The Adoption and Abandonment of Council‐Manager Government

• Author: Jungah Bae,Cheon Geun Choi,Richard C. Feiock
• Date: 01 September 2013
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12097
• Published date: 01 September 2013

Cheon Geun Choi is assistant professor

at Hansung University. He completed

his doctorate in public administration

and policy at the Askew School of Public

Administration and Policy at Florida

State University. His research interests

include local governance, performance

management, and public safety.

E-mail: cheongeunchoi@hansung.ac.kr

Richard C. Feiock is Augustus B.

Turnbull Professor of Public Administration

in the Askew School of Public

Administration and Policy at Florida State

University and holder of the Jerry Collins

Eminent Scholar Chair. He directs the Center

for Sustainable Energy and Governance,

and he was founding director of the

Local Governance Research Program and

Laboratory program at Florida State. His

research and teaching interests are in urban

and regional governance. He has published

widely on issues of local government and

governance.

E-mail: rfeiock@fsu.edu

Jungah Bae is research fellow at

the Korea Research Institute for Local

Administration. She completed her doctor-

ate in public administration and policy at

the Askew School of Public Administration

and Policy at Florida State University. Her

research and teaching interests include local

governance, urban management, sustain-

ability, and policy networks.

E-mail: jb07e@krila.re.kr

The Adoption and Abandonment of Council-Manager Government 727

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 727–736. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12097.

Cheon Geun Choi

Hansung University, South Korea

Richard C. Feiock

Florida State University

Jungah Bae

Korea Research Institute for Local Administration,

South Korea

Editor’s note:  e International City/County

Management Association (ICMA) celebrates

the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2014.

 is article is the second in a series that will

appear during the next year about the council-

manager plan to commemorate ICMA’s 100th

anniversary.

JLP

What accounts for patterns of city adoption and abandon-

ment of council-manager government? Despite dozens of

empirical studies, we lack a systematic understanding of

these forces over time because previous work has relied on

cross-sectional designs or analysis of change over short peri-

ods.  is article begins to f‌i ll this lacuna by constructing

a historical data set spanning 75 years for the 191 largest

cities with either mayor-council or council-manager

governments in 1930. Event history analysis is applied to

isolate adoption and abandonment trends and to provide

new evidence revealing the forces that have shaped the tra-

jectory of institutional change in U.S. cities.  is analysis

reveals that social context factors—in particular, economic

conditions—generate both adoptions and abandonments.

Institutional theories have become increas-

ingly important in our understanding of the

design and structure of local governments (Carr

and Karuppusamy 2009; Feiock and Kim 2001;

Frederickson, Johnson, and Wood 2004). Although

much of the literature focuses on contemporary

changes in government structure, local institutions

have been a central concern in the study of public

administration since the founding of the f‌i eld. New

institutional theories of changes in government struc-

ture that combine social and political explanations

in a historical approach can provide a more complete

understanding of the evolution of municipal govern-

ment in the United States and inform continuing

debates about local government structure.

 e form of city government—typically council-manager

or mayor-council in the United States—represents the

fundamental choice of governing structure by citizens

of the local polity; however, the recent literature on

local institutions, particularly the work of H. George

Frederickson and his colleagues, portrays this distinc-

tion as less salient today because cities with either

form can adjust a wide range of charter provisions

and electoral practices to create adapted or hybrid

forms (Frederickson and Johnson 2001; Frederickson,

Johnson, and Wood 2004). Nelson and Svara (2010)

argue that this confuses forms with models. Changes

in electoral practices and other charter provisions

can be important, but they do not alter the underly-

ing form of government itself. Hassett and Watson

describe this as a distinction between “minor changes,

such as the switch from at-large to district elections,

and profound change to the basic structure of city

governance” (2007, 1).

Form of government is the constitutional and legal

basis for assigning authority in local governments

that creates the overall governance framework (Svara

and Watson 2010). Over the last century, American

cities evolved from predominantly mayor-council

form of government to majority council-manager

form of government (Gordon 1968; Kessel 1962;

Knoke 1982). Studies of the dif‌f usion and evolution

of council-manager government generally support

the notion that there was a dif‌f usion of the council-

manager plan among American cities in which those

cities with mayor-council or commission govern-

ment shifted to the council-manager form until the

1960s, when the form of government appeared to

stabilize (Hirschman 1982; Kaufman 1963).  us,

conventional wisdom describes the early twentieth

century through the 1950s as characterized by a

general movement or shift from mayor-council to

council-manager government, with abandonments of

the council-manager form less notable or common

(Adrian 1987; Schiesl 1977).

In 1913, the city of Dayton, Ohio, became the f‌i rst

city with a population over 30,000 to establish a

council-manager government, instantly legitimizing

 e Adoption and Abandonment of Council-Manager

Government