Combined Authorities for more sub-regions? – Learning the adverse lessons from England beyond the metropolitan conurbations

an article by Alan Townsend (Durham University, UK) published in Local Economy: The Journal of the Local Economy Policy Unit Volume 34 Issue 2 (March 2019)

Abstract

The paper presents an analysis of the latent need for further Combined Authorities across England and finds that there are many potential functional areas, like the Cambridge and Peterborough Authority, which merit them on grounds of size or growth.

They often correspond to Local Enterprise Partnership or past Multi-Area Agreement areas and stand among many abortive devolution proposals of the last four years.

Their travel-to-work areas frequently conflict with shire counties’ present boundaries, a problem which provides the strongest obstacle to new ‘larger-than-local’ governance arrangements.

The present government’s abandonment of the requirement for new non-city Combined Authorities to have a directly elected mayor would remove a main barrier to establishing new devolution agreements across England, which is delayed by the need for a promised policy paper from government.

‘Deal or no deal?’ Governing urban infrastructure funding and financing in the UK City Deals

an article by Peter O’Brien and Andy Pike (Newcastle University, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 7 (May 2019)

Abstract

How urban infrastructure is funded, financed and governed is a central issue for states at the national, city-regional and city scales. Urban infrastructure is being financialised by financial and state actors and transformed into an asset in the international investment landscape.

Local governments are being compelled by national state and financial institutions to be more entrepreneurial in their infrastructure funding and financing and to reorganise their governance arrangements.

This article explains the socially and spatially uneven unfolding and implications of urban infrastructure financialisation and local government attempts to implement more entrepreneurial practices and governance forms.

The empirical focus is the City Deals in the UK: a new form of urban governance and infrastructure investment based upon negotiated central–local government agreements on decentralised powers, responsibilities and resources.

The continued authority of the highly centralised UK national state, its managerialist institutions and conservative/risk-averse administrative culture have constrained urban infrastructure financialisation and entrepreneurial urban governance in the UK City Deals. Situated in their particular spatial, temporal, political-economic and institutional settings, financialisation is understood as a socially and spatially variegated process and urban governance is interpreted as the articulation and mixing of new entrepreneurial and enduring managerialist forms.

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The smart grid as commons: Exploring alternatives to infrastructure financialisation

an article by Stephen Hall, Simon Shepherd and Zia Wadud (University of Leeds, UK) and Andrew EG Jonas (University of Hull, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 56 Issue 7 (May 2019)

Abstract

This article explores a tension between financialisation of electricity infrastructures and efforts to bring critical urban systems into common ownership.

Focusing on the emerging landscape of electricity regulation and e-mobility in the United Kingdom (UK), it examines how electricity grid ownership has become financialised, and why the economic assumptions that enabled this financialisation are being called into question.

New technologies, such as smart electricity meters and electric vehicles, provide cities with new tools to tackle poor air quality and greenhouse gas emissions. Electricity grids are key enabling infrastructures but the companies that run them do not get rewarded for improving air quality or tackling climate change.

UK government regulation of electricity grids both enables financialisation and forecloses opportunities to manage the infrastructure for wider environmental and public benefit.

Nonetheless, the addition of smart devices to this network – the ‘smart grid’ – opens up an opportunity for common ownership of the infrastructure. Transforming the smart grid into commons necessitates deep structural reform to the entire architecture of infrastructure regulation in the UK.

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Interregional inequalities and UK sub-national governance responses to Brexit

Chloe Billing City-REDI Institute, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK. C.A.Billing@bham.ac.uk
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, Philip McCann & Raquel Ortega-Argilés ORCID Icon

Philip McCann University of Sheffield Management School, Sheffield, UK. p.mccann@sheffield.ac.uk
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& Raquel Ortega-Argilés ORCID Icon

Raquel Ortega-Argilés City-REDI Institute, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
Correspondence
r.ortegaargiles@bham.ac.uk
ORCID Iconhttp://orcid.org/0000-0002-7783-2230
View further author information
ORCID Icon

a C.A.Billing@bham.ac.uk
City-REDI Institute, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
b p.mccann@sheffield.ac.uk
University of Sheffield Management School, Sheffield, UK. c
(Corresponding author) r.ortegaargiles@bham.ac.uk
City-REDI Institute, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.


Regional Studies
Volume 53, 2019 - Issue 5: Regional aspects in small firm financing

This paper discusses the various potential impacts of Brexit on UK regions and outlines the sub-national governance challenges these potential impacts raise. In the light of these, the types of activities that UK sub-national governance bodies have initiated in preparation for Brexit are then reviewed. The conclusions suggest that the UK sub-national institutional system is largely unprepared for the post-Brexit realities.

