Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Beginning in 1945 Canada had a relatively successful housing policy meeting the needs of returning veterans, baby-boom parents, and, later, baby boomers themselves in addition to those less advantaged through a number of income-support housing programs. The reasons for this success are well documented and largely relied upon the dominance of the federal government in this policy space. This was achieved despite housing being constitutionally primarily a provincial responsibility due to a process known as ‘cooperative federalism’. This success ended in the mid-1990s and Canada has not had a national housing policy, nor successful provincial policies, since that time. Much of the demise of housing policy can be attributed to what at the time was considered to be a unique Canadian federal phenomenon called ‘province building’. We look at the institutional arrangements which made for a successful housing policy for nearly fifty years and the institutional failings which led to its demise. In particular, we analyse why the unique position of municipalities in Canada vis-à-vis other federal states made it more difficult to deal particularly with planning and social housing problems in Canada. The lessons of Canada are apt for other federal states trying to trade off regional and ethnic interests versus national priorities.

The author argues that the design of decentralized political institutions shapes the effect of economic crisis on the welfare state. He proposes a simple framework for understanding the effects of crisis on areas under the responsibility of regional governments: their responses and mediating effects will vary with the financial system, degree of regional input into central decisions, and legal framework. Further, the ways in which territorial political institutions channel economic pressures should lead to changing territorial politics as the relative resources and credibility of governments change. The author discusses the influence of territorial political institutions on responses to economic crisis in Germany, Spain, and the UK. It is concluded that Germany is most likely to proceed unchanged, Spain might see the hardest landing due to the difficult finances of many regional governments, and devolution in the UK is economically sustainable and limits negative welfare-state effects but might be politically unsustainable. The conclusion suggests that welfare-state analysis should take more account of specific territorial political institutions, that further analysis should include local government, and that economic pressure might reshape territorial politics in at least some countries.

Since the late 1990s a growing number of scholars have explored the relationship between decentralization, nationalism, and social policy development. In this paper we explore the impact of substate nationalism on the territorial integration or disintegration of the welfare state in Belgium and Canada. As argued, although substate nationalist mobilization is intuitively associated with welfare-state disintegration, there is little evidence to support this claim. In Belgium, despite Flemish nationalist pressures, francophone opposition and major constitutional obstacles have prevented the decentralization of the federal social insurance system. In Canada competitive nation building between the federal and Quebec governments has not led to the erosion of social protection. Instead, this logic has favored the creation of a decentralized and asymmetrical welfare state while exacerbating pressures for social policy expansion. In order to explain such contrasted outcomes we draw on the existing scholarship on the role of ideas and of institutions in policy development.

A recurrent objection to incipient processes of welfare-state devolution is that inducing diversity in welfare activity hampers public service uniformity and opens the door to regional inequalities. However, limited empirical evidence has been reported to back this claim from experiences of welfare-state devolution. I draw upon empirical evidence of three welfare services—namely, health care, education, and long-term care in Spain, 1998–2006. I aim to explore whether devolution has shifted the patterns of regional inequalities in welfare activity, and examine the impact of regional economic development and political and fiscal devolution on the observed patterns of inequality in welfare activity. My findings indicate a reduction in regional inequalities in welfare activity after the completion of regional devolution of all three welfare services examined. This was especially noticeable in education but also occurred (less markedly) in health and long-term care. Political devolution was found to be associated with 34% of (the declining of) inequalities in health care activity, 22% of those in education, and only 4% of disparities in long-term care activity where local authorities have continued to play a heavy role, and inequalities are largely explained by regional differences in tax responsibilities.

We examine decentralisation in school-based education, with particular reference to two countries, Germany and the UK. In section 2 we explore the notions of devolution and decentralisation. We examine different types of decentralisation and some of the ideas with which it is associated including, in education, improving educational standards. In section 3 we consider the decentralisation of education in Germany and the UK. We examine the decentralisation of political authority, policies pursued at national and subnational levels, and the delegation of responsibilities to school level. We then compare achievement levels in the two case study countries and explore whether particular policies, pursued at subnational levels, might be associated with differing levels of attainment. We argue that decentralisation in the field of education is multifaceted and complex, with different types of decentralisation coexisting. Our analysis suggests that certain policies, pursued as a result of decentralisation, may be associated with different educational outcomes, but it is not possible to draw definitive conclusions particularly in light of the differing political, policy, and socioeconomic contexts.

