A neo-Gramscian approach to the regulation of urban regimes’, in M. Lauria,ed., Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory, London: Sage, 51-73, 1997.

 

The perspective on urban regimes presented here is based on a neo-Gramscianreading of the regulation approach as well as a classically Gramscian accountof the reciprocal relations between state and civil society. In particular Iargue that urban regimes can be fruitfully analyzed in terms of strategicallyselective combinations of political society and civil society, of governmentand governance, of ‘hegemony armoured by coercion’. I also argue that suchregimes may be linked to the formation of a local hegemonic bloc (or ‘powerbloc’) and an historical bloc (or accumulation regime and its mode ofregulation). To support these proposals I present some of Gramsci’s ideasabout the relations between the economic base and its superstructure as wellas his key concepts for analysing the state and state power. This will enableme to show marked similarities between a Gramscian account of the state andregulationist views on the capital relation. In the light of these analogies Ioutline eight key lessons for an exploration of urban regimes inspired by aneo-Gramscian regulation approach and, drawing on more recent work in theregulation approach, I offer some reflections on current changes in urbanregimes. My argument is shaped by European experience but I would also claimthat the neo-Gramscian approach can be fruitfully applied elsewhere.

I. Theoretical Perspectives on Urban Regimes

I now present three theoretical perspectives for an alternative researchagenda on urban regimes. After briefly presenting some Gramscian insights intopolitics and key ideas from the French regulation approach, I considerGramsci’s ideas about the ethico-political dimension of economic regimes. Thisenables me to propose some parallels between Gramscian and regulationistapproaches to political economy. I also comment on the relevance of governancetheory to both approaches.

I.1   Gramsci and ‘Integral Politics’ Gramsci analyzed the state ‘in its inclusive sense’. He defined it as ‘theentire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the rulingclass not only justifies and maintains its dominance but manages to win theactive consent of those over whom it rules’ (1971: 244). This approach islinked to his equation of the state with ‘political society + civil society’and his claim that state power in the West rests on ‘hegemony armoured bycoercion’ (1971: 261-3). Gramsci did not examine the constitutional andinstitutional features of government, its formal decision-making procedures,or its general policies (the state in its narrow sense, so to speak); insteadhe explored how political, intellectual, and moral leadership was mediatedthrough a complex ensemble of institutions, organizations, and forcesoperating within, oriented towards, or located at a distance from the

juridico-political state apparatus. This suggests that the political spherecan be seen as the domain where attempts are made to (re-)define a ‘collectivewill’ for an imagined political community2 and to (re-)articulate variousmechanisms and practices of government and governance in pursuit of projectsdeemed to serve it. Whilst his prison writings dealt mainly with ‘national-popular’ politics in national states (especially Italy and France), nothingexcludes its application to urban politics. This can be seen from Gramsci’snotes on communal politics in medieval Italy as well as incidental remarks oncontemporary cities such as Turin, Rome, and Naples. More generally, one couldargue that his approach is actually highly relevant to local politics becauseit downplays the importance of sovereign states with their monopoly ofcoercion and allows more weight to other apparatuses, organizations, andpractices involved in exercising political power.

I.2   The Regulation Approach and ‘Integral Economics’ Regulationists study the economy in an inclusive sense. In a mannerreminiscent of Gramsci’s expanded treatment of the state (as lo stato integrale or‘the integral state’), they investigate what one could likewise call l’economiaintegrale(or the ‘integral economy’). Expressed in other words, regulationtheorists examine the historically contingent ensembles ofcomplementary economic and extra-economic mechanisms and practices which enablecapital accumulation to occur in a relatively stable way over long periodsdespite the fundamental contradictions and conflicts generated by the capitalrelation itself (cf. Aglietta 1979; Boyer 1990; Lipietz 1987). In particular,whilst far from neglectful of the essentially anarchic role of exchangerelations in mediating capitalist reproduction, regulationists tend toemphasize the complementary role of other mechanisms (institutions, norms,conventions, networks, procedures, and modes of calculation) in structuring,facilitating, and guiding (in short, regulating) capital accumulation. Theyargue that relatively stable capitalist expansion over any extended timeperiod depends not only on economic institutions and practices but also oncrucial extra-economic conditions which cannot be taken for granted. And, inthis context, they must go well beyond any narrow concern with productionfunctions, economizing behaviour, and pure market forces to study the widerange of institutional factors and social forces which are directly and/orindirectly involved in capital accumulation.

In the pioneer analysis in this approach, Aglietta studied how regulation‘creates new forms that are both economic and non-economic, that are organizedin structures and themselves reproduce a determinant structure, the mode ofproduction’ (1979: 13, 16). Thus he was initially interested in what one mightcall both the economic and the socialmodes of economic regulation. The economicmode would refer to the key role of economic exchange and market forces in theself-organization of capitalism; and the social mode would refer to the roleof the ‘extra-economic’ in organizing economic activities. Among other factorsfrequently mentioned by regulationists in this regard are: the legal and

social regulation of the wage relation, the articulation of financial andindustrial capital, forms of corporate organization, modes of economiccalculation, the role of the state, education and training, and internationalregimes. Interestingly, since Aglietta’s initial work, many regulationistshave increasingly focused on the ‘social’ mode of economic regulation to theneglect of the economic. This seems to move them even closer, albeitimplicitly, to a Gramscian perspective on the expanded reproduction-régulationof the capital relation. This impression is reinforced by references, thistime quite explicit, by some key regulation theorists to the need tostrengthen their account of the state (a topic they regard as under-theorizedwithin the French regulation approach) with Gramscian or neo-Gramscian ideas(e.g., Aglietta 1979; Häusler and Hirsch 1987; Jenson 1990; Lipietz 1987,1994; Lordon 1995; Noël 1988; for further details, see Jessop 1990: 311-319).

