Sellers, Jefferey M., Marta Arretche, Daniel Kubler, and Eran Razin, eds., Inequality and Governance in the Metropolis: Place Equality Regimes and Fiscal Choices in Eleven Countries (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017). 278 pp. $139.99 (hardback); $109 (eBook), ISBN: 9781137573773

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13002
• Author: Scott A. Bollens
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• Date: 01 November 2018

Book Reviews 931

Reviewed by: Scott A. Bollens

University of California

Sellers, Jefferey M., Marta Arretche, Daniel Kubler, and

EranRazin, eds., Inequality and Governance in the Metropolis:

Place Equality Regimes and Fiscal Choices in Eleven Countries

(London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017). 278pp.

$139.99 (hardback); $109 (eBook), ISBN: 9781137573773

Scott A. Bollens is professor in the

department of urban planning and public

policy at the University of California, Irvine.

Bollens studies urbanism and political

conflict in contested cities; his new book is

Trajectories of Conflict and Peace: Jerusalem

and Belfast Since 1994

(London and New

York: Routledge, 2018).

E-mail: bollens@uci.edu

This ambitious collection reaches far and wide

in its analysis of how governance strategies and

institutions at multiple levels of governance

(what the book labels “place equality regimes”)

address disparities between local jurisdictions within

metropolitan regions. Observing that analytical

approaches to territorial policies have typically focused

on variations across regions rather than within them,

the authors position the metropolitan region as a

“distinctive type of territorial context for spatial

inequality and efforts to address it” (3). Rather than a

passive conduit through which national policies flow,

this book emphasizes the metropolitan region as a semi-

independent, active, and causative arena through which

policies impact the magnitude of interlocal fiscal and

sociospatial inequalities. Public policies examined in this

empirical work include redistributive services, such as

education, health, and welfare; allocational services, such

as cultural and environmental amenities and security;

developmental policies, such as transportation and

infrastructure; revenue-raising policies; and regulatory

programs with impacts on local social composition,

such as housing and land use. The book investigates,

comparatively, how such policies enacted at metropolitan

and national levels impact spatial inequalities within

metropolitan areas—more specifically, differentials in

taxing, spending capacities, and public services across

localities of a metropolitan area.

Both the book’s rewards and liabilities are functions

of its broad reach and impressive scope. The book

focuses on the metropolitan region as its key unit of

analysis and on how what goes on at this level—in

terms of revenue redistribution and regulation by

supramunicipal governments—either reinforces or

mitigates interjurisdictional spatial inequality. The book

admirably examines in detail 11 countries, including

developed and developing countries on five continents.

This presents a formidable challenge of coordination

and synthesis, one which the editors are mostly

successful in meeting. The countries are Brazil, Canada,

Czech Republic, France, India, Israel, South Africa,

Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. It

classifies types of “place equality regimes” operating

at the metropolitan scale—“partial Tieboutian” where

local choices, revenues, and services influence sorting

and higher levels of government are mostly silent on

redistributive and regulatory matters dealing with

municipalities (United States and India); “partial

equalization” that combines some redistribution of

revenues with elements of local choice (found in both

the federalist countries of Brazil, Canada, South Africa,

Spain, Switzerland, and the unitary states of France and

Israel); and “full equalization/compensatory,” which

assures equal services or taxation regardless of place,

where there is redistribution of revenues among places

and where equalization is emphasized at the expense

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 6, pp. 931–933. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.13002.