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Federalism and regional development: Case studies in the experience in the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany
90
Book reviews
-who wanted to leave London. At the end of the day, Lawless retains his scepticism about the likely outcome of many of the policy solutions. Economic regeneration will not be based on manufacturing jobs which are in decline anyway, but the inner city workforce is not well suited for whitecollar jobs. In any event, the inner city is just a microcosm of a declining national economy, and within such a framework spatial policies for relocating jobs are unlikely to succeed. Lawless rather stresses national policies with inner city implications, such as job creation (cheap at the price, when the alternative is unemployment pay) and training programmes, plus local small-scale initiative to make life better for existing industries. Finally, however, he wonders whether the attempt to stop the outflow from the cities may not appear Canutelike a few decades from now. This is an exceedingly well-balanced and well-informed review. The only problem with it is that the striving for balance becomes at times obsessive: it seems that every possible policy prescription is followed straight away by five convincing reasons why it will not work. At the end of the day, one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that Lawless started by believing that he could find a good policy prescription somewhere, but ended by proving that none of them was much good. In any event, the answer comes out reasonably loud and clear: whatever anyone does, the forces of economic and social change are likely to continue to shrink the inner cities. This, I feel, is the only reasonable conclusion for an objective academic study-even if it may leave the politicians and the hapless inner city planners even more baffled and frustrated than they were before reading it. Peter Hall Department of Geography University of Reading
S. AND GUIXXN,G. (1979). Regional employment change: a subregional explanation. P?wgress in Planning 12 (3), 155-213. LAMBETH INNER AREASTUDY(1377). Inner London: policies for dispersal and balance. London:
FOTHERGILL,
I-EMSO.
Federalism and Regi~nul Development: Case Studies ita the E@e&nce in the United Stutes and the Federal Republic gf Germany, George W, Hoffman (ed.), University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 1981, xxv and 750 pp., $40.00.
This large book of 23 essays is a product of the 1979 German-American seminar on federalism and regional development organized by George Hoffman at the University of Texas Twenty-five geographers, approximately evenly distributed between the two countries, presented papers on a wide variety of topics with individual problems considered ranging from Atwater’s Prairie Chicken to Boston commuters to farmers in northern SchleswigHolstein. All the papers are in English and can be categorized as two on population issues, five on natural resources, six on economic and transport policies, two on rural and land-use problems, four on general legislative background and four on specific places (Koln, Northern ~hles~g-Holster, West Bedin and Hawaii). Each author is an expert on his/her individual topic and it is clear that each was caught between writing for specialists and, given the goals of the seminar, providing a general overview for academics familiar with another national setting as well as having little expertise in the topic. As expected, the articles are highly variable, both in content and quality. The seminar was undertaken as an admirable exercise in comparative cross-national study. Despite a similar federal structure, and membership of the top 10 economies of the world, the United States and West Germany display different histories and p~losophies of planning. A thorough reading of this book will acquaint the reader with the phibsophy, planning law, legislation and responses to government efforts in the two nations. In general, the American effort at ‘direct planning’, the deliberate attempt to promote growth in peripheral regions and control over-expansion in certain states, has been extremely modest and generally a failure. In contrast, the German effort has been large and expensive but also generally a failure in achieving the ultimate goal of minimal gaps between its regions in terms of wealth and development, a goal mandated by the Federal Constitution of 1949, Beyond this aim of comparison, the book succeeds in the aim of clarifying the complexities of planning in both countries. In this respect the articles on West Germany will be appreciated for the information they convey to an English-speaking audience on the large-scale plans developed in that nation since the Second World War. The 1945-65 years can be seen as a period of adjustment to the devastation of the war and of coping with the influx of over 16 million migrants from the former eastern territories and East Germany. The ‘Wirtschaftswunder” often overshadows the desperare [and con~n~ing) housing shortage, the isolation
