This on-line version is the pre-copyedited, preprint version.

The published version can be

found here:

‘A neo-Gramscian approach to the regulation of urban regimes’, in M. Lauria,

ed., Reconstructing Urban Regime Theory, London: Sage, 51-73, 1997.

The perspective on urban regimes presented here is based on a neo-Gramscian reading of the
regulation approach as well as a classically Gramscian account of the reciprocal relations
between state and civil society. In particular I argue that urban regimes can be fruitfully analyzed
in terms of strategically selective combinations of political society and civil society, of government
and governance, of ‘hegemony armoured by coercion’. I also argue that such regimes may be
linked to the formation of a local hegemonic bloc (or ‘power bloc’) and an historical bloc (or
accumulation regime and its mode of regulation). To support these proposals I present some of
Gramsci’s ideas about the relations between the economic base and its superstructure as well as
his key concepts for analysing the state and state power. This will enable me to show marked
similarities between a Gramscian account of the state and regulationist views on the capital
relation. In the light of these analogies I outline eight key lessons for an exploration of urban
regimes inspired by a neo-Gramscian regulation approach and, drawing on more recent work in
the regulation approach, I offer some reflections on current changes in urban regimes. My
argument is shaped by European experience but I would also claim that the neo-Gramscian
approach can be fruitfully applied elsewhere.

I. Theoretical Perspectives on Urban Regimes

I now present three theoretical perspectives for an alternative research agenda on urban regimes.
After briefly presenting some Gramscian insights into politics and key ideas from the French
regulation approach, I consider Gramsci’s ideas about the ethico-political dimension of economic
regimes. This enables me to propose some parallels between Gramscian and regulationist
approaches to political economy. I also comment on the relevance of governance theory to both
approaches.

I.1 Gramsci and ‘Integral Politics’

Gramsci analyzed the state ‘in its inclusive sense’. He defined it as ‘the entire complex of practical
and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance
but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules’ (1971: 244). This approach is
linked to his equation of the state with ‘political society + civil society’ and his claim that state
power in the West rests on ‘hegemony armoured by coercion’ (1971: 261-3). Gramsci did not
examine the constitutional and institutional features of government, its formal decision-making
procedures, or its general policies (the state in its narrow sense, so to speak); instead he explored
how political, intellectual, and moral leadership was mediated through a complex ensemble of
institutions, organizations, and forces operating within, oriented towards, or located at a distance
from the juridico-political state apparatus. This suggests that the political sphere can be seen as
the domain where attempts are made to (re-)define a ‘collective will’ for an imagined political
community2 and to (re-)articulate various mechanisms and practices of government and
governance in pursuit of projects deemed to serve it. Whilst his prison writings dealt mainly with
‘national-popular’ politics in national states (especially Italy and France), nothing excludes its
application to urban politics. This can be seen from Gramsci’s notes on communal politics in
medieval Italy as well as incidental remarks on contemporary cities such as Turin, Rome, and
Naples. More generally, one could argue that his approach is actually highly relevant to local
politics because it downplays the importance of sovereign states with their monopoly of coercion
and allows more weight to other apparatuses, organizations, and practices involved in exercising
political power.

I.2 The Regulation Approach and ‘Integral Economics’

Regulationists study the economy in an inclusive sense. In a manner reminiscent of Gramsci’s
expanded treatment of the state (as lo stato integrale or ‘the integral state’), they investigate what
one could likewise call l’economia integrale (or the ‘integral economy’). Expressed in other words,
regulation theorists examine the historically contingent ensembles of
complementary economic and extra-economic mechanisms and practices which enable capital
accumulation to occur in a relatively stable way over long periods despite the fundamental
contradictions and conflicts generated by the capital relation itself (cf. Aglietta 1979; Boyer 1990;
Lipietz 1987). In particular, whilst far from neglectful of the essentially anarchic role of exchange
relations in mediating capitalist reproduction, regulationists tend to emphasize the complementary
role of other mechanisms (institutions, norms, conventions, networks, procedures, and modes of
calculation) in structuring, facilitating, and guiding (in short, regulating) capital accumulation. They
argue that relatively stable capitalist expansion over any extended time period depends not only
on economic institutions and practices but also on crucial extra-economic conditions which cannot
be taken for granted. And, in this context, they must go well beyond any narrow concern with
production functions, economizing behaviour, and pure market forces to study the wide range of
institutional factors and social forces which are directly and/or indirectly involved in capital
accumulation.

