Mark Schmitt on the influence that Who Governs? had on his political development:
New Haven, Connecticut, at the tail end of the 1970s was a pretty good place for a precocious kid to get a political education. The city contains all the ethnic and social dynamics of New York City or Philadelphia in microcosm. But it’s small enough that a 15-year-old with a ten-speed could get to any neighborhood to knock on strangers’ doors before an election or a primary, of which there were dozens. The city loved politics and was then embroiled in a fierce battle between “the reformers” and “the machine.”
To make it a real education, there was a library shelf full of books about New Haven and its politics, with titles like Model City and The Mayor’s Game
. First among them was a long-established classic of political science that still describes the city well: Who Governs?
by Yale’s Robert A. Dahl, based on a close study of the city in the late 1950s.
