ABSTRACT
The uniformities in the overall "path model" for all three countries must be kept in mind. The three countries are: US, Sweden and Netherland. Much has been written by scholars of the city about how cities differ in their budget allocations, their level and pace of development, their policy responsiveness to citizen preferences or interest group demands, their "community activeness" and their capacity for dealing with fiscal stress. On the basis of the type of data and analysis described the authors has developed a set of "path models" to describe the configuration of variables related to effective action. Differing structural and institutional conditions have to be understood in explaining the variance in city per capita expenditures. Studies have defined different types of dependent variables—the policy responsiveness of local government, cities' adaptation to fiscal strain, the level of expenditures for common governmental functions, "community activeness."
