Using the Urban Regime Framework to Study Processes of Urban Governance: Agendas, Coalitions, Resources, and Schemes of Cooperation

《Using the Urban Regime Framework to Study Processes of Urban Governance: Agendas, Coalitions, Resources, and Schemes of Cooperation》

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作者: Julien van Ostaaijen

来源: URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW,Vol.60,Issue2,P.

语言: 英文

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摘要: IntroductionShould urban regime analysis be buried “with honors” (Sapotichne, Jones, and Wolfe 2007, p. 99), has it already had its “academic funeral” (Lambelet 2017, p. 3), or does it still possess an unchallenged leading position in the field of urban politics (McGovern 2020, p. 1012)? Since Stone's (1989) pioneering work on Atlanta, many scholars have used and discussed the urban regime concept. Especially, regarding its use beyond the post-war US context, the concept has led to discussions about its usefulness. When compared to the concept of governance, the urban regime seems less flexible and therefore less suited for comparative work (Mossberger 2009). However, the urban regime is credited for being much more developed—or arguably less underdeveloped—than the governance concept. “If urban regime analysis is undertheorized because of its dependence on specific cases and the American context … the idea of governance is even more so, because it can be so many things” (Mossberger 2009, 48). In this article, a heuristic framework, derived from the urban regime literature, is central to addressing these problems. This framework focuses on the four urban regime building blocks of agenda, governing coalition, resources, and scheme of cooperation (Stone 2005a) and therefore takes a middle position between a strict interpretation of the urban regime concept and the more general notion of (urban) governance. This framework has been applied in several Dutch case studies.The central and leading question in this article is: Can a heuristic use of the urban regime building blocks, as used in several Dutch case studies, enhance our knowledge of local collective organization? By collective organization, I mean the formal and informal arrangements that enable cooperation between different governing and non-governing actors to solve societal problems (Mossberger and Stoker 2001; Stoker and Mossberger 1994). In this article, I first explain how the framework relates to different interpretations of the urban regime and urban governance concepts, and what its possible advantages are. The development of both concepts is briefly described. The second part of the article focuses on the Dutch cases.