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Revolution and the Rebirth of Inequality: A Theory Applied to the National Revolution in Bolivia . By Jonathan Kelley and Herbert S. Klein. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Pp. xvi + 272. $26.50.)

This is an ambitious and complex (and expensive) study of local politics in three Canadian cities, Toronto, Montreal, and Winnipeg. In attempting to trace the development of these disparate polities, Kaplan resorts to a mixture of systems analysis and functionalism, relying heavily on the formulations of Talcott Parsons. The result is a massive work in which the theoretical and analytic models seem to stand somewhat apart from the lengthy descriptions of what actually took place in the three municipalities concerned. The book is divided in two: theoretical framework and practical application. In the first chapter, Kaplan outlines his modifications of the Parsonian model and then in the succeeding five chapters elaborates on the model, dealing with the political culture of municipal systems, the impact of social structure, the development of reform, the role of program innovation and planning ideology, and their evolution over time. The eight chapters that follow are concerned successively with Montreal, Winnipeg, and Toronto, describing the peculiarities of each. The concluding chapter is relatively brief and attempts to justify the use of what Kaplan terms "systemic thinking" in examining city politics in Canada. Kaplan's approach leads to some notable insights. For example, he explains the extensive institutional tinkering undergone by the three municipalities over time as the result of the absence of a political culture integrated with their governance that leads to behaviors that feed on one another: the indiscriminate institutional borrowing from other systems that reinforces difficulties in establishing stability; the new structures which, lacking legitimacy, are just as dispensable as the ones they replace; the continued charter revisions that generate great expectations and impel people to look for immediate results which, when they are not forthcoming, encourage them to look for further changes; and, finally, the absence of stability that serves to further impede the attainment of institutional legitimacy. Also compelling are Kaplan's comments on the evolution of a Canadian local political culture, which he labels as strongly ascriptive, and his description of how it has worked in practice in the three arenas. Readers who wish to ignore the extensive systematization in the first part of the book can easily do so without losing too much, as Kaplan's treatment of the development of the three systems can stand by itself. He provides good characterizations of the development of Montreal as a system based on ascriptive group loyalties and spoils-oriented politics; of Winnipeg as reflecting an expressive style resulting from the cleavage between the ethnic working classes in the north end and the English Protestant middle and upper classes in the south; and of Toronto building on a cumulative success spiral because of the original value consensus underlying it. Unfortunately, Kaplan's narrative ends at approximately 1970, so there is nothing in the study about the impact of the intensified separatist and language issue on Montreal or the energy crises and the rampant inflation of the latter half of the seventies on all the systems. While the elaborate and seemingly endless categorizations of systems analysis in this study invite the assessment that it ultimately stands or falls on Kaplan's use of the methodology, it seems to this reader that there is little to be gained from repeating here the standard criticisms. This book is obviously vulnerable to them, but it is valuable nonetheless. Since the empirical material is not available in so complete a form elsewhere, and the style of analysis employed has never been applied to urban politics in Canada, the book is a useful addition to the literature on local politics. It is also of considerable interest to comparativists and, of course, to Canadianists.