This article challenges the view that citywide referenda alone are an effective means of ensuring accountability for mayoral control. Through new empirical analysis of the referenda results in Boston and Cleveland, the article shows that rather than establish genuine democratic legitimacy, the referenda in fact mask strong class-based, and in…

This study investigated the recent histories of the urban public school districts of St. Louis, Missouri and Cincinnati, Ohio in the United States of America. The purpose was to identify the similar challenges that each had recently faced in regard to the maintenance and development of its public school systems, as well to gauge the level of…