Party and Policy in West German Cities

This paper attempts to measure the impact of party ideology focusing on policy making in West German urban government. An effort is made to determine whether city governments under the control of leftist parties sponsor different, possibly more leftist policies than cities under conservative control. It is found that while “leftist†control of municipal administrations does not produce leftist policies, conservative control does have a major impact in inhibiting the growth in the scope of local government. Several reasons for the only rough correspondence between party control and policy are examined. The low correlation between leftist (SPD) control and municipal output is traced to differences among SPD cities in the power of the SPD majority, in class structure, and in degree of financial independence. It is also traced to the lack of intercorrelation among the forms of “leftist†performance and the incremental nature of most urban policy making. Other factors—the power of municipal counter-elites and the federalistic structure of the West German government—are discounted as possible intervening variables.