Governance, participation and in-between

Abstract

The article presents a comparison of practices through which non-institutional actors are included in governing processes in London, Madrid, Paris and Rome. Widespread concepts such as those of governance and participation are used here in a specific way to form an ideal-typical continuum of different kinds of inclusion. In each city the degree of consistency and complementarity among practices of governance and/or participation may result from an explicit and comprehensive policy of inclusion covering the entire city, based on a coherent strategy, or is explained by other factors. Convergences and differences between the four European metropolises are tentatively explained by analyzing the role played in each city by variables such as the orientation of policy agendas, the nature of urban political systems and changes affecting them, the institutional arrangement of local government, the strength of political leadership and its strategies for seeking consensus with economic interests and civil society as well as the exogenous pressures exerted by national and trans-national actors who provide local actors with cognitive and normative frameworks.