Local Self-Government and the Right to the City 9780773597280

Table of contents :
Cover
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction - The Hounds that Didn’t Bark
PART ONE - The Local State in Capitalist Society
1 - Community Organization and Local Self-Government*
2 - Metropolitan Reform in the Capitalist City*
3 - The Local State in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives*
Postscript - Thirty Years On: Plus ça change … ?
PART TWO - Social Movements and Political Space
4 - Globalization, Movements, and the Decentred State*
5 - The City as the Hope of Democracy*
6 - Scaling Government to Politics*
Postscript - Seeing Like a City
Part THREE - Rethinking Local Democracy
7 - The Principle of Local Self-Government*
8 - Are Municipalities Creatures of the Provinces?*
9 - Local Self-Government and the Right to the City*
Conclusion - Visions of Democracy
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

l o c a l s e l f - g ov e r n m e n t and the right to the city

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McGill-Queen’s Studies i n U r ba n G ov e r n a n c e Series editors: Martin Horak and Kristin Good

In recent years there has been an explosion of interest in local politics and the governance of cities – both in Canada and around the world. Globally, the city has become a consequential site where instances of social conflict and of cooperation play out. Urban centres are increasingly understood as vital engines of innovation and prosperity and a growing body of inter­ disciplinary research on urban issues suggests that high-performing cities have become crucial to the success of nations, even in the global era. Yet at the same time, local and regional governments continue to struggle for political recognition and for the policy resources needed to manage cities, to effectively govern, and to achieve sustainable growth. The purpose of the McGill-Queen’s Studies in Urban Governance series is to highlight the growing importance of municipal issues, local governance, and the need for policy reform in urban spaces. The series aims to answer the question “why do cities matter?” while exploring relationships between levels of government and examining the changing dynamics of metropolitan and community development. By taking a four-pronged approach to the study of urban governance, the series encourages debate and discussion of: (1) actors, institutions, and how cities are governed; (2) policy issues and policy reform; (3) the city as case study; and (4) urban politics and policy through a comparative framework. With a strong focus on governance, policy, and the role of the city, this series welcomes manuscripts from a broad range of disciplines and viewpoints.

 1 Local Self-Government and the Right to the City Warren Magnusson

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Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

Warren Magnusson

McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston • London • Ithaca

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©  McGill-Queen’s University Press 2015 isbn 978-0-7735-4564-9 (cloth) isbn 978-0-7735-4565-6 (paper) isbn 978-0-7735-9728-0 (epdf) isbn 978-0-7735-9729-7 (epub) Legal deposit third quarter 2015 Bibliothèque nationale du Québec Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that is 100% ancient forest free (100% post-­consumer recycled), processed chlorine free McGill-Queen’s University Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Magnusson, Warren, 1947–, author Local self-government and the right of the city / Warren Magnusson. (McGill-Queen’s studies in urban governance; 1) Includes bibliographical references and index. Issued in print and electronic formats. isb n 978-0-7735-4564-9 (bound). – is bn 978-0-7735-4565-6 (pbk.). – isb n 978-0-7735-9728-0 (epdf). – is bn 978-0-7735-9729-7 (epub) Municipal government.  2. Communities – Political aspects. 3. Political participation.  I. Title. J S78.M33 2015

320.8'5

C 2015-901460-3 C 2015-901461-1

This book was typeset by Interscript in 10.5/13 Sabon.

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Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction: The Hounds that Didn’t Bark  3 part one  the local state in capitalist society  31   1 Community Organization and Local Self-Government  33   2 Metropolitan Reform in the Capitalist City  59   3 The Local State in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives  85 Postscript: Thirty Years On: Plus ça change … ? 115 part two  social movements and political space  123   4 Globalization, Movements, and the Decentred State  125   5 The City as the Hope of Democracy  156   6 Scaling Government to Politics  176 Postscript: Seeing Like a City  195 part three  rethinking local democracy  201   7 The Principle of Local Self-Government  203   8 Are Municipalities Creatures of the Provinces?  224   9 Local Self-Government and the Right to the City  251

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vi Contents

Conclusion: Visions of Democracy  272 Notes 285 Bibliography 321 Index 361

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Acknowledgments

I thank the publishers of the following essays for permission to reprint them here. Chapter 1: “Community Organization and Local SelfGovernment” in Politics and Government of Urban Canada, 4th ed., ed. L.D. Feldman (Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 61–86. Chapter 2: “Metropolitan Reform in the Capitalist City,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 14, no. 3 (1981), 557–85. Chapter 3: “The Local State in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives,” Canadian Public Adminis­ tration 28, no. 4 (1985), 575–99. Chapter 4: “Globalization, Move­ ments, and the Decentred State” in Organizing Dissent: Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed., ed. William K. Carroll (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1997), 94–113. Chapter 5: “The City as the Hope of Democracy,” in Urban Affairs: Back on the Policy Agenda, eds. Caroline Andrew, Katherine Graham, and Susan Phillips (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 331–44. Chapter 6: “Scaling Government to Politics” in Leviathan Undone: Towards a Political Economy of Scale, eds. Roger Keil and Rianne Mahon (Vancouver: U B C Press, 2009), 105–20. Chapter 8: “Are Municipalities Creatures of the Provinces?” Journal of Canadian Studies 39:2 (Spring 2005), 5–29. I also thank my students and colleagues at the University of Victoria – both in the Department of Political Science and in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Cultural, Social and Political Thought – for their ongoing stimulation and support. I have also benefitted from many interactions with colleagues in the Urban and Local Politics section of the Canadian Political Science Association, as well as the Urban Affairs Association in the US.

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viii Acknowledgments

I began this work at Oxford under the doctoral supervision of the late John Plamenatz and continued it under the supervision of the late Jim (L.J.) Sharpe, both of whom were extremely helpful in different ways. I had the support of a Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship at the time, and have since received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for various aspects of my work. It has been helpful to travel to various cities and share work at conferences, and my university has been a prime source of support in that respect, for which I am grateful. As this will probably be my last book, I hope that my wife, Sharon Walls, will at last permit me to thank her in print for all she has done for us both. In recent years, our daughter, Rachel Magnusson, has become a political theorist in her own right, and I have profited from my ongoing conversations with her, especially about the work of Jacques Rancière. And, of course, there is Rachel and Jonathan’s son, Daniel, to whom I can only say that I did my best, even though there are not as many numbers in this book as he would have liked.

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l o c a l s e l f - g ov e r n m e n t and the right to the city

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Introduction

The Hounds that Didn’t Bark

This book is haunted by an old idea: the thought that people could actually come together in their own communities and decide for themselves how things ought to be: what rules ought to apply, what things should be provided collectively, and what should be left to everyone’s own initiative. Scholars interested in democracy still look back to the practices of ancient Greece – the citizens’ assemblies that were the sovereign authorities in city-states like Athens – or to traditional village meetings elsewhere in the world and see models of something we have lost. Models have also come from more recent experiences of self-government in work settings, voluntary organizations, and alternative communities. But, for some, the most dramatic examples have appeared during periods of revolutionary upheaval – those moments when people have come together suddenly, as in Tunis and Cairo in 2011 or Berlin and Prague in 1989, and demanded fundamental change.1 At such times, people often try to create open assemblies where anything and everything can be debated. Such assemblies are usually fleeting and fragile, attracting intense interest for a time and then being infiltrated or overwhelmed by more organized forces. Hannah Arendt, surely one of the great political thinkers of the twentieth century, described them as “the lost treasure” of the modern revolutions.2 She was thinking not only of the French and Russian revolutions of 1789 and 1917, but also of the American revolution of 1776 and the many thwarted revolutions since, including the ones in Europe in 1848, the Paris Commune of 1870, and the  then-recent Hungarian uprising of 1956. It is easy to think of similar instances from 1968, 1989, and 2011, years of upheaval in many countries. The thing that Arendt was pointing at – the sudden

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Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

emergence and equally quick disappearance of open assemblies or “councils” in which people tried to exercise their democratic rights directly – seems to be a persistent feature of modern politics, one that highlights the gap between the ideal of democracy and the ongoing practice of it. In Arendt’s view, the American Revolution was the most successful of the modern revolutions, because it institutionalized some of the things that opponents of the old regime wanted. Americans ultimately got a bill of rights and a form of representative government, as well as the rule of law, which are no mean things. The political reforms sought by the revolutionaries were not overwhelmed by what Arendt called “the social question”: that is, poverty, deprivation, and exploitation. What emerged in France in the nineteenth century and Russia in the twentieth after the terrors that both countries experienced was at best a bureaucratic regime dedicated to economic improvement and at worst a corrupt, abusive, and oppressive kleptocracy. The democracy that people sought was nowhere in sight. Nevertheless, something like the American model – call it liberal democracy – has been promoted quite successfully since the ­eighteenth century. Britain, and what we used to call the white dominions, including Canada, developed a different variant, but on similar principles: representative government, the rule of law, wide freedoms, and firm guarantees for established rights, including rights of property. There were also various European models, such as the French, Dutch, and Swedish models, which had been established by the late nineteenth century. In the wake of the Second World War, the progress toward what came to be called democracy was accelerated: after 1945 the West Europeans recovered and reformed institutions that had been destroyed by the Nazis and Fascists; the old imperial powers were also forced to turn over authority to elected governments in the territories they had held as colonies, dependencies, protectorates, or just imperial possessions – a process that took more than thirty years; the military dictatorships that had typified much of southern Europe and Latin America mostly gave way to elected governments – with some dramatic setbacks – between the 1970s and the 1990s; the Soviet empire suddenly collapsed in 1989–91, to be replaced, at least in Central and Eastern Europe, with states modelled on those in Western Europe; and in Asia regimes more or less corresponding to the accepted model were established in Indonesia, Turkey, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan, thus replicating and extending

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Introduction 5

the earlier successes in India and Japan. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, it became possible to imagine a world in which some sort of liberal democracy would be the standard everywhere. The upheavals of the Arab Spring of 2011 seemed to portend yet another extension of the standard model. It would be easy to tell a “just so” story of human progress with such developments in mind, pointing also to the slow development of international institutions, the emergence of a human rights culture, and the gradual spread of modern prosperity to parts of the world beyond the West as such. Not many people would buy that story completely, however, given the ongoing threats of war and environmental collapse and the continuing impact of the social question – the effective exclusion of billions of people from most of the benefits of modern life. What progress there has been is fragile, as we all know. Moreover, at least some of us are still haunted by the lost treasure to which Arendt referred. Liberal democracy is all very well, but it is not actually very democratic or even very liberal. It rests on a capitalist base, and as Marx explained very effectively a century and a half ago, capitalism is inherently inegalitarian and it imposes a strict and alien discipline on all of us. It gives the capitalists – the ones who own almost all the industries, technologies, and natural resources deployed in modern production – control over most of what is to be done and how, and makes everyone else dependent on their favour. This inequality is at the root of the social question that Arendt set aside as politically insoluble. To me, and I think most other readers of hers, that is an unacceptable evasion. On the other hand, the matter she did address – the lost treasure – is also of fundamental importance, and it would not be resolved even if the familiar inequalities of capitalist society were suddenly overcome. Socioeconomic equality is an extraordinarily important objective, but it is not the same thing as political equality. Political equality, which is what democracy is about, depends on closing the gap between the rulers and the ruled, the governors and the governed. The institutions that we now identify with democracy – especially regular national elections – actually maintain that gap, rather than close it, since they set our rulers apart and give them a veneer of democratic authority. As a result, it seems, many people have just given up on those institutions, because they seem like a fraud, meant to create an illusion of democracy that conceals something different: the old story of the rich and the powerful controlling everyone else’s destiny.

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6

Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

For me at least, it is difficult to imagine a more thoroughgoing democracy without institutions of the sort Arendt had in mind. To the extent that she had a concrete referent – other than the fleeting assemblies that appeared during revolutionary upheavals – it was to the town meetings of New England, meetings that had been crucial during the American Revolution and that were seedbeds of democratic practice before and afterwards. These were the bodies that Tocqueville – no revolutionary himself – praised in his analysis of American democracy,3 and to which John Stuart Mill pointed – somewhat more hesitantly – as a training ground for responsible democrats4. As I note, especially in the essays in Parts 1 and 3 of this book, the idea that local government has to offer an entrée for ordinary people to engage in the business of governing, or at least to become more intimately involved in the development of public policy, has been one of the standard ideas associated, practically since the beginning, with the modern state. The most powerful of the modern states, like Britain, France, and the US, were organized on a scale that dwarfed the city-states of ancient Greece and medieval Italy, where many of the practices we associate with democracy were developed. Everyone recognized that there had to be local authorities, but the question was whether these authorities should be under strict central control. In what came to be the standard analysis, some measure of local autonomy was presented as a practical necessity and a social good, a way of adapting policies to local conditions and – to some degree at least – local preferences. Given such autonomy, there was room for local democracy as a complement to national democracy; moreover, that local democracy could, in principle, be more intimate and participatory than its national counterpart. Nevertheless – and this is an ongoing theme of this book – the form of local government that is closest to the democratic ideal – namely, government in and through the popular assemblies or town meetings of the sort that Tocqueville had observed in the New England – has been routinely dismissed as an impossibility, a quaint remnant of another era that can never be recovered. It is this dismissal that set me on the long trek that has led to this book and the others that complement it.5 As I sometimes explain to people who ask me how my interests developed, I think of my quest in terms of Sherlock Holmes’s puzzle about the hounds of the Baskervilles, who failed to bark when they ought to have done so. I got interested in the problem of democracy when I was very young,

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Introduction 7

and became convinced that it had to involve measures that would allow people to participate directly in the decisions that affected them at work, in their neighbourhoods, and elsewhere. In the circles where I moved in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was a lot of interest in industrial democracy or workers’ control as a means of socializing the economy without giving too much power to the state.6 I thought that this had to be complemented by a decentralization of state power to the local level and the development of more robust democratic institutions at that level. I was confronted with the claim that all the objectives that socialists, social democrats, and liberals (in the American sense of people concerned about the social question) advanced actually depended on a centralization of authority. Only a powerful central authority could impose its rules on the capitalists or create and maintain an alternative, socialist economy. Only such an authority could ensure a fair distribution of goods and services. And only such an authority could rationalize our irrational economy, protect the environment, preserve people’s communities, and ensure that ordinary people could actually live the fulfilling lives that they deserved. Or so many people thought, and they kept gesturing at the powerful forces – most of which were embedded in the  capitalist economy – that had to be controlled. Wasn’t it the people who wanted to keep our unequal society just as it was who were most attached to ideas about local choice and local control – because they knew that weak local authorities would never stand up to the powerful corporations or challenge the irrational logic of the market? Weren’t these old nineteenth-century ideas about local democracy just a relic of another age? Didn’t we have to move forward in a different way? I found it hard to refute arguments of this sort, which appealed strongly to my sense of what had to be done to transform the capitalism we knew into something better – preferably, in my view, something completely different. It still puzzled me, though, that there was so little room in most people’s visions for robust democratic institutions at the local level. This is when I noticed the hounds that didn’t bark. It seemed to me that, whatever institutions of government we might have at higher levels, there was still a lot that might be done on quite a small scale. Didn’t we have neighbourhood schools, health clinics, parks, and recreation centres? Or, if we didn’t, shouldn’t we? And, what about daycare centres for small children or the elderly? Old age homes? Facilities for the mentally ill or the

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8

Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

disabled? Or, to think of things programmatically, what about efforts to protect or enhance the local environment, deal with wastes, create greenspace and gardens, provide people with housing more appropriate to their needs, offer outlets for people’s creativity, encourage community engagement, and so on? In short, wasn’t there much that could be done in a community organized on a small scale, even if it were part of a big city or an extended urban region? And, if so, wouldn’t it be possible to organize things on something like the town meeting model, rather than on the model of representative government used – of necessity, it would seem – at the higher levels? The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that the reasons for modelling local government on national government – and so making even the smallest local authorities elective rather than directly democratic, as they were on the town meeting model – were not very good, at least in relation to neighbourhood government. So, the question was why we generally didn’t have any neighbourhood governments in cities – or, if we did, why they were practically all constituted on the representative model. Most people seemed to take it for granted that things had to be on the representative model, but I was curious about their reasoning in that regard. Was there something I was missing? As a doctoral student in the 1970s, I decided to look much more closely at the arguments for organizing local government on a large scale and giving it a definite representative form. I thought that if I traced those arguments back to the origins of modern local government in the nineteenth century, I would eventually find the decisive case that I had to deal with. But the hounds never barked. What I mean is that the case for small-scale, directly democratic local authorities was largely ignored, rather than refuted. In fact, the case hardly even got stated in a way that came to terms with the complex requirements of – and conditions of life in – an urban– industrial society. By the time John Stuart Mill wrote his Consid­ erations on Representative Government in 1861 he could dismiss the town meeting in a sentence, without any argument.7 This was in a work that went into excessive detail on a great many other subjects, and whose author (like his father, James, and his mentor, Jeremy Bentham) liked to think through all the particularities of a subject and deal with every contrary argument that had any credibility. Moreover, it was at a time when town meetings were still the typical form of local government in New England, the part of the

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Introduction 9

United States where democratic traditions were arguably best rooted. I had thought that the town meetings only survived in sleepy rural villages, but discovered when I did a bit of research that they were still held in urbanized parts of New England, including some of the suburbs of Boston, even in my own time.8 If so, how could these institutions be dismissed as if they were totally irrelevant? I wanted to understand the grounds that people had for ignoring the town meeting, and soon realized that most of the talk about local government since the nineteenth century was about functional efficiency, and that anything that might be at odds with that was usually set aside or reinterpreted in a way that would be consistent with functionalist objectives. People were asking, even in the 1830s and 1840s, what geographic areas would be best suited for the emergent functions of local government.9 What was the optimal size or area of operation of a poor-relief agency, police force, public health board, drainage authority, school district, public utilities commission, or whatever? If local government was to have oversight over such functions, on what scale was it best organized? Among  ad­­ vanced or progressive thinkers, the typical response to such questions was almost always in favour of bigger authorities responsible for geographically more cohesive areas, ones that represented units of urban settlement that actually corresponded to the emergent patterns of modern life. If one looked at those patterns, then one would know that this was rational and that was not as a unit of local government organization. Given the complexities of modern life, there was plenty of room for disagreement, but it seemed that anything on a very small scale, like an urban neighbourhood, was just not big  enough for the most important business of local government. Or so the standard argument went. If people were to have democratic input on the big questions of local government policy – and have their wishes carried into effect by efficient administrative agencies – then they would have to get used to a larger scale of local government, one that was obviously inconsistent with the intimacies of town meeting democracy. By the end of the nineteenth century, even the major proponents of direct democracy were more likely to think in terms of institutional arrangements that could work on a large scale – especially the initiative, referendum, and recall – rather than ones that required a small scale, like citizens’ assemblies. So, old-style town meeting democracy just passed out of favour in almost every quarter.

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10

Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

The analysis I developed in response to this line of thinking highlighted the “bourgeois” assumptions that underpinned it.10 I meant two things by that. The first was that everything about local government was understood in businesslike terms, that is, with reference to the goods and services it delivered. The point of it, apparently, was to provide people with what they needed or wanted, and to do so as economically as possible, and hence with as little fuss and bother as possible. Politics was often regarded as noise in the system, and hence as a source of disturbance, inefficiency, irrationality, and corruption. Not that the people could be entirely ignored, but their preferences had to be aggregated (to use the terminology favoured by political scientists of a certain sort) as smoothly and efficiently as possible, in order to serve as cues and guides for policy-makers who would be in charge of a rationally organized administrative system. It seemed to me that this way of thinking was modelled on economic analysis, and was informed by the perspectives and values of business. In the end, everything came down to questions of business efficiency, even when the goods and services at issue were the ones that had been advocated by socialists. The second thing I had in mind is that there was an implicit assumption that things had to be managed by people with managerial or professional experience: preferably in private business, but if not then in other organizations or activities that demanded exceptional qualifications. Mere amateurs had little place unless they could bring relevant experience from elsewhere to local government. It seemed to me that there was an implicit assumption that open meetings or assemblies were undesirable unless they were very carefully managed to ensure that people who “did not under­stand” were kept at a distance from the levers of power. Implicit was a certain idea of class rule, which suggested that the modern bourgeoisie – if not the capitalists themselves, then professionals and trained managers – ought to be in charge. This might sound like a very standard Marxist analysis, but it wasn’t quite. My main point, in fact, was that people on the left politically – especially including those who purported to speak for the working class – were caught up in the same way of thinking as people on the right. The standard view was a shared conception that grew out of a particular understanding of the purposes of government, one that emphasized its role in delivering goods and services and sought to insulate it against popular irrationalities. The left might want the deliverables equally shared, but it rarely questioned

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Introduction 11

this bourgeois conception of what government was about and how it ought to be organized. As people on the right have long argued, the traditional left was keen about big government, because big government was seen as the only means for delivering what the left wanted: a society organized on socialist rather than capitalist principles. The left’s riposte was generally to point out that its opponents really only liked local authorities that were deeply conservative, rooted in traditional or highly privileged communities or ones that were so disorganized and vulnerable that they could always be expected to get on with the capitalist program. It certainly seemed clear to me that the communities that might have been the most troublesome in relation to the established order – dense urban working class neighbourhoods – had always been passed over because of fears about the sort of political mobilization that might occur there.11 Although the left might favour such mobilization, its sympathies were modulated by concerns about developing and maintaining the capacity of the state: a state that was to manage the economy, assure the proper distribution of resources, and provide for public services and facilities. The result was a set of commitments that remained within the confines of bourgeois thought: a bourgeois version of socialism or social democracy that emphasized the utilitarian functions of government and gave short shrift to the idea that ordinary people were capable of doing these things for themselves. It was in this context that I became more interested in public choice theory, which was an application of neo-classical economic analysis to the problems of public service provision, especially at the local level. This body of thought was already well-developed by the early 1960s. It challenged the long-held idea that large-scale governments with comprehensive jurisdiction – what Vincent Ostrom and his colleagues called “gargantua”12 – were necessary to deal with the problems of complex metropolitan areas. Instead, it sang the virtues of competition and choice, and pointed out how various mechanisms that were familiar in the market economy could be adapted to the public sector. Looking back, it is easy to see how this foreshadowed all the themes of the neo-liberal era, which began in the 1970s. It is important to remember, however, that what had become the mainstream view by the 1990s was strongly contested in the 1970s and 1980s, and was generally regarded with suspicion in the years before that. The neo-liberals regarded themselves as mavericks, contesting the ideas associated with what came to be called in retrospect

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Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

the Keynesian welfare state. Both Keynesianism and welfarism seemed to depend on a concentration of state authority, and they were legitimized by their success in generating steady economic growth, high levels of employment, constantly improving public services, and security in the face of the fluctuations of the capitalist economy as well as the normal hazards of life. It was not until the 1970s, when things seemed to be stalled for various reasons, that the neo-­liberals gained a wide popular audience. The Thatcher and Reagan governments of the 1980s were inspired by neo-liberal critiques, and the reforms that they introduced were generally in the neo-liberal spirit. At the time, it was not yet clear whether this would be a temporary blip in the trends that had been so marked since the 1940s, or whether we were entering a new era, as the neo-liberals hoped. Although I am suspicious of efforts to divide up the past into selfcontained eras, because the continuities are always as significant as the differences, it is clear now that what happened in the 1980s was not just a blip. The orthodox view of many things has moved in the neo-liberal direction. On the surface, neo-liberals are concerned about choice, diversity, and local control, but they have a narrow view of what local governments should do. Basically, local governments are supposed to work like firms within the market economy, and not challenge the rules of the economy itself. They are not supposed to be correcting the distribution of resources that results from market competition. They are supposed to work within the constraints of that distribution, and try to lever resources from private businesses, charitable foundations, and higher-level governments. With whatever they can get, or raise from taxation locally, they are to provide the goods and services their constituents most want. In poorer communities, only very little can be provided. In richer places, the luxuries can be afforded, including better schools, parks, recreation facilities, and so on. The rich do not actually need much in the way of public services, but what they do get, when they are allowed to spend only on themselves, is liable to be of very high quality. On this model, choice obviously works in favour of people who do well in life, or who have inherited money and social position. It does not work so well for people who have been born into disadvantage, suffer from illnesses or disabilities, get marked as different, or struggle to make a go of it in the market economy. A low-income community with high levels of unemployment and many forms of disadvantage will be hard put

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Introduction 13

to make use of the freedom it is offered, and even then will be unable to do as much for itself as its rich neighbours. That said, the neo-liberals clearly had an important point. Creating bigger authorities that had the capacity to do more for ordinary people was not a magic solution to problems of poverty or anything else. Big authorities could and did become remote and insensitive, as well as inefficient. In fact, the New Left critique of the Keynesian welfare state, which took shape in the 1960s, was all about that.13 It suggested that the welfare state – and perhaps also the Keynesian apparatus of economic management – had to be democratized by rooting it firmly in local communities, where people could be organized to make their needs and wishes clear. This is the line of thought that most interested me. What I noted, however, was that most of the schemes for decentralization that people on the left thought about had a definite limit, and that was the point at which neighbourhood democracy might turn into something like government-by-townmeeting. To me, this suggested lingering suspicions about what ordinary people might do if they were empowered. I also knew that people on the left were still strongly attached to the idea that bigger authorities with comprehensive jurisdiction were the key to social justice, sound economic planning, environmental protection, and all the other good things that a well-­organized government was supposed to provide. Local democracy would be a supplement to the centralized state, which had to be centralized in order to do things rationally. It was not that I was immune to the appeals of a wellorganized state, or insensitive to the claim that only such a state could correct what was wrong in a capitalist society, but I had a sense that the neo-liberals were onto something important about the deficiencies of the standard model and the possibilities of local democracy. What I really hoped to do was to flip the neo-liberal analysis around so that it would work not just as a critique of centralized bureaucracy, but also of the impoverished conceptions of public action and democratic participation implicit in neo-liberalism itself. The only way I could see how to do that was to show the connection between neo-liberalism and Keynesian welfarism, both of which seemed to grow out of the same conception of the state, premised on bourgeois values, bourgeois management, and an instrumentalist conception of government that overwhelmed any commitment to democracy. The doctoral thesis that I completed in 1978 explored these matters in relation to the development of Anglo–American

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thought about the organization of local government, roughly from the 1830s to the 1970s. My focus had been on ideas about neighbourhood democracy, and that was the topic of the first academic essay I ever published.14 A slightly edited version of that essay appears here as chapter 1, “Community Organization and Local SelfGovernment.” In it, I trace various ideas about community organization and administrative decentralization that had been advanced up to that time (1981) in an effort to compensate for the thing that was never on offer: self-government on the level of an urban neighbourhood small enough for town-meeting democracy. I have left the main essay as it was, because it was based on years of research that I could not hope to replicate now. Chapter 2, “Metropolitan Reform in the Capitalist City,” originally appeared in the same year. It is also based on those years of research, and it offers a complementary argument. I tackle the idea that the then recent reforms of local government – such as the reorganization that had occurred in Britain 1974 or the reforms that had created regional or metropolitan authorities in southern Ontario – were simply the effect of capitalist requirements. As I note in my commentary and postscript, similar arguments were advanced when the Toronto megacity was created in 1997. My point, to which I have alluded already, was that the thinking that led to the amalgamation of local authorities was actually widely shared on the right and the left, and that there was another current of thought – “public choice” – that suggested that bigger-scale government was actually at odds with what capitalists required. My main argument in that respect was somewhat prescient, given the obvious connection between public choice and the various nostrums of neoliberalism that were to come. The capitalists and their allies seem to have been very happy with measures that weaken the power of the state, privatize responsibility for public services, and impose the logic of the market on what governments do. The left’s response to this has been confused, at best. It seemed to me then and now that the weakness of the left’s response was bound up with its own confusion about the nature and purposes of the state.15 One theory, which we can trace back to Marx, is that the state is essentially the executive committee of the bourgeoisie. This implies that the state is there only to serve narrow class interests. To think of Keynesian welfarism in such terms is problematic, however. Ordinary people do get a great deal from such arrangements, and they obviously influence what the state can

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Introduction 15

be and do. On the other hand, the neo-liberal agenda was to bring the state more in line with capitalist requirements and to institutionalize limits on what the state could do for other purposes: as a result, the state has come to operate more and more like the executive committee of the bourgeoisie over the last thirty years or so. What this indicates is that the state is up for grabs politically: in Marxist terms, it is a site – perhaps the most important site – of class struggle. This is a classic Marxist idea. There had been a revival in Marxist thought that began in the 1960s, when most Marxists in the West turned against the Soviet Union as an organizational model. People looked back at earlier Marxist ideas, and tried to explain not only what the state had become since Marx’s time, but also what it could become if the working class were mobilized effectively. From this point of view, Keynesian welfarism seemed like a Pyrrhic victory for the working class: a temporary achievement that was overwhelmed by the reaction that formed in the 1970s. The struggle to maintain the gains that had been made after 1945 involved a defence of centralized authority, a defence at odds with the growing critique of centralized bureaucracy and demands for citizen participation. The left was pulled in two different directions – in part, I thought, because it had never really worked out what it wanted and expected of the local state as opposed to the national state. The term, local state, has never come into very wide use. It was advanced originally by some analysts on the left in Britain.16 I thought it was a useful concept, because it suggested some interesting questions about the way we are governed now and the possibilities for governing ourselves differently in the future. Most conceptions of the state are too monolithic. They are geared to the way the term is now understood in international relations. The state is supposed to be a sovereign entity that encompasses an entire country. The problem with that conception is that it obscures the ways in which state authority is extended internationally, intersects with other forms of authority, and is deployed in bewilderingly complex configurations at every scale of human life and within every form of human activity. The state is everywhere, but not always in the same form or with the same effects. When I began thinking about this, I realized that I could scarcely begin to describe the state in my own city, Victoria, B C . I also realized that my inability in this respect was typical. We did not even have the terms we needed to begin categorizing and cataloguing the different agencies of the state with which

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we might interact on a daily basis in our own communities. Since the question that had been plaguing me was really about democratic control over the local state, it seemed obvious to me that we needed to refine our categories before we could make any progress analytically or politically. That is what led to the analysis I developed in 1985, which appears here as chapter 3, “The Local State in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives.” Again I leave that analysis intact, despite my reservations about some of it. The four theories of the local state that I identify are still in wide circulation. The first turns on the idea that the municipality is actually the state at the local level and deserves to be recognized as such; the second undercuts municipal claims by revealing the fact that municipalities are part of an array of state agencies for special purposes at the local level and that as such they can claim only limited autonomy; the third reinterprets this array as a set of enterprises operating in a “public economy” complementary to the market economy; and the fourth emphasizes that all of these agencies operate as local apparatuses of the state as such, a state that is organized primarily on a larger scale. My argument is that these theories illuminate certain aspects of the local state as it now is, but fail – even when read in relation to one another – to provide a full explanation of it, and, more important, miss many of the crucial issues that have to be addressed if we are to democratize the local state while striving for social justice, environmental integrity, and social peace on a wider scale. I have grouped these three chapters as Part 1, “The Local State in Capitalist Society,” and added “Postscript: Thirty Years On.” When I first worked on this subject, I was vexed by the tendency – among political scientists, activists, theorists, observers, and commentators – to dismiss “the local” as a venue for political activity and to ignore what local government did, how it worked, and how it shaped our political possibilities. I am still vexed about these things. I look at textbooks on Canadian politics that say nothing at all about the local state and offer no analysis whatsoever of the ways in which people engage – or fail to engage – with it, and I sigh in despair. At the same time I still hear the activist slogan, which became particularly popular in the 1990s: “Think globally, act locally.” How, I wonder, are people supposed to act locally when they have no idea what is there? In this postscript I try to drive home the point that the local density of the state is just as great as it ever was, despite efforts at privatization, contracting out, and all the rest. I offer a brief summary

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Introduction 17

of recent ideas about “governmentality” – ideas that derive from Michel Foucault’s work in the 1970s, but that were developed and applied much more generally in the Anglo–American world in the 1990s and 2000s. I think that these ideas have to be read together with the various accounts of the state to which I was responding in the 1980s. The general conclusion to which I am now drawn is that the question of the state is at once fundamental and misleading: fundamental in the sense that the way the state is configured has a determining effect on the way we are governed, the political opportunities we have, and the conceptions we have of those opportunities; misleading in the sense that the state is in many ways an ideological illusion from which all of us suffer. In reflecting on my own early interest in the town meeting as a possible political form, I am struck by how strong my focus on the state was and by how hard I was trying to keep that focus while gesturing in other directions. My work in the 1990s and early 2000s – which is reflected in Part 2 – went mostly in those other directions. I was trying to decentre the state in my own thinking and get a better sense of how people were actually challenging the political space they were offered locally and globally. Nevertheless, I was still haunted by the idea of the town meeting. I thought then and still think now that the arguments in favour of having such institutions are just as strong as they always were and that they have never been addressed in any serious way. But I would add something to my early reflections: such meetings symbolize larger political possibilities that have yet to be explored fully. I take up some of those possibilities in Part 3. When I was reflecting on all these matters in the early 1980s, Canadians were just coming to terms with the implications of patri­ ating their Constitution and adopting a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One issue was the status of First Nations, a particularly pressing issue in British Columbia because of the lack of any treaties regularizing relations between the Crown – and hence the Canadian state – and the various peoples who had inhabited this land since time immemorial. Haunting all the discussions was the idea that justice required a new relation – or, perhaps more accurately, the restoration of an old relation – in which the autonomy and dignity of the First Nations would be recognized by the Canadian state and Canadian society more generally.17 One implication of that was what at the time was called “Aboriginal self-government.”18 As I thought about it, I realized that if Aboriginal self-government became

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Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

a reality, many very small communities – often numbering in the hundreds, rather than the thousands – would become self-governing. At the time, I thought about this mainly in territorial terms, but as I learned more I realized that many of the First Nations were quite dispersed geographically, living as much away from their homelands as within them and as such intermingling with other First Nations as well as with people who claimed no Aboriginal ancestry. I also realized that the organization of First Nations – especially the Indian reserves and band councils – reflected the needs and demands of the  Canadian state more than anything else. So, to imagine what Aboriginal self-government might involve was quite difficult. Nonetheless, I could see two things. The first was that any movement in this direction would involve state recognition of the political autonomy of communities that were much smaller than what was now taken to be the minimum size for a well-functioning municipality, especially one operating in an urban area. The second was that such recognition put the exclusive political claims of the state itself in question. Canadians were then as now much more worried about Quebec’s independence movement than about the restlessness among First Nations, but it seemed to me that Quebec’s independence would just divide the existing Canadian state into two, and not alter the logic of the state system at all. By contrast, what the First Nations were demanding was something very much at odds with that logic and hence with the reasoning that had relegated the town-meeting model to the pre-modern past. It seemed to me that liberal sympathies for First Nations in Canada – or for Indigenous peoples more generally – were premised on the belief that their autonomy could be recognized without disturbing “mainstream society.” We could continue to organize the state as before, while allowing an exception for Aboriginal self-government. At most, we would have to grant autonomy to the Indian reserves, establish collaborative arrangements for governance in remote northern territories, and provide support to non-governmental Native organizations in urban areas. Otherwise, things could remain much the same. The exceptionality of First Nations was what made them less disturbing than they might be to mainstream thinkers. From a municipal government perspective, this exception was similar to the one that applied to lightly populated rural areas, where people had traditionally been allowed small-scale municipalities on the grounds that larger-scale authorities were both impractical and

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Introduction 19

at odds with any form of democratic self-organization. The presumption was that urban areas – where the vast majority of Canadians now lived – had to be organized differently, in a more “modern” way, attuned to the larger scale of modern life. So, it seemed to me that a certain hypocrisy was involved in many of the gestures in favour of Aboriginal autonomy, in that they were premised on the notion that “they” were different from “us” because their lives were somehow pre-modern. I wanted to reject this presumption while accepting another one that was implicit in the analysis: namely, that any community, no matter how small, could be selfgoverning and that it could remain so despite all the pressures of modern life. Perhaps the First Nations were offering us a model that could be adopted more generally. This thought bled into another. As neo-liberal or neo-conservative governments took charge in one country after another, there was a reaction at the local level in many places. One form that this took was a challenge to the idea that local authorities had to submit to the will of the state. The predominant view – which I discuss in chapter 8 – is that local authorities are just creatures of the state, and as such have only the powers that the state has granted to them. First Nations certainly do not accept the idea that their political authorities derive their powers from the state, and there is an old idea, which was still mooted in some quarters in the nineteenth century,19 that local authorities everywhere derive their powers from the communities for which they are responsible, not from any state that might be organized on a larger scale. On the latter view, municipal authority is autochthonous: it comes from the bottom up, not from the top down, and there is no limit to it in principle. That was the view that was crushed under the weight of functionalist arguments for largerscale authorities. Those arguments provided a cover for implicitly anti-democratic assumptions about the incapacity of ordinary people. They were reinforced by concerns about possible conflicts of authority: the supremacy of the state was supposed to ensure that all such conflicts could be resolved by the higher courts, which would act in the name of the state and preserve its integrity. The municipalities are inevitable losers in this situation: accorded limited authority, subject always to a higher authority that speaks in the name of the law itself and has the powers of the police and the army behind it. To defy the sovereign authority of the state is difficult, to say the least. Nonetheless, in the 1980s and 1990s some municipalities and

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other local authorities attempted to do so directly or indirectly in the name of a variety of progressive social movements: especially environmentalism, feminism, and pacifism.20 In Britain, there was a movement toward “local socialism” that recalled earlier initiatives there and elsewhere between the 1880s and the 1930s.21 Could “progressive municipalities” actually change the relation between the local state and the national state so that local autonomy could be more of a reality? Would this allow for genuine local democracy? Was the lesson the left needed to learn actually in the practices of these exceptional municipalities that asserted their right to pursue progressive causes even in the face of reactionary national governments? These were the questions in my mind when I started work on a book that I published in 1996 under the title, The Search for Political Space: Globalization, Social Movements, and the Urban Political Experience. The search to which I was referring was twofold. In the first instance, it was about efforts on the left to find a space for itself in local government, one that would allow it to pursue its larger objectives of the transformation of capitalism, the liberation of women and minorities, the pacification of international relations, and the restoration of a proper human relationship with the natural environment. Although the standard view was that big causes had to be pursued on a large scale and that national if not global authority had to be invoked to solve the big problems, many activists were testing the possibilities for more localized action and some of them had become interested in local government as a result. I wanted to know what success they were having and what could be learned from their experience. On the other hand, I was also interested in another aspect of the search, which related to the very nature of political space. The term political space is not a common one, and is sometimes equated with public space.22 I think of it differently. The state is a political space: a venue within which people can pursue their political objectives. The internal rules and external boundaries of the state set the limits of what can be done within it. They define the space in a way that makes it clear that this can be done, but that cannot. As far as many people are concerned, the space of the state is the space of politics proper, so any other kind of space can only be  political insofar as it traverses, influences, or intrudes on that space. To my mind, this conception of political space actually begs the question. When people act politically, they have various conceptions of the space in which they are acting, and the most dramatic

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Introduction 21

political interventions are actually the ones that change people’s assumptions about what the space of the political is. For me, environmentalism and feminism have always been paradigmatic in this respect. They are movements that not only brought fundamentally different questions forward, but also changed people’s ideas about where the most decisive political activities were occurring – perhaps in the kitchen or the bedroom or the garden or in the stores where we shop? – and gestured toward communities, identities, and interests that had been submerged in the rush toward the possibilities implicit in the state and the market. Political space is not fixed. Not only are political spaces like the state or the municipality sites of political struggle, but there are struggles as well over what the relevant political spaces are or should be. This relates to my concern about town meetings and citizens’ assemblies – political spaces that have been suppressed or set aside as irrelevant. There is nothing inevitable about the present configuration of political space: it is subject to challenge. I cannot repeat the findings of my earlier study here, but there are a few ideas that I developed or came to along the way that are worth noting, because they are especially relevant to the topic at hand. The first is that space and time are relative to one another, in politics as well as everything else. This is hardly an original thought, but its political implications are rarely noted. The state not only establishes a space for politics; it also establishes a time for politics, which is separate from other times. If we are to make sense of what we do in relation to the state, we have to read our history in a particular way and understand our future accordingly. When people create other political spaces, they begin to read their history differently and imagine different futures. This is of crucial importance, especially in relation to what have come to be called social movements. As I worked on this topic, I became more and more interested in social movements, especially insofar as they seemed to decentre the state politically. If the state was not the inevitable object of political activity and if political activity could create new spaces and times for politics, what were the implications? Had I been wrong to be so concerned about the way the state was configured at the local level? Wasn’t the politics that really mattered elsewhere, in different times and spaces? Perhaps the issue wasn’t about structures, which most theories of the state seemed to suggest, but instead about movements? In struggling with this question, I was led to a second idea,

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which was that the state itself was actually more of a movement than a structure. If you thought of a state as an idea that took shape in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and then was implemented in something like its current form in the eighteenth and nineteenth, then you could see that structures now familiar to us are the product of a complex political movement that developed over several centuries and that continues to carry us forward. The idea of the state shapes our political imaginations. What produces the state and carries it forward has virtually all the characteristics we normally associate with a social movement. This led me to a third thought: that capitalism too is a movement, and so, if we are dealing with the consequences of the state and the market, we are engaging with two powerful movements, not simply with particular structures. That helps to explain why both capitalism and statism are so resilient. A fourth thought follows from this: that it is impossible to understand the world in which we live if we imagine it as a three- or four-­ dimensional space. Much more helpful are recent ideas from physics about hyperspace: an n-dimensional space in which each domain is related to all the others, even though the other domains may be imperceptible from the vantage point of any particular one. Statism and capitalism are everywhere, but so are feminism, environmentalism, and much else (including all the pernicious movements that vex us). Each of these movements produces its own space and generates its own history, and none of them is easily subordinated to the others. A fifth thought also follows: it is a mistake to think of these various movements as social, rather than political. The boundaries between different domains, like the social and the political, are always at issue, and the issue is always political; so, to conceive of these major movements as merely “social” is to misrepresent them. They are much more important and interesting than that. I take up a number of these issues in Part 2, “Social Movements and Political Space.” I wrote chapter 4, “Globalization, Movements, and the Decentred State,” very soon after I finished the book I have just mentioned, and I had the analysis of that book very much in mind. The original of this chapter was written for a book on social movements,23 which was oriented toward people who were inspired by the apparent shift toward movement politics on the left. It was a shift that I found attractive in many respects, but I sensed that there was less of a shift in people’s thinking (and practice) than they imagined. I tried to tease out some of the contradictions by exposing

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Introduction 23

hidden assumptions and gesturing toward possibilities implicit in practices that had yet to be fully developed. In particular, I questioned the idea that there was some one thing – like capitalism, patriarchy, statism, colonialism, or whatever – that held everything together, and suggested instead that there was a multiplicity of things to be dealt with. I also questioned the distinction between movements (of the good guys) and fixtures (of the bad guys) in favour of the idea – to put it crudely – that the world is all movements. The world that we have to deal with is produced by a multiplicity of movements, good and bad, and we have to learn to cope with that. In that context, “the urban” looms larger than ever. By this point, I had come to recognize that the conception of the urban that I had been brought up with, posed as a contrast to the rural, is anachronistic. It was not just that cities were expanding into the countryside and colonizing it, but that they were linking up with one another locally, regionally, and transnationally. The city had gone global. In a sense, everyone in the world now lived in the same city, a global city. Nation-states functioned within that global city, and had only limited control over it. It followed that global politics was actually urban politics writ large. To think of it so is of course to invert the familiar hierarchy, which puts cities and other local communities at the bottom of a structure at the top of which are the national governments that exercise sovereign authority and cooperate with one another (or not) to produce an international order. If the global city is the hyperspace within which we live, then the political space that we have to deal with or that we hope to create cannot be understood in state-centric terms, since states are just elements within the larger order. It is difficult to put that idea succinctly and clearly. The thought with which I end chapter 4 is that urbanism is the architectonic movement within which all the others occur. It’s the “big bang,” as it were. I am a little uneasy with that notion, because it makes urbanism seem more cohesive and determinant than it is. In my “Postscript: Seeing Like a City,” I explore this issue further. In chapter 5, “The City as the Hope of Democracy,” I address the underlying issues in a different way by posing them as policy problems. I was originally writing for a volume that asked whether urban affairs had come back on the policy agenda in Canada after an absence of thirty years or so following the abolition of the federal government’s Ministry of State for Urban Affairs. My argument was that it had never gone away, but that you had to understand “the urban” and “policy”

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Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

quite differently to see that. Again, I was trying to resist a state-­ centric analysis, by posing the problem of government in much more general terms and re-presenting the city or the urban in a way that enabled us to see that it transcended all the familiar distinctions between state and state, state and society, state and economy, and so on. The thread that runs through these chapters is the idea that all of the conventional categories of political analysis – from the individual and society to the social and the economic and the cultural and the political, to say nothing of the global and the local or the particular and the universal or the progressive and the reactionary – are parasitic upon conceptions that foreground the state as the sovereign authority and mystify the urban order within which we actually live. I keep gesturing at that larger order and hinting at ways of understanding it politically. Chapter 6, “Scaling Government to Politics,” was written as a critique of current critical understandings of the political economy of the state. Its implicit starting point is the sort of analysis that prompted chapter 2: in this case applied to the whole order of the state. One way of understanding what had happened in the neo-­ liberal era was in terms of the “political economy of scale.” The key idea is that since the 1970s the state has been re-scaled24 so as to push authority upward (into interstate authorities like the EU or N A F T A ), outward (to private businesses), and downward (to local and regional authorities). Lying behind that idea is the notion that we can explain what has happened in terms of political economy. This is similar to the idea that we can explain metropolitan reform in terms of capitalist requirements. My argument ultimately is that social scientific explanations, including the ones that come from critical political economy, depend on a conception of politics that mistakes or denies its possibilities. Genuine political possibilities are shunted aside in favour of quasi-naturalistic explanations of the way things have to be. My complaint is not about the critique of capitalism being offered: I agree with that critique and largely share the ideological commitments that follow from it. In much of the analysis, however, there is a tendency to forget other things – including what I call in this paper “the politics of security” and “the politics of identity” – and so to skate over much of what is happening. More crucially, there is also a tendency to present our future as one that is always already determined by the logic of capitalist restructuring, and so to imply that our political options are given in that logic. The

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Introduction 25

result, ironically, is to suggest that the socialist aspirations that have motivated many people for close to two centuries are as irrelevant as the longings of First Nations for the recovery of their lost ways of life. I read the efforts of contemporary socialists – and activists of all sorts – much more positively, as I do the efforts of First Nations. Rather than scaling our lives to what we take to be an inevitable future, we can scale them to the possibilities that we actually want to develop. That means resisting the scalar logic implicit in most theories of the state, which suggest that we have to conform to something that will take shape regardless of what we do politically. It’s that scalar logic, informed by a deterministic conception of history, that has always been invoked to deny local self-government. In my postscript to Part 2, I summarize some of the ideas that I have developed elsewhere, especially in Politics of Urbanism: Seeing Like a City, which I published in 2011 as a sort of sequel to my 1996 book. In this later book, I tried to avoid offering political prescriptions and instead focused on the analytical problems that I have raised here and elsewhere. My main suggestion was that we need to learn to “see like a city” rather than “seeing like a state.” When we do the latter, we take the state system as determinant and imagine that our politics has to be centred on the sovereign authorities that it establishes. If we want to change things, we imagine that we have to take control of the state. The alternative, however, is not to develop a politics centred on civil society, because civil society is always imagined as the “other” of the state and hence as a domain where the state might be tamed and subjected to social practices. Ironically, when we move into the domain of the social, we are immediately drawn back to the state as the problem that has to be solved. If instead we learn to see like a city, we come to recognize that political authority is configured in a number of different ways, only one of which is the state. The state’s pretense to sovereignty is just that: a pretense. To act politically we have to deal with a multiplicity of authorities in different registers (cultural, religious, economic, or whatever) – many of which, such as the powerful business corporations with which we are all familiar, deny that they are political. Explicitly and implicitly, political authorities interact in ways that lead to unpredictable results, and are constantly responding to problems that they cannot quite control. Nonetheless, the proximate diversity of the city – or urban life more generally – does lead to collaboration and innovation as well as conflict. Both locally and

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globally, there is an order of sorts to the city, an order that is constantly changing, in some respects benign, and in other respects highly problematic. Learning to deal with this order is our main political challenge. Our obsession with the state gets in the way of our attempts to make sense of our situation and respond to it politically. I emphasize here as elsewhere that answers to questions about what is to be done politically or how we should organize ourselves to deal with our problems are undetermined by the rationalities of government or any other rationalities. What makes sense politically is always something different. Crucial to my analysis is a broader understanding of what “local self-government” involves. I take up that question in chapter 7, “The Principle of Local Self-Government,” which has never been published in any form before and is presented here as the initial offering in Part 3, “Rethinking Local Democracy.” I came to this broader understanding through my reflections on Foucault’s ideas about “governmentality.” As Foucault thinks of it, government is a particular way of ruling, different from the exercise of sovereign authority. As a strategy, it is similar to discipline, but it is applied at the level of the population rather than at the level of the individual. To discipline an individual, one must teach that person to behave in a particular way in a given situation. Ideally, the discipline is internalized, so that the person becomes self-regulating. All the professions work this way. One learns how to be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant – or a soldier or a plumber or a carpenter – and then just does things in a certain way, constantly monitoring one’s own performance, consulting with others in the same profession about how to deal with problems or do things better, and so on. Once the profession is organized in a way that encourages self-discipline, it can be left alone in large degree: allowed to regulate itself. Similar principles can be applied to the management of populations. Streets can be designed to encourage people to regulate themselves properly. So can systems for health care, fire safety, job training, and much else. In fact, modern societies work as well as they do because there are scores of these systems of government with complementary disciplines that keep people in order, ensure some measure of cooperation, and enable people to achieve some of their purposes. That is how what we call “the economy” works. The economy, however, is just one of these systems of government. Although Foucault and others have been particularly interested in the way that the state orchestrates these systems

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Introduction 27

of government, my attention has been drawn to something else: the proliferation of governmentalities that is characteristic of urbanism as a way of life. Although some of these governmentalities originate in the state and the state certainly tries to intervene in most of them, it is a mistake to interpret the ensemble in state-centric terms. How these governmentalities arise and mutate is quite various. I came to a couple of ideas through my reflections on these matters. One is that local self-government is not some exceptional practice. In a way, it is ubiquitous, but the local in question is highly variable. Self-government is a practice that enables a person or a group to govern others. It is partly a matter of exercising one’s freedom, but also partly a matter of restraining oneself to enable more effective engagement with other people, including forms of engagement that involve governance. In a sense, every person is a locality, as is every group, however organized. So, both states and individuals are localities, as are particular neighbourhoods, cities, organizations, movements, and whatever. What I sometimes call modern republicanism or liberal democracy is premised on the idea that we all can and should be self-governing, and that means that the principle of local self-government is central to it. This is rarely recognized, because of the way that our political possibilities have been mystified by theories of the state. If practices of government and selfgovernment are ubiquitous and they can be localized in many different ways with many different effects, then we need to think very, very carefully about what is involved in the principle of local self-government. When we realize that, we are led to think quite differently about demands for autonomy from individuals, groups, organizations, cultures, enterprises, cities, neighbourhoods, tribes, nations, and all the rest. If by autonomy we mean the freedom to do anything we damn well please, regardless of anyone else’s interests or concerns, then such autonomy is actually inconsistent with the principle in question, which only makes sense if it involves a recognition of one’s responsibility to others. Local self-government is about getting the right balance between freedom and responsibility. Another idea that follows from this is that we are not in a zerosum game. An accretion of authority in any particular locality does not necessarily come at the expense of any other locality. If people cooperate effectively, this will generate a new form of authority that enables them to do things that were impossible before, and that may well work to the benefit of everyone else. This is one of the hidden

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principles of what I describe as democratic mutualism. It is also the key to understanding how urbanism works as a security system. Cities bring thousands and often millions of strangers together in huge agglomerations, which are usually characterized more by peaceful interchange than by conflict. How is this possible? State authority may play a role, but it is usually secondary to the practices of government and self-government that are generated otherwise. We needn’t be so fearful about our cities, and needn’t be so worried if the various authorities make conflicting claims that cannot be resolved by any sovereign. Once we recognize that, we can be more open to the various possibilities for local self-government, including even the town meetings that have haunted me since I began exploring these issues. Whereas chapter 7 explores the principle of local self-government in a very general way, chapter 8, “Are Municipalities Creatures of the Provinces?” addresses the issue in more specifically Canadian terms. This paper was originally published in 2005. One of my aims in it and in a complementary paper from the same year25 was to suggest a line of thought that might be taken up by the courts. Two ideas are crucial. The first is that the authority of a municipality need not be derived from any higher-level government, and the second is that the authority concerned is qualitatively different from that of the state. Again, I am inspired by the idea that there are Indigenous authorities in Canada that exist beside the Canadian state, rather than under its authority. There are actually many historical precedents here and elsewhere for “side-by-side” authorities, however much they go against the logic of sovereignty. If municipalities are conceived in this way, as polities that derive their authority from their own inhabitants and exercise it beside the state and an array of other authorities, there is no need to treat them as subordinate or fear what they might do. Governmental activity – or, more generally, public initiative – can be cumulative in the sense that what local authorities do may complement, extend, qualify, supplement, or enrich what the state itself attempts, and so there is no necessary reason for forcing them into a position of strict subordination. Nor are there necessary reasons for preventing them from taxing and regulating as they think appropriate. I bring the argument back to the analyses I offer in chapters 1 and 3, and suggest that the right of local self-government should entail direct democracy at the level of the neighbourhood, citizen participation in all political authorities at

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Introduction 29

the local level, and the creation of new political institutions that would enable us to deal with issues that arise at every level within the urban global. In chapter 9, “Local Self-Government and the Right to the City,” a paper I wrote in 2012, I link the issues of the present to the ideas that have concerned me since I was young through the work of Henri Lefebvre, the French philosopher who coined the term, “the right to the city,” back in 1968.26 Lefebvre died in 1991, but the slogan for which he is famous was revived in 2011 by activists in the  “Occupy” movement. There has been a flurry of writing since then about him as well as about the right to the city. What’s clear, I suggest, is that the full implications of the right to the city have to be worked out in conjunction with the right of local self-government. The two ideas are essentially complementary. They gesture toward the fact that the city – or, more generally, our urban civilization – does not really belong to us as it is now constituted, and that we are not really able to govern ourselves in the localities that matter to us. The old language of revolution and reform is misleading insofar as it suggests that there is some simple trajectory that we must follow. More helpful is the recognition that we have an array of problems that admit of no final solution. Nonetheless, there are commonalities that these two rights highlight. There is a persistent gap between what we are led to expect under the heading of democracy and what we actually have in the way of political opportunities. Thinking of our tasks in terms of making the right of local self-government work as a right to the city, and the right to the city work as a right of local self-government, is to clarify the problems we face. In Parts 1 and 2, I am in dialogue with my younger self. I have prefaced each chapter with some contextualizing remarks and then have concluded with some comments that revise or extend the chapter’s analysis in light of more recent events, as well as the general concerns I am outlining here. Parts 1 and 2 end with updates, but Part 3 concludes with a recently written paper that needs no particular updating. Nevertheless, I continue the pattern of prefacing and commenting upon my own analyses, so as to underscore the fact that every one of these accounts is tentative, and should be read as a contribution to a conversation, rather than as a conversationstopping declaration. In my conclusion, “Visions of Democracy,” I take the analysis a few steps further, by responding to the standardform democratic theories with an analysis that takes notions of

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Local Self-Government and the Right to the City

neighbourhood self-government seriously. Here I return to the issues I began with, and suggest that we need to go beyond the romance of mobility, beyond our own economism, and beyond identity politics to recover the emplacements that are the condition of possibility for democracy itself.

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PART ONE The Local State in Capitalist Society

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1 Community Organization and Local Self-Government*

In this chapter, I deal with the peculiar history of efforts to engage the urban working class politically without actually giving ordinary people the right to govern their own communities. Geographically, the focus of my attention is on Britain, Canada, and the United States. Historically, the focus is on the period between the 1830s and the 1970s. It was in the 1830s that Alexis de Tocqueville made his famous trip to the US and developed an analysis, Democracy in America, that has influenced scholars ever since. Crucial to that analysis was his celebratory account of the New England town meeting. At about the time that Tocqueville was touring America, the British began to modernize their political institutions, starting with Parliament itself. Crucial to the overall plan was the reorganization of local government. By the end of the nineteenth century, the old local authorities had been swept away or turned into local apparatuses of the state. The model was different from the one ­pioneered by the French in the Napoleonic era, but it was no less effectively centralized for that. Canadian institutions were on a similar model to the British. Although in the US there was less

*  Originally published as “Community Organization and Local SelfGovernment” in Politics and Government of Urban Canada, 4th ed., ed. L.D. Feldman (Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 61–86, this is a revised and extended version of “The New Neighbourhood Democracy: AngloAmerican Experience in Historical Perspective” in Decentralist Trends in Western Democracies, ed. L.J. Sharpe (London: S A G E Publications, 1979), 119–56. Reprinted with permission of the publishers.

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centralization, modernizing pressures were in the same direction. This was the context in which concerns developed in some quarters about the alienation of the urban working class, isolated from its betters in slums and ghettos. A sort of noblesse oblige stimulated efforts to reach that class, organize it, and empower it – but within carefully circumscribed limits. I got interested in this experience because of what had been happening in the 1960s and 1970s, as the deficiencies of the new welfare state became more apparent and the restlessness of the poor – especially African-Americans – led to widespread demands for “community control.” It seemed obvious to me why conservatives of various sorts would want to limit working class power, but it was harder to understand why socialists and radicals more generally tended to shy away from measures would have empowered working class neighbourhoods or allowed for direct democracy at that level. As I discovered, this shying away was part of a long history that dated back to the nineteenth century and that suggested much about the way that commitments to democratic empowerment gave way to other commitments, particularly with respect to the development of a tightly organized state with the capacity to do things effectively and efficiently. Is it really true that local self-government, in its fullest sense, is inconsistent with the requirements of a modern state? Most people seem to have thought so. Urban government has never performed the democratic functions traditionally attributed to it. By putting great numbers of people under the same authorities and giving exclusive powers of decision to elected or appointed officials, early municipal reformers made sure that democracy would not be government by the masses and so would not be a threat to property. Aristocratic liberals like Alexis de Tocqueville and Thomas Jefferson believed that direct democracy would be acceptable in rural areas where the propertied classes were dominant and demands upon government were minimal, but they were not interested in extending such arrangements to the cities.1 Every gentleman of the time knew that the urban mob was a threat to the established order. Moreover, the tasks of city government were immense, demanding skills and ideas that ordinary workmen lacked. The government of the elect was necessary in the municipalities, as well as at the national capital, and it required a scale of operations that made mass participation in important decisions impractical.

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Community Organization and Local Self-Government 35

In pre-industrial societies, local government had inevitably been small and intimate. The village or township was the main unit of settlement: given the existing state of communications, effective government was impossible without agencies at this level. In England, the parochial authorities traditionally had considerable autonomy,2 and this practice was continued in the northern American colonies under conditions that encouraged democratization. The vibrant townships of New England, which Tocqueville discovered in 1830, were – if not “coeval with the existence of man”3 – at least a natural product of a society dominated by independent farmers. After the American Revolution, when some of the colonists moved north into Canada, the British authorities had had to forbid them from holding town meetings to keep them from spreading their democratic practices.4 Unlike the conservative governors of British North America, but like most contemporary liberals in England,5 Tocqueville thought that local self-government as practised in New England had an u ­ ltimately stabilizing effect. However, he also believed, like the Benthamite liberals, that participation would have to be limited if the municipal authorities were to cope with the problems of an industrial age.6 Units of settlement were becoming larger, thanks to the growth of manufacturing, and the railways were bringing neighbouring communities into closer contact with each other. Crowding in the towns increased the need for government; industrial production created a surplus that could be applied to public as well as private purposes. More serviceable government was within reach, but unnecessary authorities had to be abolished if maximum service was to be achieved at minimum cost. Local governments had to be big enough to raise large amounts of capital, employ the latest techniques and deal with the problems of urban expansion. The parishes and townships that pretended to serve under the new conditions appeared to be obstacles to progress. It was for such reasons that reformers in the mid-nineteenth century demanded that traditional parochial authorities be eliminated, to make room for larger, more comprehensive units of government. The authorities in these big units had to be elective: town-meeting democracy was impossible.7 Although romantic conservatives re­­ sisted these conclusions,8 the preponderance of opinion was against the preservation or extension of parochial government in the towns and cities. This conviction was reflected in the Baldwin Act of 1849, which gave Upper Canadians municipal institutions of the type English reformers were advocating.9 It was also reflected in John

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Stuart Mill’s classic defence of local democracy.10 Although Mill, like Tocqueville, believed in the educative and stabilizing effects of mass participation, he was not prepared to forgo larger units of local government. In the midst of his argument for participatory democracy, he restated his conviction that the whole of Greater London should be governed by a single municipal council.11 With four million people under the same local government, there could never be the mass participation that Tocqueville had seen in New England and that had inspired Mill’s own analysis.12 However, the situation in London was exceptional: in the 1860s, most people still lived in small communities that were little affected by the new conditions of industrial life. Something close to the old scale of local government could be preserved in these areas without sacrificing efficiency, so the theory that municipal government could be the basis for a participatory democracy was credible. Unfortunately for the theory, the smaller communities in the industrializing countries were in rapid decline. By the 1880s, most people in Britain were living in cities where (according to Mill) large-scale municipal government was essential. The same thing was true of New England. In Canada and the American West, the shift to the big cities was delayed by agricultural colonization, but in the end it occurred there as well.13 Mill’s ideas about the impact of local government on citizen education are still invoked, but the gap between the effects expected and the opportunities provided is now too great to be ignored. Since his time, the scale of local government has been steadily increasing, partly in response to Mill’s own recommendations.14 Even the rural areas have been affected by this process. Working people in the big cities have never had much opportunity to participate in municipal government because of its scale of organization. Moreover, as restrictions on the franchise have been lifted, professionalization and bureaucratization have proceeded, so that the exclusion of the working class from public affairs is nearly as complete as ever.15 There is no little irony in the fact that the class, on Mill’s account, in most need of political education has the least opportunity to get it. The liberal theory of participatory democracy, which Tocqueville and Mill expounded, is ambivalent about political activity among the lower classes. It suggests that ordinary people should be encouraged to participate, but not to govern. The problem reformers have set for themselves is to overcome the mass alienation that leads to distrust of government and withdrawal from the political system. In

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Community Organization and Local Self-Government 37

recent years, parties and pressure groups have been expected to perform this function, but they have never been completely effective, and observers still worry about the divisiveness of group competition, despite assurances from the theorists of pluralist democracy.16 Thus, there is continuing appeal in Tocqueville’s description of local institutions that bring people together for communal activity, regardless of party or class. Contemporary followers of Tocqueville and Mill nevertheless refuse to go as far as they did in allowing opportunities for local self-government. The conditions that precluded parochial government in nineteenth-century London now seem to be universal, so the modern neighbourhoods that are small enough for mass participation are consistently rejected as municipal units. Latter-day proponents of participatory municipal democracy are not seeking to revive the town meeting, but to provide an effective alternative to local self-government. In this way, they hope to overcome the gap between the theory and the reality of local democracy – a gap symbolized by the distance between the neighbourhoods we live in, and the much larger communities that have local governments.

the political organization of the modern neighbourhood The gap between working-class neighbourhoods and municipal government was well-recognized in the early nineteenth century,17 but the late-Victorian settlement workers were the first to see that these neighbourhoods could be effectively organized for democratic participation, without conferring powers of local self-government. As they saw it, a new form of neighbourhood democracy could emerge if communities were organized for collective but voluntary effort.18 The crucial thing was to get people to cooperate with one another in meeting their own needs. Once they did so, a spirit of community would begin to develop, and means would be found for improving the neighbourhood. If resources were properly mobilized, local requirements could often be met without calling on the government. Voluntary action could serve many of the functions once fulfilled by parochial authorities. What is more, it could provide for the political education Mill wanted, without disrupting civic administra­tion. People who worked with one another on neighbourhood problems would have an understanding of community needs and a  com­­ mitment to meeting them. They would have enough experience of

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collective effort to judge their representatives and hold them to effective account. As such, they would be better citizens. Organized neighbourhoods would naturally make political de­­ mands. Indeed, for the settlement workers, one of the purposes of organizing was to make it possible to identify deficiencies in the public services (especially in lower-class areas) and to bring them to the attention of the governments concerned.19 This aim might involve political pressure, but neighbourhood interests were not to be pursued at the expense of the wider community. The settlement workers deplored the divisiveness of urban-industrial society: they hoped to restore its unity by organizing the poor for full participation in the life of the nation. The subordination of every neighbourhood to a common city government was symbolic of the unity they sought, and it was not to be threatened by parochial self-assertion. This was a fundamental principle of “community organization” – a practice that developed from the experience of the settlements in the twentieth century.20 The quest for organic unity did not preclude the representation of neighbourhoods on municipal councils, but ward-based elections were widely associated with the extremes of parochial politics. Reformers at the turn of the century were generally disposed toward elections-at-large. When they accepted the need for ward representation, they usually preferred big electoral districts that encompassed many different neighbourhoods.21 The early Fabians were among the few people to accept the need for neighbourhood representation, and they were far from recommending the revival of parochial government in the cities. What the Webbs suggested in 1920 was that every neighbourhood should elect a single councillor, who would sit on all local authorities that acted within the community.22 Although these wards would be too small for administrative use, they would still be politically important. the object is to constitute everywhere a self-conscious unit, which might comprise something like a couple of thousand families in the country, and twice or thrice that number in large cities, which could get to know personally the candidate whom it was asked to elect, which could be addressed by them in public meeting, and with which they could reasonably take counsel from time to time over what are, in fact, the common concerns of all.23

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Community Organization and Local Self-Government 39

On the other side of the Atlantic, Mary Parker Follett – an early community organizer – also proposed an elaborate scheme that would have recognized the neighbourhood as a basic political unit. Like the Webbs, however, she thought in terms of parochial representation in the government of the wider community and not in terms of neighbourhood autonomy. She was also very suspicious of direct democracy.24 What subsequent thinkers came to see was that neighbourhoods would be organized and recognized politically, without changing existing systems of electoral representation. As Ernest Griffith explained in 1933:25 Probably the best practical arrangement would be to divide the city into districts … and to provide for the formation of district associations or district meetings to membership in which all resident voters were eligible. These associations or meetings should be given the right by charter to send deputations to council, committee, or school board meetings, present the needs of their district and be questioned thereon. Such associations might also serve under certain circumstances as forums on general municipal or even state and national questions. By the 1930s, community groups that could fulfill this role had been established on a voluntary basis in many neighbourhoods on both sides of the Atlantic. Griffith was not alone in thinking that such groups would have a stronger voice if they had a statutory place in the system of local government. Many small municipalities had survived into the twentieth century, despite pressures to merge them into larger units. One way of overcoming their opposition to consolidation was to preserve their political status, while stripping them of administrative authority. This was how William Robson suggested, in 1931, that the smaller English local councils should be handled. These bodies would lose all their powers of government, but they would continue to be “elected for the purpose of voicing grievances and demands, expressing the will of the community and enunciating and enforcing the common rule of life and conduct.”26 As such, they could play the role that Griffith envisaged for his district association. If every community were to be treated in the same way, then neighbourhoods within big authorities that already existed would have to be allowed to elect councils similar to the others’. Since these bodies would not

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have administrative functions, the unity of civic government could still be maintained. Small local governments were more tolerable outside the central cities than within them. Although this situation began to change after 1920 as automobile transport integrated town and country, there was continuing sympathy for small-scale rural and suburban government, even among the strongest advocates of consolidation.27 An overarching government might be needed to handle some of the problems once left to the municipalities themselves, but the individual communities in the outlying areas could still be allowed some autonomy. Inner-city districts presented more of a problem, because they were so close to the heart of urban life: neighbourhood autonomy at the centre could conceivably threaten the civic organism. Working-class domination of these areas made this threat real to middle-class reformers. Only when city government was organized  on a larger scale, and more prosperous neighbourhoods were brought under its jurisdiction, could responsible middle-class leadership be assured. Even so, it was questionable whether a metropolis like London or New York could be effectively governed by a single municipal council. This was recognized in the late nineteenth century. When Manhattan was merged with its suburbs in 1898, there was provision for “borough” organization, and the contemporary reforms of London government allowed for a second tier of local councils beneath the new metropolitan authority.28 Although these arrangements compromised Mill’s principle of unitary municipal government – and conferred potentially dangerous powers on inner city councils29 – they made few concessions to parochial autonomy. The population of the London Metropolitan Boroughs was as big as most cities. It was the sheer size of the metropolis that made decentralization administratively necessary. Even Mill had conceded that two tiers of local government were necessary where people were thinly spread over a large geographic area.30 Although economies could be achieved by uniting certain branches of administration, there was nothing to be gained by centralizing services that had to be separately organized for each community. The situation in the big cities was rather similar. When there were so many people in hundreds of different neighbourhoods to be served, a uniform policy could not be applied. A centralized government would find it difficult to respond, and so might be more efficient if supported by another tier of authorities on a smaller than metropolitan scale.

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Community Organization and Local Self-Government 41

Disputes among reformers about the organization of metropolitan and regional government have continued to the present day, and one of the most trying issues has been the question of “borough” councils. The advocates of a lower tier have been surprisingly loyal to the  idea that bigger authorities are likely to be more efficient and effective. Thus, the units they advocate are generally on the scale of medium-sized cities.31 Nevertheless, this has not been enough to appease the proponents of unitary authorities. It has been argued that the political and administrative ends of decentralization can be achieved within the framework of a unified metropolitan government. A city or county can be divided into administrative districts with their own local headquarters; these offices can be supervised by district committees of a council elected for a wider area; and the people within these districts can be organized, as Griffith suggested, to bring their view to bear on policy decisions.32 Even the advocates of borough councils seem to have accepted that these modest arrangements are sufficient to deal with the problems of neighbourhood alienation. Thus, the controversy about metropolitan orga­ nization masks a common approach to the question of parochial au­ton­omy: the urban neighbourhood’s incapacity for self-­government is taken for granted.

pressures for decentralization The theory that the demand for parochial self-government can be met by community organization and administrative decentralization was already well-articulated by the late 1930s. It was said that political parties and pressure groups provided the means for involvement at every level of government. The local n ­ eighbourhood was a base for this activity. If people came together in their own communities, not only could they have a voice in wider affairs, they could also gain the means for protecting neighbourhood interests. Voluntary community councils could stand in for parochial governments. It was feasible for the authorities to consult these bodies on matters of local concern, and such groups could be given the right to make representations to the municipal council. The members of the council could be elected by wards, and contacts with each neighbourhood could be maintained by holding regular open meetings. It might be difficult for a centralized government to respond to the requirements of each community, but its task would

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not be impossible if neighbourhoods were grouped into administrative districts. In the biggest cities and counties, it would be possible to turn these districts into autonomous lower-tier governments, without sacrificing economies of scale or abandoning the higherlevel organization. These methods for decentralizing government and encouraging participation could be used separately or in combination with one another. Together they provided a reasonable, if limited, response to the pressures for neighbourhood autonomy. Nevertheless, there was not much movement in this direction before the Second World War. Although this new form of neighbourhood democracy was offered as a replacement for the old, there was little weakening of rural and suburban resistance to local government consolidation. It would have been surprising if there had been, since the new democracy was more limited. It did offer more participation and greater local control to people in the cities, but municipal reformers did little to promote it there. Their emphasis was on consolidating local authority: they thought of decentralization essentially as a means of appeasing popular opinion. In the cities, the pressures for neighbourhood democracy were too weak to force a more vigorous response. However, demands for urban decentralization began to grow dramatically in the second decade after the war. A sort of climax was reached in the United States about 1970, when city governments there came under extraordinary pressure from militant blacks. Blacks were demanding freedom from white domination, and many of them insisted that their communities should be granted autonomy.33 Liberating the ghettos in this way would have meant breaking up municipal governments, if not rupturing the states themselves. The new forms of neighbourhood democracy, which avoided parochial self-government, appeared as a far more acceptable alternative, and these forms were widely promoted as such. To many liberal reformers, the special grievances of the blacks seemed the consequence of a more general problem, that governments had become too remote from the ordinary citizen.34 People were likely to be ignored as individuals and so were the local communities. Political protest was a predictable result. The truth of this analysis was apparently confirmed by the emergence of decentralist pressures throughout the western world.35 After 1965, most western cities were faced with militant protests from neighbourhood groups; most of these groups were white and middle

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Community Organization and Local Self-Government 43

class. This was part of a more general pattern of political and industrial unrest. Although the demands for “participation” have often since been transmuted into a sullen hostility to government, the sources of this later reaction are much the same as of the earlier reactions in the 1950s and 1960s. There is a widespread resentment about the remoteness and insensitivity of public authorities, and this resentment is certainly not confined to the lower classes. The problem of political alienation, which concerned the early settlement workers, now seems general. This reflects the fact that opportunities for exercising political power seem to have been shrinking, while the citizen’s need and capacity for participation have been increasing. The growing gap between the need and opportunity for citizen influence has been most apparent at the local level. Continuing migration from the country to the cities has brought more people under the control of centralized urban governments. Although this has been partly offset by the flight to the suburbs, people left in the cities seem to be in an unjustly disadvantaged position in terms of their political opportunities. The increasing similarity of town and country has undermined the rationale for different scales of government, and urban neighbourhoods as well as rural parishes feel a need for protection against higher-level authorities, which threaten their integrity with schemes for redevelopment. Such schemes themselves reflect the fact that governments intervene in people’s lives more frequently and decisively than ever before. This is particularly true for poorer people who collect near the centres of cities and are peculiarly dependent on services from the government, but no one is entirely exempt from the process. At one time, the lower classes lacked the means to politically organize their own neighbourhoods, but universal education and mass communications have combined with the high-wage economy (and its welfare system) to make political resources more generally available. What is lacking is the opportunity to put these resources to effective use. Pressures for decentralization and mass participation were bound to develop in the face of this contradiction. Local governments were not the only ones affected, but they were particularly vulnerable to the demands being made.36 This was partly because they are charged with the immediate delivery of so many services, but it was also because they are still expected to provide the citizen with his main opportunities for political involvement. When they fail this purpose, the municipal authorities are condemned from above as well as from

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below, since the senior governments are then obliged to deal with the  unwanted pressures. This is what happened during the 1960s. The experience then and in the early 1970s is worth examining, because the most concerted efforts to develop alternatives to neighbourhood autonomy were made at that time.

