Flexibility with a Purpose: Constructing the Legitimacy of Spatial Governance Partnerships

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between flexibility in spatial governance partnerships and their legitimacy. While partnerships have become increasingly prevalent, questions have been raised about their accountability or ‘input’ legitimacy. However, recent research highlights how multiple norms of legitimacy exist and how flexible delivery of aspired outcomes may confer ‘output’ legitimacy to governance processes. This paper explores these issues through examining the delivery of a major urban extension at the edge of Cambridge City, in the East of England. It makes the case that a particular dimension of flexibility, namely flexibility in resource deployment, has been crucial to delivering outcomes underpinned by the shared vision of sustainable communities. This suggests that future research on partnerships could benefit from a more refined analysis of the different ways in which flexibility is exercised and how these may enhance or detract from the legitimacy of partnership arrangements.

Delivering sustainable drainage systems through the English planning system: A proposed case of institutional void

“…He did originally question whether these new practices would be the new carriers of political democracy and believed that there was no guarantee that these new policy practices would combine effectiveness with legitimacy, foreseeing that existing political players could capture these new political spaces. The informality of the institutional void was considered important to enable innovative forms of governing to emerge, but it was also seen to have the potential to generate problems of internal and external accountability (Lau, ).…”

“…Where the institutional void occurs and particularly where norms are unclear, Leong () suggests we will find a policy space that is “filled with the sort of policies postulated (poorly informed)” (p. 579). Earlier academic criticism of the new governance has already focused on Hajer's () identification of the institutional void and a resultant democratic deficit (Lau, ). Although collaborative forms of governance involve a diverse range of stakeholders, this may not necessarily correct the biases of powerful players, especially if existing power relations are constructed as a legitimate part of the governance process (Lau, ).…”

The craft of evaluative practice: Negotiating legitimate methodologies within complex interventions

“…While Beetham’s analysis has been criticized within political science as being simplistic in relation to the legitimation of regimes (O’Kane, 1993), as a constructivist and institutionalist approach it seems very open to being developed for the analysis of multiple and competing legitimacy claims in complex contexts. Thus Connelly (2011) and Lau (2013) have shown how Beetham’s approach can be used in the context of local governance, to explore the issues of how different actors and policy processes are accepted and become influential. Here we suggest that the analytical framework can be pushed beyond political science’s concern with the legitimacy of actors and their exercise of power.…”

Public accountability in planning for new housing areas

“…This document analysis was supplemented by semi-structured interviews with the planning officials in charge of supervising and managing the selected development projects. Other publications (Lau, 2014;Morrison and Burgess, 2014;Schönau et al, 2014) that refer to planning in these communities have been used to triangulate the findings.…”

“…For Keijzershof, local authorities lobbied to include Pijnacker-Zuid in the regional implementation covenant of Vinex (a Dutch acronym for 'Fourth Report on Spatial Planning Extra'). In the case of Clay Farm and Glebe Farm, the University of Cambridge, the development industry and local politicians lobbied to make green belt sites available for residential development (Lau, 2014;Morrison, 2013). The difference is that in Cambridge, this process was more politicised in relation to the Southern Cambridgeshire council which has more than once declared its opposition to new settlements.…”