Power in the City

Book excerpt: San Francisco is a uniquely favored city, but its politics are beset with extraordinary problems. Power is divided among traditional and new minorities, a mayor with modest authority, and a large city bureaucracy guided by insensitive professional norms. The special San Francisco "politics of profit" and ethnic conflict are complicated and profoundly influenced by such external forces as regional, state, and federal government, and by the force of a national economy. Frederick Wirt's fascinating study is based on personal interviews with knowledgeable observers and participants, on an extensive review of special reports, and on a firsthand study of the transaction patterns in the political, business, labor, ethnic, and historical life of the city. In the end, the 125-year political history of San Francisco provides solid new insights on the politics of large American cities in the 1970s. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.