography, Lakehead University. The survey from which the figures are drawn was a 2 per cent systematic sample of households based upon a randomly selected starting point. The survey was conducted in the autumn of I968.




































I I6 Notes and Comments I I6 Notes and Comments I I6 Notes and Comments I I6 Notes and Comments

It could be argued from these two sets of data (Tables i and 2) that individuals of advanced education and higher socio-economic status are more likely to be motivated towards public service, and indeed such a conclusion is supported both in terms of general political participation" and by research on local councillors and community influentials in the United States and the United Kingdom.12 However, for the purposes of the present hypothesis, the important point is that while selection by political parties may produce microcosmic representativeness and will produce a medium whereby citizen demands can be communicated to elected officials, the haphazard recruitment patterns which characterize a non-partisan council will do neither.13

Given the absence of political parties and the unrepresentativeness of the councils, in socio-economic and educational terms, it was decided to examine councillors' attitudes to the introduction into the municipal arena of devices designed to provide elected representatives with better articulated and more accurate information on the desires of the community.14 Two such devices were suggested: (i) the introduction of party politics15 and (ii) the use of referenda and plebiscites.

(i) Party Politics

Only one respondent was in favour of running municipal elections on partisan lines. Those who were opposed to the introduction of party politics, moreover, were often

violently so and phrases like 'Political parties interfere too much', 'I want to remain my own man', 'There should be nothing that is going to interfere with his [the alderman's] judgement' were common in the responses. Also, there was, underlying the conversations on this point, a fairly general conviction that political parties as institutions have an independent existence unrelated to the functions of representation. No respondent displayed any awareness that parties might exist as a channel of communication between the rulers and ruled and their perceptions of political parties were overwhelmingly sinister and maleficent. Paradoxically, however, many respondents qualified their remarks by saying that they found party politics quite acceptable and indeed necessary at the higher levels of government.

"I See L. Milbrath, Political Participation (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), esp. Chap. v. 12 See, for example, G. Belknap and R. Smuckler, 'Political Power Relations in a Mid-West

City', Public Opinion Quarterly, xx (1965), 72-8I; L. J. Sharpe, 'Elected Representatives in Local Government' British Journal of Sociology, XIII (I962), 189-208; F. A. Stewart, 'A Sociometric Study of Influence in Southtown', Sociometry, x (1949), -3 I .

13 Prewitt and Eulau, 'Social Bias', 308-Io, suggest that recruitment to non-partisan councils is not 'haphazard'. However, the possibility that recruits come preponderantly from what they call the 'auxiliary government' (public bodies of various kinds) and 'civic leadership' (chamber of commerce, service clubs, etc.), though strong in the Lakehead case (see Hypothesis vi (a), below) surely reinforces the argument here.

4 Sigel and Friesema, 'Urban Community Leaders' Knowledge of Public opinion'. 15 Wildavsky reports that in Oberlin the introduction of non-partisanship in city elections led

to increased participation in elections and to an increased interest in and discussion of issues. Leadership in a Small Town (Totowa, N. J.: Bedminster Press, I964), 49-51. It is likely, however, as Wildavsky acknowledges, that these effects were due in some measure to the fact that politics in Oberlin were not competitive between the parties, the Republicans being dominant. The Lakehead case is wholly dissimilar in that competition is strong between the parties at both provincial and federal levels. Also, it might be argued that the introduction of party politics in the Lakehead case would have the same intentions (and effects) as the introduction of non-partisanship in Oberlin - to increase competition and focus more attention on the issues. Innovation may itself be a stimulus to changed behaviour, no matter the nature of the innovation.



(i) Party Politics










(i) Party Politics










(i) Party Politics











(ii) Referenda and Plebiscites

In response to a question on the use of referenda and plebiscites on local issues, well over half of the respondents indicated that they were totally opposed to the idea of this kind of popular involvement, while the remainder felt that only 'important' issues should be handled in this way. The criteria of 'importance' were, however, personal and subjective and the examples given were not of general areas but of specific issues. One alderman, for example, felt that the question of fluoride in the water supply should always be placed before the electorate since this was the only way to ensure that fluoridation would not be implemented.16 Among those who were opposed, in principle, to the use of plebiscites and referenda there was a higher degree of sophistication in the arguments than was found in the opinions on party politics. In general, it was felt that plebiscites were contradictory to the principle of representative government and the arguments against their use typically referred to the right of the electorate to refuse to re-elect aldermen if it opposed decisions taken by them. In common with the responses on party politics, however, there was an obvious distaste for any process which might interfere with the aldermen's free exercise of judgement.

