Product Description: Nationalist and localist traditions vie within the American federal system and the American experiment with self-government. Bringing together contributions from history, political science, and sociology, this book focuses primarily on the local, seeking to recapture its origins, explain its current impact, and assess its worth...read more

Product Description: Based on the experiences of the author Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, who was the executive director of the first National Urban Policy process, and historical archives, this book analyzes the actions of President Carter, H.U.D. Secretary Patricia Roberts Harris, other Cabinet members, and the professionals leading the process...read more

During the past decade, dozens of large cities lost population as jobs and people kept moving to the suburbs. Despite widespread urban revitalization and renewal, one fact remains unmistakable: when choosing where to live and work, Americans prefer the suburbs to the cities. Many underlying causes of the urban predicament are familiar: disproportionate poverty, stiff city tax rates, and certain unsatisfactory municipal services (most notably, public schools). Less recognized is the distinct possibility that sometimes the regulatory policies of the federal government—the rules and rulings imposed by its judges, bureaucrats, and lawmakers—further disadvantage the cities, ultimately burdening their ability to attract residents and businesses. In Tense Commandments, Pietro S. Nivola encourages renewed reflection on the suitable balance between national and local domains. He examines an array of directive or supervisory methods by which federal policymakers narrow local autonomy and complicate the work urban governments are supposed to do. Urban taxpayers finance many costly projects that are prescribed by federal law. A handful of national rules bore down on local governments before 1965. Today these governments labor under hundreds of so-called unfunded mandates. Federal aid to large cities has lagged behind a profusion of mandated expenditures, at times straining municipal budgets. Apart from their fiscal impacts, Nivola argues, various federal prescriptions impinge on local administration of routine services, tying the hands of managers and complicating city improvements. Nivola includes case studies of six cities: Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. He describes the "politics of paternalism," the political pressures that federal regulations place on governance. Then he offers comparisons with various political systems abroad, including Germany, the U.K., France, and Italy. As the nation and its cities brace for a long and arduous effort to combat terrorism, Nivola recommends that federal mandates be evaluated with a standard question: are they socially beneficial, or do they deprive localities of discretion, distort legitimate local priorities, and perhaps misallocate resources? In today's intricate federal system, the unencumbered capacity of governments at all levels to define their roles and concentrate on their core functions and responsibilities seems urgent. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This book addresses the mismatch between the assumptions of planning professionals and the actual operations of the intergovernmental system. Basing her work not only on empirical research but also years of personal experience, Christensen presents a new theory of the underlying structure and dynamics of the US intergovernmental system...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Once hailed as a revolutionary change in U.S. federal aid policy that would return power to state and local governments, General Revenue Sharing was politically dead a decade later. Bruce A. Wallin now offers the only complete history of the General Revenue Sharing program -- why it passed, why state and local governments used it the way they did, and why it died...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Book by Hayes

Product Description: This book provides a thorough examination of intergovernmental relations: national-state, interstate, state-local, national-local, and interlocal. Beginning with a cost-benefit analysis of federalism, the authors examine the actors in intergovernmental relations: political poarties, interest groups, Congress, and the electoral college...read more

Product Description: John Gunther served thirty years as the staff head of the United States Conference of Mayors and here examines in detail the development of U.S. federal-city relations. He argues that each step of the federal-city relationship was a major effort by mayors to win intergovernmental cooperation...read more

An unusual, multidimensional study of how America's cities have responded to federal policy changes and budget cuts, this book draws on surveys, interviews, and empirical analyses to show what happened in the nation's cities when federal policy changed. Included are discussions of the role of state governments in urban economic development and how the New Federalism can benefit cities.

Product Description: Over the last five decades American cities have been transformed as profoundly and tumultuously as they were during the industrial revolution. In contrast to that earlier era, this contemporary transformation has been stimulated and guided by governmental intervention...read more

Product Description: Winner of the 1981 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs."City Limits radically reinterprets urban politics by deriving its dominant forces from the logic of the American federal structure...read more