Bosses, Machines, and Urban Voters John M. Allswang.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Allswang, John M., author.

Series:

Hopkins open publishing encore editions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Politicians--United States--History.

Politicians.

Municipal government--United States--History.

Municipal government.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (1 PDF (unpaged).)

Edition:

Open access edition.

Place of Publication:

Johns Hopkins University Press 2019

Baltimore, Maryland : Project Muse, 2019

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Political machines, and the bosses who ran them, are largely a relic of the nineteenth century. A prominent feature in nineteenth-century urban politics, political machines mobilized urban voters by providing services in exchange for voters' support of a party or candidate. Allswang examines four machines and five urban bosses over the course of a century. He argues that efforts to extract a meaningful general theory from the American experience of political machines are difficult given the particularity of each city's history. A city's composition largely determined the character of its political machines. Furthermore, while political machines are often regarded as nondemocratic and corrupt, Allswang discusses the strengths of the urban machine approach--chief among those being its ability to organize voters around specific issues.

Contents:

Preface to the 1986 edition

Of city bosses and college graduates

William Marcy Tweed: the first boss

Charles Francis Murphy: the enduring boss

Big Bill Thompson and Tony Cermak: the rival bosses

Richard J. Daley: the last boss?

Black cities, white machines

Epilogue: Of bosses and bossing.

Notes:

Originally published: Revised edition. Baltimore, Maryland : Johns Hopkins University Press, [1986].

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

0-8018-3323-X

1-4214-3032-0

OCLC:

1120076791