Community Action and Community Control One of the most interesting features of this recent experience has been the support from governments for community organizers, who have carried on the work of the early settlements in the slums. These people have been responsible for creating many neighbourhood groups, some of which have been involved in militant protest. From a conservative perspective, such protest is clearly suspect. Organizers have frequently been condemned as a result.37 It is clear, nonetheless, that most community workers are still attempting to integrate their clients into the larger society and to break down the suspicions that separate citizens from governments. One of the most radical theories of community organization is the one associated with the late Saul Alinsky. What Alinsky wanted was to form “people’s organizations” in inner-city neighbourhoods that could bargain with the authorities in much the same way that unions dealt with employers.38 He did not suggest that neighbourhoods should become self-governing, but he did insist that their community councils should represent the people they served and be prepared to use militant tactics. To more conventional organizers, these were highly subversive ideas.39 The original settlement workers had been concerned about the isolation of the poor from their betters. They saw themselves as the modern successors to the squire and the rector – more democratic in outlook, but in a tutelary role. One of the earliest results of settlement work was the movement to turn every neighbourhood school into a community centre.40 The groups formed at these centres were taken as a model by the American federal government for the local councils of national defence it created during the First World War. These councils were intended to be agencies of the higher authorities and were rarely democratic.41 This was not a perversion of what the settlement workers had wanted, but an extension. Their concept of community organization arose from the belief that the poor were incapable of managing their own affairs. Thus, any association that

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Community Organization and Local Self-Government 45

was based on an inner-city neighbourhood had to remain under outside tutelage. This assumption was taken over by the government social workers who began to assume the functions of the settlements in the 1920s.42 Alinsky was one of the first to protest against this paternalistic approach. His ideas were never fully accepted, but other organizers were forced to move in the direction he indicated after the Second World War. Government plans – for rural development, urban renewal, youth management, re-housing – all required the cooperation of the people affected.43 It was increasingly difficult to get this cooperation without adopting a democratic approach. By 1960, some neighbourhoods had had seventy-five years of experience with community organizers. Thanks to the changes that had occurred during that time, people were beginning to insist that any organizations that absorbed their energies should serve their own purposes. Since community workers had always been presented as servants of the local neighbourhood, it was difficult for them to resist such pressures. The experience of the Depression and the Second World War had helped to soften the traditional insistence on suppressing every sign of social conflict. Periodic strikes and demonstrations were increasingly accepted as normal. They provided an outlet for violent feeling, and a way for readjusting the claims of conflicting groups. The new pluralist conception of democracy (which had its origins at the beginning of the century)44 offered a way of understanding and accepting conflicts in this light. To organize the poor to fight for their own interests was undoubtedly a radical idea – especially if the funds for organization were to come from the government itself. However, the organized poor – like organized labour – were not as frightening as they had seemed in the past. What is more, the local neighbourhood was a safer forum for protest than most, since government and industry were both organized on a wider scale. For the central authorities, neighbourhood activity would be very remote: municipal governments would absorb most of its effects. It was with this in mind that the federal government in the United States began its support for “community action” in 1961.45 The designers of community action intended, among other things, to open new channels for participation so that the blacks and the poor could be involved in what was done on their behalf. This was supposed to inhibit violent protest. For the federal government, offering opportunities for participation at the local level was an inexpensive

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means of appeasing the poor. For the municipalities, such a response was more problematic, but Washington made it difficult for them, financially, to resist its strategy. An Office of Economic Opportunity was established in 1964 to coordinate President Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” The office used its legislative mandate to require the cities to include representatives of the poor in planning “poverty programs.” Funds were provided for hiring community workers and for organizing the election of poor peoples’ representatives to the boards of the planning agencies. Similar action was taken by the Model Cities Agency, which the central government set up in 1967 to conduct a campaign for regenerating the ghettos. Both federal offices encouraged the delegation of responsibility to agencies closer to the neighbourhood level. In part, this meant opening up “little city halls” or “neighbourhood service centers,” where government officials would be available for consultations; in part, it meant constituting residents’ advisory groups to help in developing and administering public services; and, in part, it meant funding voluntary agencies to do things that might otherwise be left to government. At the most, these measures would lead to the creation of a “community corporation,” whose directors would be elected by the local residents, and whose functions would include the development and management of a community centre where government and voluntary services would be made available. Public officials would be expected to take the advice of the corporation when acting within the area. Thus, the corporate board would stand in the place of a neighbourhood government, although it would not have the legal powers of a public authority.46 The ghetto riots of the mid-1960s intensified the pressure for decentralization in American cities. Several liberal mayors responded with plans to decentralize local administration, a strategy that was endorsed by the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders.47 These plans stopped short of creating second-level municipal governments, but that idea was very much in the air. The prestigious Committee for Economic Development had raised the possibility in 1966,48 and the federal Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations had recommended a year later that “City governments be authorized … to create neighbourhood subunits of government with election of the local leadership and limited powers of taxation.”49 This idea was supported by an important minority of the National Commission on Urban Problems, in its 1969 report,50 and it was

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raised as a crucial issue during the mayoralty campaign in New York later that year.51 For the next few years, the major city governments were under considerable pressure to present schemes that would counter the demand for “neighbourhood government.” What is interesting about the ensuing controversies is that the proponents of “neighbourhood government” – who often saw themselves as radical reformers – usually agreed with their critics in resisting a parochial scale of organization. Although they talked of  neighbourhood autonomy, what they meant was that cities should  be divided into boroughs like those in Greater London or Metropolitan Toronto. It was hardly radical to suggest that places as big as New York might need two levels of municipal government, and it was distinctly conservative to think that second-tier authorities had to be well removed from the neighbourhood level. Most of the boroughs in London or Toronto had more than 200,000 residents, so the borough plan was not exactly parochial.52 The advocates of double-tiered government wanted to show that it was consistent with large-scale administration, so by opting for big units they were able to avoid what they saw as the key criticism against creating a second level of local government. However, it was clear to any shrewd observer that demands for mass participation and neighbourhood power would not be met simply by creating new secondtier governments of this size.53 It was necessary to get down to a lower level, and the consensus was that this could only be done by making contacts with neighbourhood groups and setting up offices in each area to deal with localized problems. A city could do this without breaking up its government. Not surprisingly, pressures for decentralization in American cities have come to very little.54

B r i ta i n a n d C a n a da : C o n s o l i dat i o n and Decentralization On both sides of the Atlantic, decentralist pressures coincided with a renewed effort to consolidate local governments into larger units.55 In fact, consolidation was often conceived as a necessary complement to decentralization.56 This seemed particularly true for metropolitan areas. Wider local governments had the resources to respond to complaints about public services and to tackle the basic problems of housing, transport and employment, which appeared to be at the root of most popular grievances. What is more, such authorities

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were capable of hiring the community workers and setting up the area offices needed to bring government down to the neighbourhood level. If decentralization was to be achieved by administrative means, stronger municipalities could be expected to act more effectively. It was in Britain that decentralist measures were most closely connected to the drive for consolidating units of government. The number of local authorities in that country was drastically cut between 1964 and 1974 and their average size was greatly enlarged. Coinciden­ tal­ly,  there were a number of efforts to establish administrative units that could deal with the problems of “distressed” urban neighbourhoods in an integrated manner. “Educational priority,” “planning action,” ”general improvement,” and “community development” areas were all designated for this purpose under national legislation. The reports that recommended these measures were generally based on the assumption that local government areas ought, if anything, to be bigger than they were.57 Both major parties accepted this premise, although the Conservatives retained their belief that other decentralist gestures would not be necessary if two tiers of local government were maintained. Even the Conservatives could not escape the demand for administrative decentralization, because the second-tier authorities they wanted for the cities were very large – even larger than they had been before. There was nothing quite comparable in Britain to the black demand for community control in the United States, but there were serious pressures from inner-city neighbourhoods and these were complicated by tensions between immigrants and other groups. Redevelopment schemes were encountering serious opposition, and the much-expanded social services were proving ineffective as a means of integrating those on the lowest rungs of the social scale into the economy, and curbing various forms of delinquency. Several official reports in the early 1960s suggested that the young could only be reached if the local authorities tried to organize the communities they came from.58 The Seebohm Committee recommended, in 1968, that “area offices” of local government be established, where integrated teams of social workers could operate, to serve neighbourhoods of fifty to a hundred thousand people.59 These teams would be expected to reach out to the public, by setting up suboffices and hiring community organizers. The ideal was to have a multi-purpose community centre in each neighbourhood with offices for a social work team and its board of local advisers.

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The central government put pressure on the local authorities to move in this direction. It also encouraged them to open up their planning activities to greater public involvement. The Skeffington Committee suggested various means for doing this in its 1969 report.60 In this case, the pressures to be dealt with were by no means confined to poorer neighbourhoods. Amenity consciousness had led to the creation of many new pressure groups, concerned about the protection of local environments. These groups had to be heard at an early stage in planning if more serious conflicts were to be avoided later. This was gradually being recognized on both sides of the Atlantic. A new style of planning was beginning to emerge that put a great emphasis on public consultations and was part of a general trend toward using surveys and hearings to gather information, as a basis for the formation of policy.61 Although participation was certainly encouraged by this means, there was no shift in the locus of decision. One interesting feature of the English situation was that the parish councils – which had been preserved in rural districts as minor administrative units – had begun to take on the role of neighbourhood pressure groups, especially in districts that had been changed by urban settlement. They were particularly active in dealing with issues connected to physical planning and environmental management.62 This gave currency to the idea that every neighbourhood ought to have such a council, to express local feeling and organize community effort. This idea was taken up by the royal commissions that recommended the consolidation of local ­administrative authorities.63 The Labour government of the day showed some interest in the proposal in its 1970 White Paper on local ­government reform:64 It is common experience that local groups are increasingly springing up to protect or advance the interest of their com­ munities. Neighbourhood councils would reflect and articulate this growing strength of grassroots opinion. They could keep the main authorities more closely in touch with local feeling, attract a new and different type of representative into local ­government and strengthen its democratic base. By giving urban communities the same kind of representation that rural parishes have had since 1894, they would bring to an end at this level also the differentiation between town and country.

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The most vigorous proponents of urban neighbourhood councils denied that these bodies were intended to be units of government: “There must be two sets of institutions: one concerned with devising and controlling policy; and the other involving people in local community affairs.”65 Neighbourhood institutions would be of the second kind, so they would not interfere with efforts to consolidate local authority. It was with this in mind that the Conservative government provided for “community councils” in Scotland, under the local government reform legislation of 1973. Although no similar arrangements were made for England, the Labour party promised to act on the matter when it returned to power the following year.66 In fact, nothing further has been done, although a number of local councils have gone ahead with schemes of their own.67 In Canada, as in Britain, the demand for new modes of citizen participation coincided with a nationwide effort to consolidate municipal government. Schemes varied from province to province, but everywhere there was a move toward larger units, which offered less opportunity for popular involvement. The most imaginative effort to compensate for this was in Winnipeg, where the new Unicity government was required to establish “community committees” of council to deal with localized problems. Resident Advisory Groups of laymen were to be associated with these bodies. The city council itself was to be larger than customary in North America, to allow for smaller constituencies.68 Neighbourhoods were not given their own governments or even their own community committees (which were to serve larger districts), but each ward of ten thousand was to have its own elected representative. The new arrangements for municipal government in Winnipeg were advertised as providing for administrative centralization and political decentralization, but the decentralist elements were much too limited to establish such a balance. The community committees had very few powers and the advisory groups were relegated to an ancillary role. As a result, neither were particularly effective.69 When the Taraska Committee reviewed the structure five years later, it recommended greater centralization of authority.70 The N D P government responded by increasing the population of each ward, reducing the size of the council, cutting the number of community committees, and strengthening the position of the central administration.71 The Unicity scheme for Winnipeg had been modelled partly on the proposals of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England. This was also true for the recommendations of the Graham

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Commission on municipal institutions in Nova Scotia.72 In their 1974 report, the Nova Scotia commissioners suggested that existing municipalities be replaced by eleven unitary county councils, which would cover the whole province. Towns and villages outside the “metropolitan” counties would be allowed to retain their representative institutions, and provide certain minor services on their own account. County councils would also be permitted to delegate functions to town or village councils, which would administer services under contract to the county. However, the commissioners insisted that the full responsibility for all local services should rest with the county council, which could consolidate or decentralize as it saw fit.73 The minor urban councils were to be essentially representative bodies, with few administrative powers: as such, they were like the local councils the Redcliffe-Maud Commission proposed for England. The Nova Scotia Commission opposed the creation of councils for rural townships or urban neighbourhoods, but it accepted the idea put forward by the Wheatley Commission in Scotland, that official “community associations” be formed in these areas.74 Such associations would be established on local initiative but they would have to meet certain conditions of openness and democratic organization before they could be officially recognized. Once recognized, community associations would be eligible for public subsidies and would have a right to be consulted by the county council on various matters. The Graham Commission’s proposals were rejected in Nova Scotia, thanks largely to municipal opposition.75 In Canada, as in Britain and the United States, local authorities have resisted pressures from above for structural change. Although most of these pressures have been toward consolidation, there have also been efforts to force the municipalities to provide for wider citizen participation. These efforts are reflected in federal requirements for consulting people affected by municipal redevelopment or housing schemes, the costs of which are to be shared by the federal government. They are also reflected in more stringent provincial requirements for citizen participation in planning.76 Stimulus to decentralization and open government has been provided by various community groups, which have protested insensitive government action. The community workers who have helped organize these groups have usually been funded, directly or indirectly, by the federal government. This is a continuation of a policy that dates from the beginning of the War on Poverty in Canada. Organizers have followed in the footsteps of the Company of Young

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Canadians, which was formed to mobilize youthful idealism for the purpose of integrating the poor into the larger society.77 It would be difficult to say that these organizers have succeeded, but they have contributed to the development of a populist movement for urban reform.78 This movement has generated decentralist pressures that are still being felt in major Canadian cities. It is in Toronto that the populist reformers had their best-­publicized successes. Their decentralist aims were articulated in the 1976 report of the City of Toronto’s Neighbourhood Services Work Group. This report recommended a new policy toward neighbourhoods, which would have involved local groups in the planning, budgeting, and administration of localized services within the city. To this end, civic support was to be provided for neighbourhood organization. Four stages of organization were envisaged, from the simple “association” with an advisory role in local planning and administration, to the more elaborate “community corporation,” which would provide a wide range of services under authority from the city. The community corporation, or the more restricted “neighbourhood board,” would have some of the functions of a municipal government and its council would be elected by the municipal voters in the area where it operated.79 On the other hand, it would not have the legislative or taxing powers of a local government: its funding would be provided from above and its authority would be defined by the municipal council. Not even the “radicals” on the Toronto Council thought that neighbourhoods should be organized as separate municipalities.80 The caution of the Reform Council in Toronto was more than matched by municipal attitudes elsewhere. The Drapeau administration in Montreal vigorously resisted the de-centralist schemes of its radical opponents, because “citizen participation” seemed to threaten its political base.81 Other city councils had a similar outlook, although the “citizens’ movement” in English Canada was nowhere as radical as in Montreal. To the extent that the new populists influenced municipal policy, the concessions they secured were well within the conventional limits of decentralist reform. Indeed, the populists themselves had no interest in exceeding these bounds.

Radical Alternatives In all three countries, radicals have been conscious of the manipulative character of government efforts to involve people in public

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decisions. They have recognized the need to mobilize people for action outside the framework the authorities have offered and they have called for the development of new institutions that would allow for popular self-government. There has been little agreement, though, on the character of these institutions. The more moderate of the radical schemes hardly differ in substance from conventional proposals: revolutionary rhetoric is the only thing that distinguishes them.82 Others are vitiated by the doctrines of “democratic centralism,” which promise even less opportunity for local self-government than exists at present.83 The most genuinely radical decentralist alternatives have been posed by anarchists or “libertarian socialists.”84 In their schemes, the recovery of the neighbourhood as a unit of social, political, and economic organization emerges as a basic goal. Local communities are to be organized for popular action on every front, which is to lead to a transformation of society. The neighbourhood council then becomes not an agent of the superior authorities but a revolutionary assembly of the people. Dimitrios Roussopoulos claims that such a conception of neighbourhood organization was implicit in the proposals advanced by the Montreal Citizens’ Movement in 1976.85 The concept of direct democracy is clearly introduced. Repre­ sentation would not be based on the election of a local elite to a governing body through universal suffrage from time to time. Instead what is presented is the need for a neighbourhood organized into committees on a street-by-street or block level. Each street or block committee would send delegates to the neighbourhood council when it meets. These elected street delegates would be revocable at any time and would have clear and limited mandates reporting back to their street. Delegates will also be elected to the council from various workplaces within the neighbour­ hood, either from local trade unions or workplace committees so that workers as such would participate in the debates. In Roussopoulos’s view, neighbourhood councils would be the basis for a new regime, where political and economic power would be radically decentralized. Government would be organized on the “soviet” system, with the superior authorities subordinated to the “communes” below them. Nothing could be imposed on a local community without its consent.86

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Such arrangements might be highly impractical, but Rousso­ poulos’s proposals set the decentralist schemes of the liberal reformers in clearer relief. All those schemes take the advantages of centralization for granted: demands for citizen participation and local self-­government are met within a framework that concentrates authority at the political centre of the city or county. Decentralization is never so great as to undermine the position of the municipal authorities, whose powers are supposed to be essential for the wider community. When nations are threatened with fragmentation, their defenders appeal to our sense of national identity and denounce the radicals who threaten to destroy its basis. Cities and counties can rarely command such loyalty, because their own integrity has been weakened by centralization. Nevertheless, the fragmentation of urban government is stoutly resisted – and not only by those who have a vested interest in existing political arrangements. The welfare of the people, if not their identity, is supposed to depend on the concentration of civic authority. It is hard to deny that the capacity of government can be affected by fragmentation. What is curious, though, is the general assumption that small parochial communities like urban neighbourhoods are such a potentially disruptive force that they must not have municipal institutions, even if they are to operate under an overarching city government. It is still conceded that small towns in the country are capable of handling some of their own affairs, but neighbourhoods of comparable size in metropolitan areas are believed to be inherently incompetent. Nowhere in the literature is there a convincing explanation of this belief: it has the status of a self-evident truth. One remarkable indication of this is in the report of the Royal Commission on Local Government in England. The commissioners discovered, from their evidence, that the local areas with which people identified were extremely small – as small as, if not smaller than, the traditional ­parish.87 They took this as a justification not for reducing the scale of local government but for enlarging it. Since the communities people were concerned about were, ex hypothesi, too small for self-­ government, the reformers were free to reorganize the local authorities on whatever scale was necessary for efficiency.88 The idea that consolidation is the recipe for efficiency has been a fundamental tenet of local government reform for a hundred and fifty years. Ironically, the most effective criticism of this idea, which was elaborated by the early Benthamites, has come from the latter-day

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utilitarians of the “Virginia School.”89 These American political economists have challenged conventional reformers to provide evidence that concentrating authority will actually lead to greater efficiency, but the response to this challenge has not been convincing. Even the Redcliffe-Maud Commission failed to uncover any firm empirical evidence for its pleas for the unitary model.90 Unfortunately, the criticisms advanced by the Virginia School have been easy to dismiss, because they have been linked to a modernized version of the theory of laissez-faire. According to this view, “firms” within the public economy (i.e., municipalities and other local authorities) ought to compete with one another like firms in the market sector. This would clearly work to the advantage of the rich. As long as people with money can escape the effects of redistributive taxation by isolating themselves in suburban enclaves, there will not be much hope of using local government for aid to the poor – or indeed for any other purpose that requires the wealthy to make sacrifices.91 Most of the political opposition to local government consolidation is traditionalist92 and, as such, it is linked to communitarian values that are barely understood by utilitarian theorists. Never­ theless, traditionalists and the extreme utilitarians of the Virginia School have some similarities: both set their faces against egalitarian reform. Laissez-faire, as a doctrine that justifies the privileges of the economically successful, and traditionalism, as a doctrine that supports the autonomy of prosperous or socially undemocratic communities, serve much the same political functions. The most powerful argument for the consolidation of local governments is that it will equalize conditions of life, between town and country, slums and suburbs. Whether or not this object is really achieved, the promise of equality remains. Since the opponents of consolidation have been unwilling or unable to match this promise, bigger government is still believed to be necessary for equalization. On the other hand, the loss of autonomy that comes with consolidation is supposed to be largely offset by administrative decentralization, community organization, and participatory politics – the three pillars of the new form of neighbourhood democracy. The consolidationist strategy for overcoming the gulf between the government and its subjects was originally articulated by Victorian liberals, who were concerned about social integration. It has now been taken over by egalitarian reformers, who insist that integration depends on eliminating poverty and equalizing the opportunities of

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different social classes. Unlike their predecessors, they are prepared to accept political conflict as a natural phenomenon. This makes the intervention of community organizers more acceptable to the poor, if not to the public authorities. At the same time, the theory of local government consolidation offers reasons for denying autonomy to working class neighbourhoods. Rich and poor communities alike must surrender their autonomy to a wider authority, if resources are  to be extracted from the former for the benefit of the latter. Hence, the demand for self-government from poor inner-city neighbourhoods appears as a threat to equalization.93 To the extent that conditions of life can be defined in material terms, this may well be correct, but such a definition is inadequate. Among the goods the poor lack is the opportunity for local self-government. Denying this to the rich does not make it available to the poor. Indeed, it is arguable that the political dependency of the poor, under a centralized government, is one of the causes of their continuing poverty. If we had to choose between dismantling every large-scale muni­ cipal government and surrendering any claim to neighbourhood autonomy, we might well choose the latter, for it is obvious that most of the public business that is vital to our lives has to be handled by authorities with jurisdiction over more than one neighbourhood. Fortunately for us, this is not the choice we have to make. The volume of business that can best be conducted on a parochial scale actually increased in the twentieth century, thanks to the general expansion of the public sector. There are many services and facilities that are now being provided, or ought to be provided, at the neighbourhood level for neighbourhood use: schools, health clinics, community centres, parks, playgrounds, retirement homes, nurseries, advice bureaus, swimming pools, skating rinks etc.94 It is not obvious why these things should be provided from above, rather than by a local authority. Many neighbourhoods would obviously require financial and technical assistance to maintain a high level of service, but the necessary equalization could be achieved without putting an end to local autonomy.95 Also, several regulatory activities are primarily of neighbourhood concern: keeping the peace, controlling traffic and other nui­­­sances, regulating construction, maintaining parks and streets and sundry public facilities. Physical planning for the neighbourhood grows out of these regulatory activities, as well as from the responsibility for local public facilities. In the neighbourhood, as well as in the city as a whole, planning can be the activity that makes public business coherent and focuses public attention on it.

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Radical attacks on our present political system have had the unfortunate effect of obscuring the issue of neighbourhood autonomy. It is not necessary to be an anarchist to believe in parochial self-government. Indeed, there is nothing inconsistent about claiming that recognizing every neighbourhood’s right of self-­government would enhance the need for larger local authorities – bodies capable of redistributing resources, providing technical assistance, and dealing with the problems of the wider community. Some things may have to be centralized, to establish the appropriate conditions for local self-government. For democrats, the aim of such an effort would not be to restore the vitality of the parochial community (although that might be of value). Instead, it would be to recreate the opportunity for direct democracy:96 to recapture the form that inspired the belief that local institutions would be the basis for popular government. In 2008, a one-time community organizer from Chicago, Barack Obama, was elected president of the United States. In her campaign against him, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, made much of the contrast between her own experience as a small-town mayor with “actual responsibilities,” and Obama’s experience as an organizer. There was a point to her remarks that went beyond the campaign rhetoric. How could a community organization without any powers of taxation or re­gulation be in any way equivalent to a municipality? And so, how could the head of such an organization – let alone an organizer for it, like Obama – be in any way equivalent to a mayor? In the Chicago where Obama got his start politically, municipal government was and is highly centralized. The South Side, where he worked, has no municipal government of its own, even though its population of about 750,000 is significantly larger than Alaska’s. Organizing “the community” there is mainly about trying to influence the authorities, who are remote from this vast, primarily African-American “neighbourhood,” which apparently is not as worthy of having its own local government as Wasilla, where Palin lived. Wasilla has a population of about 8,000, which sounds like a good, neighbourly size. Anchorage, the metropolitan area of which it is part, has less than half as many people as South Side Chicago and yet contains a number of independent muni­ cipalities. So, the justice in such arrangements for municipal ­government is … what?

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Community organizing is less fashionable now than it was in the 1970s or even in the 1980s, when Barack Obama was active. This is partly the result of funding cutbacks, which have made it more difficult for non-profit organizations to hire people to do the organizing. Nevertheless, organizing of one sort or another does occur in some neighbourhoods: for example, in my part of the world, most famously in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside,97 which is reputedly Canada’s most impoverished neighbourhood. Although the result may be that poor neighbourhoods like the Downtown Eastside are better organized politically than they might otherwise be, they are still not allowed to have their own municipal governments. Once established, the unity of a city like Vancouver is jealously guarded, on both the left and the right. The demand, as we shall see in chapter 2, is more likely to be for some form of regional government that transcends the city proper. The most notable feature of more recent efforts to provide for greater citizen participation is that they are modelled on what ­companies do to ascertain what their actual or potential customers want. The presumption is that the authorities have to sell things – disturbing new developments, for instance – to people in particular neighbourhoods, so there has to be a process to get people onside. Moreover, to the extent that services are being provided, it is best to work out what services are actually wanted. So, consultations with the public make a lot of sense, and this can take the form of surveys, focus groups, open houses, community mapping, community visioning, and much else. The techniques are now quite sophisticated. The key thing is that the authority to make the final decisions – and decide what sort of consultations are to occur – remains where it always was. As Leonard Cohen might have put it, “everybody knows” that the consultations are meant to help the authorities, not displace them. So, if you don’t want to be a helper – like a little child in the kitchen – the attractions of taking part are not very great. Is it surprising that people refuse to participate?

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2 Metropolitan Reform in the Capitalist City*

Who now doubts that we live in a capitalist society? When I wrote this essay and the others in Part 1, most of the supporters of capitalism were reluctant to identify themselves as such. Instead, they claimed that they were in favour of the free market or a free society, unlike the communists and socialists, who wanted to impose something more restrictive on people. Since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the word “capitalism” has been re-embraced by its supporters, who are confident that there is now no alternative to it. I am one of those who thinks that there is an alternative – or, rather, an array of alternatives – but it is far from obvious how we would get to any of those alternatives, given the way that the capitalist system has been consolidated in the wake of the defeat of communism and the rollback of the Keynesian welfare state. Who, following the events of 2008, could doubt that the modern state – or, rather, the consortium of states that is the modern state system – works as “the executive committee of the bourgeoisie?”1 Years later, everyone is still paying for the bail-outs the big banks and other private companies received after they messed everything up in their pursuit of short-term profits. In the 1970s, the evident connection between capitalism and the state was widely disputed on the grounds that the state – at least in the most advanced capitalist societies – was actually independent of the capitalist class and more responsive to the needs and demands of ordinary

*  Originally published in Canadian Journal of Political Science 14, no. 3 (September 1981), 557–85. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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people than to business. Keynesian welfarism, which involved huge state expenditures as well as a measure of state control over the economy, was taken to be indicative of this independence, since it was clearly not very popular within “the business community” (as it is now euphemistically described). Marxists and others responded by pointing out that Keynesian measures had the effect of stabilizing the economy for the benefit of capitalist investors, and that welfare measures quieted the working class politically at a time when it might have thrown its support to the socialists or communists. In the Marxist jargon of the time, the state had “relative autonomy” from the dominant capitalist class, an autonomy necessary to fulfill its functions: continued capital accumulation on the part of capitalists, and legitimation of the whole system in the eyes of the people at large. If this was how things were best understood, how did the city or local government fit into the analysis? In this essay, I addressed the idea that “metropolitan reform” – the American term for consolidating local government in metro­ politan areas – was a consequence of the demands of the capitalist class, or of the functional requirements of advanced capitalism. Toronto, where a metropolitan government was established in 1953, is a particular focus of my attention. What happened there was a model for what happened in other parts of Canada and, unusually, it attracted much attention in the US. The basic logic of reform in Toronto was similar to that applied in Britain and many other countries. What I try to show is that this logic is not simply an effect of capitalist demands or capitalist requirements. Instead, it reflects a more generally shared bourgeois sensibility. Moreover, there is reason to believe that a different model of metropolitan reform, which then went under the label of “public choice,” could be more congenial for capitalists, both in terms of the opportunities it provided for private capital accumulation and the way it secured popular legitimacy. Subsequent events seem to have confirmed this intuition, as neo-­ liberalism, which is essentially the philosophy of public choice, has since become the dominant strategy of government globally. For a generation of American liberals, the Municipality of Metro­ politan Toronto embodied an ideal of municipal organization that could be achieved only imperfectly under American conditions. No text on local government in the United States was complete without a discussion of the Toronto experience.2 A new generation of American

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neo-Marxists now seems to have turned the conventional assessment on its head, by presenting Metropolitan Toronto as “the most fully developed State Capitalist City in North America,” “a blueprint of the urban future,” the realization of which, according to Richard C. Hill, is a “top priority on the agenda of the class-­conscious wing of monopoly capital.”3 Needless to say, these are not words of praise. The analysis is in line with the critical commentaries on metropolitan reform that have been advanced by radicals in Canada itself. As M.D. Goldrick sees it, for instance, the consolidation of Toronto’s municipal institutions was a response to the requirements of capital. Throughout the postwar period, government adjusted its structures and processes as well as its policies to the emerging needs of capital. The formation of the Metropolitan Toronto Govern­ ment in 1953 can be seen in this light. As the impact of Federal housing, immigration and agricultural policies was felt in what is now the metropolitan Toronto area, government was ill-equipped to handle the dramatic development that was occurring: a hodgepodge of competing semi-rural townships adjoined the City, none of which could afford or execute the elaborate servicing networks needed to support massive urban growth. In establishing the Metro Government, the Province of Ontario provided a governmental jurisdiction to lay down suburban services. The formation of Metro also established a centralized and isolated government that could raise at public expense the enormous sums of money needed to collectivize these costs.4 This is a useful analysis, but, like Hill’s, it suffers from oversimplification. It does not take into account the other social forces that have had an effect on metropolitan reform. The “emerging needs of capital” only become apparent in relation to the needs and demands of other classes, and the “class-conscious wing of monopoly capital” sets its “agenda” in the course of a struggle with other elements. As Hill recognizes, this wing does not always get its way, and certainly not immediately. Generally, “solutions” to problems are the result of political accommodation, and they may be advanced from either or both sides of the class divide. Metropolitan reform, as we shall see, may be regarded as a product of class struggle and a consequence of the contradictions of capitalist society, but it cannot be attributed to

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the demands or requirements of any one class in isolation. Like so many other reforms in the capitalist societies, it commands support from both capital and labour. Hill and Goldrick are also mistaken in associating metropolitan reform with advanced or state capitalism. This is an anachronistic judgment. As an ideal, metropolitan government is a product of early capitalism,5 and there are reasons for thinking that it is an archaic form of political and administrative organization. The urban system of an advanced capitalist country can only be managed by a network of agencies, many of which are larger and as many smaller than the physical metropoles. The political process within such a system is certain to be extremely complex, and is liable to burst the bounds of any simplified structure of metropolitan government. For reasons of efficiency and political accommodation, it may be necessary to opt for a looser and “messier” framework. This is what the American theorists of public choice have suggested,6 but their message has yet to be assimilated by Marxist analysts. To Marxists, it is obvious that public choice theory is ideological, in the sense that it rationalizes the interests of the bourgeoisie, and expresses a bourgeois conception of society and government. It is more difficult to see that the theory is more than just an ideology – that it expresses important scientific insights – and that it may be invoked quite sensibly by classes other than the bourgeoisie. Still more difficult to accept is that conventional Marxist analyses of the capitalist state – which suggest, for instance, that “The urban fiscal crisis embodies intensifying contradictions which can only be transcended through the implementation of state planning on a vast scale”7 – reflect a European ideological bias, which distorts the Marxist understanding of the requirements of capitalism and the conditions for socialist transformation. This bias is deeply embedded in Marxist theory, and it is a consequence of national experiences in Europe and elsewhere which suggest that capitalism, or any system that succeeds it, can only be sustained if public authority is centralized. Whether or not this is true for Europe, we should be loath to conclude that the same conditions apply everywhere else – especially not in the United States, whose development has always departed from European norms. It may well be the case that under American conditions the survival of capitalism depends on a dispersal of public authority, a reduction in state planning, and an increase in “public choice.” That is certainly the conviction of a great many capitalists.

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This essay does not purport to settle the issue. It is intended primarily as a corrective to what is becoming the conventional Marxist analysis of metropolitan reform. It begins from the premise that theories of reform must be understood as ideological constructs, which reflect conditions in the societies that produce or use them, but which have an effect of their own on political behaviour. Even in a class-dominated society, everyone may use the same constructs, and everyone may be subject to their mystification. It is ironic that, in the case of metropolitan reform, it is not the Marxists who have done most to demystify conventional bourgeois theory, but instead the proponents of public choice, who have simply taken the assumptions of the theory to their logical extreme. In doing so, they have unwittingly revealed the limitations of those assumptions, but they have also demonstrated socialists’ enslavement to conventional bourgeois notions. This will only become clear in the course of the analysis that follows.

T h e T h e o ry a n d P r a c t i c e of Bourgeois Reform The most obvious feature of the conventional theory of metropolitan reform is that it favours the consolidation of local authority. The idea that local government could be improved by overcoming the fragmentation of authority is probably as old as local government itself. Territorial consolidation was certainly an aim of reformers before the industrial era.8 However, the rapid growth of industrial towns in the nineteenth century gave a new urgency to the case for larger municipal authorities. It also changed the tenor of the case itself, because the new urban reformers had less of the mentality of the landed gentry and more of the sensibility of the bourgeoisie, for whom the dictates of the market were natural and rational. To them, reforming government meant adapting it to market requirements and market effects. From there, it was only a short step to the conclusion that the communities that should form the basis for local government ought to be the ones created by the market. As the English Poor Law commissioners “discovered” in 1834, “The most convenient limit of (parish) unions which we have found has been that of a circle, taking a market town as a centre, and comprehending those parishes whose inhabitants are accustomed to resort to the same market.”9

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In England, local government reform was closely connected to the effort to overcome archaic patterns of community that inhibited economic progress and buttressed the position of the landed gentry in relation to the bourgeoisie.10 The hope was to create new communities that would be larger and more progressive than the old. These communities would be governed by authorities that were willing and able both to act in support of economic development and to deal with the problems it created. Ideally these authorities would be professional and responsible – responsible especially to those with a “stake” in society. This meant that they had to be distanced from those who would misuse their powers. Large-scale representative government proved to be best for this purpose, since it met the demand for “democracy” while removing government from the masses. Once the United States began to industrialize – and experience the effects of what was taken to be mass democracy – this English model exerted an ever-increasing appeal. It was at the heart of the theory of metropolitan reform that was developed by American Progressives.11 To the disappointment of the Progressives and their successors, consolidation remained an elusive goal,12 so that when the Province of Ontario created the first “metropolitan federation” on the continent, this was hailed as a great event. The path to consolidation was far from smooth, even in the countries that could show greater progress than the US.13 Vested interests, often bourgeois in character, were threatened by change, and despite the penetration of bourgeois ideas, people of all classes resisted the notion that familiar institutions should be abandoned because of the dictates of the market. In any case, it was extremely difficult to keep up with the market, because of its inherent expansionism. Thanks to new innovations, market patterns were changing constantly, and with them the patterns of “natural” community. If the aim were to match political and administrative boundaries to market districts, there would have to be constant alterations. Since this was obviously impractical, the inevitable result was that boundary rationalization lagged behind economic development. The growing complexity of the economy added to the problem, because it was never very clear which of the districts created by the market was the relevant one for local government organization: was it the “commuter shed” or the “distribution area” or the “shopping district” or what? Each of these areas was different and none of them had obvious boundaries. That is why

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reformers often accepted a physical definition of the limits of a city for purposes of defining the political community.14 These problems were already a source of unease at the end of the nineteenth century, and they prompted local government reformers to look for ways of rationalizing the market itself. Some thought that regulations could be imposed that would contain the forces generated by the market within a geographic framework suitable for economic and social development, but equally appropriate for the organization of local government.15 This meant using the powers of the state to control urban development. From a business perspective, development control could have the positive effect of protecting existing investments and ensuring the profitability of new ones. It might also allow the authorities to economize on infrastructural outlays and reduce business taxes. There were other promised benefits as well: conserving scarce natural resources, enhancing urban amenities, and improving the general standard of living, but these had to be set against the effect of stringent regulations on the freedom of the entrepreneur, the potential for profits, and the natural growth of the economy. Thus the advocates of “planning” had to show that regulations could be geared to the requirements of the market. This forced them to reaffirm the idea that the market determines the “natural” form of human communities. According to this view, the purpose of the planner is to discover what the market is dictating for the future, and to develop regulations that minimize the costs of transition and add to the benefits forecast. This is obviously the sort of planning that can be acceptable to business, and it became standard in the twentieth century.16 Unfortunately for local government reformers, such adaptive planning does not do as much as they would like to simplify and stabilize the pattern of urban development: the fit between market districts and units of government is still as problematic as ever. From a business perspective, the preferred response is to place the burden of adjustment on political institutions. As Goldrick points out, this is what happened in Metropolitan Toronto, when postwar development made the traditional municipal boundaries obsolete.17 There was no effort to reinforce existing boundaries by containing new development within the political mold. Instead, the existing municipalities were obliged to surrender many of their powers to the new metropolitan authority. Although the metropolitan council could use its authority to restrict development within the area or on the

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fringes, the purpose of this was to prevent growth from outstripping the services ultimately needed to support it. The aim of the new metropolitan government was to facilitate economic expansion, and this was the end for which the traditional municipal authorities had to sacrifice their powers. This market imperative was explained to the provincial legislature by a former mayor of the city: A municipality which cannot grow, supply land for industrial purposes at reasonable cost and supply land at reasonable cost on which industrial workers can build homes, is bound to go backwards. Therefore, to make land available for industry and for homes in the Toronto area, it is necessary to create a new form of municipal government which will be able to provide the four essential services [water, sewers, roads and schools] which will permit the whole thirteen municipalities to grow into the greatest Metropolitan Area in the Dominion.18 There is more than a little truth in the claim that Metro was established to facilitate capital accumulation. This was recognized at the time by certain observers. One of the Communists in the legislature said: “I think the big real estate promoters want this legislation so as to provide them with transportation facilities, water and sewer services, schools for the thousand-acre projects they have in the offing because they want to get in, make a killing and get out; they want the legislation.”19 This anticipates the tone of many later analyses of Canadian urban policy. In the 1970s even more than in the 1950s, analysts emphasized the responsiveness of governments to real estate developers,20 but broader capitalist interests were obviously involved, since commercial and industrial development are clearly dependent on property development and all three are financed by the banks and other lending institutions. Thus it is sensible to claim, as Goldrick does, that the stimulation of urban growth and the creation of new structures to support it are necessary for the whole capitalist class.21 What is more doubtful is whether metropolitan government provides the best structures possible. The difficulties involved in pursuing the metropolitan model are illustrated by the course of provincial policy in Ontario.22 What gradually became clear was that the province was not dealing with a  metropolis and a set of lesser centres, which could be allowed to develop autonomously, but with a highly integrated urban complex

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that spread right across the southern portion of the province. Never­ theless, a variant of the metropolitan model continued to be used as the basis of local government reform. New “regional municipalities” were established to accommodate growth near the larger cities, and “mini-Metros” were formed around the fringes of Toronto itself to cope with satellite development. However, since the new authorities were obviously too small to manage the urban system as a whole, the province began to assume the functions of a senior metropolitan government. It divided the province into its own development regions, and began to intervene more directly in the whole range of municipal affairs, from land-use control and infrastructural  development to housing and the social services.23 The effect was to marginalize authorities supposedly established to deal with these problems. The experiences of other jurisdictions that have attempted to consolidate local government are similar.24 Even if areas are constantly enlarged, they never seem big enough for the purpose. The result is that consolidation coincides with an upward transfer of functions and a trend toward comprehensive planning that integrates central and local government. This – and not just the formation of metropolitan governments – is what characterizes the “state capitalist” rationalization of municipal institutions. In fact, metropolitan government is often intended to restrain the trend toward centralization.25 What defeats it as a reform is that it is neither sufficient nor necessary for that or any other purpose. The crucial decisions about urbanization and industrialization must be made (if they are made at all) at a higher level of government. Given these decisions, the existing municipal institutions may be adequate to the tasks they have to perform – including the relief of senior governments from the burdens of overcentralization. This has been the implicit assumption of most central governments, not excepting the ones that have imposed municipal consolidation. Despite the rhetoric, the main aim of consolidation has been to create municipalities of “reasonable” size that could handle functions the central authorities did not want to assume themselves. Boundary rationalization was a secondary concern.26 Where the competence, capacity, or political vitality of the local authorities was at issue, other remedial measures besides consolidation were available: redistributing revenue or redefining functions, upgrading professional and administrative personnel, or internally reorganizing the municipality as a political unit.27 These measures are often more effective or easier to secure than consolidation itself.

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The official spokesmen for business have generally supported rationalizing measures,28 which all appear to have the effects of increasing the capacity of the state for aid to business and distancing government from the mass of unreliable citizens. However, there is always a conflict between the general interests of business and the particular interests of individual companies or entrepreneurs that are bound up with existing institutions. In any case, there is a general anxiety among businessmen about the way that a strengthened government may use its powers, and this has reinforced conservative tendencies in the business community. What has happened in any particular jurisdiction has depended very much on the balance of  other political forces. Everywhere there has been strong petit-­ bourgeois opposition to the consolidation of traditional municipalities, since local elites depend on them for many of their social, economic, and political advantages. What has tipped the balance in favour of consolidation in many jurisdictions has been support from the professional middle classes (who identify with rationalization and modernization) and from working class organizations (which see benefits in stronger government).29 Thus, the progress toward metropolitan reform has depended less on the attitudes of the business community (which are always somewhat ambivalent) than on the political strength of liberal progressives and social democrats. As we shall see, the weakness of these forces has contributed to the failure of metropolitan reform in the United States, where “enlightened” businessmen have long been promoting it.

Accumulation, Legitimation, a n d   C o n s o l i dat i o n It is a peculiar fact about metropolitan reform that it has been most often advocated and least often achieved in the United States. In the nineteenth century, the annexation of suburban areas by American central cities was not uncommon, but the obstacles to this became very severe by the First World War. The familiar patchwork of American local government was institutionalized by constitutional or legislative changes that made consolidation or annexation difficult, and encouraged the proliferation of suburban authorities.30 Neo-Marxist analysts have attributed this largely to the changing requirements of capitalists who were beginning to relocate in the suburbs and wished to be free from the imposts and regulations of

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central city governments, and who gave their financial and political support to suburban autonomists.31 This policy is supposed to have backfired, however, because the fragmentation of metropolitan authority proved to be an obstacle to the accumulation of capital. The support required from urban government, in terms of infrastructural investment, was often too difficult to secure, encouraging the flight of capital to the new cities of the south and southwest, where local government could be organized on a more rational basis. In the older cities of the northeast and midwest, the representatives of capital had to work for reform in the face of institutional obstacles that their predecessors had helped to create. They were not as successful as their European or Canadian counterparts in achieving the consolidation they sought, because the state governments lacked the strength and autonomy necessary to defy parochial opposition and impose what was necessary in the interests of the capital. This analysis has much to recommend it, but it jumps rather hastily to the conclusion that metropolitan reform would now be in the interests of American capital. It is true that many capitalists have thought so because they have accepted theories propounded to them by metropolitan reformers who do not necessarily identify with capitalist interests. Indeed, to a remarkable extent, capitalists have been sold on reform by intellectuals who regard themselves as opponents – or at least serious critics – of capitalism itself.32 The nature and progress of metropolitan reform cannot be understood without taking this into account. The role played by the critics of capitalism is an ironic one but one that ought to be familiar to any observer of contemporary politics. It is a consequence of the symbiotic relationship between capitalist business and liberal and socialist reform. Whatever their ideological perspective, reformers are obliged to make major concessions to business, because in capitalist societies economic growth, full employment, and so on are all dependent on private investment. At the same time, business accepts many reforms that are pressed upon it, because that helps to legitimate both the political system and the socioeconomic relationships that underlie it. As a result, the political differences between business and labour, conservatives and reformers, are often minor. Moreover, these differences are blurred by efforts on both sides to make policies appear of general benefit.33 Certain symbolic issues arouse great passions and provide the occasion for political cleavage, but in the majority of matters there is broad consensus in each country on public policy.

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This has certainly been the case with respect to local government.34 It is interesting, for instance, to compare the schemes of reform advanced at various times in this century by intellectuals associated with the Labour and Conservative parties in Britain.35 Despite variations, they share a common commitment to larger units of government and to rationalization of boundaries in terms of the contemporary pattern of economic life. If anything, Labour intellectuals have been more determined than their Conservative counterparts to adapt institutions to the realities created by capitalist economics.36 This is not surprising, because the costs of maladjustment fall heavily on the working class. The political fragmentation of an urban region allows people with sufficient resources to isolate themselves in self-governing suburbs, and so escape some of the burdens of financing the regional infrastructure (including social services for the working class) or providing space for regional amenities or working class housing.37 Consolidating the region under a common local government allows for more equitable land use and fairer taxation. It also makes possible more effective urban planning, since people are less able to escape regulations that apply to the whole of an economic region. Paradoxically, the commitment to planning characteristic of social democracy, which arises from a determination to correct the flaws of the market, involves adapting political institutions to the dictates of the market, which continues to form the “natural” regions that must be used as the basis for planning, and hence (it is usually supposed) for government. More interventionist planning may allow for restructuring these natural regions, but there are limits to what can be accomplished in an economy that continues to depend on market-guided private investment.38 The demand for interventionist planning has not been as strong in North America, where the labour movement is weaker and socialist ideas are not so widely accepted. Nevertheless, the type of planning associated with metropolitan reform has broad appeal. It is mainly concerned with extending and improving the regional infrastructure – providing better roads, sewerage, and water supply – and to a lesser extent with controlling the worst effects of urban sprawl.39 Although commitment to such planning is consistent with firm support of the market economy, it reflects a belief in interventionist government as a necessary complement to capitalist enterprise. This is what Americans call a “liberal” viewpoint. It is common to both critics and supporters of capitalist enterprise, but the attractions of

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interventionist government are particularly strong for people concerned about exploitation, discrimination, and environmental decay. Since metropolitan reform is seen as a means of enhancing the capacity of government, and allowing it to intervene more effectively and  efficiently, “leftist” liberals have been its strongest supporters and have promoted the most radical schemes for consolidation.40 Ordinary people are supposed to benefit materially from consolidation, because their local governments will be stronger and more efficient, more capable of providing services at reasonable cost, and better able to stimulate and regulate the local economy. Geographic inequities are supposed to disappear as power is assumed by a metropolitan authority responsible to the whole community: the wider good will no longer be sacrificed to parochial interests. Fortunately for business, the wider good is normally interpreted economically, so that metropolitan authorities can be expected to provide support for private investment. However, this is not the only reason for acceding to the liberal demand to consolidate local government. Metropolitan reform is designed to put the local authorities on a more legitimate basis, by making them responsible to wider communities, eliminating inequities in taxes and services, and generally enhancing their capacity as servants of the popular interest. By strengthening the local state and distancing it from parochial interests, reform can increase people’s faith in the state’s capacity to act as a neutral arbiter.41 To the extent that it then uses its powers to eliminate the ill-effects of capitalist development, it legitimates the socioeconomic system itself. Thus, if it is correct to interpret the consolidation of local government as a reform in capitalist interests, it is so by virtue of aiding in both the accumulation and the legitimation functions of the state.42 This is an important qualification of the theories developed about Metropolitan Toronto, because legitimizing policies are necessarily oriented less to the immediate requirements of capital than to the needs of the subordinate classes. That is why housing, education, and other services for the ordinary citizen loom so large in the case for reform, even when concerns about business expansion are as prominent as they were in Toronto.43 It has become the common belief among capitalists in western societies that survival depends on a measure of socialization. This allows for accommodation not only with liberals but also with social democrats who accept the idea that the socialization of capitalism is the best – perhaps the only – means of achieving socialist ends.

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Among intellectuals, and in society at large, ambivalence about the relative merits of capitalism and socialism combines with a concern for harmony and social stability to encourage the search for a middle way and to blur ideological distinctions. Reforms are a product of compromise, and reflect a consensus that has developed in the course of political struggle. Local government consolidation is typical, in that it is an effect of the common attempt of liberal reformers and social democrats to relieve the problems and mediate the conflicts that are the products of capitalist development or are endemic to the capitalist system. It reflects common assumptions about the way the state must be organized to cope with demands upon it. It may be the result of contradictions in capitalist society and a consequence of the struggle between different classes, but it is not simply the product of capitalist demands any more than any other aspect of liberal reform or social democracy. Indeed, the fact that the “socialist” countries have implemented similar schemes in an effort to rationalize their economies and increase the general standard of living44 suggests that consolidation is a result of the demand to make the benefits of bourgeois society available to all.45 Once the legitimating potential of metropolitan reform is taken into account, it is possible to use the Marxist analysis to particularize a more general criticism of social democracy or liberal reform. Such a criticism is implicit even in analyses that seem to attribute consolidation solely to concerns about capital accumulation.46 The general Marxist complaint against social democrats is that their strategy for socialization obliges them to support the accumulation of private capital and strengthen the capitalist state, so that the capitalist class ends up with greater wealth and a better political apparatus for resisting the transition to socialism.47 As we have seen, in the particular case of metropolitan reform, the effects are apparently to establish the state on a more legitimate basis and give it the necessary capacity to facilitate business expansion and to mediate social conflicts that are a consequence of capitalism. It is arguable that the growth of monopoly capital is liable to be particularly pronounced when such reforms are introduced, because territorial consolidation of the state facilitates improvement of the regional infrastructure and makes large-scale business operation more feasible.48 Smaller companies may find it more difficult to compete in the new context, and have trouble dealing with the new political arrangements and adjusting to the requirements of big, interventionist governments. The new middle class of professionals and managers, which is gradually

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displacing the traditional petite bourgeoisie, will of course profit from the consolidation and expansion of the state and monopoly capital, for these are the main sources of bureaucratic and professional opportunities. That explains why this class (whether its spokesmen are liberal or social democrat) has provided so much of the intellectual and political support for metropolitan reform: the changes work to its material advantage, validate its social role, and (implicitly) legitimize its peculiar privileges. What Marxist analysis suggests is that although reform may bring immediate benefits to the working class, it buttresses the class system itself and works to the special advantage of the most “progressive” fractions of the petite and grande bourgeoisie. Interestingly, this analysis is exactly the reverse of the common conservative critique of liberal reform, which can also be particularized to apply to the consolidation of municipal government.49 Conservatives are worried about the potential inefficiencies of big, bureaucratic governments, but they also fear that capitalist efforts to appease the working class and accede to socialist reforms will have the ultimate effect of undermining the capitalist system itself (as many socialists hope). Metropolitan reform, for instance, enhances the power of the state at the expense of the traditional municipality and the individual entrepreneur. It involves an attack on vested interests, which throws the whole system of social and economic relations into question. It suggests that the ends advanced by socialists – and pursued by the consolidated state – are somehow superior to the ones protected by traditional social relations or pursued by the entrepreneur in the market. Even if certain sections of the bourgeoisie get immediate benefits from reforms of this kind, these are liable to be limited and temporary, while the changes themselves can rend the established order. What the liberal reformers forget is that policies that assuage their guilt about the effects of capitalism or the inequalities of capitalist society are not necessarily the ones best designed to protect the capitalist system or to advance the interests of its beneficiaries. This conservative analysis raises a possibility that current Marx­ ist theory usually neglects. In attempting to come to terms with the relationship between social democracy, liberal reform, and advanc­ed capitalism, neo-Marxists have slid into a kind of wishful thinking that makes the socialization of capitalism a necessary condition for its survival. Marx’s own analysis seems to suggest this, and it accords with the experience of many western countries.50 However,

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the necessity for socialization is not as evident to capitalists as it is to socialists, and they can point to the American example – to the most advanced of the advanced capitalist countries – for evidence to suggest that many of the projected changes can be avoided. Even if some steps toward socialization are necessary, they may be taken by governments without the will or capacity for “state planning on a vast scale.”51 A remarkable fragmentation of authority seems to be consistent with capitalist requirements for accumulation and legitimation. At the local level, this fragmentation is particularly easy to tolerate; indeed, there is a formidable theory that suggests that greater fragmentation may be required to realize the ideals implicit in bourgeois theories of local government. If so, the consolidation of the local state that is proposed by metropolitan reformers, and that is associated with social democracy, may not be in the capitalist interest – at least not in the United States.

P r i vat e E n t e r p r i s e a n d P u b l i c C h o i c e The neo-Marxist theory seems to be that the failure to socialize American capitalism is at the root of the country’s peculiar problems. With respect to local government, the claim is that the fragmentation of municipal institutions has intensified contradictions that threaten the social stability and economic health of the country. Since the authorities are too weak to deal with problems that arise, the growth of the economy is slowed, capital accumulation declines, public services deteriorate, and the legitimacy of the whole system is threatened. The assumption, of course, is that consoli­ dating public authority (on the Canadian model, perhaps) would strengthen government and enable it to act more effectively. This is a more questionable assumption than is usually realized. It is supported by experience that suggests that a strongly centralized government is necessary to overcome internal divisions and provide for external security, and that the powers of the centralized state can be used effectively in promoting economic development. On the other hand, there is also experience that suggests that attempts to consolidate authority can be self-defeating, and that greater security and prosperity may prevail if the powers of government are dispersed.52 The United States is one of those countries (Switzerland is another) where a dispersal of authority seems to be functional, at least for the

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bourgeoisie. From a bourgeois perspective, there is no need to set government above society when society is organized on market principles and these principles are entrenched in the attitudes and habits of the people, as they are in the United States. A government that is of society, not over it, has a peculiar legitimacy by virtue of its accessibility and its apparently democratic character. Moreover, the dispersal of public authority aids capital accumulation by making the apparatus of government and the support of the state available to a wide variety of private enterprises. Although these companies must compete with one another for public assistance, public agencies must also compete to secure the favour of businesses that control the available capital. As a result, there is remarkably lavish support for private enterprise. American capitalism has certainly prospered under this system, and retained the support of the people. It is true that for certain purposes – such as national defence and currency management – public authority has had to be consolidated, but American government remains polycentric. Conservatives fear that further consolidation could upset the delicate balance between effective and responsive government, and make the state more a master than a servant of society (and business). If powerful central states are necessary for the survival of capitalism in Europe, this is not necessarily the case in America.53 In fact, American experience suggests that the shibboleths that identify public efficiency with a concentration of authority, a hierarchy of responsibility, and rational coordination from the centre may be nothing more than that. The most interesting theory to be developed in support of this view is the theory of public choice, which has particular relevance to the reform of local government.54 What it does is take the unstated premise of the conventional theory of local government (and the bourgeois conception of the state) – that institutions ought to be arranged to maximize consumer satisfaction – and show that fragmentation of authority can serve this end as well as or better than consolidation, thus validating the American experience. The theory is based on the insight that the goods and services to be provided by government have differing production curves, so that the optimal scale of production for one sort of good is not the same as for another. Whereas certain types of goods must be provided on a uniform basis over a large territory, others can be offered in differentiated packages to small groups of consumers. If the market economy is any model, consumers benefit from a wide freedom

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of choice. It is possible to set the producers of public goods in competition with one another, and oblige them to offer highly differen­ tiated products. It is arguable that the American system of local government does precisely that, especially where economically integrated metropolitan areas are divided into scores of municipalities and the functions of local government are split between special-­ purpose bodies that use differing territories and are separately accountable to the electorate. Territorial and functional consolidation, which are the traditional panaceas for the problems of local government, may in fact be the greatest obstacles to consumer satisfaction, since their effect is to create huge monopoly enterprises that gobble up taxes and spew out unwanted services. According to the theorists of public choice, it is not just difficult to define a market area suitable for all the functions of local government, it is impossible to do so because the products of government and its intended consumers vary so greatly. Thus, rationalizing local government in accordance with the dictates of the market means something very different from that imagined by the early bourgeois theorists, whose ideal was to have a single municipality with comprehensive powers in each community.55 This had considerable appeal to American businessmen impatient with government, for it promised to eliminate unnecessary duplication. However, the effect of consolidation was to create authorities with a potential for interfering in the market, redistributing resources, and pursuing other ends uncongenial to business. Even if this potential was rarely realized it presented a dangerous possibility that “public choice” makes it possible to avoid. The “Lakewood Plan” in Los Angeles County provides an example of the alternative.56 Small municipalities are allowed to purchase services they need from the county or from private contractors. They can also unite with one another to form special administrative districts. Thus it is possible for them to respond to the demands of consumers and realize economies of scale without sacrificing their independence to a consolidated local state. It is significant, perhaps, that this part of California has been a major centre of American economic growth. There is not much evidence that that growth has been seriously inhibited by the fragmentation of local authority, or that the inadequacies of local government have undermined the legitimacy of the capitalist system. On the contrary, while business corporations have been able to play one authority off against another to secure tax concessions and relief from offensive regulations, the public authorities have been blamed for

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over-taxation and over-intrusiveness.57 Big government, not small government, is the ogre, because the larger authorities are not as obviously responsive to consumer demands. The public choice economy seems to reinforce itself, by legitimizing the pursuit of individual and group self-interest. This not only deflects criticism from business, it encourages middle-class consumers to seek their own benefit without worrying overmuch about the effects on the wider community. Thus, those who can afford it tend to isolate themselves in separate municipalities, where a high level of services can be provided at a low rate of tax, and planning regulations can be used to enhance and protect the desired environment. If public choice is extended to the underclasses in the inner cities, even the poor may have a chance to organize local authorities to meet their particular requirements.58 In a sense the whole system of American government is based on principles of competitive enterprise that are embodied in the theory of public choice. These principles are reflected in the American conception of democracy,59 which suggests that popular control of government depends on a wide dispersal of public authority, making mass participation possible and limiting state control over the people. The public choice economy can rationalize this dispersal, by subjecting it to market-like regulation. If the theory behind it is correct, there need be no fear that fragmented government will be inefficient, ineffective, or unresponsive. The theory thus allays the main anxieties associated with the American system. It does this, moreover, by appealing to a standard of judgment that is at once democratic and bourgeois. It is difficult for democrats to suggest that what pleases more people more completely more often is wrong. Since this standard of consumer satisfaction is derived from the theory that justifies the capitalist economy and suggests that the market in public goods is necessarily less perfect than the market in private goods, it is perfectly congenial to business. It puts the private sector on a higher plane, and makes it a point of reference for judging public enterprise. This reverses the effect of socialist thought, which imposes non-market standards of performance on private enterprise. The main criticism of the public choice approach to local government reform is that it subjects everything to market criteria, and neglects any higher moral end. However, this subordination of other ends to market requirements and market demands is already implicit in the conventional theory of metropolitan reform, which makes service efficiency its primary goal and insists on the need to adapt political boundaries to the forms of community created by the market.

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The theory of public choice simply takes a more flexible and sophisticated view of the conditions for efficiency, and of the way that political boundaries can be adapted to the market. The conventional theorists of metropolitan reform, in effect, laid the groundwork for the public choice approach, by insisting that the form of local government should be determined by measures of efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness. Later analysts showed that there is no convincing evidence that larger authorities give any more satisfactory service.60 If service is the governing ideal, it is logical to allow market-like mechanisms to determine the goods to be provided and the form of authorities to produce them. Where conditions permit, this is the approach most suitable to a bourgeois society. Whether or not this approach can actually be adopted in a particular country depends on a great many extraneous factors. It is difficult to conceive of it working in Europe, because the parties of the left are deeply suspicious of market-like mechanisms, and would regard a campaign for public choice as a threat to their entente with the parties of the right.61 In any case, it would call into question the need for centralized bureaucratic states, and threaten the interests they protect as well as the constitutional order.62 This is a risk European conservatives would be loath to take, especially since the ideal of a free market society itself is threatening to the social and economic relations that they seek to preserve. Only in the United States is the market society unambiguously a conservative ideal, and only there does it seem possible to accommodate anti-capitalist protest by extending market freedom in the public and private sectors. One of the conditions for this is the absence of a social democratic party that insists on the consolidation of the state as a means of non-market planning. Although American liberals have tried to play the role of social democrats and have pressed for consolidation, their successes have been limited and their hold on working class loyalty is weak. This creates an opportunity that does not exist elsewhere to turn public choice into a strategy for reform that has broad appeal and yet is more consistent with capitalism than social democracy.63

The Mystification of the State Recent Marxist analysis has been designed to “demystify” the capitalist state, and reveal its role in buttressing the capitalist system.64 However, another sort of mystification results when analysts assume

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that the development of each state must conform to a common ­pattern, and that everything important can be explained in terms of capitalist requirements. As the account above suggests, these requirements are complex and variable, and cannot be defined in abstraction from the demands of other classes or from the conditions in a particular society. The dominant class has to define its interests not only in relation to the state of development of the mode of production (or, in more conventional terms, to “prevailing social and economic conditions”), but also with reference to the strategic and tactical exigencies of class struggle (that is, to the particular political situation). Thus, the form of the state that it seeks will be highly contingent. Its demands will also depend on prior historical experience, and hence on various ideological presuppositions. These will include a certain theory of the state, which will not be identical in every country. To be effective, this theory will certainly confuse the interests of the class with those of the society it dominates. If there is indeed, as Gramsci suggests, “a hegemony of bourgeois ideas,”65 the conceptions of the state advanced by the subordinate classes will not be too dissimilar. Thus, the production of new forms of the state will not necessarily be marked by clear-cut disagreements between classes. Instead, we should expect forms to emerge that make sense in terms of capitalist requirements, but that vary significantly from country to country. If the state is everywhere conceived as an instrument for public service and an agency for social integration, there will still be great differences of opinion about the forms required for these purposes. In a sense, there is an idea of the state common to all classes in all societies: that is, of an organization designed to maintain the social order, if necessary by force. This is the conception that Marx and Engels insisted upon. However, there is a distinctively bourgeois idea of the state that got little notice from Marx: of a huge public corporation (or set of interlocked corporations) responsible to its shareholders and organized for providing necessary goods and services to them.66 This second conception of the state exists in uneasy relation to the first, but both are common to all classes in capitalist societies. One consequence of this is that questions about the productivity of the state loom particularly large. This is especially true in relation to local governments, which are not involved in foreign policy and seem to have little capacity to reorder economic and social relations. Efficiency becomes the dominant question in local government organization. This is what makes the theory of public choice credible.

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The generally hostile reaction to public choice theory outside the United States arises partly from a continuing belief in the virtues of consolidation as a means to efficiency, and partly from a conviction that the state (locally or nationally) must be more than just a public business corporation.67 This latter conviction has various origins: among them, the experience of internal and external threats to ­stability that require the strong hand of government locally and nationally, and the reaction to the free market economy’s failure to deliver the goods, as conjointly defined by the dominant and subordinate classes. The traditional anxiety of American local government reformers about the fragmentation of American government reflects their belief that the expedients adopted elsewhere to enhance productivity or maintain stability and security will eventually have to be adopted in the United States. On the other hand, the public choice theorists appeal to the American faith in the continued viability of a free market society (with a free market of sorts not only in the private but also in the public sector). This faith is rooted in a particular historical experience, which suggests that the state can support capitalist development without being centralized, that a tolerable level of public services can be produced by a congeries of competing public authorities, and that the political and economic freedom permitted by the dispersal of state power ultimately produces greater loyalty to the regime and greater support for the social and economic system than could be generated by a centralized state of the European type. This was Tocqueville’s judgment a century and a half ago, and it has yet to be utterly disproved. If the success of political arrangements in a capitalist society is to be measured by the degree of mystification of the working class, then the American system is probably the most successful of all. This is not to say that it provides a model that could be exported, but to suggest that a successful capitalist state can take a very different form from what Europeans expect. Since western Marxism, even in its American variants, is essentially a European body of thought – shaped by European experience and European assumptions – it is not surprising that it treats the American case as “exceptional.” However, this sort of parochialism has a perverse effect on the development of Marxist theory. In the case examined here, we have the typical assumption that only European-style solutions to the problems of advanced capitalism will ultimately work, despite all the evidence (which Marxist analysts themselves present) that suggest that

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such solutions are impossible in the American context. Rather than concluding, as they should, that stabilizing solutions of a distinctively American type are likely to emerge, they are liable to say that the United States is faced with irresolvable contradictions.68 This is a remarkable example of the way that a theory can lead to a misconstrual of reality. More realistic conclusions could be reached if Marxist theory unburdened itself of parochial assumptions, which make the consolidation of state power into a condition for productivity and stability in a capitalist society. Such a change in assumptions would lead to a shift in understanding how the transition from capitalism to socialism might occur. Communists and social democrats have implicitly shared the belief that the new society was being nurtured in the womb of the old, assuming that this referred to the way that the state was taking over functions from private enterprise; being good Europeans, they saw this as a centralizing process. They drew different strategic conclusions from this, but shared the assumption that centralization was progressive and that it would be a characteristic feature not only of the development of advanced capitalism, but also of the transition from capitalism to socialism. The dispersal of power and authority that Marx and the other visionary socialists saw as an ultimate consequence of revolutionary change was put off to the distant future. Only the anarchists found, in the contemporary dispersal of power, the seeds of a new society, and insisted that those seeds should be nurtured and the centralizing trends resisted. However, the anarchist failure to come to terms with the realities of state power or the requisites of the modern economy served to discredit this approach as impossibly idealist. The significance of the American experience lies in the fact that a less centralized state is compatible with the development of productive forces in a capitalist society, and this suggests that the transition to socialism may not necessarily involve enhancing centralizing trends. Public choice theory is particularly instructive in this regard, because it provides a basis for attacking the conventional connection between centralization and efficiency. This is not to say that the principles of public choice are adequate for the redesign of the state, or even for developing a new system of local government. The public choice economy reduces citizenship to a form of consumer activity, and subordinates politics to the dictates of the market. Traditional Marxist analysis at least brings this subordination and reduction of public life into question. Unfortunately,

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the bourgeois conception of the state as a corporation for the production of goods and services has governed socialist thinking about the organization of local government. The requisites of efficient production and effective service in a planned, non-market economy have been allowed to determine forms of local government, forms that have turned out to be uncannily similar to the ones suggested by bourgeois reformers. This is as true of state socialist countries as of western social democracies. Neo-Marxist criticism of metropolitan reform has diverted attention from the fact that socialists and capitalists have both been involved in developing the new institutions and articulating the theory that supports them. Unless this is understood it is impossible to see that a critique of metropolitan reform involves a rethinking of socialist theory. The Toronto case is still a useful focus for attention, but not because it provides a successful example of state capitalist rationalization. To describe it as such is simply to invert the uncritical assessments offered by Metro’s proponents. The reality is more complex and theoretically interesting. The metropolitan government lacks the geographic spread necessary to provide for coordinated regional planning or to internalize the externalities of local government. It remains in a clearly subordinate position to the provincial government, and it cannot muster the political support necessary to force a change. Although it would be hard to show that Metro has been positively harmful, it would be equally difficult to demonstrate that Toronto and its suburbs are any better governed as a result. This suggests that support for Metro is the result of an ideological commitment that allows for a positive evaluation of inconclusive facts. This commitment has been as strong on the left as on the right. Such a consensus might not have occurred but for the constraints of the capitalist system. However, this is not a sufficient explanation. Metropolitan government seems sensible to people with power and influence in Toronto, because they assume that problems can be solved by concentrating public authority. Thus, municipal resistance to surrendering power has been weak, and the provincial government has been able to strengthen itself by creating more manageable intermediary institutions like the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto. What is most interesting about these institutions is that they were so easy to establish and maintain despite their inadequacies. This might be explained in terms of the étatiste assumptions of Canadian political culture, but to offer such an explanation would

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involve a critique of ideas that neo-Marxists have taken for granted. Needless to say, such a critique has not been forthcoming. The analysts considered in this essay seem to have been victims of the hegemony of bourgeois ideas. A critical perspective on current reforms requires perceiving possible alternatives. The most radical alternatives – which would involve the rejection of centralizing measures and the re-creation of small, directly democratic institutions – can only be validated if the basic assumption of capitalist and socialist reform – that political institutions should be adjusted to meet economic requirements – is dropped. Abandoning this assumption does not mean ignoring the economic effects of political change, but it does mean releasing oneself from a set of anxieties that distort perceptions of these effects. Such a release is necessary for a dispassionate understanding of metropolitan reform, since this phenomenon is rooted in opinions about the conditions for public efficiency and effectiveness. Since most neo-Marxists share the opinions of their bourgeois counterparts on these matters, and accept that political institutions must be adapted to economic requirements, it is not surprising that their criticisms of metropolitan reform leave the case for it essentially untouched. This does not make their work worthless, but a more thoroughgoing critique is required to demystify the theory and practice of metropolitan reform in the capitalist city. What are we to make of the fact that the much-celebrated Muni­ cipality of Metropolitan Toronto was abolished in 1997, and the City of Toronto merged with the other five boroughs to form a new megacity? From one point of view, this was just the next logical step, which followed from the original rationale for consoli­ dation. On the other hand, the emphasis was less on the need to provide the infrastructure for ongoing urban development (most of which was now occurring beyond the bounds of the enlarged city) and more on concerns about cost containment and efficiency. In a new twist, these concerns were linked to the idea that Toronto had to become (or maintain its position as) a “global city.”69 The idea was and is that cities – and indeed whole countries – have to compete with one another for the favour of investors, and that it is useful in that context to have a distinctive “brand,” affirmed by world events like the Olympics and embodied by a “can-do” mayor with the power to do deals and deliver on promises to investors. Hence we have the new cult of the mayor as a symbolic

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figure70 and a demand for civic identities that match the global aspirations being articulated. In an interesting twist, Richard Florida has become famous by making the argument that cultural diversity of the right sort is attractive to the “creative class,” the people who develop the things that make investors money.71 This follows from earlier claims to the effect that Keynesian welfarism is actually in the interests of business, despite all the scepticism in that regard within the capitalist class or so-called business community. When I developed the analysis in this chapter, I went no further than suggesting that the American or neo-liberal model seemed to work for the United States. I did not anticipate that it would be so successfully exported in the coming years, so that in Britain not only the Thatcher government but all its Labour and Conservative successors have followed American precedents quite slavishly in almost every area of government activity. I have not followed the trends as closely in other countries, but my sense is that the nowfamiliar neo-liberal nostrums – privatization, contracting-out, competitive tendering, public–private partnerships, fee for service, consumer choice, and so on – have been embraced everywhere to a greater or lesser degree.72 In less powerful countries that are dependent on international aid, the orders of the World Bank or the IMF, which are based on neo-liberal principles, have been very effective in enforcing adjustments even when they are not wanted. The “new world order” that the first President Bush foresaw is at its core a neo-liberal order, whose legitimating principles are internal to it, but which still depends on two familiar threats: that if capitalists are not best pleased they will refuse to invest and the economy will collapse, throwing huge numbers of people out of work; and that, regardless, any serious threat to the established order will be put down by military force. In the world of local government, the first of these threats usually seems sufficient to keep things in order. One minor note, again related to Toronto, is the emergence there of a “charter” movement,73 intended to change the relationship between the province and its largest city, giving the latter more autonomy than other municipalities. This fits with the idea that Toronto and other big cities were actually “citistates”74 that merited constitutional recognition as such. Whatever the merits of this notion, it fits with the familiar idea that a certain scale is required for autonomous government. I consider this claim in chapter 6.

