An Anti-Monopoly and Abundance Movement for Urban Politics

One-party municipal rule leads to poor services, corruption, and dejected electorates.

In the economic world, it’s widely accepted that a lack of competition between firms in a particular sector leads to poor results—higher prices, constrained supply, less innovation, fewer product choices, and shoddier services for customers. At the extreme, concentrated economic power and a lack of competition lead to actual monopolies or monopolistic-like scenarios frequently seen in the telecommunications, technology, banking, and health insurance industries.

An entire “anti-monopoly” movement that crosses left- and right-populist ideological lines—built on the crusading actions of the original Progressive Era trustbusters and later consumer advocates—has developed since the 2007-2008 financial crisis to challenge corporate concentration in the hands of “too-big-to-fail” businesses and establishment policies that prop them up. This anti-monopoly movement is most entrenched in Democratic Party circles, and in recent months these advocates have been engaged in low-key intellectual battle with other Democrats from the emerging “abundance” movement over the direction of party policy making.

The debate is twofold. Should the Democratic Party’s focus be directed at populist agitation against the “financial oligarchy” and promote cross-ideological policies to tax the rich and take down big tech, big banks, and big health care as the anti-monopolists argue? Or should the party focus on the wholesale cleanout of bad regulations and cumbersome bureaucracy that needlessly mucks up the building of new housing, energy infrastructure, transportation, and other important industrial policies as the abundance people desire? Your average Democratic voter typically responds to this ideological tussle among the eggheads and activists with either a shrug or a sensible, “Why not do both?”

Perhaps a more pressing, if difficult, consideration for Democrats is why these interesting anti-monopoly and abundance policy concepts aren’t applied to the largest monopoly of them all—one-party political rule by Democrats in big cities.

The application of the anti-monopoly and abundance logic to urban politics is sound. As with concentrated economic power, one-party rule inevitably leads to poor results for citizens. In America’s biggest cities, this translates into enervated municipal governments that coast from election to election with little outside challenge to the networks and groups that keep the urban Democratic machine humming along. Facing little to no pressure from other parties or even internal critics, save coalition members and interest groups seeking to advance their own positions, urban Democratic leaders and institutions have gotten lazy and set in their ways. Schools don’t get fixed. New housing or other development gets stalled. Roads, transportation, and other public utility projects get screwed up and delayed with massive cost overruns. Crime goes unaddressed. Public spaces and parks go to seed.

Voters may not be happy about these developments, but Democrats rarely suffer electoral consequences for incompetent or corrupt government. Not unlike a corporate monopoly that knows you’ll pay whatever price and accept whatever dingy goods or services they provide because there are no alternatives.

One-party rule also undermines the policy innovation and rethinking that is necessary for urban renewal. Municipal bureaucracies are notorious graveyards where creative ideas for fixing our cities are laid to rest. Procedures rarely change or get challenged if they are inefficient. Contracts go to political insiders and donors. Rational agency coordination and stingy attention to taxpayer funds is nonexistent.

“You want to get the sidewalk and street fixed where you live, you say?” Make sure you call the arborists first to check the trees and then the disability office to make sure its compliant and then the neighborhood groups and historical people to make sure everything is up to standard. Remember, the contract will probably be in the hands of a private crew owned by some councilman’s uncle out in the county, and they’ll probably show up two months late and start tearing things up without coordinating with the sewer and gas people who will then arrive two months later to rip it all up again for another repair job. When it’s all completed, expect various mayoral, city council, and legislative candidates to send you fliers extolling their progress in fixing the city, decrying “the wealthy interests” and political outsiders who don’t care about the city like they do, and imploring you to vote straight “D” on Election Day.

The wheels on the one-party bus go round and round.

Unfortunately, one-party urban Democrats (or Republicans in deep red states for that matter) won’t unilaterally give up their power and the control of municipal purse strings. Like real monopolies, they must be broken up by existing legal means, new legislation and regulations, and the introduction of real competitors who take them on for market share and customer loyalty.

In political terms, this will require blue-state and big city citizens to push for and enact new electoral methods from ranked choice voting to non-partisan primaries, general elections, and redistricting commissions to proportional representation. It will also require the anti-monopolist and abundance movements, and their philanthropic backers, to press their case for better governance more forcefully at the local level and to take on the challenge of breaking up concentrated, one-party political power along with other forms of misrule that lead to poor policy outcomes. Corrupt private-public alignments and inefficient rules and regulations that block economic development don’t just magically appear on their own. They are cultivated over years within a mostly Democratic Party ruling apparatus that is unwilling to change and is never forced to do so because of monopolistic political environments.

Although monopolies aren’t usually self-correcting, self-interest by dominant economic and social actors can potentially play a role in increasing competition in urban politics.

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At the national level, this will require the Democratic Party to recognize that its “toxic” party brand—and diminished overall standing with voters in many parts of the country—arises primarily through its association with poorly run big cities with bloated budgets, corrupt leaders, high crime, social disorder, failed schools, expensive housing, major traffic problems, struggling small businesses, and out-of-the-mainstream cultural norms that dominate in these places. Think New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, Philadelphia, or Baltimore where I live.

Voters nationally aren’t going to take Democrats seriously again as a governing party until they can prove that they are capable of properly managing the places where they have concentrated political power. But this one-party rule inhibits necessary change so Democrats should welcome more substantial policy debates and expanded political choices in urban areas. By increasing political competition to help improve governance and widen representation beyond entrenched interest groups and elites in big cities, Democrats can start to improve their image nationally as a party that both delivers good government and represents a real cross-section of working- and middle-class Americans.

Maybe a concerned citizen should take up the issue of political monopolies at their next Democratic mayoral forum: “Promises, promises, promises. What are you willing to do to actually break up our political system and fix our decrepit public services so that the government can reasonably deliver on these promises to citizens in all parts of the city?” And perhaps a new anti-monopoly-abundance alliance of people across the partisan spectrum can unite to provide a check on these political monopolies and start improving governance and living standards for all urban residents.