Regional Partnerships and their Constructions and Implementations

ISBN-13: 9783639155532 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 376 str.

Ulla Higdem

Opis

This book addresses regional partnerships in theNorwegian context, a theme that the author hasexplored in depth through a doctoral thesis. InNorway, the use of regional partnerships in regionalplanning and development, whose main inspirationstems from the EUs concept of regional partnership,is a new phenomenon. The comparative analysis of thethree case counties has shown that they haveimplemented regional partnerships as institutionalconstructions but they have understood it as threedifferent concepts. The conclusion is thatpartnerships can appear in different forms as theydevelop in stages or steps in an institutionalisingprocess. This study indicates that regionalpartnerships as institutional constructions exist ashybrid forms, situated between what the author hasdesignated as "weak" or "strong" partnerships. Theanalysis of agreements and contracts as regulatorymechanisms at the regional level has shown,furthermore, that agreements and contracts move thelocus of directing from a traditional democraticmodel to an "output model", which creates certaindilemmas. At regional level in Norway, governance aspolicy exists "in the shadow of government".

O autorze

Ulla Higdem is Dr. Scient from the Norwegian University of Life
Sciences, Dept. of Landscape Architecture and Spatial Planning.
She is Assoc. professor at Lillehammer University College. Higdem
has for many years been working on issues as regional planning,
regional development, partnership, governance, both as a
practitioner and as an academic.