MY THESIS PHD PROGRESS PRESENTATION ON 26 AUGUST 2010

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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

ARE WE ABSORBED TO ICT FACILITIES OR ICT FACILITIES ABSORBED US?

Last Thursday, I read a few PhD theses, not a recent theses but theses wrote in 15 - 20 years ago. I wondered how they are managed and searched for the latest information. I imagined how they used typewriter and hand writing to keep their information in their note books (I mean not a laptop). However they can complete their thesis on time.

Today in the world of IT, we are as a PhD student has an advanced facility to search latest information related to our research and managed your information. I noticed every university students, undergraduate and postgraduate have laptop or desktop. There are so many search engine such as Yahoo, Google etc to assist us to search and download information on university, government and company website, latest journals, book review, newspaper online and etc. However why we cannot complete our thesis on time. Is it the research methodology is too complicated or there are so many university's requirement to fulfill? ICT should expedite our research not make our research difficult to complete.

Furthermore, ICT also absorbed us to spend more time to search and download irrelevant information to our research. I used a word absorbed because we spend so much time unnecessary to :

a) searching information for entertainment... gossip, films, song, movie stars etc;

b) reply email;

c) Yahoo messenger (YM)

c) read, update and reply facebook;

d) read and update blog;

e) read and update twitter;

f) You Tube;

g) Download movies and songs; etc

One of my friends said.. facebook make our networking widen and meet new friends. Did I need this? You tube..you will not miss anything, watching video etc. Email...exchange information so easily. The above entertainment and social websites really attracted us until we forget that we have more important thing to do. How much we spend our time to update our facebook or reply our email or download movies or song in laptop? What ever it is...up to you to assess which one good and bad. We should wisely think which one more important...complete our research or entertain ourself....

MARCH 2010 - MY THESIS PROPOSE PROGRESS TARGET

HOW MUCH DID I SPEND MY TIME FOR MY PHD RESEARCH?

Last week I and a few friends discussed about our research progress. One of my friends asked me, in a day how much did I spend my time on my research. When I look my daily timetable and calendar dairy for February 2010, I summarised under one table. And I found out that I spend about 11 - 12 hours a day for my research. Figure below shows the result of daily activities for February 2010. Did I spend my time more to family or less to my research? Should I balance my time for my family and research? How much I spend my time on research for coming month...Mac, April, May...etc? Should I sleep less than 5 hours, so I can spend my time on my phd research. However my brain need rest. I need to complete my phd research on time....

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

POSITIONING KUALA LUMPUR CITY REGION IN THE GLOBAL CITIES NETWORK: ANALYSING MALAYSIAN URBAN GOVERNANCE STRATEGIES IN THE MILLENNIUM ERA

In the age of globalization, it was argued that major cities in the region should be positioned in the global city system, in order for these cities and their immediate regions are effectively developed. As the urban and regional economic prospects increase reliance on the participation in the fast moving international and global economy, cities that are unable to adapt to these globalchanges and requirements would be marginalized. The marginalisation of major cities from the mainstream of global development will affect their progress and in most cases be determined by exogenous forces. At the same time, the emergence of new global economic and informational societies has created a new form of spatial development, the global cities. Such status was achieved only when a city and its region becomes a major center of international finance, transnational corporate headquarters, related high-level and specialized services, information processing and advanced telecommunications, a city with an international command and control functions (Sassen, 1991).

To what extend the above criteria and indicators really described the position of cities in underdeveloped and developing economies? It is the intention of the paper to deal with such a question, with particular reference to the city of Kuala Lumpur. Although Kuala Lumpur has substantially part of the international economy for the past three decades, it was argued that the city exercises little of the global or even regional control functions that world cities proposes. For this reason, the authors argued that Kuala Lumpur and possibly other cities in the rapidly developing economies be positioned in a different setting, and with different criteria and indicators, as compared to the existing global cities. Regional disparity has long been recognized in Malaysian development scenario, particularly between the more-developed western region and the less-developed eastern and northern regions in Peninsular Malaysia.

All the Five Year Malaysia Plans, starting from the Third Malaysia Plan (1976-1980) have placed special emphasis on the objectives and strategies of regional development. However in the decade of nineties, in conjunction with globalisation era, the direction of Malaysian development plans have been changed, towards becoming more competitive in the global economy. To some extend after 30 years, the issue of regional disparity is remains unsolved, and yet new emphasis on global competition has been dominated in development strategies and plans. However, analysing from the current achievement of national development, the position of Kuala Lumpur in the global cities network still unsignificant, reflecting the uneffectiveness of the strategies toward strengthening Malaysian competitivenes in global era.

