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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN
SUB-NATIONAL GOVERNANCE

Close Ties in European

Local Governance
Linking Local State and Society
Edited by
Filipe Teles
Adam Gendźwiłł
Cristina Stănuș
Hubert Heinelt
Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance

Series Editors
Linze Schaap
Tilburg University
Tilburg, The Netherlands

Jochen Franzke
University of Potsdam
Potsdam, Germany

Hanna Vakkala
University of Lapland
Rovaniemi, Finland

Filipe Teles
University of Aveiro
Aveiro, Portugal
This series explores the formal organisation of sub-national government
and democracy on the one hand, and the necessities and practices of
regions and cities on the other hand. In monographs, edited volumes and
Palgrave Pivots, the series will consider the future of territorial governance
and of territory-based democracy; the impact of hybrid forms of territorial
government and functional governance on the traditional institutions of
government and representative democracy and on public values; what
improvements are possible and effective in local and regional democracy;
and, what framework conditions can be developed to encourage minority
groups to participate in urban decision-making. Books in the series will
also examine ways of governance, from ‘network governance’ to ‘triple
helix governance’, from ‘quadruple’ governance to the potential of ‘mul-
tiple helix’ governance. The series will also focus on societal issues, for
instance global warming and sustainability, energy transition, economic
growth, labour market, urban and regional development, immigration
and integration, and transport, as well as on adaptation and learning in
sub-national government. The series favours comparative studies, and
especially volumes that compare international trends, themes, and devel-
opments, preferably with an interdisciplinary angle. Country-by-country
comparisons may also be included in this series, provided that they contain
solid comparative analyses.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15960
 Filipe Teles • Adam Gendźwiłł
Cristina Stănuș • Hubert Heinelt
Editors

Close Ties in
European Local
Governance
Linking Local State and Society
Editors
Filipe Teles Adam Gendźwiłł
Research Unit on Governance Department of Local Development
Competitiveness and Public Policies and Policy
Department of Social, Political and Faculty of Geography and
Territorial Sciences Regional Studies
University of Aveiro University of Warsaw
Aveiro, Portugal Warsaw, Poland

Cristina Stănuș Hubert Heinelt

Faculty of Social Sciences and Institute of Political Science
Humanities Technische Universität Darmstadt
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Darmstadt, Germany
Sibiu, Romania

ISSN 2523-8248     ISSN 2523-8256 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance
ISBN 978-3-030-44793-9    ISBN 978-3-030-44794-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44794-6

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 Preface

Why Did We Publish This Book?

We intend to deliver a readable and informative book, particularly useful
for those interested in local governance and in the role of institutionalized
networks between societal actors and local government. This book’s origi-
nalities lie in the comparability it allows and in the comprehensive infor-
mation it provides about these networks, which—despite their
relevance—have been less discussed.
It should be made clear, just at the beginning of this book, that it pres-
ents just results of a first step of a broader research project1 and that these
results will form the basis for a much more ambitious undertaking—
namely a survey of actors involved in networks representing local state-­
society relations in the countries from which project partners are involved.
As not all kinds of local state-society relations in these countries can be
covered by the planned survey, criteria for selecting some for each country
(between three and five per country) have to be defined. In the planned
survey the respondents will be recruited only from the networks described
in the country chapters of this book. The first criterion for the selection of
networks was (as already mentioned) that they are institutionalized. The
institutionalization can be done either by law (of upper levels of govern-
ment) or by contract of the involved partners.2 Furthermore, the focus
should be put on the networks which are of representative types: either
characterizing local state-society relations in a country by a particular form
or representing features which also other (similar) networks have.

v
vi PREFACE

Finally, networks of local state-society relations have to be character-

ized. This is not only crucial for this book to reflect on the patterns to be
found among the networks along or across countries and policy domains.
More importantly, characteristics of the networks have to be made clear
from which participants will be included in the survey. Such characteristics
are set out by a typology presented in Chap. 2 and are operationalized in
Chap. 3.3
The identification of different types of networks in the countries
included in the study will allow a robust comparison and analysis. Such
comparative reflections of the findings presented in the country chapters
will be offered in the concluding chapter. The comparative reflections deal
with a number of questions. Obvious questions are (a) whether or not
patterns of the identified types of networks can be detected, (b) whether
or not these patterns are country-specific or policy-specific, and if country-
specific patterns can be detached and (c) explained by the typology of
“national infrastructures” for local governance arrangements developed
by Sellers et al. (2020; see also Sellers and Kwak 2011 and Sellers and
Lidström 2014). Furthermore, there is the question why there are differ-
ences among countries also in networks which are substantially structured
by EU legislation—like the Local Action Groups (LAGs)4 of the LEADER5
funding scheme.

The Origin of the Book

This book originates from the work of a group of scholars organized into
the standing groups on Local Government and Politics (LOGOPOL) of
the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) or the European
Urban Research Association (EURA).
This group has carried out surveys since more than 20 years on actors
performing different roles within local government.6 The main aim of
these surveys has been to shed light on issues that cannot be specified
either by comparative analysis of the institutional set-up of local govern-
ment or by comparative case studies on individual cities in different coun-
tries—that is, issues like problem perceptions or attitudes toward the
administrative reforms of mayors, councilors, or high-ranking appointed
employees as well as their values, policy priorities, behavior, role defini-
tion, perception of self-influence, and role behavior, including leadership
style. Furthermore, little comparative information was available at the
 PREFACE vii

time on the social profile of these actors. The same applies to their notion
of democracy and whether and how it differs among countries, how dif-
ferences in their notions of democracy can be explained, and whether dif-
ferent notions of democracy matter for instance with respect to role
definition and role behavior or attitudes toward administrative reforms.
Moreover, no information was available to determine whether problem
perceptions and notions of democracy (a) differ among mayors, council-
ors, or high-ranking appointed employees as well as (b) among councilors
from different levels of local government (i.e. municipalities and the so-­
called second tier of local government, like counties, provinces, and
départements), and (c) whether they have changed over time. The interest
in these topics has been naturally extended to cover the non-state actors
involved in institutionalized networks of local state—society relations,
which are the subject of this project.
The composition of the academic network and the themes that it
addresses correspond to the current mixed configuration of “urban politi-
cal science,” namely the convergence among different approaches in polit-
ical science and sociology, as more or less explicitly illustrated in many of
the international assessments of the state of the art (e.g. Mossberger et al.
2012; Loughlin et al. 2010).
Several workshops were organized for the current study on local state-­
society relations. The first one took place in Bensheim (Germany) from
24th to 26 November 2017 to reflect conceptually on the interaction
between municipalities and societal actors and to consider if and how a
survey related to the actors involved in these interactions could be carried
out. A second workshop took place on the Greek island of Hydra between
10 and 13 May 2018. This workshop was focused on the planning of the
theoretical chapters as well as country chapters of this book. Furthermore,
the participants initiated the development of a questionnaire which will be
sent to actors involved in selected local state-society network. Both drafts
of book chapters and a draft of the questionnaire were discussed at a third
workshop, which took place in Aveiro (Portugal) on 6 and 7 March 2019.
A fourth workshop took place in Kaunas (Lithuania), on 14 and 15
November 2019, where the questionnaire for the survey was agreed
among the involved partners. The organization of these workshops and,
consequently, the development of this book were partially supported by a
small grant of the European Urban Research Association.
viii PREFACE

This volume is clearly a collective effort of a longstanding group of

scholars whose most recent contribution to this field of knowledge is
reflected in the following pages. The editors would also like to
acknowledge the significant number of other academics who volun-
tarily agreed to follow this endeavor, namely through their helpful and
valuable comments, suggestions, and blind review of every chapter of
this book.