I.3   Once More on Gramsci To reinforce these points I now return to Gramsci’s approach to economics andpolitics. Whereas regulationists’ main concern has been to offer acomprehensive economic analysis of the socially embedded, socially regularizednature of the capital relation in order the better to understand its relativestability as well as its crisis-tendencies and transformation, Gramsci’s chiefconcern was to develop an autonomous Marxist science of politics in capitalistsocieties and thereby establish the most likely conditions under whichrevolutionary forces might eventually replace capitalism. These apparentlycontrasting theoretical (as opposed practical) interests are by no meansinconsistent. Indeed, in discussing different modes of enquiry and knowledge,Gramsci observed that:

In economics the unitary centre (sc. of analysis) is value, alias therelationship between the worker and the industrial productive forces. … Inphilosophy [it is] praxis, that is, the relationship between human will(superstructure) and economic structure. In politics [it is] the relationshipbetween the State and civil society, that is, the intervention of the State(centralised will) to educate the educator, the social environment in general’(Gramsci 1971: 402-3; cf. remarks on the difference between economic andpolitical interests and calculation, 140).

Although Gramsci spent most of his prison years working on philosophy andpolitics, he also offered various comments that anticipated the regulationapproach. This is most obvious, of course, in his pioneering remarks onAmericanism and Fordism and the prospects of introducing them into a Europewith a very different history and civilization (1971: 277-318; 1995: 256-7).But he also offered some important methodological remarks on economicanalysis. In particular we may note how he redefined Ricardo’s concept of‘”determined market” (mercato determinato)3 as “equivalent to [a] determinedrelation of social forces in a determined structure of the productiveapparatus”, this relationship being guaranteed (that is, rendered permanent)

by a determined political, moral and juridical superstructure’ (1971: 410).Gramsci continued that, whereas classical economists had treated determinedmarket as an arbitrary abstraction and reified its various elements and lawsas ‘eternal’ and ‘natural’, Marxist political economy began from thehistorical character of ‘determined market’ and its social ‘automatism’ andstudied these phenomena in terms of ‘the ensemble of the concrete economicactivities of a determined social form’ (1971: 400n, 411; cf. 1975: 172, 427).Thus, according to Gramsci, economic laws (necessities, ‘automatism’) shouldbe understood as tendencies, located historically, grounded in specificmaterial conditions, and linked to the formation of a specific type of homooeconomicus, reflected in turn in ‘popular beliefs’ and a certain level ofculture (1971: 279-318, 412, 400n, 413; 1975: 167). Economic laws or‘regularities’ (regolarità) are secured in so far as the actions of one or morestrata of intellectuals give the dominant class a certain homogeneity and anawareness of its own function in the social and political as well as theeconomic fields (1971: 410-414). For it is essential that entrepreneurs areable to organize ‘the general system of relationships external to the businessitself’ (1971: 6). It is in this context that Gramsci notes that the ‘conquestof power and achievement of a new productive world are inseparable, and thatpropaganda for one of them is also propaganda for the other, and that inreality it is solely in this coincidence that the unity of the dominant class— at once economic and political — resides’ (1971: 116, emphasis added).4

These ideas can be developed by considering two further insights. One isGramsci’s basic analytical distinction between historical bloc and power bloc.The first term in this conceptual couplet has important implications for theregulation approach, the second for work on growth coalitions. The otherinsight is expressed in Gramsci’s account of the ‘decisive economic nucleus’necessary for hegemonic projects to be successful in the long run. Thisaccount also has important implications for urban regimes, especially thesocial and economic bases of different growth coalitions.

Gramsci employs the notion of historical bloc to solve the Marxian problem ofthe reciprocal relationship between the economic ‘base’ and its politico-ideological ‘superstructure’. He addresses this problem in terms of how ‘thecomplex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures is thereflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production’. This issueis typically analyzed dialectically in terms of how the historical blocreflects ‘the necessary reciprocity between structure and superstructure’(1971: 366). This reciprocity is realized, according to Gramsci, throughspecific intellectual, moral, and political practices which translate narrowsectoral, professional, or local (in short, in Gramscian terms, ‘economic-corporate’) interests into broader ‘ethico-political’ ones. Only thus does theeconomic structure cease to be an external, constraining force and become asource of initiative and subjective freedom (1971: 366-7). In this sense theethico-political not only co-constitutes economic structures but also provides

them with their rationale and legitimacy. Gramsci adds that analyzing thehistorical bloc can show how ‘material forces are the content and ideologiesare the form, though this distinction between form and content has purelydidactic value’ (1971: 377). Although Gramsci does not introduce regulationistconcepts such as ‘industrial paradigms’, ‘models of development’ (Lipietz1987), ‘accumulation strategies’ (Jessop 1983), or ‘societal paradigms’(Jenson 1990, 1993) in this context, such concepts certainly help toilluminate the ‘ethico-political’ moment of the historical bloc. For theybring out the importance of values, norms, vision, discourses, linguisticforms, popular beliefs, etc., in shaping the realization of specificproductive forces and relations of production.

In this spirit, an historical bloc can be defined as an historicallyconstituted and socially reproduced correspondence between the economic baseand the politico-ideological superstructures of a social formation. Strippedof its historical materialist ‘base-superstructure’ jargon, this concept iseasily redefined in Parisian regulationist terms. Thus an historical bloccould be understood as the complex, contradictory and discordant unity of anaccumulation regime (or mode of growth) and its mode of economicregulation.5 The dialectical relationship between form and content could thenbe seen to develop through what one could interpret as the co-constitution ofthe accumulation regime as an object of regulation in and through its co-evolution with a corresponding mode of regulation (cf. Jessop 1990: 310; alsoPainter, this volume). Or, to paraphrase Gramsci’s own comments on the stateand state power, one could say that the economy in its inclusive sensecomprises an ‘accumulation regime + mode of regulation’ and that accumulationoccurs through ‘self-valorization of capital in and through regulation’.

The concept of hegemonic bloc was introduced in Gramsci’s discussion of classalliances and/or national-popular forces mobilized in support of a particularhegemonic project. It refers to the historical unity, not of structures (as in thecase of the historical bloc), but of social forces (which Gramsci analysed in termsof the ruling classes, supporting classes, mass movements, and intellectuals).An hegemonic bloc is a durable alliance of class forces organized by a class(or class fraction) which has proved itself capable of exercising political,intellectual, and moral leadership over the dominant classes and the popularmasses alike. Thus Gramsci notes that ‘[t]he historical unity of the rulingclasses … results from the organic relations between State or politicalsociety and “civil society”‘ (Gramsci 1971: 52). Although this argumentapplies principally to the national state, it can also be used in studyingsupra- and sub-national regimes (see, for example, van der Pijl 1982 on thetransatlantic ruling class in Atlantic Fordism; and, on the local state andhegemony in French regions and communes, Dulong 1978).

