1 See, for example, Bollens, John C. and Schmandt, Henry J., The Metropolis (3rd ed.; New York: Harper and Row, 1975), 282–88Google Scholar; Adrian, Charles R. and Press, Charles, Governing Urban America (5th ed.; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), 240–41Google Scholar; and Blair, George S., American Local Government (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 581–85Google Scholar.

2 Hill, Richard C., “State Capitalism and the Urban Fiscal Crisis in the United States,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 2 (1978), 94, 90Google Scholar. Hill's analysis should be read in light of other neo-Marxist accounts of American metropolitan reform: O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1973), 89–91, 105–10, 135–37, 211–15, 226–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tabb, William K. and Sawers, Larry (eds.), Marxism and the Metropolis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 25–111, 213–40Google Scholar; and Cox, Kevin (ed.), Urbanization and Conflict in Market Societies (Chicago: Maaroufa Press, 1978), 165–212Google Scholar.

3 Goldrick, M. D., “Perspectives on Governing the Regions and the Metropolis in the Future,” in Lessons from Regional Government, Proceedings of a Conference at the University of Western Ontario,23–24 September, 1977 (London: Department of Political Science, University of Western Ontario, 1978), 233Google Scholar. Compare his “The Anatomy of Urban Reform in Toronto,” City Magazine, May/June, 1978, 31Google Scholar; Lorimer, James, A Citizen's Guide to City Politics (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1972), 90–94Google Scholar, and The Developers (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1978), 78–79Google Scholar; and Barker, Graham et al., Highrise and Superprofits (Kitchener: Dumont Press Graphix, 1973), 86–90Google Scholar. The more general neo-Marxist claim is that “the development of capitalism requires the constant widening of administrative units.” O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State, 137.

4 As early as 1837, the English Royal Commission on Municipal Corporations suggested that London and its suburbs might be united into one “metropolitan municipality.” A Metropolitan Board of Works was established in 1855 and a metropolitan county council in 1889. In the United States, the first campaigns for unified metropolitan government occurred in the 1850s, and by the 1890s metropolitan federation (of the Toronto type) had been widely accepted as an ideal by municipal reformers. See Maxey, C. C., “The Political Integration of Metropolitan Communities,” National Municipal Review 11 (1922), 229–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Teaford, John C., City and Suburbs (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, chap. 3, for the American experience, and Lipman, V. D., Local Government Areas, 1834–1945 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1949) for the EnglishGoogle Scholar.

5 Bish, Robert and Ostrom, Vincent, Understanding Urban Government: Metropolitan Reform Reconsidered (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 Hill, “State Capitalism and the Urban Fiscal Crisis,” 98–99.

7 Some of the eighteenth century schemes are discussed in Wickwar, W. Hardy, The Political Theory of Local Government (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1970), 13–17Google Scholar.

8 Cited in Lipman, Local Government Areas, 44.

9 The struggle for reform is recounted in Lipman, Local Government Areas; Redlich, Josef and Hirst, Francis, The History of Local Government in England (London: Macmillan, 1958)Google Scholar; and Laski, H. J. et al. (eds.), A Century of Municipal Progress (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1935)Google Scholar.

10 On this point, see my “Community Organization and Local Self-Government,” in Feldman, Lionel D. (ed.), Politics and Government of Urban Canada (4th ed.; Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 61–86Google Scholar.

11 On the English influence, see Waldo, Dwight, The Administrative State (New York: Ronald Press, 1948), 36–42Google Scholar, and Teaford, City and Suburbs, chaps. 4 and 5. The early theory and practice of metropolitan reform is reviewed by Studenski, Paul in The Government of Metropolitan Areas in the United States (New York: National Municipal League, 1930)Google Scholar. Territorial consolidation was only one of the means contemplated for distancing municipal government from inappropriate influences and making it more capable, honest and efficient: see Schiesl, Martin J., The Politics of Efficiency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977)Google Scholar for a discussion of the broader programme of municipal reform articulated in the Progressive era.

12 For the post-1930 experience in the United States, see Bollens, John C., The States and the Metropolitan Problem (Chicago: Council of State Governments, 1956)Google Scholar; Teaford, City and Suburbs; and Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, chaps. 11–14.

