If Different, then Why? Explaining the Divergent Political Development of Canadian and American...

If Different, then Why?: Explaining the Divergent Political Developmentof Canadian and American Local Governance

Zack Taylor

International Journal of Canadian Studies, Volume 49, 2014, pp. 53-79(Article)

Published by University of Toronto PressDOI: 10.1353/ijc.2014.0019

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Zack Taylor

If Different, then Why? Explaining the DivergentPolitical Development of Canadian and

American Local Governance1

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, Goldberg and Mercer argued that differences betweenCanadian and American cities stemmed from distinct political cultures.Taking an alternative approach, this article surveys the historical develop-ment, through a series of critical junctures, of distinct institutional founda-tions of local government and intergovernmental relations in Canada. Theseinstitutional forms—greater reliance on general-purpose local governmentand more consolidated government in metropolitan areas—were the productof the incremental development of provincial capacities to manage municipalaffairs absent in American states and have resulted in the more equitableprovision of services and a greater capacity to manage urban economic andenvironmental change.

Résumé

Il y a vingt-cinq ans, Goldberg et Mercer ont fait valoir que la différence entreles villes canadiennes et américaines découlait des cultures politiques dis-tinctes. Cet article, qui prend une différente approche, offre un survol dudéveloppement historique, à travers une série d’étapes charnières, de fonda-tions institutionnelles distinctes des gouvernements locaux et de relationsintergouvernementales au Canada. Ces formes institutionnelles — une plusgrande confiance en un gouvernement local polyvalent et un gouvernementplus consolidé dans les régions métropolitaines — furent le produit d’undéveloppement graduel de la capacité des provinces à gérer les affairesmunicipales, ce qui n’existe pas dans les États américains. Ceci a entraînéune offre de service plus équitable et une plus grande capacité à gérerl’économie urbaine et les changements environnementaux.

Twenty-five years ago, Goldberg and Mercer challenged the notion of acontinent-wide pattern of urban development. Arguing that Canada is demo-graphically, culturally, institutionally, and historically different from theUnited States, they suggested that the burden of proof should not be onexplaining continental convergence, but rather on why two such similarcountries may differ in the first place. Scholars have subsequently assembledconsiderable evidence both for and against national exceptionalism in theurban realm and otherwise (Eidelman and Taylor; England and Mercer; Filionet al.; Frisken; Garber and Imbroscio; Kaufman, Origins; Teixeira, Li, andKobayashi; Zolnik).

IJCS/RIEC 49, 2014

The focus on North America to the exclusion of the rest of the world nowseems quaint in the context of contemporary concern with the homogenizingeffects of truly global economic forces, the permeability or hollowing out ofthe nation-state, and the corresponding enlargement of the scope of economicand social policy making at the local scale (Pastor, Benner, and Matsuoka;Scott; Taylor). Viewing the two countries’ cities only in relation to oneanother risks fetishizing inconsequential differences. Under globalization, thenotion of a “North American city” (or a distinctively Canadian or Americancity) has value only if juxtaposed to a broader universe of non–NorthAmerican cities that differ in important ways. Much is made, for example,of the fact that Canada’s larger cities are somewhat denser and therefore moreenvironmentally sustainable than their American counterparts. Yet viewed inrelation to European and Asian cities of similar population size, Canadian andAmerican (and also Australian) cities are of lower density and exhibit higherownership and use of automobiles (Newman and Kenworthy; Sorensen andHess). What appears to be divergence may in fact be similarity, depending onwhich nations or cities are included in the comparison. There is alsoconsiderable variation among cities located within each country, blurring theboundaries of aggregate national patterns. Only broader comparisons permitthe discrimination of distinct national or subnational patterns of social,economic, physical, and political organization and assessment of their relativesignificance—a project that has flowered since the turn of the millennium(Hambleton and Gross; Hoffmann-Martinot and Sellers; Huang, Lu, andSellers; Savitch and Kantor).

While global comparisons may provide a better understanding of how andhow much individual Canadian and American cities and national or subna-tional urban systems may be similar or different today, they cannot necessarilyreveal why. Getting at this requires comparative analysis of their historicaldevelopment. Comparative historical research promises to transcend thereductionist dichotomy of continentalism versus national exceptionalism,revealing instead patterns of similarity and difference that vary across policydomains, national space, and time.

To begin, it is important to recognize the broad contours of similarity. AsGoldberg and Mercer acknowledge, the two countries share a border, adominant language, British political and legal traditions inherited throughcolonization, largely private-sector-led property markets, a federal structure ofgovernment, a single-member-plurality electoral system, and sustained popula-tion growth through international immigration. These commonalities are re-flected in the lumping together of Canada and the United States in internationaltypologies—as liberal market economies (Hall and Soskice; Pontusson) andliberal welfare states (Arts and Gelissen; Esping-Andersen) and as featuring acivic localist model of local government (Sellers and Kwak).

International Journal of Canadian StudiesRevue internationale d’études canadiennes

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At the same time, Goldberg and Mercer call attention to importantdifferences. On the basis of quantitative data from the 1960s and 1970s theyshow that there was in Canada more state intervention in the economy, lesssocial mobility, greater concentration of political and economic power, andless institutionalized racism. In particular, Canadian urban areas exhibitedhigher levels of urban public safety, greater population density and transit use,less downtown or central city decline relative to suburbs, and more consoli-dated local government in metropolitan areas. They explain these findings interms of divergent national political cultures and national characters. Whilethey are careful to avoid crass cultural determinism—indeed, they emphasizethe dialogical relationship between cultural and institutional development—they provide only the most general sketch of how this interaction played outover the longue durée. Explaining the branchings of national trajectoriesrequires deeper analysis than the casual historiographic shorthand of revolu-tionary rupture versus colonial continuity and “life, liberty, and the pursuit ofhappiness” versus “peace, order, and good government” as the rhetorical basesof national cultural difference, or the invocation of race and language as theprimary drivers of national exceptionalism.