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3 The Local State in Canada: Theoretical Perspectives*

The question of “the state” is of particular concern to Marxist ­theorists, but not only to them. From another perspective, inter­ national relations theorists write obsessively about it. The state is also a matter of concern to historical sociologists, who want to make sense of the particular forms of governmental and political order that characterize the modern world. The most obvious thing to say about that order is that it arises from the division of the world into separate states, which claim sovereignty not only in relation to one another but also in relation to the societies they purport to govern. Government is normally understood as an activity peculiar to states, each of which has a government or set of governments organized on particular principles. Because politics is about government, it is focused on states. Each of us is under the dominion of one state or another, and so all of us are faced with a political field whose limits and boundaries are given in the constitution and territory of the state that claims us. Most writing on the state or the state system has little to say about local government, because it is assumed to be subordinate – in the end, a matter of local administration, affected in some degree or other by local politics. The overriding sovereignty of the state is such that the question of local government organization can be treated as one of many “policy issues” that “the government” as such – in the sense of the government of the state – has to deal with. Education, transportation,

*  Originally published in Canadian Public Administration 28, no. 4 (1985): 575–99. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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health care, public safety, … : the list of policy concerns is endless. There is no particular reason to privilege local government in an analysis of what the state is, how it has developed, and why. Or, is there? At its simplest, my argument is that the under-theorization of the local state is highly problematic because it is impossible to understand what is there, or what could be there, without a subtler, more sophisticated, and more critical account. We are talking about how people’s everyday lives are organized in and through the state, and how the political institutions that might enable people to become self-governing are constituted or – more commonly – denied. This is important. In this chapter, I identify four major approaches, which describe local institutions as (a) the third order of government in our federal state, (b) mere agencies for special purposes, (c) the local public economy, or (d) local apparatuses of the state. Most theorists of the state are unaware of or uninterested in these approaches, but they are influential within the world of local government and local government studies. As I suggest in this chapter, these approaches are illuminating in certain respects, but nonetheless fundamentally flawed. What is wanted is an approach that takes the pressure for local self-government seriously and is sensitive to both geographical variation and historical change. The study of urban and local politics and government in Canada has always been oriented toward the municipalities.1 This has been a matter of both convenience and conviction. Obviously, it is much easier to focus on the municipalities and forget about all the other public agencies at the local level; but the neglect of other local “governments” is not simply the result of laziness or lack of resources. Local government studies are still shaped by the nineteenth-century ideal of municipal self-government: in other words, by the belief that every substantial local community – and especially every city – ought to have its own autonomous government.2 In the ideal, such an authority is sovereign within its own sphere, or at least sovereign in relation to other authorities at its own level. This implies that there ought to be but one general-purpose local government for each community: the municipal government. Other local agencies must then be regarded either as organs of the municipality or the senior government(s), or as quasi-governmental agencies at the margins of the state. By so conceiving them, it is possible to focus attention on

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the municipality as the only authority with a potential for local sovereignty. Since ordinary people do tend to regard the municipality as the local government of the community – as the central government at the local level – the municipal focus of local government studies corresponds to the municipal focus of local politics. This lends empirical support to an approach that has its origins in an ideological commitment. What any student of local government has to face, however, is that the gap between the current reality and the nineteenth-century ideal of municipal government is large and apparently growing. Local government as a whole has been holding its own as a component of the public sector, if we measure importance by expenditures on “final” goods and services or by numbers of employees: it is at the local and hospital levels that increased “exhaustive” expenditures … were most important over the last decade, accounting for 80 per cent of the total expenditure increases in [the public] sector from 1968 to 1977. By 1977, local governments accounted for 34 per cent of total government expenditure on goods and services … In 1975, … the municipal government sector, broadly defined to include schools and municipal enterprises, employed about 705,000 Canadians and accounted for 33 per cent of all public civilian employees.3 However, a large part of this employment and expenditure is beyond municipal control. Education alone accounted for over 42 per cent of local government expenditure in 1978.4 Between them hospitals and educational institutions employed almost 40 per cent of public sector workers in Canada in 1975 – almost four times as many people as municipal governments.5 When other special-purpose local authorities are taken into account, it becomes clear that local government, as measured in these terms, is largely non-municipal. The growth of the non-municipal sector of local government in the twentieth century has been connected to the expansion of social services in the broadest sense. What Bird and Slack call the traditional local government activities – “protection, recreation, public works, and general government” – still account for the bulk of municipal expenditure and employment.6 Given this functional disposition, the municipalities are excluded from much of the general expansion of government at the local level. At the same time, they

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have become more dependent on provincial financing, and been subjected to closer administrative supervision and legislative controls.7 What is more, they are rivalled not only by special-purpose local authorities, but also by an array of local agencies of federal and ­provincial departments and Crown corporations. In many, especially metropolitan, areas, municipal authority itself has been divided between “local” and “regional” councils. Thus, functionally if not politically, the municipalities appear to be just one set of public agencies among many at the local level. In view of this, it seems essential to distance oneself from the municipal focus of local government studies. This does not mean abandoning the idea that the municipality has a unique position. On the contrary, one of the main tasks of local government studies must be to explain what that position is, how it has evolved historically, and how it is sustained. To understand municipal government and politics, however, we must locate them in relation to other institutions and practices at the local level. This means developing new terms and concepts for analyzing that wider reality. My purpose in this paper is to explore some of the conceptual possibilities and the theories associated with them, and to suggest the approach that seems required to understand what I shall call the “local state” in Canada.

The Concept of the Local State To invoke the concept of the local state at this stage in the analysis is apparently to prejudge the issues to be addressed, since the theory of the local state comes out of a particular current of European neoMarxism. However, there is no need to accept the Marxist analysis to find value in the term. The concept of the local state derives from an effort to do precisely what is suggested here: to conceive of the presence of the state at the local level as a whole. For some Marxist analysts, any agency of government located within a community is a part of the “local state.”8 This has the odd implication of making the federal Parliament part of the local state in Ottawa. To preserve the distinction between the central and the local state, we have to recognize the difference between institutions oriented toward the wider society and ones focused on the local community. The latter – like the local R C M P office – may be part of the local state, but the former – like R C M P headquarters – are not.

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The implicit assumption of this amended definition is that the local state is physically present in the local community. Insofar as we conceive of the local state as the state in relation to the locality, this is a somewhat arbitrary assumption. Obviously, the agencies of the state at the centre are constantly making decisions in relation to particular localities. Why, then, should these agencies not be conceived as a part of the local state? The only answer is that their main activities transcend any particular locality, and as such are within the ambit of the central state. The presumption here is – and it may not always be correct – that any agency of the state that is mainly concerned with a locality will be located within it. Thus, the local state is the state insofar as it is physically present in the local community and acts in relation to that community.9 Note two things about this definition: first, it is essentially institutional; and second, it involves no clear separation between one locality and the next. Institutional definitions of the state have been criticized because they seem to involve conceiving of the state as a “thing,” rather than as a set of relations or activities. These criticisms make an important point, but an institution, after all, is simply a set of relations that governs a range of activities. The important thing is to recognize that in giving an institutional description of the local state, we are not giving a full account of the relations and activities in which it is involved. However, it is difficult to understand how that full account could be developed without the aid of an institutional description. This leads to the second point. It may appear on the surface that the proposed definition of the local state involves a reassertion of the idea that the local level of government is naturally marked by a clear separation between units corresponding to localities or communities. No such assumption, in fact, is made. Each agency of the local state may have different bounds. There may be conflicting and overlapping authorities. It may be impossible to identify localities that are generally recognized for purposes of local government. Nevertheless, the local state could still be recognizable as a complex of agencies present in localities and acting in relation to them. The objection may be raised that there is nothing in the concept of the local state that is not in the idea of the local level of government. On the surface, this is true, but the latter term is closely connected with “local government.” By the latter, we usually mean elected local government, or agencies thereof. In this sense, the term

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local government can be used to make a useful distinction between municipal government and the wider set of local authorities (including school boards, etc.). Thus, municipal government is a sub-set of local government and local government is a sub-set of the local state. As a term, “local level of government” is ambiguous, because it is not clear whether only local government or the whole local state is included. The local state is a preferable term, partly because of its unfamiliarity: It alerts us to the fact that something different from local government is being described. It also emphasizes the essential unity of the state – which may be forgotten in an analysis of the plurality of governments – even in drawing attention to the difference between its central and local dimensions. The conceptual scheme advanced here may is illustrated in Figure 1. One of the advantages of this conceptualization is that it allows for a clearer analysis of the evolving territorial structure of the state. Everyone is familiar, for instance, with the centralization of the state in the twentieth century, but it is easy to give a misleading account of what has happened without making the kinds of distinctions that appear in this diagram. What seems to have occurred in Canada is an increase in the importance of (1) special-purpose local authorities in relation to municipal government; (2) local agencies of the central state in relation to local government; (3) central agencies for local purposes in relation to the local state; and (4) central agencies for wider purposes in relation to central agencies for local purposes. All four phenomena have been involved in the decline of municipal government; but the first has had no effect on the position of local ­government as a whole and the first two have had no effect on the relative importance of the local state. Only the last phenomenon, which reflects the tendency toward uniform national or provincial policies, involves centralization in the fullest sense. When people complain about the loss of local autonomy, what they usually have in mind is the relative decline of municipal government. This is regarded as a problem by those who are committed to the idea that every substantial local community should have its own “government” in the same sense that every province does. The ideal implicit in this commitment is that the local state should consist of semi-sovereign local states – that is, each municipal government should have control over the special-purpose local authorities and local agencies of the central state within its own territory, and it should enjoy complete autonomy in relation to other municipalities.

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Figure 1 THE STATE In relation to localities Central agencies for local purposes (e.g., Department of Municipal Affairs) Local agencies of the central state (e.g., police detachments, manpower offices)

Present in localities The local state

Central agencies in the locality (e.g., military bases, research laboratories) Local government

Municipal government

Special purpose local authorities1 (e.g., school boards)

1  The reality is more complex than this diagram suggests, because special-purpose local authorities vary greatly in character and degrees of autonomy. The reference here is to authorities “independent” of other governments. What is sufficient for independence varies with the context, but separately elected authorities with the ability to raise their own funds would normally qualify.

Such internal and external sovereignty is not something municipalities have ever enjoyed in this country, but it represents the logical limit of the demand for full municipal self-government.10 Its advocates are challenged not only by defenders of the central state, but also by decentralists and local autonomists who are suspicious of the municipalization of the local state. For the latter, the concern is to bring the local state under the control of elective local governments, but not to give the municipalities a predominant position at the local level.11 On the other hand are those suspicious of the idea that elective local governments are necessarily more responsive to the local community than local agencies of the central state. For them, the real issue in decentralization is the power of the local state in relation to the central: how much freedom local agencies have is more important than whose agencies they are.12 The issue of local state power is obviously one that also concerns the advocates of municipal and local government, but it is often not clearly distinguished from their other concerns. The term local state power conceals another important ambiguity. The presence and, hence, the power of the state in civil society obviously increased dramatically in the twentieth century. All levels of

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the state have participated in this accretion of power. Municipal governments have been among the beneficiaries, so that by any ­ objective measurement – expenditures, employment, range of activities – their power or importance in society has increased. However, such an absolute increase is perfectly consistent with a decline relative to other agencies of the state. Although the evidence at hand is  incomplete, it seems that municipal government is a relatively smaller component of the state as a whole, of the local state, and probably even of local government than it was in the early years of the ­twentieth century.13 Any assessment of the position of the local state or its components in relation to the central state or civil society is complicated by the presence of intermediate bodies. Many agencies at the local level are jointly composed of representatives of different governments, and it is difficult to assign them to any one component of the local state. There are even more quasi-governmental or quasinongovernmental agencies at the boundaries between the state and civil society. Such agencies exist at the centre, but they seem even more important at the local level. It is possible, in fact, to conceive of local governments themselves as agencies within this sector between the state and civil society. If this were the most adequate conception, the utility of the local state as a term of discourse would be small. Although it may once have been appropriate to regard local governments as authorities apart from the state, such a conception would now be misleading.14 Local governments have been integrated into the state in Canada and most other countries. They derive their authority from the state’s constitution; they are subject to a variety of financial, administrative, legislative, and judicial controls; they are responsible for implementing many state policies. In any case, they participate in powers of government – for example, legislation and taxation – that are denied to other bodies. It is good to recognize that local governments are shaped by social forces, but that they are constituted as components of the state. The present analysis forces us to pay attention to this fact.

T h e o r i e s o f t h e L o c a l S tat e i n C a n a da If we accept for the moment the utility of the concept advanced above, how can we characterize the various theories of the local

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state in Canada? By a theory of the local state, I mean an account of its structure and functions. In practically all such accounts an ideal of the appropriate form and purpose of the local state is implicit. Such a theory, therefore, is both normative and empirical. No two theories address exactly the same issues, and some are prescriptive about matters that others ignore. Nevertheless, it is fruitful to examine these theories in relation to one another. It is a premise of what follows that the concept of the local state provides a framework for illuminating comparisons. Four theories or characterizations of the local state in Canada will be considered here: the third order of government; agencies for special purposes; the local public economy; and local apparatuses of the state. The argument is that none of these theories is adequate on its own, but that each illuminates important features of the local state. The Third Order of Government In Canada there are three major tiers of government: federal, provincial and municipal. That is the reality. In the eyes of the constitution, however, there are only two tiers. Local government has no constitutional status of its own, and functions as a mere delegate of the senior orders of government, primarily the provincial.15 To the dismay of municipal leaders, the Constitution Act, 1982, failed to recognize the “reality” of Canada’s third order of government – or rather, it failed to change the constitutionally subordinate position of the municipalities as specified by s. 92 (8) of what is now called the Constitution Act, 1867. Given the hostility of the provincial governments to any changes that would limit their authority within their own territories, this rebuff to the municipalities came as no surprise. However, it is interesting to see what the constitutional advisers to the municipalities thought would be involved in constitutional recognition. The Constitutions of the Provinces, within the federal constitutional system, should expressly recognize and protect the autonomy of Municipal government as to the following areas: a. Law-making autonomy: Each municipality should have independent law-making powers in defined areas, which

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should not be withdrawn or varied by the Provincial governments except by the ordinary legal processes and procedures applicable to the amendment of Provincial Constitutions; b. Fiscal autonomy: Each municipality should have access to the financial resources appropriate to the carrying out of its governmental responsibilities, and, to that end and without limiting the foregoing, should have power to improve Real Property, License, Amusements, and Rental taxes, and, subject to appropriate Provincial-Municipal tax-sharing arrangements, Income Tax. c. Institutional autonomy: Each municipality should have the power, subject to conformity to the general principles of democratic constitutionalism set out in the Constitution of Canada and also in relevant Provincial Constitutions, to determine and review its own Municipal Charter.16 This proposal reflects both American and West German experiences with constitutional guarantees of municipal autonomy. More fundamentally, it gives expression to the inchoate demand of the municipalities to be recognized as local states: that is, as governments sovereign within their own sphere, standing in the same relation to the provinces as the provinces to the federal government.17 However, the Constitution heavily qualified this assertion of municipal sovereignty. It does not advance any right of municipal control in relation to special-purpose local authorities or local agencies of the central state or make any claim to any particular spheres of jurisdiction. Even the autonomy that is claimed is subject to restriction by constitutional amendment at the provincial level – in practice, by ordinary provincial legislation. Thus, the proposed constitutional guarantees would be mainly of symbolic value, and would be designed not to elevate municipal status but to protect it from further erosion. This betrays a certain lack of faith among the municipalities and their advisers in the justice (or at least the practicality) of their claim to be recognized as local states. At first glance, it is curious that the Task Force on Constitutional Reform should begin its report with an allusion to the “reality” of a third tier of government, for obviously that tier is not constituted exclusively of the municipalities. Nevertheless, there is the reality that municipalities are the only general-purpose governments at the local level: they are the exclusive taxing authorities at this level, the

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principal regulatory bodies and major spending agencies; they are the repositories for local functions not assigned to special-purpose bodies; their councils are the main objects of political representation and the forums for resolution of conflicts; and their leaders are the authoritative spokespeople for the community in both internal and external relations The municipality is thus not just another specialpurpose agency at the local level: its status is unique, and because of that, it is the only local agency that can make a credible claim to be the local government of the community: the local state in its most adequate institutional expression. Logically, recognizing each municipality as the local state in its area would imply both control over other local authorities within its territory, and autonomy in relation to neighbouring municipalities. The form of control over special-purpose agencies might be loose: They might be constituted by the municipalities, but left to operate without municipal interference. The autonomy of these agencies might be guaranteed constitutionally. However, as long as the constitutional guarantees were subject to municipal amendment in a municipal charter, the agencies concerned would still owe their authority to the municipality, which would have the power to alter or eliminate them if it desired. Such internal sovereignty would have its counterpart in external relations with other municipalities. No municipality, presumably, could be forcibly annexed18 or obliged to submit to an overarching municipal government. This is certainly the relation of the provinces to one another, and it is difficult to see how the municipalities could make a claim to statehood – a claim implicit in their demand for recognition as the third order of government – without such autonomy. Municipal autonomy in this sense poses obvious problems. Many municipalities seem to lack the resources for full self-government. Others have boundaries that seem highly inappropriate in terms of contemporary patterns of community life. As long as the provinces remain sovereign in relation to the municipalities, they can address these problems by redrawing boundaries and redistributing resources. Local statehood would raise barriers to reorganization and redistribution. It is not clear that an individual municipality within a wider local community should have the right to resist amalgamation into the wider unit. Nor is it clear that municipalities in general should be able to forestall the redistribution of resources and responsibilities between governments. On the other hand, giving the provinces the

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right to redistribute functions by ordinary legislation would undermine the autonomy of the municipalities. If the provincial legislature can also redraw boundaries at will, local statehood practically disappears. Thus, it would seem that recognizing municipalities as a third order of government involves entrenching the right of even the most arbitrarily constituted municipalities to exist. The idea of such entrenchment makes the staunchest advocates of municipal self-government uneasy. Since John Stuart Mill’s time, the ideal of municipal self-government has been linked to the notion that only self-contained communities with some sense of identity deserve autonomy. In the ideal, each such community would have a single local government, sovereign within its own sphere. If the country were indeed composed of self-contained local communities with strong identities, there might be little theoretical objection to constituting the municipalities as local states. However, it is obvious that the demography of the country is more complex. There are “free-standing towns” such as Winnipeg or Sudbury that might be constituted as “city-states,” but these are more the exception than the rule. In heavily populated areas one town or city blurs into the next, and in rural areas community bounds are necessarily fuzzy. Thus, either we have to accept as given historically defined municipal boundaries that may seem at odds with the present pattern of community life and the contemporary requirements of government; or we must redefine boundaries in accordance with objective criteria. The latter alternative has been much favoured by local-­government reformers, who see boundary reform as a condition for making municipal self-government politically acceptable.19 However, their incessant criticism of municipal boundaries has tended to undermine the legitimacy of existing municipal governments and aid the provinces in their efforts to reconstitute the local state in forms amenable to provincial control. Certainly the redrawing of municipal boundaries in the last forty years and the establishment in many areas of overarching regional municipal governments has done little to enhance the legitimacy of the local municipalities. The reality of the municipal position is well-illustrated by the response of the Indian First Nations to federal government pro­ posals that would have had the effect of “municipalizing” Indian governments.20 These proposals were regarded as an affront to the dignity of the First Nations. On the surface it might seem that the

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affront was simply in the denial of the symbols of nationhood. After all, Indian band councils now have fewer powers than municipalities  and the federal government was proposing to increase their autonomy and widen their jurisdiction. However, the representatives of the First Nations were not only concerned about the symbols of nationhood: they could see that municipalization did not involve recognition of the band councils as a third order of government in Canada, but rather their relegation to a subordinate position. Indian leaders have taken the view that the First Nations never surrendered their sovereignty in coming under the protection of the Crown. Any  constitutional settlement must therefore take the sovereignty inherent in Indian governments into account. As then-Chief David Ahenakew of the Assembly of First Nations explained: We expect that First Nations will retain and exercise most rights and jurisdictions which provinces now have within Canada, and some others which are the special rights of the First Nations. First Nations governments will have to develop judicial systems that will establish laws, institutions, and procedures according to the needs and customs of each First Nation.21 In this view, a third order of First Nations governments would exist alongside the provincial governments within Canada. The freedom of the First Nations from provincial jurisdiction and their peculiar status as sovereign peoples within Canada would obviously differentiate them from local municipalities. More specifically, they would be distinguished by their rights to determine their own citizenship, establish their own forms of government, and exercise full jurisdiction over the “people, resources, and lands” within their own territories. As sovereign entities, they would be free to federate with one another or enter into special relations with other governments in Canada, but no First Nation could be obliged to surrender its sovereignty except by its own act.22 The assertion of such rights by the representatives of the First Nations highlights the special character of Aboriginal claims and the unreality of municipal claims to a kind of local sovereignty. Even granting that municipalities are necessarily subject to provincial jurisdiction, it is clear that the third order of government envisioned by municipal autonomists would have few of the characteristics of sovereignty. The reality is that municipalities

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are not a third order of government, beneath the provincial but comparable in autonomy, and hardly anyone wants them to be (least of all conventional municipal politicians). Agencies for Special Purposes There is deep ambivalence about the nature of municipal government in traditional thinking. Legally, the municipalities are corporations in which (as nineteenth-century commentators liked to point out) the local citizenry are the effective shareholders.23 Although a municipality is a corporation unlike any other, it seems natural to conceive of it as a body incorporated for specific purposes. As such, it cannot be a sovereign government, for its aims and its right of intervention in people’s lives are inherently limited. It must exist within a juridical order that defines its place and the place of other corporate bodies and individuals. As a corporation it has no right to autonomy, except with respect to its internal affairs; and when it is granted regulatory authority or a monopoly of certain business, a municipality, like any other corporation, must expect an increase in governmental control. Demands for greater municipal autonomy may still be sensible from this perspective, since the powers of a municipal corporation may be inadequate to its purposes. However, no claim to local statehood is involved. One suspects that municipal reluctance to assert such a claim is connected to the widespread self-conception of municipal councils as boards of directors of local public corporations. In creating a municipal corporation, a province is delegating some of its own authority. However, as James Lorimer points out, this is not unusual: One of the common practices of governments, both federal and provincial, is to exercise some of their specific powers by setting up government agencies with a narrowly defined area of responsibility … The provinces have the power to regulate and to service the urban property industry – the business of owning real property and of providing new land and buildings for urban use – and they have dealt with this power by setting up city governments to carry it out. The only departure from the usual practice in this case is that in city government the people with ultimate authority over the agency – in this case, the members of city

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councils – are not appointed by the province. Rather they are elected by people in the jurisdiction that they govern.24 In Lorimer’s view, local electoral control of municipal councils has not made them immune to the process whereby a regulated industry captures effective control of the agencies designed to regulate it. Many, if not most, municipalities have thereby become the corporate servants of the “urban property industry.” Whether or not Lorimer was correct about the political affiliations of municipal councils, his ideas suggest an interesting theory of the local state. If the functions of the municipalities are in fact mainly confined to servicing and regulating the urban property industry (or real property more generally), then municipal corporations may indeed be conceived as special-purpose agencies. Whether they serve the interests of their electors, or the provincial governments that establish them, or the industry they are supposed to regulate, or all three, is a matter for empirical investigation. Theoretically, the main point is that municipalities are special-purpose agencies like the others, comparable to school boards, hydroelectric authorities, and so on. This suggests that the local state cannot be conceived as a set of abused and somewhat diminished local states, but rather as a network of special-purpose agencies for local purposes, some locally controlled, some centrally controlled, and none with any inherent authority over the others. As a description of the local state in Canada, this account seems closer to the reality than one based on a conception of municipalities as a third order of government. It helps to explain the historical tendency for municipalities to hive off functions unrelated to their principal business, and hence encourage the proliferation of local agencies that diminish municipal authority. There is nothing unnatural about a special-purpose agency wanting to confine itself to its own proper business. Nor is it unnatural for the groups associated with that business to exercise special influence over the agencies concerned. From this perspective, the municipalities are one case among many: their councils attract realtors, builders, developers and, lately, activists in residents’ and ratepayers’ associations; school boards attract teachers and parents of schoolchildren; hospital boards attract health professionals and volunteers; and so on. These tendencies are not necessarily sinister, but they provide reasons for the public to be suspicious of municipal claims to control over other

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special-purpose authorities. Why should one sort of special-purpose agency be predominant? Should the responsibility for regulating such agencies not fall to a general-purpose government – namely, the province? The aim of the urban citizens’ movement of the 1970s, with which Lorimer was associated, was to wrest control of the municipalities from the property industry. However, this did not necessarily mean any change in the specialization of municipal government.25 “Re­form” councils were to serve the consumers of urban property rather than the producers, but their attention remained focused on the same matters. Efforts to intensify citizen participation in urban planning and to decentralize control over neighbourhood development reinforced this tendency. Only insofar as the mobilization of the citizenry brought people into municipal politics who were not mainly concerned about urban planning, but about housing, education, or welfare policies, were there pressures to broaden the focus of municipal government. These pressures were certainly present in the larger cities at least but activists soon discovered that municipalities had little control over most of the agencies of the local state. The fragmentation of the local state created multiple pressure points, but it ultimately frustrated efforts to revolutionize or reform the local state as a whole. Any conception of the local state as a set of special-purpose agencies fails to take account of recurrent pressures upon the municipalities to broaden their activities. However common the view that a municipality is just a special sort of corporation and however much municipal councils live up to their billing as corporate boards of directors, there is still the belief among many citizens that the municipality ought to be their local government. This is a belief that municipal politicians are inclined to cultivate because it buttresses their position within the local state and in relation to the province. It is an idea that will not go away, and it finds expression in the municipal focus of local politics. The question then arises why the central institution of local politics should be focused on servicing and regulating urban property. Why, for instance, are social welfare or “collective consumption” functions not at the heart of municipal government, and hence of local politics in Canada? Lorimer’s theory points toward the capture of municipal agencies by the industry they were designed to regulate. But why were these agencies designed to regulate that industry? More

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generally, what accounts for the pattern of devolution within the local state, such that some functions are retained by local agencies of the central state, others are devolved upon special-purpose local authorities, and the rest are left to the municipalities as general-­ purpose local governments? Suggestive as Lorimer’s ideas are, they do not help us much in answering these broader questions. For such purposes, we need a more general theory of the local state. The Local Public Economy An important general theory of the local state emerges from public choice analysis, an approach that owes much to conventional economic theory. As in most economic accounts, it begins with the individual and his or her preferences for goods and services. These preferences, it is recognized, are affected by constitutional arrangements that determine people’s rights and opportunities. The assumption is that these arrangements will provide for a free market in “private” goods and services. Such goods are divisible and packageable, hence their provision and acquisition can be left to individual initiative. This is not the case with “public” goods and services, which “share the characteristic of being enjoyed or consumed by all members of a community in common.” As Robert L. Bish and Vincent Ostrom explain: Public goods and services probably cannot be provided on a stable, long-term basis through purely voluntary efforts and financing. If payments were purely voluntary, each citizen would find it in his own interest to withhold payment so long as enough others paid to keep the benefits flowing. The result of many individuals withholding payment would be inadequate provision of public goods and services. Resolution of this dilemma is usually sought through some form of governmental organization.26 Thus, in this account, there is a natural division in the economy between a private sector in which marketable goods and services are produced and a public sector in which governmental organizations provide wanted but indivisible and unpackageable goods and services. The local state is simply the local public sector or public economy. This is not to say that the private and public economies are strictly separated, or that public choice analysis suggests that they should be.

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Obviously, it is a governmental responsibility to determine the constitution of the private economy. Once that constitution has been established, the public authorities may still wish to intervene to redistribute resources or to deal with the externalities of private activity. These externalities are costs or benefits to the public at large or a portion thereof. Among the goods and services provided in the public economy are measures to internalize the costs and benefits of private activities to prevent overproduction of goods with external costs and underproduction of goods with external benefits. There are many other goods and services in the public economy that would not be produced at all in an unregulated private market. Governments may produce these goods and services themselves, or they may act as purchasing agents for the public in acquiring what is wanted from private enterprises. Contracting out for goods and services is so extensive in fact that private firms have become major actors within the public economy. Just as the private economy is penetrated by government, so the public economy is penetrated by private business. The presumption of most public choice analysis is that the private economy is more responsive to individual preferences than the public. The reasons for this are complex, but ultimately they can be traced to the nature of the goods concerned. In the private economy, an individual with the financial means can order and get exactly the goods and services he or she wants, because they are packageable and divisible. In the public economy, this is not possible, because the goods and services are enjoyed in common. We must compromise with our fellows, and be satisfied with what the majority want. The mechanisms of democratic politics are supposed to make the public economy responsive to majority preferences, but for a host of reasons, they fail to do so effectively. Even if they did, little account would be taken of the variations in individual preferences. This leads public choice analysts toward the view that the public economy could be improved by making it more responsive to the differences between individuals. From this perspective, the differentiation and fragmentation of the local state appear as positive benefits. It would seem that a well-ordered public economy would allow for groups of like-minded individuals to form their own local authorities so they could purchase the goods and services they wanted. Some things they might produce with their own staff. Others they might purchase from private firms or from neighbouring or overarching public authorities. For the producers to be responsive to

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these consumers’ collectives, there would have to be competition among them – a market in public goods and services. To an extent, this is already present: Local governments in a democratic federal system of government are not pure monopolists. Citizens do have alternatives available to them which can generate competition. Competitive pressures can occur when people seek recourse by electing different officials, voting with their feet, using private alternatives or through other levels of government.27 It seems important to have several levels of government to take account of both wider and narrower communities of interest, and to allow for goods and services to be produced on the most efficient scale. However, the public choice analysis suggests that efficiency may be enhanced by enforcing competition for public favour within and between each level of government. The multiplicity of governments and intergovernmental agreements in metropolitan areas may appear “chaotic” or incomprehensible to some observers who assume that coordination can be achieved only through hierarchical structures. When the diverse nature of public goods and services and the difficulty of meeting diverse demands of citizens through large-scale bureaucracies are recognized, the complex governmental system existing in many metropolitan areas appears to be not only rational but to be an essential prerequisite for an efficient and responsive performance in the public sector.28 This is an inversion of the traditional view that efficiency and responsiveness in the public sector are to be enhanced by concentrating public authority. In the older view, each level of government was to have distinct jurisdiction. Moreover, the units at each level would be autonomous and self-contained. Thus arose the ideal of a local state composed of self-governing municipalities, or semi-sovereign local states. The difficulties in realizing that ideal have given support to the new view that efficiency and responsiveness are not to be achieved by concentrating authority in this way. Obviously, there are pressures within local public economies toward fragmentation and diversification, and these pressures can be partly attributed to the

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diversity of demands for public goods and services and the incapacity of centralized bureaucracies to meet those demands. However, it  is more debatable whether these are the only forces at work and whether their ultimate effect is a more efficient and responsive public economy. The public choice approach involves an economistic concept of the state, and hence excludes from view those dimensions of politics and government that cannot be comprehended in economic terms. It presupposes individualism and instrumentalism, and tends to deny a priori the existence of any collectivity that is prior to or transcendent of the individuals within it. One of the ironies of the debate between public choice theorists and conventional proponents of unified local government is that the latter have laid the basis for the public choice critique by insisting that municipal organization is simply a matter of convenience. On both accounts, the municipality lacks any purpose beyond the purposes of the individuals within it. It is hard for us now to think of the municipality in any other way, but it is well to remember that neither the state nor the nation is normally conceived in such limited terms. “Canada” is thought to have needs and purposes greater than those of the individuals within it, and the Canadian state is supposed to be oriented toward our ends as a society, as well as toward our wants as individuals. We need not conceive of society as a “community of communities” to recognize that the state in its local dimension participates in the wider purposes of government. To the extent that it does, it cannot be conceived simply as a local public economy. This should not be interpreted as a plea for Hegelian Idealism as the basis for local government studies. The suggestion is simply that there are dimensions of political behaviour at the local level and standards for evaluating policies and institutional arrangements that cannot be understood in terms of the pursuit of individual welfare. The common reservations about public choice analysis relate more to its conclusions about the value of fragmented government than to its assumptions about the nature of politics. It is often said that fragmentation inhibits government from responding to the wider public good, and that it tends to reinforce existing inequalities.29 There is something in both these criticisms but, as public choice analysts point out, the concentration of public authority may also reinforce inequalities and lead to a neglect of the public good. Everything depends on the context. The more fundamental criticism of public

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choice theory is that it distorts the context, by reducing society to a set of relations between individuals in a market. The tendency among the theory’s exponents to idealize market solutions – as against the opposite tendency to idealize governmental solutions – is ultimately a consequence of this distortion. To talk of the distortion implicit in an image of the state as a public economy is not to deny the truth the image conveys. The truth is that the local state does operate, to a large extent, as a local public economy. The question is why? How did people come to conceive of their local institutions in purely instrumental terms? How is this conception and the behaviour associated with it reinforced? More generally, how is it that people have come to conceive of themselves essentially as individuals in a competitive market relation with one another? Because the public choice approach takes market man and market society as given, it offers no answers to such questions. To explore them, we must turn to a different tradition of political economy. Local Apparatuses of the State The theories that emerge from Marxist and neo-Marxist political economy all suggest that the formation of market man and market society must be understood in terms of the development of the capitalist mode of production. The structure and functions of the state are determined, it is said, by the exigencies of capitalism and of the class struggles it generates. In its most sophisticated forms, recent Marxist theory avoids the poles of “voluntarism” and “determinism”: that is, it denies both that the state is simply an instrument of capitalists, to be used at their pleasure, and that its form and direction are determined solely by the capitalist economy.30 However, the twin notions that the state belongs to capitalists and that it develops in accordance with capitalism inevitably frame any Marxist analysis. The problem is to specify these notions in a way that takes account of a complex reality and generates a clear and coherent theory of the state. Marxist theorists have inevitably given much greater attention to the central state than the local. What generally emerges is a conception of local institutions as “local apparatuses of the state.”31 This is a vague idea, but it reflects the Hegelian (and more generally the European) conception of the state as an ordered whole, standing over against civil society and yet grounding and completing it. To

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speak of local apparatuses is to emphasize their functions in relation to the larger whole. It is also to emphasize that what may appear separate from the state is really a part of it. One of the important features of Nicos Poulantzas’s theory of the state – from which this notion of apparatuses is derived – is that the quasi-governmental and quasi-nongovernmental organizations at the margins of the state are conceived as an essential part of it.32 The same is true of municipalities and other local authorities, and indeed of the whole array of agencies in the local public economy. Indeed, if it can be said that public choice theorists re-conceive the state in its local dimension as part of civil society (by describing it as a set of agencies in a local public economy), then Marxist theorists who follow Poulantzas can be said to re-conceive much of civil society as a part of the state. Poulantzas, after Gramsci, distinguished between the “ideological” and the “repressive” apparatuses of the state, to draw attention to the structural differentiation required for the two forms of social control. James O’Connor, in turn, distinguished between the social control or “legitimation” functions of the state, and the ones associated with capital accumulation.33 Both distinctions have been important to recent Marxist theories of the local state. More crucial still is the category of “collective consumption.” This has emerged from accounts of the socialization of consumption in the twentieth century. There is some controversy about the definition of collective consumption, but the general view seems to be that it includes everything provided for consumption by the state in its widest sense, and not just public goods in the sense used by public choice analysts. The common claim, in relation to the local state, is that the state’s principal function is to provide these collective consumption goods.34 In Marxist theory, the growth of collective consumption is connected to the development of monopoly capitalism. In the earlier, competitive phase of capitalism, workers, like individual businesses, had to fend for themselves on the open market. However, the reorganization of capital in the course of competition resulted in large agglomerations of productive facilities and more centralized control over capital itself. The need for reliable, energetic, and skilled workers became more apparent; the workers themselves demanded better conditions; and everyone found that many of the goods and services workers demanded could be provided more economically on a collective basis. Hence, the development of capitalism as a system of production required that consumption be considerably socialized in

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the form of health, education and welfare services, cultural and recreational facilities, public housing, transport, and so on. Much of the burden of providing these collective consumption goods fell to the local authorities. Successfully providing a high standard of living for the workforce obviated the need for much overt repression. On the other hand, the increasing scale of capitalist production entailed an upward shift of the accumulation (or production support) functions of the state. This is supposed to have left the local state with functions related to collective consumption and given local politics its peculiar character. It is remarkable how close this conception is to the one generated by public choice analysis. In both cases the local authorities are conceived as agencies for collective consumption. The differences in the theories are in their accounts of the origin and operation of local public economies. Significant as these differences are, they arise from a shared economism that obscures anything that cannot be comprehended in economic terms. The local community, in particular, disappears in a set of economic relations between individuals or in a struggle between classes formed by the mode of production. Thus, the parochialism or civic pride that is the local equivalent of nationalism drops out of the analysis. So, too, do the particularities of each community, and the struggles of local communities for autonomy in relation to the centre. It is not that such phenomena are entirely ignored, but that they are explained away as consequences of something more basic that can only be comprehended economically. Even accepting an economistic perspective, it is odd that such emphasis should have been placed on the collective consumption functions of the local state. As much as anything, municipalities were established as organizations for business, that is, for regulating the local economy and promoting its development. Local boosterism reflects this. James Lorimer’s theory of municipal government records what appears to be a common municipal disposition, connected to the development functions discharged at this level. It is a feature of municipal government and politics, not confined to Canada. All this suggests that the production or accumulation functions of the local state remain of great importance, especially in relation to the local community. The exact significance of the productive activity of the local state for the national economy is difficult to assess, but it is not clear why anyone should suppose that it is less significant than ac­tivity in the sphere of collective consumption. Indeed, given strong

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central controls over the “S H E W ” (social, health, education, and welfare) services in most countries (and especially in Canada) it would seem that the relative autonomy of the local state is greater in production than in collective consumption. That local communities and local authorities are concerned with establishing their autonomy in relation to the centre seems an obvious point. However, it is a point lost in many Marxist analyses that relate the state to the economy and the state to class struggle, but treat each as an undifferentiated whole. Taking localities seriously means recognizing that each has its own economy, its own political history, and its own internal divisions. It also means recognizing that each locality is in struggle with others: with the central authorities and with external forces beyond its control. These struggles give a territorial dimension to the politics of every state, and ensure the internal differentiation of the state itself. The differentiation occurs within, as well as between, the levels of the state. The exact significance of territorial differentiation has to be assessed in relation to other features of politics and government, but presumably it is the purpose of a theory of the local state to do this. A theory that explains territoriality away can hardly do so, and that is the tendency of contemporary Marxist theory, as well as of public choice analysis. Such failings force us back toward the forms of analysis that have typified traditional local government studies.

N e g l e c t e d D i m e n s i o n s : S pac e , T i m e , and the Local State The main virtue of the traditional approach is that it focuses our attention on the municipalities as proto-states at the local level. It forces us to examine their internal politics and take their relations with other governments seriously. The modes and techniques of analysis applied to the nation-state can then be extended to the local level. However, we are immediately confronted with the reality that the local state is not composed of autonomous municipalities, but rather of a network of competing and overlapping agencies for particular purposes. This impels us toward different modes of analysis. We may conceive of these agencies as the captives of the industries they are supposed to serve or regulate, analyze them as purchasing agencies or firms in a more or less competitive public economy, or  attempt to explain their forms and activities in terms of the

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requisites of advanced capitalism. Each of these approaches illuminates a part of the reality concealed in traditional explanations, but none seems to give a fully rounded account of the local state. Part of what is missing is what is highlighted by traditional analysis: the locality organizing itself politically, exercising state power, and struggling for recognition as a distinct polity with its own government. This aspect of local politics and government can easily be exaggerated, but it should not be ignored. One of our tasks as analysts is to explain how the local community comes to be defined politically. In part, this is a matter of imposition from without, but it also involves a process of self-definition.35 We cannot understand the formation of the various agencies of the local state if we neglect the impulse from below for political organization. This impulse need not take the form of a demand for municipal status: Indian bands are not the only local communities that regard municipalization as an imposition on their autonomy. Whatever form it takes, however, the impulse for local self-government conditions the development of the local state, for it has to be accommodated, contained, or diffused in some way. If that impulse were not there, it is difficult to imagine why there would be so many local governments. Up to a point it is possible to explain the multiplicity of local authorities in terms of the diversity of consumer demands. Further insight emerges from the recognition that such authorities may be “captured” by producer interests.36 The dynamics of capitalism may account for the general disposition of government at the local level. Nevertheless, all these approaches relate to the forces that undermine or overlay the struggle for local autonomy, and produce the peculiar form of local state with which we are familiar. The power of these forces is undeniable, but their effect on the local state has to be understood in terms of the dispersal, redirection, and containment of local impulses for self-government. What has astonished many who have attempted to change local institutions from without is the continuing strength of this impulse in situations where it ought, by rights, to have disappeared. If we are to take localities and localism seriously, we need to get beyond an approach that identifies the municipality with the local community and treats all municipalities alike. It means taking space and time – geography and history – seriously. One of the remarkable features of most accounts of the local state in Canada is that they treat it as existing in undifferentiated space. It is true that a

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distinction is often made between urban and rural Canada, and that note is taken of interprovincial variations, but the spatial differentiation of the local state is rarely given close attention. Even the terms of analysis are woefully inadequate. Rural, for instance, is taken to refer not only to agricultural districts, but also to the vast areas where mining, lumbering, fishing, and trapping are the primary industries. Urban means anything from a village to a huge city. Even more modern terms like suburban and metropolitan are perfectly vague: hence we have the absurdity of referring to both Guelph and Toronto as metropolitan areas. It is not that geographers have not developed their own categories, but that students of local government have failed to refine these categories for their own purposes. The result is that a crucial dimension of the local state in Canada has not even been adequately conceptualized, let alone explained. This point is worth illustrating. Suppose we make the conventional distinction between urban and rural areas, and then divide rural Canada into its agricultural and non-agricultural components. The first thing to note is that most of the municipal governments in Canada are in the rural areas whereas most of the people are in the urban areas.37 What is less obvious is that there seem to be many more municipal governments per capita in agricultural areas than in non-agricultural rural areas. Still less apparent – at least from the conventional accounts of local government – is that the local state in the non-agricultural areas is completely different in Native communities from what it is in the white settlements. Even in the white settlements of the resource frontier, there are forms of organization unknown elsewhere: company towns, communities under provincial or federal trusteeship, and so on. Thus, the local state in rural Canada seems to be spatially differentiated, in accordance with the three types of rural communities: farming districts, resource towns, and Native settlements. The fact that municipal self-government has been more readily granted to farming districts than to other sorts of rural communities suggests something interesting and important about the political economy of the local state in Canada: municipal autonomy may be a form of class privilege. It should be obvious that the development of the local state has to be understood historically, but political scientists have scant interest in the history of local government. Surprisingly little attention has been given to the development of the provincial states at the expense of the municipal. Since municipal government seems to have been at

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least as important, if not more important, than provincial government at the beginning of this century, the rise of the latter at the expense of the former certainly deserves an explanation. What accounts we have tend to present what happened as an inevitable effect of urbanization and industrialization. But we learned after 1960 that the apparently inexorable decline of the provinces in relation to the federal government was not at all inevitable. Since then, we have had a spate of accounts of province-building.38 Why did the municipalities fail to do to the provinces what the provinces did to the federal government? This failure cannot be explained simply in terms of constitutional subordination: Were constitutions so potent, the Canadian provinces would be the local governments Sir John A. Macdonald intended. To raise such issues is to suggest the need for a serious examination of the politics of territoriality in Canada. It is ironic that, in a country obsessed with federal–provincial relations, the processes that determine the more general territorial structure of the state have been so little considered. A reader of one of the introductory texts on Canadian government and politics would hardly be aware that there even were local governments in Canada, and would form no impression at all of the extent of state activity at the local level. How and  why the central governments came to predominate over the local; what sorts of local autonomy are available and for what reasons; what political struggles have occurred over centralization and decentralization – such questions appear as issues in federal–­provincial relations, but not in the politics of territoriality in general. Commu­ nities that are not provinces or nations, concerns that are local, and ideals that can be realized only in communal institutions are shunted to the margins of political consciousness. This destroys the sort of political thinking that puts the “givens” of government and politics to the test. To consider rival theories of local government as alternative conceptions of the local state is to draw attention to theoretical underdevelopment. Whatever their merits, these theories leave us with the uneasy feeling that what exists at the local level has not even been adequately described, let alone explained. A local state perspective reveals the difference between levels of the state and levels of government. Recognizing in turn that the structure and functions of the local state are determined by a politics of territoriality means reinterpreting accepted phenomena as political contingencies. Partial

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explanations of these contingencies are offered in the theories considered above, but the explanations are either legalistic (as in the first case) or economistic (as in the other three). What we need is a fullblooded political theory of the local state that takes geographic diversity and historical change into account, and that recognizes that the locality can be as real a political community as the nation. Until such a theory is created, it will be impossible for administrators or policy-makers to assess the full implications of restructuring the local state. When I reread this chapter now, I am struck by how “statist” it is. I don’t mean to say that it favours big government or a centralized state, but that it poses the problem of government – and hence of politics – as something that concerns the state, first and foremost. I now think of government as governmentality,39 and identify it with many other institutions beside the state. I give a brief explanation of my reasons for this shift of attention in the postscript to Part 1. The state-centricity of my analysis in this chapter and the ones preceding it are still defensible, however. I began these investigations with a nagging suspicion that people had decided on forms of local government that precluded neighbourhood democracy – i.e., a scale of political organization that actually allowed people to assemble and make decisions without relying on elected representatives or appointed officials – for reasons quite different from the ones they offered. The public reasons were all about efficiency and effectiveness or equality and justice. The private reasons were about fear of the common people, especially the sort of people who had left their traditional rural communities and ended up living in poor urban neighbourhoods. I am sceptical about the public reasons, even when considered on their own terms, because they don’t provide a good rationale for completely denying people the right to govern themselves collectively in the places where they actually live. I am even more sceptical about the private reasons, which are rooted in class prejudice – the very class prejudice that democracy is meant to challenge. Why are we so fearful of the people? Why do we hate democracy so much?40 What’s at stake for us in our desperate efforts to avoid it? One of the reasons why I focus on the state is that people so often set the problem of the state aside when they start talking about the potential for local democracy. There is much loose talk about active citizenship, public engagement, and

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a vibrant civic culture, but the tendency is to assume that these things can be achieved without disturbing existing state institutions, which are organized so as to distance authority from ordinary people. Ordinary people cannot be democratically self-­governing if they are distanced in this way. They have to have a piece of the action, to make the state their own, not an alien presence, and that depends on having institutions like the town meeting, but ones that will actually work under the conditions with which we are now familiar. What institutions might those be? I try to address that issue more directly in Part 3. Some might argue that any analysis of the local state is bound to be anachronistic, because the state has retreated so much in favour of private businesses and non-governmental organizations. I don’t find such claims persuasive, however, because there has not been a retreat of the state so much as a change in the way states govern, so that they rely more heavily on non-state agencies to achieve their purposes. According to neo-liberal theory, good governance – the now general term for a proper ordering of human life – depends on freeing up society, as opposed to intensifying direct government action. The state is still conceived as the main orchestrator, however, and it is expected to use its power to block forms of action that are not in accord with neo-liberal principles. Contemporary governance depends on the relationship between state and nonstate agencies, and we will not be able to analyze that relationship without a clear conception of the state in all its guises. Recently, much attention has been paid to the multilevel character of governance, in which agencies from the local on upwards are involved in dealing with similar problems.41 Clearly an analysis of the local state is crucial for making sense of what is going on in this respect. (I have more to say about the idea of multilevel governance in relation to chapter 4.) At the end of this chapter, I distinguish between a political theory of the local state and theories that instead are legalistic or economistic. I would now want to distinguish as well between a political theory and a sociological one, using the latter term to cover any naturalistic account that explains away the politics and presents what is found as a result of social forces that are not under anyone’s conscious control. (I say more about this distinction in chapter 4.) The neo-Marxist account of the political economy of metropolitan reform, which I considered in chapter 2,

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and the post-Marxist account of the political economy of scale, which I consider in chapter 6, both tend to be sociological in this sense, as well as economistic. In chapter 6, I draw attention to the politics of security and the politics of identity, both of which play into the politics of scale, one aspect of which is the way the local state is configured and refigured. One might bring sociological accounts of the politics of identity, security, and economy together in order to enrich the analysis, but that would leave the politics of the politics yet to be analyzed. The challenge is to keep the ­politics at the centre of the analysis without prejudging the issues posed. In Part 2, I try to suggest some of the categorical shifts that are involved in developing a more realistic analysis of our political possibilities. This draws my attention away from the local state as such, but I come back to it in a different way in Part 3.

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Postscript

Thirty Years On: Plus ça change … ?

Obviously there have been many changes in the last thirty years, but with respect to the basic orientation of the state, they have not been as dramatic as many people imagine. To be sure, there has been a shift from Keynesian welfarism to neo-liberalism, but these two strategies of government are actually variants of the same thing. Both depend on economic judgments, and treat public life as something to be avoided. The presumption, which predates Keynesian welfarism, is that we are essentially consumers of public goods and services who want good value for our money. As the neo-liberals have argued, responsiveness to distinct groups of consumers is a good thing, as is the efficiency stimulated by competition. By contrast, Keynesian welfarism is mainly about rationalizing the market economy and providing better support for the disadvantaged. Both approaches point back to the individual or the family, whose private welfare is the main issue. On this ideological terrain, the neo-liberals are at an advantage, because they are more in tune with the spirit of capitalism, which celebrates self-­ reliance. One might have thought that neo-liberalism would involve strong support for local self-­government, because it appeals to nineteenth-­century ideas about laissez-faire. The gestures in this direction have been few, however. The overriding concerns have been about economy and efficiency, measured in terms of private welfare, and in this context local self-government (as it is usually understood) seems like an unnecessary luxury at best and an impediment to good government at worst. As I indicated in my earlier analyses, attitudes were similar in the Keynesian era and indeed in all the preceding years, back to the time when the modern state was first being organized.

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Several things are notable in recent institutional reforms, quite apart from the familiar neo-liberal nostrums like contracting-out, public–private partnerships, and so on. Most of the Canadian provinces have tried to give the municipalities more latitude within their areas of jurisdiction, usually by giving them “natural person” powers that enable them to act without specific authority, provided that they do not violate any federal or provincial law.1 This is somewhat helpful, but it does not change the situation very much, because federal and provincial legislation is so extensive. In any case, private individuals and private corporations continue to have well-protected rights – especially property rights – for which they can seek court protection whenever municipalities try something new. As a result, Canadian municipalities are generally as timid as ever, except when they get mobilized by private business to do its bidding. Meanwhile, they have been under intense pressure to economize in their operations, as the provinces and the federal government have downloaded or offloaded responsibilities, cut back on financial support for local public services, demanded that municipalities abide by neo-liberal principles of public management, and – in some cases – restricted municipalities’ ability to raise taxes. There is nothing like impoverishment to persuade local leaders to concentrate on whatever is absolutely necessary. With respect to other parts of the local state, which are under more direct provincial control, there have been relentless efforts to create larger administrative units and to integrate them more effectively with the market economy. Thus, in health care, education, social services, public transit, public housing, and the like, we have had a double-movement toward “gargantua” and public choice. One example is the health authority under which I live. Like its equivalents in other provinces, it is an unelected public body at arm’s-length from the provincial government. It is responsible for the whole of Vancouver Island, which is about six times as big as PEI and has a larger population than PEI and Newfoundland combined. It is mandated to use all the techniques of the new public management, work closely with the private sector, and be as responsive as it can be to its clients. Nonetheless, all of the measures for public engagement to which it is committed are on the model of centralized decision-making and top-down consultation. Although the current B C government has made much of its “Community Charter,” which is supposed to give local communities more autonomy,2 it has

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continued to put more things out of the reach of elected local governments. Much the same story could be told in other provinces. There is at least one new theme that has been introduced into the discourse of local government: globalization. That was one of the ideas invoked when Megacity Toronto was created in 1997, and it floated around in the context of other plans for amalgamation, as in Montreal and Ottawa. As Andrew Sancton and others have pointed out, the idea that cities have to annex their suburbs in order to compete in the global marketplace is a bit odd: the commercial advantages of such a move are by no means obvious.3 Nevertheless, the idea that every city ought to be competing for the favour of international investors is now well entrenched. Apparently, it is something that the global economy “demands.” These demands affect every single individual, as well as every form of human association or community, be it a village, a country, or a whole region of the world like Africa. One of the reasons why Richard Florida’s work has been popular in recent years is that he offers a competitive rationale for being friendly to cultural diversity – especially to the forms of diversity that give a “buzz” to cities that must provide a home to the “creative class” (who are the people who come up with the ideas that make investors rich).4 It may seem that Keynesian welfarism was fundamentally different, but it too was informed by the idea that countries, provinces, and cities ought to compete with one another to do the best economically. The supporters of business-friendly policies simply claim that their strategy for economic improvement works better for everyone, including the poor. Although there are many reasons for thinking that “business-friendly” policies help businesses at the  ex­­ pense of everyone else – and often degrade the business environment in the process – we should not lose sight of the fact that most of the proposed alternatives to these policies are also rationalized in economistic terms, just as they were in the years after the Second World War. Neo-Keynesianism and neo-welfarism, like neo-liberalism, show more continuity than differences with the past. So, how might we think differently? One thing that has helped me is the Foucauldian notion of “governmentality,”5 because it turns my attention away from the state as such, and gets me focused on the problem of government. If the problem is that we are not being governed appropriately, and that our opportunities for local self-­government are being foreclosed, we have to consider the issues in the broadest possible terms. So, for instance, it is rather silly to

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suggest that the organizations or companies we work for are not governing us. Of course they are. The great majority of these little – or not so little – governments are in the private sector, and some of them are under the ultimate control of boards of directors in distant parts of the world. They claim that they are doing what they need to do to operate effectively in “the market,” but what is that? Somehow control is dispersed between consumers on the one hand and investors on the other. For the latter, investment banks, rating agencies, financial advisors, and the like are crucial. The collective will of investors is expressed through the markets, especially the ones for stocks, bonds, and currencies. Obviously, this will is conditioned in some degree by consumer demands, although such demands are subject to manipulation. Even more obviously, investors react negatively whenever their position as investors is threatened. The magic of the market is such that no conscious collusion is required to discipline states or peoples or communities that stray from the “businessfriendly” path. So, government is exercised in and through the market, as well as through the policies of individual businesses. As a result, everyone is quite effectively governed – as employees, customers, clients, citizens, public servants, or even as investors – by market-­ based means that have been established over a long period of time, with the state often being involved but just as often being held at a  distance. We can make no sense of the modern world if we fail to  recognize that we are governed by these means, and that every effort to govern us otherwise – or for us to govern ourselves otherwise – comes up against this powerful, pre-established, and always evolving system of government that is not based on democratic principles, but rather on a form of class domination. That said, it is not just the state and the market that are at issue with respect to government. We are also governed – often more intensely and intimately – through our families, friends, religious affiliations, work groups, professions, associations, neighbourhoods, public spaces, and local communities, all of which can take many different forms. The authority that other people have over us arises in many different ways, and it may be quite informal. It is not always resented. It may be welcomed when there is a felt need for guidance or direction. Although any form of authority can be abused, the fact that we are subject to various authorities and thus to various forms of government is not necessarily a problem in itself. How a complex society could work if people refused to accept any rules that they did

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not themselves make is hard to imagine. If we feel like we are overgoverned, as we often do, that may just be because the form or locus of government seems illegitimate to us, or its direction wrong. What we want may be a change in the character of government, not necessarily in its intensity or extent. What “the government” does is one thing, but what is happening in the way of government in its many different forms is a much bigger question. The ideal of local self-­ government turns on two claims. The first is that self-government is better than the other kind: If I have to be governed, I would rather do it myself, thank you very much. The second claim is that local government is better than distant government: If I have to be governed by an external authority, I would rather that it be close at hand, knowledgeable, sensitive, and open to my influence. What this means in terms of government in the most general sense is a difficult question. The neo-liberal approach favours the sovereignty of the individual investor or consumer. Keynesian welfarism counters that with collective sovereignty in the form of the state. Neither approach is ultimately satisfactory, however. If we are to take local self-government seriously as a principle, we have to recognize – as I try to show in chapter 7 – that both individual sovereignty and state sovereignty are at best aspects of it, rather than separate principles that override it. When sovereignty is diffused in this way, it becomes something different, an ideal that can never be fully realized. As I argue, local self-government is the principle hidden within most conceptions of liberal democracy or “civic republicanism.”6 It renders intelligible the delicate balance between the claims of different locales and bet­ ween divergent concerns about autonomy and responsibility. I will explore more of the implications of this in later chapters, but for the moment let me just suggest that, whatever our views on these matters might be, it is helpful to adopt the broadest possible understanding of “government” if we want to make sense of what is at stake when people claim the right to be self-governing, individually, collec­ tively, or otherwise. Most people think that there is an intrinsic connection between politics and government, so that when government is identified with the state, politics is too. This line of thought also works in the other direction: identifying politics with the state triggers an identification of the state with government. The result is an institutionally restricted understanding of government and politics, which gets in the way of a realistic analysis of our problems and possibilities. Politics and

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government can be better understood as complementary modes of human activity. They may be twins, but they are born in almost every setting, as everyone who complains about office politics well knows. Although the state is an important locale for government and politics, it is not the only one, nor is it necessarily the most important. What affects us most or yields the greatest opportunities is a matter for empirical investigation. In chapter 3, I suggested that the question of the local state is much broader than the question of municipal government. I would add now that the question of local governmentality – as opposed to local government, in the familiar sense – is much broader than the question of the local state. To think about it helps us get a purchase on the larger issues posed not only by the right of local self-government, but also by other rights, like the right to the city and the right to democracy. Lying behind Keynesian welfarism were some confused and suppressed claims that we can well understand now in terms of the Lefebvrian “right to the city”: that is, a right to have an urban world that is really our own, that expresses what we are and can be, and that actually meets our needs rather than those of some dominant class. Lying behind neo-liberalism are some confused and suppressed claims to the right of local self-government: that is, a right to govern ourselves, individually and collectively, in whatever communities or associations we want. We need to unpack those claims, relate them to one another, and connect them with our ideas about liberal democracy before we can see more clearly what is at stake for us now politically and governmentally. So far in this book, I have had little to say about the ethnocultural and religious differences that attract so much political attention. It may seem odd to talk about local self-government without addressing the question of how these differences are to be resolved. There are good reasons for sidestepping this issue, however: not because it is unimportant, but because it is tangential to the issues I am discussing here. The traditional case for local self-government has little or nothing to do with such differences, and everything to do with the scale of the modern state. To put it crudely, local self-government is conceived as an antidote to excessive scale, and the presumption is that it would be good even if the larger polity were perfectly homogeneous in religious or ethnocultural terms. The standard arguments about local government, such as the ones I reviewed in chapters 1 and 2, assume that urbanization forces us together in a way that obliges us to work out our differences in a shared space that has to

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be jointly managed. The implicit assumption is that some sort of common culture, common understandings, and common values will emerge of necessity. Modernization and secularization will go together. This may not be entirely correct, but there is reason to believe that long-term trends are in this direction. In any case, an obvious feature of the principle of local self-government is that it can be invoked to accommodate deep differences of any kind, including religious or ethnocultural ones. The principle, as I interpret it, is only incidentally about territorial autonomy, and more fundamentally about the right to develop our own ways of life, in the plural. Although it will not of itself resolve deep differences, it may ease their accommodation. I will leave it to others explore these issues more fully. My own concern is about the confusions in our thinking that lead us to mistake the issues that we have to deal with even when secularization and modernization are proceeding apace under the rubric of urbanization. I have drawn attention here to our confused thinking about politics, government, and the state, and appealed for a broader approach. In Part 2, I consider questions about movement, policy, and scale, which are equally important. What I gesture toward is a different ontology of the political, which will allow us to see the issues before us in a different way. The world is not what we assume it to be when we resort to pat answers to difficult questions, as has usually been the case with local government.

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PART two Social Movements and Political Space

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4 Globalization, Movements, and the Decentred State*

I wrote the following paper for a book on social movements, but I was still preoccupied by the questions that motivated my earlier work. A common claim was that everything was being globalized so that the nation-state could no longer be the main focus for pol­ itical action (especially action that might challenge the neo-liberal or capitalist agenda). There had been a shift in radical politics in favour of social movements that were unconnected to political ­parties, with fields of action that engaged people personally but extended globally. In principle, such movements were unlimited in their reach. What then could be said about local self-government or community control, given that the nation-state itself seemed to be losing its power? Did it mean that local action was more important, or less? What sort of local autonomy was realistic? What kinds of action were called for? My sense was that we did not have the categories we needed to answer these questions. We were misled by all the standard ways of thinking about political matters, including the ones invoked by radicals and progressives. The latter were struggling to free themselves from the orthodoxies of Marxism and Keynesian welfarism (often described as “social democracy”) and to develop new forms of politics, both in terms of ultimate objectives – now more environmentalist and feminist than before – and

*  Originally published in Organizing Dissent: Contemporary Social Movements in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed., ed. William K. Carroll (Toronto: Garamond Press, 1997), 94–113. Reprinted with the permission of the University of Toronto Press.

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methods of engagement – now both personal and political, and local and global, rather than simply national. Unfortunately, old ways of thinking that arose from a particular “ontology of the political” (as I later put it) got in the way of the creative action required. In this essay, I began with the idea of a social movement – by then central to many people’s understandings of what progressive or radical politics could be like – and tried to show how it is burdened by an inappropriate and unrealistic set of assumptions. I tried to lead the reader, step by step, toward a different understanding of the problem of politics. I ended up in a global hyperspace, but I also implied that there are particularly important political opportunities at the juncture of municipalities and movements. What are the implications of that for local self-government or the right to the city? When we talk about social “movements,” what is it that moves, and in relation to what? Do we have some “fixtures” in mind, when we speak about movements? If so, what are those fixtures, and what do we mean by suggesting that they are stable in relation to the movements? Does globalization refer to a process of destabilization, and, if so, what is being destabilized: the fixtures or the movements (or both)? Why do we describe globalization as “economic,” but call movements “social”? What do we mean by the economic and the social, and how do these things relate to the “political”? Is the political what relates to the state, and, if so, is that what is being destabilized?1 Is the destabilization of the state (or “society” or “scientific knowledge”) what post-structuralists and postmodernists have in mind when they talk about “decentring”?2 What is it to decentre something? To raise such questions is to incite the wrath of many social scientists and political activists. The empirical social sciences maintain a great resistance to “conceptual quibbling,” especially when it seems to destabilize the categories commonly used for critical analysis.3 Shouldn’t we just get on with the work, and not fuss about our methods and concepts so much? Won’t the ordinary ways of thinking about movements, politics, state, and society, just do for our purposes? Many political activists certainly think so, but it is our responsibility as academics to pose questions that cannot easily be addressed in the context of a political struggle. In any case, there is good reason to think that the conceptual issues raised above are pertinent to political struggles in the world today. Inevitably we

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understand those struggles through the categories we inherited from the past, and when those categories are ratified by “social science,” they have an even greater weight. It is difficult to think clearly about our own experiences when our minds are clouded by scientifically ratified categories that have the status of unquestionable truths. We need to recognize that these categories are actually the remains of old political struggles. My purpose here is not to answer all the questions I have raised, but instead to suggest that the answers we normally take for granted are quite inadequate. Ultimately, I point toward a different way of  thinking about social movements. I refuse the two distinctions that enable us to talk about social movements in the traditional way: the distinctions between social order and social movements, and between the political and the social. These distinctions get in the way of realistic thinking about politics. The very idea of social science is at odds with political understanding, and we need to foreground the political if we are to make sense of the world in which we live – a world best understood as a global city, a city that is itself an ensemble of movements that make up our way of life. Following Louis Wirth,4 I designate that way of life as “urbanism.” Unlike him, I suggest that urbanism can only be understood as a political phenomenon, and that we need to relate to that political phenomenon. Current theories of globalization5 – and their reverse, ideas about decentring – point toward that phenomenon, but give us few ways of understanding it. This lack is related to the tendency to  depoliticize everything we analyze scientifically. Consciously or unconsciously, we conceal the politics of our analyses – sometimes by offering misleading shows of our political commitments – to conceal the politics of the phenomena we are analyzing. Learning to problematize these practices, in ourselves and others, is a great part of the political struggle. Let me stress that even here I am engaging in an intellectual / political movement, which sets some established categories in motion and throws up some possibilities for further reflection. Some of the arguments I only hint at, and the lines of thought are tentative. This meandering approach, then, touches on a number of topics but leaves others aside, and I invite readers to address the gaps for themselves. I have organized the discussion under a series of headings that refer to the key ideas that (I believe) need to be re-examined. What appears under these headings may seem arbitrary, but I hope that the

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method in my madness will become apparent before I reach my conclusion. So, let us begin with the motivating concept of this book: William Carroll’s Organizing Dissent.

T h e I d e a o f a S o c i a l M ov e m e n t “Movement,” as we normally understand it, presupposes a fixed point, surface, or object in relation to which the movement occurs. The Earth moves around the sun; I run up the stairs or down the street; my lungs expand and contract. When we talk of “social” movements, we are apparently assuming that they occur in relation to a comparatively stable frame, environment, or structure, and that the movements move in relation to this object of stability. Judging from the social science literature, it seems that the relevant social fixtures are the ones that hold people in place in a social order. These are the laws, customs, structures of government, hierarchies of status, differences in wealth and income, and other features of society of which people often complain. Apparently, a social movement is something that challenges the “social order,” whatever that is.6 If we were to take social movements on their own terms, it would be hard to specify the social order in a way that would cover every case. Every social movement tends to have a different conception of the fixtures it is moving against. Socialism, environmentalism, and feminism are far from the same in their aims and objectives; more different still are the various religious and nationalist movements. One way of understanding this is to say that every movement defines its own time and space: that is, it locates itself in relation to certain fixtures of social reality, gives an account of its own origins, defines for itself a terrain of struggle, and projects into the future a vision of what the world should be like. So, for instance, Quebec nationalists take the founding of Quebec in 1608 as a point of origin and tell a story that focuses on the Conquest in 1759 and the subsequent (unsatisfactory) constitutional “settlements” from 1791 to 1982, as well as the struggles of the “patriots” from 1837 to the present. This narrative situates the movement in a particular time and space, which is quite different from the one socialists have in mind when they talk of the struggle to overcome capitalism, or the one feminists refer to when they raise the age-old problem of patriarchy. If it is true that every movement moves against something different, then the problem of generalizing about social movements is severe.

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The surprising thing is that many analysts assume that there is ultimately a single fixture against which contemporary social movements are struggling. This single fixture is variously conceived, in accordance with the analysts’ own convictions. Thus, socialists imagine the fixture as capitalism, feminists think of it as patriarchy, environmentalists as human domination over nature, and so on. In the belief of these analysts – who ultimately identify with particular social movements – the central fixture against which all the “progressive” movements are struggling is the one that stabilizes oppression in its various forms.7 Move this fixture, and everything else begins to move; keep it steady, and everything is held in place. If this is so, there is a centre to the politics of social movements, a centre that may be revealed analytically but that in practice has to be discovered politically. Based on this view, things really start cooking politically – that is, there is a prospect of qualitative change – when the movements get their acts together. It is possible, in this view, to distinguish between fundamentally reactionary movements, which altogether mistake the sources of domination and oppression, and fundamentally progressive movements, which identify at least some of the real obstacles to human emancipation. Both the movements and the analyses to which I am referring resonate with the emancipatory dreams of modern liberalism. However, they can also display a certain ambivalence toward modernity, which is expressed in common ideas about recovering lost alternatives or redefining human relationships. These ideas evoke what Peter Laslett once called “The World We Have Lost.”8 Many people suffer from acute nostalgia for life as they imagine it in the unspoiled wilderness, the traditional neighbourhood, the little fishing village or farming community, or other settings outside or prior to the familiar forms of urban life. An even stronger reaction against contemporary trends may be expressed within religious movements that pose transcendental alternatives and offer people hope of complete redemption. Whatever their other-worldly objectives, such movements promise substantial changes in the way we live on Earth. By contrast, traditional nationalism is in many ways the least challenging of contemporary movements. Nationalist movements demand a place in the sun for a particular people, whose aspirations can be met within the established international order. However, some nationalist or particularist movements do challenge the system of sovereign states quite directly. This is the case for movements of Indigenous peoples,

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who seek cultural autonomy and self-government but reject the model provided by the modern nation-state (either because it is impractical for them, or because it does not conform to their own traditions).9 Similarly, people like gays and lesbians, who have a strong sense of identity and community despite being dispersed throughout the world, may only be able to achieve their aims by securing universal rights.10 That some fixtures of modernity are more important than others – in the limited sense that they hold more in place – seems obvious, although few analysts would agree on exactly which of these fixtures is most important. Within the social movements that command our attention in this book, there seems to be an oscillation between two poles. At the one extreme is what we might call a particularist radicalism, which constitutes itself within its own space and time and imagines itself capable of self-transformation. Thus, we have people creating their own communities and attempting to free themselves by their own actions from the strictures imposed by the rest of the world. From the outside, such people may seem vain and self-­delusive: unable to see how they are repeating the practices that they seek to escape or to appreciate the effects of their actions outside the bounds of their own imaginations. Such communities have a tendency to treat everyone outside them as an actual or potential enemy and to assume that this condition of enmity will prevail indefinitely. At the opposite extreme is the feeling within social movements that everyone really is the same – that all people are one, in principle, and that, since what we believe is true for everyone, there really is nothing legitimate outside our movement. Such an attitude can lead to violent or insensitive behaviour. In any case, a universalist or totalitarian vision usually involves the idea that the fixtures that dominate us form a single ensemble, which is subject to complete or at least fundamental transformation. Thus, the centring of movement activity seems to follow from a certain conception of its object. The idea of fundamental social change was at the heart of the eighteenth-century conception of a “revolution.”11 The French “revolutionaries” became enamoured with the thought that they could overthrow the fixtures of the ancien régime and establish the basis for a new society. As they imagined it, nothing would remain the same once the old regime had been replaced. Moreover, they sensed that, although the revolutionary movement could proceed in many venues (from private households to coffee houses and assemblies in the

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streets), the movement would remain incomplete if it did not transform the state. As the centre of sovereign authority and thus of both armed force and legal regulation, the state was a nexus of resistance to revolutionary change. It had to be overcome, or transformed into a centre of revolutionary change. Thus, the impetus of revolutionary action was toward the state as the fixture that held things in place. Following the collapse of the French Revolution, analysts broadened and deepened their understanding of what was involved in a genuinely revolutionary change. Marx and his followers in particular came to understand that capitalism held society in place, and that the state was a superstructure that secured capitalism.12 However subtle the theory of revolution became, it nonetheless tended to assume that the state posed a unique obstacle to change. Ultimately, theorists believed, the state had to be transformed, or there would be no revolution. Thus the moment at which the state fell to the revolutionaries could be conceived as the moment of revolution. It is no accident that we identify 1789 and 1917 as the dates of the French and Russian Revolutions respectively, for these were the years in which the old regimes (meaning the old states) collapsed. What I am suggesting, then, is that the idea of a social movement is closely connected with the older idea of “a revolution.” As a result, the idea of a social movement bears with it the intellectual baggage that we have come to identify with revolutionary (or more generally “progressive”) thinking over the last century and a half. It is caught up in the notion that there is a fixture or social order susceptible to transformation by the action we associate with rebels and revolutionaries, resisters and protesters. Generally the state is conceived as the key fixture, in the sense that it is the immediate object of political action. This is so even in revolutionary theories like Marxism, theories that suggest that the state simply secures relations of domination rooted in something else. To a large extent, the other progressive social movements tend to mimic Marxism (and socialism more generally) in putting the state at the centre of their political activity. Political as opposed to merely cultural or social action seems to involve a focus on the state, in the sense that it is oriented toward changing laws, public policies, governments, or institutions of government. We need to ask why this is so. Is it simply a matter of realism for people to conceive of politics in this way, or does this supposed “realism” work ideologically? Are we deceiving ourselves about the actual locus of politics?