It is important to note that Gramsci recognizes several degrees and forms ofpolitical rule — not all of them fully hegemonic. They range from an inclusive

hegemony which secures the active consent of the majority of all classes;through more limited forms of hegemony based on selective incorporation ofsubordinate groups (or, at least their leaders) and limited, piecemealmaterial (‘economic-corporate’) concessions; to a resort, in exceptionalcases, to generalized coercion (1971: 105-6). Gramsci remarks, for example,that the dominant economic class in Italy’s medieval communes was unable tocreate its own category of intellectuals and so failed to build a solidhegemony. The communes had a more confederal, ‘syndicalist’ nature: ratherthan having a hegemonic bloc, they rested on a mechanical bloc of socialgroups, often of different races, with some subaltern groups having para-statal institutions of their own and enjoying considerable autonomy withinbroad limits set by coercive police powers (1971: 54n, 56n). Elsewhere Gramscicriticizes urban politics in non-industrial cities, such as Naples, whichserve primarily as unproductive centres for regional government and theconsumption of parasitic classes and strata; he also notes that their dominantintellectual strata are more likely to be ‘pettifogging lawyers’ than thetechnocrats who predominate in northern industrial cities (1971: 90-94, 98-100).

The final insight to be explored here is Gramsci’s observation that ‘thoughhegemony is ethical-political, it must also be economic, must necessarily bebased on the decisive function exercised by the leading group in the decisivenucleus of economic activity’ (1971: 161). This claim would seem open toseveral interpretations. It could be taken to imply that only the bourgeoisie(or its dominant fraction) could really exercise hegemony once capitalism hasemerged; and that only the proletariat is in a position to develop an organiccounter-hegemonic project. But, given the mediating role of organicintellectuals (who need not themselves be recruited from the two fundamentalor decisive classes), this interpretation is far too class reductionist andinstrumentalist. Thus Gramsci’s claim could be better read in an (integral)economic manner as implying that the essential function of an hegemonicproject is to secure the (integral) economic base of the dominant mode ofgrowth; and that it does this through the direct, active conforming of allsocial relations to the economic (and extra-economic) needs of the latter.Thus Gramsci argues that ‘every State is ethical in as much as one of its mostimportant functions is to raise the great mass of the population to aparticular cultural and moral level, a level (or type) which corresponds tothe needs of the productive forces for development, and hence to the interestsof the ruling classes’ (1971: 258). This reading is better than the first butit still involves a residual (albeit integral) economism.6

A third interpretation can be framed in integral political terms. HereGramsci’s comment could be taken to mean that all feasible organic hegemonicprojects need to respect (or take account of) ‘economic determination in thelast instance’. Gramsci argues the economy is nothing but ‘the mainspring ofhistory in the last analysis’ (1971: 162). Only by examining forms of

consciousness and methods of knowledge can one decipher the necessarilyindirect impact and repercussions of economics within the wider society (1971:162, 164, 167, 365). Thus ‘an analysis of the balance of forces — at alllevels — can only culminate in the sphere of hegemony and ethico-politicalrelations’ (1971: 167). In this sense, political forces have a vested interestin securing the productive potential of the economic base which both generatespolitical resources and defines the scope for making material concessions.Wealth must first be produced before it can be distributed. From an integralpolitical viewpoint, this does not mean that economic growth is invariablyaccorded the highest political priority — even when such growth is understoodintegrally. It implies only that political agents must be concerned with theeconomic conditions of juridico-political and/or politico-military power andbe sensitive to the political effects of economic developments. Thus, whilstcertain economic-corporate interests of (fractions of) the bourgeoisie can besacrificed, the essential foundations of capitalism must be respected. Inaddition to hegemony directly and explicitly based on an accumulationstrategy, therefore, hegemony could also establish other priorities providedthat the core conditions for capital accumulation are not thereby irrevocablyundermined.

I.4   Governance Theory The final term to be introduced here is governance. This is increasinglypopular both as an umbrella term for all forms of coordination of socialrelations (the ‘conduct of conduct’) and as a more specific (but still verygeneral) term to refer to forms of coordination which involve neither marketforces nor formal hierarchy. In this latter sense economic analysts oftenrefer to novel forms of economic coordination such as relational contracting,‘organized markets’ in group enterprises, clans, networks, business or tradeassociations, strategic alliances, and various international regimes.Likewise, in political science, disquiet has grown with a rigid public-privatedistinction in state-centred analyses of politics and its associated top-downaccount of the exercise of state power. This is reflected in concern with therole of various forms of political coordination which not only span theconventional public-private divide but also involve ‘tangled hierarchies’,parallel power networks, or other forms of complex interdependence acrossdifferent tiers of government and/or different functional domains. A generaldefinition encompassing all of these forms is that governance refers to the‘self-organization of inter-organizational relations’ (cf. Jessop 1995b).

Governance is significant both for neo-Gramscian political analysis and forthe regulation approach. It is relevant to the ‘micro-physics’ of power, i.e.,the channels through which diverse state projects and accumulation strategiesare pursued and, indeed, modified during their implementation. Because statepower is inevitably realized through its projection into the wider society andits coordination with other forms of power, one must look beyond formalgovernment institutions to a wide range of governance mechanisms and

practices. Likewise, governance is relevant to the day-to-day practices in andthrough which the various structural forms of regulation are instantiated andreproduced. Regulationists typically define these forms in institutional terms(hence the frequent charge against them of structuralism) to the neglect ofspecific practices and emerging conflicts. This bias can be compensated byexamining economic governance in terms of how expectations are stabilizedwithin particular structural contexts and behaviour is regularized throughconventions, compromise, and the exercise of power (for some initialregulationist work in this area, see Lipietz 1993; Benko and Lipietz 1994;Boyer and Hollingsworth 1995; and, for a review, Jessop 1995b). Early studiesof urban regimes also offer important insights into the nature of governanceand more recent work makes explicit use of the concept in posing researchissues (for a recent review, see Stoker 1995). In short, it would seem thaturban governance is an important area for assessing the potential of a neo-Gramscian regulation approach.

