What's a City To Do? Explaining Differences in Local Economic Development Policies

Abstract

officials adopt virtually any tactic in order to keep up with the competition even though such policies have limited effect on business decisions (Grady 1987; Wolman 1988). Arms race imagery is reinforced by the advice given to policy-makers, which tends toward shopping lists of incentives, organizational plans, analytical techniques, and processes believed to promote development (see Farr 1984; Malizia 1985; Blakely 1989). There are two problems with this intense preoccupation with economic development that has been marked by a level of consensus and expectation unusual in American politics (Eisinger 1988: 3). First, those interested in the practice of economic development have placed such emphasis on being exhaustive in identifying options that they tend to ignore variation in the conditions under which communities are willing or able to adopt different policies. Second, scholars have examined such variation, but have been polarized around two competing explanations, one based on the broader economic and political systems (structure) and another that relies on the actions of local political and economic actors (agency). This note addresses these issues by analyzing variation in the economic development policies adopted by a large national sample of city governments.