Aveiro, Portugal Filipe Teles

Warsaw, Poland  Adam Gendźwiłł
Sibiu, Romania  Cristina Stănuş
Darmstadt, Germany  Hubert Heinelt

Notes
1. This research project receives no direct funding. Instead, the involved part-
ners mobilize and bring in own resources for the studies presented in this
book and for the planned survey. In those cases where there is/was indi-
vidual/national funding for developing research, it is acknowledged in the
respective chapter.
2. Without going further, we like to emphasize that we proceed from new-­
institutionalist approaches that are not just looking at “organisation fields”
(created by law or contracts) but also at “meaning systems” and the comple-
mentarities between the two (see Scott 1994: 57 ff. and 70–71). It is left to
the project partners to follow one of the different new-institutionalisms (see
Hall and Taylor 1996 as well as Schmidt 2010).
3. It must be emphasized that these characteristics are generalizations referring
to the country as a whole. This means that there can be local differences.
These differences (and their extent) can only be determined by the
planned survey.
4. More details about LAGs will be presented in various country chapters of
this book (see particularly the chapter on Spain).
5. The acronym corresponds to Liaisons Entre Activités de Developpement de
l’Economie Rural, that is, linking activities of rural economy development.
6. An overview about these surveys, their core questions and main findings, as
well as the publications which resulted out of them is given in Heinelt and
Magnier 2018 and Heinelt et al. 2018: 2–4.
 Preface  ix

References
Hall, P. A., & Taylor, R. C. R. (1996). Political Science and the Three New
Institutionalisms. Political Studies, 44(5), 936–957.
Heinelt, H., & Magnier, A. (2018). Analysing Governance Through Local
Leaders’ Perceptions: Comparative Surveys, Academic Networks, and Main
Results. Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 46(1), 157–172.
Heinelt, H., Magnier, A, Cabria, M, & Reynaert, H. (2018). Introduction. In
H. Heinelt, A. Magnier, M. Cabria, & H. Reynaert (Eds.), Political Leaders
and Changing Local Democracy: The European Mayor (pp. 1–17). Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Loughlin, J., Hendriks, F., & Lidström, A (Eds.). (2012). The Oxford Handbook
of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mossberger, K., Clarke, S. E., & John, P. (2012). Studying Politics in an Urban
World: Research Traditions and New Directions. In K. Mossberger, S. E. Clarke,
& P. John (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Urban Politics (pp. 2–8). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Schmidt, V.A. (2010). Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously: Explaining Change
through Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth ‘New Institutionalism’.
European Political Science Review, 2(1), 1–25.
Scott, R. W. (1994). Institutions and Organizations: Towards a Theoretical
Synthesis. In R. W. Scott & J. W. Meyer (Eds.), Institutional Environment and
Organizations. Structural Complexity and Individualism (pp. 55–80).
Thousand Oaks, London, and New Delhi: Sage.
Sellers, J. M., & Kwak, S.-Y. (2011). State and Society in Local Governance:
Lessons from a Multilevel Comparison. International Journal of Urban and
Regional Research, 35(3), 620–643.
Sellers, J. M., & Lidström, A. (2014). Multilevel Democracy, Societal Organization
and the Development of the Modern State. Paper Prepared for Presentation at the
23 Nordic Local Government Conference, Odense 27–29 November 2014.
Sellers, J., Lidström, A., & Bae, Y. (2020). Multilevel Democracy: How Local
Institutions and Civil Society Shape the Modern State. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
 Praise for Close Ties in European Local Governance

“This edited volume on local state-society relations is the result of an ambitious

comparative research project. In focus for the book are intermediate structures
between local authorities and actors and stakeholders in the local community in
European countries. The country chapters are structured according to a theoreti-
cal framework developed by the authors that leads to a typology for describing the
structures sampled for each country according to the autonomy, cohesion and
effectiveness of the networks and institutions. This book is recommended for stu-
dents and scholars in governance and local government studies.”
—Henry Bäck, Emeritus Professor of Public Administration, Gothenburg
University, Sweden

“A book on local state-society relations fills a most important gap in the literature
on, and understanding of local politics and policy-making. The systematic and
comparative approach, and the scope of the book (22 European countries) means
that theory-building in the field may proceed on much firmer ground than before
since previous contributions have often been case studies or single-country studies.
The typology of municipal-­society relations that guide the country studies included
in this book will remain a benchmark in the field in the years to come.”
—Harald Baldersheim, Professor Emeritus in Political Science,
University of Oslo, Norway

“This book is about analyzing, measuring, explaining local state-society networks

in more than 20 European countries from Austria to Britain, Greece or Poland.
This books goes convincingly beyond national typologies to emphasise the role of
agency and innovation in particular policy sectors. A major contribution to grasp
the local governance of Europe.”
—Patrick Le Galès, CNRS Research Professor of Sociology and Politics,
Science Po, Paris, France
 Contents

1 Interactions of Societal Actors and Local Government

in Institutionalized Governance Arrangements:
The Book’s Scope and Content  1
Filipe Teles, Adam Gendźwiłł, Cristina Stănuş,
and Hubert Heinelt

2 Diversity in Local State-Society Relations: A Typology to

Grasp Differences in Institutional Networks 13
Filipe Teles

3 How to Measure the Autonomy, Coherence and Relevance

of Local State-Society Relations 31
Björn Egner, Hubert Heinelt, and Detlef Sack

4 Local State-Society Relations in Austria 39

Werner Pleschberger

5 Local State–Society Relations in Flanders (Belgium) 55

Koenraad De Ceuninck and Tom Verhelst

6 Local State–Society Relations in Croatia 73

Ivan Koprić, Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović,
Romea Manojlović Toman, Dario Čepo,
and Sunčana Slijepčević

xiii
xiv Contents

7 Local State-Society Relations in the Czech Republic 91

Jakub Lysek and Dan Ryšavý

8 Local State-Society Relations in England105

Alistair Jones and Colin Copus

9 Local State-Society Relations in Finland117

Linnéa Henriksson

10 Local State-Society Relations in France133

Deborah Galimberti

11 Local State-Society Relations in Germany149

Björn Egner, Hubert Heinelt, and Detlef Sack

12 Local State-Society Relations in Greece165

Panagiotis Getimis

13 Local State–Society Relations in Iceland181

Grétar Þór Eyþórsson and Eva Marín Hlynsdóttir

14 Local State-Society Relations in Ireland195

Paula Russell

15 Local State-Society Relations in Italy215

Annick Magnier and Marcello Cabria

16 Local State-Society Relations in Latvia231

Iveta Reinholde, Inese Ā boliņa, and Malvine Stučka

17 Local State-Society Relations in Lithuania243

Jurga Bučaitė-Vilkė and Aistė Lazauskienė

18 Local State-Society Relations in the Netherlands259

Hans Vollaard
 Contents  xv

19 Local State-Society Relations in Norway275

Karin Fossheim

20 Local State–Society Relations in Poland289

Adam Gendźwiłł, Joanna Krukowska, and Paweł Swianiewicz

21 Local State-Society Relations in Portugal303

Luís Mota, Patrícia Silva, and Filipe Teles

22 Local State-Society Relations in Romania319

Cristina Stănuș and Daniel Pop

23 Local State-Society Relations in Spain337

Carmen Navarro and Lluis Medir

24 Local State-Society Relations in Sweden353

Anders Lidström and David Feltenius

25 Local State-Society Relations in Switzerland367

Oliver Dlabac

26 Local State-Society Relations in European Countries:

Main Findings379
Hubert Heinelt, Filipe Teles, Adam Gendźwiłł,
and Cristina Stănuş

