Local Policy Networks in the Programme Social City - a case in point for new forms of governance in the field of local urban planning

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1 Prof. Dr. Adalbert Evers, Andreas Schulz, Claudia Wiesner Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen, Germany Presented by Claudia Wiesner Research assistant at the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen Bismarckstr Gießen Germany Local Policy Networks in the Programme Social City - a case in point for new forms of governance in the field of local urban planning Prepared for the European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions of Workshops # 25 Policy Networks in Sub National Governance: Understanding Power Relations Uppsala, Sweden April

2 Adalbert Evers / Andreas Schulz / Claudia Wiesner Local Policy Networks in the Programme Social City - a case in point for new forms of governance in the field of local urban planning 1 1. Introduction Changing the forms of governance, policy making and administration is a process which entails lots of contradictions and inequalities in time and space: new concepts and practices have to be arranged with old ones; they evolve in specific sectors while remaining outside of others; new concepts mix with old realities and that results in types of governance which can not be understood by juxtaposing pure principles of old and new concepts. The field of local urban planning and the development of disadvantaged city quarters have been a case in point for changing the traditional culture of planning. The programme, installed by the central government and co-administered by Laender representatives supports integrated local concepts for a revitalizing of city quarters that are threatened by economic decay, social disintegration and the alienation of its inhabitants from local political life. Obviously, a programme that aims at once to stimulate the local economy, to cultivate community development, to better social infrastructure and finally the image of the respective city quarter as well as the self confidence of its citizens need forms of policy making and governance that work for such a complex goal. Therefore, the Social City - programme also aims at innovation concerning forms of participation and steering mechanisms. Key elements in the debate and local practice are issues as cross-departmental cooperation within the public administration, continuous participation of private and civic organisations be they representatives from the local business community or from the third sector, where many organisations have a key role for the provision of social services - and finally the creation of a public space for debate wherein the single citizen can make his or her concerns heard. One could say that the debate that accompanies the Social City programme as well as the forms local implementation has taken are mirroring two different influences. On the one hand, the programme is influenced by the traditions of concepts that favour a more participatory planning and policy making, nourished by the conviction that a combination of 1 This paper is based on the Research Project Policy Networks that is part of the official research on the Bund-Laender-Programm Soziale Stadt (Social City Programme) in Hessen. The project is located at the University of Giessen under the direction of Prof. Dr. Adalbert Evers. 2

3 working in partnership with established groups and an empowering of weaker groups through community building will allow both for more democracy and a better potential for achieving the economic social and urban goals as they have been mentioned. On the other hand, the programme is to some degree influenced by the way the debates on urban planning have taken up the broader debates about a better public management cooperation, goal setting and evaluation of public policies. 2. Social Exclusion in German City Quarters and the Social City Programme Despite the high standard of living in Germany, the gap between poor and rich has continuously increased over the last twenty years and, especially since reunification, poverty and social exclusion have gained in relevance in the political debate. Social exclusion concentrates in disadvantaged city quarters. This has manifold consequences. First, the areas concerned show a significant concentration of risk groups like unemployed persons, migrants, persons receiving social assistance. Second, exclusion entails a lower quality of life in terms of infrastructure (local business and economy, transport services etc.) and the quality of the buildings. These problems result from developments that have taken place during the last thirty or so years in most European countries in comparable ways: Income differences have increased. In Germany income differences have increased especially in the cities, where jobs in the production sector are continually reduced whereas the number of jobs in the services sector is growing. Migrants are a risk group for social exclusion. Germany has experienced several waves of immigration: in the 1970s with the recruitment of guest-workers from Southern Europe, in the 1980s increased immigration of refugees and asylum seekers, finally since 1990, late immigrants from Eastern European Countries. Thus, ethnic minorities developed, and they concentrated in disadvantaged city quarters, where some ethnic groups separated socially and spatially from the others. In several areas the percentage of people without a German passport is far over 50 per cent. Ethnic minorities and people with migration experience face a higher risk of social exclusion because of the combination of several risk factors and the impact of several problems such as language problems, resulting education and graduation difficulties and lack in vocational training. Social conflicts are increased by bad living conditions and ethnic segregation. In disadvantaged areas social conflicts are frequent. The population that considers itself as German - because born and grown up in Germany - usually differentiates itself from other 3

