Resistance to Professional Managers in American Local Government

Abstract

}Because of the American tradition of self-government and mistrust of administration, city-management professionals face difficulty in securing citizen acceptance of their roles. This is a particularly acute problem in the city manager form of local government because the manager is highly visible as the non-elected executive head of the agency. This paper argues that community resistance to the role of the local government general management professional is caused largely by a fear of loss of personal access or influence over governance, in essence, a conflict between the value of identification with community and the value of rational administration. The future of city management and local government professionalism generally may depend on an ability to adapt the premises of rational, scientifically based administration to the realities of the citizen's need for a sense of identification with a political and social community.