the empowerment zone status of empowerment zones existing in the United States at that time was extended through 2009 (Moore, 2001). In the fall of 2005, however, the Republican-controlled United States House of Representatives is attempting to eliminate federal funding for urban empowerment zones (Feinstein, 2005).
The conceptual background within which the empowerment zone policy developed is the welfare state. The welfare state in the United States emerged largely through New Deal and Great Society social legislation that guaranteed all American citizens entitlements to food, shelter, and other basic necessities. In the pre-1973 period in the United States, a tacit social contract developed, wherein capital, at least in the large and successful corporate sector, accepted collective bargaining, and provided a regime of high wages, employment, and fringe benefits and labor accepted managerial prerogatives in the organization of work and largely refrained from strikes (Midgley, 1999).
In contrast to the United States, Western Europe has a history of explicit interconnectedness between the public and private spheres. Following the end of the Second World War, universal social security and free National Health Service were institutionalized in Britain, where government has been decidedly oriented to redistribution and social welfare. Britain differs considerably from the United States in degree regarding the extent of government involvement in the social welfare system (Midgley, 1999).
The development of industrial capitalism in Western Europe led to citizen demands for a whole range of new state services for burgeoning civil societies. States first sponsored major communication systems, then mass education systems. Both of these developments contributed to the consolidation of a series of civil societies partly bounded by the territories of states. Next, states organized health systems, followed by the first stirrings of...