II. On Analyzing Urban Regimes

That urban regimes could be a fruitful testbed in this regard is indicated byStoker’s comment that regime theory emphasises ‘the interdependence ofgovernmental and non-governmental forces in meeting economic and socialchallenges’ (1995: 54; cf. Stone 1993). Moreover, given that a neo-Gramscianregulationist approach is concerned with the economy in its inclusive sense,it would seem even more suited to dealing with the role of government andgovernance in addressing contemporary economic challenges. In this spirit Inow suggest eight lessons for studying local economic governance. Theselargely derive from the preceding theoretical review (supplemented on occasionwith arguments from my earlier work) and are meant to serve as analyticalguidelines rather than as research hypotheses. Before presenting theseguidelines, however, two general cautions are needed. The following lessonsare, to repeat, concerned with economic governance; but by no means all urbanregimes give this issue the highest priority. Moreover, given the rigorousconditions they establish for success in this regard, these guidelines arebest understood as a negative heuristic. For they are more likely to serve inmost case studies to identify sources of governance failure than success.

The first lesson concerns objects of governance. Those regulation theoristsopposed to functionalist arguments regard modes of regulation as beingconstitutive of the objects they regulate: objects and modes of regulation co-evolve in a structurally coupled (and, often, indeed, strategically co-ordinated) manner (on this, see Jessop 1990; and Painter, this volume). Thusone should study how the local economy comes to be constituted as an object ofeconomic and extra-economic regulation. This involves examining two interlinkeddistinctions: (a) the local economy vs. its supra-local economic environment;and (b) the local economy vs. its extra-economic local environment (community,the political system, welfare state, education system, religious institutions,

etc.). The first distinction is premissed on the idea that, whatever thevagaries and contingencies of economic development on a global scale, it mightbe possible to endogenize and control at least some conditions bearing uponlocal economic development. At stake here is how the boundaries of the localeconomy are discursively constructed and materialized. The second distinctionrefers to the means-ends relations involved in attempts to develop localstrategies from an integral economic perspective and concerns the range ofactivities that need to be co-ordinated to realize a given economicdevelopment strategy.

The second lesson derives from the regulation approach and work on thegovernance of complexity. Both the supra-local economic environment and theextra-economic local environment are more complex than local economic actorscan understand (especially in real time) and both will always involve a morecomplex web of causality than they could ever control (since adequate controlwould require that local economic actors command diverse means of influencingthe interaction of causal mechanisms over time and space corresponding to thecomplexity of those mechanisms). Moreover, as economic and economicallyrelevant activities increasingly extend over larger spatial scales, it getsharder to demarcate a relatively autonomous economic space at less than globalscale. Thus we must direct attention to the role of the spatial imaginary andeconomic narratives and/or discourses in demarcating a local economic spacewith an imagined community of economic interests from the seamless web of achanging global-regional-national-local nexus. There is no reason, of course,why such a subset of economic relations should coincide with a given politicalterritory. Nor is there any reason a priori why the temporalities of economicshould coincide with cycles or rhythms related to localized forms ofgovernment and governance or with their overdetermination by outside forces.Thus we must also consider the specific practices, if any, which tend totransform this into a real space amenable to regulation and/or governanceconcerned to realize these common interests over a given time horizon. Thiswill typically involve organizing local governance on scales that extendbeyond local government. According to Gramsci’s views on the reciprocalnecessity of base and superstructure, a key role in both respects would fallhere to intellectual forces (broadly understood) involved in elaborating the‘ethico-political’ aspects of the relevant historical bloc. Whether theysucceed or not is, of course, another matter entirely.

Lesson three introduces the neo-Gramscian concept of accumulation strategy tobuild on this double demarcation of a manageable economic space and its extra-economic conditions. Struggles over the economic and social modes of economicregulation play a key role in shaping and unifying different supra-national,national, regional, and local modes of growth. As the different structuralforms of the capitalist economy (the commodity, money, wage, price, tax, andcompany forms) are generic features of all capitalist economic relations andare unified only as modes of expression of generalized commodity production,

any substantive unity that characterizes a given capitalist regime in a giveneconomic space must be rooted elsewhere. One such source is accumulationstrategies. These define a specific economic ‘growth model’ for a giveneconomic space and its various extra-economic preconditions and they outline ageneral strategy appropriate to its realisation. As noted above, there is akey role here for organic intellectuals linked to the dominant class. It mustbe admitted that, regarding Fordism, Gramsci claimed their role would begreater in interwar Europe, which had a more complex class and socialstructure than the United States; in the latter, the emerging hegemony ofFordism was more securely rooted in the factory and had less need ofprofessional political and intellectual intermediaries (Gramsci 1971: 285).Whatever the merits of his argument for the emergence and consolidation ofFordism on both sides of the Atlantic, however, it is evident that majorpolitical, intellectual, and moral struggles have occurred in shaping theemerging post-Fordist modes of regulation with their new, more flexible homooeconomicus, new norms of production and consumption, new discourses andsocietal paradigms, new structural forms and institutional supports, and newmodes of government and governance. Accumulation strategies can be defined fordifferent spatial scales from international regimes through supranationalblocs to national and regional economies and thence to the local. Althoughthis concept has generally been applied to the national level (itself areflection of the dominance of national economies and national states in theFordist era), it is also relevant to the regional and local level. Indeed thecrisis of Fordism has made it even more relevant (see section IV).

Lesson four concerns the need to examine the relationship between localaccumulation strategies and prevailing hegemonic projects. Since economies(even in their inclusive sense) are always embedded in a wider ethico-political context, the stability of the latter also merits attention. A keyrole may be played here by hegemonic projects which help secure the relativeunity of diverse social forces. A hegemonic project achieves this by resolvingthe abstract problem of conflicts between particular interests and the generalinterest. It mobilizes support behind a concrete programme of action whichasserts a contingent general interest in the pursuit of objectives thatexplicitly or implicitly advance the long-term interests of the hegemonicclass (fraction) and thereby privileges particular economic-corporateinterests compatible with this programme whilst derogating the pursuit ofother particular interests that are inconsistent with it. Moreover, whilst itserves the long-run interests of the dominant class (or class fraction), thelatter will typically sacrifice certain economic-corporate interests in theshort-term to help legitimate its overall hegemonic project. For Gramsci,hegemony was generally realized at the ‘national-popular’ level and expressedin the organization of national states; more recent studies have exploredinternational hegemony in Gramscian terms. However, if one of the principalfeatures of contemporary capitalism is the ‘hollowing out’ of national statesand the resurgence of regions and cities, it is important to consider how farhegemony can also be re-located (perhaps once again) at the subnational level.

