Bøger i Urban and Regional Research International serien

"Good local governance" reflects the dual functions of local government. On the one hand, democratic regimes gain input legitimacy by responsiveness and by being inclusive towards the preferences of their citizens. On the other hand, they achieve output legitimacy by effectively delivering public goods and services. Their governance strategies follow three major paths - "decentralisation," "political administrative reforms" and "participatory reforms". But national contexts, actors, political culture and path dependency matter a lot. In this book continent-wide developments are compared by using relevant country studies. This comparative approach focuses on "developing countries" in Asia, Africa and Latin America, comparing and contrasting their experience with that of European countries

This book demonstrates both successes and failures in attempts to get closer to the ideal of good urban governance in cities in North-America, Europe, and Asia. It presents a value menu and deliberately does not come up with "e;one best way"e; for improving urban governance. Good urban governance is presented as a balancing act, an interplay between government, business and civil society in which the core values need careful and timely attention. The authors address questions such as "e;What is deemed "e;good"e; in urban governance, and how is it being searched for?"e;, and "e;What (re)configurations of interactions between government, private sector and civil society are evolving, and to what results?"e;.

Matters such as gender, parties, institutions, municipal reform, functions in governance networks, and councillor influence are considered using data collected in an international survey, covering some 12,000 members of the local political elite.

Starting in the late 1980s and accelerating around the tum of the century, Scandinavia's big cities started decentralising their political, administrative and service-provider organisations. Oslo was first out with its bydelsutvalg, but Goteborg soon followed by introducing stadsdelsniimnder. At the tum of the millennium such decentralised political bodies were in place in the six cities that we have chosen for special scrutiny in this book: Copenhagen in Denmark, Bergen and Oslo in Norway, and Goteborg, Malmo and Stockholm in Sweden. Some of us had been involved in single-city evaluation studies, and, having reported our findings, we came up with the idea that it might be worthwhile to compare our findings. Decentralised political bodies of this kind are by no means unique to Scandinavia, but it seemed as if the very high degree of decentralisation in Scandinavia was quite unique. Central city authorities and mayors had relinquished around three quarters of their budg­ of such far­ ets. Describing and communicating the Scandinavian experiences reaching decentralisation also seemed to be a good idea. With funding from the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils for the Humanities and the Social Sciences, we were able to start the project in 2000. The preparations for the book included an inventory of the surveys conducted in the six cities during the course of the evaluation studies. We collected all these data sets and compiled a common data set that was distrib­ uted to all members of the group.

Der englischsprachige Band führt ein in die Lokal- und Regionalpolitik der mittel-osteuropäischen Reformländer.  Der Band beleuchtet aktuelle Probleme der Kommunal- und Regionalpolitik in den Ländern Mittel-Osteuropas, einschließlich Russlands. Zentral sind Fragen der Beziehungen zwischen zentraler, regionaler und lokaler Politik- und Verwaltungsebene, der lokalen Demokratie und Partizipation sowie Fragen der Verwaltungsmodernisierung.

Nearly all Western and Central European local government systems have been reformed since the 1990's. Taking into account variations in historical and national context, the book looks for different ways of local government reform, their emphases and their divergent trajectories.

This book is the first result of the International Metropolitan Observatory (IMO) research program. The IMO has been designated as a priority research activity of the Research Committee Comparative studies on local government and politics (RC5) of the International Political Science Association (IPSA). We would like to thank all the contributors from various countries and continents to this ambitious comparative enterprise for their constant efforts and their patience since this collaborative initiative emerged and took form in September 2002 in Stuttgart. Successive meetings organized over 2002-2005 for carrying out this program were made possible through the support of several institutions. We express in particular our deep gratitude to the Center for International Studies, the Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California, the University of Stuttgart (Institute of Social Sciences), the French Ministries of Research (PIR-Villes and ACI-Ville Programs) and Education (DRIC - ACCES Program), the CNRS (SHS Department), the GRALE in Paris, and Sciences Po Bordeaux (CERVL). Several mechanisms for cooperation have contributed decisively to the strengthening of the IMO network: the CODE (Comparing Democracies in Europe) Associate European Laboratory built between the CERVL-CNRS at Sciences Po Bordeaux and the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Stuttgart exemplifies the increase of this international scientific integration.

With this book we aim at describing and analysing the selection, daily life, networks and values of local top political leaders in seventeen European countries. The empirical nourishment to the investigation into town halls across Europe is a survey conducted in 2003 with mayors and corresponding top local political leaders. The data covering responses from 2700 leaders is a unique and rich material allowing descriptions and analyses pursuing a number of lines of inquiry.

This volume with contributions by internationally renowned authors provides a comparative survey of problems in local politics and administration in Europe, Australasia and North-America.

Papers of a conference held in April 2007 at Universiteat Halle-Wittenberg.