In the pioneer analysis in this approach, Aglietta studied how regulation ‘creates new forms that
are both economic and non-economic, that are organized in structures and themselves reproduce
a determinant structure, the mode of production’ (1979: 13, 16). Thus he was initially interested
in what one might call both the economic and the social modes of economic regulation. The
economic mode would refer to the key role of economic exchange and market forces in the self-
organization of capitalism; and the social mode would refer to the role of the ‘extra-economic’ in
organizing economic activities. Among other factors frequently mentioned by regulationists in this
regard are: the legal and social regulation of the wage relation, the articulation of financial and
industrial capital, forms of corporate organization, modes of economic calculation, the role of the
state, education and training, and international regimes. Interestingly, since Aglietta’s initial work,
many regulationists have increasingly focused on the ‘social’ mode of economic regulation to the
neglect of the economic. This seems to move them even closer, albeit implicitly, to a Gramscian
perspective on the expanded reproduction-régulation of the capital relation. This impression is
reinforced by references, this time quite explicit, by some key regulation theorists to the need to
strengthen their account of the state (a topic they regard as under-theorized within the French
regulation approach) with Gramscian or neo-Gramscian ideas (e.g., Aglietta 1979; Häusler and
Hirsch 1987; Jenson 1990; Lipietz 1987, 1994; Lordon 1995; Noël 1988; for further details, see
Jessop 1990: 311-319).

I.3 Once More on Gramsci

To reinforce these points I now return to Gramsci’s approach to economics and politics. Whereas
regulationists’ main concern has been to offer a comprehensive economic analysis of the socially
embedded, socially regularized nature of the capital relation in order the better to understand its
relative stability as well as its crisis-tendencies and transformation, Gramsci’s chief concern was
to develop an autonomous Marxist science of politics in capitalist societies and thereby establish
the most likely conditions under which revolutionary forces might eventually replace capitalism.
These apparently contrasting theoretical (as opposed practical) interests are by no means
inconsistent. Indeed, in discussing different modes of enquiry and knowledge, Gramsci observed
that:

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

Although Gramsci spent most of his prison years working on philosophy and politics, he also
offered various comments that anticipated the regulation approach. This is most obvious, of
course, in his pioneering remarks on Americanism and Fordism and the prospects of introducing
them into a Europe with a very different history and civilization (1971: 277-318; 1995: 256-7). But
he also offered some important methodological remarks on economic analysis. In particular we
may note how he redefined Ricardo’s concept of ‘”determined market” (mercato determinato)3 as
“equivalent to [a] determined relation of social forces in a determined structure of the productive
apparatus”, this relationship being guaranteed (that is, rendered permanent) by a determined
political, moral and juridical superstructure’ (1971: 410). Gramsci continued that, whereas
classical economists had treated determined market as an arbitrary abstraction and reified its
various elements and laws as ‘eternal’ and ‘natural’, Marxist political economy began from the
historical character of ‘determined market’ and its social ‘automatism’ and studied these
phenomena in terms of ‘the ensemble of the concrete economic activities of a determined social
form’ (1971: 400n, 411; cf. 1975: 172, 427). Thus, according to Gramsci, economic laws
(necessities, ‘automatism’) should be understood as tendencies, located historically, grounded in
specific material conditions, and linked to the formation of a specific type of homo oeconomicus,
reflected in turn in ‘popular beliefs’ and a certain level of culture (1971: 279-318, 412, 400n, 413;
1975: 167). Economic laws or ‘regularities’ (regolarità) are secured in so far as the actions of one
or more strata of intellectuals give the dominant class a certain homogeneity and an awareness
of its own function in the social and political as well as the economic fields (1971: 410-414). For
it is essential that entrepreneurs are able to organize ‘the general system of relationships external
to the business itself’ (1971: 6). It is in this context that Gramsci notes that the ‘conquest of power
and achievement of a new productive world are inseparable, and that propaganda for one of them
is also propaganda for the other, and that in reality it is solely in this coincidence that the unity of
the dominant class — at once economic and political — resides’ (1971: 116, emphasis added).4