Index423
 Notes on Contributors

Inese Ā boliņ a is Deputy Executive Director and a lecturer of the Faculty

of Social Sciences at the University of Latvia, Latvia. She received her
Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Latvia. Her Ph.D. thesis
focused on public administration aspect of presidential vetoes and
leadership in decision-making within the political governance in Latvia.
Her research interests include political leadership, decision-­making, gov-
ernance, network governance, and the formation of democracy.
Dubravka Jurlina Alibegović is a senior research fellow and the Head of
the Department for Regional Economics at the Institute of Economics,
Zagreb, Croatia. Her main research topics are local public finance, fiscal
decentralization, intergovernmental fiscal relations, and local development.
Jurga Bučaitė-Vilkė is an associate professor in the Department of
Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vytautas Magnus University,
Lithuania. Her research focuses on participatory democracy, local gover-
nance, and local social welfare policies. She has been involved in several
research projects on local governance, community participation, and ter-
ritorial welfare policies. She also works as an external expert for the
Research Council of Lithuania.
Marcello Cabria is a Ph.D. candidate in a joint program between the
University of Florence, Department of Social and Political Sciences, and
the University of Turin, Department of Cultures, Politics and Society,
Italy. His research interests are currently focused on local development.

xvii
xviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Dario Č epo is an assistant professor at the Chair of Sociology, Faculty

of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia. His main research interests are
legislative institutions, the European Union, and conservative social
movements.
Koenraad De Ceuninck is Assistant Professor of Local Politics at the
Centre for Local Politics, Ghent University, Belgium. His main research
areas are scale and local government, reforms of local government, munic-
ipal amalgamations, and inter-municipal cooperation.
Colin Copus is Emeritus Professor of Local Politics at De Montfort
University, UK, and a visiting professor at Ghent University, Belgium. His
main research interests are local party politics, the constitutional status of
local government, and the developing role of the councilor. He has
extensive experience as an academic advisor to government and policy
bodies: Communities and local Government Committee of the House
of Commons on the role of the councilor, All Party Parliamentary
Group for District Councils, All Party Parliamentary Group on Local
Democracy, Chair of the Local Government Association, National
Association of Local Councils, Committee on Standards in Public
Life Inquiry into Standards in Local Government, Council of Europe,
Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Localis (not-for-profit,
neo-localist think-tank), Association of Democratic Service Officers,
and Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the House of
Commons.
Oliver Dlabac is a senior researcher at the Centre for Democracy Studies
Aarau, University of Zurich, Switzerland. He leads the research group on
local democracy and teaches on decentralization. He is interested
in local and regional democracy in Switzerland and in comparative
perspective, including issues of laymen organization, administrative
reforms, urban planning, housing policy, school governance, metro-
politan governance, and state rescaling.
Björn Egner is an adjunct professor at the Institute of Political Science,
Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany. He chairs the research group
“Methodology and Philosophy of Science” at the institute. His
research interests include local politics, quantitative methodology,
and policy analysis, especially housing policy and fiscal policy.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xix

Grétar Þór Eyþórsson is Professor of Government and Methodology at

the University of Akureyri, Iceland (2008). He was Director of the
University of Akureyri Research Institute and the Icelandic Institute for
Regional Policy Research (2001–2005), Director of Bifröst University
Research Centre (2005–2008), and a professor at Bifröst University
(2005–2008). His research has, for long, been local government and
politics—especially territorial reforms. Further, he has done research
related to regional and rural development and politics. He was a
board member of Nordregio (Nordic and European research center for
regional development and planning) in 2002–2007 and is since 2009 the
contact point (ECP) for Iceland in ESPON (European Territorial
Observatory Network).
David Feltenius is an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science, Umeå University, Sweden. In addition to studies of civil society,
his research focuses on marketization and the welfare state, central-local
government relations, and territorial politics. Recent publications include
an article on civil society and marketization in the Journal of Civil
Society (with Jessika Wide, Vol. 15, 2019, No. 3), as well as a chapter
on subnational government in a multilevel perspective in the Oxford
Handbook of Swedish Politics (ed. Jon Pierre). He is working on a
research project focusing on public providers of elderly care in a mar-
ketized welfare state, financed by the Swedish Research Council for
Health, Working Life and Welfare (FORTE).
Karin Fossheim is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political
Science, University of Oslo, Norway. She is also a research political scien-
tist at the Norwegian Institute of Transport Economics (TØI). Her
research includes local government, governance networks, urban develop-
ment, democratic governance, and political representation.
Deborah Galimberti holds a Ph.D. in Political Science and in European
Urban and Local Studies. She has been teaching and researching in France
for ten years before joining the Department of Political and Social Science
at the University of Florence, Italy, as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research
Fellow in 2018. Her research interests include comparative territorial poli-
tics and policies in Europe, local development and governance, as
well as more broadly political economy and sociology.
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Adam Gendźwiłł is Assistant Professor of Political Sociology in the

Department of Local Development and Policy at the University of Warsaw,
Poland. His research interests comprise local politics, electoral studies, and
party politics. He is also interested in research design and methodology of
social research.
Panagiotis Getimis was Professor of Urban and Regional Policies in the
Department of Economics and Regional Development at the Panteion
University of Political and Social Sciences, Greece. His research focuses on
local government studies, local and regional development, metropolitan
governance, and spatial planning.
Hubert Heinelt is Professor of Public Administration, Public Policy, and
Urban Research at the Institute of Political Science, Technische Universität
Darmstadt, Germany. Between 2010 and 2013 he was the president of the
European Urban Research Association (EURA). His research covers vari-
ous policies (particularly labor market, environment, climate policy) in
multilevel systems. Furthermore, he is interested in how the shift from
government to governance can be turned into a participatory form meet-
ing standards of democratic self-determination.
Linnéa Henriksson is a university teacher in the Department of Public
Administration at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She is interested in local
politics and local politicians, roles and representation, municipal service pro-
duction and privatization thereof, and implementing bilingual administration.
She is the chair of NORKOM (Nordiska Kommunforskningsföreningen, the
Nordic Municipal Research Association).
Eva Marín Hlynsdóttir is Associate Professor of Public Policy and
Governance at the University of Iceland, Iceland. In her research she has
focused on local government and public administration from a broad per-
spective including issues such as local leadership and horizontal power
relations at the local level as well as central-local relations.
Alistair Jones is Associate Professor of Politics and a university teacher
fellow at De Montfort University, UK. His main research interests are on
parish councils in England, and on Britain’s relationship with the EU. Jones
has written several textbooks, including Britain and the European Union
(2007) and Contemporary British Politics and Government (2002). He is
frequently in the local, national, and international media commenting on
a range of issues in relation to British politics.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

Ivan Koprić is Professor of Administrative Science and Local Governance

at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb; president of the Institute of
Public Administration in Zagreb, Croatia; and the editor-in-chief of
Croatian and Comparative Public Administration. His current work is
focused on administrative reforms at the central and local levels and
their evaluation, European Administrative Space in multilevel con-
text, and improving local democracy.
Joanna Krukowska is an assistant professor in the Department of Local
Development and Policy, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies,
University of Warsaw, Poland. Her research interests are in local and
regional policies. She particularly focuses on development policies, urban
management, and political leadership.
Aistė Lazauskienė is an associate professor in the Department of Public
Administration, Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy, Vytautas
Magnus University, Lithuania. She is an ordinary member of the Group of
Independent Experts at the Congress of Local and Regional
Authorities at the Council of Europe. Her focus in research is cur-
rently on local politics and Lithuanian local government reforms.
Anders Lidström is Professor of Political Science in the Department of
Political Science at Umeå University, Sweden. He specializes in local,
regional, and urban democracy and governance, and he was the convener
of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) standing
group on local government and politics 2010–2016. Recent publications
include Multilevel Democracy: How Local Institutions and Civil Society
Shape the Modern State (with Jefferey Sellers and Yooil Bae), 2020, and a
special issue of the Journal of Urban Affairs on ‘The Citizens in City-­
Regions’ (No 1, 2018, edited with Linze Schaap).
Jakub Lysek is an assistant professor in the Department of Political
Science at the Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. His research
focuses on voting behavior, elections, local governance, and quantitative
methods in social sciences. His work has been published in journals
such as Electoral Studies, Government and Opposition, and Lex localis—
Journal of Local Self-Government.
Annick Magnier holds the Jean Monnet Chair “The City in European
Integration” in the Department of Political and Social Science, University
of Florence, Italy. As an urban sociologist, her research activity has been
xxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

