Abstract
By bypassing the party organizations and strengthening the administrative power of the mayoralty in order to finish the New Deal project in New York, Mayor Robert Wagner established direct, programmatic connections with citizens and courted the government workers who supplied the services of the local welfare state. The literature about plebiscitary politics in the US context is reviewed with a focus on the presidency.
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Notes
Herbert Mitgang, Once Upon A Time In New York: Jimmy Walker, Franklin Roosevelt and the Last Great Battle of the Jazz Age (New York: The Free Press, 2000), 52–55
Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review, 64:4 (Dec 1970): 1033–1053
This argument is carried convincingly in Sidney Milkis, The President and the Parties:The Transformation of the American Party System Since the New Deal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
Theodore Lowi, The Personal President (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985).
Samuel Kernell, Going Public: New Strategies of Presidential Leadership, 4th edition (Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2006).
Theodore Lowi, The Personal President; Sidney Milkis, The President and the Parties. On less normative evaluations of the rise of the plebiscitary presidency, see: Samuel Kernell, Going Public; James Pfiffner, The Modern Presidency, 3rd edition (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
Jeffery Tulis, The Rhetorical Presidency (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1963).
James T. Patterson, The New Deal and the States: Federalism in Transition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969).
On the rejection of the thesis that Roosevelt’s policies destroyed the big city machines, see: Stephen Erie, Rainbow’s End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas of Urban Machine Politics, 1884–1985 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
Richard M. Flanagan, “Roosevelt, Mayors, and the New Deal Regime: The Origins of Intergovernmental Lobbying and Administration,” Polity: The Journal of the Northeastern Political Science Association, 31:3 (1999), 415–450.
Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: The New Deal Years, 1928–1933 (New York: Random House, 1994).
Siegel and Siegel, Prince of the City, 2; Kessner, Fiorello H. LaGuardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York: McGraw Hill, 1989), 246.
Christopher McNickle, To Be Mayor of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 33.
Lyle Dorsett, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the City Bosses (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1977)
Rodger Biles, Big City Boss in Depression and War: Mayor Edward J. Kelly of Chicago (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois Press, 1984).
Martin Shefter, “Political Incorporation and Political Extrusion: Party Politics and Social Forces in Postwar New York,” in Martin Shefter, editor, Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 197–232
For a well-argued case that Impellitteri was a better administrator than he was widely given credit for, see: Salvador LaGuirina, New York at Mid-Century: The Impellitteri Years (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1992).
Mason B. Williams, FDR, La Guardia and the Making of Modern New York (New York: WW Norton, 2013), 317.
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© 2015 Richard M. Flanagan
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Flanagan, R.M. (2015). The Concept of the “Plebiscitary Mayoralty”. In: Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City’s Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137400871_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137400871_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
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