Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-pkt8n Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-07T02:59:04.941Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Politics and Markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Roger King
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The study of urban politics has undergone considerable change over the last ten to fifteen years. During the 1950s and 1960s the ‘community power’ approach became well-established in American political science as the dominant form of analysis of local politics, although it was less marked in Britain. In contrast, and in part as reaction, to the ecological determinism and naturalistic explanation of the Chicago school in urban sociology that preceded it, power and decision making were seen as key features in explaining urban processes. Intentionality and human action were afforded explanatory dominance. In turn, however, this approach came under sustained critique as part of the ‘anti-behaviouralist’ or structuralist resurgence in Western social science in the 1970s which attributed causal primacy to structural determination and system contradictions, not actors or voluntarism. Yet structural approaches face methodological problems of functionalism and circularity, and in constructing tests of empirical adequacy and falsifiability. Some of the more interesting, recently-published work in urban politics seeks to maintain a non-behaviouralist, more structuralist interpretation of local policy outcomes within empirically-grounded analyses that allow space for politics and power. Dunleavy, Friedland and Saunders provided three of the best examples of such an approach, and have each sought to understand either a particular policy, or a set of policies in a particular locality, through frameworks which in varying degrees incorporate structuralist assumptions. They seek to apply objective cost-benefit analyses of public policies as empirically refutable hypotheses and accept the necessity of objective criteria for assessing whether or not interests have been met in any given situation. This article examines the extent to which these selected ‘non-behaviouralist’ interpretations of urban politics have successfully been applied to empirical contexts. A central element in this examination is a consideration of the way in which business is seen as a major influence in local politics.

Type
Review Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 15 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 255 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dunleavy, Patrick, The Politics of Mass Housing in Britain, 1945–1975 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Friedland, Roger, Power and Crisis in the City (London: Macmillan 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Saunders, Peter, Urban Politics (Harmondsworth, Middx.: Penguin, 1980).Google Scholar

2 Friedland, , Power and Crisis in the City, p. 1.Google Scholar

3 Pahl, Ray, ‘Managers, Technical Experts and the State’, in Harloe, M., ed., Captive Cities (London: Wiley, 1977)Google Scholar; Rex, John and Moore, Robert, Race, Community and Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

4 Dahl, R., Who Governs? (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1961).Google Scholar

5 See, for example, the collection by Holloway, J. and Picciotto, S., eds, State and Capital (London: Edward Arnold, 1979)Google Scholar for the former, and Miliband, R., The State in Capitalist Society (London: Quartet, 1973)Google Scholar, for the latter.

6 Lindblom, C., Politics and Markets (New York: Basic Books, 1977).Google Scholar

7 Offe, C. and Wiesenthal, H., ‘Two Logics of Collective Action’, in Zeitlin, M., ed., Political Power and Social Theory (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press, 1980), pp. 67–115.Google Scholar

8 See, for example, Wilson, G., Interest Groups in the United States (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981).Google Scholar

9 See, for example, King, R., ‘The Political Practice of Local Capitalist Association’, in King, R., ed., Capital and Politics (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), pp. 107–31.Google Scholar

10 See, for example, the pieces in Schmitter, P. and Lehmbruch, G., eds., Trends Toward Corporaiist Intermediation (London: Heinemann, 1982).Google Scholar

11 Marsh, D., ‘Interest Group Activity and Structural Power’, in Marsh, D., ed., Capital and Politics in Western Europe (London: Frank Cass, 1983).Google Scholar

12 Cawson, A. and Saunders, P., ‘Corporatism, Competitive Politics and Class Struggle’Google Scholar, in King, , ed., Capital and Politics, pp. 8–27.Google Scholar See also Simmie, J., Power, Property and Corporatism (London: Macmillan, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Offe, C. and Ronge, V., ‘Theses on the Theory of the State’, in Giddens, A. and Held, D., eds. Classes, Power and Conflict (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 249–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Dunleavy, P., The Politics of Mass Housing, p. 3.Google Scholar

15 See also the interesting and analogous work on ‘issue networks’ by Heclo, H., The Private Government of Public Money (London: Macmillan, 1981).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 Saunders, , Urban Politics, p. 22.Google Scholar

17 Offe, and Ronge, , ‘Theses on the Theory of the State’.Google Scholar

18 Offe, and Wiesenthal, , ‘Two Logics of Collective Action’.Google Scholar

19 See, for example, Grant, W. and Marsh, D., The CBI (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977).Google Scholar

20 Friedland, , Power and Crisis in the City, Preface.Google Scholar

21 See, for example, Urry, J., ‘De-industrialisation, Classes and Polities’Google Scholar, in King, , ed., Capital and Politics, pp. 28–48.Google Scholar