Book reviews and poverty of the border zones, formerly at the centre, now on the periphery of Germany, the heavy importation of foreign labour who are viewed as a burden during the present economic recession, and the pressure on recreation and rural areas from urbanization conse quent on the first large-scale boom in single family home ownership in German cities. NonGermans tend to overlook the decentralized nature of the state and the power residing with the 10 tinder (states). The chapter on K61n and its services by Zschocke is particularly enlightening in this regard. A useful glossary of German planning terms complements the papers on German topics. Beyond its informative aspect, the book fails in its basic aim of providing a comparative statement of the relationship between federal structure and regional development in the two nations. Any comparison has to be drawn by the reader from the lengthy and often repetitive individual essays. Beyond the general policy categories (e.g. land use or transportation) little attempt was made to standardize the contributions so that a topic is discussed at length for one nation and ignored in the other. Truly comparative research is very rare in geography because of the difficulties of data standardization, adequate definition of similar policies and researcher experience confined to one nation or culture. Interestingly, recent developments of the American-German seminar are in this direction, to encourage cooperative research on problems of mutual interest. Beyond the parochialism of the individual essays, many suffer from longevity and tangents, some are too elementary and others are so descriptive that a reading of a statistical yearbook yields as much analysis. Basically the selection of topics was too wide although it could be argued that the first step in what, hopefully, will be a long and fruitful exchange should have wide extension. The book is encyclopaedic rather than analytic and it cannot be viewed as a coherent unit. Obviously the editor decided to allow each author full range of expression and choice of subtopics. The merits of this decision can be debated but, personally, I would have preferred a narrower topic selection, for example, regional economic development, with greater emphasis on analytic and philosophical approaches in a comparative framework. Space will not allow a review of the 23 individual essays but some are worth particular attention. Bartels provides a good, theoretical and critical review of the Bundesraumordnungsprogramm, the basic German planning law. In contrast, Hansen’s contribution is disappointing and breaks no new ground
91
beyond his previously published work. One could argue that the demise of the Economic Development Administration (EDA) under the Reagan Administration has jeopardized the research of those who depended on it for research funds and examined its disbursements (only one-tenth of one per cent of the federal budget at its peak). Perhaps they can shift their attention to the impacts of defence spending, a topic surveyed by Rees. However, his analysis suffers from data problems because subcontracting constitutes a large proportion of defence contracts and often is sited outside the state of the prime contractor. Browning’s review of total federal outlays suffers from a scale probltm. State data hide tremendous intrastate variation; federal outlays by department are readily available for the 435 congressional districts. Krumme’s paper on corporate organization and regional economies within the American federal system illustrates many of the good and weak points of the approach adopted by contributors to this volume. The paper provides a competent review of the topic and points out the inequalities produced by existing policy, particularly the free rein given to multilocational firms and the influence of corporate power in federal government halls. He suggests that large corporations have a responsibility to their communities beyond that legally required, but his neglect of political power and the locational effects of governmental decisions or, as in this case, non-decisions, prevents a complete analysis of the corporate location decision, its consequences and the possible solutions to the resulting negative externalities. Like all contributors, Krumme takes the governmental organization as a ‘given’. After reading 23 such ‘givens’, a questioning of the basic structure would have provided a welcome relief from the history of governmental regulation, ritual denouncement of growing bureaucracy, and the often tenuous links between federal policy and local developments. Other institutional forces, often reinforcing and frequently underlying governmental policy, are overlooked. Seven essays, those on coasts, canals, West Berlin, land use, waterways, wildlife and air quality, seem out of place in the book. Lenx’s review of West German attempts to reintegrate the Grenzgebiet (the strip of territory along the East German border) into the national economy is enlightening to those who argue for an active federal role in the development of the peripheral areas in the United States. Despite raising the quality and quantity of the social infrastructure to that of the western regions, the decline in population and the general decline of
92
Book reviews
the border zone has not been arrested. In general the German authors seem more concerned with the legislative intricacies of planning than their American counterparts and, given the current prominence of the foreign worker question in the Federal Repub lit, the short section in Fricke’s chapter on population policy devoted to this problem seems a misallocation of space. In summary, this book constitutes a first step on the road to comparative research of federal systems. A standardization of topics is needed and the ideal research situation is cooperative team research in the two nations. Having set down the bases and legislation of planning in this book, analysis of government policy must proceed within a framework of institutional constraint on local development. John O’Loughlin Department of Geography University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign
