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The Political Economy of Business Politics in U.S. Cities: A Developmental Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2008

Paul Kantor
Paul Kantor
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

Although the political presence of business in the economic development of American cities has been richly documented, there has been much less attention to how and why urban business politics has changed in the course of our history. Indeed, the political circumstances and problems of the early Republic's merchant entrepreneurs in the towns seem remote from those of urban business leaders of postindustrial America, with its giant cities and megacorporations. The challenge remains of identifying forces of continuity and change that have shaped relations between business and city governments in urban economic development.

Type
Research Notes
Information
Studies in American Political Development , Volume 4 , Spring 1990 , pp. 248 - 268
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

I especially wish to acknowledge Stephen David. His contribution to the larger project to which this work is related was ended by his death in 1985. I thank Edward Greenberg, Richard Fleisher, and Paul E. Peterson for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. Financial assistance was provided by the Fordham University Research Council.

1. Parts of this article describing the mercantile, industrial, and postindustrial political economies are also elaborated in Kantor, Paul with David, Stephen, The Dependent City: The Changing Political Economy of Urban America (Glenview, Ill.: Scott Foresman/Little, Brown, 1988)Google Scholar, and in Kantor, Paul, “The Dependent City: The Changing Political Economy of Urban Economic Development in the United States,” Urban Affairs Quarterly 22 (06 1987):493–520CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The focus on changing business strategies and demands over time appears for the first time in this Note.

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52. Kantor with David, The Dependent City, chap. 11.

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