Urban Political Decentralisation
Six Scandinavian Cities
1st Edition
Published on 28. January 2005
Book
Paperback/Softback
179 pages
978-3-8100-4068-8 (ISBN)
Description
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.
More details
Series
Edition
2005
Language
English
Place of publication
Wiesbaden
Germany
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Research
Illustrations
4 s/w Abbildungen
179 p. 4 illus.
Dimensions
Height: 210 mm
Width: 148 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
246 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-8100-4068-8 (9783810040688)
DOI
10.1007/978-3-322-80974-2
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Henry Bäck, Professor of Public Administration, Göteborg University; Gunnar Gjelstrup, Senior Lecturer, Roskilde University; Marit Helgesen, Researcher, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Oslo; Folke Johansson, Associate Professor of Political Science, Göteborg University; Jan Erling Klausen, Researcher, Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research, Oslo
Content
Foreword.- 1: Metropolitan Regions and Urban District Councils.- The constitutions of the cities.- Strength of the party system.- Urban district councils.- Six urban decentralisation reforms in three countries.- The chapters to follow.- 2: The institutional structure of the Urban District Councils.- Actors and preferences.- Tasks.- Resources.- City implementation and community networking.- 3: Methodological considerations.- The survey data.- The comparability of survey questions.- How we wrote this book.- 4: Citizen participation in urban district politics.- Comments on the data.- Differences between the cities.- How can the differences between the cities be explained?.- Summary and conclusions.- 5: The politicians in the UDC.- Group representation.- Attitudes towards UDCs.- Dimensions of conflicts within UDCs.- The relationship between politicians and civil servants.- Contacts with citizens.- Contacts with voluntary organisations.- Willingness to run again.- Conclusions.- 6: District politicians on central-local relations.- The electoral dimension.- The task dimension.- Intra-party co-ordination.- Summary and conclusions.- 7: Efficiency in service provision.- A note on the concept of efficiency.- A comment on the methodology.- Size of UDCs.- UDC funding and resources.- UDC organisation.- User involvement.- Summary and conclusion.- 8: Transverse processes.- Major findings.- The role of politicians.- The role of the administration.- The role of co-workers.- The role of users.- Conclusion.- 9: Conclusions: Institutions, time and politics.- Citizen participation.- The district politician's role.- UDC members and inter-level relations.- Efficiency in service provision.- Transverse processes.- Effects of the institutional set-up.- Time.- Politics.- The self-destructivedynamic of party politics and urban decentralisation.- References.