BOOK REVIEW By THOMAS M. GUTERBOCK

Confronting the myth of the Chicago machine

Samuel K. Grove and Louis H. Masotti, eds.
After Daley: Chicago Politics in Transition,
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.
244 pp. $19.95 cloth, $7.95 paper

SHORTLY after the death of Mayor Richard J. Daley in 1976, a small group of Chicago-area political scientists began meeting to discuss ways in which the transition of Chicago politics from the Daley era could be monitored and evaluated. The result was a series of essays, the "Chicago Politics Papers," published between 1978 and 1980 by the Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University and the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. Nine of these essays, plus an introduction by the editors and an additional article by Donald Haider, are assembled here into a rich, insightful book that no reader of these pages will want to miss.

After Daley offers a lively account and assessment of the recent past, showing the many ways Chicago's political ecology has changed since Daley's accession to the mayoralty in 1955, and weighing what these changes portend for the political future. The essayists steer a skillful course between the Scylla and Charybdis of political punditry: myopic "inside-dopesterism" on the one hand, and abstruse statistical modeling on the other. They write forthrightly about the actual stuff of politics: the way the votes tot up; the political influence of business, labor, ethnic groups, neighborhoods and the bureaucracy; the tangle of intergovernmental relations; the personalities and aspirations of key politicians; and the crucial policy decisions they have made.

The writers bring contrasting styles, methods and political leanings to their subjects, ranging from the exacting correlational analysis in Kenneth Mladenka's study of how city services are distributed, to the breezy, interpretive style of Milton Rakove, whose writings on Chicago have so often entertained and enlightened readers of this magazine. Michael Preston's revealing overview of black politics in Chicago is fueled with palpable impatience at the relative indifference of the machine to the needs of blacks, while Joanne Belenchia's account of Latino politics takes a more detached view that goes far in explaining why the several Hispanic groups remain so far from power. On the basis of the machine's performance at the polls, its relation to blacks, and its dealings with public employee unions, William Grimshaw argues forcefully that Chicago's Democratic organization is in unmistakable decline. Samuel Gove is cautious to a fault in evaluating whether Daley's passing has had much real impact on the conduct of statewide politics. Joseph Zikmund offers an exhaustive description of ethnic voting patterns in the city's wards over the last quarter century. Lawrence Hansen argues that the increasing size, power and selectivity of Chicago's suburban electorate now overshadow the reliable vote in the city's wards. Haider's informative analysis of budgeting practices in the city government represents the only specific prescription for policy reform.

For this reader, the stellar contributions are the opening article by Kathleen Kemp and Robert Lineberry, and the closing piece by Rakove. Though differing in style, each of these integrative essays serves to bring the larger picture into sharp focus: a factionalized, predominantly white-ethnic political machine frantically hanging on in a city where blacks are in political revolt and the maverick mayor still isn't sure with whom she wants to play ball.

Given this tenuous situation, can the machine survive? The responses these authors offer are largely dependent on how each defines the essential nature of the machine itself.

Most often, the writers appear to define the machine as a political party organization that "controls" votes, by distributing favors, by exploiting blind ethnic loyalties or by mobilizing a large contingent of effective precinct workers. Thus, the machine's leaders, because of the control they presumably enjoy, are able to pursue an "issue-free" politics of spoils, dividing the profits with their loyal ethnic cohorts. The essays in this book leave no doubt that the regular Democrats have had difficulty in "delivering" votes, that their power base of white ethnics is dwindling and dispersing to the suburbs and that recent court decisions have weakened the patronage and slate-making powers of the bosses. As traditionally conceived, then, the machine is on its way out.

Yet there are times when the authors do recognize that there is more to the machine than this definition would imply. They do so most often in dealing with Daley himself, whom they rightly credit with political skill, amazing flexibility, some interest in competent professional managment of city affairs and occasional statesmanship. As they consider how party fortunes have changed with the city's shifting ethnic composition, they recognize the fluidity of the coalitions the machine has brought together in the past.

Mladenka shows that the distribution of city services is not determined by how the wards vote. Zikmund describes the tenuous nature of ethnic factors in voting. Kemp and Lineberry emphasize the importance of symbolism, bluffing, and unwritten neighborhood racial policy in maintaining electoral support for Chicago's leadership. With these kinds of insights, the authors move away from the simplistic notion of "controlled" voting to a more open and more accurate view of the machine. Chicago's regular Democratic organization boasts some highly adaptable politicians, responsive to their specific constituencies but organized into a tightly bound coalition. To be sure, this coalition consistently places politics above the public interest, yet its members are not unresponsive to the needs of those whose support they require. Its leaders deal at once in several currencies: manipulating ethnic symbols, distributing patronage, responding to individual complaints, brokering neighborhood disputes, setting citywide policy, backing candidates for office, facilitating the needs of monied interests and securing aid from state and federal governments. Most important, this coalition is capable of splitting into new elements and regrouping around new loyalties, although its success in doing so is never guaranteed.

So conceived, the machine, or rather what Rakove calls the "political/governmental/private interest group coalition" that has ruled Chicago for so long, may very well survive the loss of Daley and the upheaval of Byrne's administration. To do so, it must broaden its base by reaching out to the black community and to the white ethnic suburbs. Success in these efforts will certainly require some changes in substantive policy, but it does not require the machine politicians to deal in unfamiliar political currency. The essays in this valuable and well-edited book are at their best when they look beyond the traditional myth and recognize the adaptive potential of the complex system that is the Chicago machine.

Thomas M. Guterbock is associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. He was raised in Chicago and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1976. His study of Chicago ward politics, Machine Politics in Transition, was selected by the library journal, Choice, as an outstanding academic book of 1981-82.

September 1982 | Illinois Issues | 25