Developing Local Governance Networks In Europe

Developing Local Governance Networks in Europe

Governing Networks

Annotation The EGPA Yearbook provides an overall view of current scientific discussion concerning networks, particularly the governing of networks in European public administration. More than 30 presentations by researchers and practitioners of public administration in different European countries guarantee that the wide range of topics related to network governance, information technology, and also to other special issues of administrative and managerial reforms related to the subject is fully covered. The Yearbook deals with two main topics centred on governing and developing networks. In the first part, issues are related to different interpretations of networks involved in social policy reforms, administration-citizen-relationships, reforming governance models, public-private relations, also including health care, local governance and professional policy networks. In the second part networks are discussed from the perspective of information technology. Among several presentations, the authors analyse challenges and applications of new technology in public administration, ICT-networks in social networks, and also reforms and improvements of new technology. The accent is on how IT is bringing new patterns into the public administration of different countries. The Yearbook demonstrates that a discussion of networks is a rather new and fresh way of thinking about the role of public sector authorities in society, reforms of hierarchical structures in public agencies and e-governance applications at all levels of government.

Local Elites, Political Capital and Democratic Development

This book helps to understand in which ways local governing elites are important for the success or failure of national democratic development. Although we know a great deal about the general importance of civil society and social capital for the development of sustainable democracy, we still know little about what specific local governing qualities or political capital that interact with democratic development. The collected data covers time series of surveys from between 15 to 30 political and administrative leaders in over a hundred middle-sized European and Eurasian cities. The study takes us across the 1980s and 1990s, going from cities in Sweden and the Netherlands - through the Baltic cities - to the cities of Belarus and Russia. The findings show the importance of local political capital based on commitments to core democratic values, informal governance networks, and the significance of initially connecting the community to global, non-economic relationships.