Oliver Cowart - Entrepreneurial Governance in the Neoliberal Era

Against the background of a growing tendency among state and local governments in the United States to vie against one another, spending public funds, and foregoing corporate tax revenues in order to attract private investment, this book offers an analysis of local economic development and business recruitment in the automotive industry. Asking why localities felt they could and, more importantly, should make deals with private capital in the first place, this book examines the shift toward entrepreneurial local governance from a global and historically informed perspective. Through a study of the 19 greenfield automotive assembly plants constructed in the United States during the neoliberal era, the author draws on interviews with corporate and government elites, to chart the connections between increasingly global competitive industry pressures and changing attitudes toward incentivizing private investment. Studying the development of an approach that has partially reoriented local governments away from managing localities and towards helping manage transnational capital flows by absorbing some of the increasing risk of long-term capital investment, Entrepreneurial Governance in the Neoliberal Era will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics, and urban studies with interests in globalization, the sociology of work and industry, the sociology of development, and neoliberal governance.

Oliver Cowart is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Paine College, U.S.A.

This series presents the latest research in urban sociology, welcoming both theoretical and empirical studies that focus on issues including urban conflict, politics and protest, social exclusion and social inclusion, urban regeneration and social class, and the ways in which these affect the social, economic, political, and cultural landscape of urban areas.

Titles in this series

The Making of Place and People in the Danish Metropolis

A Sociohistory of Copenhagen North West

Christian Sandbjerg Hansen

Deindustrialization and Casinos

A Winning Hand?

Alissa Mazar

Urban Regeneration and Neoliberalism

The New Liverpool Home

Clare Kinsella

Entrepreneurial Governance in the Neoliberal Era

Local Government and the Automotive Industry

Oliver Cowart

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Oliver Cowart

First published 2022

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2022 Oliver Cowart

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cowart, Oliver, 1984- author.

Title: Entrepreneurial governance in the neoliberal era: local government and the automotive industry/Oliver Cowart.

Description: Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2021. |

Series: Routledge studies in urban sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021015427 (print) | LCCN 2021015428 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367620226 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367620233 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003107569 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Automobile industry and tradeUnited States. | Industrial policyUnited States. | Industrial promotionUnited States. | Regional economicsUnited States. | Local governmentUnited States. | Community 2 development, UrbanUnited States.

Classification: LCC HD9710.U52 C636 2021 (print) | LCC HD9710.U52 (ebook) | DDC 338.4/76292220973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015427

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021015428

ISBN: 978-0-367-62022-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-367-62023-3 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-10756-9 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003107569

Typeset in Times New Roman

by MPS Limited, Dehradun

This work is dedicated to my mother

Kathleen Boylan Cowart

Thank you for showing through your example and advocacy that intellectual pursuits are a worthy endeavor.

Acknowledgments

Introduction, context, and cases

Theorizing local development strategies

Patterns in the industry patterns in location

The industrial recruitment of automotive assembly plants in the South

The business of partnerships

The political and economic in partnership

Axiomatic? A weird, blurred line

Appendix 1: Greenfield plant locations and incentives packages detail

Appendix 2: Sample of prompts to business development professionals

Index

While this work is somewhat critical of the economic development efforts of governing officials and professionals in the southeastern United States, I am not directly critiquing the many professionals who shared their time and knowledge with me in the course of my research. All of my respondents were generous and helpful, and I am indebted to them for their contribution. I want to thank all the members of my dissertation committee, Alex Hicks, Rick Rubinson, John Boli, and Rick Doner, who encouraged me and offered constant advice that made this final product possible and put up with my occasional divagations into obscure Marxian ephemera. Thanks to Pat Hamilton for keeping it together. Thanks to those at Routledge who took on this book, particularly Neil Jordan and Alice Salt, my patient editorial team. Thanks to my supportive family, and thanks to Ryan, for his love, support, and extraordinary patience.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003107569-1

In the early months of 2014, something strange happened in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Rumors had been circulating in trade journals and local papers that the German automaker Volkswagen was considering a plant expansion in North America to produce a new mid-sized sport utility vehicle, and the recently opened VW plant in Chattanooga was in the running along with another site in Mexico. However, a looming February vote by the Chattanooga plant employees on whether or not to accept United Auto Workers (UAW) organization was loudly denounced as threatening that sites chances for winning the new platform. These fulminations did not issue from the lips of VW executives; indeed, officials at the plant had already organized works councils to deal with daily plant issues and had freely allowed UAW representatives to distribute literature to workers in the facility (Pare and Sher 2014). Rather, it was then Governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam and state and federal lawmakers who raised their voices against the specter of plant unionization. What is most surprising is that Tennessee lawmakers threatened to revoke their offer of incentives and subsidies to Volkswagen for the proposed expansion if unionization of the plant was approved incentives that amounted to nearly half of the proposed $600 million dollar investment (Nelson 2014). Tennessee Senator Todd Gardenhire said VW officials are in your face. Its their way or no way. Theyve decided by-golly they want the UAW here. Theyre not listening to the community (Pare 2015). In a face-off against efforts to organize workers in their trophy manufacturing plant, Tennessee politicians threatened disinvestment in their own state.