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The Idea of the State Whatever the eighteenth-century revolutionists intended, they set in train a series of movements that delegitimated previous political structures and established the idea that legitimate governments derive their authority from the people. The effects of these movements have been felt throughout the world, and the process of democratization (if we can conceive it so) has by no means run its course. So-called progressives have been especially eager to pursue democratization and thus to work within the processes that it seems to entail, including the struggles to gain the vote and to mobilize people for democratic elections. The processes also include efforts to influence governments and legislatures, to make law and public policy sensitive to popular needs and interests, to secure rights for ordinary people, and to extend public services to them. At its extreme, such a politics entails a revolutionary challenge to the government and hence to the state itself. Most democratic activists have believed that the people need to form a party of their own if they are to bring about a transformative change. No matter how much social movement activity exists, the terrain of politics seems to slope toward the state. Serious activists are thus drawn into the domain of party politics, where the object of state power is explicit. This centring process is always resisted within a social movement. A social movement is by definition within civil society, and thus it appears to be outside the state.13 Within that exterior domain of social life, the movement is likely to understand itself as one of popular redefinition. People in the movement are supposed to slough off the strictures of the existing social order, discover or recover what is authentic and true, act boldly in their own interests and for the sake of the world, and thus renew or revolutionize themselves. From this perspective the fixtures that prevent people from becoming what they should be are actually deep within them: it is these fixtures, above all, that must be shifted. To the extent that a social movement is informed by such a perspective, it tends to turn inward. However, in a dialectical reversal, such inward turning often results in an outward explosion of energy, and in this context “realists” within the movement suggest that it cannot achieve its outward objectives unless it organizes itself in relation to the state. The transformation of the state thus appears as the ultimate objective of outward political action. “Realism” within the politics of social movements is akin to “realism” in international relations. The latter view (which is still

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dominant among students of international relations) is that in the anarchic world of nation-states it is inevitable that each state will pursue its own interests without much regard to higher ideals.14 It follows that one should not expect demands to “outlaw war” or to enforce “universal human rights” to have much effect, unless they can be related to the interests of the most powerful states. The socalled realists believe that, despite the emergence of a globalized economy and an international civil society, world politics consists primarily of relations between states – relations that have to be modelled in terms of complementary and conflicting interests. This view implies that the inevitable centre of citizen action in world politics is the state: to be effective globally, people have to influence their own governments. This is the flip side of the view that domestic legislation (or public policy more generally) depends on state action, and thus that the inevitable political centre of a social movement’s activity is the state in which the people concerned reside. Contemporary political space appears to have a particular shape, and this ideologically shaped appearance has profound implications for how we think about politics. The world is apparently divided into sovereign states, which collide with one another in international relations; but each of these sovereign states is constituted – by definition – as an autonomous political centre. Thus, to be effective (realists say), a social movement must organize itself not in accordance with its own conception of space and time, but rather in accordance with structures for politics that are already given. Amnesty Inter­national or Greenpeace International may be able to act globally in certain ways, but for practical purposes it has to divide itself into separate national organizations, which can lobby the governments concerned, raise money, and appeal to national publics. It seems that even relatively innovative organizations like these have to function within the pre-existing political spaces, spaces that are defined by the system of sovereign states. The spaces available also have their own temporality: each state has its own history, its own internal narrative, its own way of regulating the times for political action. As a result, a politically engaged social movement must take into account the legislative cycle, the electoral cycle, the routines of administrative and judicial decision-making, and much else within the countries where it is engaged. In consequence, a profound tension always exists between the timing and spacing of the movement itself – its own conception of when and where it is acting in its movement for change – and the political grid that it confronts in the form of the state.

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Given the other “sovereignty” that movements must confront – the sovereignty of “the individual” – the inward turning of movements is crucial to success. What many fail to notice is that the sovereignty of states actually mimics the supposed sovereignty of individuals – and vice versa.15 In the modern liberal imagination, states or individuals are supposed to be autonomous beings, free to rule themselves according to their own lights. (A “people” in the fullest sense has to be constituted as a state – something of which Quebec sovereigntists are constantly reminding us.) In the rhetoric of sovereignty, a person’s or a state’s desires are supposed to be respected because they belong to the individual concerned. What I want or what my state wants is supposed to be a reflection of needs or interests that are constituted from within. It is not for others to say whether these desires / needs / interests are authentic or appropriate. What I say that I want or think is to be taken as given, and the same is true for what states want or think. Thus, in this view, relations between individuals or relations between states have to be conceived as external relations, in which interests are potentially at variance. For social movements, this is a problematic conception, for they wish to put at issue what is internal to individuals or states.16 The presumption is that states / individuals have been fixed in particular forms and are now held in relations of domination that give the lie to the idea that what is expressed by a particular individual or state is an authentic representation of what lies within. Rather, what we express is supposed to be an effect of the systems of domination that hold us in thrall. Generally, we say what is expected of us, and we also want what is expected of us (to the delight of advertisers). If we are to become different, we have to challenge what we are internally or be challenged in that internal terrain. Insofar as social movements mount such challenges, they disrupt the sovereignty claims of both states and individuals, and hence are engaged in a “revolutionary” politics. There can be no doubt that a social movement expressing an alternative vision of human life is on dangerous and difficult political terrain. It is challenging the fixtures within both the individual and the state, and as such it is doubly at odds with the dominant order. This is why social movement activism so often conveys the sense of a life on the edge. As an activist, one is balanced precariously between the forms of life implicit in an alternative vision and the ones imposed in the dominant order. To imagine that the dominant order is on the verge of transformation, or to think oneself into a place where

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nothing outside really matters, is to ease the psychological tensions involved in living on the edge. However, there is liable to be a violent oscillation between political “realism” and political “idealism.” Those who opt for the former are liable to be condemned for “selling out,” while the rest will be accused of self-indulgent withdrawal from the real world. This tragic cycle, which forms the stuff of the morose reflections of ex-activists, is not one that can be broken by retracing the old paths under new colours. More fundamental rethinking is required. This will take us into the domain of the state’s significant other: civil society.

The Idea of Society It may not be apparent to sociology students that that the idea of “society” is parasitic upon the notion of the state, a notion that began to take shape in sixteenth-century Europe – originally in Italy, and later in France, England, and Holland.17 It took almost four hundred years for the state to acquire all the features we are now familiar with. Significantly, the science of sociology first developed in early nineteenth-century France, amidst the ruins of the ancien régime and within the bosom of an increasingly self-confident modern state.18 It was the state that was understood as the ultimate source of order within a society; in a sense, the state, legally and politically, constituted a society. The external boundaries of a society were those of a state, and the laws, institutions, and practices of the state itself provided the form of order that made that society distinctive. As Hegel put it, the state was the ground and completion of civil society.19 Europeans generally believed that to become modern was to become like them – and that in the long run other peoples and other cultures would have no choice but to become modern (if only because the Europeans intended to impose this modernity upon them). A society that wanted to become modern had to constitute itself as an independent state that could function on a par with the European states. This meant developing similar institutions, and thus establishing a similar relation between state and society. It is hard to exaggerate the extent to which we take statehood for granted and use the system of states to define separate cultures, economies, societies, or even languages. Thanks partly to the legal barriers that states create, it is difficult to collect information about people that is not precoded state by state. Look for unemployment

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statistics, for instance, or data about attitudes toward legalized abortion. Will the figures come with labels like “American” or “French” already attached? Usually they do, and this is because so much of the information is collected for purposes of government (or purposes of influencing government). Most of the rest is generated for marketing purposes, and as such may identify population groups in a different way. In reality, however, marketing regions tend to be regions of states, and so data of this sort are usually precoded in state-centric terms. (People in Metropolitan Toronto are a sub-category of “Canadians.”) As a result, it is difficult to think about the world without slipping into comparisons between states. One slides easily into the assumption that each state is a separate society, with its own economy and its own culture, as well as its own laws and political institutions. We make another slide as well, and this is into the assumption that, since the state is the source of order, society is the source of disorder. (No wonder the early students of social movements regarded them with such distrust.) Now, of course, sociologists go to great trouble to show that societies are held together by things other than the state, but the implicit assumption is usually that without the ordering force of the state the other sources of order within society would be insufficient of themselves. In a sense, the state is the necessary ground and completion of the project of social order. Thus, we can begin from the state, within the boundaries it establishes, to sketch an answer to the question of how a society hangs together. This implies in turn that the internal boundaries generated by the separation of the state from society are to be understood as inevitable features of a modern social order. There must be a sphere of law and government, political institutions, and public administration, a sphere that is separate from the domain of civil society. In turn this implies that there must be separation between the economy and politics, for the production and distribution of goods and services involve activities that are distinct from the business of governing. Similarly, we can distinguish family life, or social activity, or cultural expression, and see that it is something apart from the state. It soon becomes possible to delineate a number of separate spheres of life, and to develop for each a science that analyzes it. This seems to have been the project implicit in the development of the modern social sciences. We might pause at this point, and ask ourselves why these sciences are called “social” and not political or economic or cultural. What is it about the social that can command such privilege? Ironically, it

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seems to be that the social lacks specificity: it is what is left over when we have already talked about economics, politics, culture, geography, and psychology. But this characterization of the social as a remainder allows for a sort of reverse disciplinary imperialism: The economic, the political, and so on, are reconceived as aspects of the social, to be understood by a sociology that puts the other social sciences in their appropriate places. This allows for a mode of analysis that leaves open the question of where the ordering principles of society are, or what form they take. One does not have to assume a political or an economic or a cultural determinism when one adopts the perspective of the social. But a subtler displacement is also at work in this perspective. Heretofore – that is, prior to sociology – the science of the whole had been conceived as philosophy or theology or history or jurisprudence or political economy. The first two of these five forms of thought had pointed toward a metaphysical understanding of human reality; the last three pointed directly or indirectly toward a political understanding. The shift toward a science of society was away from philosophy and politics and toward a domain of human existence that could be understood naturalistically, thus completing a movement already implicit in the concept of “political economy,” a concept that itself tended to collapse politics into economics. In the ancient world Aristotle insisted that the economic had to be understood in relation to the political, and the political in relation to the philosophical, in a hierarchy of understandings that reflected the hierarchy of ends in human life.20 The displacement of this hierarchy by a naturalistic science of society – either in the guise of an independent sociology or of an ensemble of social sciences, each with its specific field of interest – in itself entailed a different way of thinking about politics. In this new way of thinking (which is now so old to us that we forget that there was ever any alternative), “politics” is a special sort of activity, separated off from other things that people do. The domain of the state (or activity in relation to the state) is the home turf of politics. We identify activity in other domains as political insofar as it mimics the forms and practices of politics on its home turf. For instance, we look for conflicts of interest and value that put rules of social practice into question, examine patterns of domination and resistance, and attempt to explain cooperation and conflict. In this way, we can identify politics wherever we choose to look in civil society. Such a parasitic conception of politics leaves in place

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the assumption that political action is epiphenomenal – in other words, that what people do politically can be explained by forces at work outside politics. This is the tendency of all forms of naturalistic explanation, a mode of explanation implicit in the idea that a complete science of human life is necessarily social rather than political. Perhaps I can make my point clearer by referring again to Aristotle. In his lectures, he notes that the science of politics is properly conceived as the master science.21 (Perhaps this is why political scientists still read Aristotle, while sociologists have given up on the practice.) For him, this idea follows quite directly from his understanding that politics is concerned with the development and implementation of the principles necessary for the good life, in all aspects of life within a self-sufficient community. To Aristotle, a polis (what we might call a city-state) was a complete community, whose way of life or principles of organization were always at stake politically. To be active politically was to be engaged practically in the question of what form the polis should take and how that form could be preserved or implemented. Nothing was outside politics, because the question of politics was the question of how we should live. Thus other sciences – he might talk of rhetoric or military leadership, we might say sociology or economics – might properly inform our political science, but the centrality of political science followed from the fact that the other sciences were to contribute to political judgment. The need for political judgment was not only an unavoidable human need, but one that reflected the highest of human capacities: the capacity to establish a way of life for ourselves, and to govern ourselves by the principles we had established. What centred the various sciences (including what we call the natural sciences) was this need for political judgment. These sciences were useful insofar as they helped us decide what we had to do, and the greatest questions we had to decide were political (that is, they related to our lives as a whole or in their full complexity). This interpretation of Aristotle suggests an important distinction between a politics centred on the state and a politics centred on the problem of judgment. The state is conceived as a set of institutions standing over and apart from society. As such, it appears as a fixture, and politics seems like an activity related to that fixture. By contrast, a judgment-centred politics has no necessary spatial location: or, to be more accurate, its space expands indefinitely to encompass the whole, and then folds in on itself in particular locations. A judgment-centred science or philosophy (the distinction between the two

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becomes immaterial in this context) tends to focus all inquiries on the ultimate question: What is to be done? This is a question that can be posed locally or globally, and, wherever it is posed, it points beyond itself to the other locations where it is addressed. Insofar as  this political question is displaced in favour of a naturalistic explanation, the science in which we are engaged is reified and depoliticized. The further we go along such a path, the more difficult it becomes to recognize our own political assumptions. This brings us back to the question of a social movement. Right at  the beginning of this chapter, I raised the question of why we called these movements social. The answer that is at last emerging is that this conceptualization allows us to displace and repress the know­ ledge that these movements are political. I suspect that if Aristotle were around today, and were asked to identify what he thought were the major venues for political action, he might well point to the activities of social movements. He would not separate these movements off from what we call political parties, because he would want to say that between them the parties and the movements were engaged with those questions of the whole that he considered political. He would be troubled by the ways in which we separate social movements from political parties, and thus imagine the movements as existing in a domain apart from the state. If Marx could also rise from the dead, he might point out that it was the very separation of the state from society, so typical of the bourgeois era, that had fixed or reified politics in a form that made it difficult for people to recognize the breadth and complexity of their political activities.22 He would not be surprised that, in a capitalist world, people act politically without having any idea of what they are doing.

The Idea of the Global An obvious difficulty with Aristotle’s analysis is that he fixes politics within the polis. His ideal was of a self-sufficient city-state, not too small to be independent but not too large for its own citizens to comprehend. For him, citizenship was something that should only be conferred on the masters of households – not on women or slaves or servants or dependents. Moreover, the polis was to be fiercely independent – prepared for war if necessary (one of the reasons why Aristotle thought of citizenship as naturally male). As a result, the polis was like a protected enclosure: set off from other such political

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communities and guarded against the intrusions of women, children, workmen, and others who were deemed incapable of rational political judgment. Although open debate and considered judgment on human affairs as a whole were supposedly at the centre of politics, that centre was constituted as a citadel fortified against the wrong people. By comparison, the modern state seems much more open and inclusive. Citizenship is available to everyone, and states are spread out over huge tracts of territory with millions or even hundreds of millions of inhabitants. Thus, the masses and the strangers, the lowborn and the poor, the feminine and the juvenile, are all included within the politics of the state. As a result we are able to delude ourselves into thinking that we have created a world of democracies, in which all people can participate as equals in the key decisions that affect their lives. This delusion is nonetheless hard to sustain in face of our growing awareness of globalization. Formerly separate societies, economies, and cultures are now so closely integrated that the putative sovereignty of states seems increasingly illusory.23 Every time we have an election or discuss public policy in our own country, we have to pretend that we are autonomous even though we know we are not. We have to leave aside matters that can only be addressed by wider global or regional institutions. So, we are faced with a “sovereignty” that says: “You Canadians are completely autonomous. You can organize your country however you like, live in accordance your own laws and by your own values. No one will interfere. … Unless, of course, you decide to do something that we think might affect our security or diminish our prosperity or threaten our investments, our markets, or our access to your resources. You can pursue whatever economic policies you like, provided that they conform to the guidelines that are established by the bond rating agencies in New York and London (and further elaborated by the Organization for Eco­ nomic Cooperation and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and the G-7). Of course, your social policies can also follow whatever principles you choose, provided you can finance them within the fiscal limits required by multinational corporations and international investors – and as long as  you ban the drugs we want to ban, control the environmental hazards we want to control, and so on. We’ll even let you into the inner circles of global policy-making, if you keep your economic and social policies within the bounds we want, and supply troops for the

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peace-keeping missions we have decided upon, and generally act like good global citizens. So, you see, you’re completely free to do what you want.” Are there echoes here of the familiar promise of freedom that we make to the young? “You can be anything you want to be – provided that you have the talent, get yourself a first-class education (of the specified type), hustle your butt in the marketplace, work sixty or seventy hours a week, save your money, invest wisely, and – most important – do exactly what other people want you to do. That’s freedom.” Somehow, neither freedom nor sovereignty is quite what it’s cracked up to be, either at the personal level or at the national. In fact, these collective and individual rights – to be what we want to be and do what we want to do, as communities or individuals – are bound up with some formidable social disciplines. We have to learn to think in a certain way, and to act in accordance with that thinking. Even to go to the store and buy some milk involves a number of disciplines that we have learned very well – to keep to the sidewalk and not intrude on other people’s property, to refrain from taking (without paying for) any of the things that are laid out on the shelves of the store, to accept or reject what is on offer without complaint, to hand over our money and accept our change: in other words, to be respectable customers, who acknowledge private property and abide by the laws of the market. These disciplines are so deeply ingrained that we are scarcely aware of them. As my example indicates, the disciplines imposed by the state are as nothing in our daily lives compared to the ones required by the market. To get and keep a job, to sell ourselves or our services at good prices, to be marketable commodities so that we can have marketable commodities: these are stern modern imperatives. Much of what people have in mind when they talk about “globalization” is the intensification of market pressures, pressures that force open protected local markets and at the same time require people to sell what was not previously marketed. All activities – including artistic creation, scholarly research, charitable service, and public deliberation – are now considered to be marketable commodities that ought to be supplied in the forms and quantities demanded by willing buyers. There are fewer and fewer places to escape from the dictates of the market, unless one has already been a success on the market, or can claim inherited wealth. To merit a decent life, one must have worth on the market, and to have worth on the market

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one must become what the market demands. (So, a market-conscious person really should avoid the unpopular diseases and disabilities, for which there are no telethons.) Of course, a real freedom is involved in being able to spend or give money as we choose, and being allowed to compete in any business or for any occupation that attracts us. But this freedom is the sunny side of the totalitarianism of the market: the flowers on our chains, as Rousseau put it a couple of centuries ago. By enslaving ourselves to the market, we get access to what the market offers, but at the price of becoming what the market demands. There is no guarantee even then that the market will have use for us: the market has already dispensed with a large part of the African population. For more than forty years, the major governments in the western world have been trying to cut back public expenditures, privatize public services, and reorganize government on market principles. There has been a good deal of resistance to this process, and the process has been slow as a result. However, the trend has been accelerating since the 1990s. Significantly, the agenda of neo-conservatism has been adopted by most of the socialist and social-democratic parties. The theme of domestic politics in almost every country is the one enunciated so succinctly by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980s: “There is no alternative.” Since there is no alternative, the point of political activity seems increasingly obscure, and it is not surprising that voter participation is declining, that people are becoming more alienated from their governments, and that new oppositional movements are again expressing the sort of anger and vengefulness once associated with fascism. When the popular desire for revenge is more apparent than the desire for liberation, optimistic talk about the positive features of contemporary social movements seems touchingly anachronistic. Can movements be anything other than punitive and destructive when “there is no alternative” to the totalitarianism of the market? To put the issue so starkly is to remind ourselves that, when we invoke the “social” in the context of a political analysis, we are referring to whatever has been expelled from the realm of respectable politics. Social movements express the goals, identities, aspirations, and resentments that have not been completely incorporated into the routines of day-to-day politics within the state. Thus, the movements always represent a threat of some sort to the good order of the state. We should not delude ourselves into thinking that what has

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been excluded is necessarily benign, although we should be able to see that the relentless restriction of political opportunity implicit in the globalization of the market is a major source of popular desperation. In a perverse cycle, political exclusions themselves produce the desperate behaviour that justifies demands for more exclusions. It is worth remembering at this point that one of the great themes of neoconservatism in the 1970s was that we could no longer afford democracy, because the people expected government to spend more money than capitalists were prepared to allow.24 The solution proposed was to put legal limits on public spending, borrowing, and taxation, and to force governments to put as many services on the market as possible. Voilà, the politics of the 1990s and beyond. If we are to break the vicious cycle of political restrictions, we really need to globalize our politics, so that we can deal constructively with the forces that are impoverishing our lives and producing the violence that we can sense around us. Unfortunately, it is difficult to know what such a globalized politics would involve.25 I have no simple answers of my own, but I do think that we have to make a conceptual shift from our state-centric conceptions of society and politics, economy and culture. For me, this process is eased when I begin thinking of the world as a huge city, with economies, cultures, and systems of governance that recall the patterns of the great metropolises of the past and present.26 In such metropolises, there is no state that provides an overarching order: rather, it is the life of the metropolis that encompasses the activity of state agencies and puts them in play in relation to a variety of other activities. To analyze such political complexity, we have to remember that the phenomena we are observing are not fixtures but movements. These movements interact in complicated ways – in fact, in such complicated ways that the interaction probably cannot be conceived as occurring within familiar four-dimensional space. (This is the Einsteinian conception, in which time is the fourth dimension.) Since every movement creates its own space–time, we have to imagine interaction in a global hyper-space,27 which has many more than four dimensions and which allows for regional autonomies that, although relative and limited, are nonetheless real. How one is to act politically in such a global hyperspace is not immediately apparent, but we may get some clues from thinking about the nature of the city – and more particularly from reflection on urbanism as an “architectonic” social movement.

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The Idea of Urbanism In 1938 Louis Wirth wrote what was to become the most widelycited article in American sociology: “Urbanism as a Way of Life.” He was trying to make sense of the difference between modern American society and the old world that was passing away. He did not necessarily applaud what was going on, but he could see that the Chicago with which he was familiar was fundamentally different from the forms of society that still existed in the American countryside. He did not think that terms like capitalism or industrialism fully represented or explained that difference, so he hit on the notion of “urbanism as a way of life.” When I first encountered Wirth’s article, I thought it was vacuous – and so it still seems, in many respects. But I now find the concept of urbanism increasingly helpful in conceptualizing the global realities to which we must relate politically. There are several important insights buried in Wirth’s concept: 1 What is dominant is not a structure but a movement (urbanism); 2 This movement is to be understood as a “way of life”: that is, holistically; and 3 The movement somehow encompasses other movements like capitalism and industrialism (to which, we might add scientism, liberalism, and statism). The big mistake that Wirth made was to understand the architectonic movement of urbanism naturalistically, rather than to conceive of it as a political movement.28 A political movement is something that can be contested from within and without. Thinking about urbanism in the widest terms, we can see that it is at least as old as the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Iraq: it has been with us in some form for thousands of years.29 Urbanism is older than modernity, older than capitalism. The outward explosion of the Europeans in the sixteenth century, the revolutions in commerce and industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the consolidation of industrial capitalism and European imperialism in the nineteenth century, and the successive reorganizations of the world economy and the state system in the twentieth century certainly have involved profound qualitative changes in the conditions of human life.30 It is not my purpose to suggest any explanation for these changes, and it is certainly not my view that urbanism

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of itself “caused” anything else. My point, rather, is that in retrospect we can see that the way of life that has emerged from these changes – and that was foreshadowed long before – is urbanism. Moreover, it is now becoming apparent that we all live in a giant city of global scale. No one particularly intended to create a global city, and it was not apparent until recently that such a thing was possible. Nonetheless, the impetus in this direction can be detected in the processes to which Marx and Engels drew attention many years ago. Those were processes of material production, whereby successive generations of people in different parts of the world attempted to provide for their own subsistence, and developed new needs as they did. In turn these new needs induced further inventions, and so on, in a continuing cycle. Whether or not we really meant to, we have been gradually changing the world to suit ourselves. Thus, we have been humanizing our own environment, so that the world in which we live today is already in large degree the effect of earlier human actions. The semi-conscious effort to make the world into a place that suits us ultimately takes the form of urbanism: a way of life in which people concentrate in cities and towns, which are connected to one another by various means, and from which people appropriate the surrounding countryside and natural wilderness. In the end, what is outside the urban is only what has yet to be fully controlled. (Commercial farming, forestry, fishing, and wilderness tourism are all obviously urban activities. From an urban perspective, earlier forms of these activities appear like primitive efforts that have been brought to completion by urban enterprise.) At a certain point – the point we have now reached, I think – it becomes apparent that the urban system is so dense that it no longer makes sense to think of cities as separate from one another. What we used to call cities are more like particular districts of a single, global city, which extends to the most obscure corners of the Earth. Many will cringe at this description, which echoes the Marxian celebration of human capacities and refuses the idea that there are natural limits to the human world. The point, however, is to suggest that any limits we impose on our own activities have to make sense from a human perspective. Such limits are not given naturally: they are developed politically. If this is so, there is little to be gained from imagining that wilderness reserves or fishing villages or tribal communities or family farms are somehow outside the

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urban. As the Walt Disney Corporation could explain, every one of these “places” – real or imaginary – has a vital role to play in marketing the products demanded by urbanites.31 Moreover, the place of these places within the larger whole is determined by a politics that we can sensibly designate as “urban.” Urban politics in this sense is not a politics confined to municipalities, nor is it peculiar to places where the density of human settlement is especially high. Rather, the politics of the urban is the politics that relates – critically or supportively – to the practices by which we humanize our environment. The urbanites who go to the forests of British Colum­ bia and sit down in front of the logging trucks are involved in a form of urban politics: they want the fact of their protest flashed across screens around the world, and they are hoping for decisive remedial action from the urban centres of power. They are acting from within to secure a natural “outside” that puts appropriate limits to human endeavour.32 To think this way about what we are doing is to emphasize that none of us are outside the practices by which we are destroying the natural wilderness, enslaving ourselves to the market, excluding the socially marked minorities, acting violently, and otherwise behaving in ways that moralists label inhuman. Since we share in the responsibility for the dreadful things that are happening (as well as in the credit for human achievements), there can be no honest politics that fails to remind us of this responsibility. Urbanism is our way of life, and it is our responsibility as humans to recognize the way we are living, to take responsibility for what we are doing, and to consider what we can do politically to improve our own practices. In this context, we need to recognize that we are involved in a number of activities, the most important of which we can conceive as social movements. These movements are not necessarily directed at particular fixtures. On the contrary, they create their own spaces in relation to other ongoing activities. In truth, the human world is a world in movement in which the apparent fixtures are just sedimentations or reifications of earlier movements. Movements move in relation to one another, not in relation to stable fixtures. So, how are we to think of the state, or the market, or patriarchy? There is only one possible answer: as movements. Conceived as a fixture, we can imagine the contemporary economy as “the market” or “the globalized market.” Conceived as a movement, the same phenomena appear as capitalism. That capitalism is a movement (and

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that Marx, for instance, conceived it so) is quite apparent, not only because capitalists (like other movement activists) spend huge amounts of time and money on publicizing their cause, organizing political parties, and so on, but also because the institutions and practices produced by capitalism are constantly changing. Capitalism is not some fixed thing: it is a movement that brings people in relation to one another in particular ways and encourages them to respond creatively to the constraints and opportunities that arise as a result. The forms of political, social, and economic organization that are most conducive to capitalism are subject to constant revision, and so it is always a mistake for critics and opponents of capitalism to suppose that the form fixed for now will still be there in ten or twenty years. We might say the same for statism, patriarchy, racism, or any of the other movements that have been subject to criticism or resistance. To understand statism as a movement is particularly important, for it is in and through this particular movement that we come to understand politics in a particular way. It is important to recognize (pace Marx) that statism is not simply an effect of capitalism. Statism emerged as a consequence of sixteenth-century humanism, and took particular hold on the western political imagination as a consequence of the seventeenth-century wars of religion. It may be well to remember in our own age of religious fundamentalism that statism was and is a movement against such fundamentalism and in  favour of a particular form of civilized political order. One of the questions that we have to face today is whether statism remains the most adequate response to the dangers of religious warfare, or whether we must act to transcend the movement altogether. Certainly, the proliferation of states and interstate institutions since 1945 suggests that statism will continue to be a powerful movement for the foreseeable future. What is less clear is which other movements will be producing alternatives.

The Idea of the Political Lurking in this analysis is a concept of the political that has yet to be articulated with sufficient clarity. If we accept the idea that what appears to us is an ensemble of movements – some more important than others, but none of them with the capacity to determine the whole completely – then the politics that must concern us is within and between movements. But, what is it to say “politics”? If politics

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is not simply what relates to the state (or what mimics activity in relation to the state), what is it? What are we saying when we declare that a particular problem is political, or when we label our own actions as political interventions? What is the point of thinking politically rather than socially? As indicated above, concepts like judgment and responsibility seem to be intimately associated with the notion of politics.33 To act politically is to take responsibility and to exercise judgment. But, in relation to what? The simplest answer is, “In relation to everything.” The political is what exceeds the merely economic, the merely social, the merely moral. It is the domain in which we are obliged to relate economics, morality, religion, identity, and much else to one another. It is the domain in which the rules of judgment, the boundaries between one thing and another, are always in question. These matters are in question because they have no universally satisfying answers, and because the political is the locus for resolving differences that cannot be resolved by applying the established rules. The political is  always a domain of uncertainty, negotiation, deliberation, compromise – and violence. That we could constitute the political as a domain without violence is a recurring dream, but violence is always in the shadows, always a problem (and an option) that must be considered. Politics is always difficult and always dangerous (if only for the people who are excluded from it). To draw attention to the political character of our activities is to remind ourselves of our own violence, as well as of the ideals that we pursue. It is thus to insist on taking responsibility for our own actions, and on the need for judgment in these matters. So conceived, politics is the creator and destroyer of boundaries. Political activity may produce the boundaries between one country and another or between the state and civil society, but it is also political activity that puts those boundaries into question. If I am right about the fact that we are now living in a global city, then the familiar boundaries of modern politics are now contained within a way of life that washes over them. The world contains a proliferation of political authorities, each of them liminal; that is, every authority sits uneasily at a boundary, pointing beyond itself into the world as a whole. The municipality is paradigmatic in this respect: modern states are like municipalities, and not the other way around.34 This is a reflection of the illusory character of state sovereignty. The key point is that the domain of the political is a global hyperspace that

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we have barely begun to conceptualize. It is time that we got down to this conceptual work: the task is eminently practical. Later in this book, I will say more about this larger task, but let me pause and reflect on the notion that municipalities, not states, are the paradigmatic political authorities. If our image of the state is of  a sovereign authority – one that can in principle do anything and everything – and we take that as our model, then we have utterly unrealistic expectations about what a political authority can do, for good or ill. Our expectations of municipalities are generally more modest and realistic. Although that may lead us to be less demanding than we should be, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that, even under present restrictions, municipalities can do far more than most people imagine. It is a matter of testing the limits of their powers and pushing back against the restrictions imposed by states (or market institutions). In any case, a municipality is a model of a non-sovereign democratic authority that can, in the end, be what it chooses to be. Democracy is not a structure, but a movement that contains infinite possibilities. One of those possibilities is local self-government. Another is the right to the city. To the extent that we now have a way of thinking those possibilities together, it is through the municipality. Just as we think of the state as the form that the nation must take, we think of the municipality as the form that the city must take. That may be misleading insofar as the city is global, but not insofar as it is a locality. Hence come the traditional concerns that I discussed in chapter 3. As I suggest in Part 3, the possibilities of the municipality become much more apparent if we push back against our own statist assumptions, and reimagine the municipality as a political authority of a different sort – not just part of the local apparatus of the state or a local public economy or an array of special-purpose agencies or even as a third “level” of government, but as an authority of a qualitatively different kind, embodying the possibilities of local self-government rather than sovereignty. Without such authorities, it is hard to imagine how we could realize our democratic right to the city. The analysis in this chapter is directed at some of the standard terms of sociology and political science. Although people keep coming up with new terms to deal with the inadequacies of the old ones, the new terms don’t necessarily address the issues that I am raising in this book. Take the concept of “multilevel

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governance,” for instance, a term that has recently been used to make sense of the complicated arrangements that characterize government today. In many ways it is an appealing concept, but if we are dealing with an ensemble of movements, as I suggest here, it’s not obvious how there can be “levels” of anything. Analyses of multilevel governance seem to assume that there is a particular kind of structure in place. What is that structure? Are its levels like the different floors of a building, or are they like the levels in a hierarchical organization? If the former, the higher levels are not necessarily more powerful than the lower levels, but if the latter, they are, but only by virtue of the hierarchy in place. Is there also an assumed relationship between level and scale, such that the “higher” levels are always the ones that operate on a larger scale, geographically? Does greater power and authority always come with being on a higher level or on a larger scale? If so, why? In my experience, talk about levels and scales in the social ­sciences and human geography is terribly confused, with people shifting from one term or image to another without noticing it. I do that myself. What makes this confused talk intelligible is the image of the state as a hierarchical organization with authority concentrated at the top and a geographical reach that encompasses a number of regions or provinces and the localities within them, for each of which there might be a lesser authority, with more restricted powers and a smaller geographic reach. So, at the “local level,” there may be authorities with a small scale of operations and relatively few powers. This corresponds with what most people think of as the normal situation. If this is the norm, one can switch back and forth in an analysis between the local “scale” and the local “level” without being misunderstood, and one can also assume that authorities that operate on a wider scale are at a “higher” level. Unfortunately, analytical clarity is being sacrificed for discursive convenience when we do this. If the largest scale is the global and the highest (in the sense of most powerful) authority is the one on the largest scale, it follows that the United Nations organization is the highest and most powerful of all human authorities. But, of course, that is not really so, because the UN and other international organizations have been created by sovereign states, which reserve sovereign authority for themselves. The US is far more powerful than the UN and its authority – at least in relation to its own people – is also far greater.

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The EU, as an intermediate authority between its member states and the UN, is also much more powerful than the latter, and has far more authority within Europe. But again, the EU’s authority is limited in relation to its member states, which still claim sovereignty. What this suggests, then, is that authorities constituted on a larger scale may be weaker than authorities constituted on a smaller scale. So, does it still make sense to talk of these weaker, but larger-scale authorities as higher than the stronger, but smallerscale authorities below them? Some of the literature refers to an urban scale or an urban level. This makes no sense if the primary distinction is between urban and rural, neither of which can be understood as a level or a scale. On the other hand, if the urban is identified with cities, and cities are thought of as localities governed by local authorities, talk of an urban scale or an urban level is at least intelligible. Again, however, intelligibility comes at the expense of analytical clarity. The term, “multilevel governance,” seems to refer to two things: first, a distinction between “government” as an activity carried on through state institutions, and “governance” as something – whether it is an activity or an effect is not always clear – that results from the actions of many different state and non-state agencies; and, second, a distinction between different “levels” of the state and / or society, which are identified somehow with different scales of operation or organization. Again, we have the conflation of level and scale. We also have an assumed distinction between state and society that is immediately hidden in the term “governance.” The gesture is toward an effect, “governance,” that results from the interaction of state and society at many different levels: hence, “multilevel governance.” If the point is simply that the state is not really a unitary authority and that what it does in the way of government is only a part of what happens in the way of governance, the point is well taken. On the other hand, to speak of the multilevel character of governance is not to add much clarity, for the reasons just indicated. I prefer the term “government” to “governance” because the latter term seems ideological to me. It’s clear that governments are political authorities, whose legitimacy might be contested. What about other agencies involved in this thing called “governance”? Are they political authorities? I would say so, but the distinction between government and governance seems to throw that into doubt. I think we need to be clear: any entity that governs is a

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government and all governments are political authorities. The line between government and governance may mislead us into thinking that we are only entitled to contest what happens on the “government” side of the line, since what happens on the other side is cultural, social, or economic, and hence only incidentally political. According to liberal theory, cultural, social, and economic activities are to be allowed to develop freely, and political decision-­ making and the struggles associated with it are to be confined to the other side of the line. Although a reasonable case can be made for approaching things in this way, the case should not just be assumed. By identifying government as an activity that occurs in many different settings, relates to the whole range of human purposes, and involves authorities that may actively deny that they are political, we keep the relevant questions alive. What forms of government in this broadest sense are actually appropriate? Do the familiar liberal distinctions make sense as a way of ­analyzing the issues, or not? When I consider government in this larger sense, I am led inexorably toward the Foucauldian term, “governmentality,” which refers not so much to the effects of government – which we might call governance if we wish – but to the particular way of acting that it involves, which Foucault distinguishes from mere domination. If, as Foucault suggests, government is a matter of working through people’s freedom, rather than attempting to suppress that freedom, it is an activity typical of the modern era. It’s what the neo-liberal shift from government (direct state action) to governance (action in collaboration with non-state authorities) is all about: a state strategy that turns on the idea that government cannot and should not be entirely in the hands of the state. To me, the important fact is that, whatever the state’s strategies for government are or should be, there are other agencies, including ordinary individuals, who have their own strategies. We are all in the business of government, and so “governmentality” – the way of thinking and acting involved, whereby we try to influence the way people use their freedom individually and collectively – is a pervasive feature of human life, especially modern life. We try to govern ourselves as well as other people, for good or ill. I talk about “proliferating practices of government and self-government” in order to underscore the fact that practices of this sort spread in ways that are hard to track. It is a problem if we assume that the field of government is always already constituted

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in a form that corresponds to our sense of the way things must be, and neglect the hard work of identifying what actually happens. I think that the standard categories, which are bound up with the idea that a society has to be organized as a state if it is to work properly, actually get in the way of a realistic analysis and prejudge the political issues that we have to address. If I were to choose a new term to represent the complexities of government or governance, it would not be “multilevel.” Aside from the confusions about levels, scales, and degrees of power and authority that I have already mentioned, I am troubled by the implication that we are dealing with a structure of some sort, rather than a set of movements. There are some fixed structures of course, including states and corporations, but there is also great fluidity, and it is that fluidity that we have most trouble grasping. When I speak of “hyperspace” in this chapter, I am gesturing at a way of understanding that fluidity by relativizing each of the spaces or space–times involved. The space of the state, which we may well think of in terms of levels for some purposes, is just one of many relevant political spaces. Those other political spaces have to be analyzed, but we cannot do so on the assumption that every politi­ cal space has the same features. Each of them is unique. Political spaces are created on the basis of understandings that generate particular historical and geographical limits, points of origins, and modes of integration, transformation, and struggle. We have to understand these spaces on their own terms, and work out how they relate to one another. Although the relation may sometimes be between spaces in the same space–time, such as the one generated by sovereign states, it is just as likely that the spaces are incommensurate. Think of the spaces generated by the Roman Catholic Church, Google, Toyota, Greenpeace, the women’s ­movement, and the New York Times. Aren’t they quite different? If there are “levels” within each of those spaces, they aren’t really commensurate. The only way I can imagine the relationship between qualitatively different spaces is in terms of a hyper-space that is not configured on any one model.35 Perhaps someone has a better way of thinking about the matter, but for the moment I do not. The Einsteinian notion of space–time is a reminder of the fact that we need to think about spatialities and temporalities together. That helps me to see that it’s all movements: that apparent structures

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or fixtures have to be understood as the detritus of movements, and so the analysis must begin with the movements, rather than with the structures themselves. How then are we to understand capitalism or the state as a movement or movement-effect? How do these two movements relate to one another, and to other movements? And, how can a movement for the right to the city or the right of local self-government be understood in relation to the major movements with which they must contend? As I suggest, urbanism can be regarded as the architectonic movement within which the other movements arise, but it should not be regarded as a force that determines what the other movements can be. I explain this further in the postscript to Part 2. The general point is that, if we actually live in a world of movements, we cannot just assume that one particular movement has priority over all the others. That is what happens when we treat the state as the fixture necessary to secure justice. Neo-liberals are as much attached to that fixture as anyone else, because they want states to use their power and authority to secure the neo-liberal order against any and all threats of violence and subversion. When I suggest that actual states are more like municipalities (less-thansovereign authorities) than like the all-powerful justice-securing (or threatening) authorities that haunt everyone’s imagination, I am trying to underscore the fact that the world we have to deal with politically is very little like the neat hierarchical order that state-centric thinking conjures up in our minds. Despite incessant criticism of the state as it actually is and mounting scepticism about what the state can actually do, there is still a tendency to look to the reform of the state – a constitutional amendment, perhaps, or a major shift in state policy – as a way of solving our present problems. What else can we do when we think of the state – even when we call it a different name – as the fixture that ought to secure justice for all? When the fixture doesn’t actually secure what it should, we have to change it. But, what if the idea that there could be such a fixture is just a dream? How are we to respond politically? How should we move so as to establish ourselves appropriately in a world of movements? My suggestion in this book is that we have to claim our right to local self-government and our right to the city. As I understand it, the city is not just some particular place: it is the world as a whole. But, obviously, we all live somewhere, and we have to localize our

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claims, actions, and thinking if we are to deal with things realistically. To think globally and act locally makes some sense, but we also have to think locally in order to act globally because we live locally and can only make sense of the world if we begin from where we are. Manuel Castells distinguished between the space of flows and the space of places, to suggest the tension between the places we inhabit and the flows that threaten to overwhelm us.36 I think that all spaces are places of flows and flows of places, and so I am doubtful about Castells’s distinction, but I take the point that there is always a tension between place, in the sense of a habitat with definite limits, boundaries, and distinctive flows, and flow, in the sense of a form of movement that can overwhelm any particular place.37 The traditional ideal of local self-government is connected to the belief that we live best in communities rooted in particular places that need to be sustained in face of the flows that might overwhelm them. The town meeting is supposed to enable people in such places to govern themselves more or less autonomously, despite the fact that everyone is caught up in flows that connect them elsewhere.38 Although people in such a meeting may turn inward, it is just as likely that they will assemble to claim their place in the world. Is that what makes us fear such assemblies? What of our more generalized fear of local democratic institutions? Despite the fact that municipalities are routinely despised and diminished as political authorities, they nonetheless embody a range of democratic possibilities. People are caught up in various movements that shape their daily lives. The municipality is a venue for engagement with those movements politically, and as such it can seem quite threatening to anyone bent on containment. The same is true of the city more generally.

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5 The City as the Hope of Democracy*

In what sense could the city ever be “the hope” of democracy? In a way, the answer to that question is simple. What we now describe as the original form of democracy was not an assembly of village elders or tribal warriors – throughout history a common enough gathering in many parts of the world – but an urban assembly that brought workmen and shopkeepers together with landed gentlemen and major employers to govern a great city. Ancient Athens, the place we usually think about in relation to the origins of democracy, was definitely a city, one of the greatest, most powerful, and most influential of its time, a “super-power” of sorts. That such a place could be democratic, not just in the sense that it elected some of its leaders and held them to account, but also in the sense that it was actually governed by an assembly of ordinary citizens – most of whom were not rich, powerful, or nobly born – is both intriguing and inspiring. For all its faults – slavery, militarism, and the subordination of women, to mention just a few – ancient Athens represents a hope, a possibility, that cannot just be set aside. By comparison, what we now call “democracy” seems very thin. Much of what we lack is symbolized by what the ancient Athenian citizenry actually had: a right to be part of both the supreme legislature and the supreme court, to participate in their debates and decisions, and to be chosen by lot, not election, to serve in

1  Originally published in Urban Affairs: Back on the Policy Agenda?, eds. Caroline Andrew, Katherine A. Graham, and Susan D. Philips (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 331–44. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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important public offices. As far as we can make out, citizenship there was active, not something people just received or passively endured. It involved the rights and responsibilities involved in “governing and being governed in turn.”1 It is easy to mythologize all of this – there was obviously a dark side to it, which modern historians have been at pains to describe, and the system was much more elitist and class-ridden than many people imagine2 – but it symbolizes something important: the hope implicit in the very idea of democracy. What is that idea of democracy? It is an idea of equality, a denial of the relevance of any of the familiar hierarchies – not only of race, class, and gender, but of intelligence, experience, and sensitivity – for the problem of self-government, understood not just as a question of individual freedom as modern liberals imagine it, but as a question about our lives together, how we are to manage them collectively. To be a democrat in the fullest sense is to believe that we are all equally capable of self-government, and that we can work out institutions and practices that enable us to live freely and responsibly under conditions that we decide together, with no ­person or group of people having any special privilege. The idea that all we have to do to achieve this is to have “free elections” for a president or parliament would be laughable if it were not so widespread. To achieve anything worth calling democracy is very difficult, and we are obviously still a long way from it. It is in this context that the city seems so significant. One of the things that struck people about ancient Athens is that it brought people together who had been uprooted from their ancestral villages and distanced from their tribal loyalties. Although there was no regular system for naturalizing foreigners – of whom there were many in the city – Athenian institutions were premised on the idea that the people or demos could and should become one, despite the diversity of their tribal or village origins. That idea, that diversity is no obstacle to democracy and indeed that democracy is the means for generating unity from diversity, is an important one. I would add that the familiar problems of urban life, which result from having a huge number of strangers living in the same place, actually stimulate the political responses required for their solution. In a sense, urban life forces us to come together despite our differences, to work out ways of accommodating one another and dealing with common problems. Because such practices are essential for democracy, the city really is its hope, uncertain as that hope might be.

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This essay was written in a particular context. At the time, in the early 2000s, the Chrétien government was considering how the federal government might re-engage with “urban affairs,” ­having abandoned that policy field to the provinces thirty years before.3 I was moved to think about what “urban affairs” could mean, in the broadest sense of that term. I also began to reflect on what it might mean to have a “policy agenda.” This essay, which appeared as the concluding chapter of a book that dealt with these matters in a less philosophical way, was the result. A hundred years ago, a prominent American scholar, Fredric C. Howe,4 spoke of the city as “the hope of democracy.” It was a controversial claim then, and it is no less controversial now. Howe was reacting against the anti-urbanism of American democratic thought: the Jeffersonian strain that identified democracy with agrarian life and treated cities as sources of corruption.5 It was not that Howe was satisfied with what he saw in the cities of his time: on the contrary, he deplored their many failures. On the other hand, he thought that the cities could and should become crucibles of a new democracy, appropriate to the urban–industrial age. He was inspired by the efforts that he saw around him in America and Europe, and he thought that there was a bright future to be won. We know now that the horrors of the Great War lay ahead, but Howe’s optimism – and the optimism of other municipal reformers – was not entirely unjustified. Many of the things of which they dreamed have long since been achieved in the world’s more prosperous cities, including those in Canada. Even so, there are few people today who would describe the city as “the hope of democracy.” Anti-urbanism is a persistent phenomenon. It would not be difficult to string commentaries together from the 1890s and the 1990s to show that anxieties about urban life have remained consistent. The city is anonymous; everything moves too quickly; people are massed together willy-nilly; there are no stable communities; families are breaking apart; the poor are condemned to lives of misery; old national and religious hatreds are nurtured in the ethnic ghettos; people care nothing for the community as a whole; etc. Such are the old canards. However often they may have been challenged by evidence from the social sciences and other sources, these ideas of the urban remain. They express some of our deepest anxieties. It is no secret that the suburban ideal of a detached house on its own lot in

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a quiet residential neighbourhood taps into a longing for small-town life. Nor is it an accident that the latest movement in suburban design is called the “new urbanism.”6 The “new” urbanism is yet another attempt to defeat “actually existing urbanism” by turning edge cities into assemblages of small towns. The cohesive neighbourhood is – and has been since the late nineteenth century – the standard solution to the problem of the city. We keep coming back to the idea that we have to fix the city by stabilizing it: by giving it a form that we can identify with farming communities, fishing villages, and small country towns. This constant return to an old ideal is obviously connected with particular social anxieties, but there is a political dimension to it as well. It is this political dimension that I want to consider in this chapter. When we speak of “policy agendas,” we always have a politics in mind. Typically, we attribute policies to governments, and imagine that every government has an agenda. We suppose that governments have their own agendas: issues with which they want to deal, and about which they have policy ideas. On the other hand, we also know that a government’s agenda is often changed by force of circumstance, which includes what other actors do and say. We suppose that politics is about getting issues on the government’s agenda, and then inducing the government to act in particular ways. This conception of politics is state-centric, in the sense that it attributes to governments – that is, to the ensemble of agencies that make up the state – the capacity to make policies that will govern the society. Since politics is about the way we are governed – or so we suppose – it inevitably focuses on the state. Putting urban affairs back on the policy agenda would mean putting distinctively urban issues near the top of government concerns and near the centre of political debate about the things that governments should or should not do. It would also mean bringing the municipal authorities – the ones that have front-line responsibility for urban government – closer to the centre of both politics and government. At the moment, it seems, municipal authorities are a distant third in the Canadian political imagination: far behind the federal and provincial governments in the order of public concerns. Moreover, the big governments that capture the public imagination give the most attention to issues like taxation and health-care spending that are only distantly related to the matters that we take to be central to the urban. To bring urban affairs back on the policy agenda would evidently involve a major shift.

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Suppose, however, that “policy” was not something that emanated from governments. Suppose, further, that “government” was quite different from what we usually imagined it to be: that what we call governments were particular assemblages of governmental authority that existed alongside other assemblages that also exercised such authority. Suppose, also, that the urban was a way of life that encompassed the whole: in other words, that it transcended the particularities of settlement patterns, transportation systems, housing arrangements, and so on. And suppose finally that politics was not an activity confined to a particular sector, but rather a way of relating critically to everything and anything? How then could we think of policy, politics, and government in relation to the urban? How, in particular, could we think of bringing urban affairs back on the policy agenda, when it is always already there? As I shall argue in the pages that follow, we do indeed need to think in new ways about policy, government, politics, and the urban. On the other hand, I will also be suggesting that these “new” ways of thinking were always already implicit in the “reform” tradition to which we are heirs. A key, but often unnoticed feature of that tradition, is that it points away from the state as a centre of concern and induces us to think about policy, politics, and government in much more general terms. It is also a tradition that encourages us to embrace the urban as our own way of life, to move beyond our own nostalgia, and to find better ways of living in a global city that must be the hope of democracy, if there is to be any democracy (or indeed any hope) at all.

F ro m M u n i c i pa l R e f o r m to   P rov i n c i a l   S tat i s m Fredric Howe is not a well-known figure today, but he was prominent enough in his own time.7 He was one of the generation who developed the new science of public administration in the United States, a science whose object was, in large degree, municipal government. So-called municipal reformers in the US played a huge part in developing standards for accounting and financial management, working out the best practices for the letting of contracts, establishing merit tests for entry into the civil service, and so on.8 These reformers generally thought of themselves as “progressives”: people who were looking for ways to extend and improve public services.

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They were not opposed to positive government. On the contrary. They sought to root out corruption and inefficiency, and to bring the best standards to bear on the full range of government activities. If government could be made effective and efficient, they thought, then its activities could well be extended. If it were the municipalities rather than the state that took on the responsibility for positive government, then the dangers implicit in an increase of governmental activity could be mitigated. A truly liberal society would not be without active government, but the main agencies of government would be municipalities that lacked the scarier powers of the state. The leading municipalities would be urban. They would be the political organizations of cities: not sovereign, but sufficiently empowered to improve urban life continuously. Since it was already obvious that the democracy of the future would be an urban democracy, it was evident that the hope of democracy was in the municipality. Municipal government had to be reformed if it were to realize its promise. The movement to make public administration into a science and to reform municipalities and other governments had a huge impact on Canada as well as the United States. As historians of local government in Canada have pointed out, municipal reformers in this country often applied American models without sufficient thought. Like their American counterparts, they were often more interested in business efficiency than in progressive social change. Nevertheless, we should not underestimate the impact of these reformers on the great initiatives that we now associate with the welfare state. The New Deal in the US was in large degree an effort to generalize the “best practices” that had been developed by local agencies. Later reforms in Canada followed the same logic. They made the provincial governments into agencies for health, education, and welfare (as well as for infrastructural development and resource management) and gave the federal government responsibility for social insurance and fiscal equalization. The reforms were intended to generalize “best practices,” and thus to create a uniform space for daily life. Increasingly that space was conceived as an urban space to be developed and managed by the provinces. The federal role was to coordinate provincial activities so that Canadians could enjoy a common domain for daily life. The municipalities were relegated to a minor role, as the key decisions about best practices were worked out at the higher levels of government. Although the Canadian experience was somewhat different from the American, in that the provinces emerged as exceptionally powerful

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agencies of government, the drift away from the municipality as a centre of initiative was similar in both countries. By the middle of the twentieth century, progressive thinkers on both sides of the North American border – and on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean – had come to the view that cities were no longer self-contained units, and that progressive reform had to be conceptualized on a larger scale. Although municipal reformers talked about creating metropolitan or regional governments – and a few measures were taken in that direction – it was generally easier to go up a notch or two in scale: that is, to demand action on the part of the state or provincial government, or, better yet, on the part of the national or federal government. To most progressives, the re-scaling of government was a necessary consequence of the re-scaling of society, and it was in any case a desirable step toward the extension of rights and opportunities to everyone. Whatever the advantages of small-scale government, such government could not provide for equality over a large domain. By contrast, the higher authorities, who had the benefit of “sovereignty” as well as of a wider geographic reach, seemed to have the necessary capacity. One of the ironies of the present is that the most powerful state in the world – the US – has had particular difficulty in managing cities. At least since the days of James Bryce9 – the English intellectual who was Britain’s ambassador to Washington in the 1880s – observers have been complaining about American cities. The complaints have come from Americans as well as foreign observers. Some of these complaints are obviously unfair. People construct a model that takes all the best features from Paris, Milan, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, and Berlin (with the hill towns of Italy, the islands of Greece, and the villages of Spain thrown in for good measure), and find Newark, New Jersey, and Orange County, California, sorely wanting. Canada provides a more pertinent contrast, since its cities were constructed under conditions akin to those in the US. The common observation (on both sides of the border and from observers both foreign and domestic) is that Canadian cities are safer and cleaner, better served by public transit, and generally more inhabited and habitable in their centres. Gated communities are less common, and cities for the most part retain the feel of public spaces, in which people can interact comfortably, despite their differences. That, certainly, is the image that Canadians play back to themselves.10 Hidden in this image is another, however. That second, and arguably more

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powerful image, is of a more successful state, a state that does a better job of providing domestic security and that is more effective at integrating minorities into the wider society. Gun control and medicare are the twin symbols of Canadian difference and Canadian success. Gun control symbolizes the relative effectiveness of Canada’s security culture; medicare does the same with respect to the welfare state. Thus, in the Canadian imagination – and, I would say, in the imagination of observers more generally – the relative success of Canadian cities is attributable to the Canadian state. A cynic might say that in Canada the state, rather than the city, has been the “hope of democracy.” To the extent that we have had a vision of a vital urban democracy, it has usually been posed in statist terms. Lithwick and Paquet’s hope was that the federal government would finally recognize that Canada was an urban nation, and take an appropriate lead in developing policies that would be appropriate for such a nation.11 Their belief – and the belief of most other observers – was that policy leadership would have to come from Ottawa and the provincial capitals. What the municipalities could do was necessarily secondary, since cities were already part of a more complex urban system that had to be considered as a whole. The locus of initiative was of necessity trans-municipal. Of course, what everyone soon discovered – if they did not already know – was that transmunicipal initiatives had to be provincial rather than federal in the Canadian context. The quiet revolution in Quebec and the other provinces had forestalled the possibility of creating a Canadian national government on the Western European model. Only the provinces could act with the vigour expected by advocates of a forceful “urban policy.” Thus, the demand for an urban policy became one of the supports for provincial statism.

From Urban Populism to   P r i vat i z e d   G ov e r n a n c e It was in this context that the urban reform movement of the 1970s developed.12 It tended to be localist and antistatist, but it also supported an extension of public authority. The idea, roughly, was that urban residents had to be mobilized to reclaim public space and public authority. The enemy was privatization: that is, the process whereby, on the one hand, the urban was claimed as a domain for commercial investment and, on the other, public authority was

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mobilized in support of commercial development. Much of the critical literature of the period was intended to highlight the fact that the urban domain had already been commercialized – indeed that it had been conceived from the very beginning as a commercial space – and that the municipal authorities in particular had long ago been colonized by commercial interests. Freeing the municipalities from commercial domination, reclaiming urban space for other uses, and democratizing municipal government came to be the major objectives of the new municipal reformers. It seems ironic that democrati­ zation should have been so central to the reformers’ aims, given that the municipalities were supposed to be closest to the ordinary people. It was obvious, however, that most people took little interest in municipal government, and that municipalities were especially vulnerable to domination by private interests. In the end, the new reformers had limited impact. If anything, their criticisms of existing government activities provided a spur to privatization. There was a remarkable ideological shift in the 1980s. Practices that had been described as problems a few years before – collusion between business and government, privatization of public authority, commercialization of public services, and so on – were now being touted as solutions to some of the problems that the new reformers had identified. These problems included bureaucratic inefficiency, political corruption, and general insensitivity to popular concerns. Exponents of privatization were able to convince many people that market discipline was necessary for making public services and regulatory activities efficient and responsive. In this view, consumer sovereignty was the key to democracy. By the 1990s, that had become conventional wisdom, and it fed into the idea that the state – including municipal governments and other local authorities – should draw back from direct regulation and provision of services. The implication was that governance should be privatized as much as possible. Although the state would remain at the centre of the system of governance, it would act “at a distance,”13 and it would “steer rather than row.”14 This shift in thinking had unnoticed political implications. If steering rather than rowing were the issue, then traditional state-centric politics would continue to make sense. On the other hand, the effect of “hollowing out the centre” is to give more power to the rowers and thus to redirect political attention toward authorities in the private sector or in that shadowy region where government agencies,

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non-profit institutions, and private businesses “cooperate” to do things for the public benefit. Thus, the politicization of all sorts of places where authoritative decisions are made – be they classrooms and medical offices or recycling depots and inspection stations or scientific laboratories and research sites – is a logical consequence of privatization. Not even shopping centres or shareholders’ meetings are immune (as various private businesses are finding out). The idea that “policy” is made by the state underpins a traditional conception of politics. The early municipal reformers honoured this traditional conception, as do contemporary advocates of privatization. In both instances, however, there is a clear recognition that problems of governance cannot be overcome by action at the centre only. The early reformers like Howe knew that the key changes required action at every level, inside and outside the organizations concerned. Directives from the top would not produce the desired results. The reformers hoped for waves of change that would pass through many different organizations, and induce initiatives from the bottom up, as well as from side to side. A new policy, in the sense of a new approach to solving standardized problems, could emerge anywhere, and it could spread by any number of means. For instance, it was not a matter of ordering everyone to adopt standardized accounting procedures; it was instead a matter of developing such procedures, implementing them somewhere, demonstrating that they could work and that they would produce desirable results, spreading the word about those results, embarrassing people into adopting the best practices, and finally shunning or punishing those who failed to go along with the new standard. Accounting was certainly a matter of public policy, but changes in accounting policy could not be secured just by issuing orders. One sometimes suspects that latter-day reformers forget this. Nonetheless, the new literature on governance tends to repeat the insight of the earlier literature on public administration: namely, that policy inevitably has multiple origins and is circulated by many different means, especially in a system where authority is widely dispersed. If, by urban affairs, we mean matters relating to people’s dwelling places, then the policy networks at issue are obviously not confined to particular cities, or even to particular countries. In Howe’s day, the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York had widespread influence. In our day, organizations like K P M G and Andersen Consulting15 seem to be everywhere. Who holds them to account?

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Their customers? Hardly: organizations that can pay for such expensive advice are usually sophisticated enough to generate the advice that they want. In any case, the public is at several removes from the purchasers of consulting services. How can the public hold consulting firms to account? And how can the public influence the culture of the consulting firms? Do the consultants have no values of their own, no predisposed ways of looking at the world, no solutions looking for problems? Clearly there is a consulting culture, just as there is a culture of medicine, engineering, or accounting. Moreover, this culture is formed within international networks of corporations, trade associations, business schools, professional bodies, and so on. Such networks are in many ways beneficial, but the growing power of the private authorities that dominate these networks raises serious issues about democratic accountability and democratic influence. It seems that the centre from which we are to govern “governance” (or to do the steering) is flowing out through these networks into the private sector. Moreover, that private sector is international.

From National Economies to Global City-Regions If the domain of governance is complex and expansive, so too is the domain of the urban. Thirty years ago, people were struggling to understand that “urban systems” were regional or national. The idea that Toronto, Hamilton, and Oshawa were all part of the same urban system, and that the Toronto-Centred Region was to be conceived as a key node on the Windsor-Quebec corridor, seemed like a revelation.16 It was also a revelation to think – following the work of Harold Innis, Donald Creighton, J.M.S. Careless, and others17 – that Canada as a whole could be conceived as a kind of urban ­system linked together on an east–west axis. Such notions made sense of the idea of a “national” urban policy. On the other hand, they could hardly be articulated without revealing another secret: namely, that the Canadian urban system was related to the American, and that such autonomy as it had depended heavily on linkages with Europe. As the European connection declined in importance, the relation with the US seemed ever more important. The freetrade debates of the late 1980s were implicitly about urban policy, even though they were usually articulated in other terms. The ­supposition of the free traders was that Canadian cities had to be

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reorganized, so that they could function more effectively within the American urban system. Barriers had to come down. Cities north of the line had to learn to cope with competition from the south, and to take advantage of their opportunities in southern markets. This continentalist vision was soon inflected with the rhetoric of globalization. So, the aspiration of the 1990s was to turn Canadian cities into important nodes within a global network: not just “metropolitan areas,” but global cities. But, again, the political implications of this were not well considered. How can a global city fit within a system of national governance?18 By definition, a global city or city-region transcends the province or the nation. It exists within a global space, and competes with other cities or city-regions for economic and cultural advantage. Successful cities attract both capital and talent. Such cities acquire their own cultural identities, and come to influence cultures globally. They also become centres of economic initiative, and extend their economic influence everywhere. New York and Los Angeles are ­paradigmatic, but places like Hong Kong, Bombay, Milan, Paris, London, and Frankfurt also seem to fit the model. Some analysts – most notably Kenichi Ohmae19 – have argued that states are becoming irrelevant, and that the optimal units of political organization within the new, globalized economy are actually city-regions on the  scale of 3 to 5 million people. In this logic, Megacity Toronto is ac­tually a bit small: its boundaries ought to have been extended to  include the outlying “905” suburbs. In any case, a city or cityregion of this type is in principle outside or beyond the jurisdiction of a mere state or province. The city itself is supposed to be the polity that establishes appropriate linkages, facilitates strategic decisionmaking, and enables the population to develop. The state is necessarily at one remove, because it is an embodiment of national or provincial identities, rather than of urban identities that transcend such narrow limits. One sign of globalization is that the major cities have become sites of diasporic intersection.20 Many, if not most, nationalities are now global, in the sense that the peoples concerned have spread across the world and established themselves in many different places. These peoples may or may not have internationally recognized homelands. If they are engaged in struggles for recognition, they are likely to carry those struggles with them. The same is true of religious conflicts. So, a globalized city may become a site of struggles that have

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little to do with the place itself, but that nonetheless have much to do with the way the place is situated within global cultural networks. This is a commonplace observation, but it helps us to see that a city is more than just a unit within an economic order. It is a “space of flows” of all sorts, and the eddies and currents do not create regions with definite boundaries. Vancouver, for instance, is linked to the markets for B C forest products, markets that are partly European and partly Asian, but preponderantly American. Vancouver is also Hollywood North. But, then, it is a China as well: a centre for Chinese life and Chinese business in Canada, linked with other “overseas” centres like Los Angeles and Sydney and tied into “homeland” cities like Hong Kong, Taipei, Singapore, and Shanghai.21 Vancouver is also a centre of the Sikh world, and the Tamil world, and many other worlds. So, if it is at the heart of a “city-region,” the region in question is very complex and not simply Canadian. The crude idea of a global city or city–region – the one articulated by chambers of commerce, economic development commissions, and international trade offices in cities all over the world – is of an economic entity competing with other such entities for the favour of investors. Fortunately, there is a growing recognition that “human capital” is as important for business as other kinds of capital, and that humans need to be properly educated if they are to serve modern business.22 There is also a recognition that humans need decent places to live and good public services. As the I M F , the World Bank, and the O E C D all now acknowledge, people – and the businesses they serve – need good governance. Despite all the pressures upon us to think about governance in a business-oriented way, we do still express cultural, spiritual, and other concerns. Our many-sided humanity, including our compassion for others and our concern for the world, as well our ornery selfishness, self-righteousness, and clannishness, do get expressed in our demands about governance. They are also articulated in our ways of governing ourselves and the people around us. So-called free societies are self-governing societies, and so the global concerns that people have are expressed in activities that govern the conduct of everyday life. The globalism of the global city–region is not a set of relations that can be governed by trade offices and development commissions. It is instead a set of relations implicit in the day-to-day activities and day-to-day consciousness of ordinary people. Globalism is a mode of cultural participation in sports, music, food, fashion, chat rooms, shopping,

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and entrepreneurial activity. Global entrepreneurship is not just a matter of selling software in China. It is also a matter of linking up with activists to stop construction of the Three Gorges Dam. Although it may seem that global city-regions nest more easily within the global market than within the nation-state, that is probably an illusion – as the W T O found out in Seattle.23 The term “global city-region” is itself indicative of a certain collapse. City, region, and globe were supposed to be in a hierarchy, with cities at the bottom, the globe at the top, and regions in between. But each city is a world in itself: not so much in the old sense of being a space apart, but in the sense of being a particular place that spans the whole world, in distinctive ways, and brings the whole world in. Each city is its own region, but the region has no definite external boundaries. So, to speak of a global city-region is to speak of a place that is all three: “world,” region, and city. And to say that is in effect to admit that the categories that we have used in the past no longer make much sense. The local and the global no longer relate to one another as inside and outside, small and big, particular and universal. The economic, social, cultural, and political relations that we experience on a day-to-day basis no longer have the form that enabled us to say that this was a purely local matter and that was something bigger. The Public Utilities Commission in Walkerton dealt with a global issue this spring (and did it rather badly).24 Did they have any idea that they were acting in a global political space, dealing with fundamental issues of global governance? Probably not, but they evidently were. How can we think and act politically in a world where the familiar spatial coordinates have already been displaced?

From the New Urbanism to Democratic Politics Fredric Howe and the others of his generation spoke of the city, but Louis Wirth and others of the next generation – the generation of the ’20s, ’30s, and ’40s – spoke of urban life, urbanism, or urban society.25 Wirth in particular recognized that the way of life that had developed in America and elsewhere was increasingly urban.26 It was already obvious in the 1930s that the vast majority of people would live in cities in the not-too-distant future, and that the way of life of such people was inevitably different from that of agriculturalists, pastoralists, hunters, fishers, and gatherers. Cities are obviously nodes

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within a wider urban reality. A key question is whether the urban can be territorialized: that is, whether the dynamics of urban life can be contained within spaces that are given by an external authority. Territorialization was the key to agricultural colonization in North America: farms were laid out on the authority of the state. Similar authority was used to lay out cities. Nevertheless, it was always clear that urban life tended to develop according to its own logic, and to flow beyond the boundaries established for it. Although Wirth and his contemporaries tended to identify the urban with concentrations of population, they also noticed that cities tended to spread out and link up with one another. In fact, these early theorists of the urban were frightened and entranced by the rapid movements within and between cities. It was the unsettled, almost nomadic character of urban life that seemed most distinctive, especially when it was compared with life in farming communities. Sixty or seventy years on, non-urban life is at best an ancestral memory for most Canadians. It is the life that their grandparents or great-grandparents lived: a life to be recalled through nostalgic television programs. If urbanism is a deterritorializing movement (as it seems to be) and if the vast majority of us are caught up in it (whether we like it or not), then the question of urban policy is not secondary. It is the key policy question to pose. On the other hand, to say policy is to presuppose a politics: that is, to assume that there is a process by which policy is generated and people are induced to abide by it. As we have already noted, traditional ideas about who is making policy, how, and for whom presuppose a certain relation between state and society. But the relation is not as imagined. Thus, the locus of politics is not what we imagined either. The politics within which policies are generated has different origins, a different shape, and different impacts from the ones we have traditionally expected. And this has much to do with the nature of urbanism as a way of life. Originally, cities were compact, and could easily be imagined as contained spaces. According to the ancient Greeks, politics proper was only possible within territorially delimited spaces. The modern theory of the state incorporates that idea. On the other hand, urbanism as a way of life spills out of contained spaces. It deterritorializes, reterritorializes, and deterritorializes again. The futility of drawing definite urban boundaries is indicative of this. A democratic urban politics would have to flow from the movements characteristic of urbanism, and not be imposed, as it were, from outside.

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The “new urbanism” is a scheme for territorialization, in that it posits imagined communities to be secured by structures that fix people to particular territories. It is doubtful whether the new urbanism will be any more successful than its predecessors in this respect. It will be sold as a design scheme, and as such it will appeal to people who think that actually existing urbanism defeats our aspirations to community and polity. These aspirations are nicely expressed in the work of Jane Jacobs,27 who inspired many of the new urbanists. Jacobs was associated with a group who attempted to apply the “citistate” idea to Toronto and other major Canadian urban centres.28 Although Jacobs certainly recognized the fluidity of urban life and was herself suspicious of statist forms of government, the ideal of the polis still shadowed her understanding of democratic possibility. She and other city-centred intellectuals still regarded the suburbs, the small towns, and the outlying rural areas as places distinct from the city proper. Thus, the ideal of civic democracy was connected in the minds of these intellectuals with an ideal of urban autonomy. In a way, this was an articulation of the new urbanism on a larger scale. At the neighbourhood level, we are to redesign our communities, so that they become real places with a public life of their own. At the city-regional level, we are to make our urban centres into politically autonomous places, free from the strictures of suburbanites and small-town people. Such schemes appeal to us because they tap into our nostalgia for small-town life, face-to-face politics, and communal autonomy. In the third quarter of the twentieth century, it seemed to many people that the nation-state could provide for democracy on a reasonable scale, democracy of a kind that allowed for effective popular sovereignty. But the idea that every nation can be a self-governing community seems a bit of a pipe dream in the era of globalization. In this context, it is not surprising that some people have begun to think of smaller communities on the scale of a city-region as possible surrogates for the nation-state. If autonomy is necessarily limited, why not get the scale of political organization down to a more manageable level? Why not constitute the city as the focus of our loyalties, and let the nation and the state go? This is an idea that keeps resurfacing, but it never generates the popular enthusiasm that its advocates think it deserves. One of the reasons for this is that the idea of the city-state is simply a variant of the idea of the nation-state (and vice versa). Neither political plan comes to terms with the reality

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that most ordinary people sense: namely, that the world in which we live is de-territorialized. Our problem is not to rescale our political units, but rather to invent a politics appropriate to a de-territorialized existence. In the 1970s and 1980s, Manuel Castells29 drew our attention to urban social movements, and hence to the fact that cities were the sites at which political challenges were likely to develop. The challenge implicit in an urban social movement is directed at the whole system of government. The system of government is not just a set of public policies in the narrow sense. It is instead an array of practices that “govern” our gender identities, our ethnicities, our economic relations, our modes of environmental occupation, and indeed our understandings of what human life entails. Ultimately, everything is at issue in movement politics. This is as it must be, because movements respond to the ensemble of practices implicit in urbanism as a way of life. We cannot say beforehand how, when, where, or why the urban is to be called into question, for everything is always at stake. Efforts to fix us in particular places, or to put our politics in particular forms are likely to be stifling, but they will never be entirely successful. Urban politics keeps breaking out and reposing problems in unexpected ways. In this sense, urban affairs is always already on the policy agenda, even if it is not exactly where our managers would like it to be. That said, we should treat any notion of “policy” with caution. The idea of overcoming disorder by means of well-thought-out and strictly implemented policies fits well with state-centric thinking, but not so well with the idea that we are all engaged in proliferating practices of government and self-government. As I suggest in the postscript to Part 2, we have to think of the world we live in differently if we are to make sense of it politically. A crucial aspect of that is to get away from the idea that we have to live in political units that are more or less self-contained, on the model of the ancient polis or the modern state. The problem with the “citistate” notion is that it just replicates the idea of the state or the polis on a different scale, and so involves all the same problems, if not more. Coherent citistates are as elusive as coherent nation-states and – if our experience over the last few hundred years is any indication – have less staying power. The question is not how to replace the state with something else, but how to develop a politics that

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enables us to deal with our problems more effectively. That is where the town meeting comes in: not as a state substitute, but as a mode of political organization. It has its limitations in the latter respect, but that is the proper way of thinking about it. The point of neighbourhood empowerment is democratization, which depends on people acting together where they live. Although most people live in cities now – or at least in “urban areas” of one sort or another – they usually dwell in particular neighbourhoods that are on a much smaller scale. The purpose of recognizing neighbourhoods politically is not to put bounds around them, but to enable people to engage with their immediate surroundings and the people who live there. There are many reasons for democratization, but one is that it is a means of overcoming alienation and the pervasive irresponsibility that goes with that. Some people will see a threat to their freedom in neighbourhood institutions that generate forms of collective action that limit what they can do as individuals. The positive side of that threat is that it provides an incentive for public engagement. Engaged citizens should have a keener sense of their responsibilities. At least, that is one of the hopes of democracy. What would be involved in turning cities in general into the “hope” of democracy? Surely it would not just be a matter of devolving authority to neighbourhood assemblies. In fact, devo­ lution in any form presupposes the hierarchy of authority that democracy is meant to challenge. In the end, people have to claim authority for themselves, and that seemed to be what was happen­ ing during the Occupy movement and other similar events. Democracy is a practice of equality, not a set of institutions. It is a practice that develops in various contexts and takes different forms. It occurs when people challenge the idea that others have the right to govern them, and instead assert that government is a matter in which everyone has the same rights and responsibilities. The governed are the government, and everyone is equal to everyone else in the performances at issue. Exactly what practices that entails is itself a matter to be determined democratically – which is to say, through a practice of equality. So, the exact form that democracy takes can never be determined in advance: It has to be worked out by the people concerned. The implication is that democracy can never have a definite constitutional form, because any constitution would be a limit on what it can be. That was

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one of the reasons why Aristotle disapproved of democracy, as have the vast majority of thinkers in the western tradition. People disguise their disapproval by voicing support for constitutional principles that contain elements of democratic practice, elements that are always subordinate to the principles of constitutionalism itself. The latter principles are meant to regulate what people can do politically, and so to contain democracy within limits that have been determined in advance of the democratic activity at stake. I wrestle with this problem in Part 3, but in advance I will simply suggest that the hope of democracy is to be found in the relationship between our right to the city – that is, our claim on the world that humans have created – and our right of local self-government, which is actually our right to govern ourselves democratically. Engin Isin30 describes the city as a “difference machine.” As such, it produces strangers, outsiders, and aliens in the process of turning insiders into citizens. There is much historical evidence to suggest that practices of estrangement, exclusion, and alienation are more typical than not, but claims for inclusion – of what Rancière31 calls “the part that has no part” – do arise constantly. Those claims are the ones that push things in a democratic direction. Cities attract and disperse, collectivize and individualize, homogenize and differentiate, but the political effects of these contrary tendencies are highly variable – as variable, the Greeks might have said, as the difference between Athens and Sparta. The Spartan version of political order – hierarchical, elitist, and authoritarian – always seems to have a certain appeal, but the democratic alternative is always there. Large, dense cities should not work at all, but in fact they usually work surprisingly well because of the adjustments people make to one another and the modes of collective action that arise from the necessities of the situation. People are surprisingly resourceful, individually and collectively, and surprisingly accommodating of one another. In that also is the hope of democracy. If we can make cities work as well as we do, can we not also learn to ­govern ourselves democratically? This brings us back again to the municipality. Is it the main hope of democracy in the end, as Howe and his contemporaries seem to suppose? Insofar as the municipality is simply a subordinate agency of the state, it seems to offer little, but the very fact that it has some of the powers of the state makes it a site with significant potential.