In this spirit, this article outlines an historical explanation for Canadianand American urban differences that emphasizes institutional rather thancultural determinants. Institutions are viewed here as historically constructedsites of cultural production and reproduction rather than as epiphenomenal toculture. This is in keeping with American political scientists Stone andWhelan’s call for a “polity-centred approach” to the study of urban politics(“Through a Glass,” “Urban Politics”) that engages with the burgeoning neo-institutionalist literature on American Political Development (APD). ForOrren and Skowronek (24), political development is an unending processthat “ultimately registers its : : : significance through altered forms ofgovernance.” For them, the motor of political development is the interactionof “orders,” embedded in institutions, that embody different and oftencontradictory purposes, logics, and resources. As a research enterprise, thestudy of comparative political development reveals the interpenetration ofgovernment, society, and economy over the long term and, in Stone andWhelan’s words, “the ways in which outcomes depend on how multiplefactors mesh, clash, and coexist” (“Through a Glass” 111). The study ofpolitical development is therefore cognizant of the institutional and culturalfoundations of stability, of contingency and the causes of change, of the timingand sequence of events, and of the potential for unintended consequences toshape outcomes over the long term (Pierson, Politics in Time).

The following discussion builds on existing foundations. Isin’s magiste-rial Cities without Citizens provides a detailed analysis of the comparativepolitical development of the municipal corporation in Britain, Canada, and the

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United States between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Isin reveals thelong-term interplay of ideas, interests, and institutions that led to the en-trenchment of the public municipal corporation as the sole instrument of localgovernment and its constitutional and legal subordination to state andprovincial authority. However, Isin’s account loses its specificity and con-cludes in the middle of the nineteenth century, before so many of theinstitutional innovations and transformations that continue to shape contem-porary urban politics and intergovernmental relations occurred.

More recently, Garber and Imbroscio have argued that Canadian andAmerican cities are governed by different “local constitutional regimes” thatencapsulate different legal constructions of municipal authority, propertyrights, and urban development control. As a result, much of what remainssubject to local control in American cities is in Canada regulated or giveneffect at the provincial level, thereby shifting the “locus of urban politics”upwards on the ladder of federalism. Building on Isin, they argue that ongoingprovincial control of urban development was a product of the administrativerationality of the colonial state, which sought to promote economic growthwhile limiting democracy. Provincial control was maintained by virtue of thecohesion and centralization of authority inherent in the Westminster systemand rulings of the courts that interpreted the scope of local autonomynarrowly. Arguing against Goldberg and Mercer’s assertion that businessdominance is less prevalent in Canadian cities, they suggest that capitalaccumulation is equally present in both countries, albeit orchestrated atdifferent levels.

These accounts are useful correctives to cultural determinism in theirfocus on legal and political institutions and institutional dynamics as shapersof urban politics and policies. I extend the analysis by focusing more deeplyon the historical development of phenomena highlighted by Goldberg andMercer (see especially ch. 8) and others that have been central to postwardivergence in the social, political, economic, and environmental developmentof Canadian and American cities: the greater fragmentation of local govern-ment and more widespread use of special-purpose bodies in Americanmetropolitan areas, and the existence of quite different national patterns ofintergovernmental fiscal and regulatory relations. American metropolitanareas are more spatially stratified by socio-economic status, race, and ethnici-ty, as well as by levels of services, amenities, and economic opportunitiesavailable to residents (Ellen; Walks). These inequalities and disparities haveundermined social mobility and frustrated efforts to develop metropolitanstrategies for economic, social, and physical development (Foster, “RegionalCapital”; Hamilton). At the same time, Garber and Imbroscio (606–12)suggest that a greater sphere of local autonomy in the United States hasengendered more entrepreneurial and creative executive leadership and policy


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innovation, as well as more active and complex patterns of interest groupinvolvement in local government.

To explain the origins of these differences, I consider the changingincentives and opportunities afforded by the two countries’ different consti-tutional and institutional structures as they evolved in the context of economicand social change. In particular, I highlight several historical events andprocesses in which inherited institutional structures conditioned distinctivenational responses to immediate problems as they emerged, often withunintended consequences. These events were cumulative, setting in traindistinct trajectories reinforced by their production of increasing returns andpositive policy feedback (Arthur; Pierson, “Increasing Returns”).

The argument will unfold as follows. The early Canadian adoption ofgeneral municipal legislation in the nineteenth century, in combination withthe late extension of the electoral franchise and the party discipline afforded bythe Westminster system, inhibited the formation of American-style politicalmachines. In the absence of the intergovernmental corruption nexus vilified byAmerican reformers, there was no incentive to legislate or constitutionalize“home rule” for Canadian municipalities. Instead, Canadian provinces devel-oped administrative mechanisms through which to regulate the municipalsystem. This pattern of American localism and Canadian provincialism wasreinforced during the fiscal crisis of the Great Depression. As a result, the mosturbanized and rapidly growing Canadian provinces entered the postwar periodwith a relatively sophisticated set of legal and administrative tools with whichto manage urban and metropolitan growth. In general, these tools producedmore consolidated government in metropolitan areas and greater reliance ongeneral-purpose local government to provide services.

General versus Special Municipal Legislation

Until the mid-nineteenth century in North America, virtually all municipalcorporations were constituted using the same legal mechanism: a charterenacted by special act of the state or colonial legislature (Griffith and Adrianch. 2). The creation or amendment of municipal charters could be initiated bythe legislature itself or on petition of the municipal council or residents for aprivate act.2 Wary of democracy after the Revolution, British authoritiesdiscouraged municipal incorporation in the Canadian colonies. By the 1830s,however, colonial self-government came to be seen as necessary for economicdevelopment and the inculcation of British political values (Isin chs. 3–5;Kennedy ch. 12). At the same time, a new commercial elite agitated for greaterautonomy not only from imperial authority for the colony, but also fromcolonial administration for localities (Aitchison; Buckner). With local senti-ment now aligned with imperial policy, Montréal and Québec receivedmunicipal charters in 1832, Toronto in 1834, Halifax in 1841, and Hamilton


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and Kingston in 1846. This belated embrace of municipal incorporationmirrored activity south of the border, where state legislatures had continuedthe pre-Revolution practice of regulating local government through special actcharters.

