Suchergebnisse

"Ziel dieses Aufsatzes ist es, neuere Entwicklungen in den Beziehungen zwischen der zentralen Regierung und den Kommunen in Schweden zu beschreiben und zu analysieren. Es werden die Formen der aktuellen Dezentralisierungstrends beschrieben und eine Interpretation angeboten." Mit Blick auf verfassungsrechtliche, politische, finanzielle und professionelle Ressourcen wird gezeigt, "daß die kommunalen Regierungen als potentiell stark gesehen werden können. Als jedoch in den 80er Jahren mehrere Dezentralisierungs- und Deregulierungsprogramme durchgeführt wurden, stärkte die zentrale Regierung ihre finanzielle Kontrolle über die kommunalen Regierungen. Es wurde auch eine steigende Interdependenz zwischen Kommunalverwaltungsbehörden und privaten Institutionen festgestellt. Somit können die derzeitigen Beziehungen zwischen der zentralen und den kommunalen Regierungen auf folgende Formel gebracht werden: Zentralisierung (finanzieller) Macht, Dezentralisierung von Verantwortung." (psz)

Divergent conclusions have been drawn from research about whether or not local government in Sweden has become more independent of central government during the post-war expansion of the Swedish welfare state. By using a multi-dimensional resource perspective it is argued that local government could be viewed as potentially strong with regard to constitutional–legal, political, financial and professional resources. However, during the 1980s as several decentralist and deregulative programs were being implemented, central government strengthened its financial control over local government. An increasing interdependency between local government agencies and private institutions could also be observed. Thus, the current relations between central and local government in Sweden can be summarised in the formula: centralising (financial) power — decentralising responsibility.

Focuses on municipalities. Argues that recent decentralization serves to increase central state control over local government expenditure.

Studies on urban sustainability policy often analyse what it is, could or should be in terms of contents, objectives and rationale. Often neglected, however, is what sustainability discourse actually "does". For this article, we explored the function of sustainability discourse in a collaborative metropolitan governance process of 1998-2014 that resulted in an infrastructural strategy aiming for "sustainable growth" in the Gothenburg Metropolitan Area (GMA). We asked why sustainability had become a hegemonic concept in urban politics despite the paradoxical decoupling of objectives, outputs and outcomes from environmental protection and social equity in policy achievement. We argue that sustainability works as a vehicular idea that brings significant value to fragile governance arenas by functioning as a linguistic political mechanism with no essence other than the capability to attract positive affections for any coalition of actors with the power to mobilise others. In the GMA, sustainability served as a cohesive and mobilising discourse empowering a coalition of technoeconomic experts to "get things done" and make an unruly city region governable enough to develop infrastructure perceived as crucial for the advancement of economic-growth projects. ; QC 20170706

Thanks to Elinor Ostrom and associates we know a lot about what kind of mechanisms are important for facilitating collaboration among rational actors, especially in cases of dealing with scare natural resources. Still, theoretical frameworks and criteria's based on Rational Choice is not applicable on all cases of collective action and collaboration. Especially in cases of innovative collaboration, which are not problem-driven but goal-driven and when the interests of involved actors are not to be taken for granted, there is need for other theories. The proposed paper will empirically be based on two cases of collaborative innovations, which means that the collaborations in themselves were innovative and the outcome of the collaboration process also was innovative. The cases are interrelated as they took place in the same region (Göteborgsregionen). The first case is collaboration between civil servants from different public authorities and the outcome of the process was a strategy for doubling public transport in the urban region. The second case was a consultation process including almost all council politicians in all 13 municipalities in the urban region. This consultation was initiated by the GR and the outcome of the process was an agreement of a common vision for transport policy in the urban region ("strukturbilden"). In trying to understand why the collaboration was taken place and how it was possible for the collaborating actors to come up with innovative strategies three theoretical perspectives will be applied and further developed: meta-governance, micro-sociological dynamics and social learning, stemming from political science, ethnology and pedagogy. The first perspective will focus on steering strategies used by political and administrative leaders (cf. political framing and governing by proxy). The second perspective will be focused on participating actors sense-making and construction of projects and the third perspective will be focused on learning in dialogues. These three perspectives are ...