Deck 11: The Structure of Local Governments

Question 1

Currently in the United States there are roughly how many counties?

A)300
B)1,500
C)3,000
D)6,000

Answer 1

C

Question 2

Dillon's rule means that

A)larger cities have less responsibility to its citizens than smaller cities.
B)each state must have an identical number of counties within its borders.
C)municipalities are not required to offer general services whatsoever.
D)a state legislature can make different rules about how various municipalities in a state might function.

Answer 2

D

Question 3

In the nineteenth century,some cities had "clubs" that sought to control a city by organizing supporters in enough neighborhoods so as to win elections.Today,these "clubs" are sometimes called

A)pressure groups.
B)presidential caucuses.
C)political parties.
D)national conventions.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Under which U.S.President did the political philosophy of greater political participation by ordinary citizens spread throughout the country?

A)Thomas Jefferson
B)Andrew Jackson
C)Abraham Lincoln
D)Teddy Roosevelt

Question 5

Mayors have varying degrees of executive power.Which of the following mayors has the least leeway in firing city employees?

A)Los Angeles
B)New York
C)St.Petersburg
D)Baltimore

Question 6

Racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to win seats via

A)district elections.
B)primaries.
C)at-large elections.
D)non-partisan elections.

Question 7

Why were many people in Los Angeles outraged with the political institutions of their city when the Rodney King issue surfaced?

A)The mayor of Los Angeles would not fire the police chief.
B)The Los Angeles police chief physically abused an African American motorist but was acquitted of all charges.
C)The Los Angeles charter did not allow the relatively weak mayor to remove the police chief.
D)Rodney King was fired by the police chief for playing solitaire on his office computer without being issued any prior warnings.

Question 8

What aspect of American society rapidly outpaced the bare minimal levels of basic public services in the nineteenth century?

A)Urbanization
B)Immigration
C)Nationalization
D)Naturalization

Question 9

Which of the following is NOT true regarding urban party machines?

A)The local party organizations gained and maintained control of cities by organizing neighborhoods to deliver votes for machine candidates.
B)Each party boss had to hold an elected office in order to control the machine.
C)Machines were "quasi­feudal" as they were very hierarchical.
D)Voters in neighborhoods remained loyal to the machine leaders as they provided them with favors or services.

Question 10

What did Thomas Jefferson promote as a way for Congress to raise money,and as a means to institutionalize his vision of a rural America?

A)Land Ordinance of 1785
B)Taxation Enactment of 1786
C)Naturalization Act of 1790
D)Residence Act of 1790

Question 11

All of the following describe special districts EXCEPT

A)there are nearly 40,000 across the United States.
B)they are almost always a single-purpose government.
C)they sometimes cut across city or county lines.
D)they tend to have hotly contested candidate elections.

Question 12

Which two states do not have counties?

A)Alaska and Louisiana
B)Florida and Georgia
C)Colorado and Connecticut
D)California and Nevada

Question 13

In a political machine,who provides information about the needs of residents and their voting habits to people higher up the political machine hierarchy?

A)The machine boss
B)Candidates running for office
C)The precinct captain
D)State legislators

Question 14

Many machine politicians in several large cities came up through the ranks of firefighters,as did one of New York's greatest political operatives,

A)William "Boss" Tweed.
B)James Michael "Mayor of the Poor" Curley.
C)Michael "Hinky Dink" Kenna.
D)"Sunny Jim" McNichol.

Question 15

What institution was born out of the nineteenth century environment of industrialization,urbanization,rapid immigration,and the absence of basic public services?

A)Party machines
B)Wards
C)Precincts
D)Direct democracy

Question 16

Between the 1820s and 1850s,many states

A)expanded the range of offices subject to popular election.
B)expanded the merit system for hiring public employees.
C)adopted their own Alien and Sedition laws.
D)eliminated candidate elections for county offices.

Question 17

Which group was attracted to large American cities during much of the nineteenth century?

