Political Bosses

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Political Bosses

Political bosses are professional politicians who control political machines in cities, counties, or states in ostensibly democratic regimes. Bosses first emerged in the United States in the early 1800s when masses of newly franchised, inexperienced voters provided bosses with opportunities for regimentation, mobilization, and manipulation. Each subsequent expansion of the franchise to new classes of voters, and each new wave of immigrants allowed bosses to strengthen their political power base.

Each individual political boss is a leader within the political machine hierarchy. Little bosses and big bosses are connected in a feudal hierarchy, each with a fiefdom to be exploited, and each bound to the other by mutual self-interest and personal loyalty. The boss is accountable for his actions to no one outside the machine.

The principal methods used by the boss to gain control over voting blocs are patronage, the power to appoint persons to formal positions of power in the government; spoils, the power to distribute tangible rewards, including government contracts for goods and services, tax favoritism, formal and informal exemptions from legal enforcement and prosecution, and the issuance of government permits; the politics of recognition, especially the rapid integration of newly arrived immigrant groups and minority groups into the political system; and the nomination of a balanced electoral ticket in which all supporters of the machine are represented. Bosses secure the public and electoral support of extended families, gangs, business organizations, neighborhoods, ethnic groups, and immigrant groups through patronage, graft, and the granting or withholding of favors, including government services, government welfare benefits, and social and economic benefits provided by the machine itself. Machine-provided benefits include membership in social clubs, gift baskets for the needy, and make-work employment for unemployed machine supporters.

The political machine is an interdependent community bound together through the boss. Various class, race and ethnic groups are united by the common political objectives of seizing control of government and using government to secure advantages for the constituent groups within the machine. The machine is a vehicle for class, race, and ethnic cooperation and integration, and for the distribution of economic, social, and political benefits across all social groups. Membership in the machine is an achieved status, earned through demonstrated service to the machine. The machine recruits political outsiders into the political system, provides rapid political and social advancement for members of immigrant and minority groups, and helps mainstream and empower groups and individuals previously outside the acting political community.

In jurisdictions where political machines are active, the informal political power of the machine replaces the legal authority of government officials. Bosses typically put their personal self-interest and the machine's self-interest above the interests of political parties, government institutions, and the public. Bosses use their power over politics and government to accumulate personal wealth and social status, and demand deference from leaders of non-political institutions, including businesses, churches, charities, community groups, and criminal organizations. Bosses practice politics for personal profit.

During the course of building the machine, bosses often form mutual-support alliances with corrupt business and criminal elements. These alliances, the conspiracy upon which they are based, and the scintillating lawlessness inherent in reciprocation of power and influence, undermine popular respect for politics and for machine-supported public officials. The resulting scandals and public outrage are the central themes for many novels, films, and television programs, especially police dramatic series. Feelings of helplessness in confronting an overpowering machine also leads to public withdrawal from politics and to political apathy.

Efforts at political reform during the Progressive Era in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the civil service system, party primary elections, the multiplication of elected offices, especially in the state and local executive branches, the rotation, staggering, and shortening of elected terms of office, and introduction of the Australian ballot, merely strengthened the power of the boss. First, the reforms further complicated politics, making amateur political leaders less able to compete with the bosses. Second, the diffusion and legal limitations of official authority increased the need and opportunity for unofficial, efficient authority to emerge. Attempts to solve the problem of bossism merely increased the opportunities for bosses to flourish.

Famous bosses include William W. "Boss" Tweed and George Washington Plunkitt, leaders of Tammany Hall, a fraternal aid, charitable, and political organization that controlled the New York City Democratic Party and city politics from 1798 until Tweed's fraud conviction in 1872. Boss Tom Pendergast ran the Kansas City, Missouri, machine throughout the 1930s, paving city streets and rivers and giving Harry Truman his start before being sent to jail on tax evasion charges late in the decade. Mayor Richard Daley controlled the Chicago machine during the mid-twentieth century. Most American cities and states succumbed to the power of similar bosses and political machines at one time or another. There is no distinctive personality type, life history, or other measurable criteria to distinguish a boss from a legitimate political leader. "Bossism" is defined subjectively. E. J. Flynn, author of You're the Boss, writes that it is only the leader you do not like who is a boss, and the political organization you do not like that is a machine. Throughout American history, writers, journalists, and political opponents have readily found evidence of bossism in the political leaders they dislike.

—Gordon Neal Diem