At about this time, the British Parliament and American state legislaturesbegan to experiment with general municipal legislation. Regulating municipalincorporation, annexation, and internal structure with laws of general appli-cation rather than one-off enactments promised to reduce the adhockery andexclusivity of local government, aspects of which had become increasinglyunacceptable as both societies democratized. In Britain, the 1835 MunicipalCorporations Act abolished some of the “rotten boroughs” controlled byexclusive oligarchies under medieval “closed” corporate charters and replacedthem with elected councils drawing their authority from the general act.3

Similarly, about a dozen American states passed general municipal lawspertaining to particular classes of municipality. At the same time, reflecting theJacksonian democratic ferment, the remaining “closed” municipal corpora-tions that antedated the Revolution were rechartered by special act. In bothcountries, however, much of the existing legal architecture of local govern-ment remained intact. The vast majority of existing and new incorporationscontinued to be regulated under special rather than general acts, and theAmerican general acts were often ignored as shifting majorities of legislatorsresponded to parochial interests and concerns (Hodos 49).

Something quite different happened in the British North Americancolonies. The Upper Canadian Municipal Corporations Act (1849), common-ly known as the Baldwin Act after its chief exponent, Robert Baldwin,repealed all existing special act charters (Aitchison; Isin ch. 4; Whebell).Thereafter, all municipal corporations drew their authority from a singlegeneral act that conferred corporate status on three classes of urban settlementdefined by population size, with larger municipalities granted additionalpowers and responsibilities. The act also enumerated the structures andpowers of rural townships and counties. The Baldwin Act was the firstlegislation in the English-speaking world to consolidate enabling provisionsfor all forms of general-purpose municipal government, both urban and rural.Britain would not accomplish the same until the 1880s, when the remainingunreformed borough and county charters were brought under general legisla-tion. Similar legislation was subsequently enacted in Lower Canada, theMaritime colonies, and Newfoundland.

Why was the general act system brought into being in Upper Canadabut not south of the border? The costs of imposing a comprehensive reformwere considerably lower in the British North American colonies, which werestill sparsely populated and overwhelmingly rural, and where chartered


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municipalities were new and few in number. Although a predictable anduniform system of local governance would have aided settlement andeconomic development in the United States, the long-standing existence ofspecial act charters in the American cities of the Atlantic seaboard mitigatedagainst their replacement with general legislation, especially in the absence ofthe cohesive, executive-centred government afforded by the Westminstersystem. The American system of particularistic charters was locked in andreplicated as the frontier moved west. As a result, the democratization ofoligopolistic closed corporations would be accomplished by reforming specialact charters, not reincorporating them under general municipal legislation.

The comprehensive embrace of the general municipal act in the BritishNorth American colonies but not the United States had two long-termimplications. First, American cities would continue to lack a rules-basedmechanism through which they could acquire new powers and expand theirterritories as their population increased, necessitating continuing reliance onspecial legislation as the principal means of adjustment to urbanization. As thecentury progressed, this led to inconsistency of treatment, partisan manipula-tion, and corruption. While there was no shortage of municipal special laws inthe Canadian provinces, they did not substitute for or subvert generallegislation. Rather, they served to implement, clarify, or ratify actionsundertaken within the general framework on petition from local councils orresidents, including the grant of service franchises or the adjustment of wardboundaries. Second, the absence of uniform standards and incentives to applythem led American state assemblies to be more permissive in their handling ofmunicipal affairs.4 This led to the multiplication of small suburban localgovernments regardless of their fiscal viability, and greater variability in theirpowers and structures.

To summarize, then, legislative intervention in local affairs during thesecond half of the nineteenth century was characterized largely by local orprivate initiative. The critical difference between the two countries in thisperiod was therefore not that local affairs in Canada were centrally controlledwhile American municipalities were left to themselves.5 Rather, it waswhether local initiative was channeled through a rules-based system (thegeneral act) or addressed by ad hoc measures (special legislation).

Restricted Voting Rights and the Inhibition of Machine Politics inCanada

The next step is to understand how the legal foundations of the municipalcorporation in the two countries were adapted to urbanization in the latter halfof the nineteenth century. After the Civil War, the growth of the Americanindustrial city fueled demand for urban infrastructure and services. Thisbrought capital into close interaction with local government, producing a


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triangle of influence, benefit, and corruption (Anderson, American CityGovernment 43–4; Goodnow,Municipal Home Rule 53,Municipal Problems37–8). The new urban immigrant electorate received services as a reward forsupporting candidates anointed by the boss and his machine, while economicinterests paid the bills in return for monopoly control of utility franchises andother favours (Griffith ch. 8; Patton ch. 2; Steffens; Stewart 8–9). The degreeof iniquity was such that Lord Bryce could write in 1888 that “there is nodenying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of theUnited States” (432).

Toronto, Montréal, and other Canadian cities also saw ward-heeling,bribery, kickback schemes, patronage and corrupt hiring practices, and ballot-box stuffing (Armstrong and Nelles, Revenge; Careless 190; Rutherford,“Tomorrow’s Metropolis” 211; Weaver, Shaping the Canadian City and“Modern City Revisited” 40–9). But although the proportion of the totalpopulation that was foreign born was higher in Canada than in the UnitedStates between 1860 and 1930, this did not lead to the emergence of ethnicmachine politics on the American model.6 Restrictions on the electoralfranchise and who could hold office—principally by age, gender, and propertyownership requirements—narrowed the scope of politics in Canadian cities.The disenfranchisement of unpropertied urbanites, many of whom were pooror foreign born, or both, precluded their electoral mobilization.7 In the UnitedStates, by contrast, universal adult white male suffrage had been achieved bythe 1850s (de Tocqueville Appendix H; Munro, Government of AmericanCities 11–12). In a sense, the late–nineteenth century American urbanreformer desired what the Canadian city already had: local governmentrelatively uninfected by the evils of democracy. If Canadian local governmentsometimes suffered from amateurism, negligence, and petty criminality, it didnot suffer from wholesale corruption and ethnic clientelism akin to thatpracticed by New York’s Tweed Ring and its friends in Albany.