Unemployment, Bernard Crick (ed.), Methuen, London, 1981, 160 pp., E2.50. In many ways the most significant thing about this book is that it exists. It is not that it is a boring or uninformative book; it is written for a wide audience and started life as the January 1981 issue of The Political Quurterly and is reprinted without revision so, like most symposia, it is a mixed bag. But it is interesting that it exists because it represents a new political focus on unemployment. There have been authors since the time of Beveridge and before who have made a special study of unemployment, but comparatively few are represented here. The majority of the pieces are by non-specialists, of whom Bernard Crick and Maurice Preston are two of the more prominent, who have been stirred by the present unemployment crisis to produce this book. As Sean Glynn and Stephen Shaw, whose special area is the trade union movement’s relationship to unemployment in the inter-war period, remark in their piece: ‘the actual level of unemplo~~t which is consistent with political success is now higher than was previously supposed’. Remembering the banner headlines with which the Daily Mirror greeted ‘Half Million on the Dole for Xmas’ in 1962, and comparing that to Mrs Thatcher’s 1981 statement that ‘unemployment is a problem but inflation is a moral evil’ when ~ernplo~~t
was, on a 1962 basis, nudging four million,* that seems an understatement. But opinion is, perhaps, turning and if this book is a symbol of that shift, it is both welcome and significant. Because of the non-specialist nature of most of the authors’ interests quite a significant part of the book is taken up with rediscovering the wheel, so to speak. Indeed in a sense the very structure of the book itself is a rediscovery of the wheel. The brief introduction preposterously claims the material is unique because ‘the authors were asked to examine the regional differences’, and goes on to conclude that ‘the outlying regions suffer disproportion ately’. Such a revelation is about as unusual as the observation that God made little green apples. Both are commonplace but capable of challenge. I suspect Crick is using the word ‘disproportionately’ sloppily. The usual observation, which nothing in this collection disproves, is that, as unemployment rates rise nationally, they rise absolutely more in the high unemployment regions but proportionately less, taking them together. The structure of the book is first a pair of essays dealing with the human aspects of unemployment: a rather anecdotal one bv Jeremy Seabrook, which this reviewer finds both suspect and suffused with the peculiar selfrighteousness of the middle-class Left; then a passionate, bitter, knowledgeable but partial essay by F. F. Ridley on youth unemployment in Liverpool, Despite its shortcomings it is a moving piece which provokes thought. Its shortcomings are the products of its strengths. It is so rooted in the experience and meaning of being unemployed in Liverpool that it misses the broader picture. Like a number of later pieces, it tells us unemployment rates are higher for the unskilled than the skilled and the problem of long-term unemployment is worse; hardly surprising. Economists, whom Ridley dismisses as the wisest fools in Christendom, have been producing theories that tell us to expect that and measuring those tendencies for 30 years or more. Since increases in unemployment result more from increased duration of those who become unemployed than from an increased inflow into unemployment, we must naturally expect to observe proportionately more long-term unemployed in places like Liverpool where unemploym~t is high (this is also related to the observation that unemployment is not spread at all evenly but is highly concentrated on repeat spells for a relatively
* Remember too the hundreds of thousands in make-work YOP schemes, government training and the exclusion of married women without benefit entitlement from the register.
Book reviews
-who wanted to leave London. At the end of the day, Lawless retains his scepticism about the likely outcome of many of the policy solutions. Economic regeneration will not be based on manufacturing jobs which are in decline anyway, but the inner city workforce is not well suited for whitecollar jobs. In any event, the inner city is just a microcosm of a declining national economy, and within such a framework spatial policies for relocating jobs are unlikely to succeed. Lawless rather stresses national policies with inner city implications, such as job creation (cheap at the price, when the alternative is unemployment pay) and training programmes, plus local small-scale initiative to make life better for existing industries. Finally, however, he wonders whether the attempt to stop the outflow from the cities may not appear Canutelike a few decades from now. This is an exceedingly well-balanced and well-informed review. The only problem with it is that the striving for balance becomes at times obsessive: it seems that every possible policy prescription is followed straight away by five convincing reasons why it will not work. At the end of the day, one is left with the uncomfortable feeling that Lawless started by believing that he could find a good policy prescription somewhere, but ended by proving that none of them was much good. In any event, the answer comes out reasonably loud and clear: whatever anyone does, the forces of economic and social change are likely to continue to shrink the inner cities. This, I feel, is the only reasonable conclusion for an objective academic study-even if it may leave the politicians and the hapless inner city planners even more baffled and frustrated than they were before reading it. Peter Hall Department of Geography University of Reading
S. AND GUIXXN,G. (1979). Regional employment change: a subregional explanation. P?wgress in Planning 12 (3), 155-213. LAMBETH INNER AREASTUDY(1377). Inner London: policies for dispersal and balance. London:
FOTHERGILL,
I-EMSO.
Federalism and Regi~nul Development: Case Studies ita the E@e&nce in the United Stutes and the Federal Republic gf Germany, George W, Hoffman (ed.), University of Texas Press, Austin, TX, 1981, xxv and 750 pp., $40.00.
