URBAN GOVERNMENT, URBAN POLITICS AND THE FABRICATION OF URBAN ISSUES: THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF URBAN POLICY

An "urban" definition of public policy problems raises great difficulties for the policy maker. If we emphasize implementation as a primary factor in evaluating public policy, we have good grounds for questioning the wisdom of an urban perspective. But urban questions have been and still are major areas of concern in public policy formulation. The ALP federal platform contains a long section on urban policies, reiterating what the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD) was striving to achieve under the Whitlam Government. At state level, urban problems have been tackled with varying degrees of success and seriousness, although at this level overall urban perspectives tend to be ignored, for reasons we shall indicate. However urban planning authorities have been tried in most capital cities, and metropolitan plans have been drawn up for all of them. They have concentrated mainly on land use and urban form. By the 1970s a common criticism of such planning was that it left aside many social and economic aspects of urban growth. For example, one (admittedly partisan) government source—the N.S.W. Department of Decentralization and Development—noted "a massive and increasing trend towards socio-economic segregation":
…the remoteness of central city facilities …the cost of commuter transport and the inadequacy of community facilities in low-income outer suburbs are operating to perpetuate economic under-privilege.     

THE POLITICS OF MANAGEMENT AND TECHNOLOGY IN THE USSR

Book reviewed in this article:
Nathan Leites, The Soviet Style in Management (New York: Crane Russak, 1985).
Bruce Parrott, Politics and Technology in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1985).
Bruce Parrott, Trade, Technology and Soviet-American Relations (Bloom-ington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985).     

AGRICULTURAL MARKETING ORDERS AND THE PROCESS AND POLITICS OF SELF-REGULATION

Agricultural marketing orders, put into operation with the initiative and approval of affected producers, are a form of supervised self-regulation. The 47 orders in effect variously authorize quantity controls, quality controls, and market support activities for fruits, vegetables, and specialty crops. Administered by producer committees under the supervision of the Agricultural Marketing Service, for most of their history they produced l i t t l e controversy. In recent years they have been attacked as anticompetitive. The impact of orders on prices, however, seems limited at best. Orderly marketing has largely replaced concern for "parity prices" as the goal of marketing orders.