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?
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