ACCUMULATION, LEGITIMATION, AND THE PROVISION OF PUBLIC SERVICES IN THE AMERICAN METROPOLIS

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Abstract
The provision of public services by the local state involves the full range of politics, structural forces, and actors at work in the world system. Materialist theory provides a means by which these disparate elements can be integrated as the state performs its two primary functions: maintaining conditions favorable for the accumulation of capital and ensuring the legitimacy of the economic and political systems. National and local governments attempt to provide conditions in specific places that will foster growth; the politics of production characterize these efforts. On the local level the state also provides a forum in which the demands of less organized and powerful interests can be heard, as it attempts to maintain the loyalty of the public; the politics of consumption characterize this activity. An empirical analysis of local government expenditures for public services in the United States indicates the role that public services play in the performance of these two functions of the capitalist state.

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