presented by Kantor, Savitch, and Haddock ( 1997 ) that approaches comparison by
describing a number of factors that inXuence the economic, intergovernmental,
and political contexts of cities, and uses these in various combinations to generate
eight regime typesas a starting point. Their framework as a descriptive device may
be useful and the empirical material is certainly valuable but it is not about regimes
as cross-sectoral institutional pacts for the making of governance capacity, as
presented in Stone’s regime theory.
Degreeismrefers to abuse of continua to represent all diVerences as merely
quantitative rather than qualitative—a matter of degree (see, for discussion,
Mossberger and Stoker 2001 ). The potential for this problem to arise in urban
regime theory is considerable because there is no clear demarcation within the
theory for operationalizing a ‘‘suYcient’’ degree of cooperation, stability, or
coherence. It could be asked whether descriptions of ‘‘emerging’’ regimes in the
cross-national literature (DiGaetano and Klemanski 1999 ; Bassett 1996 ; DiGaetano
and Lawless 1999 ; John and Cole 1998 ) constitute degreeism. The authors cited here
described certain European cities as having coalitions that were more limited or
fragile. They were, however, careful to depict some ability to cooperate as a
condition for regimes. The ambiguity about when a regime has ‘‘enough’’ to be a
regime is problematic in the American literature as well, because consensus is
achieved over time, and certain regimes, like progressive regimes, are assumed to be
less stable, with more potential for conXict. The problem here is the inadequate
formulation of the original concept. It emerged out of a case study in one setting
and has struggled to identify or specify a full-blown theoretical statement stripped
of that baggage.
Concept stretchingconsists of removing aspects of the original meaning of the
concept so that it can accommodate more cases. As with the other mistakes
in comparative conceptualization, the problem is that if we never know when
something ceases to apply, the variation that may help to explain and predict it is
therefore obscured by deWnitional sloppiness. The diVerence between concept
stretching and misclassiWcation is that in concept stretching there is some recog-
nition of diVerences in the phenomena being observed, and that some of the
properties of the original concept do not apply. But rather than ‘‘rising on a ladder
of abstraction’’ (Sartori 1991 , 254 ), and developing a more general, umbrella
concept (for example, mammals to describe cats and dogs), concept stretching
simply states that not all cats have the same properties in order to include dogs. The
better strategy in this case is to rise to a higher level of abstraction, to stay within
the parameters of the regime concept but toWnd a way of being more systematic
about the diVerences that do exist between regime types.
Drawing on the United States context, Stone has deWned four diVerent regime
types: maintenance or caretaker regimes, which focus on routine service delivery
and low taxes; development regimes that are concerned with changing land use to
promote growth; middle-class progressive regimes which include aims such as
508 gerry stoker