Robert Wagner and the Rise of New York City’s Plebiscitary Mayoralty: The Tamer of the Tammany Tiger

Richard M. Flanagan is Associate Professor of Political Science at City College of New York, College of Staten Island, USA. He is the author of Mayors and the Challenge of Urban Leadership (2004) and is principal investigator of the Staten Island Social Capital Community Benchmark Study, the first comprehensive study of social behavior in the borough using survey research techniques.

• 1. Introduction: Robert F. Wagner, the Forgotten Mayor 2. The Concept of the 'Plebiscitary Mayoralty' i. The Incomplete New Deal in New York 3. Mayor Robert F. Wagner and the Unfinished Business of the New Deal i. Wagner and Organized Labor ii. Wagner and the Welfare State iii. Wagner and Fiscal Policy 4. The Break: The Fight for Charter Reform and the 1961 Mayoral Election i. Wagner, the Democratic Party and the 1961 Mayoral Campaign 5. The New Wagner Mayoralty and the Shaping of Modern New York 6. In the Shadow of Wagner: Plebiscitary Politics in New York City i. The Institutional Mayoralty ii. The Civic Mayoralty iii. The de Blasio Moment

"Richard Flanagan has illuminated a dimension of the city's political history and found resonance in mayoral governance today. He shows that Robert Wagner was much more than a gray flannel prelude to the Lindsay years." - Jeffrey Kroessler, John Jay College, USA, author of New York, Year by Year: A Chronology of a Great Metropolis (2002)