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作者

Jack Lucas

来源

URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW,Vol.59,Issue1,P.

语言

英文

关键字

作者单位

摘要

IntroductionIs municipal politics ideological? Recent political science research, equipped with large and innovative new data sources, has made important advances in clarifying the ideological structure of municipal politics. But the individuals and groups who are actively involved in municipal affairs have their own theories about how municipal politics works—theories that often include quite passionate views about the role of ideological disagreement in municipal politics. The frequency with which municipal political elites express these views, and the passion with which they defend them, suggests that there is something important at stake in their competing theories about the ideological or nonideological character of municipal politics.In this paper, I describe the structure of the municipal ideology debate among municipal political elites themselves—the extent to which municipal elected representatives embrace an ideological or nonideological vision of municipal politics and the structure of their disagreement on this issue. The persistence and passion of the debate about municipal ideology suggests, I argue, that it is linked with wider patterns of disagreement in the municipal political field; attitudes about the ideological or nonideological character of municipal politics are not evenly or randomly distributed among those who are engaged in municipal politics. Instead, political elites’ theories about the role of ideology in municipal politics are likely to be related in some way to their own ideological positions.To explore this possibility, I propose two relationships between individuals’ ideological positions and their beliefs about the role of ideology in municipal politics. The first, which I call the “ends-against-the-middle” thesis, posits that committed ideologues on the left and the right share an ideological vision of municipal politics, whereas moderates defend a nonideological vision. The second relationship, which I call the “asymmetric visions” thesis, suggests instead that an ideological vision of municipal politics is more characteristic of municipal political actors on the left, while those on the right are more likely to deny that municipal politics is meaningfully ideological. In this asymmetric relationship, the shape of municipal politics—its ideological or nonideological character—is a question that is itself structured by left–right disagreement.To assess these relationships, I use new survey data from more than 800 mayors and councillors in Canada to describe the extent to which elected municipal representatives embrace a nonideological vision of municipal politics, and then assess the ideological structure, if any, of these beliefs. I find that municipal politicians overwhelmingly endorse a nonideological vision of municipal politics. This view, however, is by no means universal, and it is structured by both the ends-against-the-middle relationship (ideologues are indeed more likely to see municipal politics as ideological than their more moderate colleagues) and the asymmetric visions relationship (those on the left are more likely than those on the right to see municipal politics as ideological). Overall, I find that the asymmetric visions relationship is more strongly supported by the data. I suggest that this pattern is in keeping with more than a century of municipal political history and should be incorporated into our theories of municipal elections, representation, and policy disagreement.