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Constitutional Change In A Long-Depressed Community: A Case Study Of Duluth, Minnesota, Daniel J. Elazar

Journal of the Minnesota Academy of Science

Duluth, a "boom and bust" city with a marginal economy, has a unique position outside the mainstream of American life that adds a different dimension lo the understanding of community politics. Settlement patterns have contributed to the development of separate "business" and "labor" subcommunities that are substantially alienated from and hostile to one another and have rarely been able to cooperate in any civic endeavor. Operating within the framework of a political system caricaturing that of Minnesota as a whole, the two subcommunities reversed the pattern of local concern found in other cities; labor became the progressive force in local …