Malaysian's Development Vision, particularly toward achieving the status of developed country in the year 2020. Affirmative action as a policy response to ethnic riots is a fairly unusual, indeed unfashionable, policy response, partly because inequality and conflict have a complex and much debated relationship. General vertical income inequality, measured as the gap between poor and rich, has not been found to have a statistically significant relationship with the onset of civil unrest or conflict (Collier & Hoeffler, 2000; Fearon & Laitin, 2003). And yet, an accumulating body of evidence suggests that horizontal inequality, inequalities between identity or ascriptive groups on the multiple and inter-related planes of the political, the socio-economic, and the cultural, may be politically explosive (Stewart, 2001).

These links between ethnicity, inequality and conflict among ethnic groups using a multidimensional approach, with a view to identifying those policies which might work in other situations of ethnic conflict. Taking Malaysia as the model for my research, I investigate and measure to what extent inequalities between ascriptive groups have fallen in that country between 1970 and 2000, a period during which various affirmative action policies were applied in fields ranging from education and government employment to business. Horizontal inequality in the key indicator of income is re-assessed. In addition, changes in access by ethnic group to educational opportunities; the distribution of employment by sector and by occupation; urbanisation and housing distribuition; ownership of household assets such as houses and cars; and infant, toddler and maternal mortality rates are all considered individually, while a multi-dimensional index of socio-economic inequality is subsequently constructed for comparison purposes.

CONGRATULATION TO MY FRIENDS WHO ARE HONOURED WITH PHD DEGREE 2009-2010

While I am in Loughborough University, I have met a few Malaysian students who pursue their PhD in the Loughborough University. Last year in 2009, Najib Salleh had completed his PhD. This year I had received a good news that Farrie Akma Othman also completed her PhD. The completion of their journey in discovering a new knowledge had inspired and motivated me to keep going with my research. CONGRATULATION TO DR NAJIB SALLEH AND DR FARRIE AKMA OTHMAN....Thank you to your lovely family and friends for their support and encouragement...

DR FARRIE AKMA OTHMAN

DR NAJIB SALLEH

FEBRUARY 2010 - MY THESIS PROGRESS..PROPOSAL CHART

I am now reviewing my chapter 2...literature review. Based on my discussion with my supervisor and lectures in Loughborough University, the content of my literature review should consist the evolution of urban governace from good urban governance to efficient urban governance. This must relate to why efficient urban governance is so importance in the context of globalization issues. Based on my reading , latest journal, the role of city stakeholders in urban governance is so significant. They are actully determine the successful development of the city.According to Harrison (2009) the success of implementation of urban governance in certain states is not just focus to capital city but the whole of city-region of the state. This is due to the role of city-region as command and control function. I must prove that the efficient urban governance has the vital role and colleration to the competitiveness of the city-region.

JANUARY 2010... MY THESIS PROGRESS

MY 3RD YEAR IN UKM - THE END STAGE OF MY THESIS

This year is my last year in UKM. The time is flying so fast and I did not realise that I have been here almost 3 years. I have 10 months to go. Eventhough PhD student under JPA scholarship can extend another 1 year to continue their research, for me I try and hope to finish end of this year. I must push beyond my limit. I have to report back to JPBD on 27 Dec 2010.

With amount of my literature reviews analysis and data survey finding I hope I can complete my PhD on time. My attendance for 3 months attachment programme in Loughborough University really gave a valuable experience how to manage my research. I will use that enhance and organize my thesis preparation. Therefore I reschedule my progress chart and I will inform you all monthly via my blog how my thesis progress. This is my proposal progress chart.

URBAN GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRACY

Urban governance in most western democracies has seen various forms of public-private concerted actions becoming increasingly important instruments for local governments. These new features of urban governance are often seen as local governments trying to enhance their "capacity to act" by fusing their capabilities with those of other major societal actors. At the same time such transgressions of the border between the public and the private spheres of society make local governments more susceptible to political pressures from those actors. This volume looks at the historical development and present performance of public-private partnerships for local economic development in western Europe and the United States. Local governments in Western Europe have become increasingly involved in network building with the local business community. The author suggests that governance processes are not value neutral but reflect and sustain political values beyond partisan conflict. Comparing managerial, corporatist, progrowth, and welfare governance models of urban governance, the author argues that nation-state factors play an important role in shaping urban governance. Different sectors in urban politics display different models of governance and local political choice matters. Also, cities within the same national context differ significantly with regard to the degree of inclusion of organized interests in urban governance, which, in turn, is reflected in urban policy outcomes.

