city bound political science and the american metropolis.docVIP

City bound: political science and the American metropolis. Author: Danielson, Michael N.; Lewis, Paul G. Source: Political Research Quarterly v. 49 (Mar. 1996) p. 203-20 ISSN: 1065-9129 Number: BSSCopyright: The magazine publisher is the copyright holder of this article and it is reproduced with permission. Further reproduction of this article in violation of the copyright is prohibited. By examining political conflicts and processes in central cities, scholars of urban politics in the first two thirds of this century identified concepts and research questions that were central to the development of American political science. In recent years, however, the work of political sciences urbanists has not contributed as frequently to broad dialogues in the discipline. Instead, scholars in this field have engaged in insular (if often fascinating) debates, frequently choked with specialized jargon. (See the critiques in Peterson 1981: preface; Jones 1989.). In so doing, attention has remained focused, to an extreme degree, on big cities. We contend that scholarship in the field, accordingly, has offered a highly skewed perception of contemporary urban political phenomena. This article reviews the development of the field, and offers some explanations for its preoccupation with larger cities. It then argues for a reconsideration of what urban politics denotes. Such a clarified conception of their subject matter would take scholars of urban politics far beyond the city limits. It would not preclude their engaging in the whole host of research topics that have traditionally marked the field, but would lend more analytical coherence to such inquiry. THE CENTRAL CITY AS A POLITICAL RESEARCH LABORATORYCities long have provided a bountiful area of study for political scientists in the United States. Power and political behavior were largely rediscovered by political science in the gritty clubhouses and city halls of the industrial city, notably in the pioneering stud