Big city mayors rank among the most powerful and colorful politicians in America. Yet few books focus on the leadership challenges the occupants of the office face. Mayors and the Challenge of Urban Leadership examines twelve case studies of mayoral leadership in seven cities, from the New Deal era to the beginning of the 21st century. The prospects for mayoral success or failure are driven by how mayors manage the fit between political commitments and the broader patterns of political competition. City Hall powerhouses like Richard J. Daley of Chicago (1954-76), David Lawrence of Pittsburgh (1946-58), Tom Bradley of Lost Angeles (1973-83), and Robert F. Wagner of New York (1954-65) came to power in times of political crisis. They realigned politics in their cities to reinvigorate municipal government and bolster their power. In contrast, mayors with less redoubtable reputations like Mayors Sam Yorty of Los Angeles (1961-73), Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland (1977-79), Jane Byrne of Chicago (1979-83), and Frank Rizzo of Philadelphia (1972-1980) were outsiders who lost their battles to challenge powerful political coalitions in their cities. The new breed mayors of the 1990s? among them Rudy Giuliani of New York, Dennis Archer of Detroit, and Ed Rendell of Philadelphia? used modern campaign and governing techniques and scored surprising policy and political victories as a result. Mayors and the Challenge of Urban Leadership concludes with a discussion of Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York, elected in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, as an exemplar of the modern style of governing big cities in the 21st century.

Mayors and the Challenge of Urban Leadership

Flanagan, Richard M.

Criminal Law

University Press of America

Staten Island is New York City’s smallest yet fastest growing borough: a conservative, suburban community of nearly a half a million on the fringe of the nation’s most liberal, global city. Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City chronicles how this “forgotten borough” has grappled with its uneasy relationship with the rest of the City of New York since the 1920s. Daniel C. Kramer and Richard M. Flanagan analyze the politics behind events that have shaped the borough, such as the opening of the Verrazano Bridge and the closure of the Fresh Kills Landfill. Lost opportunities are discussed, including the failure to construct a rail link to the other boroughs of New York, to adequately plan for the explosive housing boom in recent decades and, some say, to create an independent City of Staten Island. Unlike much of New York City, Staten Island is a place with robust party competition and lively democratic politics with hard-fought campaigns, bitter feuds, and career-ending scandals. Staten Island’s two most successful politicians of the twentieth century—Republicans John Marchi and Guy Molinari—defended the borough’s interests while defining an urban conservativism that would influence politics elsewhere. In fact, Staten Island has played a pivotal role in the winning electoral coalitions of Republican mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg and continues to spark the imaginations of New Yorkers on a scale that is disproportionate to the borough’s relatively small size. Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City will allow readers to gain access to the borough-based roots of New York City’s politics. This book will be of special interest to anyone who wishes to understand the dynamics of middle-class life and democratic representation in a global city.

Staten Island: Conservative Bastion in a Liberal City

Kramer, Daniel C.

Reference

New York City mayor Robert F. Wagner governed during a period of momentous change in local politics. In this era—too often viewed as a mere prelude to the dramatic events of the Lindsay years and the fiscal crisis of the mid 1970s—important policy changes took place in the fields of housing, education, race and labor relations, and in the structures of local governance. This book focuses on the institutional structures that were reconstituted in the three Wagner administrations, the role that the mayor's own strategic decision making played in forging the political changes of the era, the long-term consequences of Mayor Wagner's choices for future generations of city politicians and citizens, and the meaning and applicability of the concept of plebiscitary governance in the U.S. urban context.

Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City’s Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger

Business & Money

Economics

Palgrave Pivot

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Books by Flanagan, Richard M.