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

Gramsci employs the notion of historical bloc to solve the Marxian problem of the reciprocal
relationship between the economic ‘base’ and its politico-ideological ‘superstructure’. He
addresses this problem in terms of how ‘the complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of
the superstructures is the reflection of the ensemble of the social relations of production’. This
issue is typically analyzed dialectically in terms of how the historical bloc reflects ‘the necessary
reciprocity between structure and superstructure’ (1971: 366). This reciprocity is realized,
according to Gramsci, through specific intellectual, moral, and political practices which translate
narrow sectoral, professional, or local (in short, in Gramscian terms, ‘economic-corporate’)
interests into broader ‘ethico-political’ ones. Only thus does the economic structure cease to be
an external, constraining force and become a source of initiative and subjective freedom (1971:
366-7). In this sense the ethico-political not only co-constitutes economic structures but also
provides them with their rationale and legitimacy. Gramsci adds that analyzing the historical bloc
can show how ‘material forces are the content and ideologies are the form, though this distinction
between form and content has purely didactic value’ (1971: 377). Although Gramsci does not
introduce regulationist concepts such as ‘industrial paradigms’, ‘models of development’ (Lipietz
1987), ‘accumulation strategies’ (Jessop 1983), or ‘societal paradigms’ (Jenson 1990, 1993) in
this context, such concepts certainly help to illuminate the ‘ethico-political’ moment of the historical
bloc. For they bring out the importance of values, norms, vision, discourses, linguistic forms,
popular beliefs, etc., in shaping the realization of specific productive forces and relations of
production.

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

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

It is important to note that Gramsci recognizes several degrees and forms of political rule — not
all of them fully hegemonic. They range from an inclusive hegemony which secures the active
consent of the majority of all classes; through more limited forms of hegemony based on selective
incorporation of subordinate groups (or, at least their leaders) and limited, piecemeal material
(‘economic-corporate’) concessions; to a resort, in exceptional cases, to generalized coercion
(1971: 105-6). Gramsci remarks, for example, that the dominant economic class in Italy’s
medieval communes was unable to create its own category of intellectuals and so failed to build
a solid hegemony. The communes had a more confederal, ‘syndicalist’ nature: rather than having
a hegemonic bloc, they rested on a mechanical bloc of social groups, often of different races, with
some subaltern groups having para-statal institutions of their own and enjoying considerable
autonomy within broad limits set by coercive police powers (1971: 54n, 56n). Elsewhere Gramsci
criticizes urban politics in non-industrial cities, such as Naples, which serve primarily as
unproductive centres for regional government and the consumption of parasitic classes and
strata; he also notes that their dominant intellectual strata are more likely to be ‘pettifogging
lawyers’ than the technocrats who predominate in northern industrial cities (1971: 90-94, 98-100).

The final insight to be explored here is Gramsci’s observation that ‘though hegemony is ethical-
political, it must also be economic, must necessarily be based on the decisive function exercised
by the leading group in the decisive nucleus of economic activity’ (1971: 161). This claim would
seem open to several interpretations. It could be taken to imply that only the bourgeoisie (or its
dominant fraction) could really exercise hegemony once capitalism has emerged; and that only
the proletariat is in a position to develop an organic counter-hegemonic project. But, given the
mediating role of organic intellectuals (who need not themselves be recruited from the two
fundamental or decisive classes), this interpretation is far too class reductionist and
instrumentalist. Thus Gramsci’s claim could be better read in an (integral) economic manner as
implying that the essential function of an hegemonic project is to secure the (integral) economic
base of the dominant mode of growth; and that it does this through the direct, active conforming
of all social relations to the economic (and extra-economic) needs of the latter. Thus Gramsci
argues that ‘every State is ethical in as much as one of its most important functions is to raise the
great mass of the population to a particular cultural and moral level, a level (or type) which
corresponds to the needs of the productive forces for development, and hence to the interests of
the ruling classes’ (1971: 258). This reading is better than the first but it still involves a residual
(albeit integral) economism.6

A third interpretation can be framed in integral political terms. Here Gramsci’s comment could be
taken to mean that all feasible organic hegemonic projects need to respect (or take account of)
‘economic determination in the last instance’. Gramsci argues the economy is nothing but ‘the
mainspring of history in the last analysis’ (1971: 162). Only by examining forms of consciousness
and methods of knowledge can one decipher the necessarily indirect impact and repercussions
of economics within the wider society (1971: 162, 164, 167, 365). Thus ‘an analysis of the balance
of forces — at all levels — can only culminate in the sphere of hegemony and ethico-political
relations’ (1971: 167). In this sense, political forces have a vested interest in securing the
productive potential of the economic base which both generates political resources and defines
the scope for making material concessions. Wealth must first be produced before it can be
distributed. From an integral political viewpoint, this does not mean that economic growth is
invariably accorded the highest political priority — even when such growth is understood
integrally. It implies only that political agents must be concerned with the economic conditions of
juridico-political and/or politico-military power and be sensitive to the political effects of economic
developments. Thus, whilst certain economic-corporate interests of (fractions of) the bourgeoisie
can be sacrificed, the essential foundations of capitalism must be respected. In addition to
hegemony directly and explicitly based on an accumulation strategy, therefore, hegemony could
also establish other priorities provided that the core conditions for capital accumulation are not
thereby irrevocably undermined.

