Join the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics as we host Mo Torres, Junior Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows and an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Mo will present, “Inequality or Incompetence? Urban Fiscal Crisis and the Spatial Politics of Blame.”

Abstract: “The United States is no stranger to urban fiscal crisis. In the 1970s, cities from New York City and Philadelphia to Cleveland and St. Louis, on the brink of crisis or bankruptcy or worse, shocked the world, revealing the precarious position of cities in the U.S. political economy. But why did cities face such severe economic challenges? Why did the problem in the 1970s suddenly seem so widespread? And what, or who, was to blame?

As early as 1972, two explanations for urban fiscal crisis were in circulation. Was the culprit inequality, as rapidly growing suburbs hoarded property taxes, withholding crucial resources from central city governments and their residents? Was it incompetence, poor management, lack of technical expertise, or outright corruption by elected municipal leaders? While not mutually exclusive, by the end of the 1970s only the latter story survived. The result was policy prescriptions to correct mismanagement at the local level, leaving underlying structural inequalities at the metropolitan level unaddressed.

Focusing on Michigan, this paper builds on the sociology of blame to show how policy elites came to narrate cities as undeserving places run by incompetent, corrupt leaders beholden to special interests like civil rights groups and labor unions. The result amounts to refusal: neglecting to solve a problem by ultimately ignoring its fundamental causes.”