Corporate and Union Power: Theory and Method

Abstract

There are always local constraints to economic growth and social control. I shall argue that corporate and union power shaped the impact of these constraints on local policy. Growth policies, like Urban Renewal, were not automatic responses to the difficulties of stimulating investment through the market. Social control policies, like the War on Poverty or expansions in local patronage and repression, did not inevitably follow local black violence or respond to a locally powerful black citizenry. Corporate and union power not only shaped what policies were adopted, but in response to which local conditions they were adopted.