II (a) Aldermen are constrained by the expectation that any great divergence between their views on issues and the views that they attribute to the electorate will adversely affect their chances of re-election.

(b) The anticipated reactions of the electorate will finction as a meaningful constraint on the decision-making process only when that process is open to public scrutiny.

These hypotheses were suggested by that part of the study which examined the strength of the relationship, in each of the two councils, between members' perceptions of the importance of issues and members' notions of the public's perceptions of the importance of issues. The rationale for this procedure was that, having established that formal communication between elections was minimal or absent, the possibility existed that informal, or unintended, communication had an effect on the decision-making process through the operation of the 'rule of anticipated reactions'.

The strength of the relationship in both cities was tested using Spearman's Rank Correlation Coefficient Test, and this yielded a value of p = 0-25 for Port Arthur and p = o-66 for Fort William. In both cases these values suggest some relationship of a positive nature; but when the significance of the value of p was tested it was found that while the Fort William value was significant at less than the 5 per cent level, the Port Arthur value was not significant enough to conclude that the relationship could not have occurred by chance. Further, the magnitude of the p value for Fort William demonstrated that the relationship there was substantial enough to raise the possibility of the existence of a causal connection.

In view of the different values obtained for the two councils, both of which were non-partisan and existed in a single homogeneous urban area, the value of Hypothesis n (a) appears questionable. Therefore, it had to be determined whether this hypothesis should be discarded completely or revised. Given the limited scope of this study and its speculative intent, and in view of the fact that the value for Port Arthur, though not of high significance, did indicate a positive relationship, it was decided to retain the

16 Evidence from the United States, however, indicates that this remark may have been based more on knowledge of the council than of the electorate. Statistics in R. L. Crain et al., The Politics of Community Conflict (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, I969) show that whereas the adoption rate for fluoridation in forty-eight states was 32-1 per cent, the success rate in referenda was 41 per cent.



























I 8 Notes and Comments I 8 Notes and Comments I 8 Notes and Comments I 8 Notes and Comments

hypothesis because of the possibility that in this aspect of its decision-making process the Port Arthur council was affected by peculiar local factors. It was decided, also, to examine the institutional structures of the two councils in the hope of generating a new or revised hypothesis. Hence Hypothesis n (b), which emerged from an attempt to explain, on the basis of other data, the disparities between the two councils revealed by the correlation test.

The problem of analysis may be expressed in terms of stark simplicity: there are data to suggest that in one city aldermen felt free to ignore their own perceptions of what the public considered important and that in the other city aldermen felt constrained by these perceptions.

When aldermen feel constrained by their perceptions of what the electorate considers important, it seems reasonable to assume that the effective sanction which produces the constraint is the possibility that their chances of re-election may be affected. Indeed, this assumption is given some weight by the frequent references to the power of the electorate as an argument against the appropriateness of referenda and plebiscites. However, this assumption depends on an antecedent assumption that, if a divergence exists between aldermen's notions of the importance of issues and their notions of public's perceptions of the importance of issues, the flow of information from council must be free enough to make the divergence visible to the public. Otherwise the divergence could have no effect upon aldermen's chances of re-election.

The most obvious structural difference between the two councils was in the nature of the committee systems. The city of Fort William employed a city administrator and operated its council by a system of committees-of-the-whole. Port Arthur, on the other hand, operated the more general mayor-council system, with small subcommittees, the chairmen of which were chosen by the mayor. Under the provisions of the Municipal Act, city council meetings must be open to the public but committee meetings need not be, the decision being at the discretion of the council. In Fort William, committee meetings were open but in Port Arthur they were closed. It is likely that this difference had an important bearing on the question of visibility and the effectiveness of public scrutiny of the actions of the councils. In the course of the interviews, respondents were asked how they felt about workings of the committee system of their councils. The results are shown in Table 3.