This does not mean that the reform impulse was absent in Canada. In fact,bureaux of municipal research and good-government organizations directlyinspired by the American example appeared in Toronto and other Canadiancities, championing such structural innovations as at-large and non-partisanelections, commission government, strong-mayor systems, professionaliza-tion of the bureaucracy, and the transfer of activities seen to be purelytechnical or administrative to semi-autonomous boards and commissions.The continental application of these reform prescriptions was such thatWilliam Bennett Munro could write that “of all branches of government inCanada, the government of cities has proved the most susceptible to Americaninfluence” (American Influences 99). In narrowing the scope of citizeninvolvement, however, Canadian limitations on the local electoral franchisealso narrowed the scope of reform activity. The American urban reform


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movement was populated not only by the “bureau men”—businessmen andchampions of scientific management—but also by social activists, includingclergymen, trade unionists, suffragettes, temperance crusaders, and “settle-ment women” (Stivers). By contrast, Canadian social reformers’ influence onurban governance was “limited in scope and fervor” in part because theirconstituencies could not vote (Rutherford, “Introduction” xii–xiii). Indeed,the Canadian businessmen reformers saw the limited franchise as a guarantorof governmental efficiency. As tenants, the poor, and immigrants werebelieved to have little knowledge of or interest in civic administration, theywould be best served by the benign paternalism of elite rule (Weaver, “Orderand Efficiency” 222–23, and “ ‘Tomorrow’s Metropolis’ Revisited” 412).

What impact limited and late enfranchisement had on civic life inCanadian municipalities in more recent times is a matter of speculation.Postwar attitudinal surveys have found that compared with Americans,Canadians have exhibited greater trust in government, lower political efficacy,and less attachment to the locality as a source of identity (Nevitte). Thesephenomena may stem at least in part from late enfranchisement at the locallevel. At the same time, the persistence of restricted voting may also helpexplain the staying power of the nonpartisan ideal in Canadian local govern-ment, which in the American context Kaufman (“Town and Country”) creditswith suppressing overt political conflict among social and economic groupsand inhibiting policy innovation.

Provincial Engagement and State Disengagement in the Progressive Era

The more limited substance of local politics in Canada, and the correspondingnarrowness of the reform project, contributed to the development of quitedifferent patterns of intergovernmental relations. As we shall see, from the1890s to the 1930s Canadian provinces incrementally evolved administrativemeans of supervising municipal affairs, while American states disengagedfrom them.

Perhaps the most obvious differentiating feature of American localgovernment is “home rule”—the relatively large scope for the exercise oflocal authority without interference from senior governments. Home rule isinstituted through two mechanisms. First, the state constitution may prohibitthe legislature from passing some or all types of special municipal legislation.Second, municipalities may be given the authority to frame and amend theirown charters without permission or ratification by the state. Separately and incombination, these measures were promoted by urban reformers and adoptedin a number of American states during the latter decades of the nineteenthcentury to solve two political irritants. The first was arbitrary intervention bystate legislatures in municipal affairs. Legislatures routinely passed speciallaws, often without local consent, regarding incorporation and annexation,


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utility franchises, and even the renaming or closing of streets. While manyinterventions were innocuous and useful adjustments in a rapidly changingsociety (Teaford, Unheralded ch. 4), some were motivated by corruption andpolitical advantage. Loyal partisans were rewarded with municipal jobs,sweetened pay packets and pensions, and even reinstatement to office afterlosing local elections. Expenditures could be moved off the state’s books—andfriends favoured—by compelling local spending on roads and other infra-structure. Legislators also received kickbacks from firms seeking utilitymonopolies or preferential treatment (Goodnow,Municipal Home Rule 22–3).

The second irritant was legislative overload. In some rapidly urbanizingstates, special laws relating to municipal governments and utilities accountedfor over half of all acts passed in a given session. Minnesota was typical. Fromthe state’s first session in 1858 through to 1881, the legislature enacted anaverage of 348 special laws and only 224 general laws per biennial session.During this period special laws accounted for over 60 per cent of all legislationand over two thirds of the pages in the statute books (Anderson, City CharterMaking 13). Whether or not corrupt, amateur legislators were ill equipped toevaluate contending bills advanced by special interests, leading to poorlydrafted laws that later proved difficult to interpret by local officials and thecourts (Anderson, Local Government 61; Goodnow, Municipal Home Rule28–9). Of greater concern to reformers were the inefficiency of the legislativeprocess and the inability of the legislature to focus on matters of statewideimport.

Good-government reformers advocated home rule as a means of resolv-ing these irritants. In principle, enlarging the scope of local autonomy woulddeliver a political and administrative trifecta. Limiting the legislature’sauthority over local government would eliminate the intergovernmental nexusof graft and corruption. At the same time, it would unburden the legislature ofthe welter of special laws that overwhelmed amateur part-time legislatorsduring short biennial sessions (Teaford, Unheralded ch. 5). Some reformersalso believed greater local autonomy would raise local morals and engendercivic pride and engagement (Goodnow, Municipal Home Rule 8–9). As thelegislature could not be trusted to tie its own hands, reformers employed analternative strategy: amending the state constitution. By the early twentiethcentury, over a dozen states had adopted constitutional limitations on speciallegislation and guarantees of municipal home rule (Anderson, American CityGovernment 47, 59–60; Binney; Goodnow, Municipal Home Rule 57–61;Patton 71).

Why was there no corresponding call for home rule in Canada, despite asimilarly high volume of special laws as a proportion of total legislativeactivity (Laskin 5 fn9, 20 fn74)? And why did American reformers pursue a


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course of decoupling state and local governments when embedding rules andstandards in consolidated general legislation could have achieved the sameends? The answer to both questions lies in the incentives and opportunitiesafforded by the two countries’ political institutions.

First, there was little institutional incentive for provincial authorities tomanipulate municipal offices and structures for partisan gain. Provincialpremiers could dispense patronage without constraint. Ontario premier OliverMowat (1872–96), for example, rewarded partisans with jobs as provincialinspectors, commissioners, and other positions (Noel ch. 15). By contrast, theability of state governors to authorize expenditures and modify governmentfunctions was constitutionally circumscribed. Legislators could also moreeasily marshal majorities in favour of municipal expenditures because theywould impose no costs on the state.

