On The Urban Regime Theory

At the mid-and late 20th century, the Urban Regime Theory is one of the most important parts in the study of city politics. As the representative scholar of Urban Regime Theory, Stone has made progress with case studies. He found that there were a wide range of interest groups in American cities after the end of World War II. They who realize the aspirations of their own interests will adopt a cooperative approach to participate the policy process, influence the policy-making progress through barganing. Scholars divided these multi-up interest groups into three categories: The first is the city government, as representation of political organizations, it represents the public interest. The government fulfills its public service functions through controlling the policy-making process to achieve its political demands,which is its advantage; The second category is elite enterprises, as the presentation of economic organizations, they occupied the city's economic resources. They seek to maximize their economic profits by controlling the direction of their investment, providing employment opportunities and paying taxes in policy process; and community organizations belong to the third type, They have the same demands in society. They are organized by their own, self-management, through its participation in the electoral process to express their preference behavior, effect the policy-making process indirectly. The Regime theory sets up a "Government - Business Elite - social organizations" composed of the dynamic analysis model, through the analysis of policy involved in these three roles and the type of their actions.The Regime Theory has its own characteristics in the analysis of urban research, it analyzes the structure of interest groups in the policy process , researches the Policy orientation in different periods of a city by Case Study Method, gives a comparative study of different urban development policy , breaks the difference between elitism and pluralism of the community theory, constructs a three-dimensional model of the power structure, provides a useful theoretical resource for the formation of Governance Theory. However, the theory has many defects, its normative and adaptive problem have been questioned by many scholars. In this paper, the author teases the Urban Regime Theory by the numbers, and give a detailed exposition from the following five sections specifically:In the first part,after several major research areas of power theory in the mid-and late 20th century , the author considers the Group of Political Theory, Community Power Structure Theory, Growth Machine Theory, Governance as important theoretical resources to the formation and development of Urban Regime Theory. Regime Theory draws on its own theoretical framework at the basis of all the above theories through a critical way.The second part is the basis of this article, the author describes the regime theory's framework detailedly. As there are many different interpretations on "regime" in academic area, firstly the author made a distinction on definitions of the classical Western political theory, the Marxist theory and the Urban Regime Theory, specified in this article are the concept of Urban Regime Theory. Secondly, Stone ,as one of the early regime theory scholars, summed up the basic framework and the assumption of this theory, at the basis of these, the author give the Urban Regime Theory a detailed interpretation of the basic content. Regime Theory content is organized around three major policy role and participation in the main role, regime theory suggests that, the municipal government--as a represent of the political organizations and enterprises--as a represent of the economic elite organization and associations--as a represent of society organizations, constitutes the political framework structure; they form a system of cooperation with the informal nature, value pluralism, the type of diversity, dynamic nature and relatively stable characteristics; Types of regime based on the different environment for the development varies. Regimes have been divided into different types through many case studies and comparative analysis by scholars. Finally, the author analyzes the logic of regime's influence from four visual angles: the reasons for the formation of Alliance, ways of how to influence policy process, effects of policies to achieve and changes in the era of globalization.In the third part, the author sums up opinions in the regime research areas, and concludes two directions of this theory's application: a critical study is mainly embodied in three aspects--its assumptions, normativeness and adaptability; applied research reflected in international comparative study and the expansion of academic research.Part IV and Part V are innovations and difficulties of this article. Through the discussion above, the author summarizes the rationality of regime theory on the research methods, the logic verification and the theoretical framework, and points out theoretical value of regime theory. However, regime theory has its flaws: the empirical study has normative problems; its multi-standard classification methods plunge the comparative research into a crisis of confidence; it hasn't been paid enough attention on factors outside the theoretical framework; it can't give a strong argument on non-economic-led development policies, either.Although the Urban Regime Theory has many deficiencies, its significance in theory still has merits, especially in the period of rapid development of China's urbanization. Economic development continues to occupy the dominant position of the city policies, regime theory provides the resources to draw on the theory for political studies in China. How to break through differences on the background, apply the regime theory to the field of Chinese Political Studies and effectively explain the political realities of Chinese? These are important tasks of the Chinese political studies. The value of this paper's does not lie in providing an effective solution, but combing the theoretical system itself, in order to do a good job for in-depth study of the academic.