TABLE 3 Attitudes to Workings of Committee Systems

Port Arthur Fort William (%) (%)

Satisfied 90 43 Dissatisfied 10 42 Don't know - 14






















When aldermen were asked to elaborate on their attitudes to their committee systems, those from Port Arthur expressed almost unanimously the view that closed meetings gave them the opportunity to discuss civic business privately without having to consider that the opinions expressed would be communicated through the press to the

people. The respondent in Port Arthur who said 'We have become unpopular because the









Notes and Comments I19

public does not get the information that it used to when committee meetings were open' was expressing an attitude towards the public relations of the council which was highly atypical and at variance with the views of the great majority of aldermen who were satisfied with the system and content that it reduced the open council meeting, in the words of one of them, to 'a rubber stamp procedure'.

The relevance of these perceptions of the closed committee meeting to the notion of visibility becomes apparent when the relationship between the committees and the council in Port Arthur is examined. In the words of one Port Arthur alderman, the typical council meeting lasted 'a half hour' every second week. At these meetings the council adopted reports, ratified decisions and passed bye-laws presented to it by the chairmen of the various committees. Relevant documents were circulated in advance to aldermen and discussion of them in council was minimal or absent. Press, radio and television coverage of the actions of the council was restricted to reports of decisions taken and interviews with the chairmen of the committees concerned. The council was reluctant to question committee members publicly and when one alderman described the relationship by saying, 'I can't think of any chairman who has brought in a recom- mendation to our council that has blown up in his face', he characterized the virtually complete delegation of the civic decision-making process to the closed meetings of sub-committees. This delegation certainly produced in Port Arthur a situation where the decision-making process was completely invisible to the electorate and where, to the public, the council invariably presented an appearance of complete unanimity and harmony.

In such circumstances, of course, it becomes less than credible to see the force of public opinion as expressed at the polls as a meaningful constraint on the activities of the individual alderman. To the public, the alderman has no individuality, being simply one part of a unanimous body which, by the dispatch with which it conducts its business, presents a picture of considerable efficiency and managerial expertise. Thus, the institutional structure and modus operandi of the council in Port Arthur provide a possible explanation for the lack of significant correlation between aldermen's perceptions of issues and their views of the public's perception of issues.

In sharp contrast to the opinions expressed in Port Arthur, aldermen in Fort William, in a majority of cases, demonstrated a high level of awareness of the effects of the publicity surrounding the deliberations of the council and of its standing committees-of- the-whole. However, attitudes to the committee system (see Table 3) revealed considerable ambivalence towards the workings of open committees, and the respondent who said that due to 'a colossal lack of responsibility on the part of committee chairmen ... committee-of-the-whole is the only way we can work' articulated a view which was apparent in the conversations of several respondents: that public scrutiny of the decision-making process was not necessarily a good thing, but that, given the person- alities and issues involved, it was the best method of operation for this particular council. This perceptual ambivalence does not, however, detract from the validity of the hypothesis which is being developed on the basis of the correlation statistics and other data. An awareness among Fort William aldermen that the entire decision-making process was public and open may be an explanation of the high level of correlation between their own perceptions of the importance of issues and their notions of the public's.

in The operational level of the 'rule of anticipated reactions' will be determined by the nature of the institutional structure of the Council.

The thesis of 'anticipated reactions' or 'unintended (or indirect) influence' was

























propounded by Carl Friedrich and applied by Dahl, Presthus and Jennings'7 in their community studies of New Haven, Edgewood and Riverview, and Atlanta, respectively. Simply stated, the thesis is that those who wield power are influenced in their decision- making by their own subjective notions of how the citizenry will react to the decisions taken. No attempt has been made hitherto, however, to examine the possibility that the strength of the 'rule of anticipated reactions' - its operative level - may be related to the nature of the institutional structure in which it operates.

TABLE 4 Operational Conditions* for the 'Rule of Anticipated Reactions'

A. Substantive Conditions

(I) That electors have some criteria on which to judge the effect on themselves of decisions taken;

(2) That the electors have some criteria on which to judge the effect on themselves of decisions which will be taken.

B. Procedural Conditions

(3) That the electors have some criteria on which to judge how decisions were taken; (4) That the electors have some criteria on which to judge how decisions will be taken.

* The bases of the operational conditions are as follows: (1) Publication of decisions; (2) Election on the basis of a legislative programme; that is, almost invariably, a partisan com-

petitive election; (3) Openness of the decision-making process; (4) Similar to (2), with candidates (or parties) making an issue of the nature of the decision-making

process.

