The National Center has undertaken a multi-year research project to examine a comprehensive range of actual or proposed policies at the local, state, federal and international levels that can substantially contribute to the goal of stabilizing communities in the United States. The overall thrust is in the direction of a more community-based, decentralized and less globalized political-economy.

The policies being examined fall into three broad areas:

• Policies aimed at altering the rules and overall context of the American economy in a direction more favorable to community stability;
• Government policies which directly enhance community stability by targeting jobs or investment to particular areas; and
• Policies which enhance and support a wide range of non-governmental, community-rooted economic institutions.

Examples of larger-scale economic policies impacting community economic stability include proposed alternative trade policies; proposed restrictions on capital mobility across borders (such as the Tobin tax); and broader proposals to rework the central institutions of the Bretton Woods postwar system (such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.)

Government policies which directly enhance community stability in the United States include public-owned enterprises (particularly at the municipal level); state-sponsored venture capital funds; public pension funds undertaking economically targeted investments; government assistance to help communities affected adversely by economic shocks such as increased international competition or military base closures; and both state and local policies aimed at giving preference to local providers on government contracts, loans, and tax abatements.

The broadest category is federal, state and local policies aimed at strengthening community-rooted economic institutions, such as employee ownership, community development corporations, community development financial institutions and cooperatives.

The aim of this research is to assemble a comprehensive range of both actual and proposed policies falling within these broad categories, as well as a compendium of existing subsidies to corporate business structures (commonly labeled "corporate welfare") which could potentially be revamped to favor community-based economic structures. This assembly of different potential mechanisms for stabilizing community will suggest that it is indeed possible to stabilize the economic health of communities over time but that it will require a systemic effort to exert the tools and powers available to governments at an array of levels in support of truly community-rooted structures.