Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches.

Andrew, Caroline

Dagenais, Michele, Irene Maver, and Pierre-Yves Saunier. Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City: New Historic Approaches. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. Pp. xii, 238. US$84.95 (hardcover).

This is an important book. Not only do we learn a great deal about the ways in which services have been delivered at the municipal level and all the complexities about who delivers them, we also gain valuable insights into issues of professionalization and its links to expertise, training, unionization, bureaucratization, management theories and practices, creation of new knowledge and new methods of acquiring knowledge, and the impact of industrialization and urbanization on urban public services. From this we gain a fresh perspective on the crucial role played by municipal governments at the turn of the century in the development of the new knowledges of the 20th century: engineering and the social sciences. And finally, the material in the book brings strong support to those who find the literature on "rescaling" an important perspective for understanding the processes by which societies decide who does what, where, and why. In looking at municipal services and municipal employees across Europe, and North and South America, the contributors provide rich material for examining the interrelations of local and central levels of the state and of local and central levels of voluntary and professional associations and the ways in which state and non-state actors maximize their interests through scalar strategies. It is always useful to be reminded of the multiplicity, and the complexity, of strategies that have been used. Industrialization and urbanization were transforming cities all across Europe and the Americas in the late 19th century, and the collection of detailed case studies brought together in this book illustrate the rich variety of strategies used to develop municipal services, policy transfers from one city to another, "jumping scale" to use the resources of different levels of political action or to avoid barriers or opposition at some particular level, multi-level governance in combining state and civil society strategies for change.

A recurring theme in the book is the link between the new scientific methods of the early 20th century, key municipal officials, and innovative public services. This emerges around the key role of engineers in Italian cities in the chapters by Filippo De Pieri on Turin and by Roberto Ferretti on Italy-wide trends in local government. Michele Dagenais' chapter on municipal management in Montreal in the 1930s emphasizes the importance of new management techniques (reforms to financial and personnel systems) introduced by new and more professionalized bureaucrats whose expertise came more from formal training than from municipal experience. Another version of this theme comes out in the chapter on American fire departments by Amy Greenberg, in which she argues that the change from volunteer to professional fire departments had more to do with the ideology of professionalism (along with the introduction of steam engines and the role of fire insurance companies) than the traditionally accepted interpretations of an inevitable reaction to urbanization and/or as a means to control unruly volunteer firefighters. In the case of Sao Paulo, Cristina Mehrtens describes the links among municipal officials, new survey techniques for understanding the local population, and the development of the social sciences in Brazil. These developments involved the municipal structures and services, the universities and programs that trained the new municipal officials, and the professional associations that built expertise and strengthened the position of the relevant professional groups. In the Sao Paulo case, many of the key figures were foreign intellectuals living in Sao Paulo who brought their international experience to bear. The importance of international contacts also comes up in the chapter by Irene Maver on Glasgow, but here it is delegations from Glasgow that visited not only London, but also Paris, Brussels. Amsterdam, and a variety of German cities. Her chapter is full of examples of what the Glaswegians learned--from Paris, the ability "to reinforce the aesthetic qualities of urban design by means of sanitary control" (192), from the Belgian museum and gallery system, "the kind of integrated approach that fostered both community identity and national unity" (193), and from Germany, "the power of the professionals" (194). And Maver makes the more general point about the importance of these international connections: "The growth of professionalism has been a recurring theme, not only in the context of education and training, but in the dissemination and exchange of ideas locally, nationally and internationally" (197).

The importance of networking and contacts beyond the municipality is also highlighted in Emmanuel Bellanger's chapter on the town clerks in the Paris region. In this case, these key municipal officials combined the resources of their knowledge of the local terrain with a strong associational network that linked them across municipalities. In the early period, they were not a particularly highly educated group, but they made up for it, in terms of resources for exercising power, by this combination of local knowledge and associational ties.

The book is primarily interested in municipal employees, and even more particularly in the key municipal officials, but there is also much to be learned about the role of elected officials. Michele Dagenais' chapter on Montreal in the 1930s is noteworthy in this regard. The growing importance and professional expertise of the key officials was supported by the politicians as they began to realize that professional management of the city not only pleased the financial community, but could also be popular with the general electorate. This led to the realization that an alliance between elected officials and key civil servants could be more productive, but also more successful politically, than earlier conflictual relationships. This is certainly a theme that resonates today in looking at municipal policy and at sources of municipal innovation.

Another theme of current importance is the relationship between municipal officials and civil society, and the role of community participation in the programming and delivery of municipal services. The chapter by Benedicte Zimmermann on municipal unemployment policies in Germany in the period 1871-1918 is one to be read by all those interested in the municipal potential for innovative policy-making. Zimmermann's argument is that, in this period, it was the municipal governments and not the national government that were the innovators, and the reason was the proximity of municipalities to local civil society. The participation of trade unions in municipal policy-making created a variety of policies across German cities, and this policy innovation moved the policy agenda from programs around poverty to programs related to employment and unemployment. The link between proximity, the participation of civil society, and policy innovation is a lesson that should be picked up by all those interested in good urban policy, be they at the municipal, provincial, or federal level.

The book is a delight to read. The detailed case studies give an intricate sense of the ways in which personalities, structures, and contexts interrelate in the development and mobilization of professional competence, scientific research, and political commitment to produce the services of modern cities. At the same time, we are continually drawn to reflect on the vast themes raised by the authors: the importance of bureaucracy and of professions to the modern world, the role played by the new emerging sciences of the 20th century, and the rescaling strategies of the various actors, particularly those of the key officials. The first chapter, by Michele Dagenais and Pierre-Yves Saunier, nicely develops the themes of the book and reflects on what we might learn about comparative analysis by comparing cities rather than national experiences. This book is certainly a good argument for doing just this.

Caroline Andrew

School of Political Studies

University of Ottawa