In examining the institutional structures of the two Lakehead cities, the operational conditions given in Table 4 were derived. (It should be noted that the assumption has been made that for 'anticipated reactions' to be considered an effective influence or constraint on the decision-makers there must exist the possibility that the ruled will be

TABLE 5 Institutional Structure and 'Anticipated Reactions'

Whether Institutional Institutional* Conditions Operational

Type Structure Operative Level I 2 3 4

I Partisan/Open yes yes yes yes Fully II Non-partisan/Open yes no yes no Semi III Partisan/Closed yes yes no yes Highly IV Non-partisan/Closed yes no no no Minimally










process.















process.















process.






* 'Partisan' is used to indicate that elective offices are regularly competed for on a party political basis; 'open' is used to indicate that all formal stages of the decision-making process take place publicly.

17 C. J. Friedrich, Constitutional Government and Democracy (New York: Harper, I937); R. A. Dahl, Who Governs ? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 196I); R. V. Presthus, Men at the Top (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); M. Kent Jennings, Community Influentials (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, I964). See also, Roy Gregory, 'Local Elections and the "Rule of Anticipated Reactions"', Political Studies, xvII (I968), 31-47.










able to institute sanctions against or exact a penalty from the rulers: in other words, free elections must be considered essential to the applicability of the 'rule of anticipated reactions'.)"8

Table 5 shows the operational level of the rule of anticipated reactions' within various institutional structures. If this configuration is applied to the two councils being examined here, it is found that whereas the Fort William council - since elections to it were non-partisan and since both committee and full council meetings were open - was of Type II, that of Port Arthur, where elections were also non-partisan but where the vital stage of the decision-making process - committee meetings - was closed, was of Type iv, and thus it may be argued that the 'rule of anticipated reactions' was semi-operational in Fort William but only minimally operational in Port Arthur. Thus, there is a further possible explanation for the differences found between the councils in the correlation test described above and, it is suggested, further evidence of the potential value of Hypothesis ini as a basis for empirical research.

iv (a) The decision-making process of a closed non-partisan council will not be affected by the partisan identifications of its members.

(b) The decision-making process of an open non-partisan council is likely to be affected by the partisan identification of its members.

The interviews, as well as providing information on the role perceptions and the importance of issues, also yielded data on the sorts and sources of pressure to which aldermen were subject while engaged in the decision-making process and on the patterns of influence within the councils. Hypotheses iv (a) and iv (b) and those which follow were generated by analysis of these data.

TABLE 6 Levels of Partisan Identification

Port Arthur Fort William

Lib. PC NDP None Lib. PC NDP None

Identification - - Membership i I 5 Sought Candidacy - 2 Candidacy - - - -

Total 2 2 I 5 2 5










Total 2 2 I 5 2 5










Total 2 2 I 5 2 5










Total 2 2 I 5 2 5

These two hypotheses are suggested by the contrasts which were revealed between the levels of partisan identification on the two councils (see Table 6). It will be noticed from the figures that, whereas in Port Arthur partisan identification among councillors was low, with half the members having no firm identification with any party, in Fort William it was high, with all members interviewed having a firm party identification which had, in all cases, been indulged at least to the point of party membership. Clearly those figures would not of themselves constitute a basis for Hypotheses iv (a) and iv (b); but the attitudes to the effects of partisanship on the work of the councils, as revealed during the interviews, illuminate dissimilarities between the councils which may be related to the nature of the institutional structures concerned,

18 See, Dahl, Who Governs?, p. ioI.










In Port Arthur, which was characterized, as has been argued earlier, by a completely closed decision-making process, 70 per cent of respondents said that party politics was never an influential factor and the others said that it hardly ever was. It is worth noting here that, at least at a perceptual level, there was considerable consistency between the attitudes of members to the entry of political parties to municipal government and the modus operandi of the council in its decision-making role. Finally, it is also significant that, in Port Arthur, in no case was encouragement from a political party given as a reason for first running for election to council and that in only one case was the desirability of party representation given as a reason for wishing to remain on council.

In contrast, among Fort William aldermen there was a much higher incidence of party identification, with all of those interviewed having a firm identification, and a heavy concentration of support for the Progressive Conservative Party. Furthermore, perceptions of the incidence of party politics as an influential factor were varied, with only three of the respondents saying that partisan considerations never entered and two of the others saying that such influence was almost continual, one that it was quite frequent, the other that it was occasional. In this context also, it is noteworthy that, in the perceptions of many respondents, the Fort William council in its decision-making process was characterized by what one alderman called 'a government and an opposition' and the incidence of open conflict both in council and in committees-of-the-whole was thought by most respondents to be high.