13 Morley Wickett, an influential municipal reformer and Toronto City alderman, proposed as early as 1913 that an overarching metropolitan government be established for the Toronto area. Weaver, John C., “The Modern City Realized: Toronto Civic Affairs, 1880–1915,” in Artibise, Alan F. J. and Stelter, Gilbert A. (eds.), The Usable Urban Past (Toronto: Macmillan, 1979), 56Google Scholar. The province gave metropolitan reform active consideration in the 1920s and 1930s but no action was taken until 1953 (Rose, Albert, Governing Metropolitan Toronto [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973], 11–22Google Scholar, and Colton, Timothy, Big Daddy [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980], 55–73)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 This was the approach adopted by the Royal Commission on Municipal Corporation Boundaries in 1837, three years after the Poor Law Commission's first report. Lipman, Local Government Areas, 66–67. Mill accepted it too: Representative Government, chap. 15.

15 The most important early theorists of urban containment were Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes. Although neither was particularly interested in local government reform, it was implicit in their conceptions of the garden city and the regional economy that a rationalization of the capitalist urban system would make it easier to develop appropriate political institutions. Lewis Mumford (Geddes' self-proclaimed disciple) made this explicit in The Culture of Cities (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), chap. 6. Another of Geddes' disciples, Patrick Abercrombie, developed the plan for London's Green Belt which set limits on the spread of the metropolis. Thanks to this, the Herbert Commission was able to discover “natural” boundaries for Greater London: see the Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London, 1957–60 (Cmnd. 1164), 22–25. Derek Senior's later Memorandum of Dissent to the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, 1966–69 (Cmnd. 4040-II) assumed that containment policies could be used to reinforce the “natural” city regions which Senior wanted to use for municipal organizationGoogle Scholar.

16 Bourne, L. S., Urban Systems: Strategies for Regulation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)Google Scholar and Clawson, Marion and Hall, Peter, Planning and Urban Growth: An Anglo-American Comparison (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973) provide comparative analyses of contemporary practicesGoogle Scholar.

17 Goldrick's analysis should be compared to the more conventional accounts in Rose's Governing Metropolitan Toronto and Colton's Big Daddy.

18 Walter Stewart in Ontario, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 24th Leg., 3rd Sess., March 12, 1953, G-7. Compare G. Dunbar, minister of municipal affairs, in Debates, March 2, 1953, A-7.

19 Joseph Salsberg in Debates, March 5, 1953, D-ll. Cf. D-10.

20 See especially Lorimer, A Citizen's Guide to City Politics, The Developers, and The Real World of City Politics (Toronto: James Lewis and Samuel, 1970)Google Scholar. Aubin, Compare Henry, City for Sale (Montreal: Editions L'Etincelle, 1977)Google Scholar; Gutstein, Donald, Vancouver Ltd. (Toronto: James Lorimer, 1975)Google Scholar; Walker, David C., The Great Winnipeg Dream (Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Pasternak, Jack, The Kitchener Market Fight (Toronto: Samuel, Stevens, and Hakkert, 1975)Google Scholar.

21 In fact, Goldrick shifts from talking of “capital” per se (“Perspectives on Governing the Regions,” 233) to speaking more narrowly of “finance capital” (“The Anatomy of Urban Reform,” 31). This is in line with a popular interpretation of the character of Canadian capitalism. Whatever the general case, it is clear that broader capitalist interests are involved in the consolidation of local government—as is illustrated by the case of Haldimand-Norfolk, a regional municipality established to facilitate a set of industrial developments in a previously rural area on Lake Erie. For a brief account, see Fraser, G. et al., The Tail of the Elephant: A Guide to Regional Planning and Development in Southern Ontario (Toronto: Pollution Probe at the University of Toronto, May 1974), 41Google Scholar. Compare Michael Cassidy in Ontario, Legislative Assembly, Debates, October 15, 1973, 4263–75, and The Steel Company of Canada, The Haldimand-Norfolk Study: Local Government Re-Structuring: Views and Observations (April 1972).

22 Relevant developments are reviewed in Feldman, L. D., Ontario 1945–1973: The Municipal Dynamic (Toronto: Ontario Economic Council, 1973)Google Scholar; Fraser, The Tail of the Elephant; and Pearson, Norman, “Regional Government and Development,” in MacDonald, Donald C. (ed.), Government and Politics of Ontario (Toronto: Macmillan, 1975), 172–93Google Scholar.

