Studies of local or community politics are often primarily concerned with the functions or goals of local government, the degree of autonomy or integration of local government with national politics, and power structure or the distribution of power within the community. They tend to focus on policy formulation and on decision making, the results often being presented in the form of case studies. “Power” suggests control, whether arbitrary or based on traditional rights; it involves the ability to control the decision-making process or to mobilize resources. It may be distinguished from influence, the ability to persuade those who control. John Walton has defined “power structure” as the “pattern within a social organization whereby resources are mobilized and sanctions employed in ways that affect the organization as a whole.” G. William Domhoff has distinguished three types of power indicators: “who benefits from the system, who directs or governs important institutions, and who wins on important decisions.” Agger, Goldrich, and Swanson have offered a typology of power structures based on “the extent to which political power is distributed broadly or narrowly over the citizenry, and the extent to which the ideology of political leadership is convergent and compatible or divergent and conflicting.”

The pioneering community studies of Robert and Helen Lynd during the 1920s and 1930s and W. Lloyd Warner in the late 1930s and Hunter's work on power structure in Atlanta during the 1940s provided a framework for what became known as the “elitist” school.