In general, one may say that the mayor is more influential in the city government than that body which represents the citizens; this in contrast to the situation in the state government, where the governor is relatively less influential than the legislature. The chief function of the governor is really a negative one, that of affixing his veto from time to time on an utterly impossible law. The mayor, on the other hand, can shape things and leave the stamp of his personality on his city. In the state, as in the city, it often happens that the head of the executive and a majority of the legislative belong to opposite parties, and this not because the party issues are forgotten in the local elections, but because the methods of election are different.
The division of public affairs into city and state issues leaves, of course, room for still a third group, namely, the affairs of communities which are still smaller than cities. These, too, derive their authority entirely from the state legislature, but all states leave considerable independence to the smaller political units. In local village government the historic differences of the various regions show out more clearly than in either state or city government. The large cities are to all intents and purposes cast in the same mould everywhere; their like needs have developed like forms of life; and the coming together of great numbers of people have everywhere created the same economic situation. But the scattered population gets its social and economic articulation in the North, South, and West, in quite different ways; and this difference, at an early time when the problems of a large city were so far not known, led to different types of village organizations, which have been historically preserved.
When the English colonies were growing up, the differences in this connection between the New England states and Virginia were extreme. The colonies on the northern shores, with their bays and harbours, their hilly country and large forests, could not spread their population out over large tracts of land, and were concentrated within limited regions; and this tendency was further emphasized by Puritan traditions, which required the population to take active part in church services. There naturally was developed a local form of government for small districts, which corresponded to old English traditions. The citizens gathered from all parts of every district to discuss their common affairs and to decide what taxes should be raised, what streets built, and, most of all, what should be done for their churches and schools, and for the poor. In Virginia, on the other hand, where very large plantations were laid out, there could be no such small communities; the population was more scattered, and affairs of general interest had necessarily to be entrusted to special representatives, who were in part elected by small parishes and in part appointed by the governor. The political unit here was not the town, but the county.