"This book is about Greek and German cities in times of crisis. It is about how cities respond to fiscal and economic crisis and whether they can make choices under fiscal stress and austrerity policies imposed by higher levels of government. By using a complementary approach, the authors focus on the fiscal policies in ten different cities. The authors suggest a fusion of different apporaches: actor centered institutionalism, leadership approaches and interpretive approaches. They use a qualitative document analysis and statistical data in order to present a full picture of the selected cities"--Publisher's description.