I.4 Governance Theory

The final term to be introduced here is governance. This is increasingly popular both as an
umbrella term for all forms of coordination of social relations (the ‘conduct of conduct’) and as a
more specific (but still very general) term to refer to forms of coordination which involve neither
market forces nor formal hierarchy. In this latter sense economic analysts often refer to novel
forms of economic coordination such as relational contracting, ‘organized markets’ in group
enterprises, clans, networks, business or trade associations, strategic alliances, and various
international regimes. Likewise, in political science, disquiet has grown with a rigid public-private
distinction in state-centred analyses of politics and its associated top-down account of the
exercise of state power. This is reflected in concern with the role of various forms of political
coordination which not only span the conventional public-private divide but also involve ‘tangled
hierarchies’, parallel power networks, or other forms of complex interdependence across different
tiers of government and/or different functional domains. A general definition encompassing all of
these forms is that governance refers to the ‘self-organization of inter-organizational relations’ (cf.
Jessop 1995b).

Governance is significant both for neo-Gramscian political analysis and for the regulation
approach. It is relevant to the ‘micro-physics’ of power, i.e., the channels through which diverse
state projects and accumulation strategies are pursued and, indeed, modified during their
implementation. Because state power is inevitably realized through its projection into the wider
society and its coordination with other forms of power, one must look beyond formal government
institutions to a wide range of governance mechanisms and practices. Likewise, governance is
relevant to the day-to-day practices in and through which the various structural forms of regulation
are instantiated and reproduced. Regulationists typically define these forms in institutional terms
(hence the frequent charge against them of structuralism) to the neglect of specific practices and
emerging conflicts. This bias can be compensated by examining economic governance in terms
of how expectations are stabilized within particular structural contexts and behaviour is
regularized through conventions, compromise, and the exercise of power (for some initial
regulationist work in this area, see Lipietz 1993; Benko and Lipietz 1994; Boyer and Hollingsworth
1995; and, for a review, Jessop 1995b). Early studies of urban regimes also offer important
insights into the nature of governance and more recent work makes explicit use of the concept in
posing research issues (for a recent review, see Stoker 1995). In short, it would seem that urban
governance is an important area for assessing the potential of a neo-Gramscian regulation
approach.

II. On Analyzing Urban Regimes

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

The first lesson concerns objects of governance. Those regulation theorists opposed to
functionalist arguments regard modes of regulation as being constitutive of the objects they
regulate: objects and modes of regulation co-evolve in a structurally coupled (and, often, indeed,
strategically co-ordinated) manner (on this, see Jessop 1990; and Painter, this volume). Thus one
should study how the local economy comes to be constituted as an object of economic and extra-
economic regulation. This involves examining two interlinked distinctions: (a) the local economy
vs. its supra-local economic environment; and (b) the local economy vs. its extra-economic local
environment (community, the political system, welfare state, education system, religious
institutions, etc.). The first distinction is premissed on the idea that, whatever the vagaries and
contingencies of economic development on a global scale, it might be possible to endogenize and
control at least some conditions bearing upon local economic development. At stake here is how
the boundaries of the local economy are discursively constructed and materialized. The second
distinction refers to the means-ends relations involved in attempts to develop local strategies from
an integral economic perspective and concerns the range of activities that need to be co-ordinated
to realize a given economic development strategy.

