If Mayors Ruled the World

If Mayors Ruled the World

At this year’s American Political Science Conference in Chicago a new book published by Yale University Press caught my eye:  If Mayors Ruled the World by noted scholar Benjamin Barber. 

This got me thinking about my appreciation for local leaders.  I place a high emphasis on grassroots community leadership, rather than the distant kind in Washington D.C.  Local leaders have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  The decisions they make, though often small, rarely go unnoticed.  What they do touches people’s everyday lives directly: emergency services, roads, and garbage collection.

I’ve also had many positive interactions with them.  Often I’ll invite the Kansas City area’s regional leaders into classes to speak.  Generally, these folks that take the time to run for local offices are driven to do so because they care.  They care about their neighborhoods, and more importantly, their neighbors.  I have found them to be quite a different breed than national level office holders and seekers.  This isn’t to say there aren’t bad ineffective local leaders, there are!  But if nothing else, they just case an even deeper affection for the good ones.

This semester I’m helping Rockhurst political science alum Joe Reardon teach a course on regionalism.  Joe, who is no doubt a well-known civic leader to many reading this blog, is the former Mayor/CEO of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas.

While publicly known as the person who helped resurrect at least a part of the metropolitan area from life support (Cerner, Google, Sporting Kansas City…), I know him as a an all-around nice and smart guy.  He’s a great teacher too by the way!

Rockhurst is lucky enough to have its prominent alum back on campus educating our students.  While a primary theme of this new course is the necessity of innovation, the course is itself structured in an innovative way.  The class is of a smaller size – it has 15 in it - and is composed of students in both the social sciences and business.  It meets on Monday nights and has the students working on research projects centered on the concept of metropolitan regionalism.  Joe brings in some fantastic guest speakers from his contact list, and then speaks based on firsthand knowledge about local leadership.

My favorite feature of the class is probably the exchange of ideas between people in different disciplines: Professor Mike Stellern in economics, students from the Helzberg School, as well as undergraduates in political science. 

I’m proud to be a part of such a great group of people exploring such an important topic as regionalism!   That’s an idea I’ll have to return to in a later post…