YOU DON'T HAVE to take Fine Arts 175 a to understand the basic qualities of Boston City Hall. Anyone who passes that behemoth across the street from Fanueil Hall can tell. It's big, overbearing, and perfectly expressive of the impersonality and arrogance of modern government. Someone not up on their architectural history might well think if was built for Kevin White.

Of course, such a thought would irk Hizzoner to no end. City Hall was actually built during the the mayoralty of John Collins, at a time when Boston's government was fairly aloof and insensitive. When Kevin White was elected mayor in 1967, as part of a wave of young and progressive big-city mayors that included New York's John Lindsay and Cleveland's Cart Stokes, he worked hard to change that. He developed an innovative program of "little city halls" designed to increase communication between neighborhoods and city government. With the array of grassroots public interest organizations around today, it's hard to imagine the effect White's approach had. The early years of his tenure were a time of refreshing change, a dose of sincere urban populism

But the Mayor White of today is hardly the same man who governed the Hub in the late '60s and early '70s. That mayor twice defeated prominent busing opponent Louise Day Hicks, ran for governor in 1970 with Michael Dukakis as his running mate, was nearly handed the vice presidential spot on George McGovern's ticket in 1972 and went way out on a limb during the 1975 busing crisis trying to persuade irate Bostonians to accept the court ordered integration plan Today's Mayor White, on the other hand, isn't really more conservative--he's still supporting Dukakis in this year's gubernatorial race. But, he's become insulated in city hall, cut off from public opinion and hardened in his attitudes. Nothing better epitomizes this transformation than the creation of his political machine.

Interestingly, White is quite open about the machine's existence--"my vaunted organization" he calls his political outfit. After 14 years in office--longer than any other current big city mayor--it's inevitable that some changes in approach would be made. The turning point for White came in 1975 Until then, he raised his campaign force around election time, just as most politicians do. But in 1975 after an unexpectedly close shave in the race with state Sen. Joseph Timility, he had second thoughts. He felt he was losing touch with his constituents.

THE SOLUTION WAS to reopen the lines of City Hall-to-neighborhood communication first used by the now neglected little city halls. White realized that every decision taken on such local levels has political implications, the touch is to make the decisions spread the mayor's political capital most effectively. It's a process whereby White's political operatives convince people the mayor is looking out for their special interests and the mayor's workers keep in touch with the pulse of the electorate.

Turning routine governmental actions into political game has, under the careful hand of White and company, been raised to a high art For instance, what to do if city funding is available for either an old-age home or a local little league City Hall came up with a nifty answer Fund the little league--after all, there's two parents per kid, and they vote more often than the elderly. What about the wealthy private neighborhood development that applied for city money for street improvements even though the area's income was too high to qualify? The city gave them the money anyway, and White won 70 percent of the vote there in 1979 versus 30 percent in 1975. Nor are these isolated incidents. Throughout Boston, city services regularly are channelled to the neighborhoods where they will have the greatest political impact.

Of course, for White's people to manipulate city decisions, they have to have positions in government. By White's own estimate about 10 percent of Boston's 10,000 employees put in work for the organization each week attending neighborhood political meetings and plotting strategy for the machine. It's not as if White is handing out jobs to all his workers. Instead, It's the other way around city employees who would expect to lose their jobs if White loses an election obtain positions in the machine. The ward coordinators and precinct captains the bear of the machine all hold city jobs. And every one of them--from Lora Baldwin, an administrative assistant in the Community Development Department up to Dennis Morgan director of the budget give money to the Committee for a Better Boston, the fundraising group for White's expected bid for a fifth term in 1983.

It all sounds pretty awful. We tend to automatically associate political machines with corruption. But the White machine floats in a gray area on the margin of legitimacy Few people actually charge. While with committing illegal acts himself And significantly the point of the machine has been to keep the mayor in touch with his constituents--it can thus make for more responsive government even while it helps his re-election campaign.

But there's a vast difference between good government and convincing key blocks of voters by manipulating city spending that they are getting good government. More important, while White is smart enough to keep his own hands clean, the machine's conduct when promoting the mayor's hand picked candidates in assorted city council and state legislature races has been not only inept--his candidates are 0-for 14 in such races--but often unethical. Several of his surrogates are clearly backs one of the "Kevin Seven," his city council slate, has since been indicted for passing bad checks.

Maybe in the hands of an intelligent politician like White a machine can be put to good purposes on occasion. But when you read about city workers casually making wildly overstated disability claims to the pension board. It's not difficult to tell what created such a cavalier attitude towards honest government. It's hard to take government in Boston seriously as long as the power structure of City Hall is used so blatantly for political purposes. White has reached the point where he is more concerned with the means for getting re-elected than with actually governing the city. Boss White is rapidly overshadowing Mayor White. The Kevin White of 1967 would never have believed it.