Final Findings

Looking at the socioeconomic data in the my blog post, one can find a correlation between the following characteristics and council-manager governments:

• smaller percentage of black persons
• fewer ethnically owned minority firms
• higher median household income and household value
• lower poverty rate
• greater number of foreign born residents
• larger percentage of Hispanic/Latino persons
•  faster rate of population growth
• larger the young population in a city.

However, these findings are based on median averages and are not necessarily statistically significant. I performed a logistic regression to test whether each characteristic could predict the likelihood of a city having one form of government versus the other.

In my model, I made 1 equal to council-manager government and 0 equal to mayor-council government. A positive coefficient, therefore, implies an increase in the likelihood of a city having council-manager form of government.  For example, because the characteristic “Hispanics/Latinos” has a positive coefficient, every one point increase in the percentage of Hispanics/Latinos in a city results in an increased probability that the city has council-manager form of government. The regression is performed with robust standard errors to combat heteroskedasticity.

Results

 Of the 13 variables tested, seven proved statistically significant at the 95 percent confidence interval and their presence, as a percentage, in cities correlates to the likelihood of one form of government over the other. The most significant (as measured by P>|z|) is city size, which is negatively correlated with council-manager form of government. As predicted in the literature, the larger the city, the more likely it is to have mayor-council form of government. The fact that the median council-manager city is growing at three times the rate of the median mayor-council city is irrelevant, as the rate of population growth proved statistically insignificant. For form of government, size matters but population growth doesn’t. However, Schnore and Alford’s conclusion that council-manager residents are “mobile” is supported by the negative correlation between the form and the percentage of people living in the same house for five years. Residents in mayor-council cities tend to be more established.

Race also plays a significant role in predicting a city’s form of government. Cities with high percentages of Hispanics or Latinos are statistically more likely to have council-manager forms of government while every unit increase in the percentage of white residents actually decreases the probability that the city employs a manager. However, just because a city is racially diverse does not necessarily mean political power and income distribution is equally diverse. For example, an increase in the percentage of minority owned firms decreases the likelihood of council-manager form of government.

Two variables that showed large variation in the medians of each form of government (income and homeownership), showed little correlation to a particular form; unemployment did, though. Higher rates of unemployment predict a lower likelihood of council-manager form of government.  

It appears that, as in 1962, the larger a city’s youth population (as a percentage of residents under the age of 18) the more likely it is to be council-manager.

Using these findings, one can more accurately predict the form of government which governs a city based on known variables. However, it is impossible to predict future government forms (i.e. one cannot say that the larger the Latino or Hispanic population, the more likely a city is to adopt council-manager form of government; only that the larger the Latino or Hispanic population, the more likely one is to encounter council-manager form of government within that city). This paper remains an early foray into the study of how socioeconomic conditions affect form of government (the notable pioneers being Bridges, Schnore, and Alford). Future work could focus on how a city’s socioeconomic characteristics affect the adoption, abandonment, retention, or rejection of council-manager form of government. For example, a study that examines Miami or El Paso (or other city that recently transitioned its form of government) within the framework of this paper’s model would be of particular interest.

Today’s council-manager cities do not look too dissimilar from the suburbs Schnore and Alford examine years ago: They remain, young, mobile, and middle-class, but they are significantly more diverse – especially when considering their Hispanic populations –  than Schnore and Alford’s study found. The changing demographics of council-manager cities are but a small sample of the changes affecting American cities en masse.  Just as European migration in the late 1800s changed the landscape of Northeastern cities and urban politics, this study shows how a new era of immigrants, setting roots in the Southwest have already done the same.