4 groups and in particular from Russian Germans because they arrived more recently than the others. As this native German part in general represents the older part of the population, conflicts between younger and older people, families and people without children etc. are frequent. Tasks concerning the organisation of the everyday life in the quarters - rubbish collection, street cleaning, conduct in public places or noise - are sometimes impossible to plan or organise by mutual consent. The neighbourhood becomes a battle zone, says Haeussermann (2001, 7). The limits of housing policies increase social segregation. The quality and comfort of housing in disadvantaged city quarters are mostly low. The German Welfare Survey has shown that in % in the West and 11.0% in the East are affected by bad living conditions (Boehnke 2001b, 17). But the possibilities of housing policies are decreasing. Due to a political liberalization of housing policies since the 1980s, the chances of public authorities to manage or hinder processes of segregation and social exclusion are reduced. This favoured a concentration of poorer groups in the least attractive city quarters where rents are low enough to be paid by people with low income or by the social welfare authority. Meanwhile, the former middle class inhabitants steadily left these quarters and moved into more favoured areas. This causes an elevator downstairs effect (Haeussermann 2001, 5) for entire city quarters. The local economy of the quarters is in a bad state. Most of the disadvantaged quarters have none or only a few local merchants, industries or other economic factors that bring life into the local economy. Thus, there are none or only a few local workplaces in the quarters. As the local economy is badly developed, there is a massive need for investments - by public and private partners - in order to improve the general and the commercial infrastructure of the quarters. This overview of problems concentrated in disadvataged city quarters indicates the need to tackle the situation in the quarters in an integrated way. As several polica areas are concerned and several actors, institutions and organizations are relevant, to ensure an integrated process ist is important that policy networks develop. New German Policies against Social Exclusion: Social City Programme To cope with these tendencies the Schroeder Government set up a New Action Programme against social exclusion in cities in The programme is financed by the Federal government, the Laender governments and the local governments. It is called Social City. 4

5 The programme concept is based on two main objectives. First of all, it aims at bundling activities of relevant actors as well as policies from different departments in public administration relevant for city development, be they oriented to the quarter itself or to the whole city or region. Secondly, the programme sets itself the objective of activating and integrating people living in the city quarter into the development process. This means that the objective of the programme is to create an integrated process of social work, town planning and the work of other policy sectors. With the broad contribution of the population and the stakeholders from the third sector and the local economy, formerly disadvantaged city quarters should be changed into quarters that have positive prospects for the future (Hessisches Wirtschaftsministerium 2000; ARGEBAU 2000, 68; Loehr 2000). The programme had several predecessors in different german Laender from 1993 onwards(for a listing see Becker/Loehr 2000, 24), on the EU level URBAN II and others were important. All German cities are entitled to participate in the programme with their disadvantaged quarters. In their application, they have to show that they will act to fulfil certain criteria, central among which - apart from clear project and policy descriptions - is the intention to activate the population to a higher level of civic participation in the development process and the related projects. In 1999, 161 city quarters in 124 municipalities had started the programme. In 2000, 49 more quarters in 157 cities were accepted (Becker et.al. 2002, 18). The money going to the quarters comes partly from the budgets the federal government and the Laender governments have placed at the programme s disposal. The municipality has to add a third from its own budget 2. Initiated directly after the elections in 1998, a sum of 100 million D-Marks came from the Federal Government in 1999 and was matched by 100 million from the Laender and another 100 million from the municipalities themselves (Krautzberger / Richter 2002, 38). The programme periods are at least five years. The total amounts the municipalities receive and invest during one such period can differ between 500,000 and more than 5 million (Evers / Schulz / Wiesner 2003). The amount depends on the size of the quarter as well as on the costs of the projects planned. The Social City programme can be considered as an example of a new kind of integrated public policy concept only recently developed in Germany. During the 1990s it became obvious that the classic policies in the social sector have one central problem: they are dispersed among several responsibilities, policy sectors and different levels of government. 2 The proportions the different institutional levels contributed have differed during recent years. At the beginning they were around one third of the total required for the projects for each government level, but recently, the proportion paid by the municipalities themselves has been growing. 5

