Most mainstream models that attempt to account for the local occurrence of innovative activity and the rate and pattern of its spatial diffusion build on an ahistorical method of inquiry borrowed from neo­ classical economics, an apparatus geared in any case toward explana­ tions of spatial economic convergence rather than regional differentia­ tion (cf. Hagerstrand 1 953; Berry 1 97 1 ; Krumme and Hayter 1 975; Nor­ ton and Rees 1 979). Disequilibrium theories that attempt to account for stubborn tendencies toward the spatial polarization of innovative activi­ ty in the real world also focus mainly on the explication of abstract eco­ nomic factors (in general, internal or external economies and disecono­ mies of scale) which may trigger or inhibit the interregional or interna­ tional transmission of growth (Myrdal 1 957; Vernon 1 966, 1 979; Krug­ man 1 979; Markusen 1 985). None of these theories accounts for the actual location of innovative activity, much less the influence that local culture and history may have on the innovative process. Even much of the radical literature tends to reduce evidence of local specificity to rigid displays of class structure; it is unabl_e, therefore, to admit any locally-specific non-class effects as factors in the historically-specific generation and diffusion of technological change (Biaikie 1 978; Gregory 1 985).

The shock of war is closely associated with the growth of the state, in the United States and elsewhere. Yet each proposal to significantly consolidate or expand executive power in the United States since September 11th has been resisted, refined, or even rejected outright. We argue that this outcome—theoretically unexpected and contrary to conventional wisdom—is the result of enduring aspects of America’s domestic political structure: the division of power at the federal level between three co-equal and overlapping branches, the relative ease with which non-governmental interest groups circumscribe the state’s capacity to regulate or monitor private transactions, and the intensity with which guardians of the state’s purposely fragmented institutions guard their organizational turf. These persistent aspects of US political life, designed by the nation’s founders to impede the concentration of state power, have substantially shaped the means by which contemporary guardians of the American state pursue “homeland security.”