This is particularly likely in more federal or decentralized regimes but thereare also clear signs of a resurgence of municipal governance in unitarystates. Nonetheless we should note that, just like national hegemony, localhegemonies may also vary in their relative inclusiveness, in the balancebetween active consent, fraud-corruption, and coercion, and in the relativeweight of government as opposed to governance. It would be interesting toexplore differences here between urban regimes in, for example, export-ledflexible industrial districts in boom regions and property-led urbanregeneration in crisis-prone Fordist cities.

The fifth lesson derives from state-theoretical (and, more broadly,‘strategic-relational’) arguments that institutional ensembles involve quitespecific forms of strategic selectivity. A major problems with Gramsci’sanalysis of hegemony was its emphasis on the changing balance of social forcesat the expense of the underlying balance of power inscribed within specificstructures. At most he discussed this in terms of metaphors such as war ofposition and war of manoeuvre. But it is important to analyze both how far,and the manner in which, institutions and apparatuses are strategicallyselective, i.e., involve a structurally-inscribed mobilization of strategicbias.7 Particular forms of economic and political system privilege somestrategies over others, access by some forces over others, some interests overothers, some spatial scales of action over others, some time horizons overothers, some coalition possibilities over others (cf. on the state, Jessop,1990: 260 and passim). Structural constraints always operate selectively: theyare not absolute and unconditional but always temporally, spatially, agency-,and strategy-specific. This has implications both for general struggles overthe economic and extra-economic regularization of capitalist economies andspecific struggles involved in securing the hegemony of a specificaccumulation strategy. Although the idea of strategic selectivity (and itsprecursor, structural selectivity) was initially developed in analyses of thestate, it has obvious implications for research into modes of growth. Here itwould refer to the differential impact of the core structural (includingspatio-temporal) features of a labour process, an accumulation regime, or amode of regulation on the relative capacity of particular forces organized inparticular ways to successfully pursue a specific economic strategy over agiven time horizon and economic space, acting alone or in combination withother forces and in the face of competition, rivalry, or opposition from yetother forces.

Combining this approach with work on the strategic selectivity of governanceregimes should offer powerful tools for urban regime analysis. For not alleconomic and political forces derive the same advantages from specific modesof growth and/or governance. Mapping such asymmetries has an important role indefining the nature of urban regimes — especially as the strategic selectivityof local institutions affects their long-run stability.  Indeed, thedurability of urban regimes depends not only on the overall coherence and

economic feasibility of the strategies they promote but also on strategiccapacities rooted in local institutional structures and organizations. Thissaid, of course, another implication of the strategic-relational approach isthat agents are reflexive, capable of reformulating within limits their ownidentities and interests, and able to engage in strategic calculation abouttheir current situation (see Jessop 1982, 1996a). This opens the possibilityof strategic action to transform the strategic selectivity of extant regimes.For example, much of the Thatcherite attack on local government autonomy inBritain and the associated transfer of local authority functions was due to aconcern to redefine access to local power and promote ‘enterprise culture’.

The sixth lesson is more clearly neo-Gramscian and concerns the scope of suchpower structures. It is important to examine how urban regimes operate througha strategically selective combination of political society and civil society,government and governance, ‘parties’ and partnerships. In this way one couldshow how some urban regimes may be linked to the formation of a localhegemonic bloc (or ‘power bloc’) and its associated historical bloc.Nonetheless one must recall that Gramsci himself allowed for a wide range ofpower structures and modes of exercising rule — not all of which involve aninclusive form of hegemony based on active consent. He also emphasized thatpolitics could not be read off mechanically from the economic base and notedthat many features of politics (especially in the short-term) are due topolitical miscalculation, the impact of specific political conjunctures, ororganizational necessities of different kinds which have little, if any,direct connection to the economic base (1971: 408-409). Conversely, in thelonger run, he emphasized that viable hegemonic projects (and, one might add,accumulation strategies) must have some organic connection to the dominantmode of growth. They cannot simply be ‘arbitrary, rationalistic, and willed’but must have some prospects of forming and consolidating a specifichistorical bloc (see Gramsci 1971: 376-377).

The seventh lesson is that, whatever specific structural forms and politicalprojects sustain or, at least, privilege the ruling bloc in an urban regime,there is also a need for an adequate repertoire of governance mechanisms andpractices to ensure its continued vitality in the face of a turbulentenvironment and emergent conflicts which threaten the unstable equilibrium ofcompromise on which it is based. Governance failure will have a serious impacton the relative stability of specific urban regimes and the success ofdifferent local economic strategies.

The eighth lesson is cautionary. It would be a gross mistake to assume that alocal mode of growth, a local mode of regulation, or an urban regime can existin isolation from its environment. Whilst this comment may seem unnecessaryregarding local modes of growth, discussions of modes of regulation tend toneglect how far both the social and economic aspects of regulation areembedded in tangled hierarchies for any given spatialized object of

regulation. Just as the postwar Atlantic Fordist mode of national economicgrowth had international and regional/local supports, so does the mode ofgrowth of regional and local economies depend on more encompassing economiccomplementarities, structural forms, modes of governance, and so forth.Strictly speaking, it would be more appropriate, if somewhat convoluted, totalk about pluri-spatial, multi-temporal, and poly-contextual modes ofregulating local economies and their relative integration into moreencompassing economic spaces. Analogous problems have already been noted incriticisms of urban growth coalition theories (cf. Harding 1995).

III. Local Economies and Economic Strategies

In depicting a local accumulation regime we encounter a definitional problemwhich is not only present for observers but also affects local participants.This is how to demarcate a local economy and its economic and extra-economicconditions of existence and, on this basis, to formulate a local accumulationstrategy concerned with local economic development. Such strategies can bedefined for various economic units (both territorial and functional) but myconcern here is with possible features of local accumulation strategiesassociated with specific urban regimes. The variable geometries of economicand political boundaries pose major problems concerning whether localpolitical forces have the juridico-political capacities to manage or governthe local economy. This is often noted for the USA but also occurs elsewhere.Any solution depends as much on the spatial imaginary and the links betweenstate and civil society, however, as on formal territorial demarcations andthe re-allocation of formal legal and political powers. For, once one adoptsan integral economic and integral political approach to local economicdevelopment, it is possible to see how local economies and local regimes mightbe organized across borders. There is clearly a key role here for local growthcoalitions (broadly understood to comprise the major forces mobilized behindthe dominant local accumulation strategy rather than limited propertydevelopment coalitions) in shaping the conditions for local economicperformance.