Second, as Garber and Imbroscio (602) suggest, the greater party disci-pline under the Westminster system of government relative to the Americanseparated-powers model restrained exception-seeking behaviour on the part oflegislators. A majority government’s control of the legislative agenda meantthat no bill could be passed without its consent. This put a brake on logrollingparochial interests. This, in tandem with the generally applicable rules andthresholds specified by the Baldwin Act, put a brake on the ad hoc or arbitraryuse of special legislation in pursuit of parochial interests. Parenthetically, it isimportant to note that the adoption of comprehensive general municipallegislation was resisted by American reformers who believed that a one-size-fits-all system would be either overly detailed or insufficient to beresponsive to local needs and conditions (Anderson, Local Government59; Goodnow, Municipal Problems 46). They also decried what they sawas the inevitable abuse of general legislation, whereby the wording of ageneral law could be carefully calibrated to apply to specific municipal unitsthrough the narrow specification of ranges of population size, land area, orassessed value (Anderson, Local Government 61–9, 319; Munro,Governmentof American Cities 55). Executive control of the legislative process under theWestminster system impeded such manipulations. At the same time, it ensuredthat the law remained sufficiently flexible to permit adaptation to changingcircumstances, enabling Ontario municipalities, be they large, small, urban, orrural, to manage their own affairs within the general strictures set out in thelegislation (Taylor, “Urban Autonomy” 272).

Third, it is also important to recognize that American states, unlikeCanadian provinces, have written constitutions that can limit legislative andexecutive action. In many states these can be amended independently of thelegislature by citizen assemblies or by referendum (Tarr 771). In the absenceof these mechanisms, Canadian reformers could not restrict the authority of


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legislators to pass special laws or of executives to create and reorganizegovernment institutions. While it was theoretically possible that provincialparliaments could seek amendment of the British North America Act toprovide for something analogous to the state-level constitutionalization ofmunicipal home rule, provincial politicians were not inclined to surrendertheir constitutional authority over local government.

Finally, local and provincial elites supported general municipal legisla-tion as urbanization progressed because it was inexpensive for provincialand local governments to administer and operate within and providedpredictability for economic interests (Anderson, “Municipal Government”74–5, 101; Weaver, “ ‘Tomorrow’s Metropolis’” 409–10). In the UnitedStates, by contrast, private sector and local elites in rapidly growing citiesbenefited from payoffs secured through special legislation.

Although directed at proximate concerns, the legal and discursive en-trenchment of home rule in the United States ultimately restricted the potentialfor strong intervention by state governments in municipal affairs. In theabsence of American-style corruption and machine politics, the commonproblem of legislative overload was resolved in most Canadian provinces bymeans other than restrictions on legislative action. Provincial governmentsinstead appointed new special-purpose boards and commissions responsibleto the executive. These bodies could hear evidence, investigate issues, andrule on petitions without recourse to special legislation. Ironically, thisdevice was an American import. In the more urbanized and industrializedNortheast and Upper Midwest, state legislatures had already establishedpublic utilities commissions to regulate the activities of private railways andgas, telegraph, electric, and steam providers, and their enabling legislationoften explicitly overrode home rule charters (Ruggles 4–5, 46; Teaford, Rise21–5). Established in 1906, the Ontario Railway and Municipal Board(ORMB) was designed to manage many of the same functions dealt withby the American public utilities commissions created a generation earlier. Inthe absence of home rule, however, it was also given responsibility foroverseeing aspects of municipal affairs previously handled directly by thelegislature: incorporation and annexation, the internal structure of localgovernment, and local borrowing. Analogous bodies were introduced inAlberta, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, and Québec in the following decade(Armstrong and Nelles, Monopoly’s Moment 188). Over time, the issuesthat spurred the ORMB’s creation—setting and enforcing service standardsfor railways and utilities, adjudicating labour disputes, approving franchiseagreements, and resolving conflicts between private franchises and munici-palities—receded in importance as needs changed, and it accumulated newresponsibilities, including adjudication of property assessment disputes andthe approval of land use plans.8


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The transfer of oversight of municipal affairs from the legislature to acommission did more than decongest the legislative agenda. It also reinforcedthe consistency and regularity of treatment inherent in the operation of thegeneral municipal act by removing the partisan legislature from the equation(Chipman 68). It is no small irony that in response to many of the sameproblems the American businessman reformer led the charge towards devo-lution, particularism, and parochialism, while his Canadian counterpartpursued centralization, consistency, and impartiality. Both sought to depoliti-cize and rationalize government at all levels. For the American reformer,however, this required the disengagement of state government rather than thereconfiguration of its legal responsibility for the municipal sphere.

The Great Depression and the Restructuring of IntergovernmentalRelations

To recap, the institutional trajectories of Canadian and American localgovernance had diverged by the First World War. The activities of theCanadian cities tended to be regulated by general rather than special legisla-tion, and under limited administrative oversight by provincial authorities.9 Inthe United States, however, state disengagement from certain categories oflocal affairs—not least incorporation and annexation—had become generallyaccepted and in many states institutionalized through legal or constitutionalchange. As a result, there was a greater degree of consistency in the structuresand practices of Canadian municipalities, as well as the rules-based manage-ment of municipal incorporation and boundary change. Of crucial importanceto the events of the postwar period is what happened next: the wrenching crisisof the Great Depression.

Both countries were devastated by the Crash of ’29. Gross domesticproduct declined and unemployment rose by similar amounts in each country.Local governments were hit especially hard as high levels of local public debt,accumulated during the speculative boom of the 1920s, proved unsustainable(Hillhouse 248–56). High joblessness and declining property values led to asharp decline in municipal property tax revenue. At the same time, expendi-ture demands rose as borrowing costs and demand for social spending—thenstill seen as a local responsibility—increased. Canadian municipalities werecomparatively worse off. Municipal debt loads tended to be higher inCanadian provinces than in American states. Public debt per capita ofincorporated municipalities in British Columbia rivaled that of the mostindebted states, while levels in Ontario and Québec were both above theAmerican national average (Hillhouse 88–9, 215, 485; United States, Finan-cial Statistics Table 5). Rates of property tax delinquency and property valuedecline were also higher in Canada than in the United States (Bird; Brittain101; Hillhouse 242; Tassonyi 6; Teaford, Twentieth-Century 80; UnitedStates, Current Tax Delinquency). Those cities that could issue debt to fund


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unemployment relief did so; those that could not defaulted on their bonds. Thedirector of research for the Municipal Finance Officers’ Association of theUnited States and Canada, Albert Hillhouse, wrote that “the municipal debtproblem is much more acute in Canada than in the United States” (215). Byhis calculations, only 3 to 5 per cent of municipal debt was in default in theUnited States, compared with 10 to 11 per cent in Canada. Ontario fared theworst—by June 1935, fully 19.9 per cent of municipal debt was in default(Hillhouse 217).

