14 September, 2013

Rise of the mayors

Rise of the mayors - Ideas - The Boston Globe: “As the importance of cities has increased, mayors have been compelled...to deal with a lot of issues that traditionally were taken care of at a higher level,” said Benjamin Barber, a political theorist at the CUNY Graduate Center. Barber is the author of a forthcoming book, “If Mayors Ruled the World,” in which he argues that mayors have stepped up to grapple with issues like climate change and immigration in ways that national politicians have not. “We tend to think of our mayoral votes as parochial votes,” Barber said. “We think, who’s the best guy for my neighborhood, or who’s the best guy for the Boston schools. And we tend not to ask the question: What about more global problems?”

Skeptics point out that mayors in America can only do what their superiors in state and federal government will let them—that even a powerful city leader can be forced to back down from ambitious plans, as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was when the courts struck down his ban on large sodas. But scholars who study local government say that hasn’t stopped visionary mayors around the country from putting forth bold local policy ideas that have spread and taken on national influence.