Holding Bureaucrats Accountable
152 pages, 8 3/5 x 8 7/10
Paperback
Release Date:30 May 1991
ISBN:9780817305192
Holding Bureaucrats Accountable
Politicians and Professionals in St. Louis
By Lana Stein
University of Alabama Press
Lana Stein looks at the taxing question of how to make bureaucracies responsible to elected officials
Stein carefully scrutinizes St. Louis bureaucracy, distinguishing those agencies that are responsive to elected officials from those that are not. On the responsive side, for example, she cites the Traffic Division of the Department of Streets, which has erected about 1,000 four-way stop signs (compared to 34 in Kansas City) because the aldermen, responding to parents concerned about the safety of their street-crossing kids, demanded them. Similarly, she finds that building inspectors are responsive to aldermen's requests that individual buildings receive priority attention. To tenants worried about unsafe living conditions, that's an important and meaningful gesture
Stein carefully scrutinizes St. Louis bureaucracy, distinguishing those agencies that are responsive to elected officials from those that are not. On the responsive side, for example, she cites the Traffic Division of the Department of Streets, which has erected about 1,000 four-way stop signs (compared to 34 in Kansas City) because the aldermen, responding to parents concerned about the safety of their street-crossing kids, demanded them. Similarly, she finds that building inspectors are responsive to aldermen's requests that individual buildings receive priority attention. To tenants worried about unsafe living conditions, that's an important and meaningful gesture
Lana Stein is Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. She is the author coauthor of City Schools and City Politics: Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis.
