Those endowed with a capacity to promote cooperation can attract allies and overcome oppositional forces. On the negative side of the political ledger, Atlanta's style of civic cooperation is achieved at a cost. Despite an ambitious program of physical redevelopment, the city is second only to Newark, New Jersey, in the poverty rate. Social problems, conflict of interest issues, and inattention to the production potential of a large lower class bespeak a regime unable to address a wide range of human needs. The capacity of urban regimes to bring about elaborate forms of physical redevelopment should not blind us to their incapacity to address deeply rooted social problems.
Stone takes the historical approach seriously.
The flow of events enables us to see how some groups deploy their resource advantages to fashion governing arrangements to their liking. Stone's theory-minded analysis of key events enables us to ask why and what else might be done. Regime Politics offers readers a political history of postwar Atlanta and an elegant, innovative, and incisive conceptual framework destined to influence the way urban politics is studied. A fine study that should have a major impact on democratic theory, the study of urban politics, and American race relations. America's Beliefs about Distributive Justice.