THE RISK OF AUSTERITY CO‐PRODUCTION IN CITY‐REGIONAL GOVERNANCE IN ENGLAND

Victoria Habermehl,Beth Perry

doi:10.1111/1468-2427.13010

Abstract

AbstractThis article examines the risk of what we term ‘austerity co‐production’, a weak form of collaborative governance shaped by resource scarcity and fragmented, multiple forms of expertise. Despite the hope that co‐production has radical potential to solve governance challenges across city‐regions, not enough attention has been paid to the institutional contexts in which co‐production is developed. We argue this institutional context is crucial in shaping how co‐production comes to ground and the conditions it reproduces. We draw on a critical case study of metropolitan policymaking in Greater Manchester, England, to examine the gap between imagined and actual institutional contexts for co‐production. We develop a framework that can be applied in different policy areas to assess the potential implementation of co‐production in city‐regional governance. Whilst the promise of co‐production remains, we conclude that austerity co‐production risks operating as an already‐existing default solution to urban problems that constrains more innovative approaches to the governance and politics of the city‐region.

Highlights

Recent urban scholarship has focused on co-production’s radical potential (Chatterton et al, 2017) as a way to address long-standing urban governance failures (Davies, 2011)
We examine the distinctive context around devolution and austerity policies in England, before outlining the factors which constitute the risk of austerity co-production
What might co-production look like, produced under such conditions? We argue that the risk of austerity co-production is heightened by the dramatic reduced capacity and capabilities of metropolitan governance under conditions of austerity devolution

Summary

Introduction

We draw on a case study of spatial policymaking in Greater Manchester, England, in order to illustrate these risks in practice We ask how this understanding of existing institutional contexts modifies our assessment of the radical promise of co-production. The risk is of greater spatial differentiation and inequality (Waite et al, 2013) which presumes that cityregional authorities and councils can ‘earn autonomy’ if they follow the rules set down by central government (Tait and Inch, 2015), reflecting an ongoing strategy of ‘elite localism’ (Cochrane et al, 1996) The effect of these changes is to re-energise questions over forms of urban governance and decision making (Ayres et al, 2018). The object of our case study is not co-production per se, nor the content of the GMSF, but what the process reveals about the institutional conditions for policymaking in which the promise of co-production might land

Inclusive structures for participation and engagement?

Culture of epistemic diversity?

Findings

Actually existing institutional context