POLS 207 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Sewage Treatment, Political Machine
18 Oct 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Some of the different things that fall under local politics are policing, property, noise, sewage treatment, zoning, local taxes, schools, and city roads. Since few people actually participate in local politics, voter turnout is substantially low especially in the off-years. In local elections lower turnout is seen when there is a non-partisan electoral system, separate city elections, small or middle-sized cities, middle class cities, no hot issues, and a council manager form of government. A political machine uses tangible benefits and personal, material rewards to maintain power. Machine politics dominated most u. s cities because they were to offer friendships, favors, jobs, and social services rather than ideologies and issues. The groups of people that wanted to put an end to the machine politics and corruption were the upper and upper middle class, intellectual individuals. They were there to help recapture government through reform.
