Business Community Structures and Urban Regimes: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Regime theorists often present business interests as coherent and unified communities with unitary interests. A central principle of regime theory, however, is that business elites tend to occupy privileged positions within regime coalitions because of the scope of resources and expertise they command and cities require for economic development and/or fiscal solvency. Cities are generally home to a wide range of business activities operating at various scales, and business elites representing various corporations in different economic sectors arguably command different kinds of resources and expertise that are functional to the economic activities with which they are affiliated. Various mixes of business elites representing different economic activities might therefore produce differentially biased input regarding urban policy-making and affect the types of regime coalitions that cities develop. Utilizing compilations of interlocking directorates among major organizations across three sectors, profiles of the corporate and social community structures of 24 U.S. cities are generated and a correlation matrix comprised of business and social organizational categories is produced. Factor analysis of the correlation matrix identifies three separate mixes of corporate and social organizational categories that generally conform to descriptions of developmental, caretaker, and progressive regime typologies. These three factors serve as prototypes of the three broad regime types and their corporate community structures. Correlations of the 24 cities with each of the three regime prototypes generally match their regime types as identified through previous case studies. Variations in regime types among cities might therefore be attributed to varying degrees of diversity in the kinds of corporations headquartered or located within them. Closer attention to the economic base of cities-the producers, after all, of local business elites-may reveal internal biases and/or material predisposition towards some urban policies over others by local business elites in relation to the economic activities with which they are linked.

Minor Cities in a Metropolitan World: Challenges for Development and Governance in Three Hungarian Urban Agglomerations

“…Changes have been compelled in large part by the emergence of a power vacuum left by economic restructuring, globalization and the withdrawal of the neo-liberal state from a range of public functions, encouraging the multi-level division of power and the autonomous development activity of cities (Imbroscio 1998;Ache 2000). Building upon the concepts originally developed in the USA (Stone 1993(Stone , 2005Mossberger and Stoker 2001;Imbroscio 2003;Kilburn 2004;de Socio 2007de Socio , 2010, the concept of urban regimes, coalitions emphasizing the cooperation of political and economic interests to effectuate urban renewal and economic development, has gained foothold, and been adapted to European circumstances as a development model for contemporary city economies (cf. the pioneering work of Harding 1997Harding , 1999 highlighting the comparatively weaker local power, less significant land ownership and stronger central control of European cities).…”

Effective Strategy Implementation: Why Partnership Interconnectivity Matters

“…As such, affiliation networks must be seen as twomode networks rather than the more traditional one-mode network of dyads normally examined with social network analysis. These dual networks have been used in describing corporate interlocks between firms (Barnes & Ritter, 2001;Burris, 1991;Burt, 1980 and1983;Davis, 1991;Mizruchi, 1996); trustee interlocks in higher education (Ingram, 1995;Pusser et al, 2006); urban regimes (De Socio, 2007); and social capital and community economic development (Crowe, 2007). Key in each of these studies is the manner in which information, trust, and norms are built up via inter-organisational co-operation and information sharing across firms, organisations, and social groups, with the aim of building "relationships and common ways of working ... to achieve [a] policy goal" (Rydin & Holman, 2004, page 121).…”

Corporate Citizenship and Urban Problem Solving: The Changing Civic Role of Business Leaders in American Cities

“…More recent research, stemming from Clarence Stone's study of urban regimes in Atlanta (1989), has focused not on who controls but on “social production,” that is, who has “the capacity to act and accomplish goals” (p. 229). The concern of Stone and subsequent urban regime theory research thus has been not on “power over” but on “power to.” (For reviews of the urban regime literature, see Stoker, 1995; Mossberger & Stoker, 2001; Stone, 2005; De Socio, 2007. )…”