Understanding Local Politics in America

 

Your business has a local problem in America. For example: your water supply is not pure enough; how do you deal with it?

The answer requires an understanding of the unusual history of the United States.

A group of visiting Japanese businessmen recently asked me how a problem of water pollution would be handled in San Francisco. I replied that there was no single place to go for a solution to the problem. There are eight independent governmental agencies that deal with the problem; each one deals with a different part of water pollution issue. The Japanese businessmen looked at me in astonishment. They said, "Anywhere else in the world, one regional authority would be in charge of all other agencies that deal with the problem." That is probably true everywhere else in the world, but it is not true in the United States.

The reason is found in history. Nearly every nation in the world was created upon the conquest of a national leader -- a king, a daimyo, or an emperor. Ultimately all power and authority was generated from the top of the hierarchy. That cascade of power from top to bottom remains in the governmental structure of most governments and most bureaucracies in the world today.

Not in the United States. No single nation or king created or conquered the United States. For three hundred years each newly formed community in the country formed its own local government. Each community also formed its own irrigation agency, its own fire department, its own school system, its own police department and its own local water and sewage agency. There are over 600,000 locally-elected, local government agencies in the United States.

Regional governments and state governments were formed by coalitions of local governments. The U.S. national government was created, two hundred years ago, by thirteen independent state governments. The word "nation" was first used by an American president (Pres. Abraham Lincoln) nearly one hundred years after the federal government was formed. For the first nearly one hundred years most Americans thought of their national government as the "United" states, not as a unified nation.

When a Japanese business person confronts a local problem that migjt be expected to be handled by one government agency, the business person should not be surprised to find that a solution will require contact with several different independent bureaucracies. A business may have to have negotiations with several different independent agencies.

Often agencies look similar to each other, such as different school districts in different parts of a state. That is because part of the taxing power used to pay for the schools comes from local property taxes and part of the money comes from state income taxes. The State uses its power to distribute tax money to create standardization among the many different local government agencies.

Expect politics and government in local America to be independent, overlapping and unusual. When your business has a water problem, you may have to deal with several independent water related agencies.

 

Michael Phillips Nov. 2002