Elected officials understand that they have few powers of their own to stimulate economic growth, that capital is becoming increasingly mobile, and that the citys creditors are deeply interested in knowing whether economic activity is on the upswing. Further, they know that if the citys line of credit dries up (as it did in Cleveland under Mayor Kucinich in 1978), default and bankruptcy are possible – and, re-election is out of the question. Protecting or “covering” their own careers (Elkin, 1987; Stone, 1989), then, seems to explain why many elected officials have accepted their subservient roles rather than running the risk of (even indirectly) campaigning against some of the city’s wealthiest interests. Local businessmen, being astute, understand these things as well. And, it is within this common understanding that a strong tendency exists for elected officials, public administrators and local businessmen (particularly those with fixed assets) to regard each other as allies (Elkin, 1987: 34; Caro, 1975).
Neither public nor private actors would probably frame these matters along the sharp lines that are here drawn, and certainly, neither group would view their stature, relative to one another, as a matter of bias or as something that was constructed unilaterally or even consciously. After all, the privileged few appear to hold in great appreciation the political authority and financial support afforded by their junior partners. But then, to defend unbalanced distributive schemes on the grounds that “local policy choices are limited” (Peterson, 1981), only to raise threats of transferring investments to other cities unless such schemes are found acceptable suggests cities might do well to re-evaluate their “primary interests,” as these delimit the types of policies that will subsequently make sense to pursue. Peterson explains that, in making policy choices:
... cities select those policies which are in the interests of the city, taken as a whole. It is these city interests, not the internal struggles for power [as provided by the community power literature], that limit city policies and condition what local governments do (1981: 4).
Cities need not, in other words, frame or envision their interests in ways that identify themselves as “resources waiting to be exploited.” Such strategizing would allow cities to examine, for instance, whether policies linking downtown and neighborhoods in a more redistributive relationship (including, for instance, requirements for minority and female business purchasing and targeted hiring), or balancing development across economic sectors might better serve the city’s long-range visions (Mier, 1993). As well, by identifying public interests as having strong social and political (in addition to economic) components, cities provide their public officials with a reasoned basis from which they, in turn, might present themselves as actors with strong voices in development policy deliberations – particularly where distributive matters are concerned.
Second, as long as voters remain as disinterested in politics as they have in recent decades, business and other policy actors will continue to have minimal inclination to engage in public debates over issues of neighborhood development or distributive equity, much less those regarding political governance.
Admittedly, discussions of governance are frequently more abstract and appear far duller than matters of technical interest, revolving, for instance, around flashy tax concessions or world-class sports arenas. However, both discussions are unavoidable. Concessions, as a case in point, in the form of property tax abatements and government loans constitute indirect taxes on educational systems and capital budgets, in that both draw from the same revenue sources. Because of this, additional tax concessions serve, at some point, to impair an areas long-term economic competitiveness. For this, and other reasons, serious discussions of abatements, loans and other more technical matters appear wholly inseparable from those of public philosophy.
Failure to observe this inseparability may account for much of the confusion that presently pervades the field of local economic development. It is engulfed by an abundance of techniques, but suffer from a paucity of participative long-range or strategic planning; it eagerly embraces any idea hailed as an innovation, though rarely can researchers say what they are thereby trying to accomplish. Entire schools of thought have been founded on little more than a commitment to capital growth, despite the fact that economic development produces losers and winners, with allocational consequences that typically favor our wealthiest citizens. Such consequences are more clearly understood as public to private transfers or, for some, as political embarrassments (Wolman & Spitzley, 1996; Sanders & Stone, 1987). Surely, at some point, the more technical aspects of capital investments and public subsidies deserve our full attention. It seems for now, however, that providing them with the attention they deserve requires a critical assessment of the public philosophy that gives rise to these techniques.
Author: Steven A. Maclin, Ph. D.
About the Author: Dr. Maclin has been a university professor of public administration and policy since 1994. Recently, from 1998 - 2004, he lived and worked with American military troops in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. He has previously edited and published dozens of articles in professional administrative journals and recently, in his ‘spare time,’ he’s been building websites for distributing materials to his graduate students. Hes now stateside, teaching graduate students online, writing articles and developing a small online business (see
Johnny Depp Posters); he can be reached by email at info@buyfromart.com.