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

Lesson three introduces the neo-Gramscian concept of accumulation strategy to build on this
double demarcation of a manageable economic space and its extra-economic conditions.
Struggles over the economic and social modes of economic regulation play a key role in shaping
and unifying different supra-national, national, regional, and local modes of growth. As the
different structural forms of the capitalist economy (the commodity, money, wage, price, tax, and
company forms) are generic features of all capitalist economic relations and are unified only as
modes of expression of generalized commodity production, any substantive unity that
characterizes a given capitalist regime in a given economic space must be rooted elsewhere. One
such source is accumulation strategies. These define a specific economic ‘growth model’ for a
given economic space and its various extra-economic preconditions and they outline a general
strategy appropriate to its realisation. As noted above, there is a key role here for organic
intellectuals linked to the dominant class. It must be admitted that, regarding Fordism, Gramsci
claimed their role would be greater in interwar Europe, which had a more complex class and
social structure than the United States; in the latter, the emerging hegemony of Fordism was more
securely rooted in the factory and had less need of professional political and intellectual
intermediaries (Gramsci 1971: 285). Whatever the merits of his argument for the emergence and
consolidation of Fordism on both sides of the Atlantic, however, it is evident that major political,
intellectual, and moral struggles have occurred in shaping the emerging post-Fordist modes of
regulation with their new, more flexible homo oeconomicus, new norms of production and
consumption, new discourses and societal paradigms, new structural forms and institutional
supports, and new modes of government and governance. Accumulation strategies can be
defined for different spatial scales from international regimes through supranational blocs to
national and regional economies and thence to the local. Although this concept has generally
been applied to the national level (itself a reflection of the dominance of national economies and
national states in the Fordist era), it is also relevant to the regional and local level. Indeed the
crisis of Fordism has made it even more relevant (see section IV).

Lesson four concerns the need to examine the relationship between local accumulation strategies
and prevailing hegemonic projects. Since economies (even in their inclusive sense) are always
embedded in a wider ethico-political context, the stability of the latter also merits attention. A key
role may be played here by hegemonic projects which help secure the relative unity of diverse
social forces. A hegemonic project achieves this by resolving the abstract problem of conflicts
between particular interests and the general interest. It mobilizes support behind a concrete
programme of action which asserts a contingent general interest in the pursuit of objectives that
explicitly or implicitly advance the long-term interests of the hegemonic class (fraction) and
thereby privileges particular economic-corporate interests compatible with this programme whilst
derogating the pursuit of other particular interests that are inconsistent with it. Moreover, whilst it
serves the long-run interests of the dominant class (or class fraction), the latter will typically
sacrifice certain economic-corporate interests in the short-term to help legitimate its overall
hegemonic project. For Gramsci, hegemony was generally realized at the ‘national-popular’ level
and expressed in the organization of national states; more recent studies have explored
international hegemony in Gramscian terms. However, if one of the principal features of
contemporary capitalism is the ‘hollowing out’ of national states and the resurgence of regions
and cities, it is important to consider how far hegemony can also be re-located (perhaps once
again) at the subnational level. This is particularly likely in more federal or decentralized regimes
but there are also clear signs of a resurgence of municipal governance in unitary states.
Nonetheless we should note that, just like national hegemony, local hegemonies may also vary
in their relative inclusiveness, in the balance between active consent, fraud-corruption, and
coercion, and in the relative weight of government as opposed to governance. It would be
interesting to explore differences here between urban regimes in, for example, export-led flexible
industrial districts in boom regions and property-led urban regeneration in crisis-prone Fordist
cities.

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

Combining this approach with work on the strategic selectivity of governance regimes should offer
powerful tools for urban regime analysis. For not all economic and political forces derive the same
advantages from specific modes of growth and/or governance. Mapping such asymmetries has
an important role in defining the nature of urban regimes — especially as the strategic selectivity
of local institutions affects their long-run stability. Indeed, the durability of urban regimes depends
not only on the overall coherence and economic feasibility of the strategies they promote but also
on strategic capacities rooted in local institutional structures and organizations. This said, of
course, another implication of the strategic-relational approach is that agents are reflexive,
capable of reformulating within limits their own identities and interests, and able to engage in
strategic calculation about their current situation (see Jessop 1982, 1996a). This opens the
possibility of strategic action to transform the strategic selectivity of extant regimes. For example,
much of the Thatcherite attack on local government autonomy in Britain and the associated
transfer of local authority functions was due to a concern to redefine access to local power and
promote ‘enterprise culture’.

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

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

The eighth lesson is cautionary. It would be a gross mistake to assume that a local mode of
growth, a local mode of regulation, or an urban regime can exist in isolation from its environment.
Whilst this comment may seem unnecessary regarding local modes of growth, discussions of
modes of regulation tend to neglect how far both the social and economic aspects of regulation
are embedded in tangled hierarchies for any given spatialized object of regulation. Just as the
postwar Atlantic Fordist mode of national economic growth had international and regional/local
supports, so does the mode of growth of regional and local economies depend on more
encompassing economic complementarities, structural forms, modes of governance, and so forth.
Strictly speaking, it would be more appropriate, if somewhat convoluted, to talk about pluri-spatial,
multi-temporal, and poly-contextual modes of regulating local economies and their relative
integration into more encompassing economic spaces. Analogous problems have already been
noted in criticisms of urban growth coalition theories (cf. Harding 1995).