A)Slaves
B)Mexican immigrants
C)European immigrants
D)Indentured servants

Question 18

For urban party machines,what was one of the more lucrative perks that they could use to reward their supporters who helped the machine win elections?

A)Distributing chickens on holidays
B)Offering a place to stay at the local party office
C)Handing out Election Day walk-around money
D)Awarding public sector jobs

Question 19

Traditionally,counties are

A)simply large municipalities.
B)the primary administrative organ of the federal government.
C)administrative and recordkeeping jurisdictions for their states.
D)largely unregulated government units.

Question 20

Which of the following is NOT true regarding urban machines and municipal districts?

A)It was easier for a machine to organize a city on ethnic loyalties when district representation on the city council was citywide.
B)District-based representation helped transfer ethnic-based neighborhood loyalties into political representation.
C)City councils with a large number of wards allowed distinct,homogeneous neighborhoods to form the basis of an individual district.
D)Urban machines were able to reach out to various ethnic groups concentrated in different parts of the city.

Question 21

The level of corruption in machine politics

A)devastated local economies because the machines ran cities into severe debt.
B)had no effect on local economies because the machines targeted state economies over local ones.
C)was not debilitating to local economies because machine politics wanted to make and spend money.
D)intertwined the local,state,and national economies by increasing the spread of machine politics nationwide.

Question 22

At the end of the 1890s,what reform was seen as a cure for municipal corruptions?

A)Party bosses
B)Weak governors
C)Strong mayors
D)Malapportioned legislatures

Question 23

A council-manager system gives executive powers and administrative control to the council-appointed administrator,known as a

A)quasi-mayor.
B)city manager.
C)municipal executive.
D)chief executive officer.

Question 24

Which of the following statements regarding urban machines and party ballots is false?

A)The party name attached to a party organization provided a banner under which the organization's local candidates sought office.
B)Some parties controlled a newspaper in a city to promote the organization and its candidates.
C)Ballots printed by parties not only allowed secrecy in voting,but also blocked recent immigrants from voting.
D)Political parties played almost no role in American elections during the mid-nineteenth century.

Question 25

Most American cities that have a mayor today,particularly small municipalities,have mayors with

A)weak executive powers.
B)responsibility for developing the city budget.
C)the power to appoint department heads.
D)the power to veto acts of their city's council.

Question 26

are characterized as having disdain for experts and elites,whereas are characterized as having disdain for the concentration of political and economic power.

A)Populists;progressives
B)Progressives;populists
C)Progressives;party bosses
D)Municipal reformers;muckrakers

Question 27

Which system of municipal governance epitomizes a business model of local government?

A)Weak mayor-council
B)Council-manager
C)Strong mayor-council
D)Commission

Question 28

The slogan "vote early,and vote often" typifies the widespread

A)distain of urban machines for political parties.
B)weakness of municipal governments during the Progressive Era.
C)civic engagement of rural residents.
D)electoral fraud and corruption of many urban political machines.

Question 29

Which of the following is NOT a power of appointed executives in a council-manager system?

A)Responsibility for preparing the annual budget
B)Directing day-to-day operations of city departments
C)Serving as the council's chief policy advisor
D)Acting as spokesperson for the community

Question 30

Today,many cities outline their governmental powers and those of their local officials in a

A)constitution.
B)statutory amendment.
C)charter.
D)legislative hearing.

Question 31

Which system of municipal governance,which is rarely used today,requires voters to elect people to run city departments rather than a city council?

A)Commission system
B)Council-manager system
C)Strong mayor system
D)At-large mayor system

Question 32

Which group worked to redefine local political institutions in the first two decades of the twentieth century?

A)Populists
B)Roosevelt Roughriders
C)Progressives
D)Greenbackers

Question 33

Which of the following statements is NOT true?

A)Urban machines were able to operate cities efficiently.
B)Urban machines needed an inflated number of public employees to boost their opportunities for handing out jobs as patronage.
C)Much of the cost of machine-run municipal government was borne by taxpayers.
D)Urban machines acted as a humanizing force,making life better for masses of immigrants arriving to America.

