Jen Nelles

Political rescaling and metropolitan governance in cross-border regions: comparing the cross-border metropolitan areas of Lille and Luxembourg

In the last 20 years, the number of cross-border cooperation structures in Europe has exploded owing to political and financial support by the European Union aimed at encouraging cohesion and developing peripheral regions. These policies are part of processes of de-bordering and political rescaling that have profoundly affected cross-border areas by creating new institutional territories and political structures. The purpose of this paper is to study the institutional history of cross-border metropolitan governance in Europe through the comparison of two of the most advanced cross-border metropolitan regions: Lille and Luxembourg. This paper asks how these cross-border structures have developed and changed. What can their patterns of institutional evolution contribute to understanding governance in other cross-border regions? Are these new spaces evidence of political rescaling? This paper presents and redefines cross-border governance as a cyclical and a long-term process and also explores the challenges that these partnerships face in becoming functionally effective and autonomous policy actors. Ultimately, we find that there is no replicable ideal of cross-border governance and that even long-standing partnerships are in a period of exploration and reinvention. Establishing a competitive and coherent cross-border metropolitan region is ambitious and complex, and it necessitates the coordination of policies at multiple scales and across institutionally diverse territories. This project requires the modification and/or construction of new institutional and legal frameworks. This reorientation of political attention has resulted in a reconceptualization of political space but not the empowerment of new political actors, indicating that the process of rescaling may be a work in progress.

From policy to practice: engaging and embedding the third mission in contemporary universities

Purpose – Over the past 20 years public policy has sought to promote and formalise the socio‐economic role of universities under the auspices of the so called “third mission”. The purpose of this paper is to consider how the third mission relates to, and has the capacity to reinforce the core missions of teaching and research.Design/methodology/approach – By highlighting the key limitations of contemporary debate the paper bridges the conceptual model/case‐study dichotomy that characterises the literature. The paper draws on an ongoing study of higher education institutions in the UK and Europe.Findings – The paper contends that triangulating teaching, research, and third stream activities reinforces the respective dynamics of each component through their recursive and reciprocal development.Research limitations/implications – The paper forms the foundations of a de novo research agenda to better understand the dynamics of the third mission as a central facet of the contemporary university.Practical impli...

Rethinking Multilevel Governance as an Instance of Multilevel Politics: A Conceptual Strategy

Abstract This paper introduces a new approach to the comparative analysis of multilevel governance (MLG). Using water governance in North America as an illustrative example, it advances an innovative approach for scrutinizing the varieties of actor constellations in multilevel settings. While MLG is commonly conceptualized rather broadly as a system, we define MLG instead as an instance of a specific actor configuration that can rigorously be distinguished from other configurations, most notably intergovernmental relations (IGR). With this more conceptually bounded classification, we suggest that scholars can now more fruitfully engage in systematic analyses of MLG and IGR across different types of political systems (e.g. unitary, federal and supranational). Our hope is that this paper will provide some much needed conceptual and analytical clarification to an increasingly nebulous debate on what MLG actually is and what it means for students of political science, public policy and public administration.

Building Entrepreneurial Architectures: A Conceptual Interpretation of the Third Mission

Universities are increasingly being challenged to become more socially and economically relevant institutions under the guise of the so-called ‘Third Mission’. This phenomenon, articulated in policy, has prompted the emergence of a growing literature documenting the evolution of the contemporary university, and specifically addressing the Third Mission and university entrepreneurship; however, it remains at once both too broadly conceptualised and overly fragmented. Thus, as the scope of university entrepreneurship widens to include ever more forms of engagement, the Third Mission remains under-theorised. Drawing together these streams of literature on the contemporary university, the concept of ‘entrepreneurial architecture’ is employed to develop a more nuanced perspective. Based on a study of UK higher education institutions, this article builds on Burnss (2005) notion of ‘entrepreneurial architecture’ to understand the internal dynamics that underpin the coordination and consolidation of the Third Mission. The Third Mission has been politically created through numerous (prescriptive) funding programmes; however, the next phase of the Third Mission demands an understanding beyond prescription. The concept of entrepreneurial architecture provides a grounded theoretical contribution to the study of university entrepreneurship, while also offering institutions and policy makers a pragmatic approach to institutional development in the context of the Third Mission.

Innovation Policy as Industrial Policy: Some Lessons from Hamburg's Regional Innovation System

The widespread transformation of the economic base has seen the decline of traditional manufacturing economies and the rise of knowledge-based economies. Consequently, conventional manufacturing-oriented industrial policy has become ‘future orientated’ towards the challenges of the knowledge-based economies, and increasingly replaced by innovation policy. Drawing upon original empirical research on Hamburgs regional innovation system, this paper unravels how innovation policy has increasingly sought to embed and realise the value of universities and publicly-funded research institutions by positioning them at the core of the regional innovation system. The outcome is that innovation policy plays an important catalytic role in promoting technology transfer and knowledge exchange. However, the success of this new agenda is shown to depend on its acceptance and adaptation by universities and publicly-funded research institutes. This study of Hamburg reveals how, when effectively achieved, innovation policy as a form of future-orientated industrial policy can restructure local economies as centres of high-technology research and development with strong science-industry links.