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Where else can people in their communities get access to state powers and have a hope of wielding them for their own purposes? How else can they develop political institutions of their own, which would resist authoritarian centralism? As I suggested in Part 1, there have been relentless efforts to “prove” that local democracy no longer makes sense sociologically or geographically. That is much the same thing as saying that it is at odds with contemporary capitalism. No doubt it is, but it is surprising that “progressives” of various sorts – liberals, social democrats, and Marxists – have been most vigorous in claiming that we need to get with the capitalist program. As I suggest in chapter 6, there is a general tendency to explain all of our political possibilities away by means of ostensibly scientific analysis. Urbanists of various sorts are especially prone to doing this even in the midst of proclaiming their support for local democracy.

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6 Scaling Government to Politics*

Scale is a fundamental issue when it comes to government and politics. It is certainly crucial for all the matters that I am considering in this book. In the conventional view, local self-government becomes possible when we scale things down to the level of the community. But what does such scaling down actually involve? The usual approach is to begin with the state, on the assumption that the state provides for organized government. Then one asks, “Which activities of the state can be scaled down to the level of the community without impairing state capacities?” Social democrats generally believe that the state has to do many tough things, and that it is opposed by selfish interests, especially ones associated with business. They think that the state must have the capacity to regulate both the economy and the environment appropriately, ­provide a wide range of public services and facilities, promote ­public health, secure public safety, and ensure that the less fortunate have what they need, which will inevitably mean redistributing things in their favour. Government must be scaled to these tasks. Market mechanisms may have a role, but they are secondary to the organization and planning that must go on within the state. How, from this perspective, can authority be devolved to local communities without compromising the integrity of the state? The danger is that local authorities will give way to vested interests and interfere

*  Originally published in Leviathan Undone: Towards a Political Economy of Scale, eds. Roger Keil and Rianne Mahon (Vancouver: U B C Press, 2009), 105–20. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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with efforts to do what is right. In any case, such authorities might not have the capacity to do what is necessary, because they are on such a small scale and their boundaries are so poorly adjusted to the requirements of modern government. However much authority is decentralized, the right of the state to correct things must be maintained, as Mill insisted long ago, and the local authorities must be integrated into the administrative apparatus of the state as a whole. On balance, larger local authorities are to be preferred, because they can be more efficient administrative agencies for the state. That is the usual line of thinking, which I have discussed in Part 1. Although neo-liberal principles, such as the ones articulated in the theory of public choice, seem to give more scope for decentralization, they have usually been aligned with the idea that the state should maintain its authority, if only to ensure that neo-liberal principles are properly implemented. Neo-liberals and social democrats (or more generally, people who accept the basic principles of Keynesian welfarism) both assume that the proper administrative and organizational principles have to be worked out first, and then applied to the overall organization of the state. The state has to retain its capacity to preserve those principles and enforce their application. That given – public participation, civic engagement, or “local democracy” – can be allowed, but the basic form of the state, down to the local level, has already been determined. It is widely admitted that some things can and should be done on a ­relatively small scale for reasons of efficiency and effectiveness, but the organizational and administrative requirements of the state generally take priority over the principles of democracy or of local self-government when these matters are considered in ­practical terms. In earlier chapters, I have explained some of my reasons for thinking that this approach is wrong, but I haven’t addressed the question of scale very directly. As I suggest in this chapter, “scale” is a much more complicated notion than we usually recognize. It is not just a matter of size: secreted in most conceptions of scale is a measure of different ways of life, according to which some ways of life are deemed inferior or obsolescent. I suggest that such notions of obsolescence are being used not only to marginalize Indigenous peoples – unfortunately, there is no surprise there – but also to put every possibility at odds with the contemporary

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order into what I call a “zone of impermissibility.” In these impermissible possibilities, we can see not only the “world we have lost” but also the world we could have, which to me is one that could arise from asserting our right to local self-government in conjunction with our right to the city. There will be more on that in Part 3. For the moment, let me note that this chapter begins with the idea that a “political economy of scale” is not the right thing to ask for. To my mind, political economy is a particular social science, and as such it purports to explain things naturalistically. The most persuasive accounts of what has been happening to the state in the neoliberal era come out of the tradition of political economy that is most influenced by Marx.1 That is the approach that I find most convincing, one that explains how the state has been re-scaled in various ways – with authority going up to the transnational level, down to the regional level, and out to the private or non-profit ­sector2 – to accommodate the demands of a globalizing capitalist economy. However convincing these accounts seem to be, they neglect other aspects of contemporary politics – particularly the politics of security and identity – and so fail on their own terms as general explanations. More important, they reinforce the traditional idea that politics must be scaled to the state, rather than the other way around. To ask for a political economy of scale3 is to suggest that we can locate ourselves politically by means of an analysis given by the science of political economy. I think that this suggestion is false: indeed, it is profoundly misleading. Perhaps everyone knows this – which is why there is so often a gesture toward an indeterminate and indeterminable politics that will take us out of the sorry passes in which the science of political economy shows us to have been caught. This sort of gesturing betrays what it is meant to conceal: namely, that we lack the science of politics that would tell us how to get out of such passes. In its original Aristotelian sense, political science was supposed to guide political action, not just explain what was given politically. The Marxian form of political economy – to which critical political economists have been responding ever since – had a similar purpose. Unfortunately, Marxian political economy is as defective as Aris­ totelian political science. If Aristotle makes the mistake of abstracting politics from the mode of production, Marx makes the opposite mistake of embedding it there. Now, more than ever, we should

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realize that the politics of material gain (the politics that is implicit in evolving relations of production) underdetermines the politics of security (how we deal with threats of violence) and the politics of identity (how we define who and what we are). Each of these politics has its own dynamic and hence its own scalar logic, which affects and is affected by the other scalar logics. The politics of “the politics of scale” is far more complicated than any political economy of scale could reveal, because much of what has to be understood falls outside the rubric of political economy. What does political economy have to tell us about the implications of being Muslim or Christian or Canadian or American – or about the meaning of our claims to be civilized or modern? What are we supposed to be securing when we try to secure our future or our children’s future? Who is this “we” that we are talking about? Indeed, who is this “I” that is asking this question? Marx, notoriously, tried to evade such questions. Most critical political economists have followed in Marx’s footsteps in this respect or have resorted to the stereotypes on offer in what they take to be progressive political thinking. That is not good enough. If we want to deal seriously with contemporary politics, we have to confront these questions as seriously as ones that flow from changes in the patterns of international finance and investment. The contours of political space are not fixed: we produce new political spaces through our own political activities. We scale politics to our purposes. This does not mean that we can do exactly what we want – just that the scales on which we act are relative to our own purposes as well as to the conditions we confront. Political economy can tell us much about those conditions. It cannot tell us what we are to make of them or how we are to respond to them. The state is still the key problem that we have to contend with when we think politically. Modern politics is scaled to the state in two different ways. In the first and most obvious sense, the size of the polity is dictated by the size of the state. The development of transnational authorities such as the European Union has had little effect on this since these authorities are rooted in states. The presumption is that a state must be of a certain size (in terms of population and territory) if it is to be viable.4 This is partly a matter of having the requisites for self-defence: a territory with defensible borders and the resources for a well-equipped modern army. It is also a matter of economic selfsufficiency: having an economy or economic agglomeration large

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enough to produce internally most of what is needed for modern life. In the latter regard, a capacity for social or cultural reproduction seems to be especially important. In other words, the state must be large enough for the ongoing reproduction of a self-sustaining modern population.5 Liberal democrats suppose that such a population will be capable of self-government and hence of the form of politics that has come to typify the modern state. The self-governing modern population is the living substance of the modern state, but we generally suppose that this population must be of a certain size and occupy territory of a certain size if it is to be viable as an autonomous political entity. The general view is that the scale envisioned by Aristotle is much too small now and that a viable state or polity must have a population in the millions (if not the tens or hundreds of millions) rather than in the low thousands, as he imagined. There is a second sense in which modern politics is scaled to the state. A scale in music is a metric – a way of relating notes to one another in standardized measures. There are scales of many other sorts that we use to measure speed, distance, volume, statistical deviation, and so on. So scale in this sense is a question of the metric we use to determine the relation between things. A certain scale, measure, or standard of judgment is implicit in the idea of the state, and it is in relation to this measure or standard that modern politics is normally understood and evaluated. In the ideal, the state bespeaks a self-sufficient constitutional order at one remove from the cultural, social, and economic relations of everyday life.6 It somehow flows from but nonetheless begets and sustains the legal order that governs everyday life. The constitutional order regulates politics by establishing procedures for changing the law. It also establishes a procedure for changing the constitution itself. Politics is thus articulated with the form and disposition of the lawful (law-making, lawenforcing) state. Although, as noted, there is a presumption that a legally self-sufficient state must be of a certain size, in terms of population and territory, much more than this is involved in scaling politics to the idea of the state. Hidden in modern thinking is a series of assumptions about the way people have to live if they are to be modern rather than traditional or primitive. To scale politics to the state is to force people to exist in a certain way and to adopt a particular scale to measure their own lives. This is a situation that poses especially difficult problems for Indigenous peoples; as a result, they pose especially difficult problems

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for the modern state and hence for modern politics. Think first of the question of size in relation to population and territory. Indigenous peoples organized themselves in many different ways in the premodern era. Although some of the so-called tribes were quite large (in terms of population and the territory occupied by that population), a small scale of sociopolitical organization was the norm. In any case, the peoples who now understand themselves as Indigenous nations – distinguished by language, custom, history, and politics from other Indigenous nations – often have small populations (often measuring themselves in the hundreds or low thousands) and have been displaced to a greater or lesser degree from their traditional territories (and suffered many unwanted incursions into those territories by outsiders). Canadian Indigenous peoples are quite various; they are intermingled with one another as well as those whose ancestors are from away; they live partly within and partly outside their traditional territories; but, as individual nations, they are generally quite small by any measure that we might associate with the logic of state organization. In the context of treaty negotiations in British Columbia, Indigenous nations have been challenged by the need to document the extent of their traditional territories, provide evidence of traditional and ongoing land-use practices, and explain to outsiders their various houses and clans and their particular systems of property, methods of adjudication, and arrangements for law and treaty making and interpretation. Vexing as the demand has been for First Nations to explain their being and disposition to outsiders (to prove that they are who they say they are), there have been certain benefits, in terms of an opportunity (and relevant resources), for First Nations to reflect upon what they want as a form of collective life that might be sustainable under current conditions (which, of course, are conditions that are not of their own choosing). Nevertheless, one of the troubling issues has been that the form of organization expected of First Nations presumes a scale that many First Nations would have trouble maintaining. Discussions of local government organization are illuminating when juxtaposed with the problem of First Nations organization. In highly urbanized areas, the assumption has been that the optimal scale of local government organization is one that encompasses the metropolis as a whole or at least some significant portion of it. One talks in millions or at least in hundreds of thousands of people. Even in accounts that suppose multiple scales of organization within the

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metropolis, the tendency is to suppose that a neighbourhood or community would need to have a population in the thousands and a reasonably coherent territory to function as an autonomous entity within the larger whole. Among the considerations invoked in working out the minimum scale for political organization are the fol­ lowing: fiscal self-sufficiency, administrative self-sufficiency, shared territory, discernible boundaries, and a shared interest in services and facilities that can be organized efficiently on the scale imagined. There is, for instance, a long tradition of thinking of the catchment area of a public school or recreational centre as the minimum that would be needed for the organization of an autonomous neighbourhood unit.7 The presumption is that a politically workable neighbourhood would need to have charge of some public services and facilities and that a certain population is required to provide such services and facilities effectively and efficiently. Moreover, such a neighbourhood would have to generate a substantial proportion of the resources necessary for these facilities and services from within. Most important, it would have to generate its own political leadership and attract appropriate administrative cadres. All of this suggests a certain minimum scale, one that may be unattainable in rural areas but one that is always already available in urban areas. Any analysis that follows along these lines will put the possibilities for First Nations self-government into question since many of the First Nations seem to lack one or more of the requisites, such as fiscal self-sufficiency or a cadre of professional administrators.8 Such an analysis will reveal something else, however: the issue of “scale” is less a matter of size than of ways of life. Think of traditional ways of life. It is obvious that those ways of life are on the scale appropriate to them, in the double sense of “size” and “measure.” Each way of life has a measure or measures internal to it: at least one metric, if not more, that will enable the participants to judge their own lives. Are we living appropriately? Have we succeeded or failed in these endeavours? What is the significance of our success or failure? What is required of us now? How should we act in the future? Some degree of reflexivity is implicit in any way of life, but the ­matters on which one reflects and the mode of reflection are likely to vary with the form of life itself. Those of us who are schooled in statist ways of thinking – which is to say all of us – are inclined to think (at least some of the time) that a person should be a “good citizen” and comport herself accordingly. This standard of judgment

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involves a particular metric or scale that we impose on the people concerned (including ourselves): this scale is unintelligible except with reference to an assumed way of life. If one imposes that scale on the traditional ways of life of Indigenous peoples, then the effect is to measure them by a standard that they could not possibly meet, one that is at several removes from the purposes implicit in the ways of life in question. To insist on such a scale is to devalue all forms of life that are not consistent with it. The arrogance of this is apparent. What may not be apparent is that the effort to impose a uniform scale is ultimately self-defeating, even for those of us who are not indigenous to the territories that we now inhabit. What is involved in establishing a particular metric or scale for measuring a way of life? One of the common claims about modernity is that it entails reflexivity, carried to a degree previously unknown.9 The principles of our way of life are made explicit and become the subject of ongoing debate. From such explicit reflection on explicitly stated principles comes a widely shared understanding that is subject to ongoing revision. To be modern is to be self-conscious, open to new and different alternatives, prepared to revise one’s principles and hence one’s way of life. To be modern is to put traditions in question, compare them with one another, and consider new alternatives. Modernity thus entails openness to the future and to other ways of life. Ironically, modernity also involves a series of closures in relation to forms of life that are deemed to be inconsistent with modernity itself. This is especially evident in the way that traditional forms of life are treated. We have a concept of the obsolescent – the family farm, outport village, ethnic neighbourhood, Native reserve, nomadic band – that we apply freely in judging ways of life. Often these ways of life are embraced freely by people who are fully conscious of the alternatives: the reflexivity that is supposed to characterize modernity is clearly present. Nevertheless, these ways of life are assigned to a past that somehow burdens the present and that must be eliminated to enable modern life to go forward. This sort of reaction reduces the diversity that modernity is supposed to allow as well as the differences that it is supposed to recognize and celebrate. Aristotle insisted that the polis should be scaled to the requisites of the good life.10 Military security and economic prosperity were important from his point of view but not as important as the possibility for self-government. A properly organized polis would be on the scale required for self-sufficiency, but the crucial dimension of

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self-sufficiency was political rather than economic or military. There could not be so many citizens of the polis that they would have no chance of familiarizing themselves with one another or deliberating together. Nor could they be so few that they had no common life other than the familial or the parochial. The polis had to be big enough to support the full range of human activities and human possibilities, but it had to be small enough to enable people to consider these activities and possibilities collectively and to arrange their lives together in accordance with their sense of what was best. To the extent that there has been any argument on the matter in the modern era, the claim has been that Aristotle underestimated the scale necessary for the full range of human activities and possibilities and overestimated the enabling effects of intimacy.11 Modern means of com­munication are supposed to enable intimacy at a distance; in any case, the larger canvas of modern life is supposed to be required for the great-spirited among us. Aristotle might not have minded these adjustments. He was little interested in the mass of ordinary people. Nevertheless, from a democratic perspective, the enlargement in scale from the polis to the state is clearly problematic because it puts the bulk of the population at a considerable distance from the venues in which mutual recognition and face-to-face deliberation might occur. Thus, there is the insistent suspicion among us moderns that politics is no longer scaled to the practices in which we must engage if we are to live the best lives of which we are capable. While politics has been scaled to the state, this scale is less a matter of size than of disposition toward a constitutional–legal order at a distance from everyday life: that is, toward an order that is impersonal and perpetual. This order offers a form of rationality that springs from the very essence of humankind and thus (in Hegelian terms) “grounds and completes” human nature. The state is the imagined universal implicit in the particularities of human interaction. Politics has been scaled to this universal, which takes us outside of our particularities and replaces those particularities on a register between the permissible and the impermissible. The particular universal implicit in the imagined community of the state is one that creates distinctive zones of impermissibility. We can understand three of these zones in terms of the marker years of 1492, 1648, and 1789: 1492 marks the distinction between the modern civilization of  the West and the barbarian peoples at its margins; 1648 marks the mutual limitations implicit in the system of states that enable particularities within a universal order; and 1789 marks the difference between a

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future of democratic self-government and a past of ancient traditions that limit people’s freedom.12 Socialist politics long promised to bring everyone into the privileged zone, but the terms of entry have improved little, if at all, on liberal terms, which reify the original modern understandings of what it means to be human. Thus, the zones of permissibility and impermissibility in the original modern disposition of the state remain much as they have been. Indigenous peoples are in a zone of impermissibility because they embody possible ways of life that do not compute with – cannot be scaled to – the particular form of modernity that has been advanced under the aegis of the modern state. Marx invoked notions of the primitive to conjure up an image of freedom in the communist future. That future would be one in which I could “hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, cowherd, or critic.”13 This vision suggests that the zone of impermissibility associated with 1492 would be integrated with the zone of communist permissibility, as a consequence of the abolition of capitalism and the state with it. Marx’s conception of the future underscores the exclusions implicit in the present, but it also highlights the way that his own thought (and socialist thought in general) is keyed to the scale of the modern state. The imagined future is reachable only through the state, conceived as an inevitable stage in human self-organization that is required for the forces of production to be organized in the last antagonistic social formation, capitalism. Since Marxian communism is not in our immediate future, it follows (from this analysis) that the state (and hence the state scale or metric) is an inevitable form of organization in the present: not one from which we could hope to be free. So it follows that, for Marxists as for more conventional liberals, the zones of impermissibility remain much as they have been for hundreds of years.14 The permissible forms of governmental and political organization are keyed to the state form, which lays the ground for the next stage in the development of human life. The main difference between Marxists and liberals is that the former envisage a zone of indistinction, in which impermissible revolutionary activity becomes permissible by virtue of its progressive promise. Marxists agree with liberals that ways of life that do not compute with the state are obsolescent: they can be recovered, if at all, only in a post-statist future. For the present, the state remains the regulative ideal.

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This binding of life’s possibilities to the metric of the state has particular consequences for Indigenous peoples, who are thought to be living archaically and hence impermissibly. We should not lose sight of this, but we should be careful about accepting the idea that Indigenous peoples are peoples apart, fundamentally different from all other peoples. After all, the latter is the idea that has legitimated the ongoing marginalization of Indigenous peoples. Although the claim that they are fundamentally different from other peoples has been turned around, so as to become a relatively effective defensive claim for those peoples, it has its origins in European claims about the difference between civilized and savage (or advanced and primitive) peoples. The latter claims were tied to a “stages” theory of ­history, which implied that some peoples were living in a past that the Euro­ peans (and other “civilized” peoples) had long since left behind.15 As I have indicated, this theory assigns Indigenous peoples to a zone of impermissibility: they may be permitted to remain there for a time, but they are doomed by history. To say that this theory is arrogant and insensitive is not to say anything that hasn’t been said many times before, more effectively and knowledgeably than I ever could. What I want to suggest is that the difference implied – between the civilized and the savage, the modern and the traditional – is doubly misleading, in that it not only makes an invidious and misleading distinction between some ways of life and others but also incites us to believe that such a distinction is crucial to modernity. In this view, modernity is always about getting beyond ways of life that are tied to a past that we have (for better or worse) left behind. That leaving behind may sometimes be perceived as a tragedy (of lost innocence or simplicity), but the tragedy is always figured as a necessity with which we must all come to terms.16 There is no way back, for us or for them. The sense that modernization is a tragic necessity has structured western thought since the eighteenth century, and it has provided the underlying rationale for many brutalities: brutalities of a scope and scale that non-Western peoples have scarcely ever matched. These brutalities are not an incidental effect. They are intrinsic to a way of thinking that forces us to expel a wide range of human possibilities from our present and imagined future. The viability of a way of life depends on its internal vitality, the fit that it offers with the natural environment, and its relation to other ways of life that have the capacity to affect it. Indigenous peoples were living modern lives when the Europeans came along; they still are living modern lives; it’s just that the conditions of possibility for

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Indigenous ways of life have deteriorated as a result of western incursions. There is an analogue here to the way in which so many other ways of life have been rendered “obsolescent” by the ongoing articulation of a particular way of life that passes itself off as uniquely modern. It is not an uncommon or incidental feature of modern thought and practice to say that this or that way of living – for instance, the life of an artist, writer, hunter, fisher, farmer, craft worker, villager, co-operant, or communard – is not (or is no longer) viable. Nor is the violence that flows from such a judgment incidental or uncommon. On the contrary, judgments of this sort structure the routine violence of life in the western dominions (which is to say, now, in the world as a whole). We are not outside these judgments or the violence that accompanies them. We practise this violence on ourselves and our children as well as on others whom we deem to need our assistance in becoming modern in the appropriate way. We seek to scale ourselves as well as others to the metric of an imagined modernity, a metric that demands that we “live large” in a now globalized economy, participate in a globalized culture, and become good citizens of a state within a system of states. The demand upon Indigenous peoples in Canada is that they become good Canadian citizens. This demand appears innocent to us – we frame it as an offer to include Indigenous peoples in a multicultural society that has room for many differences – because it is a demand that we put upon ourselves and our own children. At stake, then, is a range of impermissible possibilities that we know to be perfectly viable. We know them to be viable because people live them in our midst or at least stake the possibilities in a way that makes it obvious that these ways of life could be viable, but for the socioeconomic and political arrangements that undermine them. It is not their impossibility that makes them frightening and disturbing. Their possibility is what frightens, because it calls attention to the narrowness, shallowness, and disciplinary single-­ mindedness of the particular way of being modern that we have been induced or forced to follow. Marx made a crucial political move when he replaced the state with the mode of production as the main object of study. He suggested that we are actually governed by the mode of production and that the rest of what we do politically flows from that. If he is correct in this respect, then any analysis that focuses on the state in abstraction from the mode of production is bound to be misleading. Moreover, the most important practices of government may be the

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ones embedded in the economy or society, beyond the bounds of state regulation and hence of politics as it is normally conceived. If we are to contest these practices, then we have to open up the domain of the political. Unfortunately, Marx’s approach commits us to a sta­ ges  theory of history that suggests that we have no choice but to move toward a particular form of modernity. That commitment is bound up with another, more important, idea, however – that political economy determines politics. The latter idea (as well as the former) is secreted in the work of most critical political economists, who turn to political economy to reveal the forces that structure the political possibilities of the present. In making such a turn, political economists neglect the fact that the politics of identity – for instance, nationalism or religious commitment – often overrides political economy, in the sense that it changes the political stakes and rescales politics (in both senses) in ways that could hardly have been anticipated from the struggles implicit in the mode of production. Since the politics of identity is geared to questions about who we are and how we should live, it is always underdetermined by political economy, related as that is to material stakes. Both forms of politics raise security issues for which the state is supposed to be the solution.17 Hobbes argued that political economy presupposes the effective resolution of the “security dilemma” and hence, he suggested, the prior establishment of the state.18 A better way of putting it is that the politics of security, the politics of identity, and the politics of material gain (if that is what we want to call “political economy”) are always in play simultaneously. None necessarily determines the others. It follows that, if we look to the political economy of scale to reveal the political possibilities of the present, we are liable to be misled. There are always other things happening that rescale politics in different ways. Remember 9 / 11? We need not take that marker to indicate that the politics of the present is bleak. Rather, it is a reminder that unexpected and unpredictable things happen, for both good and ill. If we were to go by the “judgment of history,” it would seem that Marxists (and others who have tried to imagine a future beyond capitalism) have been “condemned” in much the same way that Indigenous peoples have. The period from 1917 to 1991 now appears like a phase in the longue durée of capitalist development, a time when certain difficult obstacles were overcome. The Communists were problematic, but so were the Indian chiefs, Oriental potentates, and feudal lords before them. All were swept aside as capitalism

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spread and developed in accordance with the logic of the mode of production. Are we to accept this judgment of history, or are we to put its metric into question by rethinking the relation between political economy and political possibility? I want to suggest that we can do the latter but that to do so we need to move away from sociological explanations of political possibility. The Indians are still with us, and the socialists will remain with us too, as witnesses, exemplars, and agents of possibilities concealed by accounts that embrace “actually existing modernity” (if I can adapt an old phrase to a new purpose) as a regulative ideal. To be put out of history, as Indians and socialists have been, is to be assigned to a vast zone of impermissibility, where much of contemporary life is actually lived in both aspiration and practice. How to understand that life politically rather than sociologically is the crucial task of our time. By a sociological understanding, I mean one that explains the present naturalistically and so presents current conditions as effects of forces, structures, struggles, or events that overdetermine current possibilities. The more complete the analysis, the tighter the space of present political possibility. In fact, to the extent that such sociological analyses actually work on their own terms, the political choices that we have to make fall out like solutions from mathematical equations. Liberal economists, Marxist social scientists, and the realist analysts of power politics are sisters under the skin who share a common aspiration: to make political judgment irrelevant by scientizing its exercise. I want to suggest that the gap between social scientific and political understanding is unbridgeable. You / we cannot get to where we need to go by that route, because the political is not just across the other side of a chasm. The political is in another world, a world of action and human possibility, a world of imagination and desire, a world that articulates what we are striving to be or to remain in the face of another world that is always already imposed on us. The fact that this other world – the world analyzed by economists, sociologists, international relations scholars, and other social scientists – is more potent than the worlds that we would like to sustain or create is already known. We scarcely need to be told that. No doubt it can be helpful to understand the grip of that world better and to appreciate how a temporary loosening of the grip can be the prelude to a tighter hold. Nevertheless, what we need (now especially) is to see that the impermissible possibilities of the present

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– the ones that are out of scale with the particular version of modernity that has become dominant – can be nurtured, can be acted out, and not irrationally. Pace Marx, Weber, and Hayek, the human future is not given to us in a form to which we have to adhere. Other modernities may indeed emerge in a world where the chains of causation are non-linear and political action is always a matter of human freedom. To speak of politics is to invoke the domain of human possibility: a world of judgment, choice, and action. The premise of politics is uncertainty: an uncertainty that provokes differing judgments and leads to courses of action that have indeterminate outcomes. Al­though there are always efforts to impose a fixed scale on politics, the scale of the political can never be fully determined in advance. With what reach and within which register people choose to act are always matters of uncertainty. New forms of the political can be developed with surprising speed, and their effectiveness can be extraordinary. We already know the effectiveness of the old forms of the political. The new forms surprise us. Even for the politically experienced, politics is a puzzle for which there are no easy answers. To put the point another way, our political possibilities are not sociologically or economically determined; there are always other ways of thinking and acting in the present; there are always other possibilities not foreseen by the analyses that we can develop on the basis of old ways of thinking. We have been reminded of this by the revival of various forms of religious fundamentalism. This revival was about as unexpected as the collapse of the Berlin Wall. We can offer ex post facto expla­ nations of evangelical Protestantism, religious Zionism, Islamism, Hindutva, and all the rest, but we do so in bad faith unless we acknowledge that social scientists did not expect things to go in these directions. Are we not dealing with the human capacity to articulate new understandings that posit new identities, new futures, and new scales of human interaction? Who, really, would have predicted the scales of struggle implicit in the post-9 / 11 war on terror or anticipated that this supposed war would be framed in religious terms? The measures that the US government and its allies have taken are a reminder that the political economy of scale is always overdetermined by the politics of security, a politics that is always related to basic existential questions.19 Who is this “we” that wants to be se­­ cured? And for which purposes? Surely it is not just about protecting

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one’s property within the existing mode of production. Nor is it just about positioning oneself in relation to the advance of capitalism. People really mean it when they talk about protecting the true faith or advancing the Second Coming. Their politics is not just a confused expression of their economic interests or social anxieties. The scales and boundaries of political action have been redefined by movement after movement in our time, and these movements simply refuse to accept the logic of political economy as the ground on which they must act. In the Aristotelian view, the polis (and hence politics) was to be scaled to the requisites of self-government, understood as a crucial dimension of the good life for the best of men. This view has been maintained in contemporary understandings of liberal (and especially deliberative) democracy. Nevertheless, the presumption has always been that the polis has to be scaled to the requisites of government (e.g., military defence or economic prosperity or civil order) to be effective. The requisites of government are secreted into the requisites of politics by imagining good politics as a politics that generates effective government. Many assumptions about the nature of effective government are built into an analysis conducted at one remove from the analysis of politics itself. So, in the end, the form of the political is always already determined in large degree by the form of the governmental. Current trackings of the governmental point us up, out, and down: up to the global, out to civil society (or the economy), and down to the local.20 The privileged position of the nationstate is supposed to have been compromised by the requisites of a new governmentality keyed to globalized capital on the one hand and responsibilized individuals and communities on the other.21 The conditions of possibility for this new governmentality are such that it depends on networked authority on a “glocal” scale: that is, on a scale that makes the global present in the local and the local present in the global in new ways. Glocal governmentality offers opportu­ nities for political intervention at many sites, accessible to a variety of actors who have the capacity to move in and out of those sites. These mobile actors can operate on various scales, often simultaneously. No one site is necessarily favoured for global effectiveness. The privileged actors are the ones who can operate in many sites and in many scales simultaneously. Mobility is the key. Fixtures can be a burden. So, if we are to scale our politics to the current

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requisites of governmentality, we have to learn to be mobile, operate in many sites simultaneously, and avoid commitment to fixtures that we will not be able to maintain. These prescriptions make many people uncomfortable, and not without reason. First, they seem to implicate us all in the neo-liberal world – force us all to move in the direction in which we are already moving in order to become more modern (or postmodern). Second, they seem to pass much too quickly over the fixtures that have treated us well in the past. The state may be one of those fixtures, but I would say that the more important fixtures are those that stabilize ways of life embodying human possibilities now being ruled out of court. People can and do live otherwise, in ways that do not comport with the current requisites of governmentality. Are we, once again, to rule their lives out because they are insufficiently modern (or postmodern)? Is our task to make sure that everyone gets with the program? I read the current situation doubly. To the extent that the new requisites of governmentality determine the conditions under which we have to act politically, the conditions for political action are more favourable than ever to glocal interventions from many sites accessible to actors with a strong sense of commitment but relatively few resources. This is a favourable situation. On the other hand, the ­requisites of governmentality are not politically determining in the strong sense to which I have been alluding. We have to deal with the world as it is, but the way the world is does not determine how we must respond to it; the future will depend on our various responses, the exact outcomes of which we can never quite predict. So there will always be political possibilities different from the ones that seem to flow from the current requisites of governmentality. In the end, we have to go back to what we want politically: what we want to achieve. It is that that should determine the scale of our politics: the reach to which we aspire and the register that we should use in measuring our activities. In this effort, we can all gain much inspiration from Indigenous peoples, who have always resisted the pressure to give up their identities and surrender to the particular forms of modernity that have been forced on them. There are different ways of being modern, different scales by which we can judge ourselves, and different scales on which we can act. Political economy developed in the eighteenth century as a science of the state. It posited an economy, at one remove from the rulers,

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governed by its own natural laws. The suggestion was that the rulers had to govern through people’s economic freedoms if they were to achieve their own purposes. Political economy was the science of this. Since Marx’s time, critical political economists have tried to liberate their science from the problematic of government and link it to the problematics of popular politics. They have not been very successful in this regard because the organizing assumptions of the original science linger in their analyses. The economy or capitalism or the sociospatial relations of the current mode of production are set out as objects for analysis, at one remove from the analyst in his guise as a potential ruler. This approach replicates the relationship implicit in government at a distance. The sovereign analyst, like the sovereign ruler, is always above politics even when he injects politics into the analysis. The injection is always in the nature of an arbitrary move. Genuine politicization involves something more difficult: putting political economy itself at risk by suggesting that it may be fundamentally inadequate as a science of politics. If there is an adequate science of politics, then it would have to encompass the politics of security, the politics of identity, and the politics of material gain. Political economy, identified as it is with the last of these three, is at best a partial science. Moreover, the relevant science of politics must be a guide to action and not just to explanation. This means that the politics we need to discover will not be revealed by the sort of analysis that a political economist alone can offer. We will have to discover the scales appropriate to politics by other means, ones premised on our ability to transcend political economy and become other than the subjects that we have allowed ourselves to be. Throughout this book, I have been referring to institutions and practices that are in the zone of impermissibility, especially the town meeting. I refer to that possibility because it symbolizes both what we have lost and what we might hope to gain by reasserting our right of local self-government and dismissing the incessant demands to get with the program of local government reform that has now existed for almost two hundred years. I do not accept the idea that living in cities precludes us from having political institutions on a scale appropriate for democracy. We have to take the measure of our ways of life and work out what would enable us to live democratically. For the most part, that is

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not how we live now. The incessant demand that we adjust our lives so that we can be governed in the way the rich and the powerful want us to be governed is profoundly disabling. We need to resist that demand and scale our political institutions to the way of life we actually want and need. Perhaps I have been too much influenced by a certain West Coast sensibility, but I notice efforts all around to me to sustain or develop ways of life that are at odds with what is generally supposed to be necessary. Some of these ways of life are profoundly democratic, involving people in inclusionary modes of collective action. To be sure, people are often overwhelmed by forces beyond their control, but these efforts at collective action – fair trade, urban gardening, co-housing, free schools, cooperative businesses, and so on – keep re-appearing, generation after generation. What does that signify? If nothing else, it suggests that many people are prepared to make significant sacrifices to test alternatives of a sort that are difficult to sustain but never quite disappear. These possibilities are re-created again and again because they address important human needs and desires: I would say both the right to the city and the right of local self-government. One enduring fear is that dissident groups may be authoritarian, like many religious cults, or that they may become authoritarian under pressure from without or due to their own internal dynamics. Authoritarian groups reflect the order within which they emerge. No doubt that will always be a problem, but democracy is actually contagious: once it breaks out it is often copied, because it responds to so many people’s needs. Constant denials of the right of local selfgovernment are no way to encourage democracy. Instead, we should be thinking of ways to nurture the democratic practices that keep emerging in our midst even when they seem impossible to sustain. How else can we discover what will work?

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Postscript

Seeing Like a City

I have referred obliquely to the idea that we might change our approach to politics if we learned to “see like a city” rather than “seeing like a state.” Let me now explain what I mean by that, and show how it might change our approach to the issues I have been discussing.1 The essays in Part 1 were all prompted by my sense that the ­possibilities of “democratic municipalism” had been foreclosed by measures intended to strengthen the state. The essays in Part 2 were instead prompted by more general concerns about the way our political possibilities had come to be construed. It should be obvious that these two sets of concerns are closely related. To put it bluntly, we have wrong-headed ideas about local self-government because we have wrong-headed ideas about what politics is, or could be. Our political thinking tends to be state-centric, and this is as true of those who complain about this tendency as those who embrace it (and I don’t mean to exempt myself from this criticism). There is no simple way of sloughing off this tendency, because it reflects some fundamental facts about the modern world – not least, the division of the world into states that claim sovereignty over their own territories and citizens – and some fundamental human aspirations, especially the desire to remake the world into something better. The sovereign state is like the Holy Grail: something that we are always trying to grasp, because we suppose that it is the means to our redemption. I am as much of a Grail-seeker as anyone else – otherwise, I would not have written this book – but let me issue some cautions that arise from envisioning the world as a city, rather than as a state or a system of states.

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The problem with state-centric thinking is that it is bound up with the illusion of sovereignty. When we think of sovereignty, it conjures up an image of absolute monarchy. Although we know that even an absolute monarch cannot just make it so by issuing an order, like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, we are still haunted by the thought that there is or could be some sort of authority with the power to override all the obstacles and set things right. That’s what makes the image of sovereignty like the Holy Grail. If only we could grasp it, we could make things right. As the fairy tales we learn as children show, the idea of the good king has haunted people for a very long time. Nevertheless, sophisticated political thinkers have long realized that good institutions are as important as, if not more important than good leaders, and so great attention has been paid to institutional improvement, especially since the “age of revolutions” in the late eighteenth century. Modern constitutionalism is a consequence of that line of thinking. It is essentially about establishing the state on the right set of principles and building guarantees into the institutional order. If things are done right in that respect, we suppose, a state may continue doing the right things even if it is under bad leadership. The cult of the great leader has not gone away, however. In fact, the elections that now characterize almost all constitutional orders are increasingly about the selection of supreme leaders, now called prime ministers or presidents rather than kings or emperors. Anyone who observes a major election will be struck by the hopes that are invested in the new leader. Even greater hopes seem to attend efforts at constitutional change or renewal, such as when one part of a country attempts to separate from the rest or when a new union, like the European Union, is proposed. However, it is also obvious that many people are cynical about the possible results, not just in the sense that they are on the other side of the issue, but also in the sense that they believe that, in the end, “nothing will change.” What’s notable is that people can be absolutely entranced by the idea of sovereign authority and yet be utterly sceptical about it in practice. Why? The simple truth, I think, is that we all know that “supreme leaders” are never in complete control of things and that the best institutional arrangements in the world will never guarantee that things work out as they should. The world is too complicated for any one person or group of people to control it effectively, and it cannot be ordered to match anyone’s desires. So, the idea that we can solve all our problems by setting up the right sort of constitution

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is as much of an illusion as the idea that the good king / president / prime minister will fix things if given the authority. The depressing – but ultimately inspiring – truth is that we have to fix things ourselves if we want to get them right, and that means dealing seriously with people who have completely different ideas and interests from ours. In that sense, self-government is just a necessity we have to face up to, as is the task of governing other people. Traditional ideas about sovereignty create the illusion that we can avoid this problem by getting the right leaders or setting up the right institutions. At bottom, I think that we have to face up to the tasks of governing ourselves and other people without deluding ourselves into thinking that there is some leader or political formula that will save us. It’s in this context that I find “seeing like a city” so helpful. I ask myself how cities actually work. The ones I know are relatively orderly. Why is that? Is it because there are police officers on every corner or armies lurking in the background? Is it all to do with the laws that have been passed or the orders that the courts have given? No. People adjust to one another in cities. The proximate diversity of cities forces people to find ways of accommodating one another. Moreover, the problems of cities, which mostly result from crowding so many people together in small areas, are so pressing that they generate various responses, both individual and collective. How all this works out is determined politically, but the crucial politics is not necessarily or even usually within the institutions of the state or any such sovereign authority. Things are determined otherwise, often within and between authorities that don’t pretend to be governments at all. In fact, you can often get more control over other people if you insist that you are not trying to govern them, but instead are helping them to find the goods and services they want, make their money grow, get them more social recognition, win them divine favour, or achieve something else that they want. This suggests that the crucial politics are everywhere and anywhere, and that we are ill-advised to imagine that they take just one form. The world is fluid and complex, and it is governed by many different processes, only some of which are under human control. We can see that in the cities where we live. So, what are the political implications of this? The first is that there are many authorities other than the state that we have to deal with politically. The authorities associated with the state are clearly important, but there are many other authorities in our political

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universe, including businesses, business organizations, religious bodies, and more or less organized cultural communities. Even the humblest people have a certain authority as individuals as well. The second implication is that the interactions that determine what happens cannot be predicted in advance, and so cannot be controlled with any certainty. Even those who make claims to sovereignty are at the mercy of events. We are not dealing with a simple hierarchical order that can be managed from the top, but rather with a congeries of authorities that collide with one another, sometimes cooperating and sometimes fighting, but none ever in full control. The third, rather surprising, implication is that, despite this apparent “chaos,” an order of sorts – one that enables people to go about their daily lives – usually emerges. The situation is rarely anarchic in the bad sense, and usually has some of the features of cooperation and mutual adjustment that anarchists look for as signs that we can do without the state. The fourth implication – and the last one I will note here – is that politics, in the sense of the activity whereby we engage with the order under which we live, has to deal with this complicated, ever-changing, and inherently unpredictable order rather than with something neatly organized and inherently manageable, as the standard image of the state leads us to expect. So, when I see like a city I am just being realistic, and not indulging in my, or other people’s, fantasies about how things might be if the right people were in control or the right institutions were in place. I am trying to take the world as it is, but of course I would like the world to be better than it is. How could it be better? I think that if we learned to govern ourselves more responsibly and effectively, that would certainly help. So, it’s worth thinking about what we actually do now in that regard. To what extent do we modulate our behaviour so that it does not harm others? To what extent do we cooperate with others in activities of more general benefit? To what extent are we ready to curb our own demands or restrain our hos­ tility toward those who differ from us? How eager are we to find things to do that are of benefit not only to ourselves and our loved ones, but also to people we care less about, or not at all? Are we ready to discover the public interest or the common good? We might make harsh judgments about ourselves if we were to answer questions like this honestly, but we might also discover that there are many workable compromises, accommodations, and common projects that we and others take for granted, and that make modern urban life

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tolerable for most of us. I think that’s where we should begin in thinking about our political possibilities. When I do that, I am led back to the two principles that concern me in this book: the right of local self-government and the right to the city. I put such stress on the city because I think that urbanism is our way of life, whether we like it or not. Many of my students hate the very idea of the city, but that does not make them any less urban. As I suggested in chapter 5, urbanism can be regarded as the architectonic movement within which the other modern movements arise. What can that mean? It is certainly not that urbanism is determinant in any simple sense. Causation may be in the opposite direction in that it is the other movements that ultimately give urbanism its particular form. Although trying to work out what causes what can be a helpful exercise, we will not discover our political possibilities in that way. Seeing like a city is a way of thinking about the dynamics of urbanism as a way of life without losing sight of our political purposes or falling into the trap of thinking that there is a nice, intelligible order there to be managed and put to rights. It directs our attention to the world in which we actually live rather than to some abstract form, like the state.

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Part three Rethinking Local Democracy

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7 The Principle of Local Self-Government*

I wrote this paper more than a decade ago, and it has been staring at me ever since. I could never decide what its proper venue was: I think this is it. What concerned me were two things: first, that the idea of local self-government, which was the subject of serious reflection a century ago, scarcely gets any attention now, except in some obscure quarters; and, second, that the idea has been circumscribed in a way that obscures all the issues involved in relating the two concepts, “local” and “self-government,” to one another. The conjunction is challenging, but it has received very little attention, especially from political theorists. Some of the issues should be obvious to any reader of this book, but here I try to pare the main concepts back to their origins, using ordinary language analysis. That involves some circuitous discussion, which ultimately leads back to the questions I am raising in this book. I was trying to write a paper that would actually be read by people who were so committed to the state and hence to standard ideas about liberal democracy that they would shrug off the arguments I advanced in Part 2. I tried to orient the piece toward an American audience – and indirectly toward a European one – because things that Americans (or Europeans) believe are taken more seriously than things that only Canadians believe. Nevertheless, I ended up with an argument that is more radical than most proponents of local self-government would expect. My aim was to open up the idea

*  Based on a paper delivered at the Conference for the Study of Political Thought, Toronto, O N , 28 November 2003.

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of liberal democracy, problematize the relationship between sovereignty and self-government, and reverse the standard relationship between municipalities and the state by making the former the model for the latter. (So, some of the ideas I began to develop in Part 2 do reappear, but with more of a normative emphasis.) This leads me toward the idea of democratic mutualism, which has its roots in anarchist critiques of the state,1 although I use it in a different way, to connect the principle of self-government to the problem of localization. That lays the groundwork for the specific analysis I offer in chapter 8. “Local self-government” is the least examined principle of liberal democracy. This is odd, because that principle was at the centre of classic nineteenth-century arguments in favour of the emergent liberal-­ democratic regime. The ideas to which Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill gave expression have since entered into general consciousness. Most analysts have taken for granted that a largescale representative democracy needs to have institutions of local self-government, as well as protections for individual rights, freedoms of speech, assembly, and association, a universal franchise, democratic elections, independent courts of law, and so on. The partiality toward local self-government remains in thinkers as diverse as Robert Putnam and Jacques Derrida,2 although there is not much clarity about what is involved. To the extent that there has been any rigorous examination of the principle, it has occurred far from the journals where political theorists make their home. Moreover, the burden of much of the analysis is that the principle, though honourable, is not one that can be given much weight under present conditions, since modern life is no longer as localized as it once was. If there has been any revival of interest in the principle in recent years, it is because of a confused sense that globalization somehow diminishes the importance of the nation-state and increases the importance of the city, the urban region, or the locality. No one knows exactly what might be involved, but “glocalization” seems to capture what people are thinking about. Somehow the world is now present in the locality – and the locality present in the world – in ways that even Marshall McLuhan3 only dimly perceived. One would have thought that this would have led to more serious thinking about the principle of local self-government, but there has not yet been much discussion of the concept.

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It is testimony both to the poverty of current thought and to the desperate wish of local-government specialists to be heard that the European notion of “subsidiarity” has gained so much attention. To anyone who has given serious attention to questions of local authority, the principle of subsidiarity sounds like a re-statement of one of the obvious principles of administrative decentralization.4 As such, it is not much of a challenge to the ideas that have been invoked by local government reformers for the last hundred and fifty years. The principle of subsidiarity is double-edged, in that it can be used to justify centralization whenever it appears that a problem cannot be handled adequately at the local level. As I noted in Part 1, the more radical doctrine is the one that began developing in the United States half a century ago, under the rubric of “public choice.” That theory – much influenced by Friedrich Hayek’s ideas about markets as selforganizing systems – challenges the very notion of a hierarchy of authorities. The European principle of subsidiarity is tied to a notion of hierarchy and hence to the idea that someone at the top or at the centre will decide on the distribution of authority among the levels of government. That the local authorities are the lowest and meanest of all the authorities is taken for granted. It is presumed that the people will somehow authorize a superior authority at the top or at the centre to distribute authority in accordance with a superior rationality that delimits the scope of local self-government. Somehow the vox populi will be the deus ex machina that sets the form of democracy itself – and revises that form as required. The alternative view, not much favoured outside the libertarian right or the anarchist left, is that democracy cannot be rationalized in this top-down fashion: such rationalization as may occur must flow from freely agreed arrangements among freely formed authorities.5 The fact that southern California has been taken as a model by Hayek’s disciples in the US has not endeared the Hayekian view to people who remain attached to social democratic ideals or who think that more stringent controls are necessary to make the “free market economy” safe for the environment. There is an egalitarian, environmentalist, anticapitalist version of the argument that rejects top-down authority as a solution to “global” or “local” problems,6 but that argument has had little influence on mainstream political theory; nor has it stimulated the sort of rigorous analysis that would be required to make sense of alternative conceptions of local self-government or to relate them to other issues in the theory of liberal democracy.

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Rethinking Local Democracy

My purpose here is to show that the concept of local self-government is at the centre of liberal-democratic theory, properly construed. It is not a “subsidiary” principle. It is a principle that can and should animate thinking about individual rights, national self-determination, freedom of association, and many other aspects of liberal democracy. On the other hand, this principle subverts “sovereigntist” conceptions of political order in favour of something that we might call “democratic mutualism.” Local self-government is a deeply subversive, hence profoundly liberatory and profoundly social principle. It is thus at odds with the hierarchies of the modern state. The true potential of liberal democracy can only be understood through the principle of local self-government. That may be why the principle has been so sadly neglected. It is simply too dangerous.

which localities? w h at s e l f - g ov e r n m e n t ? Tip O’Neill, mentor to John F. Kennedy and long-time Speaker of the US House of Representatives, claimed that “All politics is local.”7 One can see the truth of this axiom in any episode of West Wing – or perhaps Veep today – where political issues always turn on particular relationships that become manifest in the locality that is the White House itself. O’Neill presumably had another thing in mind: namely, that the issues people dealt with in Washington led back to their local constituencies, constituencies in which key supporters were concerned about jobs and contracts, personal prestige, and a variety of issues that had little to do with the matters at hand. To be politically effective, one had to be conscious of “local” concerns and to address those concerns appropriately. Of course, this begs the question of what the relevant locality is: The impoverished inner city neighbourhoods of O’Neill’s home city, Boston? The cluster of innovative companies along Route 128 (in Boston’s suburbs)? The complex of aerospace industries in southern California? The oil patch in Houston? Wall Street? Hollywood? Capitol Hill? The White House? Camp David? The UN Security Council? Or, all them at once? To speak of “the local” is to make a distinction between a par­ ticular place and the world as a whole. It is to invoke specificity in spatial terms; however, to speak of a particular place is also to speak of a particular time, since places only exist in time. A locality has a specificity that exceeds any abstract description that we might give

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of it. We can think in terms of the market and its mechanisms, the state and its laws, morality and its rules, culture and its norms, or whatever. None of these abstract frames is adequate for giving an account of any particular locality. Even if we put these frames on top of one another, so that we look through all of them simultaneously, the particularity of the locality still does not appear in its fullness. This, surely, is one of the things that Michael Oakeshott was getting at in his famous essay, “Rationalism in Politics.”8 No rational account can capture the particularity of the place where politics actually occurs. Thus, the effort to subsume politics within a set of ideological, ethical, or constitutional norms is doomed to failure. Rationalism leads to irrationality, in that it encourages us to neglect relevant features of the situations with which we have to deal. Every situation is a “locality,” the specificities of which cannot be understood if we rely exclusively (or even primarily) on the theoretical understandings that we bring into that situation. The specificity of the political – its inevitably local character – is as much at odds with Schmittian distinctions as it is with Kantian norms or utilitarian calculations.9 The distinction between friends and enemies is never clear in the particularities of politics. The calculations that might have led us to say that she is a friend and he is an enemy are likely to be upset by the hostility of our friend and the friendliness of our enemy. In the particularities of the locality, there are scores of reasons for enmity and collaboration, most of which will be unknown to us without specific knowledge of the place and people concerned. Moreover, the norms that we bring to bear – from whatever version of Kantian ethics we choose to adopt or from whatever form of constitutionalism happens to appeal to us – will not normally be relevant to the choices we have to make. Political deals do not come in nice, neat, normatively approvable packages. Even making strict utilitarian calculations is normally impossible, because the relevant utilities are unknown and incalculable. In any case, what is at stake is rarely just a matter of utility. The incalculability of the political is a consequence of the inevitable localization of politics, localization that brings the complexities of life into the field of the political. Life cannot be rationalized (as ordinary people seem to know better than most academics). If all politics is local, and localization brings life into politics in a way that disrupts our efforts to bring politics under a rule (Kantian, Benthamite, Schmittian, or whatever), what can we make of a notion

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of “local self-government” as a principle? Normally, “the local” is meant to denote politics and government that are not only more narrowly circumscribed than politics and government in general, but also subordinate or subsidiary to that more general domain. The rules of the state system tell us how to conceptualize “the local.” The world is divided into sovereign states, each of which has its own “municipal law,” valid within the bounds of the state in question. In each state, there is a central authority, whose responsibility it is (among other things) to speak for the state in international relations. Within the state, sovereignty may be divided functionally (on the principle of the separation of powers) or geographically (on the principle of federalism). Geographic localities within a sovereign state may have a share in sovereignty (like the Swiss cantons) or they may just have delegated authority (like municipalities within the Englishspeaking countries). Local government is what is confined to a specific locality within the state as a whole. By definition it is lesser, not only in the sense that it is more confined geographically, but also in the sense that it derives its very being from the state, which confers authority on all the organs of government within the territory concerned. Were it not for the state that secures it, a merely local government would be subject to the sovereign authority of some other state – unless, of course, it managed to gain recognition for itself as a state in its own right. Of course, in the real world, things are not so simple. States themselves are localities in relation to the world order – which is why international lawyers often speak of state law as “municipal” law. States are only equal in a formal sense, and the lesser states are obviously subject to the government of the greater states. Indeed, it often seems like the United States is the only “sovereign state” left, if by sovereignty we mean the capacity as well as the right for a country to govern itself as its leaders choose. Moreover, there are some substate localities – California and New York City being the most obvious examples – that are far more important and far more capable of robust self-government than most of the “states” in the world. A few years ago, the most important Austrian politician in the world was the governor of California (Arnold Schwarzenegger), not the chancellor of Austria. As Tip O’Neill was trying to tell us, the effective locales for the political or the governmental are different from the ones specified in written constitutions or in the doctrine of state sovereignty. In becoming locally self-governing in a fuller sense, a place

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gains global effectiveness, in the sense that what it produces of itself radiates outward and affects others. Knowing the formalities of authority – the equality of states within the state system and the hierarchy of authority within individual states – is useful, but it tells us much less than we need to know about which localities are robustly self-governing and which are not, or which localities spread their influence throughout the world and which do not. It is important to recognize that a locality is not necessarily subordinate politically. The West Wing fascinated foreigners, not just Americans, because they sensed that this must be the locality from which everyone in the world was governed. Or, if it was not there, perhaps it was in the Pentagon or Wall Street or Hollywood or some strange place in Texas. However the government of the world actually happens, the process is not even formally democratic. The White House may or not be in charge, but the people there are accountable, even in principle, only to the 5 per cent of the world’s population who happen to live in the United States. Not surprisingly, most of the people in the world are deeply estranged from a system that makes this form of “local self-government” into an excuse for imperial domination. We might generalize this point: the system of sovereign states tends to estrange political authority from most localities in favour of a particular few, the ones that are authorized to govern the rest. Other mechanisms of estrangement are also at work, especially the ones that produce economic and political centres. The experience of alien government is not the exception but the rule in the contemporary world. For Hobbes, of course, such estrangement was necessary. The natural sovereignty of individuals would lead to the war of each against all, unless we all understood (or at least submitted to the fact) that the artificial sovereignty of the state was necessary for civil society.10 In the Hobbesian view, self-government means sovereignty. There is no other possibility. Locke and many other subsequent liberals have tried to show that self-government can mean something different: namely, a sort of mutualism that generates civil society.11 Nevertheless, most liberals – like Locke himself – waffle on this issue. Locke was as insistent as Hobbes that civil society required sovereignty to realize its potential. This has been the common view. Like Hobbes, most liberals have resorted to a sovereigntist conception of individual freedom when delimiting the rights of the individual. Consider this famous passage from Mill’s On Liberty: 12

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The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. Having located this part of sovereignty in “the individual,” Mill turns the rest over to “society.” It turns out that society is organized politically as a state, under the principles of representative government. The state has sovereignty in relation to local authorities, voluntary associations, and businesses. It also has sovereignty in relation to other states. Having been kicked out of the state in the name of individual freedom, sovereignty is retained at the level of the individual and then brought back into the state as the guarantor of the very freedom it was supposed to threaten. Thus, “self-government” is strung between the two poles of individual sovereignty and state sovereignty: hung out in a way that makes nonsense of the original insight that sociability and individual freedom are complementary, not contradictory principles. The sovereigntist interpretation of the principle of self-government – notable also in arguments about “national self-determination” – is actually at odds with a more common-sense interpretation of the principle. In the latter view, self-government is as much a matter of self-restraint as it is of self-assertion. As such, it is a practice that enables peaceable relations between free people. Self-governing individuals are respectful of the rights of others and also respectful of the claims of society. They are willing to work with others to govern the organizations, associations, or communities of which they are part. They seek to spread the practice of self-government throughout society, if only to ensure that they themselves will be able to con­ tinue in this practice. Self-governing people tend to believe that self-­ government is of benefit to everyone who engages in it. Self-government entails a degree of individual autonomy – as Mill understood – but socially embedded individuals cannot be self-governing as separate units. Neither the sovereignty of the Hobbesian state of nature nor the sovereignty of the Hobbesian civil state is to be desired. Selfgovernment is the middle way between the two, and its aim is to produce a self-regulating civil society that has no need for sovereignty. Self-government is a strategy of government, in the Foucauldian sense. One way for me to govern you is to dominate you, but another

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way is for me to draw back, recognize your freedom, encourage you to take responsibility for yourself, and offer you inducements to comport yourself in ways that are beneficial or at least not harmful to me. As various commentators have noted, modern governments have increasingly resorted to this second, liberal strategy. There is no doubt that such a strategy can conceal domination, but there is also no doubt that the strategy is employed by ordinary people and not just by the governments that have power over them. We citizens of liberal societies use this strategy in our daily dealings with one another. It is not just a clever device that the authorities use to control us. We try to govern the people around us – friends, spouses, children, parents, workmates, neighbours, recreational partners, people passing us on the street – by working with their freedom, rather than against it. We try to find ways of inducing them to govern themselves appropriately, and in order to do so we have to govern our own selves with great care. Sometimes we think of self-government as a moral principle, in line with Kantian ethics; however, it is also just a practical principle of conduct for us. People behave better when they are treated as responsible individuals. Whatever the reasons, we tend to adopt this liberal strategy – a strategy of governing through freedom – as a matter of course. We govern through our own freedom and through the freedom of others in a generalized practice of “self-­ government.” Within this generalized practice, the issue is not whether self-government is to be preferred to alien rule: clearly it is. The real issue is where the practice of self-government is to be located with respect to the matters at hand. The sovereigntist view is that ultimate authority must be located in the individual or the state. Those partial to the sovereignty of the individual regard social regulation with deep suspicion, treat taxation as a form of theft, and insist on each individual’s right to dispose of his or her property and exercise his or her powers exactly as he or she pleases. Those partial to the sovereignty of the state insist that individual freedom and other values must be grounded in the power and authority of the state, without which society cannot be properly constituted or protected from external or internal threats. These polar positions conceal a common conviction: namely, that sovereignty is necessary for the common good. That conviction flies in the face of human experience. We know, in fact, that sovereignty – in the sense of a capacity to do exactly as we please, with no concern about how others might react – is always an illusion, and that

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we humans always have to act with other free agents in mind. Our problem is to work out how to live with other self-governing individuals. The easy part is to leave other people alone when we are not affected by what they do. The hard part is to work out how the principle of “self-government” can be applied to those things that we do together. How is the principle to be localized, especially for matters that seem to require coercive authority?

T h e M u n i c i pa l i z at i o n of Political Authority The argument here is that we can find a model for local self-government in the municipalities with which we are already familiar; however, we need to think differently about those municipalities if we are to see their potential. A municipality is not a miniature version of the state, nor is it a corporation in the proper sense. It is not a consumers’ cooperative or a joint-stock company, and it is certainly not just an administrative agency of the state.13 People have thought of municipalities in all these ways and treated them as such, but in so doing they have missed what is most distinctive about the municipality as a political form. Even to think of the municipality as the modern polis or civic republic – as some radicals do – is to miss the point. A municipality is a non-sovereign government: one that embodies, however crudely, an ideal of local self-government, conceived as a generalized political practice that can and should spread through every form of collective activity. A municipality has a claim to plenary authority in matters of concern to its own community, but not a claim to exclusive jurisdiction. The notion of “exclusive jurisdiction” is bound up with the logic of sovereignty, and is alien to the generalized practice of local self-government. These are radical ideas. According to standard American constitutional doctrine, municipalities are just “creatures of the states.” The American doctrine derives from English legal precedents that date back to the thirteenth century.14 Those precedents are not innocent: they were articulated in the context of what some have called a “movement” for communal rights, which began in the middle of the twelfth century and gradually spread throughout Europe.15 Whether there was a movement or not is moot.16 What is clear is that municipal political organization became more robust and self-conscious in that era. This was both the cause and effect of tensions between civic and “regnal” authorities. A crucial feature of the political and legal

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response to these tensions was the effort to define municipalities as “corporations.”17 This was a category derived from Roman law. In that way of thinking, a corporation was a body within the realm, which could exist only if there were a proper grant of authority to it from the sovereign. Thus, the municipalities, which had taken shape as a consequence of customary forms of collective action, were pressed to show that they had proper charters of incorporation and that they had been granted the “liberties” that they now claimed. Where there were strong royal authorities – as in England – the municipalities had little choice but to submit to these demands and to seek royal warrants for those activities for which they could not prove their authority. In Italy and Germany, some of the municipalities managed to constitute themselves as civic republics with de facto sovereignty. In these areas, it was easier to sustain the idea that municipalities derived their authority directly from the people who created and sustained them. Despite difficulties, this notion of autochthonous local authority lingered on elsewhere, even in England, until the nineteenth century. We can find echoes of it in Tocqueville’s account of the self-governing New England townships – according to him, a form of political organization “coeval with the existence of mankind.” The idea re-appears in the writings of von Gierke, Weber, Pirenne, and Mumford.18 Unfortunately, these writers had difficulty convincing themselves – let alone anyone else – that this idea of autochthonous local authority was still relevant in an age of sovereign states and exploding cities. There are various “state traditions” in Europe and elsewhere.19 The Napoleonic tradition is obviously antipathetic to the notion of  autonomous communes or provinces. The British tradition is equally hostile, insofar as it begins from the premise of Crown sovereignty. The Germanic and American traditions would appear to be more open to the possibilities for local self-government. In a way that is so, but the courts – following a logic already articulated by  political theorists – have tended to insist on the fundamental unity of the state, and hence on the derivative character of local authority. In the United States, as in all the other English-speaking countries, municipalities have been conceptualized as “corporations” established under state law and subject to state authority. As  Gerald Frug has pointed out,20 municipal corporations ended up  with less freedom of action than other corporations, because the  American courts regarded them as public bodies, subject to the  restrictions on government imposed by the US constitution.

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By contrast, “private” corporations, ones that were established for purely business purposes, were granted the protections accorded by the Bill of Rights. It came to be understood that one of the rights Americans had was to form limited liability joint-stock companies that could operate with virtually the same freedom as natural individuals.21 A comparable right to form and use municipalities has never been recognized. Outside the United States, the courts generally have been even more suspicious of municipal claims to autonomous jurisdiction or to popular claims to form and maintain political authorities at one remove from the state. Antagonism toward municipal freedom reflects the continuing influence of sovereigntist conceptions of the state. The various “state traditions” are all premised on a conception of sovereignty that makes it difficult to recognize political authorities that do not fit into the state or the state system. The many tribal authorities that the Europeans encountered during their age of expansion were of  this “unfitting” character: indeed, so were most of the authorities the Europeans encountered outside Europe. In the period of de-­colonization, there has been a huge effort to “re-fit” political authority according to the model of state sovereignty, throughout the world. Hence comes the current concern about “failed states.” If the state form of political authority fails, the western powers demand that it be re-created, over and over, until the local people get it right. In a way, this replicates long-standing practice in relation to municipal government. The leading western states were all reorganized in the nineteenth century on a particular model of authority, in which different “levels” of territorial government were recognized. The presumption was that the “lower” authorities had to defer to the “higher” authorities on any matter that affected the “wider” community. Moreover, it was presumed that the people had somehow authorized the higher authorities – if not the supreme legislature, then the supreme court – to determine what the distribution of powers should be, in light not only of constitutional principles, but also of “modern needs.” As it turned out, many of these “modern needs” were bound up with the urbanization of society. In this sense, cities proved to be their own worst enemies, in that their outward growth and increasingly tight linkages provided a rationale for the usurpation of municipal authority by the state.22 Crucial to the project of state sovereignty in relation to the municipalities have been the twin doctrines of national self-determination and democratic unity. National self-determination flows from the principle of local self-government, but it has usually been interpreted

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in a way that subverts that principle. The key move is to link selfdetermination with sovereignty and hence statehood. The nation is supposedly the community with which people identify most strongly. It thus becomes the bearer of sovereignty. Sovereignty is attributed to “a people” rather than to “the people.” The people have diverse loyalties and complex interconnections. A people is separate from other peoples. A people is unitary. The people are diverse. The nationalist idea that sovereignty must fall to whatever “imagined community”23 has most weight – namely, the nation – has the effect of devaluing all other forms of political community and making their claims to authority dependent on grants from the state or “the people” conceived as a unitary actor. So it is that, even in those American states like California where there is great scope for popular initiative, the unitary force of the people has been used to crush municipal initiative and forestall efforts to extend the practices of local self-government.24 The centralist practices of the American states may take a different form from the corresponding practices of the European states, but they are no less powerful or effective for that. As noted above, a non-sovereigntist conception of local government has been articulated in the United States under the guise of “public choice theory.” Unfortunately, this theory begs the question it is supposed to answer by defining municipalities as consumers’ associations. People are said to subscribe to these associations by establishing residence in the areas concerned. There is a ring of truth to this, especially in the American context, but such a conceptualization tends to be self-fulfilling. To think otherwise of the municipality is to bring the full range of human purposes into view. Many of these purposes transcend our identities as consumers of public services, homeowners, or neighbourhood residents. To organize politically, in the form of a municipality or otherwise, is to open up questions about how we are to use our collective powers: how we are to govern ourselves to achieve our larger objectives and to protect others from our own excesses. A political organization is uncontainable, in principle. There are no set boundaries to its purposes, or even to its geographic reach. Public choice theory is a containment strategy, in that it attempts to pre-define political purposes, reduce people’s aspirations, and legitimize private solutions to public problems. It may be non-sovereigntist at the level of the state, but it tends to be sovereigntist at the level of the individual, and thus is hostile to forms of local self-government that would trench on that individual sovereignty.

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Some of the contemporary resistance to notions of local self-­ government arises from the fear that local autonomy will enable people to opt out of their responsibilities to the wider society.25 Many of the most egregious examples of such opting out are from the United States, where it is relatively easy for wealthy people to wall themselves up in their own municipal tax havens. Nonetheless, it is clear that the practices that lead to what Galbraith26 called “private affluence and public squalor” have more to do with the general political culture in the United States than with the rules about municipal incorporation. Congress has ample authority to tax the American people and use the revenue for redistributive purposes. That it does not do so to the degree that egalitarians would like is not the result of the way local institutions are organized. Indeed, it is arguable that Americans with a more positive view of government need to enhance local authority and local autonomy to be able to demonstrate the virtues of collective action to their fellow Americans. Be that as it may, it is clear that government on a global scale is being municipalized, in that the great majority of nation-states are finding that their powers are more akin to those of municipalities than to the “sovereign states” of nationalist imagination. Much has been made of the drift toward a form of federal government in the European Union, but this is not the most significant development. More important has been the creation of an array of treaty-based institutions that bind states into a system of global economic management and predetermine public policy on a wide range of issues.27 Private companies operate within a transnational legal system that is largely of their own making and that is not subject to change by ordinary states. Ordinary states have police powers within their own boundaries, but they lack “war-fighting” capacities (as Saddam Hussein discovered in 2003). Their main responsibilities are “domestic.” The common view is that states must do what they can to attract capital investment and encourage economic innovation, so that their communities will have the means to provide for high-quality public services. This reflects the fact that states – or at least ordinary states – are merely local authorities within a global order that is beyond their control. If individual states have a capacity to change that global order, it is not by virtue of their “sovereign authority.” Instead, states – like Sweden, for instance – have a capacity to induce broader changes by showing other public authorities what can be done with the powers that they have. The demonstration effect of innovative policies is powerful.

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So, it may be more accurate now to think of the state as a “megamunicipality” than to think of the municipality as a “mini-state.”28 The difference is crucial, because a municipality is a non-sovereign government that embodies the principle of local self-government. Insofar as states have been identified with the order of sovereignty – hence with a mode of political organization in which authority flows in to the centre, then out to the extremities (or up to the apex, then down to the base) – they have been placed in a position in which they seem to have ultimate responsibility for the well-being of the people in their own territories. This is a responsibility that they cannot meet, hence, the pervasive sense that “government,” and hence “politics,” is useless. Our expectations of municipalities are more modest. Insofar as we conceive of the state as a large-scale municipality, we see that the issue with respect to states is not how they can wield their sovereign authority, but instead how they can be creative in using the powers that they do have. Moreover, to see the state as one sort of organization within a global system of municipal government is also to recognize that municipalities of the ordinary sort have a dignity and importance that has been denied to them within the order of sovereignty. It is significant that the federal principle has usually been interpreted as a principle of shared sovereignty, and that municipalities have generally been denied their share. There has been implicit recognition that municipalities embody a form of political authority that does not compute with sovereignty and that they need to be suppressed or subordinated to make the order of sovereignty work. Now that states themselves are being reduced to the status of local authorities, there is an opportunity to re-think the connection between sovereignty and statehood and open up our understanding of the possibilities implicit in the municipalization of political authority. Of course, there is one state that stands above all the rest, and whose power and authority is now being described as “imperial.”29 This state, the US, certainly does have an impressive “war-fighting” capability, and it has veto power within all major international institutions. Within the system of global governance, the government of the United States is the central institution. The new empire may be more like the Holy Roman Empire than its more glorious predecessor, but there is certainly some substance to it, and it would be foolish to imagine political possibilities in abstraction from it. Nonetheless, the vast majority of people in the world are denied American citizenship as a matter of principle, and so confront the imperial authority as alien.

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For them, the practice of local self-government is the only possible democratic practice. The experience of the medieval European municipalities is chastening, in that these local authorities were ultimately overwhelmed by sovereign kings and nation-states. On the other hand, the power of those nation-states was partly an effect of their capacity to re-embody the principles and practices of local self-­government within their own institutions. Those principles and practices may have been deformed by the quest for sovereignty, but they are still present and they still pose the main challenge to imperial domination within and outside the United States.

