The Local State and Social Restructuring z STEFAN KRATKE AND FRITZ SCHMOLL The increasing significance of the local level The role of the local authorities in social restructuring has over the past few years become increasingly vital (Hesse, 1983) and has led to a newly awakened interest in the local state and communal politics. The consequences of this emerge at various levels. The current process of social restructuring is leading to increased economic and social polarization both between and within urban areas, with social problems and conflicts accumulating and intensifying on a local level, especially in major cities which act as centres of economic and socio-cultural structural change; while the pressure of social problems leads to more urgent demands for action by the communal authorities, who are not only responsible for the regulation, support and modification of social restructuring on a local level, but are also expected to deal with spatial and social consequences of the restructuring process. Simultaneously, however, the ‘gap’ between the need for action by the community and its capacity for control becomes wider, with the result that the local state experiences growing difficulties in fulfilling its task of political integration and safeguarding its legitimation. Moreover, social problems experienced locally have, especially in West German cities, contributed to the strengthening of an oppositional potential from ‘new social movements’. At the same time, a tendency zyxwvu - slight as yet - towards a rearrangement of local sociaVpolitica1 forces can be observed, with the opposition gaining ground, paving the way for communal election successes by GreedAlternative parties and in some cases resulting in Social Democratic/Green majority coalitions in local government. And, even if the new political parties do not have access to the local state’s channels of power, they can put pressure on local political leaders. On a long-term basis, the prospect of a ‘local opposition’ thus looms in many German cities - as a challenge to established power politics. Therefore the question of whether and to what extent the local state can be used in oppositional urban politics is of considerable current relevance. There are some indications that communal Greedleftist reformism in local politics could be instrumental in recovering socio-political hegemony for oppositional ideas. The as yet scant discussion of this question is hampered by very extreme viewpoints. Some see the local state as the ‘long arm’, or the executive body, of the central state. Others regard it as the local branch of an inflexible state bureaucracy which can be used as an ‘experimental construction site’ for non-state projects and initiatives (Bullmann and Gitschmann, 1985). Yet others view the local state as a counter-force to the central state. They consider the mere existence of various organs of the state apparatus with their rival claims - that is conflicting interests zyx within the system - as sufficient to guarantee a local counter-force, thereby reducing this term’s inherent potential to one of mere technocratic significance. However, communal politics as a counter- force can also be understood as referring to isolated pockets of local reform and alternative communal policy as a starting point for far-reaching structural changes. An analysis of the local state is necessary in order to assess the potential and the 542