Nonincremental Change in An Urban Environment

• DOI: 10.1177/0095399705277143
• Published date: 01 September 2005
• Author: Thomas J. Main
• Date: 01 September 2005
• Subject Matter: Articles

10.1177/0095399705277143ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / September 2005Main / NEW YORK CITY AND NONINCREMENTAL CHANGE

NONINCREMENTAL CHANGE IN

AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT

The Case of New York City’s

Human Resources Administration

THOMAS J. MAIN

Baruch College

Must change in urban politics be incremental, as structuralist analysts have claimed?

Welfarepolicy in New YorkCity under Giuliani suggests not. The city’s welfare policy has un-

dergonethe following major changes: a sharp reduction in the PAcaseloads; creation of the

country’s largest work experience program;striking organizational restructuring; and the

introductionof a new information management system. The key factors that made these dra-

matic changespossible were New York City’s highly competitive political environmentin the

early 1990s; the development of a popular set of public ideas relatedto reciprocal obliga-

tions; a policy feedback effect of welfarepolicy of the Dinkins years; and the emergence of

Giuliani as a skillful policy entrepreneur. Another crucial factor was the unforeseen effect of

the 1989 city charter revisionthat eliminated the only institution that had historically been a

counterbalance to the mayor’spower. The result suggeststhat a nonincrementalist theory of

political change can be usefully applied at the local level of American politics.

Keywords: urban politics; bureaucracy; welfare; nonincremental change

Much political science and public administration literature has claimed

that change, when it happens in policy making and implementation,

occurs slowly and incrementally (Lindbloom, 1959, 1979). Urban policy

making especially is held to be slow and incremental. Classic statements

of pluralist and corporatist theories of urban politics predict that urban

politics, in particular New York City politics, will tend toward statis as

proposed changes are fought by the many interest groups with stakes in

the status quo to defend (Lowi, 1964, p. 199; Sayre & Kaufman, 1960,

p. 716). Later, structuralist accounts of urban politics have argued that var-

ious sorts of economic, constitutional, and social structures drastically

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ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY, Vol. 37 No. 4, September 2005 483-503

DOI: 10.1177/0095399705277143

© 2005 Sage Publications

limit the possibilities for change (Katznelson, 1981; Peterson, 1981;

Shefter, 1992).1A standard textbook on urban politics sums up the con-

sensus of the literature on the nature of urban politics as follows: “Urban

political structures change slowly in an incremental, evolutionary fashion”

(Harrigan & Vogel, 2000, p. 15).

Some recent literature has challenged this picture of slow or highly

limited change in policy and implementation. Perhaps the most compre-

hensive statement of this challenge is The New Politics of Public Policy,

edited by Landy and Levin (1995). The contributors tothis volume argued

that the combination of a fragmented institutional framework, divided

government, highly competitive political environment,and the rights rev-

olution encouraged policy entrepreneurs of various types to compete with

each other to have the best claim to popular political ideas. The result has

been that

a shift has taken place from a “politics of interests” (which tend to be fixed

and thus to change slowly) to a “politics of valuesand ideas” (which tend to

be more open fluid, and responsive to change and reason).

Contributors provided convincingaccounts of how the new politics led

to nonincremental changes in such areas as the environment (Clean Air

Act of 1970), education (Education for All Handicapped Children Act of

1975) taxation (Tax ReformAct of 1986) and immigration (Immigration

Reform and Control Act of 1986 and the Immigration Act of 1990). But

New Politics (Landy & Levin, 1995) and its follow-up volume, Seeking

the Center (Levin, Landy, & Schapiro, 2001), have little to say about

subnational or urban politics. A recent addition to the literature on

nonincremental change is an article by Weissert and Groggin (2002) on

Michigan’s Medicaid managed care initiative. The authors argue that

Michigan moved “quickly even precipitously” in its switch to managed

care. They found that widespread political support, a willingness to make

major organizational changes, and a deregulated civil service made

nonincremental change possible. They also found that such change made

for higher stakeholder dissatisfaction, more mistakes, and less public

involvement. Weissert and Groggin’s article is perhaps the first article on

nonincremental change to focus on state rather than national policy.

But what of policy making and implementation at the city level? Have

urban politics evolvedfrom apolitics of interests to a politics of valuesand

ideas, as the New Politics (Landy & Levin, 1995) contributors argue has

happened at the national level? Towhat extent, if any, can this paradigm of

484 ADMINISTRATION & SOCIETY / September 2005