Private Residential Complexes or Exclusive Municipalities? Revisiting the Debate on Private Local Government in France and the United States
Private local government and public local government are often contrasted. This article shows that this contrast is not always well-founded empirically. Municipalities and home-owners associations in France and the United States have functional roles that share much in common. In both countries, small municipalities provide the inhabitants of suburban homes with an opportunity to maintain strict control over their territory. Local exclusivity is certainly not the prerogative of gated communities. In light of these observations, we propose to transcend the public/private dichotomy, on which a good many analyses are based, by harnessing the concept of club.