6 For development in disadvantaged city quarters, policies in the sectors of social services and welfare, building and planning, economy and work, education, health and environment are relevant. In one municipality the responsibility for development in disadvantaged quarters will be in the hands of at least two different departments of public administration. Having noticed that this broad range of authorities and departments responsible for one single issue gravely impedes the effectiveness of measures against social exclusion, the Social City programme was started as a first step to try out a better and closer conjunction of at least several relevant policy sectors and authorities. A second point that makes the programme an example for a new kind of policy against social exclusion is its task to combine better cooperation between different policy sectors with a broad participation of the stakeholders in the city quarters. This concerns the population and the local civil society - associations, clubs, businessmen and enterprises as well as local initiatives. This objective may not seem really new to those with experience in other European countries, but in Germany it represents a new kind of administration philosophy. In a nutshell: the task of the programme is to combine the experiences and advantages of classic community work and the traditions of town planning in disadvantaged city quarters with the benefits of broad cooperation and participation of the actors concerned in the development process and the integration of investors and cooperation partners from the local economy and the public economic development or employment agencies; that is: to create a local city quarter development policy network. The responsible Ministry of Hessen Economy, Infrastructure and Traffic has created an organisational blueprint for the local network cooperations (Hessisches Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Verkehr und Landesentwicklung 2000: 20). Apart from the participation of first, second and third sector actors, this blueprint proposes the creation of two new nodal points in the network: a) a city quarter community conference that unites all relevant actors in the quarter from all sectors, meeting regularly. The idea is that it may serve as a forum for information, recollection of project and planning ideas and the creation of project groups. b) city quarter community centres, e.g. offices that are placed in the quarter and are not direct parts of the town s public administration. The blueprint proposes a fair balance of the tasks of town planning, community work and network organisation each with staff that is altogether able to deal with each of these tasks. In reality the repartition of tasks can differ very much from the blueprint s proposals. 6

7 Public Authorities Steering Group Public Administration Local Parliament City Quarter Community Conference City Quarter Community Centre Local and Social Economy Housing Associations Local Economy Work Integration Enterprises Inhabitants Nonprofit Organizations Others Public and NGOs 3. Local networks in the cities and quarters participating in the Programme targets and dimensions of an analysis In our own evaluation of local action programmes for a Social City in 18 quarters situated in 16 municipalities 3, we have determined four different streams in the debate for modernising governance. The first stream is the international academic governance debate. Trying to describe and analyse changes in the reality of public governance, it has focussed on two main issues in the last years: What are the alternatives to the traditional opposed poles of decentralisation versus central hierarchical decision making? What about new forms of central local cooperation in concepts for multi-level governance? What are efficient forms of partnerships between different actors, from basically three sectors: the public sector represented by parliaments and administrations, the private business sector and the third sector, represented by a broad variety of organisations reaching from community associations to well organised lobbies and interest groups? (Kooiman 1999, Pierre 2000, Newman 2003, Evers 2003c). 3 Sometimes two city quartes we researched were situated in one town. 7

8 The second stream we have tried to build on is a less academic one the civil society debate. At this point, however, we will omit the debate about social capital which can in many respects be seen as a part of it. Different to the governance debate, which tries to analyse the effects of various ways of mixed forms of governance, made up by hierarchical elements (e.g. a central programme), elements of self-governance (e.g. in the sphere of community development) and of co-governance (partnerships with the business and the third sector), here, a value laden position is taken: more democracy and a more effective policy making should be achieved by more participation of the civil society in the democratic process. It is hoped for that by community development, round tables, public debates etc., both in the third sector and the business community civic attitudes can be strengthened - as e.g. mutual trust, bridging social capital, the ability to take account of the interest of others, a sense for the general interest. It is hoped that thereby a democratic learning process can be installed in order to overcome such negative traits of participative approaches such as corporatism, organisational egotism and a further increase in inequalities in the policy arena (Fullinwider 1999; Putnam 2000, Evers 2003, Evers 2003b). The third stream that influences a debate about new forms of governance is the debate about a new public management (NPM). Here, issues of democracy that are at the heart of the civil society debate and its aspirations for new participatory forms of governance move to the background. Democracy presupposed, the main aims are to make the public administration more accountable, to establish clear cut responsibilities on all sides and to win less citizenpartners, that join in working out common goals and orientations, but rather business-partners to be contracted in. This debate on public management has not been at the basis of our analysis but is something to take account of when looking at local developments. Because the new practices linked with the Social City programme had to develop in a context that is usually marked not only by bureaucratic traditionalism but as well by managerial orientations. Altogether that means, that different concepts of governance then coexist locally (Rathgeb / Smith 2002; Trube 2001; Naschold 1993). A fourth theoretical stream of reference comes from a debate which has been much coined by German contributions (Mayntz 1993, 2001; Scharpf 1996) it is the debate on policy networks. Under the label policy networks one tries to develop a neutral notion for forms of cooperation that crosscut the public-private-boundaries. Such networks bring together representatives from the different levels of the public system, its policy makers and administrators, representatives of the business sectors and from various social sectors. Such networks have vertical and horizontal dimensions and their presence points in a way to what 8

