Power and City Governance: Comparative Perspectives on Urban Development. By Alan DiGaetano and John S. Klemanski. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. 328p. $57.95 cloth, $22.95 paper

The field of urban politics has been in the theoretical doldrums for some 20 years now. This is not to say there has been a dearth of scholarship; on the contrary, empirical case studies taking political economy, policy, or institutional approaches have been common. But unlike the heyday of the study of the field through the 1970s, there has been no compelling debate that has held the attention of students of American politics and political scientists more generally. Alan DiGaetano and John Klemanski set themselves up for no small task, then, by seeking not simply to establish comparisons between cities in the United States and Great Britain, but to build a new theoretical foundation for the study of city politics and for urban political economy more generally. On the whole, while the authors provide a sweeping vista of the state of the field, the theoretical edifice they build is not solid enough to sustain the weight of their own hypotheses and claims.