In both countries, senior governments resisted extraordinary expendituresunder the assumption that markets would self-correct. Poor relief was seen asthe rightful concern of local governments and charities. National governmentssaw the deterioration of municipal finances as the concern of state andprovincial governments. President Hoover restricted federal action to somelimited expenditure on public works, persuasion of major firms to maintainwage rates, government purchase of commodities to maintain price levels, andthe extension of credit to large industrial and financial concerns (Valelly83–5). Some states filled the federal void by introducing grants and loans tomunicipalities (Teaford, Rise 124). In Canada, the national governmentpursued a policy of high tariffs and fiscal probity (Royal Commission onDominion–Provincial Relations 151–60), although after 1930 it reluctantlyintroduced temporary ad hoc grants-in-aid and public works funding.

The election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a strong Democraticmajority in Congress in 1932 was a watershed moment south of the border.Shortly after Roosevelt’s inauguration, Congress created the Federal Emer-gency Relief Administration, which transferred half a billion dollars to stateand local authorities for direct relief. This and subsequent expenditures onwork relief and public works infused local economies with much neededcapital (Fishback, Horrace, and Kantor). In addition to propping up privateenterprise, the Public Works Administration and the Reconstruction FinanceCorporation bought hundreds of millions of dollars of local bonds at lowinterest rates and offered advances to local governments that enabled them tosecure private loans and sell securities (Hart 114, 229). The federal govern-ment also preempted or steered state-level actions through mandates and fiscalincentives.

By contrast, the Canadian federal government continued to ignorethe urban and municipal dimensions of the crisis, leaving the response tothe provinces. This took the form of the consolidation and expansion of thenascent administrative supervision of municipal affairs introduced a genera-tion earlier. The collapse of many Canadian municipalities into insolvencydemonstrated the inadequacy of this machinery (Kulisek and Price 257).While jurisdiction over municipal affairs distinguished the Canadian


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administrative boards from American public utility commissions, it was littleexercised and most often in response to local initiative. Nonetheless, it was afoundation on which to mount a muscular response to the fiscal crisis. TheOntario Railway and Municipal Board was reconstituted as the OntarioMunicipal Board in 1932 with a mandate to proactively manage municipalfiscal affairs, while a cabinet-level Department of Municipal Affairs wascreated in 1935. Numerous Ontario municipalities were put under the directcontrol of provincially appointed supervisors empowered to reorganizerevenues and expenditures and to restructure local debt repayment. After1935, all municipal bylaws initiating capital undertakings or issuing debt wererequired to be approved by the Ontario Municipal Board (Laskin 75–7). Mostdramatically, the province responded to the default of the City of Windsor andits adjacent suburbs in 1935 (itself indirectly caused by the economic collapseof Detroit) by unilaterally merging them into a consolidated city—a sign of theOntario government’s growing capacity for intervention and its willingness touse it (Kulisek and Price; Ontario). While Ontario’s reforms were perhaps themost centralizing, most of the other provinces had created municipal boards,departments, or analogous administrative capacities by the end of the 1930s.

It is important to recognize that provincial centralization was not intendedto undermine local autonomy and self-government; rather, it was to save it.Hearing the appeal of Windsorites opposed to municipal amalgamation, theJudicial Committee of the Privy Council (then the highest appellate court)ruled: “It is not only the right, but it would appear to be the duty of theprovincial legislature to provide the necessary remedy, so that the health of theinhabitants and the necessities of organized life in the communities should bepreserved” (qtd. in Kulisek and Price 262). The ancient British creed of theright to individual and community self-determination was inherited in both theCanadian and American colonies; however, it found different expression ineach.

Why did American states not create analogous bodies? Part of the answerlies in Washington’s fiscal interventions, already described. Federal publicworks and relief spending, combined with municipal bond purchases, directlyand indirectly supported municipal solvency. At least as important, however,were constitutional and institutional limitations on state governments’ abilityto aid local governments. This had three dimensions, two of which havealready been discussed. The first was the prior entrenchment of home rule asan operating ideology. Under pressure from good-government advocates andfederal inducements, numerous states reorganized the structure of stategovernment and professionalized administration during the 1930s. Wherestates undertook such administrative reforms, however, these tended to furtherentrench rather than diminish or regulate the scope of local autonomy. Theframers of state reorganization codes could have circumvented home rule, yet


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the principle had by this time become politically inviolable (Lutz). No stateestablished a department of municipal affairs analogous to those created in theCanadian provinces. To the extent that administrative oversight of municipalaffairs was introduced, it was relatively passive—for example, the mandatoryreporting of financial information.

The second dimension was constitutional. The so-called contract clauseof the federal constitution prohibits states from impairing contracts.10 As aresult, states, unlike Canadian provinces, could not adjust municipal debts orestablish municipal bankruptcy procedures. At the same time, the residualclause prevented the federal government from reaching over the states toestablish a municipal debt adjustment process of its own (McConnell andPicker 425–27). Only at the end of the Depression did Congress pass amunicipal bankruptcy law that survived legal challenge. With no legal path todebt adjustment, most defaulting municipalities spent much of the Depressiontrapped in a sort of legal purgatory, arriving at piecemeal settlements withcreditors through negotiation and achieving budget balance only throughdraconian expenditure reductions. As the contract clause did not apply to thejudiciary, some states authorized the courts to appoint supervisors to sit in theplace of defaulting municipalities’ councils and act as receivers, much aswould occur in a private bankruptcy (Hillhouse 295–320). In these and otherstates, however, the government played little direct role in managing theprocess, let alone subordinating debt restructuring to a consistent policy.

The third dimension was fiscal. Many state constitutions prohibited deficitspending. Almost a century earlier, in 1841– 42, eight states and the territoryof Florida defaulted on some or all of their debts after borrowing heavily tofinance canals, railroads, and banks. Nationwide, fully 51 per cent ofoutstanding state and local debt was in default in 1837– 43 (Cohen 56),provoking states to constitutionalize limitations on borrowing and introducebalanced-budget amendments. This prevented state-level countercyclicalspending on public works and poor relief. As only the federal governmentwas unfettered in its ability to tax and spend, it is unsurprising that it led theresponse to the Depression, in some cases preempting more radical state-levelactions (Valelly). By contrast, Canadian provincial governments could tax,spend, and establish new administrative capacities without constraint.

