The article describes tensions generated in land-use planning practices in Norway, Finland and Sweden, due to the shift towards New Public Management in actual governance practices, while the ideals of deliberative democracy in planning discourses and legislation have been retained. These tensions are studied empirically by making comparative observations of planning systems and practices in each country. The theoretical approach is developed by combining democracy and legitimacy theories with double bind theory and organizational learning theory. Based on this theoretical work, the article offers insights for reflectivity on the tensions. The Nordic ideal of deliberative democracy, expressed in the primary aims of our planning laws, may prohibit open acknowledgement of the uneasiness which follows from the fact that liberal democratic values (rights of landownership, free enterprise, etc.) are also secured. Thereby planners act and speak in terms of mixed messages, potentially habituated into defensive routines that may prohibit metacommunication on the basic tensions. The idea of agonistic reflectivity is offered as an approach to planning, which would acknowledge the tension between input legitimacy and output efficiency as a legitimate condition in itself, requiring ongoing political debate where the tension has to be continually discussed without actually ever being resolved.

Parekh's theory of multiculturalism offers a number of insights which are useful in analysing the role of neighbourhood governance in promoting social cohesion within culturally diverse small areas. The problems of neighbourhood governance are rooted in disjointed structural change across Europe over the past 25 years. In this context, the formation of a multicultural European polity risks creating a white European ethnicity which will institutionalise specific forms of racism within distressed neighbourhoods. At the same time, the shift from government to governance as a way to address the problems of governability in structurally reconstituted societies is associated with the top-down imposition of specific forms of neighbourhood governance which can then, unwittingly, become part of the institutionalisation of racism. Using Parekh's theory to construct a critique yields a set of principles which illuminate a number of key strategic elements which can be used practically in designing neighbourhood governance mechanisms and which illuminate the pre-occupations in the existing literature.

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Research on gender dimensions of climate change response is needed if we are to succeed in providing decision-makers with a relevant scientific basis for climate change policy. Although action at the municipal level has become a high priority for Swedish climate change response, knowledge of how gender perspectives affect that response is scarce. This paper contributes knowledge of how to integrate a gender perspective in planning for climate change response, through the modification and application of a system of gender categorization that was originally developed for evaluating the World Bank's performance of environmental impact assessments. That system is used, in this paper, to analyse the Swedish component of a global citizen consultation, World Wide Views on Global Warming. The research is based on analysis of our participation in the World Wide Views as well as interviews and documentation. A conclusion from our analysis is that the Swedish part of the citizen consultation was driven by an approach that, according to the system of gender categorization, strongly demonstrated both feminine and masculine attributes. The results show that an approach that incorporates not only masculine attributes, but also feminine ones, is likely to generate a more robust and concrete climate change response.

This paper uses a governatice theory framework to analyse the introductory process for the private sector managing and operating the public water utility Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL). The analysis was performed from three standpoints: process inputs, process conduct and process outcomes. The consultation process on involvement of the private sector was hostile and resulted in a "light" form of private sector participation in the form of a management contract that can be considered a de facto compromise, although not deliberate, by stakeholders. The challenges in improving the water sector performance and water supply services are profound. Because of continuing institutional, social, political and legal constraints, the involvement of the private sector per se is not the solution to providing long-term improvement in water services. The article concludes that it is misleading to leapfrog from government to governance, calling for the transmission of a governance "recipe", as conceptualised in the Western context, and to assume that it can work in an unaccommodating institutional context.