Nonpartisan cities often had significantly lower turnout than partisan cities, without party machines to mobilize the masses. Non-partisan groups like the League of Women Voters were hardly neutral in their composition. They too were largely White and middle-class in membership and in terms of the issues they prioritized as important to their often complacent constituents (129). Continued ascendancy without significant challenge meant political leaders in institutionalized reform cities had no reason to recruit diverse voters to support them, nor any reason to increase representation" (149). Reform with an anti-machinist spirit is thus not synonymous with democracy. Ironically this made the Southwest city managers not unlike the party bosses of the 19th century -- with neither legal nor popular opposition to change their ways, the current, undemocratic state of affairs could continue indefinitely, with significant minority communities eliminated from having a voice in government. The government did not represent their interests and no parties or organized interest groups advanced minority interests. Local governments continued to pursue policies like subsidizing developers, but not providing for affordable public housing (211). The late entry of the Southwest into the nation's economic expansion had led to a kind of hysterical faith in the benevolence of business. So long as politics was nonpartisan, it was fair, even if it enforced polices that eliminated many communities from benefiting from the region's wealth.

Bridges' narrative primarily unfolds as a tale told in the historian's voice, although she evidently made use of a considerable number of primary sources in her work, given the paucity of previous analysis of regional politics. Also, she includes a number of statistical overviews of the racial composition of different regions, and how this was reflected, and more often, not reflected,...

The stated intent of the book is merely to fill a kind of gap in the history of the chronicles of the urban and suburban political reform movements, as these histories have traditionally focused on Eastern politics, when they focused on any regional distinctions at all.
But another disturbing trend emerges from Bridges' work, namely an explanation for one of the paradoxes of the region's politics, and Californian politics specifically. How can California be such an ideologically progressive state, yet produce some of the most conservative politicians and public reform initiatives? How can the region be so diverse, yet so homogenous in terms of the people who govern it? The answers are the close association between politics and business interests, and the fact that the people who vote and the people who live in California are not the same.

What makes this book so special is the warning it gives to readers about the needs for limiting the role of industry in politics. No one would wish a return to Tammany Hall. But the increased presence of wealthy, independent businessmen in political life today may not be such a good thing. Given the negative associations with both major parties, independence may seem like a positive value, but the increased nonpartisanship in the Southwest did not lead to a more representative structure of government, and the civic 'reform' managers were more, rather than less influenced by wealthy interests that made up a minority of the population. Bridges offers no solutions to the problems of today, but she does raise troubling questions about contemporary trends in American political life through her study of the regional politics of the American past.

Works Cited

Bridges, Amy. Morning Glories: Municipal Reform in the Southwest.

Princeton: Princeton University…