This book contributes to debates in geography and urban studies by analysing the spatial dimensions and politics of urban policy failure. Attention is most often paid to successful urban policies. Policymakers go to great lengths to emulate success by importing policy 'models', implementing best practices, or pursuing 'silver bullet' solutions. Yet, stories of failure are at least as common as those of success. Some policies fail to launch in the first place. Others struggle to deliver their goals. Many collapse under the weight of poor administration, insufficient funding, or political opposition. This book establishes a vocabulary and set of analytical approaches for researching the spatial dynamics and impacts of urban policy failure. With a geographically diverse set of cases, the authors explore topics including policy (im)mobility, urban policy experiments, and governance initiatives ranging from sustainability to housing to public health, across Europe, North America, and Asia. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Urban Geography.
The urban crisis of the 1960s revived a dormant social activism whose protagonists placed their hoped for radical change and political effectiveness in community action. Ironically, the insurgents chose the local community as their terrain for a political battle that in reality involved a few strictly local issues. They failed to achieve their goals, Ira Katznelson argues, not so much because they had chosen their ground badly but because the deep split of the American political landscape into workplace politics and community politics defeats attempts to address grievances or raise demands that break the rules of bread-and-butter unionism on the one hand or of local politics on the other. A fascinating record of the encounter between today’s reformers—the community activists—and the powers they challenge. City Trenches is also a probing analysis of the causes of urban instability. Katznelson anatomizes the unique workings of the American urban system which allow it to contain opposition through “machine” politics and, as a last resort, institutional innovation and co-optation, for example, the authorities’ own version of decentralization used in the 1960s as a counter to a “community control.” Washington Heights–Inwood, a multi-ethnic working-class community in northern Manhattan, provides the setting for an absorbing close-up view of the historical evolution of local politics: the challenge to the system in the 1960s and its reconstitution in the 1970s.
They examine the operation of the Office of the Mayor and the City Council, covering everything from the number of members and their annual salaries (Council Members receive $55,000 per year, the Council President $105,000) to the mayoral races of John V. Lindsay, Abraham Beame, and Edward I. Koch. Much of this encyclopedic work focuses on New York's ever-present financial woes, including the financial crisis of the mid-1970s, when the City had an unaudited deficit of over a billion dollars and the public credit markets closed their doors.
This authoritative Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of research into urban politics and policy in cities across the globe. Leading scholars examine the position of urban politics within political science and analyse the critical approaches and interdisciplinary pressures that are broadening the field.
Examines the role and influence of race and ethnicity in the contemporary American city through three case studies of urban politics and policy decisions in Los Angeles, New York, and San Diego.
Gerhard Wegner provides new insight into the relation between democracies and market economies. He recognizes conflict between the two, but he doesn t propose constitutional controls over political action. Such proposals are grounded in the comparative static manipulation of equilibrium models. In contrast, Wegner advances an evolutionary theory of political economy, and uses this theory to explain how processes of societal learning might be set in motion that could expand support for market arrangements through time. This thoughtful and challenging book will repay examination by all students of political economy. Richard E. Wagner, George Mason University, US In drawing particular attention to the implications of evolutionary market theory for public policy Gerhard Wegner adds a novel and instructive line of argument to the long-standing debate on the inherent tension between democratic politics and economic liberalism. His concept of learning liberalism addresses an important dimension of political failure that has been neglected in this debate. Viktor J. Vanberg, Universitaet Freiburg, Germany The purpose of this book is to reconsider economic liberalism from the viewpoint of political liberalism. The author argues that advocates of economic liberalism largely overlook empirical political preferences which, in many societies, go far beyond a limited role of the state. Recent difficulties of reforming the welfare state provide evidence that political preferences are at odds with liberal economic policy in numerous cases. This fact challenges a political conception which demands a limited state role but also claims that citizens preferences as they are should determine the content of policies. Using an evolutionary perspective on economic liberalism, the book develops new arguments about how economic liberalism can be brought into line with political liberalism. Drawing on an evolutionary theory of markets, Gerhard Wegner reinforces the claim that liberal economic policies are conducive to prosperity in society, but he argues that the liberal promise of prosperity does not translate into corresponding political preferences on the part of citizens. A tension between political and economic liberalism arises which lies at the centre of this book. Political Failure by Agreement will strongly appeal to postgraduate students and researchers of global governance, political theory, political economy and institutional economics.