23 See items cited in note 23 and also Ontario Economic Council, Subject to Approval (Toronto: Ontario Economic Council, 1973)Google Scholar. It is significant that one of the problems the Robarts Commission had to consider when it reviewed the government of Metropolitan Toronto in 1974–1977 was the fact that the Toronto Region, as defined by the province, then encompassed six regional municipalities including Metro itself. In consequence it proposed a Toronto Region Coordinating Authority to handle the wider problems of the area. Report of the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Toronto (June 1977), vol. 2, chap. 3. This, of course, was the function Metro had been designed to performGoogle Scholar.

24 On the British experience see especially Sharpe, L. J., “‘Reforming’ the Grass Roots,” in Butler, D. and Halsey, A. H. (eds.), Policy and Politics (London: Macmillan, 1978), 82–110CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There is no comparable analysis of developments in Canada as a whole, but see Plunkett, T. J., “Structural Reform of Local Government in Canada,” in Feldman, L. D. and Goldrick, M. D. (eds.), Politics and Government of Urban Canada (3rd ed.; Toronto: Methuen, 1976), 313–35, for a summary of the actionGoogle Scholar.

25 As the Labour government remarked in its White Paper recommending the consolidation of local areas, “only if such change occurs, and local government is organized in strong units with power to take major decisions, will present trends towards centralization be reversed and local democracy resume its place as a major part of our democratic system” (Reform of Local Government in England [Cmnd. 4276, 1970], 28). Compare, U.S. National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1969), 8Google Scholar.

26 This is reflected in the use made by the governments in Britain and Ontario of traditional county boundaries, which despite their seeming obsolescence were often used to define the areas of new municipalities. “Reasonable size” can mean anything from the units of 250,000–1,000,000 people suggested by the Royal Commission on Local Government in England (Report, Cmnd. 4040–I, 4) to the area municipalities of 8–10,000 recommended for rural Ontario (Ontario, Design for Development: Phase Two [Toronto: 1968, 4])Google Scholar.

27 The British government used all these measures before, during and after the great consolidation of 1974. The royal commissions on the (territorial) structure of local government were complemented by contemporary studies on functions, management, and staffing. Of the reforms which followed, territorial consolidation was arguably the most disruptive and least successful (see Sharpe, “‘Reforming’ the Grass Roots”). In Ontario also, consolidation came in conjunction with changes in the functions and finance of municipal government. When political opposition forced the government to moderate its efforts to enlarge municipal areas, it turned its attention to improving municipal management (see Ontario, Ministry of Treasury Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs, Managers for Local Government, 1976–77).

28 Business support for municipal reform in the United States is well documented: see Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency, and Teaford, City and Suburbs. In the late 1960s, two very influential proposals for metropolitan government came from the business Committee for Economic Development: Modernizing Local Government, to Secure a Balanced Federalism (New York: CED, 1966)Google Scholar and Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas (New York: CED, 1970)Google Scholar. For the attitudes of British business, see the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, Written Evidence of Commercial Industrial and Political Organizations (London: HMSO, 1968)Google Scholar. According to the Confederation of British Industry, “industry's requirements would be more adequately met if the county and county borough authorities were replaced by fewer but larger regional area authorities” (ibid., 67). Compare, The Steel Company of Canada, The Haldimand-Norfolk Study. As is suggested below, such support for consolidation is not necessarily based on an accurate analysis of the options, and it is not reflective of the full range of business opinion.

29 A host of other factors also intervene, as is revealed by studies of the American referenda on metropolitan reform: compare Maranda, V. L., “The Politics of Metropolitan Reform,” in Campbell, A. K. and Bahl, R. W. (eds.), State and Local Government: The Political Economy of Reform (New York: The Free Press, 1976), 24–49Google Scholar; and Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, chap. 14.

30 Teaford, City and Suburbs, chaps. 2, 3, 5.

31 See the articles by Gordon, Ashton, and Markusen in Tabb and Sawers (eds.), Marxism and the Metropolis, 25–111. Compare R. A. Walker, “The Transformation of Urban Structure,” in Cox, Urbanization and Conflict in Market Societies, 165–212.

32 For the United States, this is truer today than it was in the past, but even in the earlier period American businessmen listened to reformers who themselves were influenced by Fabian socialist thinking. T. H. Reed, who was a prominent adviser to the businessmen campaigning for metropolitan government in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and St. Louis in the 1920s and 1930s, admitted to the National Municipal League that “G. D. H. Cole, in his Future of Local Government has suggested something of the thought I have in mind, but on a grandiose scale, and with communistic implications which I would emphatically repudiate” (Reed, , “The Region: A New Governmental Unit,” National Municipal Review 14 [1925], 417–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar). The Fabians had taken the intellectual lead in developing the case for a consolidation of local authority in Britain by the beginning of this century. See Sancton, Andrew, “British Socialist Theories of the Division of Power by Area,” Political Studies 24 (1976), 158–70, for an account of their ideasCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Hence, business makes its pleas for financial support from government on the grounds that money is needed to create jobs, and labour argues that legislated improvements in wages and working conditions will enhance productivity.