Question 34

Which of the following defines the limits of local government autonomy and results in less state control over local government affairs?

A)Governmental ordinances
B)Home rule charters
C)Local law regulations
D)Charter decrees

Question 35

Which of the following is NOT true regarding the urban reform movement?

A)Reformers were able to change the rules of how cities were governed,which contributed to the demise of machines.
B)Reformers wanted to change the impersonal bureaucracy and replace it with a more personal-based style of clientelism.
C)Reformers wanted to replace loyalists in city departments with people who had specific job qualifications.
D)Reformers wanted to insulate the functions of local governments from the influence of politicians who ruled because they could win elections.

Question 36

Who rallied the public against the dangers of crowded,inadequate urban housing and the exploitation of child labor in urban factories during the nineteenth century?

A)Blue-dog journalists
B)Muddigging journalists
C)Muckraking journalists
D)Yellow-dog journalists

Question 37

Which of the following was an attempt to bring national attention to how various municipal experiments with new political arrangements worked (or failed)?

A)Model City Charter
B)National Political Report
C)Institutional Data Report
D)Local Political Charter

Question 38

Which of the following did NOT contribute to the demise of urban political machines?

A)The large number of immigrants coming to America with limited language skills
B)The relative values of machine-dispensed favors declined
C)The rising influence of organized labor
D)The Great Depression and federal government involvement with the needs of the poor

Question 39

Which of the following is NOT true regarding urban political machines and elections?

A)Machines had to deliver something to voters to get support,although they had few decent-paying jobs to offer supporters.
B)Machines frequently opposed union efforts at organizing workers.
C)Machines contributed to the peaceful development of the United States by promoting personality-based and patronage-based politics.
D)Machines were able to transfer real political power in many cities away from the majority of Catholics to a minority of affluent Protestants.

Question 40

During the Progressive Era,numerous championed reforms to improve sanitation,education,and public health at the municipal level.

A)public policy organizations
B)think tanks
C)political parties
D)women's clubs

Question 41

Discuss the different ways cities were governed during the nineteenth-century as compared to today? Be sure to assess the major institutional differences.

Question 42

One possible consequence of municipal electoral reforms such as off-year,nonpartisan elections is that they contribute to

A)biased civil service policies.
B)barriers to mass participation.
C)weak municipal executives.
D)low-level corruption and bribery.

Question 43

Discuss the reason for civil service reforms in municipalities.Have civil service reforms resulted in impartial and more efficient bureaucracies? Or are there some unseen limitations of civil service reforms?

Question 44

When balancing the politics of local government,some observers suggest that gains in administrative efficiency may come at the price of

A)fair representation and qualified officials.
B)more corrupt party bosses and urban political machines.
C)less direct control of municipal governments by citizens.
D)the suppression of political opinions of minorities.

Question 45

Which of the following is NOT true regarding voter registration and its reforms?

A)Many states attempted to combat electoral fraud by requiring that voters personally apply for registration before each election.
B)As voter registration laws were adopted in the 1900s,statewide voter turnout increased.
C)Prior to the late 1890s,there was little local regulation of who could vote.
D)Party machines created innovative methods of offering immigrants 'instant citizenship' to make them eligible for voting.

Question 46

Discuss the major differences between the mayor-council and council-manager systems of government.What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Which do you think is the better form of local government? Why?

Question 47

Which of the following eroded urban machines' ability to directly communicate with and influence their partisan supporters?

A)Partisan ballot
B)Split ballot
C)Private ballot
D)Australian ballot

Question 48

Which of the following acts established a Civil Service Commission that began to depoliticize the hiring and firing of many federal employees?

A)Hatch Act of 1939
B)Bland-Allison Act of 1878
C)Pendleton Act of 1883
D)Newlands Resolution of 1898

Question 49

What are urban party machines? How did they operate? What ended the urban party machine era,and what has largely replaced it?

Question 50

How did the urban reform movement in the early twentieth century change the design of local governments? Do you think the changes have been for the better? Why or why not?