This Stalin Frankenstein System

Adoption and Abrogation of Proportional Representation in New York City, 1936-1947

Abstract

Starting in the second half of the 1910s, some American cities tried to attach proportionalist reforms to their new municipal charters. Many campaigns failed, a few were successful. Among the latter, a relevant one took place in New York City in 1935-36. As a result, between 1936 and 1947 New York adopted, in place of the majority system it had used until then to elect its Board of Aldermen, an electoral law based on proportional representation to elect a City Council. Although the proportionalist charter was abandoned in 1947 to restore the traditional electoral system, the deviation from the traditional political patterns and electoral behavior during New York’s proportionalist decade can provide useful suggestions to ponder some of the traditional assumptions of American political history.