Urban Political Analysis: The politics of collective consumption

208 Pages·1980·18.616 MB·English

by  Patrick Dunleavy (auth.)

Urban Political Analysis
SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS AND CITIES
Editor: JAMES SIMMIE
PUBLISHED
Manuel Castells: CITY, CLASS AND POWER
Patrick Dunleavy: URBAN POLITICAL ANALYSIS
John Lambert, Chris Paris and Bob Blackaby: HOUSING
POLICY AND THE STATE
FORTHCOMING
Brian Elliot and David McCrone: THE MODERN CITY
Alan Hooper: MARXIST VIEWS OF URBAN SOCIOLOGY
Valdo Pons and Ray Francis: SLUMS AND SHANTY TOWNS
James Simmie: POWER, PLANNING AND THE
DISTRIBUTION OF PROPERTY
Urban Political Analysis
The politics of collective consumption
PATRICK DUNLEAVY
M
© Patrick Dunleavy IgSo
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form
or by any means, without permission.
First published JgIJo by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated co mpanies in Delhi Dublin
Hong Kong }bhannesburg Lagos Melbourne
New rork Singapore and Tokyo
British Library Catalopias ia Public.tioD Data
Dunleavy, Patrick
Urban political analysis.-(Sociology, politics and cities).
I. Metropolitan government - Great Britain
2. Great Britain - Politics and government
-1964-
I. Title II. Series
301.5'92'0941 JS3091
ISBN 978-0-333-23949-0 ISBN 978-1-349-16242-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-16242-0
This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net
Book Agreement
The paperback edition of this book is sold subject to the
condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be
lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the
publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar
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subsequent purchaser.
Contents
List qf Tables and Figures VII
Editor's Preface IX
Acknowledgements XI
Introduction: Urban Politics and Local Politics
I Local Political Studies in Britain 6
Pre-behavioural approaches 6
Fragmented behaviouralism 10
Urban politics and political science 13
Discussion and conclusion I7
2 Theoretical Approaches to Urban Politics 21
Community power studies 26
Community studies 26
Local elite studies 28
Pluralist analysis 29
The neo-elitist critique 32
Comparative community studies 34
Political ecology 36
Urban managerialism 39
N eo-Marxist theory 42
A content definition of the urban field 50
3 The Structural Context of Urban Politics 56
Urban public services in the welfare state 57
Public service growth 57
Explaining public service growth 64
Public service unionisation and urban politics 65
Service growth, sectoral consumption cleavages and poli-
tical alignment 70
Predominantly private consumption processes 71
VI Contents
Predominantly public consumption processes 79
Local government organisation, the planning system and
the urban public services 86
Local government organisational structures 87
The land-use planning system 89
Distributive consequences for urban public services 92
Conclusions and discussion 95
.. Non-local Sources of Urban Policy Change 98
Policy formation in the welfare state 100
Non-executant central government and urban policy 102
The national local government system 105
Complex policy systems and state institutions 107
State mediation and corporate patronage of 'urban' profes-
sional services I 10
Theoretical approaches to the professions I I I
Professionalism in the urban public services 112
The corporate economy and urban politic~ 120
Corporate involvement 10 urban public servICes
production 120
Corporate involvement in urban development 127
Conclusions and discussion 130
5 The Role of Local Politics in Urban Policy Change 134
Analysing local political institutions 135
Insulation from electoral influences 135
The fragmentation of 'representative' decision-making 140
Local government ideological forms 144
The local political environment 150
Networks of 'community' influence 151
Urban social movements 156
Conclusions and discussion 160
6 Towards a Reconstruction of Urban Political
Analysis 162
Review: the argument so far 162
Discussion: the research basis for urban political analysis 164
Guide to Further Reading 16g
Bibliography 172
Index 194
List of Tables and Figures
Tables
2.1 Options adopted by major approaches to urban political
analysis on five theoretical questions 27
3.1 Expenditure and income growth in the urban public
services, 1955-75 58-9
3.2 Measures of local authority expenditure growth 60
3·3 Employment growth in the urban public services, 1960-
75 61
3-4 Trends in local government finance, 1955-75 62
3·5 Trends in the incidence of domestic and non-domestic
rates, 1955-75 63
3.6 Union membership and densities of unionisation in the
urban public services, 1948-74 66
3·7 Indices of industrial militancy in the public services,
1949-77 68
3.8 Working days lost per 1000 employees in the public
services, by minimum list heading, 1966-73 69
3·9 Changes in patterns of consumption locations, Great
Britain, 1950-76 72
3.10 Distribution of housing tenure and access to cars by social
grade, February 1974 73
3.11 Dominant perceptions and objective measures of subsidy
and rate incidence across housing tenures 75
3.12 Dominant perceptions of subsidy and tax incidence in
transport 76
3.13 Odds ratios for Conservative voting, February 1974 80
3.14 The standardised mortality ratios of adult males under
65, by occupational class, 1930-63 82
3.15 The private education of children in the compulsory
viii List of Tables and Figures
secondary sector by fathers' socio-economic group,
1975-6 83
3.16 Children in selective state secondary schools, and propor-
tion at grammar schools, 1972 and 1975-6, by fathers'
socio-economic group 84
3.17 Numbers of local education authorities maintaining
pupils at private schools, by partisanship of councils and
proportion of secondary school pupils involved 86
4.1 Architects employed in designing public housing, 1966-
73 116
5.1 Likely areas of continuous one-party control in the post-
1974 local government system, at the most important tier 138
Figures
2.1 Criteria for determining whether a social process can be
included within collective consumption 53
3·1 Transfers of population in the 1974 local government
reorganisation, England and Wales 90
4.1 Inter-governmental flows of influence in urban policy
change 109
4.2 Alternative forms of professional involvement in the
urban public services 114
5.1 A typology of political systems in local government 141
5.2 The inter-relationships between some common ideo-
logical forms in local government 146
Editor's Preface
The eruption of conflicts in cities on both sides of the Atlantic during the
1960s has led to dissatisfaction with the urban paradigms of the 1920S
and new scholarly attempts to explain the relationships between social
and spatial structures. The series 'Sociology, Politics and Cities' is
designed to provide a platform for these debates.
The series focuses on alternative theoretical formulations of the social
and political factors forming and developing cities. Emphasis is laid not
only on single-disciplinary approaches to such understanding but also
on attempts to build transdisciplinary ways of theorising about urban
settlements. These contain elements of history and economics as well as
sociology and politics.
Two types of book are being published in the series: small works
containing reviews of existing theoretical formulations or excursions
into new ones; and substantial works usually based on original research
and combining both theory and evidence in the analysis of various
aspects of cities.
The small books contain work on various schools of urban sociology
and politics ranging from those based on Weber to those based on Marx.
The large books contain analyses of many aspects of cities ranging from
slums to ecology and from power to policy.
In addition to the theoretical and empirical analysis of cities the series
also focuses on the problems of and prospects for intervention in the
development of settlements. In many cases this engages a concern for
public policy, although examples of such private initiatives as shanty
towns are also examined. Policies such as the urban programme,
housing, race relations and planning are included in this vein.
Urban Political Ana(ysis confronts two of the major problems of,
particularly British, local political analysis. In the first place it is argued
that most studies of local politics to date either have been almost