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Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps: The Politics of the Chicago City Council, 1863 to the Present
In Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps, Dick Simpson challenges and recasts current theories of Regime Politics as he chronicles the dramatic story of the civic wars in the Chicago City Council since the Civil War. At the same time, the author provides a window into the broader struggle for democracy and justice. Simpson points out that through analyzing city council floor fights, battles at the ballot box, and street demonstrations, one can begin to see certain patterns of conflict emerge. These patterns demonstrate that before the Great Depression, fragmented city councils were dominant. The author also discusses how, since the Democrats seized control of Chicago government after the Great Depression, Rubber Stamp City Councils have been predominant, although they have been punctuated by brief eras of council wars and chaos. This book is important for anyone wanting to understand the nature of these battles as a guideline for America's future, and is well suited for courses in urban politics, affairs, and history. Rogues, Rebels, and Rubber Stamps received an Honorable Mention for the 2001 Society of Midland Authors Book Award for Adult Non-Fiction.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 9, 2017
Let's start at the very end of the book... the acknowledgements indicate that there was a first manuscript that was several hundred pages longer. That is the book the subject deserved and I can only assume that Westview Press thought it would never recoup the costs. This incarnation is a let down with otherwise long ellipses, bewildering redundancies, and unsound statistics.
The first two chapters are delightful. The political dynamics of the nineteenth century are complex and intriguing. The early twentieth century material is similarly illuminating even as the omissions begin to show. For example: the seven page section about the birth of machine politics doesn't actually explain how machines were built or operated.
How, when the payrolls were so small, is a machine maintained? How does it influence voting to create perpetual incumbancy? Is it vote theft/fraud?
For some reason (the editing?), when we get past World War 2, the prose gets noticeably choppy with some paragraphs reading more like a high school book report than historical narrative. Moreover, he doesn't give us a very good idea of how the politics broke down by faction.
Which factions opposed the human rights ordinance? How did those who change their vote to vote for it believe that their incumbency was threatened by voting against it? Munoz led the moral cause for equality, was it he who swayed the reluctant supporters?
Why did progressives/independents lose seats in the 70s? How were they unable to build their own GOTV efforts despite their support of neighborhood councils and civic organizations ? How do we get rubber stamps alderman from disadvantaged communities? Simpson is, if not a progressive, then a good-government advocate. He offers no analysis as to how to bring his vision forward and the taxonomy of councils he presents makes it look more or less impossible.
The book ends with some shoddy statistics. After humble-bragging about the amount of analysis he did on divided City Council roll calls, he declines to use the full data set for no convincing reason, hand selects a number of years, and makes some charts because... I don't know, tenure? He uses factor charts with an insufficient sample size to make them reliable (c.f., Comrey & Lee's A First Course in Factor Analysis) and histograms that just duplicate what's in the factor chart.
The author finishes with figure 10.7, a bullshitery worthy of Bourdieu where he just places the years he's chosen to fit onto a 2D diagram. On the upper right hand side sits an empty quadrant representing the "representative democracy" Chicago has never achieved. "[A]ccording democratic theory, [representative democracy] leads to justice in the distribution of goods and services of government." That's social democracy, which is a worthy goal, but let's not pretend that the history of racism in Chicago was because the "citizen representation and legitimate representation of the voters have not been seen as necessary."
In fact, the segregation that continues in Chicago that denies social justice to the disadvantaged very much reflects many voters' desires and continues to. The Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association's fight against subsidized housing in 2017 demonstrates as much.
In fact, municipalities who approach the equal distribution of government services are often able to because they have used zoning restrictions and HOAs to homogenize their socioeconomic and racial makeups, to minimize the measure of the "other", as they see it, so that the services are rendered to people more or less like themselves.
Something tells me that most of my complaints are answered in the missing 50% of this book, but I'd recommend the reader pick up American Pharaoh, Robert Sampson's Great American City, and Natalie Moore's The South Side.
The first two chapters are delightful. The political dynamics of the nineteenth century are complex and intriguing. The early twentieth century material is similarly illuminating even as the omissions begin to show. For example: the seven page section about the birth of machine politics doesn't actually explain how machines were built or operated.
How, when the payrolls were so small, is a machine maintained? How does it influence voting to create perpetual incumbancy? Is it vote theft/fraud?
For some reason (the editing?), when we get past World War 2, the prose gets noticeably choppy with some paragraphs reading more like a high school book report than historical narrative. Moreover, he doesn't give us a very good idea of how the politics broke down by faction.
Which factions opposed the human rights ordinance? How did those who change their vote to vote for it believe that their incumbency was threatened by voting against it? Munoz led the moral cause for equality, was it he who swayed the reluctant supporters?
Why did progressives/independents lose seats in the 70s? How were they unable to build their own GOTV efforts despite their support of neighborhood councils and civic organizations ? How do we get rubber stamps alderman from disadvantaged communities? Simpson is, if not a progressive, then a good-government advocate. He offers no analysis as to how to bring his vision forward and the taxonomy of councils he presents makes it look more or less impossible.
The book ends with some shoddy statistics. After humble-bragging about the amount of analysis he did on divided City Council roll calls, he declines to use the full data set for no convincing reason, hand selects a number of years, and makes some charts because... I don't know, tenure? He uses factor charts with an insufficient sample size to make them reliable (c.f., Comrey & Lee's A First Course in Factor Analysis) and histograms that just duplicate what's in the factor chart.
The author finishes with figure 10.7, a bullshitery worthy of Bourdieu where he just places the years he's chosen to fit onto a 2D diagram. On the upper right hand side sits an empty quadrant representing the "representative democracy" Chicago has never achieved. "[A]ccording democratic theory, [representative democracy] leads to justice in the distribution of goods and services of government." That's social democracy, which is a worthy goal, but let's not pretend that the history of racism in Chicago was because the "citizen representation and legitimate representation of the voters have not been seen as necessary."
In fact, the segregation that continues in Chicago that denies social justice to the disadvantaged very much reflects many voters' desires and continues to. The Jefferson Park Neighborhood Association's fight against subsidized housing in 2017 demonstrates as much.
In fact, municipalities who approach the equal distribution of government services are often able to because they have used zoning restrictions and HOAs to homogenize their socioeconomic and racial makeups, to minimize the measure of the "other", as they see it, so that the services are rendered to people more or less like themselves.
Something tells me that most of my complaints are answered in the missing 50% of this book, but I'd recommend the reader pick up American Pharaoh, Robert Sampson's Great American City, and Natalie Moore's The South Side.
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July 26, 2012One of the greatest histories of Chicago's City Council every written by a former member of it. Has a great cast of characters from Honest John Comiskey, to the Harrison's to the Daleys.
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