way, they have political power because they wield political power, a variation on the "use it or lose it" approach. Stone cites reasons for this that make sense. He says that there are centrifugal tendencies in city government that are always strong, meaning a tendency for things to fly apart from the center, and that this means that achieving cooperation is a major accomplishment and requires constant effort. Those who expend such effort on an ongoing basis are more likely to succeed, and in any case cooperation is usually achieved by some form of reciprocity. Stone says we can surmise two things about the urban community: 1) cooperation across institutional lines is valuable but far from automatic; and 2) cooperation is more likely to grow under some circumstances than others. For Stone, this points to the importance of cooperation as a force to bring people together and to enable a coalition of actor
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