For years, scholars framed city politics as machine versus reform. Jessica Trounstine has upended that conventional approach, showing that the two ways of governing have much in common. Underneath surface differences both display a tendency toward what Trounstine aptly terms “political monopoly”—a governing arrangement in which a dominant coalition pursues strategies that enable it to retain power even as it favors a core constituency at the expense of a wider public. Although political monopolies fall short of being usual practice, they occupy a significant portion of twentieth-century urban political life in the United States. As the author reminds us: “Representative democracy has not always functioned well in American cities” (p. 217).

Displaying a thorough command of urban politics scholarship, Trounstine combines an imposing body of qualitative evidence with quantitative analyses covering 244 large cities and subsets of these cities. She offers skillfully rendered narratives of two prototypes, machine-governed Chicago and reform-governed San Jose, CA, supplemented by examples from a variety of localities. Many are familiar to urban scholars, but the author does far more than retell a familiar story. She has a keen eye for the way that details cumulate into a pattern, hence, her ability to discern an underlying kinship between political machines and reform regimes.

Trounstine establishes early on that city politics is about important stakes. She then builds a dynamic model of politics, tracing a process of monopoly construction from the early stages of rule manipulation and elite coordination through a period of consolidated control to eventual collapse. She uses various measures, from voter turnout to policy and expenditure indicators, to show that political monopolies do indeed favor core constituencies, white ethnics in machine cities, and the affluent middle class in reform cities. She also finds business to be a favored constituency in machine and reform cities alike.

The monopoly cycle begins with the creation of bias, primarily through patronage and election administration, in the case of machines, and in the reform case by selectively discouraging participation through means like ballot form and a nonelected executive. Particular steps vary by place, but they cover everything from impeded voter registration to shaping the flow and interpretation of information. In establishing and running a political monopoly, no single step is determinative. The key is the strategic orchestration of many steps. Hence, the coordination of coalition members plays a key part.

By employing the three topics of information bias, vote bias, and seat bias, Trounstine provides coherence to a huge amount of detailed information. In this way, she can also show how reform strategies differ from machine strategies and how the strategies within each type of coalition have varied over time. As the twentieth century closed, many earlier conditions that facilitated monopolies were no longer present. The author, however, shows that monopolies of the future will not be simple repeats of the past. Media campaigning has added new forms of bias. Although civil service coverage has expanded, in some cities the practice of contracting out public functions to community-based organizations provides an approximation of patronage.

Trounstine uses history to show that contenders for public office are not confined to an effort to win majority support from a given electorate. The size and composition of the local electorate are themselves quite malleable. Because local turnouts are low to begin with, a tilt here or there can make a big difference. Information about government activities, policy alternatives, and even the location of polling places may be scarce, and strategic moves can make it even more so.

Electoral politics, then, is no simple matter of candidates furthering their aspirations by being responsive to voter preferences. If a coalition gains an advantage and coordinates its actions, it can combine various forms of bias to weaken its competition and entrench its own dominant position. At the same time, Trounstine shows why a political monopoly is not easily established, thus, why a 10-year period of domination is typically a substantial feat. That some monopolies last even longer is all the more remarkable.

Dominance, of course, is never complete, and the author suggests that instead of treating systems as open or closed, we think in terms of a spectrum. Open systems make responsiveness possible; closed ones are systems “in which reelection of incumbents is wholly disconnected from quality of candidates and representation of voters” (p. 22). For systems toward the closed end of the spectrum, change is still possible. Monopolies do falter. Factors external to a governing coalition can upset even carefully calibrated systems of bias. Cities are volatile in ways that larger entities are not; they are more subject to sudden demographic shifts and to changes in economic foundation. Federal investigations can alter circumstances in unanticipated ways. Social movements can open up what were settled issues.

Given that the monopoly cycle ends in collapse, one might suppose that city politics is responsive, that cities exemplify a kind of slow-motion “mutual adjustment.” Trounstine, however, argues for a more refined model than that. She sees central players as taking a long view of what they are about, seeking durable control by combining agenda setting with coalition building and manipulation of biases. Thus, they are not atomistic actors simply seeking reelection by appealing to assorted groups and responding to constituent discontents. They want insulation from the ordinary give-and-take among constituents. Hence, they put energy and resources into creating an uneven playing field, tilted in their favor. Richard J. Daley was no mere broker among contending groups, but rather the architect of a monopoly to keep the machine in power through a combination of biases and coordinated action. Monopolies rest on strategic alliances, ample politically relevant resources, and the opportunity to engineer biases.

Not all segments of urban society are in a position to pursue politics at that level; hence, policy adjustments—even over the long term—are unlikely to be “mutual.” The threshold for political effectiveness is too high for a great deal of mutuality to take shape. Conciliation of today's losers by the prospect of becoming tomorrow's winners is a worthy ideal but may not be widely practiced. Even with turnover, the future may lack compensation for the many. A successful mobilization by an antimonopoly group may be an incomplete remedy of past neglects, and the effort may break down in factionalism.

In making the case that political monopolies are difficult to establish, Trounstine leaves unexplored the open-ended question of a threshold of requirements for genuine representativeness. What about nonmonopolies not ridden by factionalism? What does it take to establish an open system that can effectively govern? Is that an even thornier threshold to cross? She reports that when opposition coalitions came to power in both Chicago and San Jose, they provided benefits to groups that had been left out earlier. Yet she also reports that in both cities, the collapse of monopoly was soon followed by “periods of turmoil” (p. 221).

Recasting the machine-versus-reform framework and putting in its place a tendency toward monopoly are major accomplishments of this book. Although scholars have long regarded open and free elections as the foundation of democracy, they have too seldom probed beneath surface appearances. Trounstine shows that the underlying reality frequently falls far short of democratic responsiveness.

The conditions that made machine and reform monopolies possible may have altered so profoundly as to make relics of these governing forms, but the tendency to monopoly lives on. Readers may wish that the author had said more about the emerging scene. Whereas her main concern for the twentieth century is with whole systems of governing, what about a twenty-first century form in which functional monopolies operate in a narrow scope of policy but lack public accountability? The way is left open for future research to apply Trounstine's framework of bias, regime coordination, and degrees of closure to new arenas. Political Monopolies in American Cities offers a fresh perspective and carries us a long way in reframing how we think about urban politics.