Policy Roles of City Managers

Abstract

Since the inception of the council-manager plan, the role of the city manager in city government policymaking has been debated. This article develops a contingency typology of city manager policy roles. It relates the desirability by city managers of five policy roles to two contingency variables, the degree of political competition and the degree of task analyzability. Using interview and survey data, two questions based on this typology are tested. The results provide only modest support for the contingency typology because a strong overriding preference for one policy role was found.