Paul Kantor

The Political Economy of Urban Regimes: A Comparative Perspective

The authors suggest how regime politics is influenced in systematic ways by particular kinds of bargaining environments. They describe a theoretical framework designed to examine the interplay of local democratic development, market environments, and intergovernmental networks on regime dynamics in eight cities in Western Europe and the United States since the 1970s. The authors explain how structural forces influence critical aspects of local regimes, particularly their governing coalitions, means of public-private coordination, and prevailing policy agendas on economic development.

Can Politicians Bargain with Business? A Theoretical and Comparative Perspective on Urban Development

These authors examine the capability of local government to influence economic development by formulating a framework that treats state-business relations as a bargaining process. This framework suggests that governmental influence is tied to the distribution of bargaining advantages along three dimensions of a liberal-democratic political economy: market conditions, popular-control systems, and public-intervention mechanisms. The authors offer an explanation of how characteristics of these dimensions strengthen or weaken city governments in dealing with private enterprise; experiences of U.S. and Western European cities are drawn upon to illustrate this. They conclude that differences in bargaining resources accounts for wide variation in local political control of business development.

Varieties of city regionalism and the quest for political cooperation: a comparative perspective

Urban theorists forecast greater political cooperation within city regions in response to globalization, yet signs of this remain relatively scant in Western Europe and North America. This article helps to explain the gap between theory and reality, as well as suggesting another way of looking at the comparative politics of city regions. The central argument: theorists are correct about the renewed importance of regional politics, but wrong about the importance of intergovernmental political cooperation. Local governments have other ways of pulling together for compelling metropolitan-wide objectives. This is done through processes of political coordination − institutionalized systems of mutual adjustment. Pluralist, associational and macropolitical varieties of political coordination among cities and suburbs empower them to act regionally without much governmental innovation. Each process has specific political limitations, however. They also influence the prospects for political cooperation among governments. Cases in New York, north-central Italy and Holland illustrate this perspective.

Urban Strategies for a Global Era A Cross-National Comparison

This article is based on a study of 10 cities in Western Europe and North America over a 30-year period. Based on detailed case studies, the authors identify four strategies of development: (a) growth strategies, (b) community development initiatives, (c) regionalism, and (d) national urban policy. The first of these strategies focuses on promoting economic growth, albeit sometimes “slow” or “smart” growth. The other three strategies focus on rescaling the city to enhance bargaining leverage in the international marketplace. It is argued that all of these strategies have enhanced local governmental influence over the international capital investment process, thereby also stimulating local democracy over city building. National urban policy appears to play the most critical role, however, because it most powerfully supports local public sector bargaining with private enterprise.

Regionalism and Reform A Comparative Perspective on Dutch Urban Politics

Advocates of regional political cooperation find favor with political theorists while encountering widespread rejection by real-world governments. Why do practitioners often fail to follow the reformers? Employing a comparative perspective, this analysis examines theories of regional reform and then surveys metropolitan political cooperation within a context that theorists expect should be highly supportive of it—Randstad Holland and the Amsterdam metropolitan area. Regional political development finds little success in this region. Dutch experience suggests that regional theory makes unrealistic assumptions about the conditions that favor intergovernmental cooperation and underestimates the political barriers to this kind of reform.

Can Regionalism Save Poor Cities?: Politics, Institutions, and Interests in Glasgow

Regional governmental intervention is frequently advocated as a solution to the problems of poor cities. The regional reform model is examined in light of Glasgow’s experience. It suggests that this approach became a trap for Glasgow and contributed to the city’s spiral of decline. The findings indicate that the reform model is seriously flawed by economic determinism and ignores regional political dynamics. In particular, it conflates abstract notions of regional economic interdependence with policy prescriptions to aid cities, and it neglects powerful institutional political pressures that bias regional officials against equity considerations that might favor central cities. These forces are not likely to be peculiar only to Glasgow.

City futures: politics, economic crisis, and the American model of urban development

Looking to the future, this essay examines the likely trajectory of the American model of urban development in the face of world-wide economic crisis and major political re-alignment in the United States. It highlights how deeply suspicious many Americans are about concentrating power, even in the face of big sacrifices to social equality and threat of economic crisis. The US model shows how global capitalism does not drive urban change, even in the capital of capitalism. American post-industrial cities have long promoted a competitive urban development style as a matter of public policy, not because of overpowering economic forces leaving little alternative. The major political pillars that sustain the American urban model are not being challenged by President Obamas political coalition. Although American commitment to localism may be unique, it also suggests how urban policy strongly reflects a nations political choices even in crisis. From this perspective, predicting the future of cities is strongly tied to peoples willingness to invest political capital in forms of governance that promote the kind of urban development they want.

Urban Policy in the Federal System: A Reconceptualization of Federalism

We do not, yet, have a perspective on federalism that takes account of the substantive policy consequences of the systemic biases imposed by the political economy of our intergovernmental order. Professors David and Kantor propose to focus on the economic and political context in which policy issues are settled. Their approach, they suggest, would reveal stable systemic interests that govern choice, and it would show that cooperation between the various levels of government depends on whether or not they share these interests.

The Coherence of Disorder: A Realist Approach to the Politics of City Regions

Although study of political cooperation has yielded valuable insights about city region governance, this approach achieves less understanding of its actual practice. Viewing it mainly as a struggle to achieve political cooperation neglects how local governments sometimes find other ways of pulling together. A realist perspective uncovers how local governments pursue collective action despite limited political cooperation. Taking cues from theories of international politics, a framework for realist analysis of metropolitan areas is fashioned. It focuses on identifying processes of coordination and their political, economic and social structural linkages. This approach reveals enduring patterns of governance in support of de facto regional politics and policies. The framework is illustrated by the case of the New York tri-state region where a two-tier system of coordination having distinct policy biases is found in the regions fragmented politics. The usefulness of this framework for the comparative study of urban regional politics is suggested.

A Case for a National Urban Policy

Growth of the federal urban presence has not occurred as expected: National economic development programs have increased urban and regional economic rivalry; national redistributive programs usually have failed to check the political consequences of this constraint in local welfare politics. In effect, federal urban policy has govemmentalized the pressures in the urban economy that discourage local government activism in aiding the disadvantaged. A strategy is outlined for reforming national urban policy so that this dilemma can be resolved.