City Limits [Paperback]

Winner of the 1981 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for the best book published in the United States on government, politics, or international affairs.

City Limitsradically reinterprets urban politics by deriving its dominant forces from the logic of the American federal structure. It is thereby able to explain some pervasive tendencies of urban political outcomes that are puzzling or scarcely noticed at all when cities are viewed as autonomous units, outside the federal framework. Professor Peterson's analysis is imaginativelyfor conceived and skillfully carried through. His beautifully finished volume will lastingly alter our understanding of urban affairs in America. —from the citation by the selection committee for the Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award

Preface
Acknowledgments
1. An Alternative Theory of Urban Politics
1. City Limits and the Study of Urban Politics
2. The Interests of the Limited City
2. City Limits and Public Policy
3. The Three Policy Arenas
4. Toward a New Theory of Federalism
5. Cities, Suburbs, and Their Schools
3. City Limits and Urban Politics
6. Parties and Groups in Local Politics
7. The Politics of Development
8. The Politics of Allocation
9. The Politics of Redistribution
4. Changing the Limits of Urban Policy
10. Is New York a Deviant Case?
11. Redistribution in the Federal System

Paul E. Petersonis professor of Government at Harvard University. He is the coauthor ofRace and Authority in Urban Politicsand the author ofSchool Politics, Chicago StyleandThe Politics of School Reform, 1870-1940. All are published by the University of Chicago Press.