Analysing Democracy in Third‐Party Government: Business Improvement Districts in the US and UK

Abstract

Institutional designs for third-party governance have proliferated in the US and Europe, but there has been little systematic analysis of their democratic performance. A comparative analysis of business improvement districts (BIDs) in the US and UK documents an approach to the democratic analysis of third-party public governance institutions and finds variation in institutional designs and democratic performance within - as well as between - countries. BIDs accommodate the democratic imperatives for legitimacy, consent and accountability in different ways. In many ways, the democratic aspects of the BID design reflect those found in a private membership organization, but there is also evidence of actual and potential engagement with residents and local governments in BID governance. US BIDs continue a tradition of informally privileging business interests in local governance, but may potentially increase democratic purchase. UK BIDs may have the potential to increase the role of businesses in local governance at the cost of democratic performance. Copyright (c) 2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation (c) 2009 Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Understanding Business Improvement Districts: A New Governance Framework

“…BIDs entered the consciousness of public administration practitioners and academics through a series of publications and conference presentations in the last couple of decades. The first books on BIDs for practitioners (Feehan and Feit 2006; Houstoun 1997) and academics (Mitchell 2008; Morçöl et al 2008), the book reviews in Public Administration Review (Banyan 2008; Justice 2009), the PA Times article on BIDs (Justice and Skelcher 2006), and the panels on BIDs organized at ASPA conferences (Newark, New Jersey, in 2001; Portland, Oregon, in 2004; Dallas, Texas, in 2008) contributed to this consciousness. The online certificate program for BID managers that Rutgers University–Newark, launched in 2007 ( PA Times 2007), was a step in the institutionalization of these entities through the professionalization of their managers.…”

Business Improvement Districts in England and the (Private?) Governance of Urban Spaces

“…This is so even as regards safety and security, an area o f BID activity that has been particularly scrutinised in the academic literature-and the findings here mirror those of Vindevogel (2005) for a sample of US BIDs. Rather than privatised government of the public realm, English BIDs appear as a hybrid of private club and public agency (see Justice and Skelcher, 2009), operating within a network of organisations centred in the local authority, and connected to one another through a mix of legal and contractual relationships of the sort described by Peel et al (2009).…”

“…These three concerns are not new: Hoyt and Gopal-Agge (2007) discuss a similar set of issues from a North American point of view, and they inform the assessment of the democratic performance of BIDs by Justice and Skelcher (2009). However, the particularities of British BIDs ask for a more contextualised treatment.…”

Resource Orchestration as a Source of a Competitive Advantage for Cities

“…To give an overview of the BID literature and elaborate some of these issues, I distinguish four levels, at which BIDs and their impacts have been analyzed. Mitchell, 2001), and which implications BIDs have for democratic participation and accountability (e.g., Briffault, 1999;Hochleutner, 2003;Justice & Skelcher, 2009). …”