(Re)conceptualiser l'université

Envisagee en termes de Troisieme mission, l’universite « entreprise », egalement appelee universite « entrepreneuriale », s’est peu a peu inscrite dans le panorama conceptuel ordinaire des politiques publiques. Les analystes ne sont toutefois pas parvenus a s’entendre sur ce qu’implique reellement cette Troisieme mission pour les deux autres volets de l’activite universitaire. Ainsi, il existe peu de donnees probantes fiables permettant d’affirmer que la Troisieme mission a un impact negatif sur l’enseignement et/ou la recherche (fondamentale). Selon Martin et Etzkowitz (2000), certaines preuves anecdotiques indiquent que la Troisieme mission contribuerait, au contraire, a dynamiser les deux missions traditionnelles. C’est precisement sur ce debat que les auteurs de cet article souhaitent apporter leurs lumieres. Ils s’interessent, a cet effet, a la facon dont la Troisieme mission peut reellement promouvoir les activites d’enseignement et de recherche, soulignant a quel point cet effet de levier presente, en lui-meme, une importance bien superieure a la Troisieme mission. Les auteurs sont ainsi persuades qu’une imbrication de l’enseignement, de la recherche et des activites relevant de la Troisieme mission peut, grâce au developpement progressif et mutuel de ces volets, avoir pour effet de renforcer leurs dynamiques respectives. Conceptualiser globalement l’engagement des etablissements en faveur de la Troisieme mission en termes « d’architecture entrepreneuriale » peut permettre aux universites de stimuler leur developpement institutionnel au-dela de la Troisieme mission. Les auteurs concluent en envisageant l’avenir du point de vue des politiques d’enseignement superieur et de la gestion des etablissements d’enseignement superieur.

Explaining the Emergence of Indigenous–Local Intergovernmental Relations in Settler Societies A Theoretical Framework

There has been growing interest among practitioners and academics in the emergence of intergovernmental relations between local and Aboriginal governments in Canada. Initial research has focused on describing the nature of these relations but has yet to develop any theoretical expectations regarding why some communities are more likely to cooperate than others. We address this lacuna by developing a theoretical framework for explaining the emergence of cooperation between Aboriginal and local governments. After identifying a set of variables and specifying how they are likely to affect the propensity of communities to cooperate, we conclude with a discussion of how future researchers might use this framework to investigate cooperation and noncooperation between Aboriginal and local governments in Canada and in other settler societies.

On the Boundary: Local Authorities, Intergovernmental Relations and the Governance of Border Infrastructure in the Detroit–Windsor Region

A growing and diverse academic literature exists on the functional, cultural and political linkages between border communities. These examinations of borderland communities seek to explain why and how linkages develop and assess the strength and implications of these relationships. In North America, Detroit–Windsor is the quintessential metropolitan border region along the Canada–US border. It is a community that shares many problems and policy concerns as well as strong functional linkages. One of these concerns is the reform of the Detroit River border crossing. This is the busiest land border crossing in North America and it is central to the regional economy as well as the wider North American economy. Over the past decade, the senior governments have debated reform of border infrastructure and the access routes to planned and existing crossings. One of the central considerations in this set of reforms has been the construction of a new crossing to reduce waiting times and increase infrastructural redundancy at this key choke point. Any new crossing will have a major impact on the local communities and various local actors on both sides of the border have sought to participate in the policy debate and influence the decision-making process. This article examines the extent to which local actors in Detroit and Windsor have interacted and sought to co-ordinate their policy positions and strategies within the border reform debate. The article focuses on the extent of the interaction among municipal governments and community groups in an effort to map and understand functional and political relationships between local actors in this dynamic border space.

The role of governance networks in building metropolitan scale

ABSTRACT The role of governance networks in building metropolitan scale – Territory, Politics, Governance. The broad aim of this comparative study is to examine the relationship between governance networks and the emergence (or lack thereof) of metropolitan scales through an analysis of metropolitan development-policy processes. It explores the characteristics and substance of policies that purport to be metropolitan in scope through a set of six case studies of global city-regions lacking a formal metropolitan-scale government: Berlin, Delhi, New York, Paris, Rome and Shenzhen. This is done to obtain a better sense of the networks, strategies and approaches used in various contexts to tackle boundary-spanning issues in regions. Three paired case studies analyse what interests and actors were involved, how central each actor was to the policy process, and what territorial scales and interests dominated to identify commonalities across cases and to look for evidence of the emergence of new actors in metropolitan policy-making and of political rescaling.

A Quiet Evolution: The Emergence of Indigenous-Local Intergovernmental Partnerships in Canada

Christopher Alcantara is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Western University in London, Ontario. Much of Dr. Alcantara’s research examines the roots of collective action and intergovernmental cooperation in Canada, especially between Indigenous communities and the other three levels government. He has written several books, including “Negotiating the Deal: Comprehensive Land Claims Agreements in Canada” (Published by University of Toronto Press, 2013) and “Beyond the Indian Act: Restoring Aboriginal Property Rights” (Published by McGillQueen’s University Press in 2010).