Racial Governance in Postwar Chicago: A Multiple Orders Perspective

Much theorizing about patterns of urban governance portrays urban governing arrangements as unified political orders of some kind, be they progressive, neoliberal, or defined by power structures such as urban regimes or growth machines. In this study of racial governance in postwar Chicago, I borrow from literature on American political development to advance a multiple orders perspective in which racial governance is conceptualized as combinations of overlapping elements, at times in conflict with one another. Examining three distinct periods during the postwar era, I show how intersections among multiple political orders resulted in change at certain times and stability, or the appearance of stability, in others. Against arguments that portray urban political development as long periods of equilibrium punctuated at times by brief episodes of change, I find seemingly stable arrangements to be more precarious than they appear, as multiple orders impinge on one another and create frictions that can be key sources of change.