From these contrasts between the councils, Hypotheses iv (a) and iv (b) have been derived, and, it is argued, they are worth testing in other jurisdictions.

v In closed councils influence is perceived in terms of individuals; in open councils influence is perceived in terms of groups and alliances.

Respondents in both cities were asked to say which members of the councils had most influence on their decisions. It was found that in Port Arthur influence was generally (but not invariably) perceived in terms of individual aldermen, but that in Fort William influence was seen to be exerted by groups or alliances which were considered to be permanent or semi-permanent in nature. The distinction between the councils on this

point, while generating a hypothesis worthy of examination, should be considered in the light of the further data described under Hypotheses vi (a) and vi (b).

vi (a) Interest groups are likely to seek to have members elected to closed councils but not to open councils.

(b) Closed councils are likely to be consistently influenced over time by interest groups which have a high representation on council.

Respondents were asked to say whether they had been encouraged to run for office by any organization. In Port Arthur it was found that five members of the council, as well as the mayor, had been encouraged to run by the business community. No such encour-

agement was mentioned by any Fort William alderman. Given the homogeneity of the

area, this complete dissimilarity suggests that Hypothesis vi (a), which raises the

possibility that the differential behaviour of a major interest group towards the two councils may be explicable in terms of the difference in their decision-making processes, is worthy of wider-scale testing.

This differential behaviour is also important in the generation of Hypothesis vi (b). Respondents were asked which individuals and groups, both inside and outside the

councils, had been most involved with the most important issues to come before the














































councils in the preceding year. In the perceptions of Port Arthur aldermen, the only outside group which was greatly concerned with issues which came before the council in the period under investigation was the business community. For the purposes of this analysis four organizations - the Lakehead Chamber of Commerce (including the Junior Chamber), the Lakehead Executives Association, the Convention Bureau and the Downtown Businessmen's Association - were grouped together to form one interest group and it was found that this group received thirteen nominations, spread over three of the six most important issues, as having been concerned to influence the Port Arthur council in its decision-making role.

The continued influence of the business community in the affairs of the city council became even more significant in view of some of the other data collected. First of all, five members of the council, as well as the mayor, were businessmen and only one of these, an insurance broker, did not operate his own business in the downtown area. Secondly, as has been said, five members of council, as well as the mayor, indicated that they had been encouraged to run for election in the first instance by business organizations. Thirdly, of thirty-five nominations in answer to the question, 'Which members of the Council do you consider to have most influence on its decisions?', twenty-two went to the five businessmen on the council, and there was a general indication among all respondents that the mayor, also a businessman, exercised an influence on the council's decision-making which was ill-defined but constant.19

In striking contrast with Port Arthur, among Fort William aldermen there was no perception of any continuing effort by any interest group to influence the decisions taken by council.

Although there was in Fort William no perception among aldermen that there existed a continuing pressure group acting on council in the way that the business community was perceived to act in the neighbouring city, it was found that business organizations received the greatest number of nominations as having been concerned with the important issues during the period under study. The major differences in the two cities were that, whereas the business community received thirteen nominations in Port Arthur (an average of 1-3 per respondent), the corresponding group received only five nominations in Fort William (an average of 0-7 per respondent) and that, whereas in Port Arthur the nominations were spread over three of the six most important issues, in Fort William the business community was perceived to have been concerned only with the issue of the proposed amalgamation of the cities.

'American Democracy Reconsidered'- Some Comments

K. NEWTON*

L. J. Sharpe's two-part article ('American Democracy Reconsidered' in this Journal, [II [1973], 1-28, 129-68) is an important and controversial one. He questions many of the

19 Burkean representation, in its purest form, excludes the possibility of the representation of any interests except those which are 'impersonal' and 'unattached' (see above, p. I 14). Thus there is the possibility that the strong representation of the business community on the Port Arthur council constitutes a modification of the model by the superimposition upon it of the direct representation of a particular economic constituency.

* Nuffield College, Oxford. This note was written while the author held an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship at the University of Wisconsin.






K. NEWTON*









K. NEWTON*









K. NEWTON*






Local Politics and Decision-Making: A Hypothesis-Generating Case Study

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