mainly dedicated to comparative analyses of local leadership and their

recruitment and values. Her focus in research is currently on local spatial
policies and planning systems.
Lluis Medir is an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science at the University of Barcelona, Spain. He belongs to the research
group on local government at the same university (www.ub.edu/grel),
and his research interests include local government, intergovernmental
relations, and public policies at the local level.
Luís Mota is invited assistant professor at the University of Aveiro,
Portugal, and a researcher at its Research Unit on Governance,
Competitiveness and Public Policies (GOVCOPP-UA). He holds a
Ph.D. in Public Administration and his research interests are public gover-
nance reforms, network governance, policy process, and local governance.
He is developing a post-doctoral project on Local Governance
Modernization, financed by the Foundation for Science and
Technology (SFRH/BPD/115117/2016).
Carmen Navarro is an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science and International Relations, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid,
Spain, where she teaches public policy and local government undergradu-
ate and graduate courses. Her research interests are local democracy, local
public policies, local government institutions, and local political leadership.
Werner Pleschberger has been an associate professor at BOKU University
of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, from 1999 to 2015. His
main research interests concern local politics, and he has been a three-­
times titleholder of a European module grant funded from the Jean
Monnet Action of EU. He is working as an independent consultant (non-­
research work) for companies and political organizations.
Daniel Pop is based at the Ethnocultural Diversity Resource Center in
Cluj, from where he leads the Education Support Programmes of the Open
Society Foundations. There, he leads policy research initiatives and efforts to
build networks of commitment and strengthen new forms of civic activism.
Iveta Reinholde is an associate professor in the Department of Political
Science at the University of Latvia, Latvia. Her main interests are admin-
istrative reform at local and national levels. Her focus in research is cur-
rently on urban governance and multilevel governance. She is a member
of the Group of Independent Experts at the Congress of Local and
Regional Authorities at the Council of Europe.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxiii

Paula Russell is an assistant professor and Director of Graduate Studies

in the School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy,
University College Dublin, Ireland. Her main area of research relates
to the role of civil society in the planning process, looking at issues of
engagement and influence. She is a member of the governing board
of the European Urban Research Association (EURA) and is an asso-
ciate editor of the journal Urban Research and Practice.
Dan Ryšavý is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology,
Andragogy and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, Palacký University
Olomouc, the Czech Republic. As a sociologist, his main research
interests concern to local and subnational governments, their politi-
cal representatives and currently to local government responses to
urban housing affordability crisis.
Detlef Sack is Professor of Comparative Politics at the Faculty of
Sociology, University of Bielefeld, Germany. He is interested in public
policy and governance. His research covers various policies (particularly
economic, regional, transport, energy policy as well as home and jus-
tice affairs) and interest associations (in particular Chambers of
Commerce, Organized Business). He is interested in institutional
change and comparative policy analysis.
Patrícia Silva holds a Ph.D. in Political Sciences. She is a researcher at
the Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies Research Centre,
the University of Aveiro, Portugal, and was granted a Scientific
Employment Stimulus Contract by the Foundation for Science and
Technology (grant number CEECIND/04550/2017). Her main
research interests are political parties, the politicization of the recruitment
of appointed elites, territorial governance, and local public-­sector reform.
Her research has been published in international journals—with the most
recent articles published in Public Administration and the International
Review of Administrative Sciences—and chapters of books by national and
international publishers.
Sunčana Slijepčević is a senior research associate in the Department for
Regional Economics at the Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia. Her
main research topics are economics of public sector and local ­development,
with specific focus on financial issues, efficiency, productivity, and
competition.
xxiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Cristina Stănuș is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lucian

Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania, where she teaches courses on gover-
nance, policy analysis, and research methodology. Her research interests
focus on the study of Romanian local government and politics in a com-
parative context and the governance of public service delivery. She is a
member of the Governing Board of the European Urban Research
Association.
Malvine Stučka is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Political Sciences
at the University of Latvia, Latvia. Her research is centered on political
leadership in local governments. She has received both Bachelor’s and
Master’s degree in Political Science with a public administration focus. In
addition, she has experience in analyzing policies introduced in local
governments.
Paweł Swianiewicz is Professor of Economics at University of Warsaw,
Poland, and leads the Department of Local Development and Policy at the
Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies. Between 2005 and 2010 he
was the president of the European Urban Research Association (EURA).
His teaching and research focus on local politics, local government
finance, and territorial organization. Most of his empirical research
focuses on Poland, but also on comparative studies of decentraliza-
tion in Central and Eastern Europe.
Filipe Teles holds a Ph.D. in Political Sciences and teaches courses in the
field of comparative local governance. He is acting as Pro-rector for
Regional Development and Urban Policies at the University of Aveiro,
Portugal. He is a member of the Research Unit on Governance,
Competitiveness and Public Policy (GOVCOPP), where he has devel-
oped research work on governance and local administration, territo-
rial reforms, and political leadership. He is a member of the Governing
Board of the European Urban Research Association (EURA) and of
the Steering Committee of the standing group on Local Government and
Politics of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR).
Romea Manojlović Toman is an assistant professor at the Chair of
Administrative Science, Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
Her research interests are public management, human resources manage-
ment, and citizens’ participation.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxv

Tom Verhelst is Assistant Professor of Local Politics at the Centre for

Local Politics, Ghent University, Belgium, and a postdoctoral research fel-
low at the Department of Political Science, Maastricht University, the
Netherlands. His research focuses on the Europeanization of local
government (with a particular interest for the regulatory mobiliza-
tion of local government in EU decision-making processes) and on
the role and position of the local council in Belgium and the
Netherlands (with a particular interest for council scrutiny).
Hans Vollaard is Lecturer in Dutch and European Politics at the Utrecht
University, School of Governance, the Netherlands. In the area of
European politics, he has written on European disintegration,
Euroscepticism in the Netherlands, and the implementation of EU health-
care law. His work on Dutch politics concentrates on local councils, pro-
vincial councils, and non-elected representatives.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Grid-group cultural types 22

Fig. 2.2 Typology of local state-society networks 27
Fig. 3.1 Measurements of the three dimensions and their relation
to the types of networks distinguished by Teles 36

xxvii
 List of Tables

Table 26.1 Means for autonomy, coherence and relevance by network

type distinguished by Teles 382
Table 26.2 Means for autonomy, coherence and relevance by network
and country 383
Table 26.3 Types of network by country 385
Table 26.4 Means for autonomy, coherence and relevance by type of
national infrastructure of local state-society relations 387
Table 26.5 Means for autonomy, coherence and relevance by network
and policy field 390
Table 26.6 Type of network by policy field 392
Table 26.7 Type of network characterizing Local Action Groups by
country393
Table 26.8 Functions and power of network by policy field 398
Table 26.9 Networks of local state-society relations by country and the
dimensions of the typology and indicators for
characterizing the networks 411
Table 26.10 Networks of local state-society relations by country and
(selected) policy field 414

xxix
 CHAPTER 1

Interactions of Societal Actors and Local

Government in Institutionalized Governance
Arrangements: The Book’s Scope
and Content

Filipe Teles, Adam Gendźwiłł, Cristina Stănuş,

and Hubert Heinelt

Interactions of societal actors in institutionalized governance networks

with local government are one of the most common features of contempo-
rary local governance. The multiple and diverse forms it can take provide
relevant clues concerning different roles of local government in Europe,

