The Territorial Imperative

The Territorial Imperative explores an area of interest in comparative political economy - the interaction of politics and economics at the mesolevel of the polity. Noting the ubiquity of regional economic disparities within advanced industrial democracies, Jeffrey Anderson undertakes a sophisticated analysis of the complex political conflicts such disparities generate. In this study of political responses to regional crisis, the principal theoretical focus centres on the impact of constitutional orders as bona fide political institutions. On the basis of a carefully constructed comparison of four declining industrial regions within a broader cross-national comparison of unitary Britain and federal Germany, Anderson concludes that constitutional orders as institutions do in fact matter. The territorial distribution of power, encapsulated in the federal-unitary distinction of interests and resources among sub-national and national actors and on the strategies of cooperation and conflict available to them.