III. Local Economies and Economic Strategies

In depicting a local accumulation regime we encounter a definitional problem which is not only
present for observers but also affects local participants. This is how to demarcate a local economy
and its economic and extra-economic conditions of existence and, on this basis, to formulate a
local accumulation strategy concerned with local economic development. Such strategies can be
defined for various economic units (both territorial and functional) but my concern here is with
possible features of local accumulation strategies associated with specific urban regimes. The
variable geometries of economic and political boundaries pose major problems concerning
whether local political forces have the juridico-political capacities to manage or govern the local
economy. This is often noted for the USA but also occurs elsewhere. Any solution depends as
much on the spatial imaginary and the links between state and civil society, however, as on formal
territorial demarcations and the re-allocation of formal legal and political powers. For, once one
adopts an integral economic and integral political approach to local economic development, it is
possible to see how local economies and local regimes might be organized across borders. There
is clearly a key role here for local growth coalitions (broadly understood to comprise the major
forces mobilized behind the dominant local accumulation strategy rather than limited property
development coalitions) in shaping the conditions for local economic performance.

The choice of spatial scale at which local economic development should be pursued is inherently
strategic. It is contingent on various political, economic, and social specificities of a particular
urban and regional context at a particular moment in time. The temporal and spatial are not
separable here. The choice of time horizon will in part dictate the appropriate spatial scale at
which development is sought. In turn, the choice of spatial scale will in part determine the time
horizon within which local economic growth can be anticipated. Thus the discursive constitution
of the boundaries and nature of the (local) economy affects the temporal dimension of strategy-
making as well as its spatial scale. This is quite explicit in many economic strategy documents —
with powerful players seeking to shape both the spatial and temporal horizons to which economic
and political decisions are oriented so that the economic and political benefits are ‘optimized’ (on
the case of the East Thames Corridor in Britain, see, e.g., Jessop 1996b). Hence the ability to
match spatial scale and time horizon may be a crucial factor shaping the success or failure of
local economic development strategies associated with urban regimes. When space and time
horizons are articulated more or less successfully, economic development will occur within
relatively stable ‘time-space envelopes’ (cf. Massey 1994: 225; Sum 1995).

Regarding the supra-local economic environment and the extra-economic local environment, the
attempted governance of complexity involved in local accumulation strategies requires key
players to undertake two interrelated tasks. These are: firstly, to model the factors relevant to
local economic development based on the analytical distinction between the local economy and
its two above-named environments; and, secondly, to develop the ‘requisite variety’ in policy
instruments and/or resources to be deployed in the pursuit of local accumulation strategies. This
puts considerable demands on the monitoring and self-reflexive capacities of local growth
coalitions and suggests the importance of their own organizational learning capacities as well as
those of the local or regional economy as a whole. The greater the capacities of a specific group
or network to learn, the greater the chances of its becoming hegemonic in defining the local
accumulation strategy; and, in addition, that the latter will be organic rather than ‘arbitrary,
rationalistic, and willed’. In both respects economic hegemony also requires acceptance of the
strategy by other key players whose cooperation is needed to deliver the extra-economic
conditions to realize an accumulation strategy.

A final point to note is the extent to which local economic and political forces can draw on wider
sources of knowledge about the economic and extra-economic conditions which bear on the
competitiveness of local economies. For stable modes of local economic growth typically involve
building a structured complementarity (or coherence) between the local economy and one or more
of its encompassing regional, national, and supranational accumulation regimes. Since capitalism
is always characterized by uneven development and tendencies towards polarization, the
success of some economic spaces (and the success of the spaces whose growth dynamic is
complemented by their own) will inevitably be associated with the marginalization of other
economic spaces. This is seen in the changing hierarchy of economic spaces as capitalist growth
dynamics are affected by the relative exhaustion of some accumulation strategies and modes of
growth and/or the dynamic potential of innovations in materials, processes, products,
organization, or markets. This in turn means that different ‘urban growth coalitions’ should orient
local accumulation strategies to an assessment of the position of their local economic space in
the urban hierarchy and international division of labour. This explains the wide range of alternative
strategies in different localities, highlighting the need for economic development initiatives that
are sensitive to the specificities of particular local economies (cf. Barlow 1995; Hay and Jessop
1995; Krätke 1995).

