Membership of the European Union on 1 May 2004 will undoubtedly have a major effect on the course of political developments in the countries of central Europe, although it is difficult to predict any particular consequences for, or direct impact on, the party systems of the region. Analysis of...

Drawing upon literature from political science, economics, and sociology that has attempted to consider how local preferences are translated into policy outcomes, we delineate four conceptually distinct areas of “the local political system”: resident and interest-group demands, partisanship...

There is a longstanding academic debate regarding whether local governments can meaningfully shape their long run fortunes through their own policymaking, or whether the autonomy of localities is swamped by larger macroeconomic forces. In the arena of development policy, specifically, some...

The relationship between the Austrian tradition and Bloomington institutionalism has been part of a larger intellectual evolution of a family of schools of thought that coevolved in multiple streams over the last 100 years or so. The Bloomington scholars, once they delineated the broader...

This paper focuses on the immigration-related demands currently being placed on local police in the United States, and the emergence of what we call a “multilayered jurisdictional patchwork” (MJP) of immigration enforcement. The evolving relationship between layers of government involved in...

What types of cities tend to aggressively pursue industrial or retail firms? What types of cities tend to favor housing over business development? What motivates cities to try to slow residential growth? Custodians of Place answers these and many other questions