In short, the Great Depression was in both countries a catalyst forprofound change, yet the substance of this change was formed within theconstraints of inherited constitutional and institutional legacies. In the UnitedStates, immediate intervention to resolve the municipal fiscal crisis and thecreation of permanent mechanisms of municipal supervision were legally anddoctrinally inhibited by home rule, the contract clause, and fiscal limitations.A leading American authority on local public finance believed that state-level


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administrative machinery akin to the Ontario Municipal Board was desirableand could be made to function within the constraints imposed by the contractclause, yet the option was politically foreclosed by the potency of the“shibboleth” of home rule (Hillhouse 260). The more limited scope of thelocal debt crisis in the United States, combined with the magnitude of federalNew Deal expenditure, also reduced the pressure on states to expand theiradministrative capacities. At the same time, the New Deal “federalized themetropolis in regard to political mobilization” (Ethington and Levitus 166). Inthe postwar period, local officials and activists would look to the federalgovernment, not the states, for aid and policy innovation. In Canada, thefederal response to the Great Depression was ad hoc and implemented throughthe provinces. It was only during and after the war years that the federalgovernment laid the foundations of the contemporary welfare state. By thenthe provincial governments had taken full ownership of municipal affairs andhad stabilized municipal finances on their own. There was no need for directfederal intervention.

American Special-Purpose Government as a By-Product of Public DebtLimitation

Another distinguishing feature of American local government in need ofexplanation is the extraordinary volume of special-purpose governments. TheCensus of Governments shows that between 1952 and 2012, the number oflocal special-purpose governments in the United States (not including schooldistricts) more than tripled. Over the same period, the number of counties,general-purpose local governments, and school districts per capita declineddramatically. Residents of American metropolitan and rural areas are servedby multiple overlapping and often competing entities that provide garbagepickup, street lighting, mosquito control, irrigation, water supply and sewer-age, land use planning, and countless other services (Bollens; Burns; Foster,Political Economy). While no comparable figures are available for Canada andits provinces—and indeed, the fact that the federal government does notcollect municipal government statistics speaks to the lack of connectionbetween the two levels of government—it appears that special-purpose bodiesare much less prevalent and, where they do exist, are closely integrated with orsubordinated to general-purpose governments through board appointmentsand fiscal supervision. This is in part a consequence of the provinces’ embraceof general municipal legislation, which has discouraged the proliferation offreestanding service districts.

Although the general act system permitted greater reliance on general-purpose local government in Canada, the proliferation of special-purposebodies in the United States is best understood as a long-term unintendedconsequence of the constitutional limitations on borrowing by states describedin the previous section—limitations that shifted capital expenditure to the


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local level (Wallis 245; Weingast and Wallis 344, 51–5). State debt was eighttimes local debt in 1843; by 1860 they were equal, and local debt was 50 percent higher than state debt in 1870 (Hillhouse 32–6). Runaway local debt inthe recessionary two decades following the Civil War led to further constitu-tional limitations, this time on municipal taxation and borrowing, as well aslegal requirements for voter ratification of bond issues (Griffith ch. 3; Teaford,Unheralded ch. 10; Weingast and Wallis 355–57). In the twentieth century,these limitations led to the proliferation of special-purpose bodies relativelyunfettered in their ability to tax, borrow, and spend. As provincial taxation,expenditure, and borrowing cannot be constitutionally limited in Canada,there was no corresponding shift of debt financing to special-purpose bodies.The provinces could not evade their legal responsibility for local debts, and sothey retained an enduring interest in preserving local solvency.11

Towards a More Historicized Examination of the Present

While necessarily abbreviated and partial, this analysis suggests that distinctcontemporary national or subnational patterns of urban governance are notultimately reducible to fundamental differences in political culture or nationalcharacter. While not denying the motive force of evolving collective politicalattitudes, it is clear that inherited and changing institutional forms have playeda critical—if often unanticipated—role in determining each country’s path ofurban political development. Concerned in 1849 with the proximate objectiveof enhancing local autonomy under the watchful eye of the colonial adminis-tration, the framers of Upper Canada’s general municipal legislation could nothave imagined its long-term implications as Canadian society urbanized,industrialized, and diversified. At the same time, reformist delegates tonineteenth-century state constitutional conventions could not have imaginedthat their efforts to ensure state and municipal solvency and honest govern-ment would in the postwar period lead to metropolitan government by amultitude of overlapping and unaccountable special-purpose bodies. Theseearly decisions were made in the context of a largely agrarian society andbefore the rise of the positive state, yet they provided the seedbed for the long-term development of distinct patterns of responses to urbanization. Thesepatterns were sustained and reinforced during subsequent crises despite theappeal of alternatives because they generated increasing returns for key actorsand positive policy feedback. The Canadian model provided predictability forprivate interests at low administrative cost. While inefficient and inconsistentin the aggregate, the American model provided residents, private capital, andparty elites with financial and political rewards. As Garber and Imbrosciosuggest, both patterns facilitated private capital accumulation. Yet it is alsoclear that compared with American cities, the Canadian system, reinforced bythe installation of federal–provincial redistributive programs in the postwarperiod, produced more egalitarian outcomes: lower income inequality; less


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spatial stratification by income, race, and ethnicity; more equitable access toservices and amenities. The greater (but by no means absolute) subordinationof incorporation, annexation, and land use planning to uniform policy frame-works at the provincial level has also led to more compact urban form inCanadian cities.

A nuanced historical comparison between Canada and the United Statesalso reveals that epistemologically speaking, we do not face a binary choicebetween continentalism and national exceptionalism. In fact, Canadian andAmerican cities have at particular historical junctures been similar in somerespects and different in others. Before the enlargement of state activities andadministrative capacities during the latter half of the nineteenth century, theeveryday experience of life and government in localities was much the sameon both sides of the border. Yet when confronted with the need to adjust to thesame external stimuli, including macroeconomic, technological, and socialchange, institutional differences generated different responses. For example,the narrow electoral franchise in Canada inhibited the popular mobilization forpartisan advantage at the local level, which in turn limited the appeal of homerule. In the United States, the prior installation of constitutional restrictions onstate-level action (home rule, fiscal limitations, and the contract clause)arrested the development of permanent state-level administrative machineryfor the management of municipal affairs.

