For my senior paper project I am reading the book "Local Politics" by Terry Christensen and Tom Hogen-Esch. In the first hundred pages the book describes the basic structures of town governments: town meetings, mayors, town councils, school boardse etc. It drives home the point that town governments are arguably one of our most idiosyncratic governing institutions. Depending of the town real political power may rest with any group or individual. Some towns have even created unique institutions with seemingly random distribution of authority. However, while the distribution of local legal political power might seem random the authors do point out that there are some common denominators. The first of which is that political power in towns is determined not so much by what position one holds as by how much one cares to exert influence. In most town governments very few people bother to vote let alone run for office. From my experience Brookline seems to mirror this trend. Many Brookline town officials ran unopposed in the last election. According to Christensen and Hogen-Esch this means that holding elected office is not a prerequisite for holding and wielding political power. Showing up at a town meeting with two a handful of friends and supporters can be enough to alter a local policy. Such a situation exists because most people don’t care about local governance. Whether this is important is an issue that I hope will be addressed later in the book. If nothing of consequence is decided in local governmental institutions that there is no point in caring. However, if important decisions are made the increased participation in local governance would be beneficial to all.