Local governments in the United States exist within the complicated web of intergovernmental relations created by American federalism that both limits what local governments can do and, at the same time, empowers them to undertake activities and programs that they otherwise could not do. In this study of local self-government in the United States, Ellis Katz, professor emeritus of political science and fellow of the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, examines how the ideas of self-government and federalism affect the organization and functioning of local government.

The Constitution of the United States creates a national government with limited powers. While these powers are very broad, and have expanded enormously since the Constitution was written in 1789, it is still assumed that the national government has only those powers delegated to it by the Constitution; all other powers remain with the states. There is no mention of local government in the U.S. Constitution, and it is widely understood that local government is a matter of state, not federal concern.

This is not to say that the federal government has no influence over local government. The federal Constitution, for example, prohibits state and local governments from infringing upon the civil rights and liberties of their residents; it precludes them from enacting laws that discriminate against citizens of other states; and it prohibits tax and regulatory policies that handicap businesses in other states. In addition, cities and other units of local government participate in the federal government's grant-in-aid system, by which the federal government provides over $225 billion in grants to state and local governments annually for a wide variety of purposes ranging from community development to education to child nutrition. Nevertheless, local government is a matter for the states, not the federal government.

According to conventional legal theory, local governments are created by state government. Their institutional structures are defined, their responsibilities are delineated and their powers of taxation all are derived from state government. In fact, it is the state government that gives local governments "the breath of life," without which, they could not even exist. Whatever legal theory might say, the political reality is that America's cities and towns enjoy a remarkable degree of autonomy and independence.

A Passion for Popular Sovereignty

Writing 167 years ago, the French journalist Alexis de Tocqueville observed that the United States' pattern of local government reflected America's passion for popular sovereignty. By this, he meant that individuals and families joined together to form local communities, which, in turn, federated to form states, which ultimately led to the creation of the national government.

Forgiving some exaggeration, Tocqueville's observation does capture the important fact that local units of government are not created by some higher authority, such as the state or national government, but are created by the people themselves, and represent popular and enduring expressions of how we think about local government in the United States.

A Variety of Communities

Americans live in a wide variety of local communities. Overall, there are almost 36,000 cities and towns in the United States today. Almost 45 million Americans live in large cities with a population of over 250,000, another 40 million live in medium-sized cities of between 50,000 and 250,000, and yet another 40 million live in small cities of between 10,000 and 50,000. Despite being "a nation of cities," 123 million Americans -- almost 50 percent of the total population -- live in cities of less than 10,000 residents, in unincorporated towns and townships, or in rural areas.

The size of the population of a local community affects both the kinds of services that can be provided and the nature of civic life. In the United States, many very small local communities cannot provide for their own police and fire services, schools and libraries, or sewage and trash disposal systems. These small communities often join with other nearby communities to share these services, or they contract with state or county government to provide them.

At the same time, the sheer size of very large cities has an impact upon the structure of government and the quality of civic life. Large cities, for example, tend to have strong mayoral systems of government because, it is believed, only a single powerful individual can provide leadership and mobilize resources in a large and diverse community. Many medium-sized and smaller communities provide for nonpartisan, professionally trained city managers to oversee the day-to-day operations of government. Small towns, on the other hand, often have commission-type forms of government in which both legislative and executive authority are vested in an elected commission. In smaller communities, it is not unusual for almost every resident to have a relative or friend who personally knows some important political leader. Thus, personal access to political decision-makers is much easier in small communities than in large cities.

Moving from Cities to Suburbs

One of the great demographic trends that has affected where and how Americans live has been the move from cities to suburbs. This move has led to the creation of large metropolitan areas that may include one or more substantial-sized cities and many contiguous smaller independent communities.

This pattern of urban-suburban life poses difficult problems of governance. For example, the city of Philadelphia has approximately 1.5 million residents, but the Philadelphia metropolitan area (narrowly defined to include only Philadelphia and the four surrounding counties in the state of Pennsylvania) has almost 4 million inhabitants, organized politically into three cities, 92 boroughs (small cities, usually with less than 10,000 residents) and 145 townships.

Typically, an individual might be a resident of, pay taxes to, and elect the officials of a city or town, an independent school district, several special districts, a county, and the state and national governments. It is no wonder that there are almost 500,000 elected public officials in the United States today.

In many countries of the world, this proliferation of governments would be intolerable, and cities would simply expand to annex their surrounding territories, or some sort of all-encompassing metropolitan government would be created. At a minimum, the small, suburban governments would be forced to consolidate into larger units.

In the United States, however, citizens have resisted these efforts, and have been quite ingenious in finding ways to coordinate public services while maintaining the integrity of their local communities. In general, state constitutions and state laws provide for incorporated municipalities and unincorporated towns and townships as general-purpose local governments, counties as administrative subdivisions of the state, school districts, and over 33,000 other special districts that serve limited purposes which provide and coordinate services across jurisdictional lines without creating larger governmental units.