'Starting from the idea that market and state are intertwined domains, and explaining the economy as a system of communication evolving through innovation, this excellent book makes a valuable contribution to understanding government rule setting in knowledge-based economies. It provides a taxonomy of ways in which government rules function more or less successfully, and addresses the important problem of institutional vulnerability. Intellectual property rights laws and reform of health care systems are perceptively discussed. This book is strongly recommended for public policy experts and researchers investigating the publicprivate economy.' John Davis, Marquette University, US and University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands 'Since the 1970s the conventional wisdom has been that governments should retreat from the economic sphere and enhance the role of markets. The financial crash of 2008 has brought that into question. This stimulating set of essays considers the role of government in modern complex economies. Addressing the potential for both government failure and market failure, and drawing on empirical evidence, these studies are important contributions to a revived debate.' Geoffrey M. Hodgson, University of Hertfordshire, UK 'The idea that governments as well as markets can fail has been central to the public choice literature for the last half century. Typically government failure is described and measured as excessive expenditures or unbalanced budgets. This original book points out that government failures often take the form of inappropriate or inconsistent rules governing the private sector. The argument is nicely illustrated using real-world examples in the areas of healthcare, innovation, and intellectual property. The book is a timely and important contribution to the literature.' Dennis C. Mueller, University of Vienna, Austria This highly unique book takes a fundamental look at when and how a government can fail at its core responsibility of formulating rules. Government, representing society, relates to the economy by formulating the rules within which (market) players should operate. Although market and business failure are much discussed in the economics literature, government failure is often overlooked. This book addresses this gap, exploring in detail what constitutes government failure. Wilfred Dolfsma illustrates that it is not adequate to discuss government failure simply with reference to its level of expenditure, as is usually the case. Defining government failure and analysing it in the domains of health care, innovation and technology, he explores topics such as how market and society relate, consequences of conflicts between government policies, how government should (not) intervene, the vulnerability of institutions and rules (set out by government), and suggests a welfare perspective for evaluative purposes. This stimulating and thought provoking book will prove a fascinating read for academics, researchers and advanced students in economics particularly public choice and institutional economics public administration, policy studies, and law and economics.
A comprehensive reference work which provides a way to access research on urban politics and policy in the United States. Experts in the field guide readers through major controversies, while evaluating and assessing the subfields of urban politics and policy. Each chapter follows the same basic organization with topics such as methodological and theoretical issues, current states of the field, and directions for future research. For students, this work provides a starting place to guide them to the most important works in a particular subfield and a context to place their work in a larger body of knowledge. For scholars, it serves as a reference work for immediately familiarity with subfields of the discipline, including classic studies and major research questions. For urban policymakers or analysts, the handbook provides a wealth of information and allows quick identification of existing academic knowledge and research relevant to the problem at hand.
The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal examines how postwar thinkers from both sides of the Atlantic considered urban landscapes radically changed by the political and physical realities of sprawl, urban decay, and urban renewal. With a sweep that encompasses New York, London, Berlin, Philadelphia, and Toronto, among others, Christopher Klemek traces changing responses to the challenging issues that most affected the lives of the world’s cities. In the postwar decades, the principles of modernist planning came to be challenged—in the grassroots revolts against the building of freeways through urban neighborhoods, for instance, or by academic critiques of slum clearance policy agendas—and then began to collapse entirely. Over the 1960s, several alternative views of city life emerged among neighborhood activists, New Left social scientists, and neoconservative critics. Ultimately, while a pessimistic view of urban crisis may have won out in the United States and Great Britain, Klemek demonstrates that other countries more successfully harmonized urban renewal and its alternatives. Thismuch anticipated book provides one of the first truly international perspectives on issues central to historians and planners alike, making it essential reading for anyone engaged with either field.