The choice of spatial scale at which local economic development should bepursued is inherently strategic. It is contingent on various political,economic, and social specificities of a particular urban and regional contextat a particular moment in time. The temporal and spatial are not separablehere. The choice of time horizon will in part dictate the appropriate spatialscale at which development is sought. In turn, the choice of spatial scalewill in part determine the time horizon within which local economic growth canbe anticipated. Thus the discursive constitution of the boundaries and natureof the (local) economy affects the temporal dimension of strategy-making aswell as its spatial scale. This is quite explicit in many economic strategydocuments — with powerful players seeking to shape both the spatial andtemporal horizons to which economic and political decisions are oriented so

that the economic and political benefits are ‘optimized’ (on the case of theEast Thames Corridor in Britain, see, e.g., Jessop 1996b). Hence the abilityto match spatial scale and time horizon may be a crucial factor shaping thesuccess or failure of local economic development strategies associated withurban regimes. When space and time horizons are articulated more or lesssuccessfully, economic development will occur within relatively stable ‘time-space envelopes’ (cf. Massey 1994: 225; Sum 1995).

Regarding the supra-local economic environment and the extra-economic localenvironment, the attempted governance of complexity involved in localaccumulation strategies requires key players to undertake two interrelatedtasks. These are: firstly, to model the factors relevant to local economicdevelopment based on the analytical distinction between the local economy andits two above-named environments; and, secondly, to develop the ‘requisitevariety’ in policy instruments and/or resources to be deployed in the pursuitof local accumulation strategies. This puts considerable demands on themonitoring and self-reflexive capacities of local growth coalitions andsuggests the importance of their own organizational learning capacities aswell as those of the local or regional economy as a whole. The greater thecapacities of a specific group or network to learn, the greater the chances ofits becoming hegemonic in defining the local accumulation strategy; and, inaddition, that the latter will be organic rather than ‘arbitrary,rationalistic, and willed’. In both respects economic hegemony also requiresacceptance of the strategy by other key players whose cooperation is needed todeliver the extra-economic conditions to realize an accumulation strategy.

A final point to note is the extent to which local economic and politicalforces can draw on wider sources of knowledge about the economic and extra-economic conditions which bear on the competitiveness of local economies. Forstable modes of local economic growth typically involve building a structuredcomplementarity (or coherence) between the local economy and one or more ofits encompassing regional, national, and supranational accumulation regimes.Since capitalism is always characterized by uneven development and tendenciestowards polarization, the success of some economic spaces (and the success ofthe spaces whose growth dynamic is complemented by their own) will inevitablybe associated with the marginalization of other economic spaces. This is seenin the changing hierarchy of economic spaces as capitalist growth dynamics areaffected by the relative exhaustion of some accumulation strategies and modesof growth and/or the dynamic potential of innovations in materials, processes,products, organization, or markets. This in turn means that different ‘urbangrowth coalitions’ should orient local accumulation strategies to anassessment of the position of their local economic space in the urbanhierarchy and international division of labour. This explains the wide rangeof alternative strategies in different localities, highlighting the need foreconomic development initiatives that are sensitive to the specificities of

particular local economies (cf. Barlow 1995; Hay and Jessop 1995; Krätke1995).

These considerations make it important that strategically reflexive actors onthe local scene try to choose appropriate spatial and temporal horizons ofaction as well as appropriate strategies and tactics to improve their chancesof realizing their aims and objectives. Yet any attempt to isolate spatio-temporally a set of social relations from the complex and continuous web ofcausal connections is inherently fragile and bound to produce unintendedconsequences. These will be harder to deal with and learn from to the extentthat the environment is more turbulent and/or the system more complex.Moreover, although all actors routinely monitor the effects of their actions,such turbulence and complexity obviously constrain their ability to engage instrategic (including organizational) learning.

IV. Changing Urban Regimes

We can now attempt a re-interpretation of the changed economic agenda ofeconomic partnerships in contemporary western capitalism. It was always one-sided to suggest that local growth coalitions were oriented primarily toproperty development. For during Fordism, as now, strategies pursued by localauthorities and agencies of local governance were numerous, spatially andtemporally specific, and divergent. But it is fair to say that the localcoalitions were oriented to specific models of development which generallycomplemented the dominance of Atlantic Fordism and its distinctive forms ofuneven development. Thus local states under Fordism typically provided a localinfrastructure to support Fordist mass production, promoted collectiveconsumption, implemented local welfare state policies, and, in some cases(especially as the crisis unfolded), engaged in competitive subsidies toattract new jobs or prevent the loss of established jobs. Whilst localeconomic conditions clearly shaped how individual local governments saw theirrespectiveeconomic roles, there was an almost universal commitment to theKeynesian welfare social policy role. These generalizations apply moststrongly, of course, to trends in Europe. Indeed, as Gramsci himself noted,hegemony was more rooted in the factory in the USA; inter alia, this meantthat Keynesian welfare was supplied in part through company- or industry-levelbargaining for those in the privileged Fordist sectors of segmented labourmarkets. Even in the USA, however, the heyday of Fordism witnessed attempts tocomplement military Keynesianism with a ‘Great Society’ reinvigoration of theNew Deal welfare state.

With the crisis of Fordism on both sides of the Atlantic, however, we candiscern a transition from systems of local government organized aroundexpanding, localized delivery of ‘Keynesian welfare state’ functions towards asystem of local governance organized around what, by analogy, can be termed a‘Schumpeterian workfare’ role. This role is quite novel. In economic terms, it

attempts to promote flexibility, economies of scope, and permanent innovationin open economies by intervening more widely and deeply on the supply-side ofthe economy and tries to strengthen as far as possible the structuralcompetitiveness of the relevant economic spaces. And, in social terms, itsubordinates social to economic policy with particular emphasis on labourmarket flexibility, structural competitiveness, and the impact of the socialwage as an international cost of production (cf. Jessop 1993).