JEL Classification: R12, R58, R59

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Social capitalism: Incorporating sustainability factors into macroeconomic analysis

a column by Yashaswini Dunga, Nancy Hardie, Stephanie Kelly and Jeremy Lawson for VOX: CEPR’s Policy Portal

As climate change worsens and the forces of populism gather, there is a strong argument for moving beyond narrow economic measures of national progress.

This column presents a new indicator of progress that integrates environmental, social, and governance factors into growth analysis. Results show that the countries that have been able to blend economic dynamism with environmental, social, and governance dynamism are mostly developing economies. These countries often fly under the radar of traditional macroeconomic analyses.

Continue reading

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No Stump City: The Contestation and Politics of Urban Street-Trees – A Case Study of Sheffield

an article by Ian D. Rotherham and Matthew Flinders (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in People, Place and Policy Volume 12 Issue 3 (February 2019)

Abstract

Issues of sustainable development, liveable cities, green infrastructure, and urban ecosystem services currently receive attention from researchers and decision-makers. Furthermore, the benefits to public wellbeing and health of high quality open spaces and green areas are now undisputed (e.g. Simson, 2008; Booth, 2005, 2006).

However, with increasing pressure on urban landscapes for competing uses like housing-development green-spaces are under threat. Furthermore, austerity-driven cuts to local authority budgets mean loss of core services and skills relating to open-space management and planning. Some local authorities such as Newcastle City Council are withdrawing all expenditure on parks and community spaces. With major challenges in providing good quality urban green-spaces, the loss of most local authority countryside management services from 2008 onwards, reflects bigger problems (see Rotherham, 2014, 2015 for example).

Within this wider scenario has been the growing importance of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) to deliver core environmental and green-space services in many urban areas. These have been seen as possible fixes for the current waves of austerity cuts and many local authorities such as Sheffield City Council have gone down this route.

Nevertheless, real costs (financial and otherwise) of Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) are now emerging (Syal, 2018). There are also issues of public access to information once contracts become ‘commercially sensitive’ and of profit-driven delivery of core ‘public benefit’ services. These changes threaten ‘local environmental democracy’ as part of a wider shift in democratic processes (Flinders, 2012, 2017).

This paper examines wider issues of austerity-driven cuts to green-space services, of PFI projects, and of local environmental democracy. It takes the Sheffield street-trees initiative as an exemplar case-study to interrogate the broad concerns.

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Urban greenspace quandaries: Can systems thinking offer any solutions?

an article by Jill Dickinson and Paul Wyton (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in People, Place and Policy Volume 12 Issue 3 (March 2019)

Abstract

Public urban greenspace provides myriad benefits, including health and wellbeing, ‘community cohesion… and local economic growth’ (House of Commons, 2017: 3). As other ‘Third Place’ (Oldenburg, 1989) types, including leisure centres (Conn, 2015), have closed, greenspace’s popularity continues to increase (Heritage Lottery Fund, 2014).

Yet, public sector funding cuts (Stuckler et al, 2017) have forced local authority prioritisation of statutory services (Dickinson and Marson, 2017). Resulting reliance on the voluntary sector is leading to geographical inequalities in greenspace provision (Molin and van den Bosch, 2014). This shift in policy-focus and funding-allocation, and consequent community-responsibilisation for greenspace ‘place-keeping’ (Mathers et al, 2015: 126) means that neglected greenspaces face a ‘vicious circle of decline’ (House of Commons, 2017: 31) and could lead to the production of ‘contested spaces’ (Barker et al, 2017: i).

Whilst the systemic notion of boundary critique (Churchman, 1970; Ulrich, 1996) has been applied within other contexts, this case study seeks to contribute to the literature by applying boundary critique as a methodology for developing a more holistic understanding of greenspace management, and offering solutions to the quandaries faced.

Full text (PDF 21pp)

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Public Spaces Protection Orders: a critical policy analysis

an article by Vicky Heap and Jill Dickinson (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) published in Safer Communities Volume 17 Issue 3 (2018)

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critically appraise the Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) policy that was introduced by the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act (2014). Within a designated area assigned by the local council, PSPOs can prohibit or require specific behaviours to improve the quality of life for people inhabiting that space. Those who do not comply face a fixed penalty notice of £100 or a fine of £1,000 on summary conviction. However, the practical and theoretical impact associated with the development of these powers has yet to be fully explored.

