The Dynamics between State Control and Metropolitan Governance Capacity

Abstract

Due to the national importance of metropolitan areas, central governments seek to make them as attractive and competitive as possible. In many cases, this is done through state control over metropolitan areas and their governance arrangements. This article examines the relationship between state control and metropolitan governance capacity based on a comparative case study of four metropolitan areas: Auckland, Dublin, Montreal and Oslo. These areas represent different models of metropolitan governance, as well as different forms of state control. We studied state control by focusing on political and administrative decentralization: how independently can the metropolitan government make decisions and perform its tasks? The conclusion is that the different dimensions of decentralization are connected to capacity, but not straightforwardly. This study indicates that state involvement through different forms of control can increase metropolitan governance capacity, but only if it is combined with mandate and supportive policy actions.

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“…В настоящее время, характери зующееся сдвигами в социальной структуре общества и экономике, геополитическим кри зисом, названные вопросы крайне актуальны для России и не менее актуальны за рубежом (Castan Broto еt al., 2019;Bell еt al., 2020;Gran qvist еt al., 2020). Это обосновывает значимость «качества управления, в том числе повышение качества планирования» (Окрепилов, 2021а) (Tolkki, Haveri, 2020). С другой стороны, это решение порождает проблему, широко обсуждаемую сегодня в зарубежных исследованиях незави симых экспертов (Dixon еt al., 2023;Kitchin, MooreCherry, 2020) (Свириденко, 2022).…”

Soft Spaces as a Traveling Planning Idea: Uncovering the Origin and Development of an Academic Concept on the Rise

“…While the neoliberal turn in state spatial politics is clearly a pan-European trend (Brenner 2003), it arrived in the Nordics relatively late (Galland 2012). Therefore, it was only during the 2000s when neoliberal spatial strategies materialized as policy reforms and sparked the conceptualization of urban regions as soft spaces in Denmark (Galland 2012; Olesen 2012), Finland (Luukkonen and Sirviö 2019), and to a limited extent also in Sweden and Norway (Smas and Lidmo 2018; Tolkki and Haveri 2020). Luukkonen and Sirviö (2019) describe the transformation of spatial strategies in Finland as follows:The Christallerian imagery of a decentralised national territory of the 1990s has been replaced by the post-structuralist imagery of soft spaces in which the state territory consists of a rhizome of significant urban agglomerations and the connecting development corridors between them.…”

Peculiarities of Ukrainians’ Approval of Decentralization Reform

“…Nevertheless, there are no sufficient differences between country systems, as they both can be considered adequate. Tolkki and Haveri (2020) analyzed four metropolitan areas to compare their governance and state control. The authors focused on political and decentralization aspects to answer how independently metropolitan government can make decisions and perform its tasks.…”