Explaining “Power to”

Abstract

The urban regime theory has placed the decisional power of urban policy makers in the foreground. From this perspective, enduring governing coalitions can in fact manage to change the consolidated urban policy mix to foster great changes in the social and economic context. The urban regime theory labels this capacity “power to.” Although this higher capacity has frequently been affirmed, the literature has neglected to look at the framing mechanisms and the policy-making processes that allow a new agenda to emerge and be implemented. The present article has the aim of addressing this matter and in particular of trying to answer two main questions: (1) If an incubation phase lays the foundations for the emergence of a new policy agenda, how does this process take place? (2) Is the new agenda a by-product of sectorial policy negotiations or is it the output of a collective effort? The findings of an in-depth analysis of a case study are presented and discussed to address these questions.

E-Participation, Rural Regime, and Network Governance: A Case of Balien River Conservation

“…Although RT seldom considers external or global socio-economic factors, it is a suitable approach for analyzing community networks because community development belongs to the governance at the grassroots level and is not necessarily related to global forces or does not require a set of grand discourses as an analytic framework [27]. In addition, plural participation still matters even if the power domination or bias may occur in a capitalist society [11,28]. RT can help understand how the decision-making process of community affairs establishes partnerships among multiple stakeholders, shares resources, delivers knowledge, and exchanges information, thereby contributing to the linkage of community organizations and networks [9,29].…”

“…Third, RT originates from American urban politics, and therefore, its applicability to non-American cases is doubted [26]. Last, RT seldom investigates the socio-economic transformation and the evolution of new agenda-setting [11].…”

“…In other words, the governing capacity of a community regime emanates from the synergy of power-to-the government empowers other non-governmental actors in a governing coalition-but not power-over-the government controls people through a hierarchical system (Stoker 1995). The concept of social production implies that governing coalitions can evolve with the enduring socio-economic transformation [11,12]. In addition, a new networking interaction exists between the virtual place based on SNSs and the physical place that requires face-to-face interaction.…”

“…RT inspires two critical issues to explore the experience of rural governance. First, most studies on RT have focused on the issues of urban governance in the last five years [7][8][9][10][11][12]. Second, the information society had been premature when the RT emerged in the 1980s.…”

E-Participation, Rural Regime, and Network Governance: A Case of Balien River Conservation

“…RT inspires two critical issues to explore the experience of rural governance. First, most studies on RT have focused on the issues of urban governance in the last five years [7][8][9][10][11][12] . Second, the information society had been premature when the RT emerged in the 1980s.…”