34 The Labour and Conservative parties in Britain both supported the consolidation of local government in the early 1970s, although their schemes of reform differed somewhat. Compare Reform of Local Government in England and Local Government in England: Government Proposals for Reorganization (Cmnd. 4584, 1971). For the development of party attitudes in Britain, see Brand, Jack, Local Government Reform in England, 1888–1974 (London: Croom Helm, 1974), chap. 4. In Canada, schemes for metropolitan or regional government have been implemented in various provinces by Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic party, Social Credit, and Parti Québécois governments. In the United States, where business-oriented reformers have so often taken the lead in pressing for consolidation, the Socialist-led Milwaukee city council was one of the most vigorous proponents of metropolitan government in the 1930s (Teaford, City and Suburbs, 100). Communists (including Joseph Salsberg, the critic of Metro Toronto) have also been favourable towards metropolitan government (see Ontario, Legislative Assembly, Debates, March 6, 1953, H-3 to H-6, and Communist Party of Great Britain, in Royal Commission on Local Government in England, Written Evidence of Commercial, Industrial and Political Organizations, 58–63). Compare footnote 28 above and footnote 40 belowGoogle Scholar.

35 For some of these schemes, see Thomhill, W. (ed.). The Case for Regional Reform (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1972)Google Scholar. Two proposals from the 1960s which illustrate this community of thought are L. J. Sharpe, Why Local Democracy? (Fabian Tract No. 361, 1965) and the Bow Group, New Life for Local Government (London: Conservative Political Centre, 1965)Google Scholar.

36 This is reflected both in a greater determination to rationalize boundaries and in impatience with proposals which would allow for too much local autonomy within urban regions. It was the Labour Government which supported the Maud Commission's proposal for “unitary” local authorities in England (see The Reform of Local Government in England). Significantly, it was the New Democratic party in Manitoba which provided Winnipeg with a “Unicity” government, for somewhat similar reasons.

37 This is most evident in the United States: see Hill, R. C., “Separate and Unequal: Governmental Inequality in the Metropolis,” American Political Science Review 68 (1974), 1557–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Newton, K., “Feeble Governments and Private Power: Urban Politics and Policies in the United States,” in Masotti, L. H. and Lineberry, R. L. (eds.), The New Urban Politics (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Publishing, 1977)Google Scholar. Compare Report of the Royal Commission on Metropolitan Toronto (Goldenberg) (Toronto: 1965), chaps. 7, 9, 14Google Scholar. For an early British view of this problem, see Municipalization by Provinces (Fabian Tract No. 125, 1905). Rate equalization schemes in Britain have mitigated the financial effects of fragmentation, but central city authorities are still faced with obstacles to “overspill” public housing in the suburbs.

38 This is one of the lessons of postwar urban planning in Britain. See Hall, Peter et al., The Containment of Urban England, 2 vols. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1973)Google Scholar. It is significant that the Labour party's interest in local government reform increased as the frustrations of planning a market economy mounted: if the economy could not be changed, the structure of government could.

39 These concerns are interdependent in the sense that containing and rationalizing urban development may make economies in infrastructural investment possible. The promise of greater economy is central to the appeal of both planning and governmental consolidation.

40 This liberal view is apparent in the Report of the Urbanism Committee to the National Resources Committee (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1939)Google Scholar; Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Metropolitan America: Challenge to Federalism (Washington: A.C.I.R., 1966)Google Scholar, and the National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City. Harrington, Compare Michael, Toward a Democratic Left (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 126–31Google Scholar; and Harvey, David, Social Justice and the City (London: Edward Arnold, 1973), 91–94Google Scholar.

41 In the nineteenth century, metropolitan reformers hoped to put power directly in the hands of the representatives of the bourgeoisie, but now the preference is for a government ostensibly accountable and responsible to the people—which can be expected, because of the constraints upon it, to act in the capitalist interest regardless.