Developments in the global economy have radically altered the relevance of thetypical Fordist demarcations of economic space. National economies are nolonger taken for granted as the main space and/or object of economicregulation; and the range of extra-economic conditions considered to besignificant for securing economic competitiveness has been much extended.Thus, whereas the crisis of Fordism initially led to attempts to reinvigoratethe conditions for Fordist accumulation at local and national levels, aconsensus (valid or not) has since grown that the economic spaces mostrelevant to accumulation and the main extra-economic conditions for economiccompetitiveness have changed significantly. This is reflected in dominanteconomic discourses and the demarcation of spaces of accumulation. Alongsidediscourses of globalization, triadization, and so on (with their importantsupra-national strategic implications), there is the alleged discovery (or,perhaps, re-discovery) of flexible industrial districts, innovative milieux,technopoles, entrepreneurial cities, ‘learning regions’, cross-border regions,global cities, and so forth (with their more localized strategicimplications).

The impact of globalization, the growth of new core technologies, and themarked paradigm shift from Fordism to post-Fordism8 are also associated with afar broader account of the conditions making for economic competitiveness. Itis now held to depend on a wide range of extra-economic factors and thus toneed a wide range of competitiveness-enhancing policies.

This dual re-orientation has been reinforced in so far as regional and localeconomies have been seen to have their own specific problems which could beresolved neither through national macro-economic policies nor throughuniformly imposed meso- or micro-economic policies. This perception indicatedthe need for new measures to restructure capital in regard to these newlysignificant economic spaces and for new forms of urban governance to implementthem. This is associated with demands for specifically tailored and targetedurban and regional policies to be implemented from below, with or withoutnational or supranational sponsorship or facilitation. These tendencies arereflected at local level in a widening and deepening of initiatives in re-skilling, technology transfer, local venture capital, innovation centres,science and high technology industrial parks, incubator units for smallbusiness, support for entrepreneurship, efforts to expand export markets, andso on. This in turn affects the definition of economic spaces. For, rightly or

wrongly, they are seen as much more strongly socially and/or institutionallyembedded and, perhaps consequently, as requiring more complex forms ofregularization and governance than Fordist forms of economic organization.

This is related to a shift in economic governance mechanisms away from thetypical postwar bifurcation of market and state. Indeed, postwar forms ofurban government which rested on this institutional distinction were oftenseen as ill-equipped to pursue new approaches and thus came to be seen as partof the problem of poor economic performance. In part this is reflected(especially in Europe) in the search for supranational forms of government tocompensate for the deficiencies of local as well as national government; butit is also associated with the search for new forms of governance at alllevels able to overcome the problems linked to pure market or hierarchical,bureaucratic solutions. Thus we find new forms of network-based forms ofpolicy coordination emerging — cross-cutting previous ‘private-public’boundaries and involving ‘key’ economic players from local and regional aswell as national and, increasingly, international economies. Sub-nationalgovernments (including urban authorities) have been reorganized to promoteeconomic regeneration in partnership with a range of local (or localized)economic, social, and political forces. This entails active, state-sponsoreddispersion of local power from elected local authorities to a wide range oflocal (or localized) economic and political forces. This is intended toenhance the reorganized local state’s strategic capacities in the ever moreclosely interconnected fields of social and economic policy-making; and tohelp it cope with the far-reaching political repercussions of economic andsocial restructuring.

Although the increased significance of governance typically involves a loss ofdecisional and operational autonomy by state apparatuses (at whatever level),it can also enhance their capacity to project state power and achieve stateobjectives by mobilizing knowledge and power resources from influential non-governmental partners or stakeholders. However, as regional and local statesare becoming a partner, facilitator, and arbitrator in public-privateconsortia, growth coalitions, etc., they risk losing their overallcoordinating role for and on behalf of local community interests and, thereby,a part of their legitimacy. This problem is particularly acute where urbanareas have active social movements with political agendas rooted in thecontinuing crisis of Fordism and/or the economic and social pressures arisingfrom more flexible, but also more insecure, post-Fordist economic order.

A final point to note regarding changing urban regimes is the enhanced role ofthe local state and local governance mechanisms in international economicactivities. This is closely related to more general changes in the autonomyand capacity of national states due to the expansion of supranationalintergovernmental regimes, local governance regimes, and transnationalizedlocal policy networks. Duchacek was one of the first theorists to describe the

expanding regional, provincial, and local government roles in internationalaffairs. He referred to ‘micro-diplomacy’ (including overseas representation,promotion, lobbying, etc.) in such fields as economic interchange,environmental policy, and welfare (e.g., Duchacek 1984). The result is a‘perforated sovereignty’ where nations are more open to trans-sovereigncontacts by subnational governments and where international policy transferbetween localities is likely to increase (see Cappellin 1992; Church and Reid1995). This reinforces the importance of looking beyond increasinglyartificial local boundaries in studying urban regimes and growth coalitions.It also poses the problem of increased vulnerability by allowing foreignactors to divide and rule different levels of policy making (cf. Rycroft 1990:218-19, 229).

Since post-Fordist economies will be co-constituted through post-Fordist modesof regulation (see above), there is no pre-given blueprint from which toderive appropriate forms of governance. Regulation theorists have long arguedthat new modes of regulation emerge as ‘chance discoveries’ through trial-and-error search processes. This is reflected in continuing experiments to findnew, more adequate forms of articulation of regulation and governance inresponse to narratives which ascribe part of the blame for failure and crisison previous models of urban politics and local economies. It is hardlysurprising that there is widespread experimentation with new forms of economicgovernance for new urban regimes and that there are always new fads andfashions for models (and their backers) that appear to promise success.

V. Concluding Remarks

In the spirit of this volume, I have proposed an alternative research agendaintended to supplement and reorient rather than to wholly supplant the studyof urban regimes. Thus I have drawn on Gramscian state theory, the regulationapproach, recent insights into governance, and some reflections on the‘spatial imaginary’ in order to present some key dimensions to urban regimes,their structural and strategic dimensions, their economic and ‘ethico-political’ moments, and their embeddedness in a wider economic and extra-economic context. My primary concern with agenda-setting and a firm editorialreminder not to stray beyond strict word limits have precluded anypresentation of new empirical material (although my arguments have been shapedby ongoing research in Greater Manchester and the Thames Gateway in England)(see, for example, Hay and Jessop 1995). Given the principal aims of thepresent volume, however, this theoretical and methodological focus is probablyjustified. Accordingly I now want to note some key points for thisalternative, strategic-relational approach to urban regimes.

