Civil Society versus Growth Machine: Community Actors' Influence on Local Development Strategies

This research examines the relationship between diverse community actors and the existence of two contrasting types of economic development, self-development and industrial recruitment, across counties in the United States.... [ view full abstract ]

This research examines the relationship between diverse community actors and the existence of two contrasting types of economic development, self-development and industrial recruitment, across counties in the United States. Self-development is regarded as an endogenous form of economic development that relies largely on home-grown entrepreneurism and local resources. Industrial recruitment is regarded as an exogenous form of economic development that seeks to solicit outside investors and firms to locate within a particular locality. Using unique primary data from county governments across the United States, I question the degree to which civil society versus growth machine-oriented actors influence economic development strategies. I employ count models with fixed effects to explore the relative effect of these actors on the likelihood of counties engaging in more or less self-development and industrial recruitment. Based on a largely rural social capital literature, counties with a robust civil society should be expected to elicit greater self-development strategies. This perspective is contrasted with the urban growth machine perspective, which argues local elites drive local policy toward a singular goal of more intensive growth.  This paper places two community development literatures in dialogue, to further extend academic knowledge about the relative determinants of local economic development strategies across counties.