Returning to a theme introduced at the beginning, what implications doesthis historical narrative have for contemporary studies of globalization’simpact on urban economics, politics, and governance? It is frequently claimedthat international competition for capital and talent is pushing local govern-ment around the world to be more entrepreneurial and resourceful, resulting inthe “rescaling” of the locus of political and economic decision making(Brenner; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development; Savitchand Kantor; Swyngedouw). Given the institutional legacies described, whichnational pattern of local governance is better positioned to either competeglobally or resist competitive pressures? It may be that the centralizing anddepoliticizing aspects of the Canadian governance pattern produced a morestable and equitable mode of capital accumulation during the postwar epoch ofKeynesian regulation (Donald). However, the historical substitution of gov-ernment for private and local initiative, and the suppression of overt localpolitical conflict through the restricted franchise and the non-partisan ideal,may put Canadian cities at a disadvantage in today’s era of hypercompetition,deregulation, and devolution. The historical pattern of American localism,which has germinated and reproduced a political culture that values local self-determination, open government, partisan competition, and local policyinnovation may be more conducive to the construction of dynamic,“bottom-up” coalitions, urban regimes, and networks of public and private


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actors in the pursuit of market and non-market objectives (Imbroscio; Pastor,Benner, and Matsuoka; Stone; Wolfe and Nelles). The past is not merelyprologue; it is constitutive of contemporary choices. On this basis, a compar-ative research program that plumbs the historical foundations of contemporarypossibilities may prove more fruitful than a narrow and contemporary focus onwhether Canadian or American cities are converging or diverging undercontinentalization and globalization.

Notes

1. The author thanks Kristin Good, Andrew Sancton, Clarence Stone, RobertWhelan, David Wolfe, Enid Slack, Richard White, Almos Tassonyi, Jack Lucas,Gabriel Eidelman, and Alan Martinson for their comments and encouragement onthis research as it developed. An early version of this paper was presented at the2010 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, at whichdiscussant McGee Young made valuable comments.

2. Special acts are those that apply to a specific person or corporation (includingmunicipal corporations). General legislation, by contrast, applies to all subjects inthe polity or a defined class thereof. Private legislation is enacted on petition ofindividuals, groups, or corporations, while public laws are enacted of thelegislature’s own initiative. Thus a municipal corporation could be chartered bythe legislature either on petition of residents or unilaterally by the legislature. Bothwould be special laws, but the first would also be a private law.

3. As Isin describes, until the nineteenth century there was no legal distinctionbetween public and private corporations. The late-medieval municipal corporatecharters in Britain and pre-Revolutionary British North America were granted toassociations of local merchant elites as a means of regulating economic devel-opment. There was no popular franchise, and in some cases membership on thecouncil was hereditary. These “closed” or “close” corporations, or “rottenboroughs,” were challenged by reformers who argued for “open” corporations forwhich the council would be selected through a general election procedure.

4. For example, Anderson (Local Government 15) reports that in Minnesota,virtually all petitions for incorporation, no matter how small the population, weregranted: “[T]here is little or no evidence that either the legislature or the countyboards exercised restraining power of any consequence upon the petitioners.” InOntario, by contrast, this author’s review of the legislative journals for the1873–99 period indicates that local petitions for incorporation and annexationwere typically rejected if they did not meet the thresholds specified in generallegislation.

5. DiGaetano makes a similar point in his comparison of nineteenth-century localstate formation in the United States and Britain: “[D]espite : : : differences in statestructures (centralized versus decentralized), both British and American inter-governmental systems provided a permissive environment for local state for-mation in the nineteenth century” (442).

6. Nationwide, Canada’s proportion of foreign-born residents was higher than in theUnited States in almost every census year between 1860 and 1930. This holdsregardless of whether British-born residents are counted as “foreign”—a grey area


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in the Canadian case. Available historical statistics do not permit the comparisonof the foreign-born populations of urban areas.

7. The degree of exclusion is difficult to assess, as there has been no historicalanalysis of the municipal electoral franchise in Canada. Such an analysis would becomplicated by the fact that, unlike in the United States, federal, provincial, andmunicipal elections occur at different times and according to different rules.

8. While in Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and later Québec the regulationof utilities and municipal affairs were commingled, other provinces set up separatemunicipal commissions, boards, or inspectorates, as in British Columbia andSaskatchewan in 1913. Québec set up agencies charged with overseeing localbond issues first for greater Montréal (1921) and then a separate body for the restof the province (1932). Similarly, Manitoba set up an oversight board forWinnipeg’s suburbs in 1921 (see Brittain 33–4). In each case the motivation forexpansion of provincial oversight was the same: to ensure municipal solvencywhile unburdening the legislature of matters deemed purely local or technical innature.

9. This is not to say that no Canadian cities operated under special legislation. TheCity of Vancouver, for example, was chartered by special act, and speciallegislation and administrative rulings were used to respond to situations that couldnot be addressed under general legislation.

10. US Constitution, Article I, sec. 10, clause 1 prohibits state legislatures fromretroactively modifying the provisions of private contracts. This was a remedy to aproblem that had been endemic during the Revolutionary period prior to theadoption of the constitution in 1789: State legislatures would pass speciallegislation preferentially absolving influential people of their debts—in essencethe abrogation of legally binding private contracts. To halt this abuse, a clause wasadded to the Constitution granting exclusive authority over contracts to theCongress.

11. In addition to the administrative and democratic rationales for the expansion ofmunicipal government in British North America, there was also a fiscal one. Thecolonial administration had incurred substantial debts funding canal and railwayinfrastructure. By the late 1840s the facilitation of municipal incorporation wasseen as a means of shifting infrastructure financing off provincial books.Municipalities initially proved incapable of entering credit markets on their own,and so after 1852 the province issued bonds on the municipalities’ behalf. Thesebonds did not constitute a liability on its books because they were not technicallysecured by the provincial fisc. This actuarial sleight-of-hand backfired whenmunicipalities overborrowed. These “indirect” provincial debts increased from£92 000 to £7.5 million in only four years. In 1859 the province was forced tobackstop the funds (see Piva, “Government Finance” 260–68, and The BorrowingProcess ch. 4).

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