F. Teles (*)
Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies,
Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, University of Aveiro,
Aveiro, Portugal
e-mail: filipe.teles@ua.pt
A. Gendźwiłł
Department of Local Development and Policy, Faculty of Geography and
Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland
e-mail: a.gendzwill@uw.edu.pl

© The Author(s) 2021 1

F. Teles et al. (eds.), Close Ties in European Local Governance,
Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44794-6_1
2 F. TELES ET AL.

administrative, civic and political cultures, governance arrangements,

decentralization processes, state–society relations, local practices in interest
intermediation and political action. Comparative studies on this topic pro-
viding an in-depth analysis of institutionalized governance networks
are needed.
The book will provide an understanding of the types of networks in a
large number of European countries, their formal differences and partly
also the motives for their creation. Given the comprehensiveness of sub-
jects, dimensions, historical and political events to cover, this book will
proceed by selecting the most relevant topics to address and identifying
reasonable arguments in order to classify these differences between
European countries but also policy domains. The comparative lessons and
implications are particularly interesting not only for the scholarly debate
but also for political practice. These are useful for those pursuing this
debate and implementing similar agendas: local government associations,
local authorities and professionals.
This book is focused on relations between (a) individual and collective
or corporate societal actors and (b) municipalities, that is, the first tier of
local government with a directly elected representative body as the crucial
organ for taking binding decisions. This clarification might be necessary
for readers who—due to particular circumstances in their countries—
would probably look at this phenomenon from a legal perspective and
regard local government not as a level of statehood but as means of self-­
administration and, in this sense, as part of the executive branch of a state.
In this book, organized interests—ranging from chambers of com-
merce and industry and so on to differently organized associations with
various kinds of membership (from enterprises to elderly people)—as well
as individuals engaged in the policy process are regarded as societal actors.

C. Stănuş
Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities,
Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania
e-mail: cristina.stanus@ulbsibiu.ro
H. Heinelt
Institute of Political Science, Technische Universität Darmstadt,
Darmstadt, Germany
e-mail: hubert.heinelt@tu-darmstadt.de
 1 INTERACTIONS OF SOCIETAL ACTORS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT… 3

The focus on the municipal level of local government means that we

will consider local representatives of state (national or sub-national)
authorities or agencies only in cases where they are interacting with soci-
etal actors when representatives of municipalities are also involved. The
focus on the local level also means that there are numerous cases of net-
works of each type and that the networks’ institutional design is adapted
locally.
The book concentrates on institutionalized interactions between repre-
sentatives of municipalities (mayors, councilors and members of the
municipal administration) and societal actors. Consequently, those munic-
ipal committees which consist only of councilors who occasionally ask
societal actors and experts for their opinion will not be considered.
Some local state-society relations have developed in the field of inter-­
municipal cooperation or reach beyond the border of just one municipal-
ity. These forms of organized interest intermediation at the inter-municipal
level will be considered as well. However, as will be shown by the country
chapters, most of the forms of local state-society relations considered here
are located within the boundaries of one municipality.
The question of the size of the municipalities under study is defined
precisely: Municipalities of all sizes should be included—providing institu-
tionalized interactions between representatives of municipalities and soci-
etal actors exist. However, actually the number of smaller municipalities
considered has been limited because, particularly in countries with two
tiers of local government (municipalities on the one hand and counties,
provinces, etc. on the other), some forms of local state-society relations
are located at the second tier of local government. In these countries, only
‘cities with county status’, ‘kreisfreie Städte’, ‘unitary local authorities’
and so on which combine the competencies of both tiers of local govern-
ment have been considered. These are usually urban centers and munici-
palities with a larger number of inhabitants.

Organized Interests and Their Interaction

with Local Government—And the Question of How
Democracy Is Understood
Although individual actors will also be considered as part of institutional-
ized interactions between representatives of municipalities and societal
actors, empirically the latter are usually collective and corporate actors (in
4 F. TELES ET AL.

the sense outlined in Sect. “Measuring the Coherence of Societal Actors”

of Chap. 3 in this book). This implies that we are ultimately dealing with
organized interests and how they interact with local government in inter-
est intermediation, decision making and partly also the implementation of
decisions. Interest intermediation within interest organization and
between them and government has been a ‘traditional’ topic of debates in
political science for decades (for an overview, see Schneider and Grote
2006 or the contributions in Petracca 1992). The topic has been exam-
ined by proponents of pluralism, neo-corporatism and the policy-network
approach. However, these debates have been focused mainly on societal
processes at large and the national level of political systems. As will be
discussed in greater detail in the next section of this chapter, these debates
have dealt only marginally with policy making at the local level (as already
argued by Cawson 1985). Nevertheless, some ideas developed in these
debates were considered as starting points for the work carried out so far
by the authors of the contributions to this book—as will be outlined in the
following section.
However, one issue in the debates among proponents of pluralism,
neo-corporatism and the policy-network approach, as well as those of gov-
ernance, has served as a starting point for the common work presented in
the book—namely the relationship between organized interest and
democracy or, more precisely, the understanding of democracy.
Particularly proponents of neo-corporatism, but also those interested in
policy-networks and governance arrangements as empirical phenomena,
are in danger of not being critical enough to recognize the ‘democratic
deficits’ and limitations of citizen participation as a core element of democ-
racy in their objects of investigation (for this criticism see, for instance,
Dahl 1994; Bekkers et al. 2007). This danger has been emphasized in
scholarly as well as political debates against the background that nowadays
political systems in the ‘Western World’ have been characterized as a ‘post-­
democracy’ resulting from the complexity of modern society (Zolo 1992)
and are sometimes considered as a ‘crisis of egalitarian politics and the
trivialization of democracy’ (Crouch 2004: 6).
Nevertheless, the authors of the contributions to this book agree that a
democratic political system has to ensure ‘a degree of participation so
great and so fairly spread about that no one feels neglected and everyone
feels, with justice, that his viewpoint has been pretty fairly attended to’
(Dahl 1971: 112). However, they also agree with the dictum of Schmitter
(1993: 4) that a democratic political system is not to be conceived of as
one ‘regime’ ‘but as a composite of “partial regimes”’ because it consists
 1 INTERACTIONS OF SOCIETAL ACTORS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT… 5

of a complex web of various forms of participation. This also means that in

a democratic political system ‘citizenship, its most distinctive property, is
not confined to voting periodically in elections. It can also be exercised by
[—] joining associations or movements, petitioning authorities, engaging
in “unconventional” protest, and so forth’ (Schmitter 1993: 4). To put it
precisely, in this book we are not focused on the use of ‘citizenship […]
confined to voting periodically in elections’ but on its exercise ‘by […]
joining associations or movements’ and engaging in what is called ‘func-
tional interest representation’.1 In this sense, we are looking beyond a
‘thin’ liberal (or representative) democracy (as Barber 1984 called it) to a
(broader) participatory democracy.2

Studies on the Relations Between Local Government

and Societal Actors: What Has Been Achieved? What
Is Missing? What Could Be Helpful for Closing
the Research Gap?

