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CIVIL SOCIETY IN THE CONTEXT OF URBAN REGIME THEORY

But what, actually, we mean by the urban regime? According to Stone (1989), the regime is an informal yet relatively stable group with access to institutional resources, and which has a significant impact on urban policy and management. It is not a coherent organisation or association, but an informal group of influential persons who derive their power from different sources, who share some policy objectives like that of promoting the growth in their city, and who can gain some economic, political or social rewards from their involvement. The regime is formed as an informal basis for coordination and without an all encompassing structure of command. (Stoker 1995, 59; Anttiroiko 1996a, 66)

An important point to be made here is the view that the politics in different cities seem to be dominated by various types of governing coalitions or regimes. There are pluralist regimes in which strong political leaders bring together a mixed set of private actors. Elitist regimes are run primarily by cohesive business elite. Corporatist regimes, which we may assume to be relevant in the context of Northern countries, combine both strong political leaders and a relatively unified business elite. And lastly, there is a category labelled as the hyperpluralist regime in which any governing coalitions can hardly be identified. One assumption is, that the direction of change within urban governance is towards more pluralist models, though new elites which are able to manage with the informational mode of development may emerge. (Stoker 1995, 62)

The social complexity is central to this perspective. The urban policy is dependent on institutional arrangements, business interest mediation, and some degree of popular control. What is essential is the fact that all the key institutions and actors are involved in an extremely complex web of relationships. The social control and effective management is limited to particular aspects of local development and policy choices. This, in turn, limits the capacity of local government as an agency of authority at local level. Other kinds of limits are determined by the higher levels of government. This is to say that the autonomy of Finnish cities is constrained by two principal factors, those of limited economic resources and local economic conditions, on the one hand, and the political control of the state authorities and European Union, on the other hand. (cf. Gurr & King 1987, 56) This makes it easier to understand why in most of the western countries there can be said to be two groups which dominate the urban regimes, the business elite provided it has structured itself to have a single voice, and the political force which operates within wider institutional and corporatist setting (cf. Stoker 1995, 63). The social complexity, thus, shapes not only local authorities and city management but also the governing coalitions within the urban setting.

IS URBAN GOVERNANCE ORIGINALLY FROM URBAN REGIME THEORY?

The study of urban regimes brings to center stage the issue of how to think about power. In Regime Politics (1989), I drew the distinction between "power over" and "power to" as a way of differentiating a social-production model of power from a social-control model. Over the past few years, as I have sought to understand the politics of social reform in the U.S., reform in urban education in particular, that distinction continues to strike me as critical. Yet, to make such a distinction is not a matter of endorsing one conception of power over the other, but of understanding how each fits into a larger political picture. It is important to see that in everyday political reality the two understandings of power are intertwined. Though conceptually different from "power over," for reasons spelled out below, "power to" has a domination or "over" aspect that should not be ignored in the study of urban regimes. After all, regimes are not neutral mechanisms through which policy is made. Instead, they are arrangements that facilitate action on some issues more readily than upon others

Originally urban regime theory focused on urban politics abstracted from historical epochs connected to changes in the structure of the world economic system. The theory appears to have gained a dominant position in the American literature on local politics precisely because it dispenses with the stalled debates on conventionally conceptualised tensions like those between elite hegemony and pluralist interest group politics, between economic determinism and political machination, and between structural determinants and local choices. It provides a conceptual framework that views these, on the one hand, as false dualisms and, on the other hand, as theoretically driven historical and/or empirical questions. Urban growth coalitions are viewed as only one of the political coalitions that may arise in cities. In addition, it is assumed that they need to be hegemonic for an extended period of time to be considered a corporate controlled regime. Respectively, entrepreneurialism is viewed as only one of the possible leadership approaches that local politicians and government bureaucracies can pursue. Thus, regime theory asks how and under what conditions do different types of governing coalitions emerge, consolidate and become hegemonic, and how they devolve and transform. The recent transference of urban regime theory to contexts outside of the United States as well as its use in comparative cross-national research attests to its dominant position in urban political scholarship. (Lauria 1995) Our primary intention is to apply this theory to the urban governance in the context of restructuring the corporatist 'post-welfare society'. This is a significant aspect to be taken into account when applying the theory to the Nordic cities and their governance relations.

According to Stoker (1995, 54), regime theory holds substantial promise for understanding variety of responses to urban change. It emphasizes the interdependence of governmental and non-governmental forces in meeting economic and social challenges. This is why it pays attention to the problem of cooperation and co-ordination between government, business community, and the third sector or civil society. Some regime theorists, Clarence Stone (1989) in particular, argue that cities are able to accomplish important public purposes by assembling coalitions of political, business and community elites. This has some important implications. It questions the elitist argument that if actual decision-making appears to be democratic, important issues will be effectively kept off the agenda by the real wielders of community power (Wolman 1996, 168-169). It may, indeed, be said that local politics has its relevance and that it can make a difference, though many academics who have studied the impacts of global economic restructuring and the changes in urban governments are pessimist about the ability of local government to shape its own destiny in the face of sweeping changes. (Wolman 1996, 172) In this the regime theory differs from elite theory: any group is unlikely to be able to exercise comprehensive control in a complex world (Stoker 1995, 59).

One of the attractive features of regime theory is that it addresses the questions which are widely discussed within more conventional approaches such as neo-pluralism. In short, the regime theory tries to shed light to following type of questions (Stoker 1995, 57):

1. What are the implications of social complexity for local politics?

2. What does the systemic advantage of certain interests imply for the nature of urban politics and policy?

3. What forms of power dominate modern systems of urban governance?

4. What roles are there for democratic politics and, for example, disadvantaged groups?

APRIL 2010 - MY PHD THESIS PROPOSED PROGRESS CHART

NOTES

One segment of the pie chart represent 1 hour

Red colour - sleeping / resting hour

Yellow colour - time spend for my family

Green colour - time spend for my research

Purple colour - public holiday