42 This exposition makes use of the neo-Marxist idea that the main functions of the capitalist state are legitimation and accumulation. A thorough critique of this theory is unnecessary for the purpose at hand, but some of its difficulties are worth noting. The legitimation function can perhaps be identified with what non-Marxists would call system maintenance. However, as Leo Panitch points out, maintenance requires coercion as well as legitimation (“The Role and Nature of the Canadian State,” in Panitch, [ed.], The Canadian State [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977], 8). In any case, there are many different things in a capitalist society which have to be legitimated, from the relations of production to the authority of the government itself. What legitimates one does not necessarily legitimate the other. There is a similar ambiguity in the notion of an accumulation function, because what stimulates the growth of capital does not necessarily put it in the hands of the capitalist class or the dominant class fraction. Perhaps this only confirms the contradictory character of the two functions, but to say that the functions of the state are contradictory is a neat way of avoiding the task of explaining how and why these contradictions are usually resolved. Without such an explanation, there is no Marxist theory of the capitalist state—only a loose and ambiguous description of its functions which is certainly incomplete, and which could probably be applied with equal accuracy to the socialist statesGoogle Scholar.

43 It was a housing crisis which provided the stimulus to forming Metro Toronto. This crisis had to be overcome not only because it was affecting the value of the social capital available to businessmen, but also because it was creating discontent among the people who embodied that capital.

44 Poland, for instance, reorganized its system of local government in 1972, making the “town” the basic unit. “The new town is composed of an urban center and the surrounding rural area including several villages. It should be a socio-economic micro-region capable of performing on its territory broad social, production and service functions based on increased budgetary and economic self-reliance” (Piekalkiewicz, Jaroslaw, Communist Local Government [Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1975], xii)Google Scholar. This sounds remarkably like the reasoning of the English Poor Law Commission. See Leemans, A. F., Changing Patterns of Local Government (The Hague: International Union of Local Authorities, 1970)Google Scholar and Local Government Reform: Analysis of Experience in Selected Countries (New York: United Nations, 1975)Google Scholar for accounts of consolidationist trends, which seem equally apparent in developed and underdeveloped, capitalist and socialist countries.

45 Note that consumer benefits are essentially the ones at stake.

46 See Goldrick, “The Anatomy of Urban Reform.”

47 Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 96–118, 273–75Google Scholar.

48 Lorimer, The Developers, 123, 225.

49 See, for example, Rees, I. Bowen, Government by Community (London: Charles Knight, 1971)Google Scholar, and Greenleaf, W. H., “Toulmin-Smith and the British Political Tradition,” Public Administration 53 (1975), 25–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nisbet, Compare Robert, The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953)Google Scholar.

50 Of course, the point of Marx's analysis was that the socialization of capitalism was an inherently contradictory process which would ultimately lead to the supersession of the system. See Bottomore, T. B. and Rubel, Maximilien (eds.), Karl Marx: Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy (London: Penguin Books, 1963), 145–51, 163–64, 257–59, for examples of the socializing tendencies which Marx could observe in nineteenth century capitalism. It is a long way from the joint stock company to the “social-industrial complex,” but the progression is intelligibleGoogle Scholar.

51 O'Connor claims that “regional planning requires corporate-dominated regional government” (Fiscal Crisis of the State, 227), but a contrary notion has been popular in the business community itself: “in an important sense regional planning may be a substitute for centralization of government. If sufficient co-operation between the communities in a region can be obtained so that they will agree on the broad outline of a plan for all their areas together, and if they collaborate to carry out such a plan, they can go far toward attaining the ideal which would be possible under a united government” (Committee on the Regional Plan of New York and its Environs [1929], cited in Jones, Victor, “Local Government Organization in Metropolitan Areas,” in Woodbury, Coleman [ed.], The Future of Cities and Urban Redevelopment [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953], 535). See Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, chap. 13, for an account of efforts to provide for metropolitan planning without metropolitan governmentGoogle Scholar.

52 This was one of the major themes of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. For an attempt at empirical assessment of the advantages of consolidating states into larger units, see Dahl, Robert and Tufte, Edward, Size and Democracy (London: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar.

53 In this respect, what is true of the United States may also be true of Canada.

54 Compare Tiebout, Charles M., “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditure,” Journal of Political Economy 64 (1956), 416–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ostrom, Vincent et al., “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas,” American Political Science Review 55 (1961), 831–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Warren, Robert, Government in Metropolitan Regions (Davis, Calif.: University of California Institute of Governmental Affairs, 1966)Google Scholar; Bish, Robert L., The Public Economy of Metropolitan Areas (Chicago: Markham, 1971)Google Scholar; Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government; and Banfield, Edward C. and Grodzins, Morton, “Some Flaws in the Logic of Metropolitan Consolidation,” in Danielson, Michael N. (ed.), Metropolitan Politics (Boston: Little, Brown, 1966), 142–52Google Scholar.

