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Politics and performance:
The implications of emerging governance arrangements for urban management approaches and
information systems
Carole Rakodi
International Development Department,
School of Public Policy,
University of Birmingham, UK
1. Introduction
Use of the term governance implies that urban management is not the exclusive responsibility
of public sector agencies, but involves relationships between government and non-governmental
actors. First, the recent evolution of thinking and practice with respect to the
distribution of responsibilities for urban management is reviewed, focusing on political
arrangements and processes, decision making, accountability, relations between government
agencies and resource allocation. This is followed by a critical analysis of attempts to define
criteria by which the quality of urban governance arrangements and performance might be
judged. Finally, some implications of recent trends in urban governance for the development
and use of geographical information systems will be discussed.
2. From government to governance
To govern is to steer, guide, direct, control, regulate, influence or determine. In particular, it
is to rule with or exercise authority and to administer the affairs of a state. Government,
therefore, refers “.. to the formal institutional structure and location of authoritative decision
making” (Stoker 1998)(p.34), embracing the legislative and executive branches of the state
apparatus and those who control them (Hewison et al. 1993). Governance, in contrast, refers
to “.. the action, manner or system of governing in which the boundary between organisations
and public and private sectors has become permeable… The essence of governance is the
interactive relationship between and within government and non-governmental forces”
(Stoker 1998, p.38). It implies, Stoker asserts, joint action and thus a common purpose, a
shared framework of values and rules, continuous interaction, and the desire to achieve a
collective benefit which cannot be achieved by either acting separately. It is about
relationships between the state and ‘civil society’, rulers and the ruled, government and the
governed. It implies interdependence but does not prejudge the locus or character of real
decisional authority, instead being concerned to disentangle the relationships and practices
involved in governing (McCarney et al. 1995). Governance is about the way the power
structures of the day and ‘civil society’ inter-relate to produce a civic public realm (Swilling
1997). In many discussions of governance there is, however, considerable ambivalence over
how ‘civil society’ is constituted, in particular where the private sector, powerful individuals
or informal associational life fit in a conceptualisation of governance as the relationships
between the state and civil society.
Until the 1980s, the predominant assumption was that governments had the authority and
capacity to govern: to formulate and implement policy, and to realise development goals.
Translated into an urban context, the state-led approach to development implied that public
sector organisations could plan and manage urban development and the debate focused on an
appropriate allocation of roles and responsibilities between central and local government and
between the administrative departments of government and semi-autonomous public sector
agencies. The tasks urban government is expected to perform are similar everywhere (Davey
1996)(p.47):
- provide infrastructure for the efficient operation of cities
- provide services which develop human resources, improve productivity and raise the
standard of living of residents
- regulate private activities that affect community welfare and the health and safety of
the urban population
- provide services and facilities that support productive activities and allow private
enterprise to operate efficiently.
However, the organisational structure of urban government, the precise allocation of power
and responsibility between organisations and the capacity of public sector agencies to
perform these functions effectively vary.
Frequently, the effectiveness of urban government, judged in terms of its technical
competence, efficiency in the use of resources, financial viability, responsiveness to the needs
of urban growth, sensitivity to the needs of the urban poor and concern for environmental
protection was very limited. By the middle of the 1980s, the inefficiency of traditional
approaches to urban planning, under-performance by local government and failures of service
provision had in many places given rise to advocacy of a managerial rather than blueprint
planning or administrative approach to urban demands (Devas and Rakodi 1993). Although
the deficiencies of earlier approaches were explained in terms of the structure of public
agencies, the distribution of functions between them and problems in central-local relations,
as well as deficiencies in the internal organisation and management approaches of
government agencies and shortages of human and financial resources, the newer approaches
were still state-centred.
However, two changes were increasingly challenging the state-led view of urban
management. The first was the influence of neo-liberal economic thinking, expressed in the
macro-economic policies associated with structural adjustment and a desire to reduce the role
of the state to the minimum enabling functions necessary to support the operation of markets.
These ideas have strongly influenced thinking about appropriate approaches to urban
infrastructure and service provision.
The second was rooted in dissatisfaction with the ability of existing political systems to
respond to the views and needs of all social groups, whether in well-established systems of
representative democracy; formal democracies in which power is actually concentrated in the
hands of a few; or authoritarian, bureaucratic and one-party states. The emergence of broad
social movements, the proliferation of new forms of social organisation and demands for
increased political participation led to the dramatic (re-)democratisation of many
authoritarian regimes in the late 1980s and early 1990s, attempts to revitalise surviving
democracies (such as India), and a re-focusing of attention from formal political structures
and governments as the locus of decision making authority to the role of civil society in
exercising democratic rights and functions (Stoker 1998). Increasingly, the need for forms of
government that were less heavy-handed, inflexible and unsubtle than traditional forms were
recognised, underpinned by shifts in political ideology both on the right (freedom and
individual choice) and left (recognition of limitations to state capacity). Greater attention had
to be paid to civil society organisations and social movements, both because of the role they
had played in challenging undemocratic regimes and also because of the status many won for
themselves as a result in the new constitutions drawn up to accompany the restoration of
multi-party democracy, for example in Brazil, South Africa and the Philippines. Closely
associated with formal democratisation at the national level were calls for decentralisation,
based on the assumption that decentralised government is able to coordinate sectoral
activities, more knowledgeable about local conditions, more accountable to local populations
and so better able to match resources to local needs and priorities. In towns and cities,
recognition of the important role of non-state actors and civil society organisations in the
production and management of the urban built environment, filling gaps in state provision of
services, and holding formal democratic structures to account was coupled with renewed
attention to democratic decentralisation (Blair 2000; United Nations Centre for Human
Settlements 2001).
These challenges to traditional public sector approaches to urban government have had an
impact on various aspects of governance and management in the 1990s, including political
arrangements, decision making processes, ways of ensuring accountability, the allocation of
roles and responsibilities between public sector agencies and other potential services
providers and between different levels of government, and the mobilisation and allocation of
financial resources for urban development. These trends will be discussed in the remainder
of this section.
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