NONPARTISAN SLATING GROUPS: THE ROLE OF REFORMED PARTIES IN CITY ELECTORAL POLITICS

Abstract

The nonpartisan slating group is an organization which serves the same functions as a political party, but operates in a nonpartisan electoral system. As such, it is extremely important in efforts to structure the scope of conflict in municipal electoral politics to favor identified interests. With its origins in the Municipal Reform Movement of the Progressive Era, those interests who established and most benefited from these organizations were predominantly upper and middle class and white. The nonpartisan slating group must therefore be understood as a further effort on the part of municipal structural reformers to institutionalize their domination of city politics. Their success has worked to the systematic disadvantage of working classes and ethnic and racial minorities