List of Tables and Figures Preface 1. Introduction: Political Choice and Local Finance 2. How Cities Arrived on the National Agenda in the United States 3. The Rise of the Topocratic State: US Intergovernmental Relations in the 1970s 4. A Victorian Drama: The Fiscal Subordination of British Local Government 5. Central Government Grants, Territorial Justice and Local Democracy in Post-war Britain 6. Local Subsidies in the Third Republic: The Political Marketplace and Bureaucratic Allocation 7. Financial Transfers and Local Government in France: National Policy Despite 36,000 Communes 8. Federal and State Transfers to Local Government in the Federal Republic of Germany: A case of Political immobility 9. Territorial Politics and Resource Transfers in the Netherlands 10. Centre-local Financial Exchange in the Welfare State Notes on Contributors Index