





































Book Reviews


COMMONWEALTH, Volume 20, Issue 1 (2018). © 2018 The Pennsylvania Political Science Association.  
ISSN 2469-7672 (online). http://dx.doi.org/10.15367/com.v20i1.181. All rights reserved.

Book Reviews

■ Blazing the Neoliberal Trail: Urban Political Development in the 
United States and the United Kingdom. Timothy P. R. Weaver. 2015. 
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-81224-782-4 
(cloth).

How did supposedly politically liberal cities come to adopt market- oriented 
public policies for economic development and enhanced social welfare? In 
Blazing the Neoliberal Trail, Timothy P. R. Weaver answers this question 
through an ideational and historical institutionalist lens with case studies of 
the use of Urban Development Corporations in the London Docklands proj-
ect and the City of Philadelphia’s implementation of Enterprise Zones. In the 
process, he traces the history of these pronounced pro-market ideas through 
the highest levels of government in both the United Kingdom and the United 
States. Contrary to intuition, he shows that enterprise zones, also known as 
empowerment zones, were not a direct result of catering to capital; business 
was at first lukewarm, if not opposed. Similarly, the policy was fully embraced 
by President Bill Clinton’s New Democrats and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s 
New Labour.

Weaver defines neoliberalism as “a political-economic theory and rhetori-
cal framework that rests on the notion that freedom, justice, and well-being 



Book Reviews 73

are best guaranteed by a political-economic system, undergirded by the state, 
which promotes private property (including via the privatization of state 
assets), open markets, and free trade and which privileges the interests of 
financial capital above all” (p. 11). Ultimately, the argument goes, the burden 
on business through taxation serves as the main driver of urban disinvest-
ment, poverty, unemployment, and their attendant ills that befell cities from 
the 1970s onward. Like the mantra of the Republican Party today, tax cuts are 
the magic bullet for growth.

Of particular interest to readers of this journal will be the political-eco-
nomic history of neoliberalism’s progress in the City of Philadelphia. The dis-
cussion covers nearly one-third of the book, from 1951 and the takeover of 
city government by the reform Democrats from solid Republican control, to 
2000, with particular emphasis on the administration of Mayor Ed Rendell 
in the 1990s. In its early stages, neoliberalization was “by default,” whereas 
under Rendell, it was “by design.” Weaver traces the causes through three 
channels: political economic trends such as federal trade policies, lowered aid 
to cities, and deindustrialization; demographic trends such as white flight and 
an influx of African Americans just as middle-class jobs for low-skill work-
ers were disappearing; and a fiscal crisis due to increased pressure for public 
services and ballooning labor costs.

The Tate-Rizzo years (1962–1980) marked the “alienation of economic 
elites from City Hall” (through extreme tax hikes and public employee ben-
efits), a unified black electorate, and a “solidification of the coalition” between 
business elites and African Americans. The logic of coalition politics also 
played a major role in setting the stage for neoliberalism’s hold. From 1980 
onward, each successive administration consolidated power through the 
alignment of African Americans, white liberals, and business interests. The 
limits of coalition politics, as well as severe cuts in federal aid, made Mayor 
Wilson Goode, the city’s first Black mayor, neoliberal by default.

Under Rendell, “services were privatized, unions defeated, and defi-
cits reduced,” helping to make the city more appealing to developers and 
“business-f riendly.” The creation of the state-controlled Pennsylvania Inter-
governmental Cooperation Authority (PICA) with its appointed, not elected, 
city budgetary oversight, and the implementation of the 10-year tax abatement 
on new construction further showed the triumph of capital over citizens. It 
was neoliberalism by design.

Despite the absence of evidence of its effectiveness, neoliberalism marched 
on under the Rendell administration with the creation of more empowerment 



74 Michelle J. atherton

zones. Unfortunately, the empowerment zone tracts fared worse on measures 
of reducing unemployment than comparable areas of the city between 2000 
and 2007. On income, the zones performed even more poorly, declining nearly 
12%. For the city as a whole, between 1990 and 2000, median household 
income declined, the unemployment rate nearly doubled, and poverty rose 
by nearly seven points to 26.7%. At the same time, the city attracted more 
and more households making over $150,000 per year. This number doubled 
between 2000 and 2010 to reach nearly 5% of the city. Philadelphia succeeded 
in attracting more rich people, but in the process created even more of the 
poor.

One does not have to guess that Weaver finds neoliberalism highly dis-
tasteful. In the case of the United States, the ideology ignores the structural 
and historical place of cities and their citizens in urban political development, 
while denying the forces of global capital, racism, and the unequal distribu-
tion of resources in favor of the embrace of “free-market” solutions and a 
pathology of the poor and working class. While Weaver does, at the end of 
the book, call for an alternative idea to take root in order for cities to grow in 
a more equitable fashion, the concluding chapter has no such vision. Given 
the constraints of rising conservatism and a growing distaste for redistribu-
tive policies in the United States and the United Kingdom, if not neoliberal-
ism, what is a politically feasible alternative to bring balanced and sustainable 
development to urban areas?

Michelle J. atherton, Associate Director, Temple University Institute for Public 
Affairs

■ Gifford Pinchot: Selected Writings. Char Miller, ed. 2017. University 
Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-27107-842-7 
(paperback).

