Many of the oldest and largest Western cities today are undergoing
massive economic decline. The State and the City deals with a key issue
in the political economy of cities--the role of the state. Ted Robert
Gurr and Desmond S. King argue that theoreticians from both the left and
the right have underestimated the significance of state action for
cities. Grounding theory in empirical evidence, they argue that policies
of the local and national state have a major impact on urban well-being.
Gurr and King's analysis assumes modern states have their own interests,
institutional momentum, and the capacity to act with relative autonomy.
Their historically based analysis begins with an account of the
evolution of the Western state's interest in the viability of cities
since the industrial revolution. Their agument extends to the local
level, examining the nature of the local state and its autonomy from
national political and economic forces.
Using cross-national evidence, Gurr and King examine specific problems
of urban policy in the United States and Britain. In the United States,
for example, they show how the dramatic increases in federal assistance
to cities in the 1930s and the 1960s were made in response to urban
crises, which simultaneously threatened national interests and offered
opportunities for federal expansion of power. As a result, national and
local states now play significant material and regulatory roles that can
have as much impact on cities as all private economic activities.
A comparative analysis of thirteen American cities reflects the range
and impact of the state's activities at the urban level. Boston, they
argue, has become the archetypical postindustrial public city: half of
its population and personal income are directly dependent on government
spending. While Gurr and King are careful to delineate the limits to the
extent and effectiveness of state intervention, they conclude that these
limits are much broader than formerly thought. Ultimately, their
evidence suggests that the continued decline of most of the old
industrial cities is the result of public decisions to allow their
economic fate to be determined in the private sector.