The aim of this paper is to explain the regulatory activity of the Autonomous Communities (Spanish regional governments) between 1989 and 2001, employing the methodological framework provided by the economic theory of regulation. To this end, a ‘model of regulatory demand’ and a ‘model of regulatory supply’ are specified and estimated for the seventeen Autonomous Communities over this period. The results of these estimations show that for the fields of institutional and economic regulation the behaviour of the Autonomous Communities between 1989 and 2001 may be explained by a complementary set of supply and demand factors: financial, political, and institutional factors on the supply side, and the heterogeneity of preferences and the role of interest groups on the demand side. However, with respect to total regulation and social regulation, supply factors outweigh demand factors in the explanation of regional regulatory production.

The author reconstructs the history of the implementation of the Odelouca Dam in the Algarve in a Natura 2000 area, viewing it in the context of Southern European coastal development. He looks at the dynamics leading up to the construction of the dam, and illustrates the persistence of the hydraulic paradigm in Portugal and the way it has been moulded by shifting European policymaking paradigms—namely, ecological modernisation (EM). Political aspects of EM are discussed because they seem to play an important role in legitimising the construction of the dam at a European level. The author assesses the policy measures and the policy outcome of the policy package associated with the Odelouca Dam and discusses whether EM in this case can be considered to have reached the stage of ecological structural policy. At the systemic level, the analysis shows deliberate, symbolic, and unintended policy contradictions. Assessment of EM policies requires careful attention to the scale of assessment, as partial EM runs the risk of contributing to aggravating overall resource pressure, as the case study illustrates. The Portuguese National Water Authority is the dominant actor in the implementation of the dam. The European Union's Regional Funding facilitated its construction, and European environmental policy provided checks and balances that were exploited by environmental NGOs. Nevertheless, the key to success of the EM—to turn around resource-use patterns in the long run—lies with national actors. In the case of the Algarve, they seem to have failed.

This study deals with a new policy for disadvantaged areas that has been introduced in Italy since the second half of the 1990s. This policy aims to promote local development based on partnerships between public and private actors. I present research carried out on thirty ‘Territorial Pacts’, analysing their impact at the local level. In some cases the results of the new policy were positive; in others they were very disappointing. Three key factors explain these different results. The first relates to the form of social interaction between local actors (the concertation factor). The second involves the presence or absence of policy entrepreneurs—namely, actors and institutions that ensured a strong and effective process management (the leadership factor). The third involves the political and organisational choices made in both the start-up and implementation phases of the pacts (the continuity factor).

As reliance on groundwater increases, the impact of groundwater-intensive use in internationally shared aquifers threatens not only to create negative environmental and economic externalities, but also to generate tensions between neighboring nations. Through an investigation of the shared Santa Cruz aquifer, located along the United States—Mexico border, we aim to understand factors leading to effective management of transboundary groundwaters. Specifically, we find that purely state-centric approaches provide limited explanatory value, and instead examine how national (domestic) arrangements for water management condition a country's position vis-à-vis its shared groundwaters. Polycentricism in national and subnational institutional regimes leads to gaps and overlaps in authority, limiting binational groundwater management. Concurrently, evolving institutional arrangements lead to ambiguity in decision making, yet crucially also provide opportunities for innovation in binational agenda setting and data sharing, which in turn aid in the alignment of both countries' priorities for the transboundary Santa Cruz aquifer.

Existing literature has paid considerable attention to the effects of supporting programmes on the survival and performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), but it lacks a deep understanding of the benefits of the use of such assistance and the factors influencing the evaluation of such services from the perspective of SMEs. We examine the factors affecting the propensity to use assistance when SMEs make financial decisions and the usefulness perceived by the users. We examine 2500 UK SMEs and find that the use of assistance and the usefulness of such services, as perceived by SMEs, are much related to: the characteristics of the entrepreneur, the nature of the business, and the financial products used by the business. These empirical results imply that support and advice on financial decision making, available for SMEs, are important for them to better manage and to access finance. Assistance and advice are also very valuable for SMEs and entrepreneurs to compensate for their lack of human capital and thus facilitate overcoming possible problems in managing their businesses.