This large book of 23 essays is a product of the 1979 German-American seminar on federalism and regional development organized by George Hoffman at the University of Texas Twenty-five geographers, approximately evenly distributed between the two countries, presented papers on a wide variety of topics with individual problems considered ranging from Atwater’s Prairie Chicken to Boston commuters to farmers in northern SchleswigHolstein. All the papers are in English and can be categorized as two on population issues, five on natural resources, six on economic and transport policies, two on rural and land-use problems, four on general legislative background and four on specific places (Koln, Northern ~hles~g-Holster, West Bedin and Hawaii). Each author is an expert on his/her individual topic and it is clear that each was caught between writing for specialists and, given the goals of the seminar, providing a general overview for academics familiar with another national setting as well as having little expertise in the topic. As expected, the articles are highly variable, both in content and quality. The seminar was undertaken as an admirable exercise in comparative cross-national study. Despite a similar federal structure, and membership of the top 10 economies of the world, the United States and West Germany display different histories and p~losophies of planning. A thorough reading of this book will acquaint the reader with the phibsophy, planning law, legislation and responses to government efforts in the two nations. In general, the American effort at ‘direct planning’, the deliberate attempt to promote growth in peripheral regions and control over-expansion in certain states, has been extremely modest and generally a failure. In contrast, the German effort has been large and expensive but also generally a failure in achieving the ultimate goal of minimal gaps between its regions in terms of wealth and development, a goal mandated by the Federal Constitution of 1949, Beyond this aim of comparison, the book succeeds in the aim of clarifying the complexities of planning in both countries. In this respect the articles on West Germany will be appreciated for the information they convey to an English-speaking audience on the large-scale plans developed in that nation since the Second World War. The 1945-65 years can be seen as a period of adjustment to the devastation of the war and of coping with the influx of over 16 million migrants from the former eastern territories and East Germany. The ‘Wirtschaftswunder” often overshadows the desperare [and con~n~ing) housing shortage, the isolation
Book reviews and poverty of the border zones, formerly at the centre, now on the periphery of Germany, the heavy importation of foreign labour who are viewed as a burden during the present economic recession, and the pressure on recreation and rural areas from urbanization conse quent on the first large-scale boom in single family home ownership in German cities. NonGermans tend to overlook the decentralized nature of the state and the power residing with the 10 tinder (states). The chapter on K61n and its services by Zschocke is particularly enlightening in this regard. A useful glossary of German planning terms complements the papers on German topics. Beyond its informative aspect, the book fails in its basic aim of providing a comparative statement of the relationship between federal structure and regional development in the two nations. Any comparison has to be drawn by the reader from the lengthy and often repetitive individual essays. Beyond the general policy categories (e.g. land use or transportation) little attempt was made to standardize the contributions so that a topic is discussed at length for one nation and ignored in the other. Truly comparative research is very rare in geography because of the difficulties of data standardization, adequate definition of similar policies and researcher experience confined to one nation or culture. Interestingly, recent developments of the American-German seminar are in this direction, to encourage cooperative research on problems of mutual interest. Beyond the parochialism of the individual essays, many suffer from longevity and tangents, some are too elementary and others are so descriptive that a reading of a statistical yearbook yields as much analysis. Basically the selection of topics was too wide although it could be argued that the first step in what, hopefully, will be a long and fruitful exchange should have wide extension. The book is encyclopaedic rather than analytic and it cannot be viewed as a coherent unit. Obviously the editor decided to allow each author full range of expression and choice of subtopics. The merits of this decision can be debated but, personally, I would have preferred a narrower topic selection, for example, regional economic development, with greater emphasis on analytic and philosophical approaches in a comparative framework. Space will not allow a review of the 23 individual essays but some are worth particular attention. Bartels provides a good, theoretical and critical review of the Bundesraumordnungsprogramm, the basic German planning law. In contrast, Hansen’s contribution is disappointing and breaks no new ground
91
beyond his previously published work. One could argue that the demise of the Economic Development Administration (EDA) under the Reagan Administration has jeopardized the research of those who depended on it for research funds and examined its disbursements (only one-tenth of one per cent of the federal budget at its peak). Perhaps they can shift their attention to the impacts of defence spending, a topic surveyed by Rees. However, his analysis suffers from data problems because subcontracting constitutes a large proportion of defence contracts and often is sited outside the state of the prime contractor. Browning’s review of total federal outlays suffers from a scale probltm. State data hide tremendous intrastate variation; federal outlays by department are readily available for the 435 congressional districts. Krumme’s paper on corporate organization and regional economies within the American federal system illustrates many of the good and weak points of the approach adopted by contributors to this volume. The paper provides a competent review of the topic and points out the inequalities produced by existing