It remains to be asked how this emergence of urban governance is to be interpreted in terms of democratic legitimacy and accountability. Undoubtedly, governance networks are usually organised in a less hierarchic manner than governments and can be joined by a multitude of different actors much more spontaneously. Yet, this does not automatically render them more democratic. As a matter of fact, urban governance arrangements are usually neither democratically elected nor controlled. Due to their project orientedness and often ephemeral character, these networks are hard to grasp and control for outsiders. Aren’t these features interpretable as a perfect precondition for alarmingly undem ocratic policies thrusting aside governing by government, which – at least to a larger extent – was based on transparency, electoral legitimacy and accountability? In fact, manyscholars have been deeply worried about these developments. They have regarded urban governance networks as the ideal breeding ground for short-term, particularistic and profit-oriented interests. Indeed, these are the main concerns of the authors who fear that European cities run the risk of becoming “Americanised” in the long run. Are these concerns well-founded? Are governance and democracy two contradictory phenomena? At this point, it is helpful to bring to mind the contextual argument again! As the example of the local state debate has shown, we should be careful with universalistic and functionalist conclusions and implications. However, note that asking the question “What kind of effect does a shift from urban government to governance have on the aspect of urban democracy?” clearly does imply these universalistic and functionalist assumptions:

Firstly, it entails that there is a direct causal link between the rise of governance and the issue of urban democracy. Secondly, it suggests we can hope to find a generally and universally applicable answer to this question. In what sense does context matter also for the question of urban governance arrangements? Most importantly, like many other concepts in urban studies the discussion on urban governance has emerged in an Anglo-American context. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was in the United States where public- private partnerships (PPP’s) first came to dominate urban politics.4 Instead of referring to a terminology of “governance”, scholars started to deal with this phenomenon using the labels “urban regimes”, “public private partnerships” and “entrepreneurialism”. Soon it became evident that these non-elected public-private arrangements were chiefly dominated by economic interests such as growth, profit, competitiveness and efficiency (see for example: Kearns and Paddison 2000). When in the 1980s, scholars started to recognize that also in European cities elected officials were about to become increasingly dependent on the collaboration with non-governmental actors, it was widely assumed that also the results can be expected to be very similar to those in the USA. In other words, experiences and theories from America have often been directly imported to Europe.

Seen from a contextual point of view, this does not seem compelling at all. The mere dominance of governance networks in politics does not tell us anything about the modes of governance yet, i.e. about the actors involved, the power constellations among them, the political goals prevailing within these networks as well as the final outcomes. “Governing by governance” does not per se imply or favour any specific normative political goals – it rather is an empty shell to be filled with content first. As a term, it merely describes the trend of a partial destatisation, multiplication and informalisation of the collective actors in charge of political decision making. As a consequence, the point is that the political and social consequences of such a shift from urban government to governance will differ decisively, depending on the context these arrangements are embedded in and confronted with

MY JOURNAL PUBLISHED IN GEOGRAFIA - MALAYSIAN JOURNAL OF SOCIETY AND SPACE, THE NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MALAYSIA (UKM)

ENHANCING URBAN GOVERNANCE EFFICIENCY THROUGH THE E-GOVERNMENT OF MALAYSIAN LOCAL AUTHORITIES – THE CASE OF SUBANG JAYA MUNICIPALITY