Design/methodology/approach
Using Bannister and O’Sullivan’s (2013) discussion of civility and anti-social behaviour policy as a starting point, the authors show how PSPOs could create new frontiers in exclusion, intolerance and criminalisation, as PSPOs enable the prohibition of any type of behaviour perceived to negatively affect the quality of life.

Findings
Local councils in England and Wales now have unlimited and unregulated powers to control public spaces. The authors suggest that this has the potential to produce localised tolerance thresholds and civility agendas that currently target and further marginalise vulnerable people, and the authors highlight street sleeping homeless people as one such group.

Originality/value
There has been little academic debate on this topic. This paper raises a number of original, conceptual questions that provide an analytical framework for future empirical research. The authors also use original data from Freedom of Information requests to contextualise the discussions.

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Crime, insecurity and corruption: Considering the growth of urban private security

an article Jeff Garmany (King’s College London, UK) and Ana Paula Galdeano
(Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning, Brazil) published in Urban Studies Volume 55 Issue 5 April 2018

Abstract

We call into question the growing presence of private security companies (PSCs) in cities throughout the world. Though PSCs have grown enormously in recent decades, there exist few academic analyses to consider their broad-reaching effects.

Researchers still have much to understand about the relationships between PSCs and changing patterns of urban development, governance and public security. PSCs are prevalent in both the Global North and South, yet their presence is perhaps most intense in emerging countries, where social inequality is high and public security is tenuous.

As such, in this article we draw on specific examples from the city of São Paulo, Brazil, where demand is soaring for private security and PSCs operate in complicated networks between the state, private capital and organised crime.

Our analysis draws attention to the paradoxes of urban private security, beginning with the fact that public insecurity is in fact good for PSC business. By reflecting on existing published resources – and making connections across several disciplines – our goals in this article are threefold:

1. to highlight the need for more research on PSCs in urban settings;
2. to draw attention to the ways private security is changing urban space, and;
3. to suggest that the growth of PSCs, rather than being representative of increased public security, may in some cases coincide with rising levels of urban crime and insecurity.

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The politicisation of diversity planning in a global city: Lessons from London

an article by Mike Raco and Jamie Kesten (University College London, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 55 Issue 4 (2018)

Abstract

This paper explores the politics of diversity planning in one of Europe’s most socially and economically divided and globally oriented cities: London.

The analysis draws on Latour’s writings on modes of politicisation to examine the processes and practices that shape contemporary urban governance. It uses the example of diversity planning to examine the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of urban politics.

It shows that on the one hand diversity is represented in pragmatic, consensual and celebratory terms. Under prevailing conditions of contemporary global capitalism, the ‘what’ of diversity has been politicised into an agenda for labour market-building and the attraction of ‘talented’ individuals and foreign investment.

However, at the same time this celebratory rhetoric represents part of a wider effort to deflect political attention away from the socially and economically divisive impacts of global models of economic growth and physical development. There is little discussion of the ways in which planning frameworks, the ‘how’ of diversity policy, are helping to generate new separations in and beyond the city.

Moreover, despite claiming that policy is pragmatic and non-ideological, the paper shows how diversity narratives have become an integral part of broader political projects to orientate the city’s economy towards the needs of a relatively small cluster of powerful economic sectors.

The paper concludes with reflections on the recent impacts of the vote for Brexit and the election of an openly Muslim London Mayor. It also assesses the broader relevance of a Latourian framework for the analysis of contemporary urban politics.

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Accountability, governance and performance in UK charities

an article by Giulia Bellante, Laura Berardi,Eugenia Nissi and Michele A. Rea (G. D'Annunzio University, Pescara, Italy) and Silke Machold (University of Wolverhampton Business School, UK) published in International Journal of Business Performance Management Volume 19 Number 1 (2018)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between governance characteristics of a sample of 200 UK non-profit organisations (NPOs) and their performance, considered as their ability to collect financial resources. Using a regression analysis, we verify strong positive relationships between the NPOs financial performance and CEO duality and board size.

Further analyses show that if the charities increase their level of accountability through the use of additional voluntary disclosure mechanisms and tools such as the use of social networks, these relationships are confirmed.

The results of our research have implications for policy makers that seek to strengthen governance of NPOs, and for boards and managers of NPOs who wish to develop their organisations’ performance.

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Addressing food insecurity: a systemic innovation approach

an article by Sharon Zivkovic (University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, Australia) published in Social Enterprise Journal Volume 13 Issue 3 (2017)

Abstract

Purpose
This paper aims to question the utility of addressing food insecurity through food assistance programmes and by separating food security into pillars, and it argues for a systemic innovation and complexity approach. This is achieved by demonstrating that food insecurity is a wicked problem and therefore needs to be addressed holistically.

