Customer Reviews

St. Louis Politics: The Triumph of Tradition

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This is a frustrating book. The author presents a thorough, well documented analysis of St. Louis politics. She demonstrates repeatedly the city's maddening inability to reform its governing structure, as it declines through most of the twentieth century. But she fails to explain--indeed barely even covers--why the forces that pursued reform in other American cities did not take root in St. Louis. While individual Mayors tried their best to modernize the political structure, they were ultimately thwarted by the forces for the status quo--the Board of Aldermen, city bureaucrats, organized labor, local political bosses, and on occasion the underworld. Where were the pro-Good Government business community and the young professionals who sought reform in other cities? Professor Stein has no answer except to say that the business community discredited itself early in the twentieth century and never recovered. The definitive "community power" study of St. Louis remains to be written.