In The Politics of State and City Administration, Abney and Lauth take a penetrating look at the relationships of state and city administrators to the people with whom they work: legislators, councilors, chief executives, and numerous interest groups seeking to influence administrative decisions and upon whom administrators depend to achieve their objectives. The analysis is based upon information obtained from national surveys of approximately 800 state and 600 city government department heads. The reader of this book will learn, for example, that governors are perceived by their department heads to be more interested in management than in policy leadership, interest groups are viewed as allies rather than enemies of state administrators, and the emergence of professionalism in administration has reduced the ability of mayors to be chief administrators. The Politics of State and City Administration will be of interest to scholars and students of public administration, state and local government, and public policy.

More than Mayor or Manager offers in-depth case studies of fourteen large U.S. cities that have considered changing their form of government over the past two decades. The case studies shed light on what these constitutional contests teach us about different forms of governmentùthe causes that support movements for change, what the advocates of change promised, what is at stake for the nature of elected and professional leadership and the relationship between leaders, and why some referendums succeeded while others failed. --