rol, they are easy to take for granted--unless a breakdown in their functions creates a problem. Voters are reminded of their lack of understanding of local government when they confront a ballot box, every few months at best. Less regularly, difficulties with state, city and county legal requirements and encounters with their many departments may serve as more forcible reminders.
Such encounters can be a shock, because most Americans know very little about their local governments on either a practical or a political level. Media broadcast coverage, the main information source for political news, focuses on trivialities and scandal. Even more serious analysis is issue-driven. Most important of all, national issues and the activities of the president and Congress occupy the news media and play a much greater role in political analysis than all but the most celebrated local issues.
All the more reason, then, for students to understand the goals and mechanics of local government. Politics in States and Communities, by the University of Florida's Thomas R. Dye, uses comparative analysis and a political focus to explain the why as well as the what of American politics (xv). Revised and expanded
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