Critical perspectives on network governance in urban regeneration, community involvement and integration

Abstract

Significant claims have been made about the benefits of network governance and management in securing community involvement and assisting social integration in complex urban regeneration programmes. The move from vertical to horizontal forms of coordination, and the assumption of a more equal power distribution between participants, have combined with an emphasis on mutuality and trust to present networks as a promising mechanism for pluriform involvement and collective decision-making. Often this promise runs ahead of the evidence of how network governance functions in practice, the opportunities for different actors to influence the process and the often disappointing outcomes of joint decision-making. This special issue contributes to the 'second generation of research on governance networks' by tackling key questions relating to the sources of governance network failure and success. Building on the articles in this special issue, we explore these questions in relation to urban regeneration, community involvement and the integration of minority groups in The Netherlands, Sweden and England. This article reviews the articles in this special issue from the perspective of Klijn and Skelcher's (2007) four conjectures on democracy and governance networks and Sørensen and Torfing's (2007) four conditions for democratic anchorage. It also suggests ways in which the research agenda on networks in urban regeneration, community involvement and integration might be developed.

Field Emergence in Civil Society: A Theoretical Framework and Its Application to Community-Led Housing Organisations in England

“…The literature on network management and governance provides further insights that can enhance our understanding of social skill. Building on the policy networks literature (Marsh and Rhodes 1992), the ''Governance Club'' research programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam developed concepts and tools of network management with strategic, managerial and behavioural dimensions (Koppenjan and Klijn 2004) that have been applied to analyse network governance in housing and urban regeneration (Van Bortel and Mullins 2009). Further studies have highlighted the role of local organisational innovation driven by the practical skills and experimentation of institutional entrepreneurs to bridge organisational boundaries (McQuarrie and Krumholz 2011).…”

Steering the Poverty‐Environment Nexus in Central Asia: A metagovernance analysis of the Poverty‐Environment Initiative (PEI)

“…Previous studies (Bell & Quiggin, ; Bortel & Mullins, ; Bovaird, ; Derkx & Glasbergen, ; Engberg & Larsen, ; Fotel & Hanssen, ; Jessop, ; Parkins, ; Thuesen, ) have shown how the co‐ordination and implementation of public policy can be improved in multi‐level and fragmented settings through an explicit or implicit metagovernance approach. Metagovernance can be viewed as the process of governing governance.…”

Global polity in adult education and UNESCO: landmarking, brokering and framing policy

“…Framing is a familiar concept in the social sciences. In network and governance studies, framing usually refers to a mode of meta-governance that captures the definition of policy-relevant goals by a given network, the material conditions necessary to achieve these goals and the discursive/ narrative rationale linking both together (Van Bortel and Mullins 2009). It also refers to one of the principles of network management, and thus also includes the legal basis and fiscal conditions that goals, conditions and discursive/ narrative rationales depend on (Sørensen and Torfing 2009).…”