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

IV. Changing Urban Regimes

We can now attempt a re-interpretation of the changed economic agenda of economic

partnerships in contemporary western capitalism. It was always one-sided to suggest that local
growth coalitions were oriented primarily to property development. For during Fordism, as now,
strategies pursued by local authorities and agencies of local governance were numerous, spatially
and temporally specific, and divergent. But it is fair to say that the local coalitions were oriented
to specific models of development which generally complemented the dominance of Atlantic
Fordism and its distinctive forms of uneven development. Thus local states under Fordism
typically provided a local infrastructure to support Fordist mass production, promoted collective
consumption, implemented local welfare state policies, and, in some cases (especially as the
crisis unfolded), engaged in competitive subsidies to attract new jobs or prevent the loss of
established jobs. Whilst local economic conditions clearly shaped how individual local
governments saw their respective economic roles, there was an almost universal commitment to
the Keynesian welfare social policy role. These generalizations apply most strongly, of course, to
trends in Europe. Indeed, as Gramsci himself noted, hegemony was more rooted in the factory in
the USA; inter alia, this meant that Keynesian welfare was supplied in part through company- or
industry-level bargaining for those in the privileged Fordist sectors of segmented labour markets.
Even in the USA, however, the heyday of Fordism witnessed attempts to complement military
Keynesianism with a ‘Great Society’ reinvigoration of the New Deal welfare state.

With the crisis of Fordism on both sides of the Atlantic, however, we can discern a transition from
systems of local government organized around expanding, localized delivery of ‘Keynesian
welfare state’ functions towards a system of local governance organized around what, by analogy,
can be termed a ‘Schumpeterian workfare’ role. This role is quite novel. In economic terms, it
attempts to promote flexibility, economies of scope, and permanent innovation in open economies
by intervening more widely and deeply on the supply-side of the economy and tries to strengthen
as far as possible the structural competitiveness of the relevant economic spaces. And, in social
terms, it subordinates social to economic policy with particular emphasis on labour market
flexibility, structural competitiveness, and the impact of the social wage as an international cost
of production (cf. Jessop 1993).

Developments in the global economy have radically altered the relevance of the typical Fordist
demarcations of economic space. National economies are no longer taken for granted as the
main space and/or object of economic regulation; and the range of extra-economic conditions
considered to be significant for securing economic competitiveness has been much extended.
Thus, whereas the crisis of Fordism initially led to attempts to reinvigorate the conditions for
Fordist accumulation at local and national levels, a consensus (valid or not) has since grown that
the economic spaces most relevant to accumulation and the main extra-economic conditions for
economic competitiveness have changed significantly. This is reflected in dominant economic
discourses and the demarcation of spaces of accumulation. Alongside discourses of globalization,
triadization, and so on (with their important supra-national strategic implications), there is the
alleged discovery (or, perhaps, re-discovery) of flexible industrial districts, innovative milieux,
technopoles, entrepreneurial cities, ‘learning regions’, cross-border regions, global cities, and so
forth (with their more localized strategic implications).

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

This dual re-orientation has been reinforced in so far as regional and local economies have been
seen to have their own specific problems which could be resolved neither through national macro-
economic policies nor through uniformly imposed meso- or micro-economic policies. This
perception indicated the need for new measures to restructure capital in regard to these newly
significant economic spaces and for new forms of urban governance to implement them. This is
associated with demands for specifically tailored and targeted urban and regional policies to be
implemented from below, with or without national or supranational sponsorship or facilitation.
These tendencies are reflected at local level in a widening and deepening of initiatives in re-
skilling, technology transfer, local venture capital, innovation centres, science and high
technology industrial parks, incubator units for small business, support for entrepreneurship,
efforts to expand export markets, and so on. This in turn affects the definition of economic spaces.
For, rightly or wrongly, they are seen as much more strongly socially and/or institutionally
embedded and, perhaps consequently, as requiring more complex forms of regularization and
governance than Fordist forms of economic organization.

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

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

A final point to note regarding changing urban regimes is the enhanced role of the local state and
local governance mechanisms in international economic activities. This is closely related to more
general changes in the autonomy and capacity of national states due to the expansion of
supranational intergovernmental regimes, local governance regimes, and transnationalized local
policy networks. Duchacek was one of the first theorists to describe the expanding regional,
provincial, and local government roles in international affairs. He referred to ‘micro-diplomacy’
(including overseas representation, promotion, lobbying, etc.) in such fields as economic
interchange, environmental policy, and welfare (e.g., Duchacek 1984). The result is a ‘perforated
sovereignty’ where nations are more open to trans-sovereign contacts by subnational
governments and where international policy transfer between localities is likely to increase (see
Cappellin 1992; Church and Reid 1995). This reinforces the importance of looking beyond
increasingly artificial local boundaries in studying urban regimes and growth coalitions. It also
poses the problem of increased vulnerability by allowing foreign actors to divide and rule different
levels of policy making (cf. Rycroft 1990: 218-19, 229).