Much has been written about local governance in the sense of governing
a city beyond city hall (or: Who [really] governs the city?). However, most
of it has been focused on single case studies or, at best, comparative case
studies. The focus on case studies can be explained because it is taken for
granted that ‘city matters’ (see Boddy and Parkinson 2004). This assump-
tion is based on the fact that the relevance of space and ‘locality’ has been
emphasized at least since the 1980s (see Gregory and Urry 1985; Savage
et al. 1987). In this scholarly debate, place-specific and sometimes histori-
cally rooted circumstances are often invoked to explain local differences in
the relations between city hall and societal actors (see, for instance,
Goodwin and Duncan 1986).
Nevertheless, these differences between cities or the distinctiveness of a
single city have been explained in line with more general approaches and
research interests. This particular attention to the local context should be
taken into account and considered as a useful building block for further
research—particularly with regard to the planned survey and the studies
which will be based on it.
This applies, for instance, to different versions of interest theory (i.e.
either from neo-Marxist positions or by referring to rational-choice mod-
els). They played and still play a role in the debate about ‘urban regimes’
(see Elkin 1987; Stone 1989, 2004a, 2004b and with a critical perspective
Davies 2002, 2003, 2004; Imbroscio 2003, 2004; Pierre 2005).
Furthermore, ideas have also gained attention in the context of case
6 F. TELES ET AL.

studies as hegemonic frames for forming and stabilizing coalitions and

guiding ‘city choices’. One such choice is, for instance, the one to turn the
city, in a collaboration between local government and societal actors
(mainly from the business sector), into a ‘growth machine’ (Molotch
1976; Logan and Molotch 1987). In a similar way, ideas about different
paths (and how they are guided) taken by cities in the post-Fordist era
(Halford et al. 1993; Jessop 1997) have received attention in the debate
(inspired by the French regulation school of thought and neo-Gramscian
approaches). Finally, it must be remembered that the ‘community power’
debate was based on case studies which started with the seminal studies of
Floyd Hunter (1953) on Atlanta and of Robert Dahl (1961) on New
Haven. However, although the ‘community power’ debate was based on
case studies of individual cities, its focus was more general—namely on the
question of power in society. This becomes clear in the results of this
debate, in which power has been understood not just as the ability of
actors to dominate decisions (Dahl 1957), but as the structuring logic of
communication that enables certain issues to attract public attention while
others are kept off the agenda (Bachrach and Baratz 1962, 1963) or even
kept from being perceived as a problem at all (Lukes 2005 [1974]).
Furthermore, urban research from a political science perspective has
not only been limited to local case studies. It has also been limited by
focusing on local government in general—and not on local governance or
relations between societal actors and local government. This even applies
to international comparative studies on national differences among local
government systems (for an overview, see Heinelt et al. 2018). Although
there are several typologies of local government systems (see ibid.), com-
parative studies on national patterns of local governance or relations
between societal actors and local government are missing until now.3 A
broadening of this focus usually takes place only when certain local poli-
cies are considered—for instance local labor market or housing policy (see,
e.g., Heinelt 1992; Egner and Grabietz 2018 )—because in these policies
it is obvious that they depend not only on decisions taken in city hall but—
in one way or the other—on societal actors.
Looking for approaches on state–society relations in general in political
science, of course, the debates about pluralism and neo-corporatism and
the controversies among their proponents could be considered. However,
it was already emphasized in the debate in the early 1990s on policy net-
works that the ‘traditional’ dichotomy between pluralism and neo-­
corporatism is too general for capturing state–society relations that are
 1 INTERACTIONS OF SOCIETAL ACTORS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT… 7

specific to a country or a particular policy field (see, for this debate, Jordan
and Schubert 1992).
Although the policy-networks approach has been often used in the
empirical analysis of specific state–society relations,4 the resulting classifi-
cation of detected patterns of institutionalized relations between govern-
ment and societal actors has not proved helpful. It led to a multitude of
‘dimensions and types of policy networks’ (van Waarden 1992) and
attempts to distinguish them by creating a long (if not endless) list of
policy-network labels. However, all efforts at ‘ordering of policy network
labelling’ (Jordan and Schubert 1992) have turned out to be fruitless—at
least according to the assessment of the partners involved in the project.
Nevertheless, the partners involved in the project started their conceptual
reflections on relations between local government and societal actors at
the municipal level with a debate about the policy-networks approach.
Furthermore, the partners involved in the research from which this
book resulted made use of the typology of ‘national infrastructures for
local governance’ developed by Sellers et al. (2020; see also Sellers and
Kwak 2011 and Sellers and Lidström 2014), which aims at establishing a
theoretical link between the institutions of local government and the orga-
nization of civil society. The authors present three alternative configura-
tions which characterize infrastructures of multilevel local governance in
contemporary democracies: nationalized, civic localist and local elitist.
Their distinction is based on differences along two general dimensions:
vertical inter-governmental relationships (among the local state and higher
levels of government) and incorporation of various actors representing
different spheres of society. In the local elitist infrastructure, a restricted
set of elites dominates local governance and assures the integration of local
governance with the policies of national government. In the civic localist
infrastructure, incorporation of societal actors is wide, but the integration
of local and national policies is limited. Local government relies more on
the resources of local society than on support from higher-level authori-
ties. In the nationalized infrastructure, local governments carry out poli-
cies formulated at the national level, and a high level of policy integration
and wide incorporation of nation-wide organized societal actors are pos-
sible through strong multilevel party organizations. As Sellers et al. (2020)
argue, each infrastructure developed following its own long-term trajec-
tory and displays distinctive patterns of tensions and conflicts, but also
institutional complementarities. Finally, the partners decided not to use
this typology because it became obvious that in a country, policy-­specific,
local state-society relations can exist which can show different network
8 F. TELES ET AL.

characteristics from those attributed to the ‘national infrastructures’ for

local governance distinguished by Sellers et al. This is also admitted by
Sellers and Kwak (2011) by referring to ‘sectoral influences’ or influences
from policy domains: ‘Although sectors are part of the infrastructure for
local governance, influences from them reflect infrastructural effects dis-
tinct from those of national types’ (Sellers and Kwak 2011: 627).
Against this background, the partners involved in the project decided
to use the typology of different networks of local state-society relations
presented in Chap. 2. This approach makes it possible to capture within-­
country variation in institutional arrangements which establish and regu-
late local state-society networks.

Limitations of the Approach Applied in the Book

This book presents a systematization of knowledge resulting from the
analysis of local state-society relations in 22 European countries and iden-
tifies and classifies patterns in these institutionalized governance networks.
However, as in any attempt to capture empirical observations by a typol-
ogy and ‘measure’ empirical observations, a number of ‘critical’ issues
arise and have to be clarified.
This applies first of all to the selection of networks presented in the
country chapters of this book. It had to be done by the authors (as experts
on local state-society relations in their respective countries) based on the
agreement of all partners involved in the project to consider networks
which are either typical for local state-society relations in the country or
resample main feature also shown by other networks in a country.
Nevertheless, a high degree of discretion remained for the authors in
selecting such networks. However, the double-blind peer-review proce-
dure applied for the country chapters of this book contributed to the
avoidance of implausible or even arbitrary decisions by the authors,
because in a number of cases reviewers asked authors to rethink their selec-
tion of local state-society networks.

Notes
1. For functional interest representation (and its differences from territorial
interest representation through political parties and directly elected repre-
sentative bodies), (see for example, Heinelt 2010: 52–53 and Knodt
et al. 2011).
 1 INTERACTIONS OF SOCIETAL ACTORS AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT… 9

2. Concerning the different understandings of democracy among mayors and

councilors detected empirically in the studies mentioned in the section on
‘The origin of the book’ of the preface of this book, (see Vetter et al. 2018).
These different notions of democracy clearly follow the distinction between
liberal (or representative) democracy and participatory democracy.
3. Finally, although the eastern and some southern parts of the European con-
tinent have experienced democratic transitions over the last three decades,
accompanied by reforms of local government as well as of local governance,
little has been written on the functioning of institutionalized networks
among societal actors and local government in these parts of Europe (e.g.
Furmankiewicz et al. 2010; Petrova 2011; Dąbrowski 2014).
4. Beside these empirical network studies, policy networks have been studied
to understand general (governance) modes for coordinating societal interac-
tions. For the differences between these two policy-network approaches,
(see Börzel 1998, Marsh 1998).

