The Legal Basis Of American Local Autonomy - The Origin And Evolution Of Urban Charter

Local autonomy is the main principle of local government below the states in the United States. The city government has special character in the system of the local autonomy. The United States have many cities and the cities are very different with each other, but most of the government of cities is all priority to autonomy. City charter is a legal text which was cities and its government established on. The state government creatures a city by awarding a city charter to the dwellers. The city charter gives a city its name, determines its land area, stipulates the rights and privileges, gives its many commercial obligations, and in a certain extent, authorized power to the dwellers to establish government to governance themselves. When they got the charter, the city becomes a legal and political entity, and can independently bear legal rights and obligations to manage the urban public affairs. At the same time, the city charter is also the legal guarantee of autonomy. Under the guidance of the charter, city residents can elect government officials to governance. City autonomy can’t subject to any intervention from external. So it has the vital significance for the city autonomy. However, how the city charter had institutional change in the history? How the evolution of the city charter had effect the mode of the local autonomy in the United States? These questions ware not made clear explanation and research in the previous literature. Through carding and analysis the texts of the early city charter, the research explore the historical path and power of the institutional changes of early American city charter by the method of Historical Institutionalism, and the mode of local autonomy changes under the influence of the city charter. This paper will be divided the history of the early city charter in to three periods:the Royal Charters, the Corporate Charters and the City Charters. On the based on the history periods, this study will comb and summary the different characteristics of the system of the Charter and the mode of local autonomy on the charter. The research thinks that, in the evolution of the city charter, it had obviously path dependence and institutional change. The source of power of the city charter and the heart idea of the autonomy is always the core of the city charter, and had been shaping the change path of the city charter. The game between the power of the people and the power of the supreme is the dynamics of the institutional change. The institutional change of the early city charter also directly promotes the shift of the mode of local autonomy.