Author(s) : Azmizam Abdul Rashid , Hamzah Jusoh , Jalaluddin Abdul Malek

Published in : January 2010, Volume 6 , Issues 1

Abstract

The electronic government (e-government) initiative in Malaysia was launched to lead the country into the Information Age. The vision was for government and businesses people to work together for the benefit of the nation through improved convenience, accessibility and quality of interactions resulting from better information flows, processes, speed and quality of policy development, coordination and enforcement. This paper describes how this vision of e-government had been achieved by the Majlis Perbandaran Subang Jaya (MPSJ) local authority. Seven factors were behind this success of the MPSJ’s implementation of the e-government, namely, the willingness of the local authority to commit to e-government and depart from existing ways of doing things; the willingness of the local authority’s top management to lead the way to e-government; seamless e-government services that encouraged different agencies to work closely with the MPSJ; the ICT skills building capability and capacity of the MPSJ officers; the development of an e-government public-private partnership framework; the ability of the MPSJ management to overcome costrelated problems in the implementation of e-government; and, the ability of the MPSJ management to monitor and evaluate the impact and benefits of the e-government programme in order to justify continued political and public support. The achievement notwithstanding, the paper identifies further rooms for improvement, namely, the introduction of e-submission to enable the electronic transfer and management of Computer-Aided Drawings (CAD) and related documents through the creation of a Wide Area Network (WAN); and, the application of GIS (GIS-MPSJ) for the computer processing of geographically referenced data.

Keywords: application of GIS, electronic government (e-government), delivers services, ICT skills building, management of Computer-Aided Drawings (CAD), seamless e-government services

View Article : http://pkukmweb.ukm.my/geografia/images/upload/1.2010-1-Azmizam%20Hamzah%20Jalal-english-3.pdf

ANWAR FAZAL - URBAN GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY EMPOWERMENT

"In a world that is increasingly violent, wasteful and manipulative, every effort at developing islands of integrity, wells of hope and sparks of action must be welcomed, multiplied and linked..." - Anwar Fazal

We need to create a new paradigm of development and happiness that can generate a three-dimensional peace - peace with ourselves, peace with other people and peace with mother earth. Little people doing little things in little places everywhere can change the world"…Anwar Fazal

WHO IS HE?

Anwar Fazal is a leading international civil society person who has contributed much to our society in areas of consumer, health environment, human rights and social ethics. Deeply concerned about the social injustices, especially those unconscionable marketing practices by the transnational corporations in developing countries, he has strived to and has succeeded in bringing these to international attention way back in the 1970s. Anwar Fazal, born in 1941, first became associated with the consumer movement in 1968 when he founded the Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) and later worked on consumer affairs for,among others, the Government of Mauritius, the Hong Kong Consumer Council and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In 1978 he was the first person from the Third World to become President of the International Organisation of Consumers Unions (IOCU), an independent, non-profit group which links the activities of consumer organisations in over half the countries of the world. IOCU, which has since changed its name to Consumers International, promotes international cooperation in consumer protection and education, represents the consumer interest at the global level and facilitates the comparative testing of goods and services.

WHAT IS CONTRIBUTION TO THE IDEA OF URBAN GOVERNANCE?

The issues, ranging from consumer, health, environment to corruption and integrity are all a mark of his persona on the international scene. This website contains a selection of his speeches, presentations and articles is a tribute to Anwar Fazal's contribution to the many social movements he is involved in.

1. Civil society and the culture of integrity
2. Building Partnerships For Good Governance
3. Building The Culture Of Integrity
4. Good Governance - Better Human Development
5. The Governance and Management of Urban Communities - Challenges for the 21st Century
6. Building The Culture Of Integrity - The Spiritual Fundamentals
7. International Governance: Government, Ngos And The Citizenry - Their Synergistic Role In A Global Village
8. Fighting the Twin Terrors - Peace By Peace
9. Challenges to Human Security In The New Age
10. The Death And Life Of Asian Cities -The Challenge of Good Governance
11. The Future Of Cities

WHAT ARE HIS MAIN IDEA ON URBAN GOVERNANCE?

People must have a new conception of space. More and more issues are ceasing to be associated with political boundaries: the environment does not respect political boundaries, the transnational companies are not concerned with political boundaries--except when it benefits them. In communications, we are moving toward a global village; products and services are becoming homogenized. So we will have to understand space in a new way--we will have to think of space at all three levels because all three--local, national, global--impact on you. And we have to develop systems whereby groups can act locally, nationally and globally. Different groups can work at different levels, but with vertical and lateral links. If we have these vertical and lateral linkages, then we can make use of people's power that will be inclusive and can make transformational change to produce a more just and fair world.

The challenge of urban governance is to have people who take their civic responsibility beyond the personal self and who see that inclusiveness and bringing groups together is critical, who understand that there will be differences in tactics and even in visions; some people think for the summer, others think for a year, others might think for a decade and others will be thinking generations ahead.