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 CHAPTER 2

Diversity in Local State-Society Relations:

A Typology to Grasp Differences
in Institutional Networks

Filipe Teles

Introduction
Interactions of societal actors in institutionalized governance networks
with local authorities are one of the most common features of contempo-
rary local governance. The multiple and diverse forms it can take provide
relevant clues regarding different roles of local government in Europe and
its administrative, civic and political cultures. It adds also to the knowl-
edge on different governance arrangements, decentralization processes,
state-society relations, and citizens’ engagement practices. Comparative
studies on this topic with in-depth analysis of formally and informally as
well as compulsorily and voluntarily institutionalized governance networks
are needed but require a conceptual framework that allows for a clearer

F. Teles (*)
Research Unit on Governance, Competitiveness and Public Policies,
Department of Social, Political and Territorial Sciences, University of Aveiro,
Aveiro, Portugal
e-mail: filipe.teles@ua.pt

© The Author(s) 2021 13

F. Teles et al. (eds.), Close Ties in European Local Governance,
Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44794-6_2
14 F. TELES

identification of such arrangements and provides the tools for an analytical

instrument for comparison.
This chapter aims at developing a typology that allows researchers to
systematize evidence and knowledge resulting from the analysis of these
networks. The identification of different types of local state-society
arrangements will allow a more robust comparison and analysis.
The involvement of societal actors within the public governance of dif-
ferent policy domains is increasingly seen as the ‘big idea’ to cope with a
series of social, economic, and political dilemmas (Rathgeb Smith and
Grønbjerg 2006; Pestoff and Brandsen 2010), particularly under the
recent economic crisis and the subsequent welfare sustainability problems
(Ervasti et al. 2012; Silva and Teles 2018). Although the involvement of
societal actors in local governance has clear benefits, it also results in a
series of challenges of coordination and management. This applies particu-
larly for the integration of different network arrangements, given their
interaction and the wickedness of the problems they are targeted to solve
(Andrews and Entwistle 2010).
In parallel, the interaction between non-state organizations and local
governments needs to be reassessed. Societal actors are often perceived as
a source of social innovations, fostering novel forms of organization and
interactions that address societal needs that have hitherto been unmet in
several policy areas, among others. Extant research, however, is scant in
assessing the consequences for both societal actors and public policies of
the network relationships that have to be redefined to encompass these
new processes. This is all the more pressing in contexts with poor tradi-
tions of co-governance.
Indeed, these emerging collaborative mechanisms may entail major
risks, both for local governments and societal actors, dealing with a pleth-
ora of (public and) private bodies—that are not directly subject to demo-
cratic controls. The emergent complexity of policy networks may erode
the position of local governments and ultimately generate problems of
democratic legitimacy or accountability (Rhodes 1997). The possible
drawback is local government’s attempt to curtail third sector organiza-
tions’ autonomy, that is, organizations acting neither along the logic of
the market nor the hierarchy of statehood and the solidarity of private
households. In such scenario, these actors may be confined, with limited
opportunities to influence substantive policy direction or content, thus
restraining the benefits attributed to them, namely their autonomy: not
being just another arm of government (Verschuere and De Corte 2012).
 2 DIVERSITY IN LOCAL STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS: A TYPOLOGY TO GRASP… 15

This argument may also be extended to public policies: limited autonomy

may restrain the potential—and expected counter-cyclical—role of societal
actors in local policies. These are relevant questions for academics and
practitioners and particularly for policy makers.

Local Networks: State-Society Relations

The dividing line between state and civil society has never been sharp.
Over recent years, policy makers across Europe have increasingly turned to
organizations between the market and the state in seeking to identify,
manage, or solve a range of economic, social, and political problems. At
the same time, the number of relevant research on partnerships and co-­
governance at the local level has grown significantly, reflecting a common
understanding that at this level of government we can analyse the implica-
tions of newly emerging forms of policy making and delivery (Mouritzen
2013; Lowndes and McCaughie 2013; Teles 2016).
One of the most recurrent dictums about these state-society networked
mechanisms is that they enhance the efficiency of public service access and
delivery, nurture social solidarities for public good, and strengthen the
legitimacy of political authorities (Kendall 2009; Brandsen and Pestoff
2006). This narrative, however, warrants further inspection.
The term governance implies that the interest of the analysis goes
beyond the functioning and the strategies of formal public institutions and
elected authorities. It stands on a wider notion of politics, including the
provision of public services at the civil society’s level. In order to identify
new ways of ‘achieving collective action in the realm of public affairs, in
conditions where it is not possible to rest on recourse to the authority of
the state’ (Stoker 2000), local governments are increasingly seen as facili-
tators of these processes, enabling collaborative local networks. New agen-
das on urban politics and local administration reforms have implied an
important expansion of the notion of policy delivery through the inclusion
of non-state actors (Schwab et al. 2017).
However, the necessarily synergistic relationship between local govern-
ment and civil society in facilitating governance mechanisms requires fur-
ther elaboration. Individuals and institutions engage in collective action
using several strategies and using assorted means and capacities. The issue
of who initiates these new governance arrangements and how autono-
mous it really is from political power and public institutions is seminal to
the definition of governance itself. Most of the known local governance
16 F. TELES

models derive from a normative approach and seek better policy formula-
tion and policy delivery arrangements—in general seen as incapable of
accomplishing all local government’s tasks, insufficient to answer all
demands or relying on optimist assessments of grassroots autonomous and
spontaneous organization.
In this chapter, both terms (governance arrangements and local state-­
society networks) are used as a way to capture the wide range of mecha-
nisms through which consultation, coordination, power over policy
making and delivery at the local level are exercised. The multi-agent con-
text of local governance, with its complex diversity of networks, has pro-
duced a rich literature and has shaped significant research on the plural
mechanisms of delivery of public services and collaborative arrangements.
The aim is allegedly to improve public policy decision and delivery pro-
cesses in a ‘joined up’ way, together with the local community. Local pub-
lic services’ restructuring, modernization agendas, New Public
Management-type reforms, and, more recently, the consequences of eco-
nomic downturns have attracted attention from research, signalling an
arrangement where public and non-public agencies are involved in the
formulation of policy and delivery of services (Brandsen and Pestoff 2006:
497; Schwab et al. 2017).
State-society partnerships and co-governance are often used to describe
the context within which public services are delivered at the local level.
Co-governance refers to the mutual formation of collective bodies around
governmental roles and addresses the capacity for government and com-
munities to work together (Sommerville and Haines 2008). This concep-
tual approach has accompanied a volume of literature on how localities are
currently governed, on the influence of informal networks (Rhodes 1997),
and on the analysis of the proliferation of non-state actors, their resource
exchanges, and interdependency (Stoker 2006). Likewise, research on
interactions between various network actors (e.g. Rhodes 1996) and on
the new steering and monitoring roles expected from governments (Stoker
2000; John 2001) has suggested the decline of state power (Jessop 2003)
or of the existence of new complex power configurations through which
state actors steer networks (see Lukes 2004).
The delivery of public services and policy networking has resulted in
unresolved problems related to the differentiation and integration of non-­
state actors. The generic terms of collaborative governance, actually just
an add-on to the concept of governance, or of co-governance, depict, in
essence, very complex systems: it is much more than shared rules of
 2 DIVERSITY IN LOCAL STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS: A TYPOLOGY TO GRASP… 17