If E. Digby Baltzell’s assertion that “[t]he governorship of Pennsylvania has 
proved to be a political graveyard” (1979, 389) is correct, then Gifford Pinchot 
chose the right trajectory for his political career. He established a national 
reputation by being at the forefront of the conservation movement of the late 
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was instrumental in developing 
programs to educate foresters and in creating national organizations dedi-
cated to scientific management of the wilderness. Further, Pinchot was a close 
ally of President Theodore Roosevelt, who appointed him as the first director 



Book Reviews 75

of the United States Forest Service, where he served from 1905–1910. It was 
only after establishing his national presence as a conservationist and lead-
ing progressive that he decided to enter the “political graveyard” and was 
elected to nonconsecutive terms as governor of Pennsylvania (1923–1927 and 
1931–1935).

Char Miller has written extensively about the legacy of Pinchot as well 
as the environmental movement. He draws on this background to provide a 
selection of primary writings from Pinchot that create a comprehensive por-
trait of concepts behind the conservation movement and the larger progres-
sive political philosophy that housed it. Gifford Pinchot: Selected Writings is 
organized around five topics: forestry, war and peace, governing Pennsylva-
nia, power regulation, and nature writings. Two primary themes emerge from 
these writings. First, Pinchot made a career of supporting reforms designed 
to make government operate in the public interest rather than on behalf of 
concentrated, private beneficiaries. He was a utilitarian who believed that 
private property should be subject to public control when individuals acted 
in their short-term economic self-interest at the expense of the long-term 
benefit of society. Unregulated monopolies and the political machines that 
protected them were Pinchot’s main targets. He argued that the United States 
would lose its “political liberty” if it could not create an administrative state 
that would ensure “industrial liberty.” This was the heart of his second main 
theme: scientific administration by a strong national government was the only 
way to protect the public interest. His conservation movement was not based 
on preserving pristine forests for their own sake. Rather, it was a tool to cre-
ate an efficient and well-executed plan to ensure a steady supply of wood and 
wood products to advance the nation’s economy. Private interests looked for 
a quick profit without concern for replenishing forests. Pinchot believed only 
government could correct this market failure while at the same time keep-
ing prices low and dealing with corollary environmental problems caused by 
clear-cutting forests.

Readers of COMMONWEALTH would be interested in how these themes 
applied to Pennsylvania and state politics in general. Pinchot viewed federal-
ism as an impediment to achieving his goals. Almost half a century before 
E. E. Schattschneider coined the phrase, Pinchot argued that the only way 
to wrest power from economic interests and party bosses was by expanding 
the scope of conflict. States had three deficiencies from his perspective. First, 
they did not have the expertise or training to effectively administer programs 
in the national interest like forestry. A strong federal bureaucracy was neces-
sary to train and guide subnational employees. Second, Pinchot believed that 



76 J. Wesley leckrone

many states, particularly in the resource-rich West, were dominated by the 
industries he sought to regulate. Absent a strong federal presence in fields 
such as conservation, some states would never adopt programs in the public 
interest, because their state legislatures were corrupt. Finally, Pinchot believed 
that there might be some instances in which states would pass good policy. 
However, given the lack of expertise on behalf of state bureaucracies and the 
corruption in legislatures, good policies would be stifled at the implementa-
tion stage. Pinchot saw a role for the states in issues like conservation as long 
as Washington, DC assumed the dominant role in the federal partnership. 
This philosophy extended into broader political questions of the early 1900s. 
For example, he argued that the federal government should be responsible for 
relief programs during the Great Depression because it had the power to redis-
tribute resources through a progressive income tax. Again, Pinchot believed 
that moneyed interests could only be stopped at the federal level because state 
and local governments were too weak to challenge their power.

Gifford Pinchot used the same political philosophy in his eight years as 
governor of Pennsylvania. He supported the direct primary as a means to take 
power from party bosses and return it to average citizens. This worked to his 
benefit as he successfully ran as an “independent” candidate in the Pennsyl-
vania Republican primary and was elected governor in 1922. He focused on 
balancing the budget, making government more efficient, and fighting cor-
ruption in his two nonconsecutive terms in office. In addition to supporting 
the direct primary, he advocated for campaign finance limits and “a general 
revision of election laws to make it harder for the gangsters of Philadelphia 
and Pittsburgh to steal votes” (p. 152). As governor he applied his centralizing 
tendencies by having the state assume control of a network of rural roads and 
assistance for the elderly. He argued that the Commonwealth could more ade-
quately address these issues and administer them more efficiently than local 
governments. Pinchot’s most notorious act of centralizing power in Pennsyl-
vania occurred after the repeal of Prohibition. An avowed “dry,” he sought to 
tightly regulate alcohol sales through state-run liquor stores whose proceeds 
would finance new social programs. However, regulation, not increased rev-
enue, was the primary principle behind centralized liquor sales. Supporters of 
liquor store privatization will smirk at Pinchot’s claim that the system would 
provide “no artificial stimulation of demand for liquor. Whisky [sic] will be 
sold by civil service employees with exactly the same amount of salesmanship 
as is displayed by an automatic postage stamp vending machine” (p. 173).

Collections of speeches and writings often get mired in details that only 
appeal to true devotees of authors. Char Miller avoids this by providing just 



Book Reviews 77

enough detail to explain the rationale behind Pinchot’s thinking without 
becoming repetitive. Gifford Pinchot: Selected Writings provides great insight 
into the conservation movement, Theodore Roosevelt-style progressivism, 
and Pennsylvania politics. It is well worth reading, if only for the last section 
where Pinchot shows a surprising ability to engross the reader in tales of the 
outdoors.

REFERENCE

Baltzell, E. Digby. 1979. Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia. Boston: Beacon Press.

J. Wesley leckrone, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, 
Widener University




