environmental protection, historic preservation, aVordable housing, and linkage
funds; and lower-class opportunity expansion regimes that emphasize human
investment policy and widened access to employment and ownership. The latter
two are the most diYcult to achieve, in part because they entail a measure of
coercion or regulation of businesses rather than voluntary cooperation, but Stone’s
discussion makes it clear that the participation of businesses is still an ingredient in
the regime (see Stone 1993 , 19 – 22 ).
The Stoker and Mossberger ( 1994 ) typology constructed for purposes of cross-
national comparison adapts the typology of maintenance, development, and
progressive regimes by including them in the broader categories of organic, instru-
mental, and symbolic regimes. For example, the more speciWc case of
‘‘caretaker regimes’’ becomes a subtype of a more general ‘‘organic regime’’ that is
based on tradition and local cohesion, and maintenance of the status quo. The
maintenance of the status quo may not be maintenance of low tax rates, as found in
the prototypical caretaker regimes, but could include maintenance of traditional
elites or racial or class exclusion. The instrumental regime is similar to Stone’s
development regime (i.e. Atlanta) and reXects the importance of selective incentives
and tangible results in coalition maintenance. Symbolic regimes include Stone’s
progressive regimes and also revitalizing cities bent on changing their image. The
main purpose of the regime is redirection of the ideology or image. Selective
incentives are less important in symbolic regimes or organic regimes. These regimes
are more tenuous, and may be transitional, especially in the case of revitalizing
regimes.
Does this revised typology constitute an example of concept stretching? The case
for the prosecution is strongest when it comes to the discussion of symbolic
regimes since the ephemeral and non-dominant nature of that regime type may
make it impossible for it to claim pre-emptive power over the agenda of a city, a key
quality of a regime. The case for the defence is that all the regimes identiWed are
cross-sectoral, although the partners and the incentives used to bind them together
vary. In short the analysis seeks to ‘‘cleanse regime theory of its ethnocentric
preoccupations and to apply a set of criteria that enables scholars to identify
diVerent sorts of governance’’ (John 2001 , 49 ).
The idea of a regime aimed at expanding the opportunities for lower-class
citizens—the fourth element in Stone’s original typology—has not been entirely
neglected and has become central to Stone’s work with colleagues on education
reform in the United States. In the Civic Capacity and Urban Education Project
(Henig, Mula, Orr, and Pedescleaux 1999 ; Stone 1998 a) the insights of urban regime
theory have been used to investigate a speciWc policy other than economic devel-
opment. Although human capital issues have been discussed in the context of
urban regimes before (Orr and Stoker 1994 ), this newer work represents a focus on
a speciWc policy area with a diVerent array of actors. The concept of ‘‘civic capacity,’’
or ‘‘the mobilization of various stakeholders in support of a community-wide
comparative local governance 509