Jan Erling Klausen

Legitimacy and community involvement in local governance

1. Introduction 2. How to Achieve Governability at the Local Level? Theoretical and conceptual considerations 3. Sustainability and Policy Challenge: Towards a contextual and reflexive understanding of institutional performance 4. Participation & Leadership in Planning Theory and Practices 5. Rules and Practices. An institutional analysis on complementarities between urban leadership and community involvement 6. Cities in the European Multi-level Governance 7. Multi-actor Governance 8. The Institutional Setting of Local Political Leadership and Community Involvement 9. States in Transition: From statism to democracy 10. Leading Localities: Rethinking the Agenda 11. Changes in Urban Political Leadership: Leadership types and styles in the era of urban governance 12. Legitimacy, Citizen Participation, and Community Involvement in Governance 13. Measuring Institutional Performance in Achieving Urban Sustainability

Urban Leadership and Community Involvement: Ingredients for Good Governance?

The article asks how political leadership and community involvement together can contribute to legitimate and effective policy making in the context of urban governance. Particularly, the question is discussed if the interplay between both increases capacities for governing localities. Conceptually, this is based on Jessop’s assumption that every mode of coordination is failure prone and that there is a need for enduring “metagovernance.” The concept of metagovernance is then linked with considerations on institutional contexts and a comparison of four case studies, situated in different contexts. Whereas the case studies can show different practices or failures of metagovernance in the interaction between political leaders and involved societal actors, the institutional contexts are shown to more or less facilitate these practices.

Understanding sustainability policy: governance, knowledge and the search for integration

The EU, through the Cardiff and the Gothenburg strategies, sought to counter what was seen as fragmented and uncoordinated environmental policy development by promoting a broad and integrated approach to sustainability. This article seeks to assess two recently implemented EU directives on environmental issues in light of this aim, namely the directives on Air Quality Management and Strategic Environmental Assessment. Drawing on theoretical foundations and empirical evidence from the EU FP6 project ‘Governance for Sustainability’, this article seeks to understand how policy integration is a matter of knowledge use, which is again related to the governance arrangements in which implementation takes place. Drawing on a total of 15 case studies in nine countries, the article finds that actual decision-making practice varies a lot albeit based on the same directives. In many cases, the directives were viewed as a sectoral ‘environmental tools’, and these cases were often dominated by expert knowledge being funnelled through relatively closed, hierarchical governance arrangements. In other cases, however, the directives were viewed as opportunities for politicians to cultivate a network mode of governance that ‘aspired’ to arguing and sometimes opened up for competing knowledge claims.

Regional Foresight, Modes of Governance and Democracy

The aim of this article is to discuss democratic potentials and pitfalls inherent in the use of Foresight methodologies, especially on the regional level. Foresight is used on the regional level as a tool for developing common visions about the future, strengthening the cohesion between regional actors and enabling coordinated action towards common goals. Based on broad participation, foresight represents a departure from expert-based scenario building and planning. The emphasis on building common goals and achieving coordinated action makes it feasible to conceptualize foresight processes as instances of governance. Based on a discussion on generalized modes of governance, a contention is made to the effect that foresight processes most closely resemble network governance as a general mode. With this point of departure, the paper uses arguments from the debate on democratic network governance to substantiate the discussion on the democratic aspects of foresight.

What Causes Municipal Amalgamation Reform? Rational Explanations Meet Western European Experiences, 2004–13

The chapter develops a theoretical model consisting of factors that exert pressure to undertake amalgamation reforms (fiscal stress, urbanization, decentralization, reform history), and factors that mediate the causal relationship between pressure to reform and decisions to implement amalgamation reform (e.g., political system characteristics). The model’s predictive power is tested using data on seventeen Western European countries between 2004 and 2013. During this period seven of the countries undertook reforms and ten did not. Based on mixed results of this model test, the authors discuss potential measurement problems, model construction (whether relevant variables are included), and potential weaknesses with the definition of the dependent variable—national amalgamation reform. Finally, suggestions are offered for future research into the causes of amalgamation reforms.

Territorial upscaling of local governments: a variable-oriented approach to explaining variance among Western European countries

ABSTRACT Local government systems change at varying speeds. While some countries have dramatically reduced the number of local governments during a short period of time, other countries have seen only incremental change or relative inertia. A number of explanations for structural change have been put forward in the comparative local government literature, but these explanations have to a small extent been tested empirically. This article uses statistical indicators to analyse changes in the local government systems in 17 Western European countries between 2004 and 2014. Some often-cited explanations for what drives structural change receive little support. Still, the article demonstrates that changes tend to occur in situations marked by different combinations of decentralisation, urbanisation, fiscal stress and a recent history of territorial upscaling.

Governance and change on the urban fringe – special issue of Urban Research & Practice

There is increasing interest in sociospatial and sociocultural developments on the fringes of cities. Some studies focus on the emergence of polycentric metropolitan areas and others on changes in existing suburbs and the development of new suburbs and exurbs. At the same time, development and regeneration of areas on the urban fringes increasingly take place in a context marked by deregulation, privatization, and network-like modes of coordination. It is an important challenge to explore the spatial, political, social, and cultural processes and implications of the changes taking place. The workshop Governance and Change at the Urban Fringe explored various aspects of these developments, and the results are published in this special issue.

Oslo Inner City Districts: Network Failure in the Face of Policy Success

When the Oslo Regeneration Programme for the Inner City Districts was launched, it suggested that a significant step had been taken by Norway’s largest local government towards the often noted ‘shift to governance’. This 10 year, 122 million project was to be co-ordinated by a consortium involving three levels of government — national, municipal and the urban districts. Moreover, it encompassed several branches of the public services, including the school system, the social services and the agency for parks and public spaces, targeting the living conditions of a wide variety of people living in three challenged inner city districts. A network-like structure was established in order to facilitate the coordination of the programme across the levels and sectors of government involved. In addition to the involvement of several levels of government, the Norwegian Parliament signalled strongly that actors representing the local community were to be involved in the network. This is emphasized in one of the white papers: A strategy involving special efforts by national government over a period of ten years must be set up in order to shift developments in a positive manner … a necessary precondition for such a strategy is close and mutually binding cooperation between Oslo city government and national authorities. In these efforts, the solicitation of active participation by the residents is required. (Innst. S. nr. 174. 1995–1996).

Sub-municipal Arrangements in Norway: District System in Oslo

Oslo is the only city in Norway where a wide range of tasks and functions are decentralized to sub-municipal units (SMUs) headed by an elected local political body. The 15 districts employ about 21,000 people and serve a key function in providing the capital’s residents with key welfare services. While Oslo’s district system has proved its viability by remaining in place through almost three decades, the aim of boosting democratic participation and political involvement through establishing sub-municipal political arenas remains elusive.

Boosting involvement between elections—The case of Citizen’s Initiative

Over the years, authorities in many countries have devoted considerable attention to the issue of raising the turnout in local elections. In attempts to counter receding turnout figures, elections have been carried out on the same day as national elections (Sweden) or European elections (Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) or indeed on individual dates in different municipalities (Nittedal, Norway).