The Cities on the Hill

This major contribution to political understanding powerfully knits together urban and national political affairs. Intellectually inventive, innovative in data and argument, and a pleasure to read, its powerful analytical history of institutions and behavior guides understanding of why urban representatives came to form a cohesive, often effective, political force, and how today's hard-edged party polarization emerged. -Ira I. Katznelson, Ruggles Professor of Political Science and History, Columbia University and author of Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time With this landmark analysis of the links between the different levels of the federal system, Ogorzalek revives the study of urban politics as a central element in understanding American politics. Carefully documented and full of incisive, even paradoxical insights, he shows both how the imperative of overcoming the differences rife in city settings provided the political foundation for the liberalism of the long New Deal and why current metropolitan patterns have made it difficult to sustain. -John Mollenkopf, CUNY Graduate Center Reasoning from the most prominent characteristics of cities-size, density, and heterogeneity-Ogorzalek builds an elegant theory of urban politics and politicians. This is a brilliant book, teaching, organizing and illuminating the central characteristics of urbanicity. -Amy Bridges, University of California, San Diego This is a fascinating, theoretically sophisticated, and methodologically rigorous examination of the transformation of urban political regimes. The book is also incredibly timely: Ogorzalek offers a way forward for modern day political parties to reduce political and societal polarization. As he powerfully illuminates, political coalitions and potential understandings of shared interests are politically malleable and can be reconceived and reconciled in ways that bring diverse constituencies together. -Paul Frymer, Princeton University