Design/methodology/approach
To establish that food insecurity is a wicked problem, characteristics of food insecurity are aligned to characteristics of wicked problems. The need to address wicked problems holistically through a systemic innovation approach and an understanding of complexity theory is discussed by referring to the literature. How to take such an approach for addressing food insecurity is illustrated by describing the use of an online tool that takes a systemic innovation and complexity approach.

Findings
Given food insecurity is a wicked problem and needs to be addressed holistically, the focus when addressing food insecurity should not be on programmes or pillars. Instead, it needs to be on increasing the coherence and building the adaptive capacity of food insecurity solution ecosystems.

Practical implications
This paper provides insights into the nature of food insecurity and how to address food insecurity.

Originality/value
For the first time, this paper aligns characteristics of food insecurity to characteristics of wicked problems and demonstrates how an online tool for systemic innovation can assist food insecurity solution ecosystems to address food insecurity.

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Infrastructure: why it is under provided and badly managed

an article by Dieter Helm (New College, Oxford, UK) and Colin Mayer (Saïd Business School, Oxford, UK) published in Oxford Review of Economic Policy Volume 32 Number 3 (2016

Abstract

The paper records the substantial deficiencies that exist in the design and implementation of infrastructure programmes around the world. It points to three sources of failure.

The first is a failure to recognize the systems nature of infrastructure and the implication of this for the appropriate tools of analysis that should be employed in infrastructure assessments.

The second is a preoccupation with income and expenditure flows rather than balance sheets in reporting public- as well as private-sector infrastructure accounts. This has had profound and in many cases perverse implications for the ownership, funding, and operation of infrastructure.

The third is inadequate governance of infrastructure programmes to overcome the significant commitment problems that afflict both private- and public-sector providers of infrastructure.

The paper describes a set of responses that recognize the systems nature of infrastructure, the importance of balance sheets, and the need for commitment mechanisms in the private and public sectors to promote the efficient provision of infrastructure.

JEL classification: H54

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Governance: public governance to social innovation?

an article by Andrew Massey (University of Exeter, UK) and Karen Johnston-Miller (Glasgow Caledonian University, UK)

published in Policy & Politics Volume 44 Number 4 (October 2016)

Abstract

This paper reviews governance and public governance related to an emerging area of policy interest – social innovation.

The European Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (2001) focused on openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence in public policy as characteristics of good governance. The EC has prioritised social innovation to address policy problems. Yet, the extant literature and research on social innovation is sparse.

The paper questions whether it is a new mode of governance which contributes to good governance or a continuum of neoliberal reforms of the state which alters the relationship between the state, market and civil society.

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The politics of quangocide

an article by Katharine and Matthew Flinders (University of Sheffield) published in Policy & Politics Volume 43 Number 1 (January 2015)

Abstract

This article returns to Christopher Hood’s influential work, The politics of quangocide, to examine the United Kingdom’s coalition government's approach to public bodies reform since May 2010. It combines theoretical-innovation and fresh empirical research to argue that the coalition has not simply engaged in quangocide, but has adopted a dual-track strategy based upon 'bureau-shuffling' and a focus on strengthening internal control rather than outright abolition.

This has significant international and comparative relevance due to the manner in which these findings resonate with broader 'post New Public Management' narratives of state restructuring.

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Economic place making: policy messages for European cities

an article by Michael Parkinson and Richard Meegan (Liverpool John Moores University, UK) published in Policy Studies Volume 34 Issue 3 (May 2013)

Abstract

The global recession, Eurozone crisis and austerity programmes have had a huge impact upon the European economy and present even greater future threats. They have sharpened debates about policies for recovery and the role that different territories can play in this. In this context in particular they have encouraged a debate about the economic contribution of capital and non-capital cities and whether countries perform better if they concentrate their investment in their capitals or spread investment across a wider set of cities.

Drawing on the findings of a recently completed study of European second-tier cities and a review of the academic and policy literature on local and regional economic development, the paper argues the case for a ‘place-based’ approach to support second-tier cities across Europe.

The key policy messages of this approach for policy-makers at national and European levels are highlighted.

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Strategic contextualisation: free movement, labour migration policies and the governance of foreign workers in Europe

an article by Regine Paul (Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, Universität Bremen, Germany) published in Policy Studies Volume 34 Issue 2 (2013)

Abstract

Heightened levels of internal labour mobility since the European Union (EU)’s Eastern enlargements in 2004 and 2007 have shifted the context for member state policies geared towards the admission of non-EU workers.

