To read the fulltext, please use one of the options below to sign in or purchase access. Dec. 15, 2020. Yet there is disagreement about how far it can help us to understand urban political processes. City governments, run by mayors or city councils, hold a restricted amount of governing power. Regime theory is, therefore, unconvincing for two reasons. Unlike traditional urban research, which stressed the coordination among the formal structures of urban governance, regime theorists emphasize the role of informal "arrangements" that complement the formal workings of government (Stone, 1989).Regime theory is, in part, a theoretical account of resource mobilization and exchange. Its essential contribution is to focus attention on the collective action problems that have to be overcome for effective urban governance to emerge. (1998). Members of _ can log in with their society credentials below. Since then, regime analysis has been extensively used to examine urban politics both inside North America and beyond. Sign in here to access free tools such as favourites and alerts, or to access personal subscriptions, If you have access to journal content via a university, library or employer, sign in here, Research off-campus without worrying about access issues. How to increase brand awareness through consistency; Dec. 11, 2020. This alliance represents the power structure in majority black cities. The changing role of state actors in urban regimes requires an expansion of urban regime theory as a conceptual … These issues have been taken up by urban regime theory, a school of urban political science that has influenced urban political economy since the late 1980s. The authors argue that the wide use of regime analysis is a recognition of its value and insights but that some applications have stretched the concept beyond its original meaning to the point that the concept itself runs the risk of becoming meaningless and a source of theoretical confusion. Hegemonic stability theory 2. The full text of this article hosted at iucr.org is unavailable due to technical difficulties. Part of the reason is simply its existence; too much scholarship on cities (as well as other political phenomena) ignores power altogether. Blog. A excellent study of the relationship between business and the political structure of Atlanta 1946-1988. Theories of Urban Politics. Sharing links are not available for this article. The author is doubly indebted to the UK Economic and Social Research Council for the support which underpins this article. Regime theory (Stone, 1989), the dominant paradigm in the field, reflects the assumptions of a political economy perspective, which maintains that class, not race, is the driving force of urban politics. Stone and Sanders' The Politics of Urban Development,5 and Elkin's City and * European Institute for Urban Affairs, Liverpool John Moores University. Urban regime theory came to prominence with the publication of Clarence Stone’s study of Atlanta in 1989, although earlier work by Fainstein and Fainstein (1983) and Elkin (1987) has also been influential. Urban Regime Theory originated in the early 1980s and was advanced by N.I. Central to the theory is the understanding that governing capacity is not the same thing as electoral outcomes. His research interests include the theory and practice of local democracy, urban education, and the local agenda-setting process. Learn more. Governing capacity is created and maintained by bringing together coalition partners with appropriate resources, nongovernmental as well as governmental. The Newark case reveals that as governors assume greater leadership roles in urban regimes, local constituencies have to contend with the presence of an influential regime actor whose electoral success may or may not be dependent on the communities that they lead. Clarence Stone (Ph.D., Duke University, 1963) is Research Professor of Political Science and Public Policy. The analy- and you may need to create a new Wiley Online Library account. community), regime theory offered a unique political economy perspective on urban power and governance, moving beyond traditional notions of the command and control of community resources that dominate elitist and pluralist arguments. Regime approaches to obscenity policy: 1960s to 1980s, City planning and the postwar regime in Philadelphia, Regional and transnational regimes: Multi-level governance processes in North America, annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Conceptual “stretching” revisited: Adapting categories in comparative analysis, Locality and community in the politics of local economic development, The urban antiregime: Progressive politics in San Francisco, Urban governing alignments and realignments in comparative perspective: Developmental politics in Boston, Massachusetts, and Bristol, England, 1980-1996, Urban regimes in comparative perspective: The politics of urban development in Britain, Urban governance and industrial decline: Governing structures and policy agendas in Birmingham and Sheffield, England, and Detroit, Michigan, 1980-1997, Regime politics in London local government, Regime strategies, communal resistance, and economic forces, Spatial structures of regulation and urban regimes.