commitment between actors; it is not only the consequence of individual

interests based on expected future profits; and it does not result just from
the voluntary urge to engage in public policy decisions and delivery.
Collaboration between state and non-state actors is also a consequence of
intentional strategies to involve the latter in governance arrangements.
These institutional mechanisms coming from beyond the borders of pub-
lic authorities result in an assemblage of processes to ensure coordination,
power, resources, and information. Such system needs not be a replica of
the way local governments work, and, in fact, is most of the times an all
new way of connecting the public and the private/voluntary spheres.
Governance arrangements, even in the cases where local authorities can
claim to be their main initiators, present new challenges that confront the
extant scholarship with profound changes in the actors involved in the
network.
Kooiman (2005) distinguished three ways of governance: the hierarchi-
cal one, where top-down directives from public authorities shape public
policy; the self-governance mode, a collective based approach to bottom-
­up policy building; and, co-governance, in which societal actors and pub-
lic authorities cooperate in a mutual shaping process of partnerships. This
simple taxonomy presents an interesting potential to explain how state and
non-state actors participate in policy building and service delivering. It
tends to produce diverse arenas for engagement, since it includes both the
hierarchical modes of governance (which tend to be dominated by state
actors) and the more self-governed arrangement (usually seen as non-state
actors’ homeland). However, it is still far from grasping all the different
types of networks, since the kind of relations and interdependencies that
are developed between these actors is much more diverse.
Over the last decades, the diverse approaches (both conceptual and
methodological) to policy network and governance have provided a more
or less fair map of these local governance arrangements, but typically fail
to fully develop the practical implications for the understanding of the
diversity of networks in place. It has also failed to provide sufficient guid-
ance about how to create the adequate conditions for collaborative prac-
tices. Consequently, scant attention has been paid to developing the
necessary tools to assess the real extent of network diversity of these local
governance systems.
Despite the growing attention local governance has received, there is
little systematic attempt to analyse the practical implications of these
emerging solutions. Indeed, despite the efforts to conceptualize and
18 F. TELES

operationalize measures of autonomy, institutionalization, and policy dis-

cretion (see, inter alia, Verhoest et al. 2004; Verschuere and De Corte
2012), the discussion remains far from being settled. More importantly,
existing efforts fail to provide an integrated approach to the analysis of the
kind of interdependencies that are developed between local governments
and societal actors and how the resulting type of institutional network
affects the process of taking collectively binding decision and policy
delivery.
Inconclusive results are partly a consequence of the lack of an inte-
grated approach that allows understanding the diversity of governance
networks at the local level, using a common framework. The suggested
typology in this chapter aims at allowing in-depth analysis of each kind of
local state-society network, and potentially provides a framework for large-­
scale comparative research.

Cultural Theory: A Grid-Group Typology

The ‘grid-group method’ developed by the anthropologist Mary Douglas
(1978), which has subsequently become known as Cultural Theory, offers
an opportunity to identify four logical strategies that derive from expecta-
tions about the possibility and ability to manage situations. These strategies,
initially seen as a consequence of alternative cultural biases, can be used as
instruments to understand possible approaches deriving from plural ratio-
nalities. Actually, these two main standpoints were particularly vivid in the
debate that confronted agent-centred perspectives (e.g. Wildavsky 1987)
with institutional approaches (e.g. Perri 6 2003); concurrently, the analy-
sis based on the ‘grid group method’ evolved from individual solidarities
and agent’s rationalities to social systems and institutional arrangements.
The main argument for the use of grid-group theory is that it allows
understanding institutional networks as neither isolated from, nor wholly
determined by, social environment, and as being stemmed from a belief
system inherently tied to expectations and experiences. Despite the
expected complexity of a framework of state-society networks, its success
will be due in large part to its capacity to allow understanding on how
these different networks perform.
This use of the grid-group theory as a typology of social settings is not
novel and has been thoroughly adapted and applied, becoming a subject
of its own. The basic premise of grid-group approach is that competing
worldviews and systems of beliefs can be understood as a result of only two
 2 DIVERSITY IN LOCAL STATE-SOCIETY RELATIONS: A TYPOLOGY TO GRASP… 19

dimensions. It argues that it is possible to systematize group or organiza-

tional cultures as an answer to two basic social dimensions: its degrees of
hierarchization and of social cohesion. First developed in social anthropol-
ogy—despite the fact that this system is essentially deductive—the grid-group
theory has since been applied throughout the social sciences. Mary Douglas
states that the intention was to produce ‘a crude typology […] to account for
the distribution of values within a population’ (Douglas 2007: 2), in order
to ‘show the connection between different kinds of social organization
and the values that uphold them’ (ibidem). Wildavsky (1994) argued that
it helps explaining how people derive their answers to basic questions like:
how does my context work? How do I hold people accountable to me?
Answers to these questions produce basic orientations towards the two
dimensions: external control and rules (grid) and the strength of prescrip-
tions and affiliation with others (group). It explains how societal arrange-
ments’ preferences are formed as consequence of different grid and group
positions.
Aaron Wildavsky was responsible for major contributions to the history
and development of grid-group theory—thereafter, and mainly due to this
author’s work, often called ‘Cultural Theory’. From an apparently intui-
tive theory by Mary Douglas, it evolved to a better integrated idea of
organizational cultural bias. Together with Michael Thompson and
Richard Ellis (1990), Wildavsky rendered a theory that comprised impor-
tant features about the exercise of power and its applicability to the realm
of politics, assuming that the four types of cultural bias are normally pres-
ent in any group. Rather than a static and deterministic framework, grid-­
group or cultural theory provided important explanatory value for the
generation of different ‘worldviews’, conflict, leadership, institutional
arrangements, and societal roles. It has, since, morphed into a dynamic
theoretical system and analytical tool.
Grid-group theory has been presented as useful to better understand
institutions (Wildavsky 1987), new institutionalism (Grendstad and Selle
1995), citizenship (Denters and Geurtz 1999), political ideology
(Coughlin and Lockhart 1998), political change (Lockhart 1999), and
policy analysis (Hoppe 1999). Stoker (2000) did the same when studying
British local governance, and Hood (1998) applied it to public
administration.
This analytical framework provides a useful tool to understand how
individuals position themselves in relation to their environment. Denters
and Geurtz (1999: 2) explain that grid-group theory ‘pretends to bridge
20 F. TELES

the gap between individual preferences and the social structure’. It can
illuminate many of the fundamental analytic questions of networked gov-
ernance, as it captures much of the variety in individual and organizational
attitudes and perspectives about how the public sphere is circumscribed by
autonomy—Grid—and the extent to which choice is constrained by for-
mal group belonging—Group (Hood 1998).

Grid and Group Dimensions

Grid-group theory is grounded on the idea that ways of ‘organizing’ the
world and ways of positioning and acting towards it are inextricable and
linked. Accordingly, the individual or the organization is an adherent of
one of a restrict number of ways of life, each characterized by mutually
exclusive sets of shared beliefs and motivations. The theory is constructed
around two dimensions, where grid brings about the prescribed auton-
omy of social units, and group refers to the constraints created by ordered
group coherence. Hence, in the first case, the greater degree to which the
individual or organization has to follow imposed rules, the higher one is
on the grid axis. On the other hand, the more one feels bound by collec-
tive decision, the higher one is on the group dimension.
Group measures the extent to which behaviour is pre-determined and
influenced by the membership of a certain group, and how much of choice
has to be made in order to privilege the interests of the collective rather
than one’s own. High group situations relate to those when organizations
or individuals are conscious of what they have to do as a consequence of
their membership of a coherent particular social unit. Low group situa-
tions are those in which the individual adheres to collective units by choice
and the role of the group is permanently negotiated. As stated by Mary
Douglas: ‘The group itself is defined in terms of the claims it makes over
its constituent members, the boundary it draws around them, the rights it
confers on them to use its name and other protections, and the levies and
constraints it applies’ (Douglas 1978: 8).
Every group varies in boundary strength and control acceptance. This
is supplied by the second dimension: Grid. This measures the extent to
which roles and autonomy in social relations are constrained by some kind
of differentiation, and options limited by rules and norms. A high grid
situation corresponds to those where behaviour is constrained by imposed
rules and where the autonomy to overcome the complexity of the real
world is particularly limited. A low grid situation is one where the role is
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