D e m o c r at i c M u t ua l i s m The idea of local self-government has long been tied to conceptions of democracy, although there has been surprisingly little effort to explain what the principle would entail. If the argument here is correct, this timidity among political theorists and others is connected to fears about the loss of sovereignty.30 It is not the practice of sovereignty so much as the principle of it that attracts such loyalty. In a sense, sovereignty is what political theory is about: the capacity to draw the line, define the terms, lay down the law, determine justice, constitute society, and / or deploy overwhelming force. Political theorists pride themselves on their unflinching focus on these sovereign capacities. Not to keep the focus there seems like a betrayal or a devious and ultimately self-defeating shift away from the ultimate questions. But, curiously, sovereignty is more of a presumption of political theory than an object of study. It is the presumption that enables learned speculations about principles of justice, the ideal form of the constitution, the correct definition of human rights, and so on. The question of who will implement the findings is always already answered in the presumption that there is (and always must be) a sovereign authority. This is in tension with another presumption of almost all of contemporary political theory: namely, that whatever is to be done is to be in accord with the principles of liberal democracy. Sovereignty and liberal democracy are not in tight accord. On the contrary, they are at odds with one another. It is true that liberal democracy has been tamed to fit the sovereigntist imagination, but careful reflection suggests that liberal-democratic principles actually subvert the order of sovereignty. Individual freedom is not a matter of conforming to a particular order or accepting a particular form of

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authority. On the contrary, it is about choosing among forms of order and authority, deregulating and discovering oneself, acting on one’s fantasies, becoming other than what one might otherwise be. To be liberal is to recognize and respect people’s freedom to act in ways that are at odds with one’s own sense of what a self-governing individual should do. Pace Mill, there is no way of drawing a line around an individual’s freedom and saying, “Therein s / he shall be sovereign.” At best, one can inculcate an ideal of self-government that connects individual freedom with responsibility to others. The exact form of that connection is a matter for debate, not least because resolutions are tied to the particularities of local circumstance, which cannot be anticipated in advance or described from the outside. The Kantian principle may be a useful maxim of conduct, but it is only a maxim to be used with other maxims in considering the dilemmas we face. Thus, the line between what is left to individual responsibility and what is placed on the agenda for collective action is never determinate. Nor is the line between what is appropriate to this community rather than that one. Sovereignty-thinking leads us into the delusion that we can draw lines without compromising the freedoms implicit in the principles of liberal democracy. The self-government principle is also in tension with the principles of freedom, but the “solution” it poses is more of a question than an answer. It suggests that individual freedom and social responsibility can only be resolved through a practice of self-government, but it leaves open the question of what that practice might involve. To interpret the principle as one of local self-government is actually to go a step further in facilitating openness. The reified “individual” of modern liberal thought is a character we need to question. To pose issues in Millian terms is to prejudge the ontological issues that are at the heart of many contemporary political debates. Are we, or do we want to be, “individuals” in the relevant sense? Or, is our problem to identify and develop those forms of community that give meaning to our lives? Do we need or want to have coherent individual identities, or should we give more room to the play of difference within ourselves and each become “many” rather than one? Is “community” what we seek, or is that too closed and cloistered a form of connectedness? What modalities of action are appropriate to us as humans? Are we to rank them or to let them be? To try to capture such debates in a simple antimony between “the rights of the individual” and “the rights of society” is to do them no justice at all.

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By connecting the principle of self-government with the problem of localization, we draw attention to the fact that, in many circumstances, neither the individual nor society is likely to be the appropriate locus of “self-government.” Standard liberal-democratic theory anticipates this point insofar as it sketches out a domain of action called “civil society.” In the standard view, civil society is the domain where individuals can act collectively, but nonetheless preserve their freedom. In this sense, the market is a region within civil society where people can freely pursue their purposes. There are other, complementary regions, where different purposes can be pursued. Thus, freedom of association and freedom of commerce are thought to flow from the principle of individual freedom. Moreover, there are certain practices of self-­government – and hence rules of conduct – that seem to be required to achieve the various, freely adumbrated purposes that become manifest in the broad domain of civil society. It seems to be  the role of government to give coercive authority to the most important of these rules. In the standard view, “government” is not within the domain of civil society. Government is in the state, which may be constituted democratically, but is not in itself part of the realm of freedom or self-government that we think of as civil society. The trouble with this characterization is that it stigmatizes a particular form of collective activity on the grounds that it involves “coercion.” Even the mildest forms of coercion – traffic regulations, building codes, product labelling requirements, rules about waste disposal – get identified with the force of arms. Moreover, the practice of collective self-government is split in a completely unrealistic way between a domain of freedom and a domain of coercion. If we look at the things that municipalities have traditionally done, we can see that the distinction between “state” and “civil society” is  quite unhelpful for analytic purposes. Draining the land, laying out the streets, and figuring out how to get various public utilities into the homes and businesses of a new area of settlement are among the traditional municipal functions. Municipalities generally have the responsibility for regulating new urban development and providing vital public services within areas already settled. Coercion is incidental to the activities concerned. The municipality provides an organizational base and framework for collective activity that could not occur – or could not be nearly so effective – if the municipality (or something like it) were not there. Municipalities are as much the

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product of free activity as the organizations that have normally been identified with civil society. They simply have a different set of purposes, which require powers that are not necessary for business or recreational or religious activities. Very few municipal leaders think of themselves as being engaged in governmental activities. They are providing services, enhancing their communities, encouraging economic investment, protecting people and property, improving community relations, and so on. Government is the last thing on their minds, and – in the Anglo-American countries especially – they rarely think of themselves as part of “the state.” As noted above, ordinary states are more like mega-municipalities than sovereign authorities. This is no bad thing. In fact, it is required by the principles of liberal democracy. The assimilation of the state to ordinary practices of local self-government means re-embedding an institution that had been conceptualized as above and apart. It also means re-legitimizing public action as part of the free activity of civil society. Pace Hobbes and Locke, there is no sharp distinction between coercive and non-coercive activity. What is to count as coercion and how any coercion is to be legitimized are matters for political debate. In the generalized practice of self-government, one of the issues is how to minimize coercion, but that is by no means the only or most important issue. To use this criterion alone in working out how to locate the activities of self-government would be irrational. Obviously, we must think about the objectives of those activities, the conditions for achieving those objectives, and the communities of interest and concern that are relevant to the matters at hand. In any case, the principles of liberal democracy require us to leave the question open, to be resolved politically within the practice itself. In other words, we have to rely on democratic mutualism rather than sovereignty to resolve the tough jurisdictional issues. Democratic mutualism is not anarchy. The myth of anarchy sustains the myth of sovereignty. When there are multiple authorities – including individuals, voluntary associations, communities, and wider societies – that insist upon governing themselves and have a right to do so according to the principles of democracy, there will inevitably be disputes about who has the right to do what and under which circumstances. The sovereigntist presumption is that the state is there to keep these disputes within appropriate bounds and provide for their authoritative resolution. The state, however, does not have that capacity. It is one authority among many within a complicated web. There

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is no sovereign solution to the problem of multiple sovereignties. On the other hand, there is hope in the way that local self-government leads to democratic mutualism. For localities to secure their rights, they need to respect the rights of other localities. Since the localities at issue may be as small as a single individual or as large as the world as a whole, this mutualism has no form that we can predict in advance. At best, we can say that the form is democratically negotiable, insofar as the principle of local self-­government is respected. What is to  be anticipated is not the collapse of political authority, but the proliferation of new forms that are pertinent to human needs. We have lived for a long time with an effort to force all political authority into the state form and to deprive civil society of many of its capacities for self-government. There is now an extraordinary opportunity to create new political institutions, but little will happen if we fail to challenge the myth that we need sovereignty to give order to liberal democracy. Local self-government has no definite boundaries or pre-set objectives – any more than politics does. It is a practice that opens inward and outward. All “localities” are related to other localities, and all localities are relative to the matters at hand. We have to reimagine “the community” (or “the individual,” for that matter) every time we address a new issue. Whereas the “imagined communities” of the nationalists are fixed, definitely bounded, and enduring, the communities implicit in the practice of local self-government are fluid, open, and temporary. We need to associate liberal democracy not with national sovereignty but rather with freely formed and freely associating municipal authorities that make no pretense to sovereignty. Such a conception is definitely not one of anarchy. It is instead a conception of local self-government: autochthonous authorities emerging from ongoing social life and negotiating their claims upon one another with an eye to mutual benefit. Such a regime would not be governed by the principle of sovereignty, but instead by the principle of self-government, understood as democratic mutualism. One feature of this would be a softening of the sharp distinctions between self and other, society and state, economics and politics, private and public, individual and community. A non-sovereigntist conception of self-government is one that recognizes the relatedness of selves, the multiplicity of forms of self, the surfeit of matters that need to be governed, the uncertainties about what matters now here, and the abitrariness of the lines that we draw to separate this from that or

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him from her. Self-government is a crucial political principle, but it only cautions against false solutions and sets us up to ask the right questions. It does not provide simple rules of conduct. I was not thinking about the right to the city when I wrote this paper, but as I argue in chapter 9 there is no fundamental conflict between that right and the right of local self-government: in fact, the two principles are complementary. Democratic mutualism is a principle that helps us understand the relationship between the other two. Note that in this paper I talk about the principle of local self-government, rather than the right. I confess that I have always been uneasy about “rights-talk,” because rights are usually conceived as “trumps”31 and the overriding concern of most rights advocates seems to be to shift the locus of decision-making to the courts, where ordinary political debates are not allowed. There is a definite suspicion of democracy among most rights advocates: ordinary people are often portrayed as a threatening mass that has to be restrained by the enlightened few. That view is usually masked by references to minority rights or popular disenfranchisement, but the implication is that the downtrodden will have to be protected by the courts because they will never be able to protect themselves. It is hard not to applaud when the courts do intervene on behalf of people who are oppressed or excluded, or when they insist on principles of justice that powerful authorities choose to ignore. Nevertheless, to rely on the courts is to depend on the good intentions of an aristocracy, and that is a politically dangerous course. We only have to remember what the courts have done over the years to entrench and extend rights of property to recall how they protect the rich and powerful. There is no reason to expect this ­pattern to change dramatically unless the overall political climate changes. Insofar as rights-talk opens up political issues and puts the pretensions of the rich and powerful into question, it serves a democratic purpose. Insofar as it is meant to depoliticize crucial issues, it has the opposite effect.32 I hope that the rights-talk that I slide into in the next two chapters fits into the former category. In any case, it lets me into a political conversation that is otherwise closed.

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8 Are Municipalities Creatures of the Provinces?*

Here I try to apply some of the ideas I developed in chapter 7 to the Canadian case, initially by challenging the idea that “cities” are just creatures of the provinces. I appeal to various historical, sociological, and geographical facts to show that the way we actually live is at odds with the way the state is imagined to be. There is an array of democratic possibilities implicit in our practices of self-government, but most of them have not been recognized, despite the fact that they are implicit in the principles of a “free and democratic society,” which are supposedly enshrined in the Canadian Constitution. I am addressing myself to people who are committed to those principles and who believe that the Constitution protects them. Although I am sceptical about modern constitutionalism, I am prepared to accept it as a ground for discussion here. I try to show how it implies something quite different from what is usually supposed. For the most part, I stick to the standard terminology about local government and keep my proposals for constitutional change relatively modest. We have had many constitutional debates in this country, but there has been little serious discussion of the principle of local self-­ government.1 That principle is at least as important as the principle of federalism and comparable to the principles of liberty and equality already recognized in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

*  Originally published in Journal of Canadian Studies 39, no. 2 (Spring 2005), 5–29. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

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Without local self-government, there can be no free and democratic society. And yet, in very high places,2 we still hear the old canard that cities (and towns and villages and other localities) are just “creatures of the provinces.” Ridiculous as that claim is, it has been invoked again and again to justify arbitrary provincial authority, to prevent the federal government from coming to the aid of the cities and other municipalities, and to deny ordinary Canadians the right to develop political institutions that meet their needs. I will go so far as to say that this is the one constitutional doctrine that most threatens our capacity to give effect to liberal-democratic ideals. Many of the key doctrines of nineteenth-century constitutionalism – that Canada was a British country, that political authority was properly vested in the hands of propertied Anglo men, and that individual rights and freedoms were at the pleasure of the Crown – were effectively challenged in the twentieth century. This particular doctrine, however, persists in a way that makes further advance toward a free and democratic society extremely difficult. No one would claim that First Nations are “creatures of the federal government” simply by virtue of the fact that section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867 gives exclusive jurisdiction over “Indians, and Lands reserved for the Indians” to Ottawa; and yet, the parallel provision in section 92, which gives exclusive jurisdiction to the provinces with respect to “Municipal Institutions in the Province” is interpreted to mean that municipalities – and, by extension, cities, towns, and other forms of settlement – are just “creatures of the provinces.” The result is totalitarian provincial control over local political institutions: control that is at odds with “the principles of a free and democratic society.” Patrick Macklem is one of the many legal scholars who insist that a reinterpretation of the Canadian Constitution is required to redress past injustices against First Nations. As he says, “This task requires a non-absolute, pragmatic conception of sovereignty that contemplates a plurality of entities wielding sovereign authority within the Canadian constitutional order. The legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty thus depends on constitutional recognition of territorial and jurisdictional spaces in which Aboriginal societies can take root and flourish, which in turn requires reconceiving Canadian sovereignty in non-absolute terms.”3 I would extend that argument to encompass the territorial and jurisdictional spaces of local communities. The doctrine of municipal subordination flows from an absolutist conception of sovereignty, a conception that was written into our

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constitutional law in the nineteenth century. In the absolutist view, all political authority is within the state. Although the state may be accountable to society, it stands apart from it and rules over it. This is an obviously simplistic view, but it is none the less powerful for that. The alternative view is that political authority takes myriad forms, and that reliance on one form of political authority – the form associated with a state – is a recipe for political impoverishment. The idea that local governments are at the bottom of a hierarchy of state authority has been with us for a long time. Although the alternative view is implicit in many of our actual practices, it is not well articulated in political theory, let alone in constitutional law. My argument here is that the alternative view actually makes more sense historically, constitutionally, and practically. The standard “sovereigntist” account of municipal subordination relies on an archaic, nineteenth-century conception of political authority, a conception that has been challenged by thinkers who have drawn attention to the broader “political system,” complex patterns of “governance,” the character of the “public economy,” and the ubiquitous practices of “governmentality.”4 Serious analysts of “the modern state” recognize that the sovereigntist view is ideological, and that a different account of political authority and governmental practice is required, both to make sense of the way we live and to identify opportunities for improvement. My aim is to bring what we already know to the surface, and to apply it to an understanding of the principle of local self-government, an as yet unrecognized principle of the Canadian Constitution. I begin by taking the doctrine of municipal subordination literally, and posing the problem of how it is to be read against the historical record. I then broach the argument that municipalities can be understood as polities of a different sort, ones that can coexist with the Canadian state, but not be subordinated to it. I try to show how the principle of local self-government relates to the politics of the everyday and hence to life in the “urban global.” I explain why it is so difficult to cash out on the principle of local self-government, but I also suggest some lines of advance: ones that would relate the principle to (a) direct democracy at the level of the urban neighbourhood, (b) citizen participation in all political authorities at the local level, and (c) the creation of new political institutions that would enable us to deal with issues that arise at every level within the urban global. The challenges implicit in this principle are profound, but it is time that we took them up.

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C r e at u r e s o f t h e P rov i n c e s ? Let’s begin with this odd idea that “cities are just creatures of the provinces.” It is odd because most of the major cities in Canada actually predate the provinces. For instance, Victoria grew up around the Hudson’s Bay Company fort established there in 1842. It was a substantial town by the time that Vancouver Island and the mainland British colony were united to form British Columbia in 1858. It was even better established by the time British Columbia became a province of Canada in 1871. Vancouver was established after B C became a province, but the initiator was the Canadian Pacific Railway, not the government of the province. The province simply recognized the new reality when it granted a charter to the City of Vancouver. Elsewhere in the country, cities generally had a much longer pre-provincial history. The most dramatic example is the City of Quebec, which predates the province of the same name by 259 years. Even Toronto – a relatively late creation – had been around in one guise or another for 74 years at the time of Confederation. Similarly, the settlement at what is now Winnipeg had been there for a couple of generations when Manitoba entered Confederation in 1870. The principal towns and cities of the Atlantic provinces are much older. I find it hard to think of a single example of a Canadian city “created” by a province: so how is it that the provinces get retrospective credit for generating cities that were there before them? I am tempted to say that provinces are creatures of the cities, but that would be exaggerating. Clearly, at the time of Confederation, most Canadians lived in rural areas. To the extent that the provinces were not simply administrative impositions of the imperial government, they were the joint creation of people living in the country and in the towns and cities. Nevertheless, city folk often had a disproportionate influence in the process, because they were near the centres at which decisions were made. The provinces were commonly based on the older “colonies,” and the various colonies were administrative units created by the imperial government. Not to put too fine a point on it, a colony was a territory whose limits were defined by the imperial government and was to be administered from a centre or capital that the imperial government chose. The imperial government, however, had to deal with the situation on the ground. In B C , that meant that the imperial government had to accept the fact that the main settlement in its territory in the Pacific Northwest was the

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one that had grown up around the Hudson’s Bay post at Fort Victoria. Victoria was the logical administrative centre for the new colony, because it already existed as a city. The story in other parts of Canada was different, and in some cases the imperial authorities created what was to become a capital city in advance of settlement. In all cases, however, the authorities had to adapt administrative structures to the actual pattern of settlement. Governments were rarely in a position to decide what were to become the major centres of commerce and industry, and they had to adjust to the realities if they were to become effective. Thus, in B C now, much of the business of the provincial government is actually done in Vancouver, just as much of the business of the Quebec government is done in Montreal. A province is an administrative overlay on a form of life that takes its own shape as people respond to the opportunities available to them. In Canada, as elsewhere, our form of life is urban. This was not always so, but it became so in the twentieth century. Even in earlier days, the Europeans who came here were working for city-based businesses. They supplied fish, furs, and later lumber and wheat to European cities.5 In retrospect, Canada’s agrarian heyday seems like an interlude: a moment in the development of a new urban society functioning within a complex global economy. The major cities in Canada are nodes in an urban system, in which there are various regional economies. In some respects, the provinces function as re­­ gional economies, but the boundaries between one province and the next are porous, and in any case the regions constituted by the various provinces are on vastly different scales. In economic terms, urban-centred regions are much more important than provinces as such. The same is true socially and culturally. The organizational nodes of modern life are cities. The provinces, like the municipalities, are at one remove from the process. They exist in one domain only, whereas urban life is multi-dimensional. Because of that multidimensionality and also because of the interconnectedness of cities and their hinterlands, urban civilization tends to transcend its political containers – municipality, province, nation-state, or empire. To say that municipalities are the creatures of the provinces is a bit more logical than to say that cities are the creatures of the provinces. A municipality is a legal form, and the provincial legislatures apparently have the right under the Constitution to change that form as they please. At least, that is how the Supreme Court of Canada has

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seen the issue to date.6 According to what is now the standard view, the provinces are sovereign within their own sphere of jurisdiction, sovereignty having been neatly divided by the Constitution Act, 1867 (formerly the British North America Act) between the provinces on the one hand and the federal government on the other. (In the old days, of course, the British Parliament retained residual authority.) It seems that Ottawa and the provinces have absorbed all the sovereignty available, and there is none left over for the municipalities and other local authorities. Things look a little more complicated when we examine the actual pattern of public and public–private authority on the ground. Increasingly, public services are provided by agencies at one remove from government: private firms operating under service contracts, non-profit organizations with multiple funding sources and missions of their own, public authorities with their own boards of directors, regulatory boards, advisory agencies, joint ventures, and all manner of other bodies with modes of organization, lines of authority, and patterns of accountability peculiar to them. It is not that the provinces or anyone else “commands” what happens on the ground exactly, by way of public service provision and public regulation. The provinces do what they can to take control – offering money and taking it away, providing and removing legal authority, demanding or not demanding information, asking for cooperation, issuing edicts, and so on – but their effectiveness in this regard is limited. They have to adapt what they do to what is emerging on the ground, just as they have to adapt their administrative structures to the pattern of settlement. According to the traditional view of provincial powers, Ontario could abolish Toronto any time it felt like. In fact, it could do away with local institutions of government altogether, and centralize the administration of everything in the Premier’s Office. That would be a recipe for disaster; however, it might also wake up the courts, and encourage them to think a little more seriously about the limits of provincial authority in relation to local institutions. If, as the courts have indicated in other contexts, this is a liberal-democratic country with a liberal-democratic constitution, then there must be limits to what a provincial government can do in relation to local insti­ tutions. A merely provincial government does not have the right to  sweep away institutions fundamental to a liberal democracy. Nor does the federal government have such a right. The section of the Constitution Act, 1867 that gives the provinces authority over

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“municipal institutions” is designed to protect both the provinces as such and local institutions from the sort of federal interference that would threaten the exercise of public authority by duly elected local governments. To interpret the section this way is to read it as a protective clause, one that explicitly forbids the federal government from trying to abolish the City of Toronto or sweep away the school boards in Saskatchewan. Local institutions that have been established under provincial law are protected from the federal government; however, that explicit protection need not be at odds with the protection implicit in the principle of local self-government: a principle that protects the municipalities against the provinces, albeit in a different way.

The Constitution as a Living Document One of the encouraging features of recent Canadian jurisprudence has been the willingness of our highest courts to reconsider what had at once been considered settled principles of constitutional law. The Reference re Secession of Quebec (1998) and the Delgamuukw v. British Columbia decision (1997) are particularly significant in this respect. The Court put nineteenth-century conceptions of sovereignty into question when it refused the federal government’s claim that it could simply ignore a positive vote for separation in Quebec and when it denied the B C government’s historic claim that the mere assertion of Crown sovereignty had wiped out pre-existing Abori­ ginal rights in that province. The Court may revert to older views, but for the moment it has opened the door to the idea that sovereignty is just an organizing fiction that has to be interpreted in light of conflicting claims to legitimacy. Indeed, sovereignty has been displaced by democracy as the organizing principle of constitutional interpretation – and that is as it should be. Sovereignty has been assimilated to the principles of democracy on the assumption that those principles entail the sovereignty of the people, sovereignty to which Her Majesty has graciously consented. According to this view, the Constitution of Canada gives effect to the organizing principles of a free and democratic society, and must always be interpreted with reference to those principles. A free and democratic society does not ignore Aboriginal rights, nor does it ignore the expressed wishes of the people in one of its provinces. Sovereignty is not to be interpreted as an excuse for totalitarian government.

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Unfortunately, the court has not yet applied this more open, democratic way of thinking to issues that relate to the status of municipal government. There have been strong pressures on the court to rethink the history of colonialism in relation both to Quebec and to the First Nations. More important, perhaps, there is now a large academic literature on the rights of Quebec and the rights of First Nations: a literature on which the court (and the clerks who help write the court’s decisions) can draw. There is no comparable literature in Canada – or in the countries that have influenced our jurisprudence – on the right of local self-government. Sovereigntist thinking, which defines municipalities as creatures (and hence agencies) of the state, has been almost universally accepted in the AngloAmerican democracies.7 There are many reasons for this. Earlier notions about the multiplicity and incommensurability of different forms of political authority seem to have been discredited in the context of democratization. The nation was conceived as the embodiment of the people, and the state was conceived in turn as the embodiment of the nation. Merely local authorities seemed to represent particular interests, often bastions of privilege. Hence, it seemed logical to reorganize local government so that it conformed to the requirements of the state. To think otherwise was to invoke the principles of a different age: the seventeenth century perhaps, or even the thirteenth. Thus, the proponents of local self-government have been cast in the role of reactionaries or utopian dreamers who fail to understand the principles of modern government. What was progressive in the nineteenth century, however, is not progressive now. Our problem is not to create a unified state or to develop a system of trans-local public administration. Those things have already been done. Our problem is to develop new forms of political authority that will enable us to deal with the problems of the twenty-first century. To put those forms of authority on the same register as the state and – worse – subject them all to the arbitrary power of the state is not helpful. It constricts innovation in much the same way that the actions of traditional local authorities did in the early nineteenth century, when reformers were trying to develop political authorities appropriate to the needs of an industrializing society. In our time, however, the state, rather than the local authorities, has been the main obstacle to innovation. In particular, the state has inhibited forms of local authority that might put politics on a different register and so undermine the state’s claim to monopolize political space.

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It is possible to think of a municipality as a political entity that exists alongside the state, in a qualitatively different political space, rather than as a body subordinate to the state, within the space that the state has created. So conceived, a municipality is not a local administrative agency of the state, or even the state in its local guise. Rather, it is a political entity of a qualitatively different sort, an entity that might be recognized by the state, but is not really part of the state. Whether such an entity can be created (or abolished) by the state is a moot point. The important thing to notice is that it can emerge of its own accord, quite apart from the state. It need not borrow the authority of the state to have political authority of its own. Think of some historical examples. In medieval Europe, the Church existed alongside the civil authorities, claiming inherent authority. It also insisted that it was an authority of a different kind, and that it did not begrudge the civil authorities their rightful powers. The relation between spiritual and temporal authorities was a vexing issue, and ultimately some kings – most notoriously, Henry VIII of England – asserted sovereignty over the Church. In that context, some apologists for the temporal authorities tried to argue that the latter had always had sovereignty, but such an argument could hardly be sustained by the historical evidence. The two different modes of authority had existed side by side for centuries. Similarly, the authority of marquesses, dukes, earls, barons, counts, and other nobles had long existed side by side with royal and imperial authority. One noble ruler might have a more dignified title than another, and might thus demand appropriate recognition. Rulers might legitimate their titles by reference to inheritances that bound them to recognize feudal duties in relation to other rulers. The rules, however, that specified the relations of loyalty and obedience were extremely complex and often contradictory, so that it was always doubtful exactly what one nobleman owed to another. Noble rulers existed side by side, enjoying unquestioned authority in some respects in most (but not all) of their own domains, and being subject to the authority of other noblemen in other respects or in relation to other parts of their domains. There were yet other entities – cities, universities, charitable foundations, monasteries, guilds, and so on – that claimed authority from a grant given by some temporal or spiritual ruler; and there were bodies like villages, tribes, or clans that claimed to have had authority from time immemorial. Taken as a whole, the pattern of authority in medieval Europe was extremely complex.

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Although claims might be made that there was some single key to  that pattern of authority (e.g., feudal obligation, grants from the emperor, the legacy of Christ), in fact there was a proliferation of forms of authority and considerable uncertainty about how these forms of authority related to one another.8 The doctrine of sovereignty was a response to this “confusion.”9 Sovereignty was supposed to be the single principle that could rationalize all the relations. By the nineteenth century, judges had come to think in sovereigntist terms, so when they were confronted with the issue of municipal authority, they had a simple answer: municipalities were the creatures of the state. According to this view, the Constitution Act, 1867 resolved the issue of which level of the state would have control over the municipalities: the federal or the provincial. The municipalities had to be either the creatures of Ottawa or the provinces. They could not exist independently. Such self-­subsistence would have been inconsistent with the principle of sovereignty, since that principle was understood to imply that the state had a monopoly of political authority. If the Canadian state consisted of a confederation of the provinces, there could be no authority left over once powers had been divided between the two levels of government. There was simply no space left for autonomous political entities. The implications of this way of thinking about political space are profound. The locality – be it a city or a town or a village or a tribe or a clan or a nation – ceases to exist, except as an effect or “creature” of the state. Thus, the state can reorganize itself in a way that makes the city or the nation concerned disappear. Of course, the state may be reluctant to uses its authority in this way, but – according to the logic of sovereignty – it has an undoubted right to do so. Moreover, the constitution of the state is understood to be the constitution of political space, since the two are identical. That there might be other principles constitutive of political space, principles incommensurate with or at least different from the ones implicit in the constitution of the state, is, literally, unthinkable in sovereigntist terms. The logic of sovereignty is quite explicitly totalitarian. What does not compute with the logic of sovereignty simply does not exist. When Aboriginal peoples assert a right of self-government, they do not say that this right was given to them by the state.10 On the contrary, they say they have always had this right, and that it is a right that no state can take away from them. The implication of this is that there have always been many political authorities in Canada

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that do not derive their authority from the Canadian state. Those authorities existed before the Canadian state was established, and they continue to exist today. Whether the Supreme Court of Canada or any other agency of the Canadian state chooses to recognize this is, in a way, neither here nor there. No decision of the Canadian state can erase these Aboriginal political authorities as long as a substantial number of Aboriginal people wish to maintain those authorities. (Even if a majority of people of Aboriginal descent renounced these authorities, the authorities would still exist.) Aboriginal political authorities exist alongside the Canadian state in a space of their own. The space of the Canadian state is simply incommensurable with the space of the Aboriginal authorities, rather in the way that the space of the Roman Catholic Church is incommensurable with the space of the system of nation-states. It is not that the one exists and the other does not, or that the one has authority and the other does not. Rather, it is that each exists in a different dimension: a different region of space–time, as it were. That is not to say that Aboriginal peoples exist in the past and the Canadian state in the present, or vice versa; both exist in the present, but the domains in which they exist are different. This recognition is of great importance because it allows us to think that different forms of political authority may co-exist without a relation of subordination. Sovereigntists believe that all political authority must exist within the same domain and be resolved into a whole. According to their view, every political authority is disposed to claim sovereignty. The only way to resolve the competing claims is to establish an agreed-upon hierarchy of authority that locates sovereignty in a definite place; however, if we move away from the sovereigntist perspective, we can see that different political authorities can exist in their own worlds without necessarily intruding on the worlds governed by other authorities. This is a hard idea to grasp because we are schooled to think in sovereigntist terms; but think again about the example of Aboriginal peoples. Aboriginal self-­ government is largely a matter of Aboriginal peoples working out ways to maintain themselves as Aboriginal peoples under modern conditions. To maintain themselves, Aboriginal peoples have to organize themselves and hence to govern themselves. For the most part, this has little to do with anyone else. It is rather like the problem of the Roman Catholic Church maintaining itself, hence organizing itself and governing itself in a way that works under modern

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conditions. This is a problem for Catholics to sort out. The rest of us are not directly affected. The ongoing problem of Aboriginal selfgovernment is one that Aboriginal peoples have to sort out for themselves, and it is not a problem that can be settled one way or another by actions of the Canadian state (or indeed any other state). At this point, one might well object that what is true for the Roman Catholic Church or for Aboriginal peoples is definitely not true for municipalities. If we grant (as many people would not) that Aboriginal peoples and the Roman Catholic Church exist in political spaces incommensurable with the political space of the state, how could anyone in his right mind argue that the same is true of municipalities? Again, it is a matter of loosening some old assumptions. Think again of the village, the town, or the city. Think of their origins. Think of how a way of life is worked out on the ground, through the practices of urban life. And think of how a practice of “self-government” is implicit in urban life. How could cities work if we did not govern ourselves appropriately in our day-to-day lives? Surely, the practice of “self-government” is apparent on every Toronto subway car, in every village street, in every hospital and daycare centre. How could civilized life exist, without self-­government? Is not civilization, to a large extent, a learned practice of self-government? The politics of that everyday practice is apparent every day in the spaces where we live. This suggests that the space of everyday life is a political space that develops out of everyday practice – a space constituted in a domain that is other than the domain of the state. The sovereigntist view is that the space of the state and the space of everyday life – civil society – stand in a relation in which the former is expected to govern the latter. Politics, sovereigntists claim, is the struggle for the right to govern, and hence for the right to control the state. Political authority, in the proper sense, is supposedly authority of, in, or over the state. This view is one of those absurd fictions that draw their strength from their own absurdity. We fear that everything might collapse if we start to think of things in a different way, so we cling to the ruins of old ideas. We know that the authorities that govern us are multiple, and that the ones that are contained within the framework of the state are not necessarily the most important ones. (Consider, for example, multinational corporations.) We know that the political space in which we must operate is much more complex than the space of the state and that the democratic authorities we need in order to deal with the real world

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are underdeveloped. So, why do we go on clinging to ideas that prevent us from acting effectively? Is it simply that we are afraid of new possibilities? If so, there is something reassuring about the idea of local self-government, because it is an old idea that has been made to work in the past. Can we make it work under new conditions?

T h e P o l i t i c a l S pa c e o f t h e E v e ry day According to the conventional view, municipalities provide scope for local self-government. To the extent that there is a sustained argument for local political institutions, it turns on the idea that such institutions can compensate for the remoteness of the state. Some analysts insist that the state is supposed to be remote: it is supposed to be at one remove from the people, for its job is to govern the people. According to this view, the purpose of democratic institutions is only to make the leaders of the state accountable to the people.11 Self-government is neither desirable nor possible. The other view is that democratic institutions are intended to make the state as much of an organ of self-government as is possible in the circumstances. According to both views, the state as such is susceptible to democratization only in small degree, because the purpose of the state is to establish uniformity of laws (and hence uniformly good conditions of life) over a large territory. Millions of politically inexperienced people cannot act as one to govern a large territory effectively. They must have a government with a large bureaucracy, consistent principles of administration, expert assistance, and a capacity for coordination. If the state is to be an effective institution, it can only provide for mass participation in exceptional decisions. Most decisions have to be made bureaucratically; professional politicians can get involved in what they take to be the key decisions, and give direction to the bureaucracy; those politicians can in turn be made accountable to the people at large. More democracy than that is simply not possible. So the standard story goes. What that story implies, however, is that there may be room for local self-government, even if the state is otherwise organized. One can accept the necessity for a strong state, at one remove from the people, and still believe that there should be institutions of local self-government. That was how Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill saw the matter, and such views still seem to be common among liberal democrats. People

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generally take for granted that we ought to have institutions of local self-government as a counterweight to the state. If one follows the logic of local self-government to its conclusion, one begins to see that a different idea of the political is implicit in that logic. In the standard statist view, the political is to be associated with the state itself: whatever concerns or involves the state is political; whatever does not is social, cultural, or economic. This view is at odds with another view, which grows out of everyday life: politics is everywhere, in the family, on the streets, in the classroom, in the office, in the concert hall, wherever one might look. As we all know, power takes many forms, and is exercised in many different ways. People may resist power when it is exercised over them, or they may align themselves with that power. People may try to create new powers; they may struggle over an available power; they may try to overcome one power with a different kind of power. Power relations are extraordinarily complex. When we relate to those relations as such, we tend to think of them as political. To be subject to power is to be subject to politics; to contest that power is to contest the authority that grows from that particular politics. We say that a situation has been politicized when at least some of the people concerned have questioned the power being exercised: i.e., they have challenged its authority. The question of who or what will have authority in a particular situation is always the key political question. When people complain that “it’s all political,” what they mean is that matters are not being determined in accordance with agreed (hence depoliticized) norms, but rather by criteria related to the needs and ambitions of the people who are exercising authority. The politics of the situation becomes manifest when things no longer flow from agreed-upon rules. To demand local self-government is to question the state’s authority to dispose of conditions of life in one’s own locality and to claim instead the right to dispose of these matters locally, in accordance with the relations of authority that are accepted locally. Certain relations of authority are implicit in the practices of everyday life. In that sense, a local community is always already constituted politically. Whether it shares in the authority of the state or whether the “government” established in that community actually emerges from the established relations of political authority is far from certain. In fact, the common perception of municipalities is that

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they are neither one nor the other, neither potent embodiments of state authority nor effective manifestations of the relations of political authority that flow from the everyday life of the community. If municipalities were the latter, they would be nearer to embodying the ideal of local self-government. At the same time, the relations of authority that flow from the everyday life of the community are not necessarily democratic. Some people are suspicious of municipal government because they think that local communities are normally undemocratic. To empower undemocratic local communities might be to retard progress toward the ideals implicit in a “free and democratic society.” Nevertheless, to disempower all local communities on the grounds that some of them might subvert the larger ideal hardly seems sensible. One of the difficulties we face is in identifying the form of local community relevant to discussions of local self-government. We are still dealing with the effects of the Romantic reaction to urbanization, a reaction that has long informed the idealization of rural communities. The rural community is the imagined alternative to the city, and its character is the subject of obsessive concern. Whatever its merits, however, the rural community is no longer the norm, and there is no conceivable scenario – except perhaps a horrific war that destroys most of human life – in which a majority of Canadians will again come to live on farms and in little villages. The villages that will survive the twenty-first century are likely to be the ones that succeed in transforming themselves into retreats for urbanites. The paradigmatic immediate community for the majority of us will be the neighbourhood, not the village, and relatively few of us will live in neighbourhoods that have the qualities of intimacy and inclusiveness celebrated by the Romantics. Many, if not most, neighbourhoods will remain as they are today: loose communities to which some people are strongly attached, but many are not.12 Transience, anonymity, and openness will not cease to be characteristics of urban life. On the contrary, people will continue to lead lives and form communities that transcend particular neighbourhoods. It is not that people who live urban lives lack community. It is that the communities in which they engage are multifarious and shifting. Some people will live in relative stability, at least at certain stages of their lives, with definite circles of family, friends, workmates, neighbours, and other acquaintances. Nevertheless, these networks of community will rarely conform to neighbourhood boundaries. Other people will

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lead lives whose shape changes year by year if not month by month. No one pattern is necessarily ideal. In fact, one of the virtues of urban life is that it allows people to keep changing as their needs and aspirations change. We need to be suspicious of change only insofar as it is thrust upon people who lack the resources to deal with it. The fact remains that the changefulness and complexity of urban communities make it difficult to privilege the neighbourhood – or, indeed, any wider region – as the locus for “local self-government.” Thus, there is persistent confusion about the matter of urban boundaries. This confusion results not from our inability to clarify the issues, but rather from the complexity of the situation we face. On the one hand, we think that local government should be qualitatively different from other forms of government: more intimate, less partisan, more closely attuned to the patterns of everyday life. We think that it should enable us not just to hold our governors to account, but to be self-governing, in the fullest sense. That means keeping it on a neighbourly scale, so that there can be some chance of communal self-government. On the other hand, our lives are not confined within neighbourhoods, nor do we wish them to be. If we are to be self-governing in the proper sense, and yet continue to live characteristically urban lives, we need to be able to make collective decisions about the wider communities in which we live. The relevant collectivity is more like an urban region than a neighbourhood. Given modern means of transportation and communication, the region at issue may well be 100 or even 200 kilometres across. Those who live in neighbourhoods on the other side of the region may not seem like co-inhabitants, and yet there may be many issues that we have in common. Thus, the relevant community stretches between the neighbourhood and the urban region. Some of us are more concerned about protecting our neighbourhoods, others about providing for effective governance on a regional scale. The problem is that it is not evident that there is enough commitment to urban communities on any scale to make vibrant political life possible. Globalization complicates this problem. Urban regions are connected with one another, and we can identify various urban clusters on a sub-national, national, or trans-national scale. These clusters are in turn related to one another, at least as part of a global economy. How far the process has gone is a matter for debate, but it is no longer silly to talk about a global culture, a global society, and global political institutions. These are real phenomena. One way of

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understanding this is to say that we live within a global urban system, or a “global city,” if you prefer.13 In relation to the global city, Canada is just a particular neighbourhood. Like smaller urban neighbourhoods, it is relatively porous. Although some people live almost entirely within the neighbourhood, others are connected with networks that stretch across different neighbourhoods (or “countries” as we usually call these larger entities). Just as the immediate neighbourhood may have only a tenuous hold on the loyalty and concern of its residents, the wider neighbourhood that is the country (or the province) may have difficulty establishing itself as the main focus of popular loyalty and concern. Partisans of the nation-state tend to regard this as a huge problem, but we should not be too quick to jump to that conclusion. The fact that people live complicated lives and have complicated loyalties and complicated concerns is not in itself a problem. There is no intrinsic virtue in a patriotism that focuses on the nation as opposed to the city as an object of concern. What matters is that our political institutions are appropriate to the way we actually live. Having anachronistic structures that no longer suit the lives that we actually lead is a great problem. Arguably, that is exactly the problem we face.

T h e R i g h t o f L o c a l S e l f - G ov e r n m e n t If one were to look afresh at political institutions on this half of the continent, one’s attention would not go first to the municipalities. Instead, one would focus on the odd assemblage of authorities that passes for the Canadian state. The logic of maintaining a separate transcontinental political authority as a sort of appendage to the body politic of the US is not immediately apparent; nor are those nineteenth-­ century creations called “provinces” obviously ­necessary. Almost everyone recognizes that the patterns of life that emerge from our economic, social, and cultural activities are different from the ones that follow from the structure of our political institutions. Government regulations may make Toronto the centre of our airline system, but we all know that air travel would flow through other centres if those regulations were to disappear. But for the power of the Canadian state – including the Canadian provinces – our lives would be even more completely involved with American life than they already are. Thus we have to keep asking ourselves why we bother to maintain these institutions that enforce a certain

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separation. Personally, I think that there are a number of good reasons for remaining separate, but my point here is that if one were to identify the levels of government whose necessity was most questionable, the provincial and federal governments would be the ones that would merit most attention. By contrast, the need for some form of local government is almost self-evident. No doubt we need other political authorities, but it is hard to see how we can manage the challenges of urban life without political institutions that enable us to come to terms with problems that emerge where we live day to day. Where we live day to day is still relatively immediate: one’s house or apartment, the place(s) where one works, the places where one goes to shop, places of entertainment and recreation, local parks and open spaces, and so on. The scale of everyday life is variable: it differs from activity to activity and from person to person. To some extent, it is de-territorialized, in that we can live with others, in certain respects, even though they are thousands of kilometres away. Nevertheless, much if not most of our day-to-day existence is confined within a territory that we can reach conveniently on foot, by car, or by public transit. Day-to-day life is, for the most part, life lived within a particular neighbourhood, set of neighbourhoods, city, or urban region.14 Life is not lived on a global or national scale, except insofar as we participate in mass-mediated culture or in wider social, economic, or political activities. The immediate urban region in which we live is the setting for most of what we do, and we have a clear interest in seeing that that setting remains hospitable. The urban setting is an unavoidable given: something with which we have to contend and to which we have to relate in some fashion. To become self-conscious and effective politically is in part a matter of engaging with the setting in which we find ourselves. Although there is more to that setting than what is physically present to us, that physical presence constitutes a space with which we have to contend if we are to be “self-governing.” This is what our Supreme Court has yet to recognize. We can do without much in our political institutions – we can do without Canada or Quebec – and still remain consistent with the principles of a free and democratic society. We cannot do without the institutions that enable us to govern ourselves locally, within urban settings. If there are rights implicit in having a “free and democratic society,” the right of local self-government is among them. That is a right to have political institutions that enable us to govern ourselves in our own cities.

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In what might such a right consist? Unfortunately, it is very difficult to say. In the United States, there was a controversy among legal scholars and judges in the late nineteenth century, a controversy that centred on what came to be known as “Dillon’s Rule.”15 Judge Dillon had said, in a widely read ruling, that municipalities were simply creatures of the states, and hence were subject to state law in all matters. This meant that a municipality’s constitution could be changed by ordinary state legislation. Whatever powers were given to the municipalities under state law could later be taken away. Municipalities could be abolished, amalgamated, or reorganized at the discretion of the state legislature. In Dillon’s view, there was no right of local self-government, rather, just a right of the people in each state to have a republican form of government at the state level. This view was challenged by various scholars, including Judge Cooley. In the end, the Supreme Court of the United States accepted Dillon’s account. Even those scholars who were sympathetic to the notion of an inherent right of local self-government tended to conclude that the right was inchoate, so vague that it could be reasonably interpreted in entirely contradictory ways and so had no value to judges who had to make concrete decisions. An analogy might be made to the three principles articulated in the American Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Judges have made some progress in articulating a set of rights that have to be protected if people are to enjoy liberty. They have been less certain about what to do with a purported “right to life.” The “right to the pursuit of happiness” defeats them completely. What would be involved in such a right? “Better not go there,” has been the view. There has been a similar reluctance to explore ideas about a right of local self-government, because to recognize a set of justiciable rights associated with that principle would mean committing the courts to settling matters on the basis of principles that have yet to be articulated with sufficient clarity. To the extent that this matter has been litigated in Canada, the key cases have related to issues like the so-called megacity amalgamation in Toronto.16 Proponents of local self-government have argued that the provinces have no right to alter municipal boundaries, reallocate functions, or reduce the fiscal autonomy of local authorities. The courts have not been sympathetic to these arguments, which seem to imply that municipal boundaries are sacrosanct and that no change can be made in the existing division of revenues and  responsibilities between the provincial government and local

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authorities. Clearly, a right of local self-government is something we have as people, not something that inheres in particular structures of government. We need to be able to change our political, administrative, and fiscal arrangements from time to time, to take account of changes in the way we live. At no level of government is this more important than at the local level. An urban way of life is inherently changeable, and it is important that we keep adapting our institutions. There must be flexibility, but at what cost? The provinces keep changing arrangements for local government with such frequency the public is simply bewildered. The municipalities find it difficult to develop political constituencies of their own. Because the municipalities are so weak politically, the provinces can force unpopular changes through, and still get away with it electorally.17 Under the circumstances, the courts have been reluctant to intervene, because it is far from clear that the defenders of existing local institutions actually have the support of the public at large. Municipalities are supposed to provide for local self-government, but the ones we actually have are so limited in their powers and so remote from their constituents that they can scarcely sustain themselves. If by “local self-government” we mean a system that enables us to govern ourselves in our own local communities, rather than be governed by a distant state, then the institutions we now have fail to give us what we need. It may be that some municipalities – mostly small ones – approximate a system of local self-government in that they are organically related to the communities they serve; however, this is the exception, rather than the rule. Most municipalities are alien to the people who live within their borders. They – like the federal and provincial governments – are organs of government over the people. Ordinary people often know less about their municipalities than they know about the federal and provincial governments, whose leaders appear on television and whose policies are discussed at length in the media. Why should an Albertan feel more distant from Ralph Klein18 than from what’s-his-name, the local mayor? Why should an Albertan feel more attached to the existing form of the municipality (or the local school board) than to the existing form of the ministry of highways? If Klein and his people can reorganize the latter, why not the former? It is not clear to people that local selfgovernment is actually at stake when provincial governments fiddle with municipal boundaries or change municipal powers. To the extent that local self-government exists in Canada, the practice is contained in a myriad of institutions, some of them voluntary, some

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governmental, some connected with the municipalities, and some of them not. The practice, such as it is, is so variable, so complicated, so much connected to everyday life, that it is almost impossible to map. This is the practice that we have to nurture. Municipal autonomy is important to it, but it is not all of it. I seem to be saying two things: that local self-government does not really exist in Canada and that it is nonetheless a ubiquitous practice. What I mean is that the practice, although pervasive, has not been properly recognized and that its embodiment in existing municipal institutions is at best uncertain. Those existing institutions subvert the practice as much as they facilitate it, because they work like institutions of the state, institutions that provide for government over us rather than for self-government. When we are asked to go to the wall in defence of North York or Burnaby, it seems absurd, because North York and Burnaby do not appear to be organs of local self-government. They just seem like ordinary bodies of government controlled by low-level politicians and bureaucrats. A meaningful right of local self-government has to be connected to the practice of self-government and embodied in institutions that give effect to that practice. The practice at stake is one that involves direct citizen participation in the business of government. It is a different aspect of democracy from the one involved in having periodic elections. The elections are to choose legislators, to deal with matters that we cannot deal with ourselves in our local communities. Local self-government involves some, but not all of the practices that are entailed by self-government generally. The key principle is that it is better for people to govern themselves in their own way than to be governed externally. Having a large sphere of personal freedom is a part of what is involved. Having the right to participate in debates about wider legislative matters is also important; however, having local institutions that enable direct participation in the government of the local community is crucial. Without such institutions, democracy is thin and imperfect.

Vindicating Democratic Rights The implication of my analysis is that Canadian democracy is thin and imperfect, in large part because we have failed to develop a set of municipal institutions that meet the need for local self-­government. If we are to create such institutions in the twenty-first century, we have to become much more insistent on our rights in this regard.

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Neither the federal government nor the provincial government has a right to deprive us of the institutions that would enable us to be selfgoverning in our local communities.19 In fact, they have a duty to provide such institutions where such institutions do not now exist. The overwhelming majority of Canadians live in places where opportunities for local self-government are sparse and incomplete. If we appeal to the courts, it should be on the grounds that we have been unjustly deprived of opportunities that are required for Canada to be a free and democratic society. Three aspects of this deprivation are particularly troublesome: the absence of institutions for direct democracy at the neighbourhood level; bars to citizen participation in local agencies of the state that are not under the control of elective local authorities; and the underdevelopment of political institutions for the various regions of the urban global. Let me make it clear that when I speak of direct democracy, I am not referring to referenda. A referendum is a poor substitute for the real thing: a meeting or assembly where people can discuss matters and make decisions. How the old model of the town meeting can be related to the conditions of modern urban life is a hard question, but it is not really a question that has ever been effectively posed in Canada. The assumption is that we must have “representative government” at all levels, even in communities that are small enough for other alternatives. Urban neighbourhoods are often very small – consisting of only a few hundred people at best. What means are there for people to govern themselves in such neighbourhoods? What provision is there for the neighbours to assemble and resolve certain matters for themselves? Are such assemblies accorded any authority when they do occur? Under what circumstances might we refuse to recognize the authority of a neighbourhood assembly? Are there other sorts of communities – networks of interest and concern – that encompass some of the people in various neighbourhoods? Should assemblies of such people have some form of recognition? Should communities that stretch across different neighbourhoods have certain powers of self-government? If so, which? These are not easy issues, but they are issues that we would have to address if we were seriously committed to democracy.20 When I talk of the barrier to effective public participation in local institutions of government that are not controlled by the municipalities or the school boards, I am referring to the fact that the provincial and federal governments routinely establish local agencies that make decisions about the local community without offering the local

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community meaningful opportunities to participate in those decisions. Is your local R C M P detachment in any way accountable to your local community? What are the mechanisms for citizen participation in R C M P policy? Think of your local hospital or public health clinic. Are its directors responsible to you? What are the mechanisms that enable you and others like you to participate in decisions on local health care? I could raise similar questions about forestry offices, ocean research stations, highways offices, museums, employment offices, and an array of other local public agencies. I could complicate the issue by bringing a variety of non-profit agencies and private companies into view, on the grounds that they were providing public services under contract or otherwise filling niches within the public sector. Too often, when we pose the question of local democracy, we think only of the municipalities and we forget that municipalities only control a fraction of what goes on in the way of local government activity. Just because the province takes over a local hospital and tries to run it does not it mean that it ceases to be a local hospital; however, people in the local community may find that they have much less to access to decision-making about health care than they had before. This is not an issue that should be ignored. When I talk of the underdevelopment of political institutions for the various regions of the urban global, I am referring to the fact that everyday urban life occurs in regions that bear little resemblance to the territorial divisions of the state and state system. Metropolitan reformers have long pointed to the fact that urban life is organized into regions of differing scales, and that the regions around major cities are very large. In many cases, there is no appropriate urban– regional authority, or even any forum where urban–regional issues can be posed and properly debated. There is another problem, however, and that is that the urban global is taking on the shape of a global city, which transcends particular countries. What political institutions might be appropriate at that global level? These are difficult questions, and I should hasten to add that I am not making a case for unified metropolitan government, let alone for unified world government. In fact, I believe that the model of the unified state is a bad model for contemporary political institutions. We need to have multiple forms of political authority, and most of these forms will depart dramatically from the model of the state; however, that is not to deny that we need to work out ways of governing ourselves on the

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various scales in which we actually live. Global self-government is implicit in the principle of local self-government. I or anyone else could suggest any number of measures to enhance the opportunities for local self-government, but to do so in abstraction from the particularities of individual communities is not very helpful. A measure that would broaden popular participation in one place could discourage it in another by reinforcing a particular form of elite domination or by alienating certain minorities. There is no magic formula in these matters, and no way of guaranteeing the best results. We need experimentation and innovation, informed by lateral communication between activists, politicians, and public officials in different communities. The answers, such as they are, must be worked out on the ground in specific institutional contexts, by people dealing with particular political conflicts in a particular socioeconomic setting on the basis of particular historical experiences. We sometimes forget that a local community has as specific a history as the country as a whole. What works in Halifax or Inuvik may not work in Montreal or Calgary. I have argued elsewhere for  direct democracy at the neighbourhood level (see chapter 1), fuller recognition of the local state as a presence in our lives (see chapter 3), and the need for a reconsideration of the political space afforded by the urban global (see “Hyperspace” or “The Symbiosis of the Urban and the Political”). Here I am suggesting that Canadians in general need to press much more vigorously for their right of local selfgovernment and to resist efforts on the part of the authorities to encroach upon that right by destroying local institutions and frustrating efforts to arrive at decisions democratically. I am also suggesting that Canadian intellectuals need to begin thinking about the issues posed here in a much more serious way.21 We have had endless constitutional debates about other issues, but everything to do with the municipal and the local has been pushed to one side as if it were a trivial matter beneath the notice of those who deal in questions of high politics. This must change if we are to deal with the realities of life in the twenty-first century. According to the standard sovereigntist view, we are not really fit to govern ourselves, even on a small scale or in minor matters. Our leaders rarely express this view directly, because they do not want to insult us; however, they act upon it as far as they can. Sadly, the courts support them, by deferring to antique notions of sovereignty, notions that make nonsense of the ideal of democracy. We need to

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insist on the right of local self-government if we are to make good on that ideal. Every time a school or hospital is closed without proper consultation, every time a police force refuses to give an account of its policies, every time a social or cultural agency is deprived of its funding, the principles of local self-government are at stake. The real constitution of our country is revealed in the fine details of local administration. We cannot grant that the state has the right to alter this real constitution without even consulting the people most affected, nor can we grant that the constitution is democratic if it fails to provide appropriate opportunities for direct democracy and citizen participation. A democratic constitution is one that protects our rights, not one that empowers the state to deny us opportunities for local – or global – self-government. In this discussion, I skirt a crucial question. Should people be able to constitute municipalities on whatever basis they want? Should any and every municipality have constitutional protection? What if a self-interested group uses municipal powers to frustrate efforts to provide low-income housing or halfway houses or shelters for street people? What if such a group takes control of a municipality on the suburban fringe and sells out to developers who care nothing about energy conservation, the preservation of natural areas, or the conservation of agricultural land? And, what are we supposed to do when narrow-minded, parochial, self-interested municipal authorities stand in the way of rational transportation planning, equitable taxation, and all the crucial public services that “progressives” favour? This takes us back to the issues I considered in chapters 1 and 2. There I cast doubt on some of the standard progressive arguments against small-scale local authorities. Let me add a few things here. As I write this, there are great controversies in my province about pipelines that are supposed to carry bitumen from the Alberta tar sands to the Pacific coast to ship to Asia. There is a good chance that some or all of these projects will be frustrated by local authorities. The First Nations authorities along the coast are especially sceptical about prospective tanker traffic. Well they should be. In any case, these authorities seem to be the only ones prepared to stand up for the wider public interest, which is not served by plans to excavate more of the tar sands and extract yet more bitumen to be burned. In my view, the federal and provincial

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governments have been acting like shills for the oil and gas industry, rather than living up to their wider responsibilities. That may not change. So, why should I be worried about the possibility that some small First Nations authority might stand in the way of what the pipeline proponents regard as progress? My idea of progress is quite different from the one that the pipeline proponents have, and it is not clear to me that larger authorities are any more – or less – likely to follow the right path than smaller ones. It would be nice if larger authorities promoted environmentally friendly, socially responsible, and truly equitable forms of development, but this is rare. Smaller authorities may resist good developments, but they also resist bad ones. There is no obvious connection between the scale of an authority and its political character. In another article that I wrote,22 I tried to address the problem of privatistic localism23 more directly. By privatistic localism, I mean the idea that a local authority is there mainly to advance the private interests of the people who live there – even at the expense of the public interest. Is there a way of forestalling such uses of public authority? Not entirely. At best, perhaps, we can promote the understanding that I advance here, which emphasizes that the right of local self-government is as much about restraining ourselves for the sake of others as about exercising our freedom. Once we get away from the idea that every political authority must be sovereign within its own sphere, and accept the fact that there must be a multiplicity of political authorities with overlapping responsibilities, then we can see that the presence of small, awkwardly-shaped municipalities is no barrier to the creation of other authorities on a different scale, with more “rational” boundaries. We can – and often do – create new authorities to meet new needs, and this “proliferation” is neither a threat to freedom nor a recipe for dysfunctional administration. Authorities may sometimes be at odds with one another, but this is less of a problem than the absence of any authority on the appropriate scale to deal with the problems at hand. Given our sorry record on environmental issues, I can only welcome the possibility that we might have many governments on various scales attempting to address those issues. Perhaps together they might have some positive effect. The same might be said of action on a range of other matters that seem to be of little interest to the higher authorities, not least the widening gap between the rich and the poor. In recent years, there have been strong demands

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for leaner, more efficient government, and hence for ridding the system of any duplication. As the public choice analysts pointed out more than a generation ago, duplication is not in itself a problem, however, even if the concern is only to get value for money. When our concerns are broader, it can be of great benefit to have more than one authority address the matters at hand. If we are to come to terms with the big issues of our day, we will need more governments doing more things, not fewer.

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9 Local Self-Government and the Right to the City*

This paper was prompted by the revival of an old slogan – “the right to the city” – during the “Occupy” movement that began in 2011. Henri Lefebvre had popularized that slogan in 1968 in the wake of the “May events” of that year in France, but it had fallen into disuse. The Wall Street occupation of 2011, which mimicked earlier occupations in North Africa and Europe and encouraged similar occupations elsewhere, could be understood in various ways, but it obviously involved a claim to the city, symbolically and otherwise. The focus on Wall Street in New York was meant to symbolize the concentration of economic power there, and the self-description of the movement as representing the 99 per cent, as against the 1 per cent who seemed to control things, suggested that the many, the demos, were struggling for their rights. The Wall Street occupation was especially evocative because its ostensible target was a financial centre and not the state. How could the people make this centre theirs? Didn’t that mean challenging the rights of private property, cutting through the clutter of politics as usual – with its focus on elections and legislative manoeuvring – and concentrating instead on what was really important: how the system as a whole distorted people’s lives, foreclosed their opportunities, and shut them off from the wealth that was everyone’s birthright? That is certainly how many of the radicals involved saw it. The fact that the ensuing conversations

*  Based on a paper delivered at the Urban Affairs Association Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, P A , 21 April 2012.

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addressed so many different issues was a source of frustration for some and of celebration for others. It seemed like things were not regulated by any particular policy agenda, and instead were opening up in unpredictable ways. One way of describing what was happening is that people – or at least some of them – were demanding their right to the city, however many disagreements there might have been about what that right might involve. The city is of course both an actual place and a symbolic centre, Wall Street even more so. What does it mean for people to claim Wall Street as theirs? How might the local and the global then be related? What would a democratic occupation of Wall Street consist of as an enduring practice, rather than as just a temporary ­protest? Questions of this sort were and are in circulation, but ­discussions are usually abstracted from the principle of local selfgovernment, even when that principle is implicit, as in the commentary of anarchists like David Graeber.1 In this paper, I start not from the Occupy movement, which has come and gone, but from the ideas and practices in our existing institutions, and try to show how the right to the city and the right to local self-government might be understood together. Perhaps it hardly needs saying, but the practices of the Occupiers – although suggestive of some important possibilities – tell us much less than we need to know about how we might do things more democratically in the long run. I think that we all need to be much more attentive to our existing practices of local self-government – and the ways in which those practices have been suppressed or distorted – to make sense of our political possibilities. This is especially important for people who consider themselves radicals or progressives. How can we understand the relationship between the local and the global, or between Wall Street and the world, if we just put all the traditional issues about local self-government aside, as most activists and ­sympathetic commentators have done? Once upon a time, a right of local self-government was routinely asserted in relation to the claims of a modernizing state. The contrast was between a remote central authority and local authorities that somehow embodied the principle of self-government. Selfgovernment was contrasted with a form of government in which authority was asserted over the locality concerned. The locality was identified as a place where collective self-government could be

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practised, because it was on a small scale and the people who inhabited it could readily understand and address the issues that arose there. Such people would have what Clifford Geertz and James C. Scott were to call “local knowledge”2 – specific knowledge of the locality concerned – as opposed to generalized and hence largely theoretical knowledge of the sort that more remote authorities might possess. Thus, there was often an epistemological claim implicit in the argument for local self-government, a claim conjoined with the assertion that the locality’s interests (and / or preferences) were different from those of the larger state or society in which it was embedded. These two claims – the one to the effect that the people in the locality would know better what to do and / or be better able to accomplish what was needed and the other that their interests were in any case distinct – were reinforced by a third, and often more important one: namely, that self-government was inherently better than external government because it allowed people more freedom, overcame their apathy and dependency, stimulated them, and encouraged them to take more responsibility for themselves and for the people and places around them. This vision of robust, dynamic, local self-government was set out most vividly and appealingly in the works of Tocqueville and Mill in the mid-nineteenth century. There are other variants that are less attractive, however. Obviously, any claim to a right of local selfgovernment can be parochial in the worst sense. It can represent a turning inward, a refusal of wider responsibilities, a stubborn attachment to local hierarchies, and a resistance to widely acknowledged truths. For instance, in nineteenth-century England the right of local self-government was invoked to justify resistance to public health measures, which current scientific discoveries showed to be necessary for everyone’s well-being. One can think of similar instances today, say where vaccination programs are resisted by local authorities who claim the right to make the relevant decisions. More generally, one can see that the right of local self-government can protect privileged localities that refuse to contribute appropriately to wider causes – especially ones that involve action on behalf of the underprivileged, marginalized, or excluded parts of the general population. For many who believed in the social democratic ideals that took shape in the twentieth century, claims to a right of local selfgovernment seemed like claims to continued privilege, reactionary sentiment, ignorance, and irresponsibility. So, to the extent that there

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was provision for local autonomy in the developing modern state, it was generally as a modulation of institutions designed to allow for effective central government. Federalism came to be understood as a principle for organizing a very large and / or internally divided state: that it devolved authority onto smaller-scale authorities was almost incidental.3 Similarly, the ideal local authority was conceived as one that operated on a relatively large scale, perhaps big enough to encompass an entire metropolis or city–region. A common way of understanding the right of local self-government today is in terms of the European principle of subsidiarity,4 which suggests that authority should be devolved to the lowest level possible, given what is required for equitable and effective public policy. In this conception, the right of local self-government is definitely relative to the rational ordering of the state, and thus to the knowledge that enables the latter. Such knowledge is not local knowledge of the sort that Geertz and Scott had in mind. Moreover, the presumption is that differences of interest between the locality and the wider society are to be resolved in favour of the latter. Local self-government may be valued, but only as a subsidiary practice within a state ordered on other principles. The most robust articulations of the right of local self-government come from libertarians of the right and left, the former imagining a state that is melded with the market and organized on the principles of market rationality5 and the latter imagining a democracy that subordinates both the state and the market to its own principles.6 The latter articulation is the most interesting, for two related reasons: it challenges both market rationality and state rationality, and it imagines a form of order that actually develops from self-government, rather than from alienated authority.7 Current neo-liberal nostrums are a reminder that the state and the market are two dimensions of the same order, always already conceived as a way of curtailing and / or regulating human freedom: the point is always to conduct the conduct of people so that they do the right things. Left-libertarian or anarchist-inspired visions always gesture toward the openness implicit in the idea that people have a right of local self-government. If authority is localized, rather than centralized, it will be devolved to people who will claim their right of local self-government in various ways: as individuals, associations, movements, enterprises, communities, tribes, nations, etc. To specify in advance which localities are entitled to self-government would be to beg the main political question.

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Henri Lefebvre’s notion of a “right to the city” seems to suggest something akin to a right of local self-government, interpreted in left-libertarian terms, but Lefebvre’s account of that right is vague.8 This notion is his way (or, at least, one of his ways) of concretizing the claims of the proletariat in relation to the bourgeoisie. Read in the context of Marxist revolutionary theory, Lefebvre’s ideas suggest a different way of thinking about revolutionary struggle, one that locates it in urban society rather than in the countryside and moves it from the factory gates or the picket line to the streets of the city as a whole. It suggests that the issues at stake are as much about how the city as a whole is to be understood as an oeuvre – a work or product of human endeavour – as about how the specific products of workers are to be understood. The alienation implicit in capitalist production is extended, amplified, and transformed through the relations of reproduction (including the processes that Castells described in terms of collective consumption),9 which constantly regenerate the working class as subordinate and produce the city as an imagined and physical space alien to the working class. For the working class to exercise its right to the city would be to make the city its own. This revolutionary transformation would overcome the  alienation required by the capitalist mode of production, and usher in a genuinely urban society, in which people could actually exercise their right to the city in the fullest possible sense. From a Marxist perspective, there is not much point in trying to articulate exactly what the right to the city might involve, because the claim covers matters that can only be worked out in the course of struggle. At any moment, certain aspects of the right to the city come to the fore in the course of urban struggles, but other aspects are not so apparent. What in the end will be necessary and appropriate remains to be discovered, and some claims that are important now will be obsolete in the future. So understood, the right to the city cannot be reduced to a list of specific claims. There can be no exhaustive account of what the right to the city might entail, and every particular claim will be relative to the situation of the people concerned. What’s at issue in Pittsburgh is not the same as what is at issue in Athens or Aleppo. At best, we might say that a “right to the city” is among the aspirations of the people everywhere. But, if the argument in this book is correct, it ought to be understood in relation to aspirations for local self-­ government. The two rights are best understood as complementary

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challenges to the existing order, which reveal much of what has been excluded from liberal democracy.

T h e R i g h t o f L o c a l S e l f - G ov e r n m e n t One obvious question, however, is how a right of local self-­government might relate to a more general right of self-government. The common liberal view is that everyone has a right to freedom, a right that is usually interpreted as a matter of autonomy. Although, in the Kantian view, autonomy is to be interpreted as a matter of living in accordance with a law or rule that one gives to oneself, liberals usually pay little attention to government as an activity emanating from the self at issue. Instead, the focus is on the restrictions that have to be swept away, to allow for freedom. Moreover, the self is usually understood to be an individual person. The result is that what might have been conceived as a very general issue – how both individual and collective selves are to be constituted in a way that ensures that government of others is always rooted in appropriate government of ourselves – is narrowed in a way that obscures much of what is at stake and presupposes certain answers to the most basic political questions. As I have already remarked, I instead follow Foucault in suggesting that we can understand government as the conduct of the c­ onduct of others.10 Government in this sense is not the same as domination. Rather, it is a matter of guiding people to do certain things, or to do them in certain ways, and avoid other alternatives.11 Ideally, one structures a situation so that it seems obvious to the person or people concerned that they should proceed in a certain way. One can offer incentives as well as penalties, but the main thing is to erect barriers that prevent people from going off in the wrong directions. If the situation is normalized and people come to see the barriers as natural and necessary, very little will have to be done by the external authority to ensure that people continue to do the right things. A well-governed population will think that it is free, and in fact it will be free in an important sense. Within constraints, it will govern itself. Mild penalties will be sufficient to deal with most forms of misbehaviour, and the population will be activated appropriately by a range of incentives. So, everything can be orchestrated in such a way that everyone enjoys local self-government in a double sense: individual and collective freedom. As far as possible, people can be induced to govern themselves, individually and collectively, and this

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will involve them in the government of others, but in a fashion that conforms to the practices by which people govern themselves. Government in this sense is an activity that one can apply to oneself as well as to others. As Plato, for one, well understood, the rule that one applies to oneself largely determines the rule that one applies to others. Moreover, the self is difficult to rule because it is the site of desire, and desire often exceeds what is profitable or appropriate. To govern oneself appropriately is to put oneself in order, so as to achieve what is best for oneself and others. An orderly person will deal with others in a way that maintains his or her own internal order, and relays that order more generally. Of necessity, a person must decide what is owed to others, and behave accordingly. So, selfgovernment is a matter of restraining one’s own desires, for the sake of oneself and for the sake of others. The relevant freedom is in the governing power, but that power is directed as much inward as it is outward, so as to achieve the appropriate balance. It follows that self-government, properly conceived, is not a threat to others, but a benefit conferred on them by restraining untoward desires and activities. If everyone is properly self-governing, no external government will really be necessary, but, in the absence of that, the people who are properly self-governing will have reason to govern others in accordance with the principles that they apply to themselves. Thus, in an imperfect world, everyone may be brought to order. This vision has many implications, both good and bad. It informs a Kantian morality that attributes ultimate value to human freedom, and yet requires us to offer complete respect for the freedom of others. The effect, as is well-known, is to bind us tightly, while offering cover for our interventions in the lives of others – interventions that can always be justified as enhancements of their freedom, because the form of freedom has been identified in advance by philosophical reasoning. As disciples of Kant – as most liberals are – we know that there are many intolerable forms of freedom that involve harms to others, as well as to the selves that are to exercise their freedom. So, we are not loath to insist on certain disciplines and forms of governmentality. If we are restrained in our interventions, it is for two reasons: on the one hand, we think that people have to exercise their freedom, if they are to learn how to use it responsibly: they must be allowed to make their own mistakes, and learn from them; on the other hand, we are also – at least occasionally – modest enough to recognize that our knowledge is limited, and that we may not know

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what form of freedom is appropriate in all (or even any) circumstances. Descartes’s radical doubt seeps through the certainties that he and, later, Kant, tried to establish. In Mill’s later account of freedom, which is probably closer to what most people would now embrace, our own uncertainties about the right and the good – indeed, about most things – are crucial. If we cannot know with any certainty what is best for ourselves, let alone for other people, we are well-advised to live and let live, provided that others do not threaten the very basis of our tolerance for them. The modern state, in its liberal-democratic guise, offers a way of securing everyone’s individual and collective freedom, given the rule of law and extensive guarantees for everyone’s rights. As we all know, there are intense efforts to extend this regime internationally, efforts that were anticipated by Kant himself and that are implicit in the logic of the state system. In the conventional view, ultimate authority derives from individuals who somehow grant authority to a state that is to govern them, subject to the limitations that secure individual freedom, which includes the right to associate with others for economic, social, cultural, religious, and political purposes. As a consequence, there are two privileged sites of local self-government. On the one hand, individual states enjoy sovereignty in relation to one another and to the societies they are authorized to govern. On the other hand, individual people are sovereign in relation to their own personal lives, and have a right to associate with others for any and all lawful purposes. Although individual people may bind themselves to one another in associations that govern much of their conduct, these associations’ powers are limited. People retain their inalienable individual freedoms and the state sets the rules for associative life. The implication is that the right of local self-government is most firmly entrenched in the individual on the one hand and the state on the other. To conceive of the state or the individual as a “locality” is unusual, but it is otherwise difficult to make sense of the conventional view in relation to a putative right of local self-government. Clearly, any individual country is a locality in relation to the global order. It follows that the widely recognized right of national self-determination can only be understood as a particular instance of the principle of local self-government. That raises two issues: what is a country, and why should countries – rather than, say, cities or villages or bioregions – be privileged in this way? The standard view depends on two different rationales. The first suggests that what counts as a

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country is what is recognized as such by other countries. Since the only way a country can give recognition or receive it is by being constituted as a state, this is as much as to say that whatever is recognized as a state by other states counts as such. The circularity is obvious, but it can be rationalized by saying that it doesn’t much matter what countries get recognized as such or how, so long as there is a process of mutual recognition that secures the sovereignty of states that are organized on a less than global scale. The point is to bring the scale down, to allow for differentiation within the global order. This is where the second rationale, which identifies countries with nations and nations with states, is usually articulated. In the modern era, the preference has been for organizing the state on a national scale, the nation being conceived as something that transcends particular tribes or ethnic groups, unites urban and rural areas, and shares a common culture and history, usually expressed in a common language or languages.12 Although not all states are based on nations in the relevant sense, there is a double expectation: that all nations will claim statehood, and that all states will attempt to form their populations into nations. Nations or states that do not fulfill these expectations are regarded as anomalies. So, what of localities in the more usual sense of that term? They have at best a tenuous status, it turns out. Federalism is often put forward as an arrangement that allows for a high degree of local autonomy, but it is usually understood as an arrangement that unites regions that would otherwise be constituted as separate states, and so the regions concerned are supposed to have what would normally be required for statehood: a distinctive national, quasi-national, or proto-national identity and / or a geographical scale or population size comparable to that of established states. Although many of the units of actual federations are not of that character, some of them usually are, and that is what drives the demand for federalism. Normally, the constituent units are large enough to need local governments within their own territories, and so the question of the right of local self-government re-emerges in relation to these units. A common demand from reformers is that local government boundaries should be rationalized to create units that are appropriate for purposes of land-use management, transportation planning, infrastructural development, equitable taxation, effective regulation, and the provision of a wide array of public services. The presumption is that many of the localities to which people are attached – especially

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rural villages or neighbourhoods – are too small for the purposes of  local government, and that nascent regional loyalties can and should be nurtured and developed by larger-scale authorities that have greater capacity to deal with the problems people care about. Although this functionalist logic has been challenged by advocates of public choice,13 it continues to haunt discussions of local government organization. A common presumption is that, if there is any collective self that deserves recognition, it is the nation. There is widespread scepticism about localities to which people are attached for purely instrumental reasons. The scepticism deepens when the attachments seem peripheral, superficial, or transient. Although some communities – notably in remote rural or tribal areas, but also in ghettoized parts of big cities – can claim to have many of the features of what Kymlicka calls a “societal culture,” in that they provide people with a framework for most aspects of their lives, they are sometimes on a very small scale, or lack resources, and are considered inadequate for purposes of territorial self-government. This perceived inadequacy is a consequence of the idea that governments, in the proper sense, must be part of the order of the state and have the capacities demanded of a state institution. Although explicitly governmental institutions are expected to have those capacities, less is demanded of institutions whose governmental activities are incidental to other purposes, such as making a profit, fostering or enacting religious precepts, providing social services, offering an education, playing music, displaying art, or any one of a number of other things. Most human activities involve individual self-government – sometimes a discipline, in the sense that Foucault discussed – and a degree of collective organization that involves goal-setting, rule-making, and manifold exercises of authority in relation not only to those immediately involved but also to others who may just be in the neighbourhood. Often there is a fine line between what “governments” do in the way of controlling and regulating people’s lives, and what other organizations do in that respect. Private restaurants and shopping centres are often more tightly regulated than public libraries. Nevertheless, the governmental character of such institutions is often recognized only to be set aside in the analysis. As Frug has pointed out,14 it is an anomaly that some corporations – which are essentially associations for specific human purposes – have been deemed governmental and associated with the state, and

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others have not. Municipalities have ended up in the former category, and so the difference between them and local institutions of the state has been eroded. In fact, as was more obvious to analysts in the early modern era than it is now, municipalities were among an array of local authorities whose relationship to the emergent state was in dispute for centuries all over Europe.15 Some of these disputes were carried across the Atlantic and elsewhere as the Europeans spread their practices and imposed their institutions in one part of the world after another. Had the colonists and the imperial powers had a different attitude, they might have seen that the steps that they took to recognize “native” authorities and systems of government – steps that they had to take to appease the natives and secure their own position – mimicked earlier measures in Europe, where there were competing authorities with different sources of legitimacy. Although the idea that the state must have sovereign authority – and hence that any other claim to authority must be recognized by the state to be legitimate – gained ground in Europe throughout the early modern era, the opposing idea – that there were multiple sources of authority, and that the state had to recognize that its own authority was limited – was still quite strong. Liberal theory undercuts all legitimacy claims that cannot be derived from what free and equal individuals require. Ironically, it supports the ultimate authority of the state, which is constituted to protect those free and equal individuals. The intermediate zone of economy and society is conceived as one of free association within lawful limits established by the state. There is no room in that zone for governments that are not part of the state or authorized by it. As a consequence, a monological conception of governmental authority, which associates it with the state, has become predominant in the modern liberal era. The anomalous authorities associated with the medieval era or colonial rule are widely regarded as anachronistic, and the general demand is for an order of things that makes sense in terms of a relationship between free individuals and a sovereign state, with an associative life in between the two and a sphere of interstate relations above that secures states – and hence individuals – globally. There are nonetheless many difficulties. Associative life cannot be confined within the boundaries of states. There is a global economy and something like a global civil society. Moreover, there are cultural zones – the English-speaking world, the West, the Islamic world, the Arab world, and so on – that are the focus of organization

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and communication on a scale that transcends particular states. People organize themselves in bewilderingly complicated ways for a great variety of human purposes, and all of this activity involves selfgovernment of one sort or another. It also involves government – control over the activity of others – in many direct and indirect ways, and the claims to legitimacy associated with these various activities are almost as diverse as the activities themselves. Part of the response to this situation is a tendency to misrepresent every threat to the liberal order as violent. This mythology conceals the fact that many of these threats are simply assertions of a right to local self-government that does not map easily onto the liberal order. For example, people claim the right to be Muslim or to live in a Muslim way universally, rights that in their view involve governing themselves and others in accordance with Muslim understandings of what is right and proper. Similar universal claims come from other quarters, but there are also claims to protected spaces that would enable minorities to live out their lives without interference. In most cases, there is a complicated set of demands about having one’s own territory and separate institutions, while at the same time maintaining the right to “live large” in the world. An example is the way that Indigenous peoples claim particular territories or particular rights within larger states, while at the same time asserting a right to live in accordance with Indigenous ways of being and to establish Indi­ genous organizations everywhere and anywhere.16 To confine Indi­ genous peoples – or any other groups that understand themselves in terms that are not reducible to liberal principles – to particular territories is not consistent with the demands at issue.17 People want to be self-governing in a variety of different ways, and they understand their rights in quite different terms. So, to localize the right of selfgovernment simply in the terms offered by the liberal imaginary is actually to undercut its rationale, which is (at least in part) to allow for “deep difference.” It is at this point in the analysis that a left-libertarian or anarchist perspective seems most relevant. The more common neo-liberal view – which may morph into a pseudo-libertarian position like Hayek or Nozick’s18 – is more restrictive, in that it puts everything onto the same register of market-mediated individual choice. Many of the dissident views just noted turn on a rejection of market rationality and the liberal conception of the individual more generally, in favour of quite a different conception of what is good, morally appropriate,

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and rational. The individual self that liberals value is not everyone’s idea of the appropriately privileged agent. Collectivities of various sorts are put forward as natural, divinely ordained, or otherwise necessary for human (or more general) well-being. Deep differences seem to demand a deep liberalism that puts liberal presuppositions at issue and allows not only for individual choice, but also for a political order that accommodates different claims to legitimacy, ways of life, and forms of political organization. From this perspective, the modalities of government and self-government cannot all be on the same register if human differences are to be accommodated peacefully. It follows that a right of local self-government is open to various and sometimes contradictory interpretations that cannot be fully resolved. In practical terms, this means that it is a right open to political contestation. How then might it relate to other, equally contested rights?

