Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T02:28:32.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Party and Bureaucracy: The Influence of Intermediary Groups on Urban Public Service Delivery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Bryan D. Jones*
Affiliation:
Wayne State University

Abstract

Geographically based intermediary groups in cities, primarily the political party structure and community groups, can potentially affect the distribution of public services to neighborhoods in three ways. First, they can stimulate citizen demands for services, which urban bureaucracies transform into outputs; more demands yield more services. Second, urban service agencies may grant special consideration to demands mediated by the intermediary structures, producing more output per demand for mediated demands. Finally, parties and groups may intervene in neighborhoods to co-produce services, gaining more impact from agency efforts than in neighborhoods not represented by strong intermediary structures.

Using data on citizen complaints, agency outputs and service impacts in neighborhoods, this study of building code enforcement in Chicago finds that the party structure is efficacious at all three stages of the service provision process, but that groups are not effective at any stage.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acton, Forman S. (1966). Analysis of Straight Line Data. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Banfield, Edward (1961). Political Influence. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Board of Education Commissioners of Chicago (1978). “Election Summary Statistics.” Mimeographed.Google Scholar
Brody, Richard A. (1978). “The Puzzle of Political Participation in America.” In King, Anthony (ed.), The New American Political System. Washington, D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, pp. 287324.Google Scholar
Chicago Area Geographic Study (n.d.). “Population Estimates for the Chicago SMSA by Census Tract Area Within the City of Chicago, 1975.” Chicago: Department of Geography, University of Illinois, Chicago Circle.Google Scholar
Chicago Community Organization Directory 1977-78. Chicago: Community Renewal Society.Google Scholar
City of Chicago Department of Planning (1973). Chicago Statistical Abstract, Part 4: 1970 Census-Ward Summary Tables. Chicago.Google Scholar
Crecine, John P. (1969). Government Problem-Solving. Chicago: Rand-McNally.Google Scholar
Crenson, Matthew A. (1978). “Social Networks and Political Processes in Neighborhoods.” American Journal of Political Science 22: 578–94.Google Scholar
Dornan, Paul (1977). “Whether Urban Policy Analysis: A Review Essay.” Polity 9: 403–27.Google Scholar
Gosnell, Harold (1968). Machine Politics, Chicago Model. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Guterbock, Thomas (1980). Machine Politics in Transition: Party and Community in Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hawkins, Brett (1971). Politics and Urban Policies. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.Google Scholar
Johnston, Michael (1979). “Patrons, Clients, Jobs and Machines: A Case Study of the Uses of Patronage.” American Political Science Review 73: 385–98.Google Scholar
Jones, Bryan D., et al. (1977). “Bureaucratic Response to Citizen-Initiated Contacts: Environmental Enforcement in Detroit.” American Political Science Review 71: 148–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Bryan D., et al. (1978). “Service Delivery Rules and Distribution of Local Government Services: Three Detroit Bureaucracies.” Journal of Politics 40: 332–68.Google Scholar
Jones, Bryan D., with Greenberg, Saadia and Drew, Joseph (1980). Service Delivery in the City: Citizen Demand and Bureaucratic Response. New York: Longman's.Google Scholar
Karnig, Albert (1975). “Private-Regarding Policy, Civil Rights Groups, and the Mediating Impact of Municipal Reforms.” American Journal of Political Science 19: 91106.Google Scholar
Kasperson, Roger (1965). “Toward a Geography of Urban Politics.” Economic Geography 41: 95107.Google Scholar
Kaufman, Herbert (1956). “Emerging Conflicts in the Doctrines of Public Administration.” American Political Science Review 50: 1057–73.Google Scholar
Kemp, Kathleen (1978). The Regulated City. Ph.D. Dissertation, Department of Political Science, Northwestern University.Google Scholar
Kemp, Kathleen, and Robert Lineberry (1979). “The Last of the Great Urban Machines and the Last of the Great Urban Mayors? Chicago Politics Since 1955.” Evanston, Ill.: Center for Urban Affairs, North-western University.Google Scholar
Levy, Frank, Meltsner, Arnold J., and Wildavsky, Aaron (1974). Urban Outcomes. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lineberry, Robert (1977). Equality and Public Policy: The Distribution of Municipal Public Services. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage.Google Scholar
Lineberry, Robert, and Fowler, Edmund (1967). “Reformism and Public Policies in American Cities.” American Political Science Review 61: 701–16.Google Scholar
Lipsky, Michael (1980). Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York: Russell Sage.Google Scholar
Mladenka, Kenneth (1978). “Rules, Service Equity and Distributional Decisions.” Social Science Quarterly 59: 192202.Google Scholar
Mladenka, Kenneth (1980). “The Urban Bureaucracy and the Chicago Political Machine: Who Gets What and the Limits to Political Control.” American Political Science Review 74: 991–98.Google Scholar
Nivola, Pietro (1979). The Urban Service Problem. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Rakove, Milton (1975). Don't Make No Waves, Don't Back No Losers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Rich, Richard (1979). “Neglected Issues in the Study of Urban Service Distributions.” Urban Studies 16: 143–56.Google Scholar
Rossi, Peter H., and Cutright, Phillips (1961). “The Impact of Party Organization in an Industrial Setting.” In Janowitz, Morris (ed.), Community Political Systems. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press.Google Scholar
Wald, Kenneth (1980). “The Electoral Base of a Political Machine: A Deviant Analysis.” Urban Affairs Quarterly 16: 331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.