This article contends that the strategic use of the internal mobility régime by member states, as a justification for selective recruitment of labour from outside the EU, deserves more analytical attention.

This contribution examines how labour migration policies (LMP) in the United Kingdom, France and Germany make use of the EU free-movement framework in current legislation, and how associated policy rationales are justified.

In an interpretive policy analysis of legislative documents and decision-makers’ meaning-making, as related in semi-structured interviews, the article identifies the logics, tools and rationales which link LMP to EU free movement. These links are shown to be highly selective and they serve common as well as nationally distinct governance goals.

Across all three cases LMPs ascribe various degrees of relevance to EU internal labour supply, depending on the different skill levels of migrants targeted in respective policies. This shared pattern of economic coordination of LMP by skill level – in which the EU common labour market plays the role of delimiting additional migration in the skilled and especially low-skilled segments – is conflated with national migration control agendas.

Member states draw on EU free movement to justify migration restrictions targeted at specific sending countries. As a result, the governance of the foreign workforce produces skills- and origin-based privileges rather than granting rights to mobile migrant workers in Europe.

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Centrifugal schooling: third sector policy networks and the reassembling of curriculum policy in England

an article by Ben Williamson (University of Exeter, UK) published in Journal of Education Policy Volume 27 Issue 6 (November 2012)

Abstract

This article examines changes in curriculum policy in secondary education in England.

It is concerned with recent curriculum policy and reform, and the proliferation of non-government actors in curriculum policy creation.

It examines the emergence of a loose alliance of third sector organisations and their involvement in a series of alternative ‘curriculum experiments’.

The third sector curriculum policy network revolves around a policy vision of decentralisation constituted by public-private partnership, media-friendliness, social enterprise and an ‘open source’ or network-based organisational logic. It assembles a policy ideal of ‘centrifugal schooling’ which links together ideas about ‘networked governance’ with ‘flexible’ learning and ‘entrepreneurial’ curricula.

The article traces and discusses some of the inter-organisational relations, materials and discourses of the third sector network of alternative curriculum policy developments, and provides a case study of a prototypical third sector curriculum programme. It examines the organisational relations and practices by which the project was produced and the conditions leading to its failure.

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Life after Regions? The Evolution of City-regionalism in England

an article by John Harrison (Loughborough University, UK) published in Regional Studies Volume 46 Issue 9 (October 2012)

Abstract

This paper examines the evolving pattern of city-regional governance in England.

Following the demise of English regional policy in 2004, city-regions have come to represent the in vogue spatial scale amongst policy élites. The result has been a proliferation of actual and proposed policies and institutions designed to operate at a, variously defined, city-regional scale in England.

Nevertheless, attempts to build a city-regional tier of governance have been tentative and lacking coherence.

Alongside this, city-regions are to be found emerging alongside existing tiers of economic governance and spatial planning.

Arguing that what is being witnessed is not ‘life after regions’ but life with, or alongside, regions, the analysis presented argues that to understand why contemporary state reorganisation results in a multiplication of the scales of economic governance and spatial planning, it must be recognised how the state shapes policies in such a way as to protect its legitimacy in maintaining regulatory control and management of the economy.

The final section relates these findings to wider debates on state rescaling and speculates on the future role of transition models in sociospatial theory.

JEL classifications: O18, R10, R58

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Governance and Poverty Eradication: applying a gender and social institutions perspective

an article by Nicola Jones and Elizabeth Presler-Marshall (Overseas Development Institute, UK) published in Public Administration and Development Volume 32 Issue 4-5 (October-December 2012)

Summary

Recently, there has been growing attention to the need to include girls (and boys) more prominently in poverty reduction and development agendas.

How to do this effectively, however, remains an under-researched subject, especially in debates around chronic poverty, that is, the experience of severe, multidimensional poverty for an extended period of time.

Although the Chronic Poverty Research Centre has spotlighted the often overlooked social and non-income dimensions of poverty traps, including social discrimination and limited citizenship, in general scholarship has paid relatively limited attention to the interplay between gender, poverty reduction and governance institutions.

To address this lacuna, this article draws on recent research by the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and the Overseas Development Institute that highlights the key role context-specific social institutions play in informing and determining the life opportunities and agency of girls and young women. To more effectively address the governance challenges involved in tackling such deprivations, the article discusses three key measures that can support the eradication of gendered experiences of poverty:

• the importance of involving local community leaders,
• working with men and boys to raise awareness about girls’ and women’s rights, and
• promoting collective action and voice among girls and young women.

Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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