The Right to the City Lefebvre’s notion of a right to the city might be interpreted as a right to have institutions of local self-government. That is one way of interpreting the right in relation to the claims states make to have authority over all the cities within their bounds. The city in this context is whatever the people concerned claim to be a city, and so it might include many territorial entities that would not normally be called cities. This is evidently not the main thing that Lefebvre had in mind, however, and indeed it is hard to make any sense of what Lefebvre said unless we remember that, for him, that city as it is now belongs to capital, as much as or more than to the state. To free the city from the control of capital is the key to realizing the popular right to the city. To say that the power of capital frustrates the popular right to the city should not be controversial. It is controversial, however, because some obvious truths are acknowledged, only to be set aside and forgotten. The first obvious truth is that most of the land in a capitalist city is privately owned. Of that privately owned land, the most valuable portions – the ones with significant locational advantages – tend to be in the hands of major businesses of one sort or another. The second obvious truth is that the main purpose of a business is to make money. Thus, the most valuable portions of the privately held land in a city are normally regarded as investments, which are held

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in order to generate the largest returns possible. Although this drive for higher returns may be moderated for one reason or another, it is always at the core of business enterprises. The third obvious truth is that businesses are interdependent, in that the successes of each depend on the successes of the others. In principle, growth means more profits all around. The entire business community is dependent on ongoing “development,” which is to say the development of lands in the city in a way that enhances their profit-generating capacity. The fourth obvious truth is that labour is beholden to capital, insofar as employment opportunities depend on the ongoing success of business. The fifth obvious truth is that the state is also beholden to capital, insofar as it depends on both popular support and fiscal resources. Ordinary people need employment opportunities, and expect the state to facilitate those opportunities. An obvious and often widely supported strategy is to offer concessions to capital for this purpose. In any case, a buoyant economy with high profits and ongoing reinvestment appears to be the key to healthy state resources, which can be generated by taxation. The sixth obvious truth that bears mentioning – there are more, of course – is that public lands can be used and in fact are used to support private investment. This is partly a matter of using those lands for urban infrastructure – normally built by private companies at the expense of the state – as well as for what Castells and others (following Marx) have called the reproduction of labour power. Thus, the whole edifice of the city, including the configuration of public and private space, the nature and disposition of labour power, and the organization of state services can be understood as an effect of the requirements of capital accumulation. In a way, all of this is quite visible: iconic office towers downtown, suburban campuses and airports, expressways and rail lines, great warehouses, big malls and theme parks, housing subdivisions that mirror the class structure, and so on. Nonetheless, the whole of it has a taken-for-granted character that expresses what Marx might have called a bourgeois sensibility, and tends to repress any sense of different possibilities. Lefebvre’s interest was in those other possibilities. For him, as for many others, a city organized to meet the requirements of private capital accumulation was not one where the right to the city had been fulfilled. For ordinary people to have the right to the city, they had to own it. To own it was not just a matter of having title. It involved claiming the city in a way that would enable people to satisfy their own needs, rather than the needs of capital, and not just in an

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instrumental way. In principle, the city is a form of life, not just the means of satisfying other requirements. It ought to give symbolic and practical expression to people’s creativity, their enjoyment of being together, their sense of common purpose and mutual respect, their connection with the natural environment, and their relation to the world at large and its future. For the right to the city to be fulfilled, the city must be transformed into something it is not at present. What is the sense of such utopian dreaming? In a way, Lefebvre was trying to give substance to Marx’s dream of a communist future by rooting it in an acceptance of urban life. That did not mean an acceptance of cities as they were, but rather an embrace of urban possibilities. What could city life be if it really were an expression of human possibilities, rather than something distorted by the requirements of private capital accumulation? Obviously, that is an open question, which could only be answered in practice, thanks to democratization. Lefebvre, like Marx, might have preferred to talk about “revolution,” but that is a vacuous concept. In any case, the issue is neither the speed nor the degree of change – which may be fast or slow, big or little – but rather its quality. Is what Rancière calls “the part that has no part”19 actually included on equal terms with those who formerly claimed the city for their own? As Rancière insists, and as Plato and Aristotle well knew, democracy is about equality, and so it challenges the freedoms that stand in its way. The most crucial of those freedoms – which are really privileges – is the right to accumulate property without limit and to use it to control the city, as a space and form of life. Democratization entails new modalities of government and self-government that establish relations of equality between people who were formerly of different classes, castes, and racialized groups. To the extent that differences such as those of gender and ability persist, the presumption is that they should be governed by relations of equality. The same is true of differences of culture, religion, lifestyle, opinion, sensibility, and personality. Democracy entails efforts to compensate for disabling endowments and experiences, both physical and social. On the other hand, it also requires a certain morality and social commitment. If there is to be real democracy, it must be deep democracy. To say that people have a right to the city is to say that the city belongs to everyone, and that means that everyone has to be included. The strenuous efforts now to enclose privileged territories – be they states, campuses, subdivisions, apartment buildings,

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recreational complexes, or symbolic spaces – are signs of widespread opposition to such sharing. Or, to put it another way, the challenge implicit in the right to the city is not only to the rights of capital, but to any and every form of privilege. Existing privileges are secured by the state system, which works as a system of multiple exclusions, the most significant of which deprive the vast majority of people of access to the rights of citizenship offered by strong and prosperous states. An American citizen may have a right to the city in the sense that she can go to New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles and pursue whatever opportunities are available there. A Bangladeshi citizen does not have such a right: access to Dacca is by no means the same thing. Moreover, the opportunities for education, health care, or social services are not at all similar. In terms of citizenship, the world is obviously divided into haves and have-nots, with some people having large entitlements and strong protections, and others next to nothing. So, if a universal right to the city were actualized, the ramparts around the rich countries and the many zones of privilege within them would have to come down, along with the ramparts around the zones of privilege in the poor countries. The changes at issue are so radical that it is hard to imagine what might be involved. Are we talking about completely open borders?20 The right to dwell anywhere? Free access to land? A right to all the amenities of modern urban life such as rapid transit, housing, water and power supplies, telecommunications, parks and recreation, and waste disposal? A right to social services, education, health care, and employment? Guaranteed income? A person not only needs access to the city, but also needs an array of supports and facilities to take advantage of that access. Moreover, the right at issue is not just something for individuals. It is a right that must be extended to selfidentified groups and communities if they are to make the city their own as well. Certainly, everything that was involved in what came to be called the “welfare state” in the twentieth century is at stake, but to pose the issue in terms of a relationship with the city rather than the state is actually to globalize it. No individual state can actually provide all that is required. Any particular city is just a node in a global urban system – what Wirth described as urbanism as a way of life, McLuhan dubbed the global village, and Lefebvre called urban society.21 To redeem people’s individual and collective rights in the latter involves much more than any individual state or even the state system as a whole can deliver.

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To speak of the right to the city is to suggest a different relationship between people and the world they live in. The implication is that the city does not belong to anyone in particular, not even its designers, founders, or makers, and certainly not the first settlers or those who have purchased their positions or claimed their stakes as a matter of exclusive right. If the city is our collective inheritance, the product of generations of human effort all over the world, it belongs to us all, without qualification. Together we inherit what people have made, and together we remake what we have inherited to suit our needs. Although the natural world may not belong to us in quite the same sense, this human world is ours. Clearly, it extends from our cities into the countryside, so that all that people touch there is encompassed in urban society. Our right to the city is entailed by what Marx called our species-being, our relation to our own species’ creativity and productivity. If we were to vindicate that right, we would overcome our alienation from our own labour, the products of our labour, our fellow humans, and our human capacities. Perhaps we would also overcome our alienation from external nature or “the natural world.” This last point raises the question of whether the right to the city involves a right to subordinate the whole of the natural world to human purposes. If so, many people would balk at the notion, and quite rightly. It is one thing for humans to welcome other humans into this human world on equal terms. It is another thing to claim dominion over other species, or to treat the Earth as if it were there solely to serve human purposes. This suggests that the right to the city is just one element of what is right for humans, and that it must be modulated accordingly. Many would rush in to say that established rights of property and citizenship ought to take priority over the right to the city, and that the latter should be understood as a democratic aspiration to be fulfilled by small steps that protect existing rights. So construed, the right to the city would not mean much, as it would be fenced in by established rights and, in a way, fenced out by concerns about the extra-human world. The latter concerns suggest that the right should not only be construed as part of an ensemble of rights, some of which may trump the right to the city in particular situations, but also that the right entails a heavy responsibility, which involves limits on what people can do to the world they live in. Threading these observations together, we can see that responsibility to others – including non-human others – is implicit in an enlarged

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conception of the right to the city. What motivates the claim is concern about the exclusions implicit in capitalism on the one hand and the state system on the other. By extension, all forms of privilege come into question. By further extension, our responsibility to others comes to include the non-human world. What was posed originally as a universal right that challenged all forms of privilege then becomes a set of responsibilities that all the rights-holders share. This is in line with the idea that all claims of right involve promises of self-government in accordance with those claims. That Kantian notion can be extended to include collective organization and activity. The right to the city is non-exclusionary, and so it must not only involve toleration of difference, but also a generalized sense that all human arrangements are based on fragile and eminently revisable understandings of what is best. The condition of possibility for tolerating the “intolerant other” is a general culture of tolerance, mutual respect, and self-doubt. If we concede a right to the city, it is because we believe that it is wrong to exclude people on the grounds that they are too ignorant, irresponsible, uneducated, or uncivilized to be part of the city. Such claims have always been deployed against the demos, but they must be set aside if a generalized right to the city is to be recognized. Clearly, a right to the city involves a right to appropriate it in many different ways, as long as they are consistent with the rights of others. If the rights of capital cannot be recognized, it is because those rights are inconsistent with the rights of others. By contrast, there are many other collective rights – such as the right to self-management (autogestion in the French terminology) in the workplace or self-­government in the neighbourhood – that need to be recognized if the right to the city is to be meaningful. What anarchists have called democratic mutualism is implicit in the right to the city, for such mutualism – a generalized recognition of the right, need, and possibilities of and for self-organization and cooperation in every venue, locale, and form of activity – is the necessary condition for genuinely inclusive engagement with others. To say that we have a right to the city is to say that we have an unfulfilled capacity to live democratically.

T owa r d a D e m o c r a t i c V i s i o n One of the implications of this reading of the right to the city is that it entails local self-government. The standard liberal accounts glorify

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the individual on the one hand and the state on the other. The individual is to have the widest possible freedom or sovereignty; the state is to protect this freedom and so must also have sovereignty. How these two forms of sovereignty are to be reconciled is the standard liberal dilemma. This is a false dilemma, however, one that results from a truncated account of local self-government. The truth is that people organize themselves in many different ways for various purposes and that their loyalties, interests, concerns, and identities are far too complex to be understood in terms of just two poles of identification. The relevant self is multiple, and highly contingent on how people are socialized or encultured, how they interact, how they understand themselves, what goals they posit, and what they want to be. Sometimes “the individual” or one’s country is important, but sometimes not. People are also women or men, gay or straight, urban or rural, religious or irreligious, materialistic or spiritual, ethnic or deracinated, craft-oriented or entrepreneurial, liberal or conservative, worldly or parochial – the list could go on. How people understand themselves, what identities they think are important, what modalities and localities of self-government are necessary for them to be who they are and realize their main purposes: all this is highly variable and highly contingent. The liberal conceit is that we can rationalize everything in terms of the rights of the individual on the one hand and the rights of the state on the other. In the end, that solution does not work because it is illiberal and undemocratic. The tendency in liberal theory has been to eviscerate the right of local self-government for fear that it might threaten the individual or the state, or both. Local self-government is associated with exclusionary practices and parochial self-interest. Ironically, it is understood on the same register as the rights of capital, which are clearly exploitative. We are supposed to become free by becoming robust individuals who can stand up to capital with only minimal assistance from the state. Then, we can associate with others to advance our interests or express our collective identities, provided that we do not exploit others. If, on the other hand, self-government is a matter of organizing and managing oneself appropriately, with an eye to what is best generally, then it is not a threat to others. In fact, it is an inclusive practice, multiply localized and articulated in many different registers. Various collectivities emerge, and keep changing. There is no single register in relation to which everything can be ordered. Nevertheless, a civilized order can and does emerge insofar as people

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adjust to one another, individually and collectively, by recognizing one another’s rights and including one another in common spaces and common activities. This is not all dependent on the sovereign authority of the state, and it cannot be rationalized in terms of the rights of abstract individuals. We are not abstract individuals, and we are under no moral imperative to live as if we were. In fact, to be as viciously self-regarding as liberal theory often suggests that we are, is to fall into a pattern of pathological behaviour. Fortunately, such behaviour is more the exception than the rule. Read together, the right of local self-government and the right to the city imply democratic relationships that are inherently inclusive and that enable us all to have full access to the urban life that we produce together. Only when these rights are interpreted in abstraction from one another and from the life to which they relate do they become problematic. Exclusionary practices may be excused by invoking a right of local self-government. Exploitative practices may be excused by invoking a right to the city. Neither set of excuses makes sense in terms of the democratic aspirations implicit in these rights. Obviously, rights-claims can be abused, and it is not clear that either of these rights could or should become justiciable, given that they are rights that people must be prepared to assert against the state when state law restricts them inappropriately. Implicit in both the idea and the practice of the city is an order that depends on local self-government in various forms and that can accommodate claims to inclusion – the right to the city – more easily than a rigidly structured state. It is this democratic openness that the city promises, and that must be nurtured constantly. The Occupy movement was open in some respects but closed in others. It offered activists a means of escaping from their more conservative neighbours and establishing a space where they could welcome others on the activists’ own terms. Most people stayed away, however, and became increasingly sceptical or hostile over time. It’s fine to talk about new democratic practices and experiment with them, but they will be stillborn if the majority of people don’t want them or agree with them. In the end, we have to live with all our neighbours in one way or another. The current neo-­ liberal order provides for such living together after its own fashion, and it is to that fashion that people revert when the other things on offer don’t appeal or make sense to them. Loosely organized

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popular assemblies may appeal to young anarchists, but not to other people, except in the most exceptional circumstances. The challenge is to develop and institutionalize more enduring democratic practices in the face of widespread scepticism among the ­people whom those practices are meant to benefit. A form of democracy that the great majority of people resist is clearly neither practicable nor democratic. That is one good reason for beginning with the institutions and practices we already have – like municipal ­government – and working out how they might be changed or transformed. It was disturbing to me in 2011, as it was in 1968, that discussions about democratization could treat municipal institutions as if they were irrelevant to the issues at hand. Needless to say, I think this is a mistake, both for radicals and everyone else. We already have a dense network of local institutions. The problem is how to democratize them and extend their reach, so as to extend the zone of democratic self-government as far as possible. The most robust democratic institutions will be ones that build on familiar practices, which include the ones that have sustained municipalities as distinct political institutions in the age of the modern state. We need to understand those practices. In principle, they complement the practices of neighbourhood self-government that still persist in many places, despite adverse pressures. Local self-government is not an obstacle to the right to the city, but its necessary condition; or to put it another way: a democracy that is not localized properly is no democracy at all.

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Visions of Democracy

Debates about democracy have changed a great deal over the last forty years. There is much less talk about “participatory” democracy than there used to be, and much more concern about developing “deliberative” institutions. Just getting more people involved seems insufficient if there is no way to get them discussing the issues seriously – familiarizing themselves with the facts, listening to one another’s views, and working toward decisions that are informed, well considered, and appropriately balanced.1 On the other hand, democracy must be “inclusive” if it is to live up to its own principles, and that means being open to people who are not very articulate or whose understanding, no matter how profound, cannot be wellexpressed in propositional logic.2 Such inclusiveness must reach concerns that would otherwise be suppressed or ignored. From a “liberal” view, things can be organized in a way that privileges only the individual as a subject of rights,3 but from a “communitarian” view, that is impossible: the communities that provide the frame of reference for people’s lives must be recognized.4 Of course, there are ongoing doubts about the way “deep differences” can be accommodated or “minority rights” protected.5 Moreover, the architecture of “global governance” seems problematic.6 Not only are the means for democratizing it elusive, but it is also hard to say what democracy could consist of on such a large scale. In any case, there are constant reminders that democracy is necessarily “agonistic”:7 it involves struggles that are likely to threaten any established order.8 Democracy cannot be tamed by a set of philosophical principles or institutional arrangements. How could it actually be democracy if it were?9

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Some of the debates that exercise political theorists have scarcely gone beyond the academic journals, but they relate to issues of much wider concern. If elected legislatures do not work as deliberative bodies – as clearly they do not in most instances – then what can be done to ensure that policies are well worked out and that issues are debated in a way that sharpens people’s understanding and generates pressures for more rational, effective, and inclusive responses to the matters at hand? How can the relevant publics be activated?10 Once activated, how can their influence over policies be assured? Is there some way of making voting systems work better, so that they not only ensure that the full range of views is represented, but also offer a way of resolving differences?11 What protections should there be for minorities, and what requirements for commitment to our life in common? Do the new electronic means of communication allow us to assemble as a public on whatever scale is required, and so resolve matters by discussing things and voting on issues directly, without involving elected representatives? Can we bring democracy into the twenty-first century by such means, or are we stuck with the models developed more than two hundred years ago? All these issues are important, but I follow the academic and popular debates about them with impatience. The leading commentators evade most of the issues I have raised in this book. The tendency is to focus on issues of supposedly “national” concern or to talk about “global” trends without addressing the question of how politics is to be localized. If the territorial structure of the state is considered, it is almost always in highly conventional terms (with little or no consideration of the vast literature on local government).12 The question of “scale” – in either of the senses I note in chapter 6 – is addressed, if at all, on the assumption that it could be simply resolved by referring to the principles of federalism or subsidiarity – or perhaps by using electronic media to organize publics on whatever scales anyone can imagine. If the scale of everyday life is taken into account, it’s the scale on which the most mobile and affluent among us live, the scale of elite existence. The fact that democracy has to be localized if it is to work at all just gets glossed over, as does the connection between democracy and self-government. What’s at stake here is a set of inconvenient truths that problematize the nation-state as the main locale for democracy and force us to think much more seriously about how we are to organize ourselves. Contemporary democratic theory is not very

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helpful in that respect because it is abstracted from all the main problems of local government. When I began investigating these issues, one body of literature particularly impressed me, and that was the one generated by debates between the Fabians13 and the Guild Socialists14 in Britain after the First World War. These people were trying to imagine how a socialist society might be organized, and they took two things very seriously. The first was the idea that the economy had to be democratized. To them, capitalism was clearly undemocratic in that it subjected the mass of the people to the rule of capital. So, how could the new economy be organized so that it would be democratic and yet reasonably efficient at producing the things that people needed and at ensuring proper distribution of those goods? Looking back, we can see that many difficult issues were missed, but there was a serious effort to reconcile three important principles: rational economic planning, consumers’ sovereignty, and workers’ control. Somehow work had to be organized democratically and yet be governed both by what consumers wanted and by what was, in a larger sense, necessary and rational. Making democracy work meant localizing it so that people could have a large measure of control at work – and so govern themselves, individually and collectively – without absolving them of their responsibilities to the wider society or to the end-users of the goods or services that they produced. Perhaps because the Fabians and Guild Socialists were aware of this, they also took another problem seriously: how to localize and democratize territorial government. They understood that an economy would have constantly changing territorial boundaries, but they knew that people lived their everyday lives in particular areas, and relied on public regulations, goods, and services for the quality of their lives there. So, how could government in this sense be localized? And, how could the relevant publics be activated so that they would take the problem of local government seriously enough to make things work as they should? One can find elaborate schemes for the organization of a socialist society in these works and compare them with the paper constitutions that later came out of the Soviet Union and its imitators. It is hard to know how seriously to take these utopian proposals, but the dreadful experience of the Soviet Union is warning enough of the distance between our imaginings and the practical realities of any situation. (This is something that people entranced by what is now happening in Bolivia or Bhutan or some other place that they don’t

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know much about might well keep in mind.) More important, I think, are the questions being asked, ones that draw our attention to the hard choices, delicate balances, and inherent conflicts involved in any political situation. A century ago, socialists were worrying about the relationship between rational economic planning, consumers’ sovereignty, and workers’ control, as well as about the relationship between economic and territorial authorities. Their approach was too economistic, but at least they recognized that there were important questions about local self-government that had to be resolved. In this concluding essay, I want to re-pose these questions by framing them in terms of places, activities, and communities. If it is true that we live in particular places rather than willy-nilly in the world at large, how can we localize democracy in those places?15 If our activities are diverse and variously scaled, as they seem to be, how can we localize democracy in relation to those activities? If our communities are equally diverse and variously scaled, how can we localize democracy in relation to them? The Fabians and Guild Socialists had too rigid a conception of human life and were insensitive to the importance of things that escaped their view. A democratic approach to democracy must be more open – and hence less definite in its prescriptions – but to avoid the problem of localization would be to beg the most important questions. What can we say, then?

P l ac e s : B e yo n d t h e R o m a n c e o f M o b i l i t y One of the things obscured by the public choice literature is that the most vital function of local government is land-use planning. Many other things can be left to the market or to voluntary initiative, but a strong regulatory system is essential for good land use, however the good in question might be conceived. There have been efforts to get round this common-sense conclusion,16 but they turn on elaborate schemes for getting results that can be secured much more easily in the old-fashioned way, by using the powers of government (in the ordinary sense of that word). Whether we are talking about a particular street, a neighbourhood, a larger area of a city, or an entire urban region, there is a compelling case for having an authority with the powers necessary to forbid certain land uses and permit others. There is an equally compelling case for using this authority in a positive way to secure wider goods that might not otherwise be forthcoming: clean air, efficient transportation, open space, greenery, places for public and private gatherings, public art, buildings of great

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beauty or historic significance, a satisfying mixture of quiet and bustle, room for other species, and so on. When freed from their obsessions with market rationality, civic authorities can usually see that their regulatory powers give them the means for city planning and, moreover, that their responsibilities in this respect go far beyond any narrow concerns with economic efficiency, substantial as those concerns might be in an urban context. What follows from this is the traditional rationale for local government. We may have wider identities and concerns and we may be engaged in activities that connect us more closely with distant others than those close to home, but we still have to live somewhere and that “somewhere” has to be regulated if it is to be a good place to be. More than that, it is only by regulating the particular somewheres appropriately that we can have the kind of world we want. Once we become engaged in this regulatory activity, we may realize that we can do much more together. We can be creative, and produce things that would not otherwise exist; we can supplement or fundamentally change the market-ordered world that otherwise constitutes any particular locality; and we can resist or adapt what the state requires. The possibilities of a territorially emplaced local authority are endless, because its purchase is on the territory itself, the place where people are living. It also follows that the key places are the ones that people actually inhabit, in the fullest sense of that term. What places are those? As I noted in Part 1, the tendency since the early nineteenth century has been to think in terms of the wider urban areas that encompass just about every aspect of people’s activities. The focus, moreover, has often been on the people who are most mobile: those who make the longest commute to work or go furthest afield to shop or take advantage of cultural or recreational opportunities. There is an important rationale for thinking in this way. The authorities have to plan a regional transportation system and to control land-use accordingly. It makes sense to think about the urban region as a whole and decide where growth should occur, where it should be constrained, and what form it should take. Only an overarching authority can take such a broad view and make the regulations and investments necessary to bring it into effect. The problem is that it is difficult to think about the particular areas where people live their day-to-day lives when issues are posed in these terms. Moreover, it is in those smaller areas that people can actually congregate with their neighbours to decide on things democratically. If we are going to

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emplace democracy, we have to empower people in their neighbourhoods to govern the areas in which they live. That is the conclusion resisted by most analysts of local government. They fear the consequences for wider-scale planning, the organization of public services, and the distribution of resources. There is another, and more important issue, however. To talk of “empowerment” is to talk of something that comes from the top down, from the centre outwards, or from the elite to the masses: it is in the way of a gift conferred.17 But that is not how democratization happens. People have to claim their rights, in this case the right to govern themselves in their own neighbourhoods. Unfortunately, people now have only a weak sense that they have such a right, because they have been subject to such relentless propaganda to the contrary. Until there are more examples of people claiming this right effectively, there is bound to be much scepticism. The relevant models are not communities that set themselves apart physically, economically, or culturally, but neighbourhoods that are open to anyone. Although some neighbourhoods are of that character, few of them provide inspiring examples of democratic self-government. On the other hand, the fact that an organizing effort can produce results even in relatively unlikely areas such as the poorer urban areas that have been targeted from time to time over the years – as noted in chapter 1 – is encouraging. The question is whether people in such areas or even in more favoured ones will claim their right of local self-government effectively. People’s tentativeness in these matters is connected to their uncertainties about their right to the city. Although that right may have been proclaimed here and there, it has not yet been embraced with vigour anywhere. Instead, the right to the city has usually been conceded to private property holders and thus to capital and capitalists, with strong backing from the state. I think that the reversal of priorities implicit in the idea of a democratic right to the city makes most sense when it is connected to the principle of local self-government, which in turn makes most sense when it is related to the places where people live their day-to-day lives. In a neighbourhood, unlike a workplace, everyone is part of the relevant public. It does not or should not matter whether a person is young or old, employed or unemployed, well-educated or barely schooled, able-bodied or disabled, healthy or sick, long-established or transient, of the cultural majority or not: the relevant fact is that the person lives there. The inhabitants of a neighbourhood – including the so-called homeless

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– all have the same right to it. So, the possibility implicit in neighbourhood self-government is one of full inclusion, which is an entrancing prospect for some and a frightening one for others. It is not just the current elites who are frightened, unfortunately. One can sense the same fears among radicals who try to persuade themselves that the people will be the way they want, as well as among moderates who are nervous about what their neighbours might do if they had the power. People are caught between their concerns about their own private property and personal freedoms, their compassion and understanding of others, their mistrust of those around them, their sensitivity to the natural and social environment, their aspirations for a better world, and their fears about a worse one. Definite risks are involved in democratization, as well as challenges to what many people think of as their individual rights. Part of the current romance of mobility is that people can be free from any responsibility to the places where they actually live, because they are always on the move somewhere else. In fact, mobility is often a curse for people, in that they are obliged to commute long distances to work, move frequently for employment, and keep their relationships up over long distances. Efforts to develop and maintain neighbourhoods, so that it is easier for people to stay put in them, may go against the logic of a de-territorialized life, but they nonetheless connect with many people’s unfulfilled needs and aspirations. One obvious thing about localizing authority in neighbourhoods is that it encourages people to pay attention to where they live. That will mean paying attention to the local environment, but if the neighbourhood is democratic it will also mean paying attention to the other local inhabitants, whoever they may be. Standard ideas about local government reform still favour the metropolis or urban region as the smallest unit to be clothed with state authority. Although authorities on that scale may be able to respond effectively to the needs of people who want to be highly mobile, or have to be so, they are not likely to be any more effective than larger-scale authorities at responding to the needs of people who are not mobile, who really want to settle, or who are actually alive to the immediate environment in which they live.

A c t i v i t i e s : B e yo n d E c o n o m i s m Although the idea that we have a right to the city is a powerful one, it focuses more attention on the environment in which we live than on the activities in which we engage. We now talk about “voluntary”

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activities as if they were somehow exceptional. The implication is that some form of enslavement is the rule in this “free and democratic” society, despite its pretensions to the contrary. The intended point of the distinction between voluntary and other activities is different, of course. Some activities are driven by economic necessity. We don’t do them for free. We expect to get paid or to make money from them somehow. Other activities are dictated by governments of one sort or another, and so they are not voluntary in that sense. If we do something for ourselves or for others that is not dictated to us, and for which we are not being paid or seeking to make a profit, we say they that such an activity is “voluntary.” This makes sense up to a point, but it obscures many things. In the first place, the work that we do, for which we usually hope to get paid or make a profit, is not done entirely for the pay or the profit. If it’s good work, it’s work that we believe in, that we enjoy when it’s done well, that we think benefits others or is good in itself, and that gives meaning to our lives.18 Work that we do despite the fact that we hate it or deplore its consequences is not good work: it may pay the rent, but it doesn’t satisfy us otherwise. On the other hand, something that is required by government is not necessarily something that has been imposed on us: we may embrace it heartily, like education for our children or good health care. The realm of freedom is not just what has been left over when the dictates of the state and the market have been satisfied. When things are as they should be, free activity can be found everywhere. So, what does this mean in terms of localization? In the first place, our activities often draw us outside our immediate neighbourhood. They are not necessarily or even usually oriented toward the particular neighbourhood where we live. They have value and meaning that arise from other relationships, which may not have any particular geographical boundaries or whose bounds are simply quite different – geographically wider or specified in a very different way. Thus, people who live near one another are liable to be involved in activities that have quite different locales. There may be various scales of ope­ ration within each activity, but the pattern will vary from activity to activity. It follows that the problem of localization differs in each case. With respect to those who are taking part in the activity, the key issue is whether authority is localized in a way that allows for self-­ government, which is to say some combination of individual autonomy and collective, democratic decision-making. On the other hand, each activity affects other activities as well as conditions of life more

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generally, and so its governance is more than a matter of workers’ control. This raises the question of how the various activities are to be governed externally, if at all. Where is that authority to be localized? The neighbourhood seems like an unlikely candidate in this respect, because so many activities are on a larger scale. The issue is usually whether those activities will fit into the local environment, which is a standard regulatory issue at this level. A different and often neglected issue is whether the neighbourhood can foster activities that are more beneficial and engaging, especially ones that tap into the interests and  talents of people who might otherwise be discarded or poorly employed in a competitive capitalist economy. A capitalist economy actually misemploys or under-employs most of the people who offer their services for sale, and shuts off avenues of employment that do not yield a profit, regardless of how valuable those activities might be in other terms. This is the Gordian knot of capitalism – or at least one of them. Although a neighbourhood may be stifling as a regulatory authority in relation to wider-ranging activities, it nonetheless offers a venue for developing and supporting activities that have a nonmarket rationale and that tap into possibilities for public service, cultural expression, human solidarity, and innovation. There are many possibilities for humanizing the local environment and re-­establishing connections with the natural world. It is hard to understand how such goals can be achieved if people lack the capacity to act together in their own neighbourhoods. Of course, this is not to deny the need to foster and regulate activities that transcend particular neighbourhoods: quite the contrary. The major advantage of modern means of communication and transportation is that they enable activities to occur on scales that were previously unimaginable, and there is every reason to suppose that yet more possibilities will emerge in the coming years. Every new or re-configured activity raises issues about how it is to be governed, and there is no reason to suppose that any one locale will be right for every purpose. We need more authorities, not fewer, and they have to be scaled to the tasks at hand. And yet, there can be no democracy in the fullest sense if people are denied the opportunity to  govern their own neighbourhoods. Without such a base, the ­complex institutional structure that is required will instead rest on the isolated individual, who clearly lacks the means to govern either the market or the state, whatever the ongoing propaganda to the contrary about “capitalist democracy” might suggest. Neighbourhood

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democracy has been denied, not because it actually threatens the viability of larger-scale institutions, but because it is premised on modes of action that would challenge the logic of capitalist restructuring and transcend the narrow purposes of the Keynesian welfare state. The prevalent assumption now is that human activities should be governed primarily by the market, and that the state’s role is simply to make minor corrections without impinging too far on the freedoms that are the key to market rationality. Neighbourhood democracy is actually premised on the different view that human activity should be allowed to flourish regardless of the demands either of the market itself, or of states that see themselves as servants of the market. Some would say that the discipline of the market ought to be replaced by the discipline of “nature,” with ecological rationality replacing economic rationality as the ruling principle.19 How that could happen is not clear, but any notion of an external discipline is problematic in relation to the practice of democracy itself. If that practice is one of local self-government, as I have argued, then the responsibility for ecological rationality, economic rationality, and any other rationality we might imagine actually rests with the people who have to govern themselves in light of these rationalities. If we do not trust ordinary people to govern themselves as well as or better than they have been governed by others, then we are not democrats, whatever our claims to the contrary.

C o m m u n i t i e s : B e yo n d I d e n t i t y P o l i t i c s A major complaint in recent years is that we are plagued by various forms of identity politics, which subvert the promise of a constitutional order that could unite us on the basis of our common humanity. The irony, of course, is that the nation-state, which is now the standard form of constitutional order, is premised on identity politics. In a sense, we get what we ask for when we demand loyalty to “the nation” as the first condition for political engagement and then discover that many people have other loyalties that take precedence. By contrast, one of the attractions of the neighbourhood or the city as a venue for political action is that its appeal is so mundane. We have to work out ways of living together because we live in the same place, not because we share the same lineage, culture, religion, or ideology. The fact that we have our differences, including different loyalties and identities, makes the tasks before us more urgent, but

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what we share is a common ground – in the most literal sense – that has to be managed in a mutually satisfactory way. It is this common ground, rather than a shared identity, that brings us together. Of course, by acting together we may develop a sense of community that binds us to one another despite our differences, but that sense is the result of sharing a political space, not the condition or rationale for such sharing. Unfortunately, it’s an old story that communities of interest are often overwhelmed by communities of identity that appeal to people’s passions. Things are not likely to change dramatically in that respect, but there is reason to think that the practical experience of working to improve the neighbourhood or the city does moderate some of the hostilities that are likely to arise and does give people the sense that good things can be done if they work together, rather than focusing on their differences. In a way, this is the promise of democracy itself, which is premised on the idea that our differences do not matter in the end: we are all human, and we are all capable of governing ourselves appropriately. Erasing the differences bet­ ween the qualified and the unqualified has been the democratic aspiration, and it goes against the idea that people are qualified or disqualified on the basis of their identities or loyalties. The idea that some people are naturally of the ruling class, because they are more intelligent, sensitive, educated, or experienced, is similar to the idea that some people are naturally “one of us,” because of their lineage, culture, or religion. Both ideas are exclusionary, and both of them are challenged by the principles of democracy, which suggest that anyone at all has a right to be one of the rulers by virtue of being human and by virtue of “being there.” That a person has to be there to be part of things sounds like a significant limitation, but it turns on the idea that everyone is somewhere, and so everyone has a right to be included in the ruling group in that place. This is different from the notion that everyone is entitled to citizenship in some state or another. That idea also makes sense if states are the dominant authorities, but the issue here is access to democratic institutions, the basic institutions of local selfgovernment that are rooted in the places where people live. One of the appealing features of the old debates between Fabians and Guild Socialists – as well as some more recent debates about a future beyond capitalism – is that they treat community as a likely effect of working together or living together in the same place, rather than as something

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that has to be there beforehand and “respected” ever after. No doubt, it is optimistic to suppose that people who just happen to live in the same neighbourhood or work in the same place can figure out means of democratic self-government that actually work well enough, but the contrary assumption, that something better can be imposed on them, goes against general human experience. That democracy actually works when people are prepared to put their trust in it has been proven again and again. When connected to the idea of democracy, the ideas of a right to local self-government and a right to the city cut across the grain of identity politics and expose it for what it is: yet another mode of resistance to democracy itself. If we are actually to achieve the promise of democracy, we have to put our precious identities at risk, along with everything else. There can be no absolute guarantees because people will decide for themselves how things will be done, and to what ends. Nevertheless, as I suggested in chapter 5, there is hope in the way that people resolve problems in cities despite the way that they are thrown together. When we are thrown together in a particular place or in a particular activity, we have no option but to deal with one another. If we can learn to deal with one another as equals, rather than as this or that, we may actually become the democrats that we claim to be.

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Notes

introduction   1 See Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope; Harvey; Rebel Cities; Graeber, The Democracy Project; and Merrifield, The Politics of the Encounter.  2 Arendt, On Revolution, ch. 6. Although there is now a large literature on Arendt’s thought, this aspect of it has attracted less attention than it might. See Muldoon, “The Lost Treasure of Arendt’s Council System.”  3 Democracy in America, vol. 1, ch. 5.  4 Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 15.  5 The Search for Political Space (1996) and Politics of Urbanism (2011).  6 Blumberg, Industrial Democracy, and Pateman, Participation and Democratic Theory, were particularly influential.   7 “In some of the New England States these functions are still exercised directly by the assembled people; it is said, with better results than might be expected; and those highly educated communities are so well satisfied with this primitive mode of local government, that they have no desire to exchange it for the only representative system with which they are acquainted with, by which all minorities are disenfranchised. Such very peculiar circumstances, however, are required to make this arrangement work tolerably in practice, that recourse must generally be had to the plan of representative sub-Parliaments for local affairs.” Mill, Considerations on Representative Government, in On Liberty and Other Essays, 412.   8 Kotler, “Politics and Citizenship in New England Towns”; Mansbridge, Beyond Adversary Democracy; and Bryan, Real Democracy.   9 See especially Lipman, Local Government Areas.

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Notes to pages 10–20

10 Magnusson, “Bourgeois Theories of Local Government.” See Elkin, City and Regime in the American Republic, for a very different view of these tendencies. Compare Gottdiener, The Decline of Urban Politics. Only after I had done my research and published my initial findings was I introduced to the work of the American legal scholar, Gerald Frug, who had gone over much of the same material that I had consulted, but with a lawyer’s grasp of issues that I had trouble formulating for myself. See especially his “City as a Legal Concept.” Isin’s Cities without Citizens deals with the Canadian context in a way largely complementary to Frug’s approach and mine. 11 Compare Magnusson, The Search for Political Space, 161–213. 12 Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren, “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas.” 13 Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements; Gitlin, The Sixties; Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets; Breines, Community Organization in the New Left; Katz, The Undeserving Poor; and Cruikshank, The Will to Empower. 14 “The New Neighbourhood Democracy.” 15 See Vincent, Theories of the State, for an unusually careful account of the way ideas of the state developed. Compare Watkins, The State as a Concept of Political Science; Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought; and Skinner and Stråth, States and Citizens. 16 Cockburn, The Local State. 17 Compare Asch, Home and Native Land, and Boldt and Long, The Quest for Justice. See also Cassidy and Bish, Indian Government; Boldt, Surviving as Indians; and Fleras and Elliott, The Nations Within. 18 Terms keep changing. I am highly conscious of that in a book that includes things that I wrote more than thirty years ago. Most people would now prefer the term “Indigenous” to “Aboriginal.” They would also insist on capitalizing the term. “Native” is also used, but “First Nations” is preferred. For better or worse, I have tried to keep to the terminology I used when I wrote the material in question, including in my references to the people who would now be called “African-Americans,” but were earlier called “black” in preference to “Negro.” 19 Toulmin-Smith, Local Self-Government and Centralization. 20 On the American experience, see Community Ownership Organizing Project, The Cities’ Wealth; Boyte, The Backyard Revolution; Swanstrom, The Crisis of Growth Politics; Clavel, The Progressive City; Kann, Middle Class Radicalism in Santa Monica; Guma, The People’s Republic; Conroy, Challenging the Boundaries of Reform; Kling and Posner, Dilemmas of

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Activism; Shuman, “Dateline Mainstreet”; Gunn and Gunn, Reclaiming Capital; and DeLeon, Left Coast City. 21 Boddy and Fudge, Local Socialism?; Green, “The New Municipal Socialism”; Gyford, The Politics of Local Socialism; Blunkett and Jackson, Democracy in Crisis; Seyd, The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left; Davies, “From Municipal Socialism”; Mackintosh and Wainwright, A Taste of Power; and Lansley et al., Councils in Conflict. 22 I associate the term “public space” with Hannah Arendt. See The Human Condition, but also On Revolution and Between Past and Future. The social science literature on space in general is dominated by geographers, many of whom have been influenced by Henri Lefebvre (The Production of Space). See, for instance, Soja, Postmodern Geographies and Thirdspace; Massey, Space, Place, and Gender and For Space; and Harvey, Spaces of Hope. All of this work involves a critique of the other social sciences for ignoring the spatiality of the social, the cultural, the economic, and the political: Agnew, “The Devaluation of Place.” There is a particular critique of international relations theory in this regard: see especially Agnew, “Timeless Space,” and Agnew and Corbridge, Mastering Space. Sophisticated geographers realize that spaces change over time, and that what humans can do in particular spaces will depend on technologies of transportation and communication, socioeconomic structures and relationships, forms of political organization, and so on. In the end, one has to think in terms of spatio-temporalities that are always changing, and that are different for different groups of people. The literature on “time,” which is mostly from the humanities, ought to be read in conjunction with the literature on space: see, for instance, Fraser, The Voices of Time; Adam, Time and Social Theory; and Bender and Wellberg, Chronotypes. 23 Carroll, Organizing Dissent. A new edition of this book is now planned. 24 Brenner, New State Spaces. 25 “Protecting the Right of Local Self-Government.” 26 For Lefebvre’s idea of the right to the city, see The Urban Revolution and Writings on Cities.

chapter one   1 The Boston town meeting had already been abolished when Tocqueville ­visited Massachusetts: he had no word of criticism for this. Jefferson’s fear of the urban mob was enhanced by his sojourn in Paris. See his Letter to James Madison, 20 December 1787, in Padover, The World of the Founding Fathers, 285. His ideas for an agrarian democracy of “ward republics” are

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set out in his Letters to John Tyler, 26 May 1810, John Adams, 28 October 1813, Samuel Kercheval, 12 July and 5 September 1816, and John Cartwright, 5 June 1824.   2 Webb and Webb, The Parish and the County, vol. 1, in English Local Government.  3 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, 62. For accounts of the early New England town meetings, see Sly, Town Government in Massachusetts; Zuckerman, Peaceable Kingdoms; and Kotler, “Politics and Citizenship in New England Towns.”   4 Bourinot, “Local Government in Canada.” Compare Crawford, Canadian Municipal Government, 23–4.   5 Their ideas are expounded in Redlich and Hirst, The History of Local Government in England. Lord Durham was one of this group. In his report on Canada, he strongly recommended the development of municipal institutions as a means of ensuring a more “durable and complete union” of the warring colonists. Crawford, Ibid., 28.  6 Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 1, 91–3, 335–7, and vol. 2, 32–48. Compare Redlich and Hirst, Ibid., and Lipman, Local Government Areas, Part 1. For Jeremy Bentham’s own ideas, see his Works, vol. 9, 147–50, 612–15, and 640–7.   7 In Massachusetts, town meetings in the cities were gradually suppressed after the state began to industrialize in about 1820. Sly, Town Government, 112–16. The democratic parish vestries in England (and there were a few) were suppressed by the Sturges Bourne Acts of 1818 and 1819. Webb and Webb, The Parish and the County, 91–103 and 152–63.   8 Most prominent among them was Joshua Toulmin-Smith. See his Local Self-Government and Centralization and The Parish. Compare Stephens, Parochial Self-Government. See also Greenleaf, “Toulmin-Smith and the British Political Tradition.” Toulmin-Smith’s ideas had more radically democratic implications than he himself recognized.  9 Crawford, Canadian Municipal Government, 29–32. One later English observer thought that the system established in Ontario was “nearly perfect, and certainly the best in the whole world.” McKay, “Municipal History,” 455. 10 Considerations on Representative Government, ch. 15. 11 Mill, Considerations, in On Liberty, the Subjection of Women, etc., 368–9, 204–6. 12 See Mill, “M. De Tocqueville on Democracy in America,” in Dissertations and Discussions, vol. 2, 1–83. 13 In the nineteenth century, town meeting government spread west with the settlers from New England. Howard, An Introduction to the Local

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Constitutional History of the United States, 140–66, and Fairlie, Local Government in Counties, Towns, and Villages, chs. 3 and 9. However, outside New England, this form of direct democracy was strictly confined to rural townships. Within New England, it was disappearing in the most urbanized areas: see note 7 above. 14 On the history of local government consolidation in England, see Lipman, Local Government Areas, and Brand, Local Government Reform in England. On American efforts in this direction, see Maxey, “The Political Integration of Metropolitan Communities”; Bollens, The States and the Metropolitan Problem; and Zimmerman, “Metro­politan Reform in the U.S.” On the Canadian experience, see Plunkett, “Structural Reform of Local Government in Canada,” and Tindal, Structural Changes in Local Government. 15 Thanks to the Labour party, this exclusion used to be less pronounced in Britain than in the United States and Canada. See Sharpe, “Elected Repre­ sentatives in Local Government,” and United Kingdom, The Local Govern­ ment Councillor. Compare Higgins, Urban Canada, ch. 8. 16 The best exposition of pluralist ideas is in the work of Robert A. Dahl. It is significant that he himself has stressed the importance of local government as a forum for democratic participation. See “The City in the Future of Democracy,” and After the Revolution?, 140–66. 17 Glass, “Urban Sociology in Great Britain.” 18 The first settlement houses were established in Oxford and London in 1884. Within two years, the movement had spread to the United States where it was very successful. See Davis, Spearheads for Reform. For representative writings, see Barnett and Barnett, Practicable Socialism; Coit, Neighbourhood Guilds; Holden, The Settlement Idea; and Woods, The Neighborhood in Nation-Building. In Canada, the settlement movement was one expression of the “social gospel.” See Allen, The Social Passion, 11–12. Both J.S. Woodsworth and W.L. Mackenzie King were early settlement workers, as was William Beveridge, whose 1942 report is supposed to have presaged the welfare state in Britain. 19 Settlement workers were organizing protests against urban redevelopment before the First World War. Davis, Spearheads for Reform, 74–5. 20 See Dillick, Community Organization for Neighborhood Development. Compare Dennis, “The Popularity of the Neighbourhood Community Idea.” 21 This belief was particularly strong in the United States. See Hays, “The Politics of Reform in Municipal Government.” American ideas influenced Canadian practice. 22 Webb and Webb, A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain, 213–16 and 222–33. Administrative areas were to vary by function.

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Notes to pages 38–44

For other Fabian ideas, see Sancton, “British Socialist Theories of the Division of Power by Area.” 23 Webb and Webb, ibid., 216. Compare the late-nineteenth-century American schemes for precinct assemblies, as described in Goodnow, Municipal Problems, 174–5. 24 Follett, The New State, 220–41, 245–51, and 301–3. See also 142, 154, 179, 208, 212. Follett’s conception of the state was proto-fascist – a fact that seems to have been neglected by some later commentators. Compare Stever, “Contemporary Neighborhood Theories.” 25 Griffith, Current Municipal Problems, 236. 26 Robson, The Development of Local Government, 157. Compare D’Aeth, “The Unit of Social Organization in a Large Town.” 27 See, e.g., Reed, “The Region: A New Governmental Unit,” and Fawcett, Provinces of England, 28–9. 28 United Kingdom [Herbert], para.138. Compare Maxey, “The Political Integration of Metropolitan Communities,” 237–40. 29 The later struggle between the government and the Poplar Council in inner London was an illustration of these dangers. See Branson, Poplarism, and Macintyre, Little Moscows. I considered this struggle in chapter 7 of The Search for Political Space, 174–8. 30 Considerations, in On Liberty, the Subjection of Women, etc., 371–2. 31 See below. It is significant that the two Royal Commissions on ­Metro­politan Toronto both recommended consolidation of the lower-tier municipalities. See Ontario [Goldenberg] and [Robarts]. 32 Because they recognized this, early American reformers who were interested in decentralizing big city government gave little support to the “borough plan.” See Goodnow, Municipal Problems, 292–305, and Wilcox, The Study of City Government, 7. 33 For an early statement of this position, see Carmichael and Hamilton, Black Power. 34 For example, see Waldo, “A Symposium”; Smith and La Noue, “Urban Decentralization and Community Participation”; Lynch, “Neighborhoods and Citizen Involvement”; and Frederickson, Neighborhood Control. 35 See Sharpe, Decentralist Trends in Western Democracies. 36 Compare Sharpe, “Instrumental Participation and Urban Government.” 37 One of the most interesting of the early American experiments in community organization was ended shortly after the First World War when the mayor condemned it as being “a step away from Bolshevism, with dangerous radical tendencies” in Steiner, “The Cincinnati Social Unit Experiment,” 124. This was of a plan to help nursing mothers care for their babies.

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For similarly extreme reactions a half-century later, see Lorimer, A Citizen’s Guide to City Politics, 199. 38 Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals. 39 Wilson, “Planning and Politics,” 416. 40 Davis, Spearheads for Reform, 76–83, and Dillick, Community Organization, 58–66 and 76–9. For similar British ideas, see Milligan, Community Associations and Local Authorities. 41 Dillick, ibid., 71–81. Of course, they were ideally supposed to be democratic organizations. See Clarke, The Little Democracy. 42 Compare Lubove, The Professional Altruist. On Britain, see Baldock, Community Work and Social Work. 43 Compare Martin, Grass Roots, 15–20, and Wilson, “Planning and Politics.” The control of juvenile delinquency has always been one of the major aims of community organization. This was the purpose of the Chicago Area Project, which spawned Alinsky’s Back-of-the-Yards Council in 1939. It was the purpose of the first experiments in community action in the United States in the 1960s. It was the purpose of Liverpool’s “Councils of Social Service,” which ultimately gave rise to the first neighbourhood councils in Britain. Dillick, Community Organization, 146–8, Marris and Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform, ch. 1, and Rose, Local Councils in Metro­ politan Areas, 22. 44 Bentley, The Process of Government. 45 For an account and assessment, see Marris and Rein, Dilemmas of Social Reform. 46 These developments are reviewed in Hallman, Neighborhood Control of Public Programs. The earliest community corporations originated as self-governing settlement houses: 65–73. Compare Gunn and Gunn, Reclaiming Capital. 47 United States [Kerner], 150–5. Mayor John Lindsay of New York was Vice-Chairman of the Commission and his ideas are clearly reflected in its recommendations. On the decentralist gestures in that city, see Bell and Held, “The Community Revolution,” 142–77, and Yates, Neighborhood Democracy. Compare Nordlinger, Decentralizing the City, and Washnis, Municipal Decentralization and Neighborhood Resources. 48 Modernizing Local Government, 47. In Reshaping Government in Metropolitan Areas, the C E D came down definitely in favour of a twotier system: 17–21, 52–3. 49 Fiscal Balance in the American Federal System, vol. 2, 17. 50 Building the American City, 350–4.

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51 Norman Mailer gained national publicity for his ideas, for which see “Why Are We in New York?” A more conservative scheme was presented by the New York Bar: Farr et al., Decentralizing City Govern­ment. For more general proposals for two-level government in the big cities, see Altshuler, Community Control; Zimmerman, The Federated City; and Hallman, Neighborhood Government in a Metropolitan Setting. 52 Before the “megacity” amalgamation in 1997, the smallest of the Toronto boroughs had over 100,000 people. The smallest London borough, aside from the City of London (still bounded as it was in medieval times), had more than 150,000 in the same period. The latter figure was suggested as a reasonable minimum for “neighbourhood governments” in New York City. Although it is usually admitted that authorities at this level can be on a smaller scale in smaller cities, a population of 50,000 is often taken to be an appropriate minimum for all urban governments. 53 In any case, large ghetto governments were politically threatening. 54 The Advisory Committee on Intergovernmental Relations concluded from a 1972 survey that “municipal governments are still unwilling to devolve substantial amounts of political power … to neighborhoods.” The New Grass Roots Government, 14. Compare Washnis, Municipal Decentralization and Neighborhood Resources, and Hayes, “Decentralizing City Government.” 55 For a review of consolidationist trends in the 1960s, see Smallwood, “Reshaping Local Government Abroad.” 56 The proposals for borough councils in the American cities were linked to schemes for creating new metropolitan governments. 57 United Kingdom, Report of the Planning Advisory Group, The Future of Development Plans, [Plowden] Children and their Primary Schools, and [Seebohm] Report of the Committee on Local Authority and Allied Personal Social Services were particularly influential, and were written from this perspective. For a review of the measures taken, see Donnison, “Micro-Politics of the City” in Urban Patterns, Problems, and Policies, 383–404. 58 Compare United Kingdom [Ingleby] Report of the Committee on Children and Young Persons, [Plowden], Children and their Primary Schools, and [Seebohm], Report. See also Gulbenkian Study Group, Community Work and Social Change. 59 Report, 147–57, 181–4, and 192. 60 United Kingdom [Skeffington], People and Planning. 61 See, for example, Spiegel, Citizen Participation in Urban Development. For an analysis and critique of such methods, see Arnstein, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation.”

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62 United Kingdom [Redcliffe-Maud], Minutes of Evidence, National Association of Parish Councils, 7 March 1967, 134–5. 63 United Kingdom [Redcliffe-Maud], Report, vol. 1, ch. 9, and vol. 2, Memorandum of Dissent from Mr. Derek Senior, ch. 4. Only Mr. Senior accepted the ideal fully. His ideas were similar to those of the [Wheatley] Royal Commission on Local Government in Scotland, ch. 26. 64 The Reform of Local Government in England, 18. 65 Hampton, Democracy and Community, 301. Compare Hampton and Chapman, “Towards Neighbourhood Councils,” and Baker and Young, The Hornsey Plan. 66 United Kingdom, Department of the Environment, Neighbourhood Councils in England. For an account of these developments, see Hain, “Neighbourhood Councils.” Compare Rowe, Democracy Renewed, on the Scottish legislation. For comparable American ideas, see the Los Angeles City Charter Commission, City Government for the Future, and the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Regional Governance, vol. 2, 65–7 (on Indianapolis). See also Hallman, The Organization and Operation of Neighbourhood Councils. 67 Harrison, “The Neighbourhood Council,” 73. See Cockburn, The Local State, chs. 4 and 5, for a critical account of the scheme in Lambeth, Greater London. 68 See the “Policy Statement of the Manitoba Government on Reorganization in Greater Winnipeg.” Compare Hefferon, “Notes on Bill 36.” 69 Wichern, “Winnipeg’s Unicity after Two Years”; Lorimer and Ross, “Reform Politics in Winnipeg”; and Manitoba, Committee of Review, City of Winnipeg Act, Report and Recommendations, 21–30, 84–105. 70 Manitoba, Committee of Review, Ibid., Parts III and IV. 71 Wichern, “An election unlike – and very much like – others.” See Brownstone and Plunkett, Metropolitan Winnipeg, for a fuller account of the Winnipeg experience. 72 Nova Scotia, Royal Commission on Education, Public Services, and Provincial-Municipal Relations, Report. The key recommendations for municipal reform are summarized in Tindal, Structural Changes in Local Government, 48–64. For commentary, see Auld, “The Graham Commission.” 73 Nova Scotia, Report, vol. 1, chs. 5, 3. Compare vol. 2, ch. 5, 322–7. 74 Nova Scotia, Report, vol. 1, chs. 5, 11, and vol. 2, ch. 5, 344–7, and ch. 6, 224–5 and 264–71. 75 Nova Scotia, New Directions in Municipal Government in Nova Scotia. That was not the end of the matter, however. Demands for consolidation

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resurfaced in the 1990s, and huge new regional municipalities were created for Halifax and Cape Breton. See Poel, “Municipal Reform in Nova Scotia,” and Cameron, “Nova Scotia.” 76 The effects on Toronto of this conjunction of pressures are well illustrated by Fraser, Fighting Back. 77 Daly, The Revolution Game. On other aspects of community organizing, see Draper, Citizen Participation. For more radical perspectives, see Repo, “The Fallacy of Community Control”; Keating, The Power to Make it Happen; and Keating, “Looking Back at Community Organizing.” 78 The now-defunct City Magazine became the main vehicle for expressing the movement’s ideas. See also the works of James Lorimer: The Real World of City Politics, Working People, A Citizen’s Guide to City Politics, and The Developers. For critical analysis of the impact of populist reform in Toronto, see Caulfield, The Tiny Perfect Mayor, and, more especially, Goldrick, “The Anatomy of Urban Reform in Toronto.” 79 City of Toronto, Report of the Neighbourhood Services Work Group, ch. 6. 80 The report of the Work Group, which reflected the views of the radical reformers, seems to have been shelved by the Council majority. 81 See Daly, “Montreal’s Poor Challenge Mayor Drapeau’s Regime,” on the early challenge from the Front d’Action Politique (F R A P ). This group was virtually destroyed by the F L Q crisis of 1970, but the Montreal Citizens’ Movement emerged to replace it in 1974. The M C M won over 45 per cent of the municipal council vote in the elections that fall, on a platform that called for the devolution of certain powers to elected district councils. See Roussopoulos, “Building Local Power in Montreal.” 82 See, for example, Citizens for Local Democracy, How to Make the United States a Democracy. Compare Goodman, People or Personnel, 15–16, and Kotler, Neighborhood Government. Kotler looks toward direct democracy at the neighbourhood level, but his scheme is otherwise conservative. 83 Megill, The New Democratic Theory, for an example. Yugoslavian arrangements have attracted some attention, but they are hardly more decentralist than their western counterparts. Compare Pusic and Walsh, Urban Government for Zagreb. 84 Benello and Roussopoulos, The Case for Participatory Democracy; Long, The New Left; Morris and Hess, Neighborhood Power; and Schecter, The Politics of Urban Liberation. 85 Roussopoulos, “Building Local Power in Montreal,” 28–30. Compare Schecter, ibid., ch. 6, and M. Beer, “M C M Sorts out Problems.” After adopting this radical program, the M C M was soundly defeated in the

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1978 municipal elections. For a post-mortem, see Roussopoulos, The City and Radical Social Change. The M C M later came to power on a more moderate platform, under the leadership of Jean Doré, who was mayor from 1986 to 1994. See Thomas, A City with a Difference. 86 Roussopoulos, “The Organizational Question and the Urban Commune,” and “Debates: A Community Control Strategy.” Compare Schecter, ibid., ch. 2. See also Arendt, On Revolution, ch. 6, for a more conservative version of this model of democracy. 87 United Kingdom [Redcliffe-Maud], “The Community Attitudes Survey.” 88 [Redcliffe-Maud], Report, ch. 5, especially p. 62. 89 The best statement of this critique is in Bish and Ostrom, Under­standing Urban Government. Long ago, Mark Sproule-Jones pointed out that I ought to have distinguished between the Virginia school and the Indiana school. The Indiana school, from which Bish, the Ostroms, and SprouleJones himself came, was not so obviously associated with conservative politics in the US. Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel laureate, came out of this school, and some of her work points toward the possibilities of local self-government that I consider in later chapters: see her Governing the Commons. 90 [Redcliffe-Maud], Research Studies, nos. 3–5, and Research Appendices, nos. 9–12. 91 Compare United States [Douglas], Building the American City, 326–9, and Long, The Unwalled City, 27–8, 41–2, 47. On the effects of present American arrangements, see Hill, “Separate and Unequal.” See also Dreier et al., Place Matters. 92 As such, it rarely receives a coherent theoretical exposition. However, see Rees, Government by Community. 93 Milton Kotler, the best-known proponent of neighbourhood government, gives credence to such fears. “Radical politics must understand that social equality is not the object of political revolution, but its opposing force.” Neighborhood Government, 101. 94 Compare the report of the Neighbourhood Services Work Group; Hallman, Neighborhood Government in a Metropolitan Setting, Part 3; United Kingdom [Seebohm], Report, 147–57, 181–4. 95 This should be evident to Canadians who are familiar with the mechanisms developed to equalize provincial government revenues. 96 It is this aim that makes a parochial scale of organization necessary. Urban neighbourhoods of much more than 10,000 people would probably be too large for town-meeting democracy. 97 Hasson and Ley, Neighbourhood Organizations and the Welfare State; Blomley, Unsettling the City; and Robinson and Culhane, In Plain Sight.

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chapter two   1 Compare Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism; Panitch and Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism; and Gill and Cutler, New Constitutionalism and World Order.   2 See, for example, Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, 282–8; Adrian and Press, Governing Urban America, 240–1; Blair, American Local Government, 581–5.   3 “State Capitalism and the Urban Fiscal Crisis,” 94, 90. Hill’s analysis should be read in light of other neo-Marxist accounts of American metropolitan reform: O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State, 89–91, 105–10, 135–7, 211–15, 226–35; Tabb and Sawers, Marxism and the Metropolis, 25–111, 213–40; and Cox, Urbanization and Conflict in Market Societies, 165–212.   4 Goldrick, “Perspectives on Governing,” 233. Compare Goldrick, “The Anatomy of Urban Reform,” 31; Lorimer, A Citizen’s Guide, 90–4; Lorimer, The Developers, 78–9; and Barker, Highrise and Superprofits, 86–90. The more general neo-Marxist claim is that “the development of capitalism requires the constant widening of administrative units.” O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis, 137.   5 As early as 1837, the English Royal Commission on Municipal Corpo­ rations 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, “The Political Integration of Metropolitan Communities,” 229– 53, and Teaford, City and Suburbs, ch. 3, for the American experience, and Lipman, Local Government Areas for the English. Compare Burns, The Formation of American Local Governments and Loughlin, Local Government in the Modern State.   6 Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government. Compare Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph.   7 Hill, “State Capitalism and the Urban Fiscal Crisis,” 98–9.   8 Some of the eighteenth-century schemes are discussed in Wickwar, The Political Theory of Local Government, 13–17.   9 Cited in Lipman, Local Government Areas, 44. 10 The struggle for reform is recounted in Lipman, Local Government Areas; Redlich and Hirst, The History of Local Government in England; and Laski, A Century of Municipal Progress.

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11 On the English influence, see Waldo, The Administrative State, 36–42, and Teaford, City and Suburbs, chs. 4 and 5. The early theory and practice of metropolitan reform is reviewed in Studenski, The Government of Metropolitan Areas in the United States. 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, The Politics of Efficiency, for a discussion of the broader program of municipal reform articulated in the Progressive era. Compare Jones, Metropolitan Government, and Stewart, A Half Century of Municipal Reform. 12 For the post-1930 experience in the United States, see Bollens, The States and the Metropolitan Problem; Teaford, City and Suburbs; and Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, chs. 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, “The Modern City Realized,” 56. The province gave metropolitan reform active consideration in the 1920s and 1930s but no action was taken until 1953. Rose, Governing Metropolitan Toronto, 11–22, and Colton, Big Daddy, 55–73. 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, 66–7. Mill accepted it too: Representative Government, ch. 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’s self-proclaimed disciple) made this explicit in The Culture of Cities, ch. 6. Another of Geddes’s disciples, Patrick Abercrombie, developed the plan for London’s Green Belt, which sets limits on the spread of the metropolis. Thanks to this, the Herbert Commission was able to discover “natural” boundaries for Greater London: see United Kingdom [Herbert], Report, 22–5. Derek Senior’s later Memorandum of Dissent to the Royal Commission on Local Government in England assumed that containment policies could be used to reinforce the “natural” city regions that Senior wanted to use for municipal organization. 16 Bourne, Urban Systems, and Clawson and Hall, Planning and Urban Growth, provide comparative analyses of contemporary practices. See also Barnekov et al., Privatism and Urban Policy; Fosler and Berger,

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Notes to pages 65–6

Public-Private Partnership; Cullingworth, Urban and Regional Planning; Levine, “The Politics of Partnership”; Savitch, Post-Industrial Cities; Gaffikin and Warf, “Urban Policy”; Keating, “Political Change”; and Fainstein, The City-Builders. For exemplary critiques of urban planning, see Forester, Planning in the Face of Power and Sandercock, Towards Cosmopolis and Cosmopolis II. 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, 2 March, 1953, A-7. 19 Joseph Salsberg in Debates, 5 March 1953, D-11. Compare D-10. 20 See especially Lorimer, A Citizen’s Guide to City Politics, The Devel­ opers, and The Real World of City Politics. Compare Aubin, City for Sale; Gutstein, Vancouver Ltd.; Walker, The Great Winnipeg Dream; and Pasternak, The Kitchener Market Fight. On the US, see Molotch, “The City as a Growth Machine;” Peterson, City Limits; Mollenkopf, The Contested City; Tabb and Sawers, Marxism and the Metropolis; Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes; Smith and Feagin, The Capitalist City; Stone and Sanders, The Politics of Urban Development; Plotkin, Keep Out; Feagin, The Free Enterprise City; Eisinger, The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State; Schneider, The Competitive City; and Logan and Swanstrom, Beyond the City Limits. On Europe or Europe in relation to the US, see Harloe, Captive Cities; Friedland, Power and Crisis in the City; Coakley and Harris, The City of Capital; Gurr and King, The State and the City; Scott, New Industrial Spaces; Judd and Parkinson, Leadership and Urban Regeneration; and Keating, Comparative Urban Politics. 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, et al., The Tail of the Elephant, 41. Compare Michael Cassidy in Ontario, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 15 October 1973, 4263–75, and The Steel Company of Canada, The Haldimand-Norfolk Study.

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22 Relevant developments are reviewed in Feldman, Ontario 1945–1973, Fraser, The Tail of the Elephant, and Pearson, “Regional Government and Development.” 23 See also Ontario Economic Council, Subject to Approval. It is significant that one of the problems the Robarts Commission had to consider when it reviewed the government of Metropolitan Toronto in 1974–77 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. Ontario [Robarts], Report, vol. 2, ch. 3. This, of course, was the function Metro had been designed to perform. 24 On the British experience see especially Sharpe, “‘Reforming’ the Grass Roots.” There is no comparable analysis of developments in Canada as a whole, but see Plunkett, “Structural Reform of Local Government in Canada.” 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” (United Kingdom, Reform of Local Government in England, 28). Compare US National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City, 8. 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 to 1,000,000 people suggested by the Royal Commission on Local Govern­ ment in England (Report, 4) to the area municipalities of 8,000 to 10,000 recommended for rural Ontario (Ontario, Design for Development: Phase Two, 4). 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 that followed, territorial consolidation was arguably the most disruptive and least successful (see Sharpe, “‘Reforming’ the Grass Roots”). In Ontario also, consoli­ dation 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

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Notes to pages 68–9

improving municipal management (see Ontario, Ministry of Treasury Economics and Intergovernmental Affairs, Managers for Local Government). 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 Develop­ ment: Modernizing Local Government and Reshaping Govern­ment in Metropolitan Areas. For the attitudes of British business, see the Royal Commission on Local Government in England, Written Evidence of Commercial Industrial and Political Organizations. 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,” 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 does not reflect 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 V.L. Maranda, “The Politics of Metropolitan Reform,” and Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, ch. 14. 30 Teaford, City and Suburbs, chs. 2, 3, and 5. 31 See the articles by Gordon, Ashton, and Markusen in Tabb and Sawers, Marxism and the Metropolis, 25–111. Compare Walker, “The Transformation of Urban Structure.” 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”). 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, “British Socialist Theories,” for an account of their ideas. 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

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legislated improvements in the 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: Govern­ ment Proposals for Reorganization. For the development of party attitudes in Britain, see Brand, Local Government Reform in England, ch. 4. In Canada, schemes for metropolitan or regional ­government have been implemented in various provinces by Liberal, Conservative, New Demo­ cratic Party, Social Credit, and Parti Québecois 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 toward metropolitan government (see Ontario, Legislative Assembly, Debates, 6 March 1953, H-3 to H-6 and Communist Party of Great Britain, in United Kingdom [Redcliffe-Maud], Written Evidence of Commercial, Industrial and Political Organizations, 58–63). 35 For some of these schemes, see Thornhill, The Case for Regional Reform. Two proposals from the 1960s that illustrate this community of thought are Sharpe, Why Local Democracy? and the Bow Group, New Life for Local Government. 36 This is reflected both in a greater determination to rationalize boundaries and in impatience with proposals that would allow for too much local autonomy within urban regions. It was the Labour Government that 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 that provided Winnipeg with a “Unicity” government, for somewhat similar reasons. 37 This is most evident in the United States: see Hill, “Separate and Unequal”; Newton, “Feeble Governments and Private Power”; and Dreier et al., Place Matters. Compare Ontario [Goldenberg], Report, chs. 7, 9, and 14. For an early British view of this problem, see Muni­cipalization by Provinces. 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 et al., The Containment of Urban England. It is significant that the Labour

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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, Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Metropolitan America, and the National Commission on Urban Problems, Building the American City. Compare Harrington, Toward a Democratic Left, 126–31, Harvey, Social Justice and the City, 91–4. 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, because of the constraints upon it, can be expected 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, The Canadian State, 8). In any case, there are many different things in a capitalist society that 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 that is certainly incomplete, and that could probably be applied with equal accuracy to the socialist states. 43 It was a housing crisis that provided the stimulus to form 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

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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, Communist Local Government, xii). This sounds remarkably like the reasoning of the English Poor Law Commission. See Leemans, Changing Patterns of Local Government, and Local Government Reform, for accounts of consolidationist trends, which seem equally apparent in developed and underdeveloped, capitalist and socialist countries. Compare Szajkowski, Marxist Local Governments. 45 Note that consumer benefits are essentially the ones at stake. 46 See Goldrick, “The Anatomy of Urban Reform.” 47 Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society, 96–118, 273–5. 48 Lorimer, The Developers, 123, 225. 49 See, for example, Rees, Government by Community, and Greenleaf, “Toulmin-Smith and the British Political Tradition.” Compare Nisbet, The Quest for Community. 50 Of course, the point of Marx’s analysis was that the socialization of capitalism was an inherently contradictory process that would ultimately lead to the supersession of the system. See Bottomore and Rubel, Karl Marx, 145–51, 163–4, 257–9, for examples of the socializing tendencies that 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 intelligible. 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 obtain­ ­ed 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, “Local Govern­ment Organization in Metropolitan Areas,” 535). See Bollens and Schmandt, The Metropolis, ch. 13, for an account of efforts to provide for metropolitan planning without metropolitan government.

