St. Louis Politics: Relationships Among Interests, Parties, and Governmental Structure

Abstract

OLITICAL SCIENTISTS have been troubled in recent years by just what it is they mean when they talk about a political party. Whether the discussion concentrates on the American scene or includes comparative data from other countries, the ambiguity of party as an analytical tool remains. Particularly difficult and very largely untouched by specific empirical analysis are the relationships which connect core party organizations, the social and economic interest group configuration, and the formal governmental structure of a community. Whereas some political scientists have assumed the crucial importance of the formal structure in shaping the political life of the community, others have tended to regard structure as largely irrelevant and to argue instead that the only significant variables were embraced in interest group activity. This paper will offer a synopsis of the situation in one city, St. Louis, Missouri, in an effort to suggest the ways in which the three factors mentioned are interrelated. The burden of the argument here is that a somewhat peculiar bifurcated structure of local government plays a crucial role in shaping the nature and scope of political conflict in the city. Two broad interest groupings in St. Louis, each composed of rather loosely allied groups and each pursuing different sets of goals in the political arena, are enabled to live under the same party label by the fact that each grouping can control one segment of the governmental structure and from that control secure the portion of its goals most vital to it. Neither group gains complete satisfaction thereby, but the consequence is that the two groups are not forced into the full range of sharp competition that a more centralized and monolithic structure might require.