Subdivisions of Local Government

Every state except Connecticut and Rhode Island is divided into counties. Counties are subdivisions of the state itself. They tend to cover large geographic territories and, because counties vary so much in size, state law typically divides them into categories based on population. Thus, there may be slight variations in the powers of county government that vary with population. Counties may include urban, suburban or rural populations (or even combinations of all three) and, not surprisingly, their functions may vary with the nature of their demography. Their principal functions are judicial administration, public safety and the organization of elections, although in recent years they have taken on a variety of new functions, such as solid waste disposal, public health, libraries, technical and community colleges and environmental protection.

Townships were originally subdivisions of county government and were primarily responsible for road maintenance. Today, townships carry out a full range of governmental functions, such as police and fire protection, trash collection, zoning and land use, recreation and economic development. State law usually categorizes them according to population size or density. In many states, they are indistinguishable from small cities, except that they lack municipal charters.

Cities are municipal corporations that operate under charters from the state. Until the last half of the 18th century, the tendency was for the state to grant each municipality a charter unique to its needs. During the second half of the last century, as urbanization increased, most states provided for general municipal charters (sometimes with some optional features) so that upon reaching a certain population (typically 10,000) a local community could apply to the state for a charter and become a municipal corporation.

Typically, local communities of different populations receive different types of charters, so that the charters of large cities tend to establish a different form of government than is characteristic of smaller cities, and large cities tend to have more taxing and regulatory authority than do small cities. But, in all cases, the powers granted to a municipal corporation are to be narrowly interpreted. According to Judge John Dillon's famous 1868 opinion:

It is a general and undisputed proposition that a municipal corporation possesses and can exercise the following powers, and no others: first, those granted in express words; second, those necessarily or fairly implied in or incident to the powers expressly granted; third, those essential to the accomplishment of the declared objects and purposes of the corporation -- not simply convenient, but indispensable. Any fair, reasonable, substantial doubt concerning the existence of a power is resolved by the courts against a corporation, and the power is denied.

"Dillon's Rule," as it became known, while technically correct, flies in the face of the historical and political reality observed by Tocqueville only 37 years earlier.

Home Rule

To counter Dillon's restrictive view of local authority, states adopted a new way to charter local governments, one more way in keeping with the American tradition of popular sovereignty.

For example, beginning in the state of Missouri in 1875, the states began to change their constitutions to provide for home rule for local communities. Pennsylvania's home rule constitutional provision is typical, and provides that "Municipalities shall have the right and power to frame home rule charters." Operating under such charters, "a municipality may exercise any power or perform any function not denied by this Constitution, by its home rule charter, or by the General Assembly." Pennsylvania, by legislation, also extends the home rule option to counties and townships.

Today, many states have some sort of constitutional provision for home rule. Under most home rule provisions, the residents of a local community write and adopt their own charter that serves as a kind of constitution for the city. While home rule charters go far in restoring the historical independence and autonomy of local communities, citizens cannot adopt charters that offend the state constitution or state laws. Furthermore, state courts are called upon to interpret home rule charters and often have fallen back on Dillon's Rule to take a narrow view of local authority.

School and Special Districts

In addition to counties, townships and municipalities, states also create school districts and other special districts. School districts are a good example of the tension between local and state forces. Historically, state law simply empowered (and sometimes required) local communities to create public schools. The schools were organized, regulated and financed by the local community. As public education became more complicated, and as the state financed a greater share of the cost of education, the state's role in such important matters as curriculum and school personnel expanded. Today there is continuing tension between local and state forces for control of the schools within a community.

Special districts, whether concerned with solid waste disposal, mass transportation, fire protection, or other matters, have developed for two reasons. First, because state constitutions limit local indebtedness, special districts are sometimes created to finance large capital projects through the issuance of public bonds. Second, because some problems cross the boundaries of several local governments, a special district might be created to address a particular inter-jurisdictional problem. Whatever their precise structure and authority, these special districts have proven useful in fending off the consolidation of small local units of government into larger regional governments.

Accountable Local Self-Government

In thinking about local government, perhaps the key question is: to whom are local governments accountable?

In some countries, local governments are really local administrations, and local officials are accountable to some higher authority. In such countries, revenue collection tends to be centralized, central authorities often audit local expenditures, and sometimes there is even some kind of appointed governor who oversees the activities of local officials.

In the United States, however, local officials are primarily accountable to their local citizens. Local communities raise the bulk of their own revenues, the centralized audit function is extremely limited, and state departments of community affairs exist merely to provide services to local governments, not to oversee their operations.

Local governments are not entirely autonomous and independent, however. They exist within the overall framework of a state's constitution and laws, much as the American states, themselves, exist within the framework of the Constitution of the United States. Indeed, a few states -- Connecticut, New Hampshire and many of the New England and Middle Atlantic states, for example -- operate almost as if they were federations of their local communities. However, some other states -- Idaho, New Mexico and many of the Western and Southern states -- are substantially more centralized and carefully control the operations of their local communities.

However we conceptualize the local-state relationship, we must recognize that there will always be a tension between the advocates of local self-government and the advocates of centralization. The very fact that this tension exists, and that local communities and states bargain with each other about the relative powers of each, is evidence that Tocqueville's 19th century observation about how much we value our local institutions is still very much a part of the American system.