Financing Urban Government in the Welfare State

ISBN-13: 9781032516271 / Angielski

Douglas E. Ashford

Opis

First Published in 1980, Financing Urban Government in the Welfare State shows how intergovernmental structures have now become the main policy device designed for an earlier age and often for quite different purposes, linking national and local policymaking. Special attention is given to the historical structures which now form the basis for national - local spending and investment decisions, and which moderate the increasing interdependence of national and local decisions. The so called ‘crisis’ of urban spending has not emerged as a major problem, but each country has sought to modify and adapt old bargaining procedures to the new needs and problems of local government.

The manner in which this has been done reflects crucially important aspects of the political process in each country- Britain, France, the United States, Germany and the Netherlands, and does not follow the lines that might be suggested by economic deterministic thinking. Essentially each country must work out its historical and institutional compromise between the financial problems of national and local government, with politics continuing to have an important explanatory role in understanding contemporary urban development. This is an interesting read for scholars and researchers of urban studies, urban politics and public policy

Spis treści

List of Tables and Figures Preface 1. Introduction: Political Choice and Local Finance 2. How Cities Arrived on the National Agenda in the United States 3. The Rise of the Topocratic State: US Intergovernmental Relations in the 1970s 4. A Victorian Drama: The Fiscal Subordination of British Local Government 5. Central Government Grants, Territorial Justice and Local Democracy in Post-war Britain 6. Local Subsidies in the Third Republic: The Political Marketplace and Bureaucratic Allocation 7. Financial Transfers and Local Government in France: National Policy Despite 36,000 Communes 8. Federal and State Transfers to Local Government in the Federal Republic of Germany: A case of Political immobility 9. Territorial Politics and Resource Transfers in the Netherlands 10. Centre-local Financial Exchange in the Welfare State Notes on Contributors Index

O autorze

Douglas E. Ashford