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52 This was one of the major themes of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. For an attempt at an empirical assessment of the advantages of consolidating states into larger units, see Dahl and Tufte, Size and Democracy. 53 In this respect, what is true of the United States may also be true of Canada. 54 Compare Tiebout, “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditure”; Ostrom et al., “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas”; Warren, Government in Metropolitan Regions; Bish, The Public Economy of Metropolitan Area; Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government; and Banfield and Grodzins, “Some Flaws in the Logic of Metropolitan Consolidation.” See also Goldberg, Zoning; Ostrom, Governing the Commons; Ostrom et al., Local Government in the United States; and Sproule-Jones, Governments at Work. 55 This principle was given its classic expression in Mill’s Representative Government, ch. 15. 56 Cion, “Accommodation Par Excellence.” Compare Robert Warren, Govern­ ment in Metropolitan Regions. Fogelson, The Fragmented Metropolis, and Foster, The Political Economy of Special Purpose Government, offer different perspectives on this experience. 57 These were themes of the campaign for Proposition 13. Frank Levy, “On Understanding Proposition 13,” 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” and Danzinger, “California’s Proposition 13.” 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, 52–3) and theorists of public choice (Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government, 30, 95–6, 103). Not all the suburban municipalities that now have autonomy and resist consolidation are havens of the upper middle class. 59 See Sharpe, “American Democracy Reconsidered,” for an analysis of the effects of this conception. Compare Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory. 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,” 91–3, 98–103.

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61 Things changed after I wrote this, and the Europeans – especially the British – began to follow American models more closely. On the trend of reform with respect to local government in Britain, see Gyford et al., The Changing Politics of Local Government; Pimlott and Rao, Governing London; and Stoker, Transforming Local Governance. See also Harvey, “From Managerialism to Entrepreneurialism.” 62 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. 63 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, ch. 7; Warren, Government in Metropolitan Regions, 41–3; Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government, 57–99; and Banfield and Grodzins, “Some Flaws in the Logic,” 146–8. 64 See Panitch, The Canadian State; Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society; O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State; and Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes. 65 Gramsci, The Modern Prince, 58–75. 66 The importance of this concept 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, The Municipal Revolution in America, and Webb and Webb, English Local Government, vols. 1–4, esp. 4, chs. 5–6. To a large extent, the Webbs maintained this concept in their own theory of local government, except that they insisted that local authorities were organizations of consumers and not producers (Webb and Webb, The Development of Local Government and A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth). In doing so, they were elaborating on Bentham’s theory of state: compare my “Participation and Democratic Theory,” 101–18 and 174–83. See also Willoughby, “The National Government as a Holding Company.” 67 This is part of what is meant by the “relative autonomy of the state.” 68 One analysis that does suggest that distinctively American stabilizing solutions may be viable, is in Friedland et al., “Political Conflict, Urban Structure and the Fiscal Crisis.” The emergency arrangements made to

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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 advantage. 69 See Isin, “Governing Toronto without Government”; Keil, “Toronto in the 1990s”; Boudreau, Megacity Madness; Sancton, Merger Mania and The Limits of Boundaries for various analyses of what happened. 70 For example, see Barber, If Mayors Ruled the World. 71 Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, The Flight of the Creative Class, and Who’s Your City? 72 On the Canadian case, see for instance Calvert, Government Limited; Magnusson, et al., The New Reality; Hardin, The Privatization Putsch; Banting, The Welfare State and Canadian Federalism; and Banting and Myles, Inequality. More generally, see Esping-Anderson, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, and Jessop, “The Schumpeterian Workfare State.” 73 Keil and Young, “A Charter for the People?”; Broadbent, Urban Nation; and Boudreau, Keil, and Young, Changing Toronto. Jane Jacobs was an inspiration: see her Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association. 74 Peirce et al., Citistates.

chapter three   1 This is still reflected in the main Canadian texts, as they have developed since the 1980s: compare Higgins, Urban Canada; Feldman, Politics and Government in Urban Canada; Magnusson and Sancton, City Politics in Canada; Tindal and Tindal, Local Government in Canada; Higgins, Local and Urban Politics in Canada; Lightbody, Canadian Metropolitics; Thomas, The Politics of the City; Graham and Phillips with Maslove, Urban Gover­ nance in Canada; McAllister, Governing Ourselves?; Lightbody, City Politics, Canada; and Sancton, Canadian Local Government.   2 The classic expression of this is in Mill, Considerations on Represen­tative Government, ch. 15. More generally see Feldman, ibid., 4th ed., Section A. Compare Hill, Democratic Theory and Local Government.   3 Bird and Slack, Urban Public Finance in Canada, 39–40. For a more current analysis of municipal revenues and expenditures, see McMillan, “Municipal Relations,” and Sancton and Young, Foundations of Governance, 8–11 and Appendix.   4 Bird and Slack, Urban Public Finance, 41.   5 Bird et al., The Growth of Public Employment in Canada, 31.

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Notes to pages 87–99

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  6 Bird and Slack, Urban Public Finance, 40.   7 Since the 1980s, one of the strategies for fiscal restraint on the part of the federal and provincial governments has been to cut back on grants to the municipalities and force them to rely more on their own revenues. See, for instance, Graham and Phillips, “‘Who Does What.’” Compare Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Our Cities, Our Future.   8 See Cockburn, The Local State, 45–6.   9 See my “Urban Politics and the Local State,” 120–5, for an earlier treatment of these definitions. 10 Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Municipal Government in a New Canadian Federal System. Compare the Federation’s Policy Statement on the Future Role of Local Government and Our Cities, Our Future. 11 See Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government. 12 This position is implicit in decentralist schemes that bypass municipal organization. See chapter 1. 13 In Britain evidence about the ostensible decline of local government has been much more carefully scrutinized than in Canada. See Sharpe and Newton, Does Politics Matter?, ch. 2. Compare Loughlin et al., Half a Century of Municipal Decline. 14 See the analysis I develop in chapter 7, however. 15 Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Municipal Government, 1. 16 Ibid., 126. 17 Jacobs, Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association. 18 This is one of the provisions of British Columbia’s “Community Charter.” See Bish and Clemens, Local Government in British Columbia. 19 See chapter 2. 20 See Long, Little Bear, and Boldt, “Federal Indian Policy and Indian SelfGovernment”; Tennant, Weaver, Gibbins, and Ponting, “The Report of the House of Commons Special Committee”; and Little Bear, Boldt, and Long, Pathways to Self-Determination. 21 Quoted in Report of the House of Commons Special Committee, Indian Self-Government in Canada, 63. 22 Ibid., 39–78. See also Canada, Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples and compare Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, and Borrows, Canada’s Indigenous Constitution. 23 See Rogers, The Law of Canadian Municipal Corporations. Compare Frug, “The City as a Legal Concept,” and Isin, Cities without Citizens. 24 Lorimer, A Citizen’s Guide to City Politics, 9. Compare Molotch, “The City as a Growth Machine,” and Logan and Molotch, Urban Fortunes.

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Notes to pages 100–12

25 See Andrew, “Ottawa: Progressives in Power,” 96–108, and Higgins, Local and Urban Politics in Canada. 26 Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government, 9. 27 Ibid., 31. 28 Ibid., 61. Not everyone who adopts a public choice approach would go so far. For a more cautious Canadian analysis, see Bird and Slack, Urban Public Finance. See also my “Political Science, Political Economy, and the Local State” for critical commentary. 29 See, e.g., Hill, “Separate and Unequal,” Hoch, “City Limits,” and Newton, “American Urban Politics.” Compare Judd and Swanstrom, City Politics, and Dreier et al., Place Matters. 30 For reviews of these ideas in relation to mainstream political theory, see Held, States and Societies, and Carnoy, The State and Political Theory. See also Panitch, The Canadian State. 31 See Cockburn, The Local State; Stephen Schechter, The Politics of Urban Liberation; and Roussopoulos, The City and Radical Social Change. 32 See Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism and Political Power and Social Classes. 33 O’Connor, The Fiscal Crisis of the State. 34 Saunders, Social Theory and the Urban Question; Dunleavy, Urban Political Analysis; and Castells, The Urban Question. I have considered this theory at greater length in “Urban Politics and the Local State.” 35 For an intriguing analysis of this process at the neighbourhood level, see Crenson, Neighborhood Politics. 36 There is a public choice version of this capture theory, which emphasizes the phenomenon of bureaucratic empire-building: see, for example, Niskanen, Bureaucracy and Representative Government. 37 According to the 1981 census Canada, 52.5 per cent of the Canadian people lived in metropolitan areas. Between them, the census metropolitan areas contained 350 lower-tier municipal governments – just over 8 per cent of the total. By contrast, villages, townships, and other rural municipalities accounted for 75.5 per cent of the municipalities in Canada, even though 24.3 per cent of the people lived in rural areas. My thanks to Barbara J. Falk for these calculations. 38 Young, Faucher, and Blais, “The Concept of Province-Building.” 39 Michel Foucault invented this term in the 1970s: see his lectures at the Collège de France in 1975–76 (“Society Must Be Defended”), 1977–78 (Security, Territory, Population), and 1978–79 (The Birth of Biopolitics). The idea was first widely introduced to English-speaking readers in Burchell et al., The Foucault Effect. For me, the expositions in Rose,

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Notes to pages 112–29

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Powers of Freedom, and Dean, Governmentality, have been particularly helpful. More generally, see the journal, Economy and Society. I have ­discussed Foucault’s lectures in Politics of Urbanism, ch. 4, and invoked the concept of governmentality in “Urbanism, Cities, and Local Self-Government.” 40 Rancière, Hatred of Democracy. 41 See, for example, Lazar and Leuprecht, Spheres of Governance.

postscript: thirty years on   1 Garcea and LeSage, Municipal Reform in Canada, and Sancton and Young, Foundations of Governance.   2 Bish and Clemens, Local Government in British Columbia.  3 Sancton, Merger Mania and The Limits of Boundaries. See Hambleton et al., Globalism and Local Democracy for a nuanced discussion of the wider trends and issues.  4 Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class.  5 Dean, Governmentality.   6 Compare Petit, Republicanism; Honohan, Civic Republicanism; and Viroli, Republicanism.

chapter four  1 Maier, Changing Boundaries of the Political; Howard, Defining the Political; Crick, In Defence of Politics.   2 Magnusson and Walker, “Decentring the State,” and Hardt and Negri, Empire.  3 Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse.   4 Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life.”  5 Robertson, Globalization; Waters, Globalization; Knox and Taylor, World Cities in a World System; and Held and McGrew, The Global Transformations Reader. Compare Nancy, The Creation of the World.  6 Tarrow Power in Movement, and Touraine, Critique of Modernity. Compare Zald and McCarthy, The Dynamics of Social Movements; Oberschall, Social Conflict and Social Movements; Boggs, Social Movements and Political Power; Lowe, Urban Social Movements; and Eyerman and Jamison, Social Movements.  7 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference. Compare Laclau and Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, and Butler, et al., Contingency, Hegemony, Universality.

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Notes to pages 129–44

 8 Laslett, The World We Have Lost.   9 See, for instance, Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness, and Wasáse; Turner, This is not a Peace Pipe; and Coulthard, Red Skins, White Masks. Compare Boldt and Long, “Tribal Traditions”; Tully, Strange Multiplicity; and Shaw, Indigeneity and Political Theory. 10 Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitics. 11 Kumar, Revolution, and Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution. 12 Marx, Selected Writings. 13 Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory. Compare Keane, Civil Society and the State and Global Civil Society?. 14 Walker, Inside / Outside, and George, Discourses of Global Politics. 15 Walker, Inside / Outside. 16 Melucci, Nomads of the Present. Compare Evans, Personal Politics, and Touraine, The Voice and the Eye. 17 Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, and Vincent, Theories of the State. 18 Heilbron, The Rise of Social Theory. 19 Knox, Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. 20 Barker, The Politics of Aristotle; Arendt, The Human Condition. 21 Aristotle, Ethics, Book 1. 22 Marx, Selected Writings, 39–62. 23 Gill and Law, The Global Political Economy, and Waters, Globalization. Compare Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics; Walker and Mendlovitz, Contending Sovereignties; Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society; and Sassen, Losing Control? and Territory, Authority, Rights. 24 Crozier et al., The Crisis of Democracy; King, The New Right; and Gill, American Hegemony. I am not distinguishing here between neo-­ conservatism and neo-liberalism: neo-liberalism is probably the better term. 25 Walker, One World, Many Worlds. 26 See Featherstone, Global Culture; Appadurai, Modernity at Large; Ong, Flexible Citizenship; and Isin, Democracy, Citizenship, and the Global City. 27 See Kaku, Hyperspace, for the way physicists use this term. I draw on the idea in “Social Movements and the Global City” and “Hyperspace.” 28 Castells, The Urban Question; Smith, The City and Social Theory; Saunders, Social Theory and the Urban Question; and Chorney, City of Dreams. For different views of urbanism, see Sennett, Classic Essays; Weber, The City, Simmel, On Individuality; Park et al., The City; Hawley, Human Ecology; Parker, Urban Theory; Jacobs, The Economy of Cities and Cities and the Wealth of Nations; Lefebvre, Writings on Cities; Pickvance, Urban Sociology; Dunleavy, Urban Political Analysis; Sennett,

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Notes to pages 144–63

311

The Fall of Public Man; Castells, The City and the Grassroots and The Information Age; Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital and Consciousness and the Urban Experience; Smith, Uneven Develop­ ment; Smith, Trans­national Urbanism; Scott and Soja, The City; and Amin and Thrift, Cities. 29 Mumford, The Culture of Cities and The City in History; and Jacobs, The Economy of Cities. 30 Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism; Wallerstein, The Modern World System; Wolf, Europe and the People Without History; Timberlake, Urba­ nization in the World Economy; and Kasaba, Cities in the World System. 31 Zukin, Landscapes of Power. 32 Magnusson and Shaw, A Political Space. Compare Cronon, Uncommon Ground. 33 Crick, In Defence of Politics. Compare Wolin, Politics and Vision. 34 Magnusson, The Search for Political Space, 301–6. 35 Magnusson, “Hyperspace.” 36 Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society and The Network Society. 37 Casey, The Fate of Place. 38 Bryan, Real Democracy.

chapter five  1 Aristotle, The Politics. Compare Finley, Democracy Ancient and Modern, and Macpherson, Democratic Theory.   2 See, for instance, Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle, and Okin, Women in Western Political Thought.   3 See Andrew, et al., Urban Affairs, and Young and Leuprecht, Canada.  4 Howe, The City.   5 On American anti-urbanism, see White and White, The Intellectual versus The City.   6 See the Congress for the New Urbanism: www.cnu.org. Compare Talen, New Urbanism.  7 Miller, From Progressive to New Dealer.  8 Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency. Compare Waldo, The Administrative State, and Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph.   9 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth. 10 Ibittson, The Polite Revolution. 11 Lithwick and Paquet, Urban Studies. Compare Lithwick, Urban Canada. 12 Higgins, Local and Urban Politics in Canada.

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Notes to pages 164–78

13 Rose, Powers of Freedom. 14 Osborne and Gaebler, Reinventing Government. 15 Now Accenture. The parent accounting firm was caught up in the Enron scandal and effectively collapsed. 16 Nader, Cities of Canada, and Gertler and Crowley, Changing Canadian Cities. Compare Bunting et al., Canadian Cities in Transition. 17 Innis, Empire and Communications, Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence; and Careless, Frontier and Metropolis. 18 Friedmann and Wolff, “World City Formation;” Sassen, The Global City and Global Cities, Linked Regions; King, Global Cities; Knox and Taylor, World Cities in a World-System; and Scott, Global City Regions. 19 Ohmae, The End of the Nation State. 20 Ong, Flexible Citizenship; Smith, Transnational Urbanism; Satzewich and Wong, Transnational Identities; and Good, Municipalities and Multiculturalism. 21 Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown; Goldberg, The Chinese Connection; and Mitchell, Crossing the Neoliberal Line. 22 Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class. For a critique, see Peck, “The Cult of Creativity.” 23 Smith, “Globalizing Resistance.” 24 The reference is to the contamination of the local water supply in 2000, which led to several deaths and a provincial commission of inquiry: http://www.walkertoninquiry.com. 25 Park, The City; Smith, The City and Social Theory; Chorney, City of Dreams; Parker, Urban Theory. 26 Wirth, On Cities and Social Life. 27 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 28 Jacobs, Canadian Cities and Sovereignty Association; Broadbent, Urban Nation. 29 Manuel Castells, The Urban Question and The City and the Grassroots; Lowe, Urban Social Movements. 30 Isin, Being Political. 31 Jacques Rancière, On the Shores of Politics and Hatred of Democracy.

chapter six   1 See, for instance, Lipietz, Mirages and Miracles; Scott and Urry, The End of Organized Capitalism; Gill and Law, The Global Political Economy; Jessop, The Future of the Capitalist State; and Panitch and Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism.  2 Brenner, New State Spaces.

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Notes to pages 178–95

313

  3 Keil and Mahon, Leviathan Undone?   4 This presumption is implicit in two key decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada that deal with the questions of Aboriginal self-government and Quebec independence respectively: Delgamuukw v. British Columbia and Reference re Secession of Quebec. The court assumes, as almost everyone does, that Quebec has the requisites for independent statehood, whereas Aboriginal nations do not. The recent decision in Tsilhqot’in v. British Columbia is in line with previous assumptions in this respect.  5 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism.  6 Vincent, Theories of the State.   7 See Perry, “The Neighborhood Unit,” and Isaacs, “The Neighborhood Theory.”   8 See the discussion in the 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples at http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/index_e.html. Compare Cassidy and Bish, Indian Government, and Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness.   9 Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?”; Kant, Political Writings, 54–60. 10 Aristotle, The Politics, 73–5, 171–9. 11 Dahl, After the Revolution? and Held, Models of Democracy. 12 I remember that this way of describing things, in terms of marker years, came from a conversation with Rob Walker, but I no longer remember exactly how that conversation went. I am sure I am indebted to him for some of these ideas, however. 13 Marx, Selected Writings, 169. 14 See chapter 2. 15 Ferguson, An Essay. Compare Wolf, Europe and the People Without History, and Clifford, Returns. 16 Weber, The Protestant Ethic. 17 Campbell and Dillon, The Political Subject of Violence. 18 Hobbes, Leviathan; and Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism. 19 Let me be clear: I recognize that the chain of determination can also go the other way. 20 Brenner, New State Spaces. 21 Rose, Powers of Freedom.

postscript: seeing like a city   1 I have explained myself at greater length in Politics of Urbanism and more briefly in “Seeing Like a City,” and “The Symbiosis of the Urban and the Political.”

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Notes to pages 204–14

chapter seven  1 Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.  2 Putnam, Bowling Alone, and Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism.   3 Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media.  4 Fesler, Area and Administration and “Approaches to the Understanding of Decentralization”; Maass, Area and Power; and Smith, Decentralization.   5 It might be argued that Althusius anticipated such ideas: see Hueglin, Early Modern Concepts.  6 Bookchin, The Limits of the City, The Rise of Urbanization, The Ecology of Freedom, and Urbanization without Cities.  7 O’Neill, All Politics is Local.  8 Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics.  9 Schmitt, The Concept of the Political; Kant, Political Writings; and Bentham, Works. 10 In my view, the Hobbesian understanding of this issue is still predominant, although people are often reluctant to admit that they think that Hobbes was right in important respects. Schmitt’s influential theory of sovereignty follows from Hobbes’s: see his Political Theology and Constitutional Theory. Compare Mouffe, The Challenge of Carl Schmitt. Agamben’s Homo Sacer also draws obvious inspiration from Hobbes. Stankiewicz, In Defence of Sovereignty, and Hinsley, Sovereignty, follow a similar line, although in more conventional terms. For subtler analysis, see Bartelson, Genealogy of Sovereignty and Critique of the State. 11 Locke, Two Treatises of Government; and Smith, Wealth of Nations. 12 Mill, On Liberty, 14. 13 See Chapter 3. 14 Levin, The Charter Controversy, and Loughlin, Legality and Locality. 15 Weber, Economy and Society, especially vol. 2, ch. 16. 16 See Holton, Cities, Capitalism, and Civilization; and Friedrich, The Early Modern City, for critiques of this interpretation. Compare Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities. 17 Frug, “The City as a Legal Concept,” and Isin, Cities without Citizens. 18 Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age; Weber, The City; Pirenne, Medieval Cities; and Mumford, The City in History. 19 Dyson, The State Tradition in Western Europe. 20 Frug, “The City as a Legal Concept.” Compare Hartog, Public Property and Private Power; and Clark, Judges and the Cities. 21 See Bakan, The Corporation, for a scathing indictment of the consequences. 22 See chapters 1–3.

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Notes to pages 215–26

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23 Anderson, Imagined Communities. 24 Smith, Tax Crusaders and the Politics of Direct Democracy. 25 Briffault, “Our Localism,” and Magnusson, “Protecting the Right of Local Self-Government.” 26 Galbraith, The Affluent Society. Compare McKenzie, Privatopia, and Blakely and Snyder, Fortress America. 27 Compare Miliband and Panitch, New World Order?; Sinclair, Global Governance; Holsti, Taming the Sovereigns; Gill and Cutler, New Constitutionalism; and Best and Gheciu, The Return of the Public. 28 This has obvious implications for the way we think about international relations. For other critical views, see Der Derian and Shapiro, International / Intertextual Relations; Patomäki, After International Relations; Walker Inside / Outside and After the Globe; Teschke, The Myth of 1648; and Gratton, The State of Sovereignty. 29 Panitch and Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism. Hardt and Negri, Empire, offers quite a different interpretation, which draws attention to the ways in which the United States itself is enmeshed in an “empire” that transcends any particular state. See also Walker, After the Globe, for a yet more subtle analysis. 30 Compare Laski, The Foundations of Sovereignty. 31 Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously. 32 Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitics.

chapter eight   1 See, however, Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Policy Statement, which refers to Council of Europe, European Charter of Local SelfGovernment and International Union of Local Authorities, World-Wide Declaration of Local Self-Government. In my view, none of these statements of principle gives an adequate account of the right of local self-government.   2 See Scoffield, “Urban Funding Dominates Liberal Battle,” and Simpson, “Why Ottawa Should Stay Out of the Urban Game.”  3 Macklem, Indigenous Difference and the Constitution of Canada, 7. Compare Borrows, Recovering Canada and Canada’s Indigenous Constitution, and Asch, On Being Here to Stay. For a critique of the “­politics of recognition,” see Coulthard, “Subjects of Empire” and Red Skins, White Masks.   4 The term “political system,” is associated with David Easton (see his The Political System), “governance” with, among others, the journal of the

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Notes to pages 228–41

same name, “public economy” with the public choice school of analysts (for example, Bish, The Public Economy of Metropolitan Areas, and Sproule-Jones, Governments at Work), and “governmentality” with Michel Foucault (Security, Territory, Population). The governmentality ­literature is especially insightful: see Burchell et al., The Foucault Effect; Dean, Governmentality; Rose, Powers of Freedom; and, more ­generally, the journal Economy and Society. See also Hewson and Sinclair, Approaches to Global Governance Theory, and Pierre, Debating Governance.  5 Innis, Empire and Communications; Creighton, The Empire of the St. Lawrence; and Careless, Frontier and Metropolis.   6 The clearest statement of the Court’s view is in Public School Boards’ Association of Alberta v. Alberta. Most of the other key cases were decided at a lower level. See Milroy, “Toronto’s Legal Challenge to Amalgamation,” for a discussion of the Toronto amalgamation decision.   7 On the American case, see Frug, City-Making, 26–53. See also Eaton, “The Right to Local Self-Government,” and McQuillin, A Treatise on the Law of Municipal Corporations. More generally see Syed, The Political Theory of American Local Government, and Wickwar, The Political Theory of Local Government. The American case is especially significant, since the US Constitution is not freighted with the doctrine of Crown sovereignty. Moreover, the tradition of local autonomy is exceptionally strong in the United States. Compare Loughlin, Local Government in the Modern State and Legality and Locality; and Walker, Sovereignty in Transition.   8 See Anderson Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism and Lineages of the Absolutist State.  9 Hinsley, Sovereignty; Stankiewicz, In Defence of Sovereignty. 10 Alfred, Wasáse; Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe; Borrows, Canada’s Indigenous Constitution; and Coulthard, White Skins, Red Masks. 11 The sharpest statement of this position is still Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. 12 Keller, The Urban Neighborhood. Compare Sennett, The Uses of Disorder; Berman, All that Is Solid Melts into Air; Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity; Jameson, Postmodernism; and Zukin, The Cultures of Cities and Naked City. 13 The term is usually used in a different sense, as in Knox and Taylor, World Cities in a World-System; Scott, Global City Regions; or Sassen, The Global City. I first used it in the sense I mean here in “Social Movements and the Global City.” 14 Compare De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life.

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Notes to pages 242–54

317

15 Syed, The Political Theory of American Local Government; Frug, “The City as a Legal Concept”; and Briffault, “Our Localism.” 16 Milroy, “Toronto’s Legal Challenge.” 17 Recent events in Quebec are an exception, both in the sense that forced municipal amalgamations did become a provincial election issue and the new Liberal government followed through on a plan to allow for referenda on de-mergers, which allowed a number of ­formerly separate municipalities on the Island of Montreal to regain their status. See Trent, The Merger Delusion, for a detailed account of the struggle by one of the mayors involved. 18 Ralph Klein, a charismatic populist, was premier of Alberta from 1992 to 2006. 19 If a municipality is a political institution of a different sort, rather than a local agency of the state, it is not evident that anyone but its own constituents has a right to abolish it. Municipalities need not have exclusive jurisdiction, and so the ongoing presence of a traditional municipality is not necessarily an obstacle to the formation of new authorities for larger geographic areas. 20 Compare Seabrook, The Idea of Neighbourhood, and Kotler, Neighborhood Government. 21 This article was the first of three in which I tried to work out the implications of a right of local self-government in the Canadian context; the others are “Urbanism, Cities, and Local Self-Government,” and “Protecting the Right of Local Self-Government.” 22 “Protecting the Right of Local Self-Government.” 23 Briffault, “Our Localism, Part II.” Compare McKenzie, Privatopia, and Blakely and Snyder, Fortress America.

chapter nine  1 Graeber, The Democracy Project.  2 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, and Scott, Seeing Like a State.   3 Nicolaidis and Howse, The Federal Vision.   4 Council of Europe, European Charter of Local Self-Government, and International Union of Local Authorities, World-Wide Declaration of Local Self-Government.  5 Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty and Law, Legislation and Liberty.  6 Bookchin, The Rise of Urbanization and The Ecology of Freedom.   7 That the state is a form of alienated authority is obvious: contractarian theories of the state make that explicit, since their purpose is to explain how

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Notes to pages 255–62

authority that naturally belongs to ordinary people gets transferred to ­others, who then have the power of life or death. That the market is also a form of alienated authority is less obvious, since the market is usually understood as a quasi-natural order that arises from free activity. Never­ theless, it is clear that any particular person encounters the market as an authority already in being. One has to abide by the rules of the market in order to operate there, and the claim – made again and again by market theorists – is that certain rules (such as security of property) have to be observed if the market is to work properly. The market is akin to the polis as Aristotle imagined it: something that arises naturally from human purposes, and that takes a form that it must have if it is to serve those purposes. A person may be free within the market, polis, or state, but the rules that delimit that person’s freedom are not within his or her control. If we assume, as liberals do, that all authority originates from individuals, it follows that all the authority embedded in the market or the state must have been alienated from the individuals concerned by some process, conceived either as an implicit social contract or as a natural emanation.  8 Lefebvre, Writing on Cities, The Urban Revolution, and State, Space, World. Compare Lefebvre et al., Implosions / Explosions. For other commentaries on Lefebvre’s idea of the right to the city, see Purcell, “Excavating Lefebvre”; Brenner et al., Cities for People; Harvey, Rebel Cities; and Merrifield, Politics of the Encounter.  9 Castells, The Urban Question. Castells criticizes Lefebvre in this book. In contrast, see Harvey, Social Justice and the City. 10 Foucault, Security, Territory, Population and The Birth of Biopolitics. 11 Rose, Powers of Freedom. 12 Gellner, Nations and Nationalism. 13 Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren, “The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas”; and Bish and Ostrom, Understanding Urban Government. 14 Frug, “The City as a Legal Concept” and City-Making. 15 Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle Age; Pirenne, Medieval Cities; Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State; and Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe. 16 McFarlane, Brotherhood to Nation; Alfred, Peace, Power, Righteousness and Wasáse; Turner, This Is Not a Peace Pipe; and Coulthard, Red Skins, White Masks. 17 Tully, Strange Multiplicity; Niezen, The Origins of Indigenism; Shaw, Indigeneity and Political Theory; Brody, The Other Side of Eden; and Clifford, Returns. 18 Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty; and Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

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Notes to pages 265–81

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19 Rancière, On the Shores of Politics and Disagreement. 20 Carens, Immigrants and the Right to Stay and The Ethics of Immigration. 21 Wirth, On Cities and Social Life; McLuhan, Understanding Media; and Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution.

conclusion  1 Dryzek, Discursive Democracy and Deliberative Democracy and Beyond.  2 Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference and Inclusion and Democracy.  3 Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship and Multicultural Odysseys.  4 Taylor, Sources of the Self and The Malaise of Modernity.   5 Eisenberg and Spinner-Halev, Minorities within Minorities; and Eisenberg, Reasons of Identity.  6 Held, Democracy and the Global Order; Archibugi and Held, Cosmopolitan Democracy; Zolo, Cosmopolis; Shaw, Theory of the Global State; Held, Cosmopolitanism; Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought; Gill and Cutler, New Constitutionalism and World Order; and Best and Gheciu, The Return of the Public.  7 Tully, Public Philosophy in a New Key.  8 Mouffe, On the Political.  9 Rancière, On the Shores of Politics and Disagreement. 10 See, for example, http://www.masslbp.com/journal.php. 11 Pilon, Wrestling with Democracy. 12 There are exceptions, of course. In the US, Robert Dahl and Ben Barber have taken the question of localization seriously, although their analyses differ from mine: see Dahl, “The City in the Future of Democracy” and After the Revolution? and Barber, The Death of Communal Liberty, Strong Democracy, and If Mayors Ruled the World. Compare Cook and Morgan, Participatory Democracy, and Williamson et al., Making Place for Community. 13 Webb and Webb, A Constitution. 14 Cole, Social Theory and The Future of Local Government. 15 Casey, The Fate of Place; and Conway, Identity, Place, Knowledge. 16 Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty. 17 Cruikshank, The Will to Empower; and Ingram, Radical Cosmopolitics. 18 Sennett, The Craftsman and Together. 19 Compare Sale, Dwellers in the Land; Worster, Nature’s Economy; Meyer, Political Nature; Eckersley, Environmentalism and Political Theory and The Green State; Dobson and Eckersley, Political Theory and the Ecological Challenge; Torgerson, The Promise of Green Politics; and Dryzek, The Politics of the Earth.

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Index

Aboriginal self-government, 17–9, 96–8, 225, 230–5, 313n4. See also Indigenous peoples agencies for special purposes, 16, 86, 93, 98–101. See also local authorities Alinsky, Saul, 44–5 American local government: community organization, 44–7, 57; constitutional principles, 94, 221, 231, 242; neighbourhood authorities, 39; neo-Marxist analysis, 68–9; New England town meetings, 35–6; Progressive reform, 64, 158, 161–2, 212–6; public choice theory, 74–8, 80–1. See also California; Dillon’s Rule; New England; town meeting anachronism, anachronistic, 23, 62, 113, 142, 240, 261 anarchists, anarchism, 81, 198, 205, 262–3; and local self-government, 53, 254; and the Occupy movement, 252, 271. See also democratic mutualism anarchy, anarchic, 133, 198, 221–2 anti-urbanism, 158

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Arendt, Hannah, 3–6 Aristotle, 137–9, 178–84, 265 autochthonous authority, 19, 213, 222 autonomy, local: and federalism, 259; loss of, 90; need for, 6; neighbourhood, 56; pressure for, 20, 109–11; and subsidiarity, 254; and wider responsibilities, 216. See also autochthonous authority; community action; democratic municipalism; local self-government Bentham, Benthamite, 8, 35, 54, 207 best practices, 160–1, 165 boroughs, borough system, 40–1, 47, 83 boundaries: activities, 279; domains of life, 22, 148; economy, 274; global city-regions, 167–70; local government, 64–70, 77–8, 95–6, 177, 182, 242–3, 249, 259; neighbourhood, 238; place, 155; political action, 191, 215; provincial, 228;

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362 Index

self-government, 222; state, 20, 85, 135–6, 216, 261; urban, 239 bourgeois: era, 139; fractions, 73; ideological hegemony, 79, 83, 264; metropolitan reform, 60, 63–8; public choice theory, 62; society, 72, 74–5, 78, 255; state as executive committee, 13–15, 59–60; theory of local government, 10–11, 74–7; theory of the state, 75, 82 British local government: administrative decentralization, 48; consolidation, 14, 33–7, 47–8, 54, 63–4, 70; constitutional position, 213; neighbourhood councils, 39, 49–50; public consultation, 49; resistance to public health measures, 253. See also Fabians; Guild Socialists bureaucracy: administrative necessity, 236; centralized, 13–15, 76–8, 103–4; decentralized, 244; inefficiency, 164; regime, 4, 36, 73 California, 208; restrictions on municipal initiative, 215, 304n57. See also Lakewood Plan Canadian local government: Baldwin Act, 35–6; citistates, 171; creatures of the provinces, 224– 50; the local state, 16, 85–112, 116–7; Metropolitan Toronto, 60–1, 65–7, 82–4; neighbourhood institutions, 50–3, 58; ­provincial statism, 161–3; urban policy agendas, 159 capitalism: alienation, 255; control or transformation of, 7, 13, 20,

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185, 274–83; economy, 7, 12, 280; local state apparatuses, 105–8; movement 22, 144, 146– 7, 154; neo-liberalism, 115, 125; politics, 139; regime, 5, 11, 23, 269, 274, 277; requirements, 14–15, 24, 59–62, 66–84, 143, 178, 188 Castells, Manuel, 155, 172, 255, 264 charter: B C Community, 116; municipal, 39, 94–5, 116, 213, 227; Rights and Freedoms (Canada), 17, 224; Toronto movement, 84 civil society: as everyday life, 235; global, 261; governmentality, 191; municipalities within, 220– 2; and the state, 25, 91–2, 105–6, 132–7, 148, 209–10 class struggle, 15, 61, 79, 105, 108; structure, 264. See also middle class; working class collective consumption, 100, 106– 8, 255 common: good, 198, 211; ground, 282 community: action, 44–7, 291n43; aspiration toward, 171; beyond identity, 281–83; business, 60, 68, 84, 264; centres, 44; charter (b c ), 116; city-region, 171; control, 34, 48, 125; corporations, 46, 52; created, 130; cultural, 198; forms of, 117, 130, 141, 219; gated, 162; imagined, 171, 184, 215, 222; interests, 221; local, 107–109, 176, 222, 237–8, 243–7; loss of, 158; market-­generated, 63–5, 77;

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Index 363

municipalities, 86–91, 95–6, 174–5, 212, 225, 243–4; national, 171, 215; neighbourhood, 171, 182, 238, 245, 277; organization, 14, 37–58; organizers, 44–6, 48, 51, 56; patterns of, 95–6, 222, 238; place-based, 155; planning-generated, 65; political, 112, 138–40, 215, 237; poorer, 12; public goods, 101; responsibilities, 191; rural, 129, 159, 170, 238; self-governing, 210, 219, 221–2, 245, 254, 266; self-sufficient, 138; small-scale, 8, 19; societal, 104, 260; tribal, 145; urban, 239; wider, 71, 76–7, 158, 214, 238–9 conservative, conservatism: American, 75, 78; class interests, 34, 44, 47, 68, 73, 75; European, 78; imperial, 35; local, 11; national, 19, 142–3; neighbours, 270; romantic, 35 Conservative Party (UK), 48, 50, 70, 73, 84, 301n34 consolidation, local government, 39–42, 47–51, 54–6, 60–84, 289n14, 296n5 constitution, constitutional order, 78, 85; Canadian, 17, 111, 128, 224–6, 229, 230–6, 247–9; constitutionalism, 154, 173–4, 180, 184, 196, 207–8, 218, 224, 281; economic order, 101–2; municipalities, 74, 92–8, 213, 242; social order, 218; US federal, 212–3, US states, 68, 212, 242 consultation, 46, 49, 58, 116, 248 corporation, corporations, 260; business, 7, 25, 76, 116, 140,

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146, 153, 166, 214, 235; community, 46, 52; municipal, 98–100, 212–6; public, 79, 88; the state as, 80, 82 creative class, 84, 117, creatures of the states or provinces, 19, 212, 224–50 critiques: of bureaucracy, 13, 15; of capitalism, 24; of liberal reform 73; of metropolitan reform, 82–3; neoliberal, 12; of neoMarxism, 83; new left, 13; public choice, 104; of the state, 204 decentralization: administrative, 14, 41, 48, 55, 205; of local government, 40–55; to neighbourhoods, 7, 13–14, 100; to provinces, 111; to special-purpose authorities, 91, 177 deep: democracy, 265; liberalism, 263 democracy: American, 77; ancient Greek, 3; city as the hope, 156– 75; equality, 265; fear of, 34, 36–7, 112, 143, 155; industrial, 7; left libertarian, 254; local, 177, 244–8; municipal, 28–9, 34–7, 149, 271; neighbourhood, 37–57; principle of local self-government, 119–20, 203–23, 236; representative government, 4–5, 64; revolutionary assemblies, 3–4, 251–2; scale, 191–4; sovereignty, 230; town meeting, 6–9; visions, 272– 83. See also deep democracy; democratic mutualism; direct democracy; liberal democracy; local democracy; representative government

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364 Index

democratic mutualism, 28, 204, 206, 221–2, 268 deterritorialization, 170 Dillon’s Rule, 242 direct democracy, 9, 28, 34, 39, 53, 57, 226, 245, 247–8 discipline, disciplinarity, 5, 26, 118, 137, 141, 164, 187, 257, 260, 281 economism, economistic, 30, 104, 107, 112–4, 117, 275, 278–81 economy, 24, 136–7, 148, 152, 237; advantages, 68; agglomeration, 179; analysis, 10–11; arrangements, 187; authorities, 25, 275; centres, 209; conditions, 79; determinism, 137; development, 64–6, 74, 168; economic activities, 240–1; economical, economically, 10, 71, 106, 107, 117, 190, 277; economics, 70, 137–8, 148, 222; effects, 83; efficiency, 276; entity, 168; equality, 5; freedom, 80, 193; globalization, 126, 167; growth, 12, 69, 76; health, 74; improvement, 4, 117; influence, 167; initiative, 167; innovation, 216; integration, 76; interests, 191; investment, 221; judgments, 115; life, 70; management, 13, 216; necessity, 279; neighbourhood, 53; order, 168; organization, 147; planning, 13, 274–5; policies, 140; power 251; progress, 64; prosperity, 183, 191; purposes, 258; rationality, 281; region, 70; relations or relationships, 69, 73, 78, 79, 107, 169, 172, 180; requirements, 83; self-sufficiency,

26953_Magnussen.indd 364

179, 184; setting, 247; socialization, 7; system, 71, 80; terms, 104, 107, 228; theory, 101. See also capitalism; markets ethnocultural differences, 120–1 Europe, European: bias, 62, 80, 203; colonialism, 186, 212, 227– 8; Marxism, 88; municipal origins, 212–13, 218, 261; non-state authorities, 232–3; origins of the state, 135; outward expansion, 144, 166, 168; statism, 69, 75, 78, 81, 105, 163, 213–14; subsidiarity principle, 205, 254 European Union, 151, 179, 196 everyday life, 86, 168, 180, 184, 226, 235, 236–40, 241, 244, 246, 273–4 executive committee of the bourgeoisie, 14–5, 59 Fabians, 38–9, 274–5, 282, 300n32 federalism, 208, 224, 254, 259, 273 First Nations. See Aborginal selfgovernment; Indigenous Florida, Richard, 84, 117 Foucault, Michel, 17, 26, 152, 256, 260 freedom: black, 42; collective, 27, 206, 220, 279; consumer, 75; corporate, 214; economic, 78, 80, 142, 193, 265, 281; entrepreneurial, 65; First Nations, 97; governmentality, 152, 193, 211; municipal, 13, 91, 213–14; personal, 27, 157, 173, 185, 204–6, 209–11, 218–20, 225, 244, 269, 278; political, 80, 190; self-­ government, 253–8; youthful, 141

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Index 365

Frug, Gerald, 213, 286n10 functionalism, functionalist, 9, 19, 260 global city, 23, 83, 127, 145, 148, 160, 167–9, 240, 246 globalization, 117, 126–7, 140–3, 167, 171, 204 Goldrick, Michael, 61–2, 65–6 governance, 18, 27, 113, 143, 150– 3, 163–9, 217, 226, 239, 272, 280 governing through freedom, 211 governmentality, 17, 26, 112, 117, 120, 152, 191–2, 226, 257 Gramsci, Antonio, 79, 106 Guild Socialists, 274–5, 282, 300n32 Hegel, Hegelian, 104–5, 135, 184 hegemony of bourgeois ideas, 79, 83 Howe, Fredric C., 158–60, 165, 169, 174 hyperspace, 22–3, 126, 143, 148, 153 idea of: class rule, 10; the global, 139–43; multilevel governance, 113; the political, 147–9; revolution, 131; social movement, 126, 128–31; social science, 127; ­society, 135–9; the state, 22, 79, 132–5; the town meeting, 17; urbanism, 143–7 identity, 54, 96, 148, 259; identity politics, 24, 30, 114, 130, 178–9, 188, 193, 281–3 ideology, 69, 72, 79, 115, 164, 281; governance, 151; localism, 87;

26953_Magnussen.indd 365

neo-liberalism, 115; public choice theory, 62; rationalism, 207; realism, 131; socialism, 24; state apparatus, 106; statism, 17, 133, 226; theories of reform, 63, 82 imperialism, 4, 144, 209, 217–8, 227–8, 232, 261; disciplinary, 137 Indigenous, 286n18; aspirations, 25; authorities, 28; challenges to sovereignty, 129–30, 225; controlling tanker traffic, 248–9; inspiration from, 18–19, 192; living large, 262; peoples, 18, 129, 177, 180–8, 192, 262; and the problem of scale, 180–8. See also Aboriginal self-government individual sovereignty, 119, 210, 215; individualism, 104 inequality, 5, 73, 104 instrumentalism, 13, 104–5, 260, 265 Jacobs, Jane, 171 Keynesian welfare state, 12–5, 59–60, 84, 115–20, 177, 281 Labour Party, British, 49–50, 70, 84 Lakewood Plan, 76 Lefebvre, Henri, 29, 251, 255, 263–66 left, political, 10–5, 20, 22, 58, 71, 78, 82, 205, 254–5, 262 legitimacy: capitalism, 76; local authorities, 71–2, 96; political authorities, 151; social movements, 130; sources, 230, 232, 261–3; the state, 75, 119, 132, 225

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366 Index

legitimation: capitalism, 60, 69, 71–2, 74; functions of the state, 71, 106, 302n42; inheritance, 232; marginalization of Indigenous peoples, 186; neo-liberalism, 84; the state, 68–9, 72, 132 levels: concept, 150–3; of government, 7–8, 87, 103, 111, 161, 205, 214, 241, 245; of municipal government, 47; of the state, 91, 108, 111, 151, 233 liberal democracy, 4–5, 27, 119–20, 180, 203–6, 218–22, 225, 229, 236, 256, 258 liberalism, 129, 144, 263. See also neo-liberalism local agencies, 86, 88, 90–1, 94, 99, 101, 161, 245 local authorities: amalgamation, 14, 48, 54, 71, 177; authority from the community, 19; autonomy, 108, 242; challenge to state authority, 20, 51; collective consumption, 107; community organizing, 48–9; competitive firms, 55; complement to the state, 28; conservativism, 11, 253; consumer demands, 109; control by vested interests, 176, 231; directly democratic, 8; early modern, 218, 261; large-scale, 57; modelled on national government, 8; need for, 6; neighbourhood representation, 38; organization from below, 77, 102, 252; privatization of services, 164; reform 67; smallscale, 248; special-purpose, 87–8, 90–1, 94–5, 101; states as, 216– 17; subordination to the state,

26953_Magnussen.indd 366

19, 33, 106, 177, 205, 210, 229; unelected, 245; weakness of, 7 local democracy, 6–7, 13, 20, 36–7, 112, 175, 177, 246 local knowledge, 253–4 local public economy, 86, 93, 104–6, 149 local self-government: alternatives to, 37; Canadian constitution and, 224–50; character of, 26–9, 119–20, 149, 155, 195, 203–23, 277; demand for, 86, 109, 154, 178, 193–4, 277; democracy and, 149, 174, 281, 283; early socialist theory of, 275; egali­ tarian pressures against, 115; ethnocultural difference and, 120–1; globalization and, 126; ideal, 119; lost opportunities for, 117; movement for, 154; neo-­ liberalism and, 115; New England model, 35; opposed to scalar logic, 25, 176; for the poor, 56; in relation to the state, 34, 53–4, 57, 177; right to the city and, 251–71 local state, 15–16, 20, 71, 74, 76, 85–114, 116, 120, 247 localism, 109, 249 localities: geographic, 108–9, 150– 1, 208–9; rights of, 222, 253–4, 269; and the state, 89, 91, 225; types of, 27, 29, 206, 209, 259–60 Lorimer, James, 98–101, 107 mapping, 59, 244, 262 market(s): competition, 55; dictates, 63–6, 70, 76, 81, 140–2, 146, 149, 281; discipline, 76,

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Index 367

164, 281; economy, 11–2, 16, 70, 75, 115–6; end, 73; free, 59, 78, 80, 101–2; global, 117, 141–3; place and, 146; principles, 75; public goods, 77–8, 103, 176; rationality, 7, 14, 77–8, 254, 262, 276, 281; rationalization of, 65, 70, 76, 115, 205, 254, 275–6, 280; regions, 63–6, 76–7, 136, 169, 207, 220; society, 80, 105– 6, 118, 205, 254; state and, 21–2, 118, 142–3, 279 Marx, Karl, 5, 14–15, 73, 79, 81, 131, 139, 147, 178–9, 185, 187– 8, 190, 193, 264–7 Marxist: analysis, 10, 15, 125, 145; local state, 85, 88, 105–8, 113– 14; metropolitan reform, 60–3, 68, 72–4, 78–83; political economy, 178–9, 185–9; revolutionary theory, 131, 255. See also neo-Marxist; post-Marxist medieval, 6, 218, 232, 261 mega-municipalities, states as, 148, 154, 204, 216–17, 221 metropolitan reform, 24, 60–83, 113, 246 middle class, 40, 43, 68, 72, 77 Mill, John Stuart: on individual sovereignty, 209–10, 219, 258; on local government, 6–8, 36–7, 40, 177, 204, 236, 253, 285n7 Montreal, 52–3, 117, 228, 247 movements, 21–3, 27, 125–55, 170, 191, 199, 254; social, 20–1, 126– 31, 172 multilevel governance, 113, 150–1 multiplicity: of authorities, 25, 103, 109, 231, 249; forms of self, 222; movements, 23

26953_Magnussen.indd 367

municipal: attitudes, 52; authorities, 18, 35, 42, 54; claims, 16; council, councils, 36, 38, 40, 41, 52; democracy, 37; development policy, 51; expenditure, 87; forums, 39; government, governments, 18, 36–7, 40, 42, 45–7, 50, 52, 57, 58; institutions, 35, 51, 54; opposition, 51; policy 52; reformers, 34, 42; source of authority, 28; units, 37; voters, 52 municipalism, democratic, 195 municipality, municipalities: autonomy of, 84, 116; citizen participation in, 51; and civil society, 220; consolidation of, 65–8, 76; as consumers’ associations, 215; as corporations, 213–14, 261; democratic possibilities, 155, 161, 174, 271; derivation of authority, 28, 213; as firms in a public economy, 55, 76–7, 101– 5; government of the elect, 34; and local communities, 109, 237–8, 243, 248; as mini-states, 16, 86–7, 90–8, 108, 111, 213, 217; and movements, 126, 155; neighbourhoods as, 52; as nonsovereign authorities, 148–9, 212, 215, 217–18, 226, 231–2, 235, 249; and the poor, 46; and positive government, 161–2; and private property, 116; progressive challenges, 19–20, 164; reform of, 161; requisite scale, 18, 39–40, 48, 51; as sites of ­struggle, 21; as special-purpose agencies, 16, 87–8, 98–101; states as, 154, 204, 216–17, 221;

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368 Index

subordination to the state, 19, 93, 105–8, 161–3, 208, 212, 214, 224–50, 242, 261; traditional, 73; and urban development, 220, 228; and urban politics, 146 mystification, 63, 78, 80 nationalism, 107, 128–9, 188, 215– 6, 222; nation-states, 23, 108, 130, 133, 172, 216, 218, 234 natural: citizenship 139, 157; community, 64–5, 263, 282; economic growth, 65; environment, 20, 129, 145–6, 186, 248, 265, 267, 278, 280–1; goods, 102–3; governmental regions, 70; individuals, 214; labour, 264; laws, 193; limits on humanity, 145–6, 256; market requirements, 63; municipal government, 98; person powers, 116; political boundaries, 89; political conflict, 56; political demands, 38; politics, 104; private and public, 101; resources, 5, 65; ruling class, 282; sovereignty of ­individuals, 209; social product, 35 naturalistic explanations, 24, 113, 137–9, 144, 178, 189. See also sociology nature: of the city, 143; of effective government, 191; human, 184; of metropolitan reform, 69; of political space, 20; state of, 210; of the state, 14; of urbanism, 143, 170 neighbourhood(s): alienation, 41; assemblies, 173, 226, 245, 247; autonomy, 27, 39–40, 42, 44, 47,

26953_Magnussen.indd 368

56–7, 182; Canada as, 240; character, 238; community groups, 39, 44–5, 49, 58; councils, 49–50, 52; democracy, 7–9, 11, 13–14, 28–30, 37, 42, 55, 112, 173, 226, 277–8, 280–3; development, 100, 278; ethnic, 183; government, 40, 42, 46–8, 56, 118; interests, 41, 43, 215; as localities, 27; as municipal units, 37–8, 41, 53–4, 57, 173, 239, 260, 268; as places of everyday life, 37, 241; protest, 42; public life, 171; representation, 38–9, 41, 50, 58; scale, 182; self-­ government, 268, 271, 277–8, 280; traditional, 129, 159; working class, 34, 37–8, 43, 48–9, 56, 112, 206 neo-liberal, neo-liberalism, 13, 60, 115, 117, 120 neo-Marxist, 61, 68, 73–4, 82–3, 88, 105, 113 New England, 6, 8–9, 33, 35–6, 213, 285n7 New Left, 13 new urbanism, 159 non-sovereign authorities, 149, 212, 215, 217, 222 non-state agencies or authorities, 113, 151–2 Nova Scotia, 51 Obama, Barack, 57–8 Occupy Movement, 29, 173, 251– 2, 270–1 Ontario, 14, 61, 64, 66, 229 oppression, 129 opting out, 216 Ostrom, Vincent, 11, 101

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Index 369

parishes, 35, 43, 49, 54, 63; parish councils, 49; parish unions, 63 parochial: authorities or governments, 35, 37, 41–2, 54, 288n8; autonomy, 40–1; interests, 71, 184, 269; politics, 38; representation, 39; scale of organization, 47, 56, 295n96; self-government, 57 parochialism, 38, 54, 69, 80–1, 107, 248, 253, 269 participatory democracy, 36, 272 particularity, 8, 107, 160, 184, 207, 219, 247 planning: economic, 13, 274–5; land-use, 275; program, 46, 52, 277; regional, 82; state, 62, 67, 74, 78, 176; transportation, 248, 259; urban, 48–9, 51–2, 56, 65, 70, 77, 100, 276 police, 9, 19, 91, 197, 216, 248 policy: accounting, 165; agenda, 23, 159–60, 172, 252; business, 118; capitalist, 69; concept, 159– 60, 165, 170, 172; decisions, 41; economic, 117, 140; foreign, 79; ideas, 159; innovative, 216; local government, 9, 40, 50–2; makers, 10, 112, 170; making, 49, 140; networks, 165; police, 246, 248; problems, 23; social, 100, 140. See also public policy; urban policy political: accommodation, 61–2; action, 125, 131–3, 138–9, 178, 190–2, 281; activity or activities, 16, 21, 36, 131, 139, 142, 148, 179, 241; activists, 126; advantages, 68; affiliations, 99; alienation, 43; analysis, 24, 142;

26953_Magnussen.indd 369

apparatus, 72; arrangements, 54, 72, 80, 187, 243; assumptions, 139; attention, 120, 164; authority or authorities, 19, 25, 28, 148–55, 209, 212, 214, 217, 222, 225–6, 231–8, 240–1, 246, 249; autonomy, 18; base, 52; behaviour, 63, 104; boundaries, 22, 64, 77–8; centre, 54, 133, 209; challenge, 26, 172; change, 83; character, 148, 249; choices, 189; claims, 18; cleavage, 69; climate, 223; commitments, 127; community, 65, 112, 140, 215; complexity, 143; conflict, 56, 247; consciousness, 111; containers, 228; contestation, 263; contingencies, 111; conversation, 223; corruption, 164; culture, 82, 216; deals, 207; debate, 159, 219, 221, 223; decentralization, 50; decision, 152; demands, 38; dependency, 56; differences, 69; dimension, 159; education, 36–7; effects, 174; engagement, 281; entity, 232; equality, 5; exclusion, 143; field, 85; forces, 68; form, 17, 212; formula, 197; fragmentation, 70; freedom, 80; functions, 55; grid, 133; history, 108; idealism, 135; imagination, 22, 147, 159; implications, 21, 164, 167, 197; impoverishment, 226; institution, 29, 33, 65, 70, 83, 86, 136, 175, 193–4, 222, 225–6, 236, 239–41, 245–6, 271; interventions, 21, 148, 191; involvement, 43; issues, 153; judgment, 138, 140, 189; leadership, 182; mobilization, 11; movement, 22,

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370 Index

127, 144; objectives, 20; ontology, 121, 126; opportunities, 17, 29, 43, 126, 143; opposition, 55; options, 24; order, 85, 147, 174, 206, 263; organization, 37, 62, 109, 112, 161, 167, 171, 173, 181–2, 185, 212–17, 263; parties, 41, 125, 139, 147; phenomenon, 127; plan, 171; possibilities, 16–17, 24, 27, 114, 175, 188–92, 195, 199, 217, 252; power, 43, 53; practice, 212; prescriptions, 25; pressure, 38; principles, 223; process, 62; protest, 42–3; purposes, 5, 41, 199, 215, 258; questions, 139, 237, 254, 256; realism, 135; reforms, 4; relations, 169; representation, 95; resources, 43; responses, 157; restrictions, 143; science, scientists, 10, 16, 110, 138, 149, 178; situation, 79, 275; stakes, 188; status, 39; strength, 68; structures, 132; struggle, 21, 72, 111, 126–7; support, 69, 73, 82; system, 36, 57, 69, 226; terrain, 134; theory, 112–13, 203–5, 213, 218, 226, 273; thinkers, 3, 196; thinking, 111, 179, 195; understanding, 127, 137, unit; 39, 53, 67, 172; universe, 198; vitality, 67 political economy, 137; of metropolitan reform, 59–84; of scale 24, 176–94; of the local state, 98–108. See also Marxism; public choice political space, 17, 20–1, 23, 133, 153, 169, 179, 231–40, 247, 282 politics: Canadian, 16, 111; civil society 25; concept or

26953_Magnussen.indd 370

conceptions of, 24, 104, 119–20, 125–7, 131, 136–40, 147–8, 160, 165, 170; contemporary, 69, 178; democratic, 102, 170; domestic, 142; face-to-face, 171; forms, 113–14, 178; global, 23, 143; government, 119–20; identity, 24, 30, 114; judgment, 138–40; local, 85–7, 100, 107, 109; modern, 4; movement, 22, 147, 172; municipal, 88, 100, 107, 108; as noise, 10; parochial, 38; participatory, 55; party, 132; radical, 125–6; revolutionary, 134; scale, 114, 176; science, 178; security, 24, 114; social movements, 129, 132–3, 142, 172; space, 20–2; state, 25, 85, 112, 133, 138, 142– 3, 147, 159, 164; subordinated to the market, 81, 104; territorial, 108, 111, 148; time, 21; urban, 23, 86, 146, 170, 172 Poor Law Commission, 63 post-Marxist, 114 post-structuralism, 126 Poulantzas, Nicos, 106 practice of equality, 173 privatistic localism, 249–50 professions, 26, 118; professional, 10, 26, 64, 67–8, 72–3, 99, 166, 182, 236; professionalization, 36 progressive: bourgeois, 73; as a category, 24; communities, 64; politics, 126; promise, 185, 231; reforms, 81, 162; social change, 161; social movements, 20, 129; thinkers or thinking, 9, 125, 131, 162, 179 progressives, 64, 68, 125, 132, 160, 162, 175, 248, 252

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Index 371

Quebec, 18, 128, 134, 163, 166, 227–8, 230–1, 241, 313n4, 317n17

166–9; loyalties, 260; marketing, 136; planning, 82, 276; provinces, 150, 259; space-time, 143, 234; states, 136, 164; urban, 8, 23, 70–2, 166, 178, 204, 239, 241, 246, 275–6, 278; urban global, 245–6; world, 117, 140 relative autonomy, 60, 108, 305n67 representative government, 4, 8, 64, 210, 245 re-scaling, 32, 162, 178, revolution, revolutionary, 3–6, 29, 53, 81, 100, 130–4, 163, 185, 196, 255, 265 right to the city: concept, 29, 120, 126, 194, 255, 263–71, 277–83; democracy, 149; movement, 154, 178, 199; Occupy, 29, 251–2; working class, 255 romantics, romanticism, 35, 238 Roussopoulos, Dimitrios, 53–4

rationality, 26, 184, 205, 254, 262, 276, 281 rationalization: boundaries, 64, 67, 70, 259; bourgeois interests, 62; democracy, 205; economy, 7, 65, 72, 115, 117; life 207; local administration, 68, 76–7, 269; municipal institutions, 67; relations of authority, 233, 270 reactionary, 20, 24, 129, 253 realism, 131–5 reform movement, Canadian municipal, 52, 100, 163 regional government, 14, 24, 41, 58, 67, 88, 96, 162, 246 regions: bio-region, 258; cityregion, 254; civil society, 220; economic, 168, 228; global city,

scalar logic, 25, 179 scale: activities, 275, 280; business, 72; citistate, 171–2; communities, 275; concept, 150–1, 153, 176– 94; economies of, 42, 76, 103; everyday life, 241, 273; global, 145, 150, 216, 239, 259, 262; global city, 167; glocal, 191; Indigenous peoples, 180–3; large, 8, 9, 11, 20, 36, 47, 56, 64, 72, 103, 217, 254, 272; level and, 150, 153; local government, 9, 11, 14, 34, 36, 41, 43, 54, 56, 84, 103, 171, 181–2, 249, 253–4, 260, 277–8; metropolitan, 40, 47; modern life, 19, 20, 184–5, 187, 190, 192, 241, 246–7; neighbourhood, 7–9, 18, 47, 56,

proximate diversity, 25, 197 public choice: local public economy, 101–8; model for metropolitan reform, 60–2, 74–81, 205, 215; neo-liberal principles of, 116, 177; theory, 11, 14, 62–3, 250, 260, 275 public economy, 16, 55, 86, 93, 101–8, 149, 226 public goods, 76–7, 101–3, 106, 115 public policy: accounting, 165; consensus, 69; democratic participation, 6; international, 216; requisites, 254; state focus, 131– 3, 140, 172. See also policy; urban policy

26953_Magnussen.indd 371

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372 Index

112, 171, 173, 239, 248; operational, 151, 279; political economy of, 24, 114, 176–94; political units, 172, 272–3; politics, 114, 179–80, 183–4, 188, 190–4; power and, 150–1; production, 75, 107; reform, 162; regional, 228, 239, 246; representative government, 204; selfsufficiency, 183; social, 48; state, 6, 15–16, 19, 24, 45, 62, 64, 74, 120, 171, 179–80, 184–5, 217, 259; traditional communities, 36, 40, 260; urban, 151 scientism, 44 security: culture, 163; domestic, 80, 163, 188; economic, 12, 74, 80; external, 74, 140, 183, 188; politics, 24, 114, 178–9, 188, 190, 193; urbanism, 28; security system, urbanism as, 28 self-government, 27–8, 119, 152, 157, 172, 204, 223, 254, 263, 269, 279; Aboriginal, 17–8, 130, 182, 234; civil society, 222; and coercion, 221; collective, 252; communal, 239; democratic, 185, 222, 236, 244, 265, 271, 273, 277, 283; and freedom, 211, 219– 20, 253; global, 247; and government, 210–12; individual, 260, 269; municipal, 86, 91, 95–6, 110; neighbourhood, 14, 41, 54, 56, 57, 239, 245, 268, 271, 278; parochial, 41–2, 57; political, 183, 191, 197, 220, 224; popular, 53, 180; right, 256–7, 268; and sovereignty, 209–12; territorial, 260; urban, 235; workplace, 3, 268. See also local self-government

26953_Magnussen.indd 372

settlement houses, settlement work, 37–8, 43–5 side-by-side authorities, 28, 232 social democracy, social democrats, 7, 11, 68, 70–4, 78, 81–2, 125, 142, 175–7, 205, 253 social movements: civil society, 135–9; concept, 21–22, 126–31; globalization, 139–43; political character, 147–9; progressive, 20, 125, 132; state-centricity, 132–5; urban, 172; urbanism as, 144–7 social science, 24, 126–8, 136–7, 150, 158, 178, 189 socialism: bourgeois, 11, 63, 82, 142; Guild, 274–5, 282; libertarian, 53; local, 20; social movement, 128; state-centricity, 131; socialist: challenges, 189; democracy, 34; economy, 7; ideas, 70, 77, 81–2, 185, 274–5; neighbourhood objectives, 7, 10, 25, 59, 71–4, 128–9, 185, 274; politics, 60; principles, 11; reform, 69, 73, 83; Soviet, 72, 82; transformation, 62; transition, 72, 81. See also Fabians; Guild Socialists; social democracy society: agricultural, 35, 144; American, 144; bourgeois, 62, 72, 75, 78–9; Canadian, 17; capitalist, 5, 7, 13, 59, 61, 63, 72–3, 80–1, 131; civil, 25, 91–2, 105–6, 132–3, 135–7, 191, 209–10, 220–2, 235, 261, 302n42; community and, 104; complex, 118; decentring of, 126; democratic, 224–5, 230, 238, 241, 245, 279; disorder, 136; economy and, 261; ends of, 104; free, 59, 113,

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Index 373

224–5, 230, 238, 241, 245, 279; global, 239, 261; government within, 188, 210; individual and, 24, 105, 210, 219–20; larger, 44, 52, 72, 88, 92, 163, 216, 253–4, 274; levels, 151; liberal, 161; mainstream, 18; market, 75, 78, 80, 105; multicultural, 187; ordering of, 128, 136–7; particular, 79; re-scaling, 162; science of, 137; socialist, 11, 81, 274; state and, 24, 91–2, 135–6, 138–9, 143, 148, 151, 153, 159, 170, 210–11, 218, 222, 225; transformation of, 53, 130; urban, 169, 214, 228, 255, 266–7; urbanindustrial, 8, 38, 64, 231 sociology, 85, 113–4, 135–8, 144, 149, 175, 189–90, 224 sovereign: analyst, 193; authority or authorities, 3, 19, 23–6, 28, 131, 149–50, 196–7, 216, 225; ruler 193; state, 15, 129, 131, 133–4, 149, 153 sovereignty: absolute, 225; anarchy and, 221; Canadian, 225; claims to, 198, 234; consumer, 164, 274–5; First Nations, 97, 225, 230; illusion of, 196–7, 211, 222; individual, 119, 134, 140–1, 209–11, 215, 219, 269; liberal democracy and, 218–19, 221–2, 230; local, 86–91, 94–6, 98, 103, 161, 213–14, 226, 229; logic of, 28; non-absolute, 225; monarchy, 196, 213, 218, 232; popular, 171, 215, 230; provincial, 95, 229; self-government and, 204, 206, 209–12, 247; state, 25, 85, 119, 129, 131, 133–4, 140–1, 148–54,

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162, 195, 208–18, 221, 231–2, 235, 258–61, 270; theory of, 218, 222, 226, 230, 233–5, 247, 249 space: commercial, 164; flows and places, 155; global, 167, 169; green, 8; political, 17, 20–3, 133, 138, 146, 153, 169, 179, 189, 225, 231–5; public, 20, 118, 162–3; regional amenities, 70; state, 20, 133, 153, 234–5; urban, 120, 161, 164, 168–70, 235. See also hyperspace; space-time space-time, 21, 109, 130, 133, 143, 153, 234 state: authority, 12, 17; bourgeois, 13–15, 79, 82; Canadian, 17–18, 28, 85–114, 163, 226–50; capacity, 11, 68, 176–7; capitalist, 59, 62, 67, 72, 78–80, 82, 105, 131, 154, 264, 266; centralized, 13, 74, 78, 80–1, 90; citizenship, 266, 282; city, 3, 6, 84, 96, 138– 9, 167, 171–2; and civil society, 92, 135–9, 143, 148, 151, 170, 209–10, 220, 222; conceptions of, 15, 17, 24–5, 27, 75, 79–80, 85, 104–6, 150, 214, 224, 236, 254; constitutionalism, 196; as a corporation, 82; creatures, 19, 212, 231, 233, 242; decentring, 17, 21; democracy, 113; economic management, 11; expenditures, 60; failed, 214; functions, 71, 75, 105–7; government, 26–7, 85, 112–14, 119, 151, 176, 220, 260; history, 135, 261; idea, 22, 132–5, 170, 180, 184–5, 199; illusion, 17, 133; imperial, 217;

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374 Index

international, 15–16, 59, 143–4, 187, 208–9, 216; legitimation, 72; local, 15, 20, 71, 74, 76, 85–114, 172; locality, 27; marketdiscipline, 118; modern, 6, 115, 140, 172, 185, 196, 206, 226, 252, 254, 258, 271; movement, 22, 146–7, 154; as a municipality, 148, 154, 204, 216–17, 221; mystification, 78; nation, 4, 15, 23, 59, 85, 125, 130, 133, 169, 171, 191, 204, 216, 218, 231, 240, 259, 273; neo-liberal, 15, 164, 177–8, 215; organization, 34, 72–3, 79, 81, 90, 177, 254; planning, 62, 65, 74, 78, 176; political economy, 24; policy, 154, 165; political space, 20–1, 231; politics, 126, 132, 137, 142, 148, 159, 178–81, 184, 188, 196–7, 237; power, 7, 14, 19, 21 28, 60, 73, 75, 77, 80–1, 92–3, 132, 141, 161, 175, 177, 211, 226, 258; provincial, 42, 69; purposes, 14–15; rationality, 254; relative autonomy, 60, 108; revolution, 131–2, 134; scale, 24, 120, 179–80, 184; ­science, 192; site of struggle, 15; socialist, 82; territoriality, 72, 108–11, 246, 273; traditions, 213–14; vision, 195; welfare, 12–13, 34, 59, 119, 161, 163, 266, 281. See also sovereign; sovereignty state-centricity, 23–4, 27, 112, 136, 143, 154, 159, 164, 172, 195–6 statism, 22–3, 144, 147, 160, 163 strategy: appeasement of the poor, 46; class, 79, 81, 215; city 167;

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consolidation of local government, 55; democratic, 72; government as, 26, 210; individual, 152, 211; Keynesian welfarism, 115, 117; liberal, 211, neo-­ liberalism, 60, 78, 115, 117; social state, 152, 264 structure, structures: administrative, 228–9; anachronistic, 240; capitalist, 24, 70, 188–9, 281; class, 264; concept, 21–3, 128, 144, 150, 153–4; democracy, 149; hierarchical, 103; infrastructure, 65, 67, 69–70, 72, 83, 161, 259, 264; institutional, 280; local government, 50–1, 61–2, 66; local state, 93, 111–12; political, 132–3, 240; social control, 106, 256; state, 105, 128, 243, 270; superstructure, 131; territorialization, 90, 111, 171, 273; thought, 186–7 subsidiarity, 205, 254, 273 suburban: business, 68, 264; enclaves, 55, 70; government, 40, 68, 70, 248; resistance to consolidation, 42, 69; services, 61 suburbs: Boston, 9, 206; consolidation with central city, 55, 68, 117; flight to, 43; ideal, 158–9; London, 296n5; nature of, 171; New York, 40; term, 110; Toronto, 82, 167 territorial: autonomy, 121; con­ solidation, 63, 72, 76; democracy, 274; politics 108, 111; self-­ government, 260, 275; structure of the state, 90, 111, 273; term, 18; urban, 170–2

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Index 375

territory: colonial, 227; economic, 75, 274; ethno–cultural, 262; everyday life, 241, 278; First Nations, 97, 180–2, 225, 262; governmental, 76, 108, 276; municipal, 95, 263; privileged, 265; state, 85, 90, 93, 140, 179– 80, 195, 208, 214, 217, 236, 246, 259 third order of government, 86, 93–9 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 6, 33–7, 80, 204, 213, 236, 253 Toronto: boroughs, 47; Charter movement, 84; citistate, 171; everyday life, 235; founding, 227; government support, 240; Megacity, 14, 83, 117, 167, 242; metropolitan area, 110, 136, 166–7; Metropolitan Municipality, 47, 60–1, 65–6, 71, 82–3; mini-­ Metros, 67; Reform Council, 52; relation to Ontario, 229–30 town meeting: alternatives to, 37; Canada, 35; local self-government, 28, 113, 155, 173, 193; model, 6–9, 14, 17–18, 21, 245, 288n13, 295n96; New England, 6, 9, 33, 288n3; opposition to, 35, 287n1, 288n7

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urban policy, 61, 66, 69, 158, 163, 166, 170 urban reform, 52, 63, 163. See also metropolitan reform; reform movement urbanism, 23, 27–8, 127, 143, 144– 7, 154, 169–71, 199, 266. See also anti-urbanism; new urbanism utopian, utopianism, 231, 265, 274 Vancouver Island, 116, 227 voluntary agencies or associations, 36, 39, 41, 46, 210, 221, 243; voluntarism, 37, 101, 105, 275 War on Poverty, 46, 51 Webb, Sidney and Beatrice, 38–9 welfare state, 12–13, 34, 59, 161, 163, 266, 281, 289n18 welfarism, 12–15, 60, 84, 115–20, 125, 177, Winnipeg, 50, 96, 227 Wirth, Louis, 127, 144, 169–70, 266 working class, 10–11, 15, 33–4, 36–7, 40, 56, 60, 68, 70, 73, 78, 80, 255

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