One measure of governance quality is the level of reported conflict and cooperation that is present between and among elected officials and administrators. High levels of conflict or low levels of cooperation can hinder the decision-making process. However, there are few attempts to assess the causes of conflict and cooperation in the existing literature. This study uses an expanded typology of local government form and additional independent variables to determine what factors are likely to lead to conditions conducive to cooperation and lower perceived conflict in the local governance process. Data on government performance and indicators of perceived conflict and cooperation were collected from a national survey of municipal mayors, council members, and chief administrators in cities with populations of 50,000 to 250,000. Our results suggest that form of government and proportion of council members elected by district are two factors that significantly influence governance at the local level.

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The increasingly important issues of transparency and citizen involvement have challenged public administrators in the budget process. This paper adopts a contingent valuation approach, surveying citizens in the city of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on their preferred allocations of both a large city budgetary increase and a large city budget reduction. The results are then used to examine how citizen assessment of service quality and importance are related to their desired changes in net budget allocations. We believe that this is a major improvement in the contingent value approach, and can serve as a useful tool to public administrators for identifying the public’s budget priorities.

This article examines the forms of municipal governments in Wisconsin and their relationship to variables in the areas of socioeconomic, partisanship, election process, decision-making in the governance process, and internal municipal operations. Wisconsin has more mayor-council and mayoral forms with an appointed administrator rather than council-manager forms common in other states. We find that reform in Wisconsin has occurred in all government forms and that most municipalities desiring the managerial results of a professional administration have chosen an adaptation of the mayor-council form. Furthermore, we find that there are few clearly identifiable differences between cities with differing governmental forms.