Methodologically I hope to have added to arguments presented elsewhere in thisvolume on the potential role of the regulation approach as a supplement to thestill evolving urban regimes approach. But I have done so by putting a

particular gloss on the regulation approach — one that notes its remarkablesimilarities to Gramsci’s work on the state in its inclusive sense and, evenmore strikingly perhaps, his various reflections on the ethico-political andpsycho-economic moments of economic regimes. It is certainly worth remarkingthe significant extent to which each paradigm adopts a strategic-relationalapproach and also places its specific theoretical object in its wider socialcontext. Thus, whereas Gramsci examined the social embeddedness and socialregularization of state power, the regulation approach examines the socialembeddedness and social regularization of accumulation. For Gramsci, thismeant examining the modalities of political power (hegemony, coercion,domination, leadership) which enable a historically specific hegemonic bloc(power bloc) to project power beyond the boundaries of the state and therebysecure the conditions for political class domination. Conversely, forregulationists, this involves studying the modalities of economic regulation(the wage relation, money and credit, forms of competition, internationalregimes, and the state) which regularize, discipline, and guide micro-economicbehaviour within limits that are compatible in given historical circumstanceswith the expanded reproduction of capitalism as a whole. In this sense bothapproaches are interested in the strategic selectivity of specific regimes(political or economic respectively) and their implications for classdomination (likewise political or economic).

In bringing these approaches together we can strengthen each of them and, atthe same time, develop useful tools for studying the nature and succession ofurban regimes. Gramsci’s own work is itself marred by its gestural (if stilltheoretically tantalizing) treatment of the ‘decisive economic nucleus’ ofhegemony. This neglect is often more serious in recent neo-Gramscian work. Regulation theory is one way to remedy this particular deficiency and has thevirtue of intrinsic compatibility with Gramscian concepts. Moreover, as Itried to indicate above, it was in certain respects anticipated in Gramsci’swritings. Conversely, the regulation approach is regularly criticized for itsneglect of the distinctive dynamic of the state system and political regimes.Only a few theorists (mostly working outside the Parisian mainstream) havepaid much attention to the state system. More generally there has been a one-sided concern with the various structural forms and institutions involved inthe overall reproduction-régulation of capitalism to the neglect of the manyand varied governance mechanisms involved in the organization or self-organization of the complex web of interdependencies among these forms andinstitutions. Clearly this is a serious defect from the viewpoint of someoneinterested in urban regimes and suggests that in its predominant versions theregulation approach can at bestcontextualize the nature and succession of urbanregimes rather than explain them (important exceptions regarding the state canbe found in the work of German theorists working with regulationist concepts,e.g., Esser and Hirsch 1988, Keil 1993, or Mayer 1994). Lastly, the regulationapproach has neglected the role of the ethico-political dimension toregulation and, in particular, the key role of economic discourses, theorganic intellectuals involved in elaborating accumulation strategies and

hegemonic projects, and their implications for the formation of economicsubjects. The study of urban regimes needs to address such issues and linkthem to the current transformation of economic strategies.

Nonetheless it is important to note here that neo-Gramscian theory and theregulation approach are still only complementary. They cannot be combinedwithout further theoretical work to establish more detailed conceptuallinkages and logical connections. And, in doing so one must be careful toavoid any simple-minded reduction of urban politics to the needs of theeconomic base (let alone a base that is understood in narrow economic terms).Moreover, as already suggested in my comments on governance theory here andelsewhere (see, for example, Jessop 1995b), both the regulationist and neo-Gramscian approaches would benefit from more interest in issues of governanceand meta-governance.

Two additional lessons need to be stated. First, as already noted above, itwould be wrong to attribute any (let alone all) of the changes identified inurban regimes theory simply to the effect of economic changes. The regulationapproach is useful for contextualizing changes in the nature of urban regimesbut cannot directly explain them. Due regard must be paid to how economicissues are first translated into political problems for action by the state inits inclusive sense and their solution is mediated by the structurally inscribed,strategically selective nature of political regimes. Moreover, as I haveconceded above, by no means all urban regimes prioritize economic development.Thus many of the preceding arguments must be interpreted in terms of the needfor alternative hegemonic projects to recognize that the viability of urbanregimes depends in the last instance on the economy in the sense that adequaterevenues must either be generated locally or re-directed from more succesfuleconomic spaces elsewhere. Second, from a more state-centric viewpoint, itwould be wrong to suggest that any of these trends are purely attributable toeconomic changes, however ‘integrally’ or ‘inclusively’ these are analyzed.For there could also be distinctive political reasons prompting state managersand/or other relevant political forces to engage in institutional redesign andstrategic reorientation regarding local economic strategy (cf. Jessop 1992a;1995a; 1995c).

Endnotes1. This paper arises from an ESRC research programme on local governance,grant number L311253032. It has benefitted from comments by my researchofficer, Gordon MacLeod, other participants in the ESRC programme, and theeditor and contributors to the present volume. The usual disclaimers apply.

2. Anderson (1991) regards nations as ‘imagined’ communities; states, regions,cities, etc., are likewise ‘imagined’ entities.

3. Although Gramsci probably misattributes the idea of ‘determined market’ toRicardo, this is unimportant for present purposes.

4. Current splits within the Conservative Government and the Establishmentreflect the narrowing of Major government horizons to the retention of officeat the expense of establishing a new productive world.

5. American radical political economists who work on social structures ofaccumulation come even closer to the Gramscian concept of historic bloc. See,for example: Kotz, McDonough, and Reich, 1994.

6. Gramsci himself often criticizes pocket-geniuses who resort to simpleeconomistic explanations for any event (Gramsci 1971: 167 and ???).

7. On the mobilization of bias, see Schattschneider (1970). Similar ideasoccur in the debate on the three faces of power between pluralists and elitetheorists.

8. This reference to a paradigm shift does not imply that there has alreadybeen a transition from Fordism to post-Fordism in the real economy. Apart fromany conflation this would introduce between strategic paradigms and realeconomies, some commentators argue that a real transition has not yet occurredand that all that we can witness are various states of disorder.

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