55 This principle was given its classic expression in Mill's Representative Government, chap. 15.

56 Richard M. Cion, “Accommodation Par Excellence: The Lakewood Plan,” in Danielson (ed.), Metropolitan Politics, 272–80. Compare Robert Warren, Government in Metropolitan Regions.

57 These were themes of the campaign for Proposition 13. Levy, Frank, “On Understanding Proposition 13,” The Public Interest 56 (Summer, 1979), 66–89Google Scholar, suggests that the voter reaction was not against “big government.” Nevertheless, the effect of it was to provide further protection against government for the propertied classes, and to reaffirm the superiority of private enterprise. Compare “Proposition 13: The California Model of the Taxpayers' Revolt,” Center Magazine 11 (1978), 18–41Google Scholar, and Danzinger, James N., “California's Proposition 13 and the Fiscal Limitation Movement in the United States,” Political Studies 38 (1981), 599–612Google Scholar.

58 This has not been done, but it has been proposed, by representatives of big business (Committee for Economic Development, Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas, 17–21, 52–53) and theorists of public choice (Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government, 30, 95–96, 103). Not all the suburban municipalities which now have autonomy and resist consolidation are havens of the upper middle class.

59 See Sharpe, , “American Democracy Reconsidered,” British Journal of Political Science 3 (1973), 1–28, 129–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for an analysis of the effects of this conception. Dahl, Compare, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956)Google Scholar.

60 Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government. Ironically, this conclusion is supported by the evidence gathered for the Royal Commission on Local Government in England: see Research Appendices 9–12 and Research Studies 3–5. Compare Sharpe, “‘Reforming’ the Grass Roots,” 91–93, 98–103.

61 Vested interests are also threatened by the public choice approach in the United States. As a result, it is not as popular as it might otherwise be: in this respect, its fate is similar to that of the conventional theory of metropolitan reform.

62 One of the claims of the public choice theorists is that egalitarian aims can be met by creating an appropriate legislative framework for private and public enterprise, and using the powers of the state or national government to redistribute resources in favour of the poor. See Bish, The Public Economy of Metropolitan Areas, chap. 7; Warren, Government in Metropolitan Regions, 41–43; Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government, 57–99; and Banfield and Grodzins, “Some Flaws in the Logic,” 146–48.

63 See Panitch (ed.), The Canadian State; Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society; O'Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State; and Poulantzas, Nicos, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973)Google Scholar.

64 Gramsci, Antonio, The Modem Prince and Other Writings (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 58–75Google Scholar.

65 The importance of this conception in the theory of local government can hardly be exaggerated. It has been widely noted that American municipal reformers promoted the idea that local governments were essentially business corporations. What has not been usually observed is that this was a traditional attitude, with strong historical justification: compare Teaford, John C., The Municipal Revolution in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975)Google Scholar and Sidney, and Webb, Beatrice, English Local Government, vols. 1–4 (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1963)Google Scholar, esp. 4, chaps. 5, 6. To a large extent, the Webbs maintained this conception in their own theory of local government, except that they insisted that local authorities were organizations of consumers and not producers (Webb, , The Development of Local Government in England, 1689–1835 [London: Oxford University Press, 1963]Google Scholar and A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975]Google Scholar). In doing so, they were elaborating on Bentham's theory of state: compare my “Participation and Democratic Theory” (D. Phil., University of Oxford, 1978), 101–18 and 174–83Google Scholar. See also Willoughby, W. F., “The National Government as a Holding Company,” Political Science Quarterly 32 (1917), 505–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 This is part of what is meant by the “relative autonomy of the state.”

67 One analysis which does suggest that distinctively American stabilizing solutions may be viable is in Friedland, Roger, Piven, Frances Fox and Alford, Robert R., “Political Conflict, Urban Structure and the Fiscal Crisis,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 1 (1977), 447–71. The emergency arrangements made to save New York City from bankruptcy are sometimes taken to be evidence of deep-seated inadequacies in the American political structure. Perhaps they are also evidence of the ease with which the capitalist class can resolve contradictions to its own advantageCrossRefGoogle Scholar.