policy, particularly the free rein given to multilocational firms and the influence of corporate power in federal government halls. He suggests that large corporations have a responsibility to their communities beyond that legally required, but his neglect of political power and the locational effects of governmental decisions or, as in this case, non-decisions, prevents a complete analysis of the corporate location decision, its consequences and the possible solutions to the resulting negative externalities. Like all contributors, Krumme takes the governmental organization as a ‘given’. After reading 23 such ‘givens’, a questioning of the basic structure would have provided a welcome relief from the history of governmental regulation, ritual denouncement of growing bureaucracy, and the often tenuous links between federal policy and local developments. Other institutional forces, often reinforcing and frequently underlying governmental policy, are overlooked. Seven essays, those on coasts, canals, West Berlin, land use, waterways, wildlife and air quality, seem out of place in the book. Lenx’s review of West German attempts to reintegrate the Grenzgebiet (the strip of territory along the East German border) into the national economy is enlightening to those who argue for an active federal role in the development of the peripheral areas in the United States. Despite raising the quality and quantity of the social infrastructure to that of the western regions, the decline in population and the general decline of
92
Book reviews
the border zone has not been arrested. In general the German authors seem more concerned with the legislative intricacies of planning than their American counterparts and, given the current prominence of the foreign worker question in the Federal Repub lit, the short section in Fricke’s chapter on population policy devoted to this problem seems a misallocation of space. In summary, this book constitutes a first step on the road to comparative research of federal systems. A standardization of topics is needed and the ideal research situation is cooperative team research in the two nations. Having set down the bases and legislation of planning in this book, analysis of government policy must proceed within a framework of institutional constraint on local development. John O’Loughlin Department of Geography University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign
Unemployment, Bernard Crick (ed.), Methuen, London, 1981, 160 pp., E2.50. In many ways the most significant thing about this book is that it exists. It is not that it is a boring or uninformative book; it is written for a wide audience and started life as the January 1981 issue of The Political Quurterly and is reprinted without revision so, like most symposia, it is a mixed bag. But it is interesting that it exists because it represents a new political focus on unemployment. There have been authors since the time of Beveridge and before who have made a special study of unemployment, but comparatively few are represented here. The majority of the pieces are by non-specialists, of whom Bernard Crick and Maurice Preston are two of the more prominent, who have been stirred by the present unemployment crisis to produce this book. As Sean Glynn and Stephen Shaw, whose special area is the trade union movement’s relationship to unemployment in the inter-war period, remark in their piece: ‘the actual level of unemplo~~t which is consistent with political success is now higher than was previously supposed’. Remembering the banner headlines with which the Daily Mirror greeted ‘Half Million on the Dole for Xmas’ in 1962, and comparing that to Mrs Thatcher’s 1981 statement that ‘unemployment is a problem but inflation is a moral evil’ when ~ernplo~~t
was, on a 1962 basis, nudging four million,* that seems an understatement. But opinion is, perhaps, turning and if this book is a symbol of that shift, it is both welcome and significant. Because of the non-specialist nature of most of the authors’ interests quite a significant part of the book is taken up with rediscovering the wheel, so to speak. Indeed in a sense the very structure of the book itself is a rediscovery of the wheel. The brief introduction preposterously claims the material is unique because ‘the authors were asked to examine the regional differences’, and goes on to conclude that ‘the outlying regions suffer disproportion ately’. Such a revelation is about as unusual as the observation that God made little green apples. Both are commonplace but capable of challenge. I suspect Crick is using the word ‘disproportionately’ sloppily. The usual observation, which nothing in this collection disproves, is that, as unemployment rates rise nationally, they rise absolutely more in the high unemployment regions but proportionately less, taking them together. The structure of the book is first a pair of essays dealing with the human aspects of unemployment: a rather anecdotal one bv Jeremy Seabrook, which this reviewer finds both suspect and suffused with the peculiar selfrighteousness of the middle-class Left; then a passionate, bitter, knowledgeable but partial essay by F. F. Ridley on youth unemployment in Liverpool, Despite its shortcomings it is a moving piece which provokes thought. Its shortcomings are the products of its strengths. It is so rooted in the experience and meaning of being unemployed in Liverpool that it misses the broader picture. Like a number of later pieces, it tells us unemployment rates are higher for the unskilled than the skilled and the problem of long-term unemployment is worse; hardly surprising. Economists, whom Ridley dismisses as the wisest fools in Christendom, have been producing theories that tell us to expect that and measuring those tendencies for 30 years or more. Since increases in unemployment result more from increased duration of those who become unemployed than from an increased inflow into unemployment, we must naturally expect to observe proportionately more long-term unemployed in places like Liverpool where unemploym~t is high (this is also related to the observation that unemployment is not spread at all evenly but is highly concentrated on repeat spells for a relatively
* Remember too the hundreds of thousands in make-work YOP schemes, government training and the exclusion of married women without benefit entitlement from the register.