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

V. Concluding Remarks

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

Methodologically I hope to have added to arguments presented elsewhere in this volume on the
potential role of the regulation approach as a supplement to the still evolving urban regimes
approach. But I have done so by putting a particular gloss on the regulation approach — one that
notes its remarkable similarities to Gramsci’s work on the state in its inclusive sense and, even
more strikingly perhaps, his various reflections on the ethico-political and psycho-economic
moments of economic regimes. It is certainly worth remarking the significant extent to which each
paradigm adopts a strategic-relational approach and also places its specific theoretical object in
its wider social context. Thus, whereas Gramsci examined the social embeddedness and social
regularization of state power, the regulation approach examines the social embeddedness and
social regularization of accumulation. For Gramsci, this meant examining the modalities of political
power (hegemony, coercion, domination, leadership) which enable a historically specific
hegemonic bloc (power bloc) to project power beyond the boundaries of the state and thereby
secure the conditions for political class domination. Conversely, for regulationists, this involves
studying the modalities of economic regulation (the wage relation, money and credit, forms of
competition, international regimes, and the state) which regularize, discipline, and guide micro-
economic behaviour within limits that are compatible in given historical circumstances with the
expanded reproduction of capitalism as a whole. In this sense both approaches are interested in
the strategic selectivity of specific regimes (political or economic respectively) and their
implications for class domination (likewise political or economic).

In bringing these approaches together we can strengthen each of them and, at the same time,
develop useful tools for studying the nature and succession of urban regimes. Gramsci’s own
work is itself marred by its gestural (if still theoretically tantalizing) treatment of the ‘decisive
economic nucleus’ of hegemony. This neglect is often more serious in recent neo-Gramscian
work. Regulation theory is one way to remedy this particular deficiency and has the virtue of
intrinsic compatibility with Gramscian concepts. Moreover, as I tried to indicate above, it was in
certain respects anticipated in Gramsci’s writings. Conversely, the regulation approach is
regularly criticized for its neglect of the distinctive dynamic of the state system and political
regimes. Only a few theorists (mostly working outside the Parisian mainstream) have paid much
attention to the state system. More generally there has been a one-sided concern with the various
structural forms and institutions involved in the overall reproduction-régulation of capitalism to the
neglect of the many and varied governance mechanisms involved in the organization or self-
organization of the complex web of interdependencies among these forms and institutions. Clearly
this is a serious defect from the viewpoint of someone interested in urban regimes and suggests
that in its predominant versions the regulation approach can at best contextualize the nature and
succession of urban regimes rather than explain them (important exceptions regarding the state
can be found in the work of German theorists working with regulationist concepts, e.g., Esser and
Hirsch 1988, Keil 1993, or Mayer 1994). Lastly, the regulation approach has neglected the role of
the ethico-political dimension to regulation and, in particular, the key role of economic discourses,
the organic intellectuals involved in elaborating accumulation strategies and hegemonic projects,
and their implications for the formation of economic subjects. The study of urban regimes needs
to address such issues and link them to the current transformation of economic strategies.

Nonetheless it is important to note here that neo-Gramscian theory and the regulation approach
are still only complementary. They cannot be combined without further theoretical work to
establish more detailed conceptual linkages and logical connections. And, in doing so one must
be careful to avoid any simple-minded reduction of urban politics to the needs of the economic
base (let alone a base that is understood in narrow economic terms). Moreover, as already
suggested in my comments on governance theory here and elsewhere (see, for example, Jessop
1995b), both the regulationist and neo-Gramscian approaches would benefit from more interest
in issues of governance and meta-governance.

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

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

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

3. Although Gramsci probably misattributes the idea of ‘determined market’ to Ricardo, this is
unimportant for present purposes.
4. Current splits within the Conservative Government and the Establishment reflect the narrowing
of Major government horizons to the retention of office at the expense of establishing a new
productive world.

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

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

7. On the mobilization of bias, see Schattschneider (1970). Similar ideas occur in the debate on
the three faces of power between pluralists and elite theorists.

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

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