9 is debated as forms of mixed governance (Fischer 1993; Pappi 1993; DeLeon 1993; Batten / Casti / Thord 1995). Given this background our own analytical concept has been constructed in the following way: We used the term local policy networks as a catchword for a specific style of steering and cooperation. And we consider networks as stable and durable cooperation structures among actors from the public or city administration, civil society, third sector and the market economy that cooperate - in horizontal and/or vertical direction - with the aim of solving common problems and reaching common targets. Most generally speaking, their aim with respect to our context is(a) to strengthen the capacities and possibilities of all local actors in coping with the targets they agree upon here the concrete and local versions of targets as defined in the Social City programme- and furthermore (b) to strengthen the democratic quality of political governance. The current research contributions are discussing networks mostly from the first organisational and efficiency-oriented perspective: they shall help to lessen weaknesses of established work or cooperation structures by creating better communication and work relations through formal participation of relevant actors in the networks. Finally, all participating actors are supposed to profit from the coordination successes of these networks. Sometimes this holds true as well for policy documents from the Social City programme (ARGEBAU 2000; Hessisches Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Verkehr und Landesentwicklung 2000; Fischer 1993; Pappi 1993). Such a perspective, which is concentrated on questions of efficiency and effectiveness of governance and its results leaves two other decisive perspectives behind: the conditions and targets of democratic processes, structures and institutions, and the question of sustainability of the achieved developments. We took up these perspectives as additional criteria for analysis and discussion of the local processes and concentrated in our analysis on the three perspectives of a) efficiency and effectiveness, b) democracy and c) sustainability. (a) Effectiveness and Efficiency First of all we have been interested in analysing issues which can be termed as needed but not sufficient for a more effective and efficient local planning and policy making. These are issues concerning the degree to which one has been successful in bringing together representatives from various sectors and policy fields. In the context of the Social City programme this has been especially important because in urban development policies there is a traditional split between concepts that focus on powerful investors, linked to issues of 9

10 economic development (partnerships with developers etc.) on the one hand and, on the other hand, forms of social urban planning that bring together weaker allies as e.g. social housing associations, community groups, voluntary agencies and representatives from the side of the city urban and social planning departments. The programme guidelines, as stated earlier, declare the inclusion of a broad range of relevant local actors into the local cooperation networks as a decisive factor for effectiveness and efficiency (Hessisches Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Verkehr und Landesentwicklung 2000: 19). But mostly the action fields and the cooperation structures are based on the targets and problems defined by the administration, later further detailed by input from the inhabitants of the city quarter. Thus, inefficiencies that will not appear until the programme is further implemented, are caused in this phase of the integration process, because there was no broad consent established on targets and on the actors that are to be included in the cooperation structures (Alisch 1999). The programme guidelines regard successes in raising local funds as a further condition for effectiveness and efficiency of the programme application. Acquisition of funds from the EU, the Federal Government or Laender programmes is generally important for the cities partly because the cities badly need extra funds. But the raising of local funds is also important for the city quarters concerned. If a city wants to sustain a quarter substantially, it should use the cooperation networks to make the participating local actors (third sector organisations or social housing associations) get another view on the city quarter so that they give it a higher priority in their own plannings. Furthermore, the creation of new local initiatives and groups may as well create new resources. Thus, the acquisition of financial capital and the acquisition of social capital can be closely connected (Becker et. al 2002). (b) Democracy The point mentioned before already leads to the democratic dimension of new forms of governance as it is most openly debated in the civil society and social capital debates. With respect to that a tension arises out of the fact that by the Social City programme various forms of participation are brought together that ought to merge in local networks: (a) participation of well organised interests as a form to overcome traditional forms of corporatism that works partly informal and behind closed doors; (b) participation of groups which are traditionally weak or still in a formative process: young people with difficulties to participate, ethnic minorities and others and where it first of all needs community building to make them part of a network; (c) participation in terms of creating spaces for public debate and deliberation like 10

11 e.g. public forums, where plans and projects are introduced and can be debated though open controversies. Networks, as far as they act on the outside of, or as parallel structures to, local public administration or representatively elected institutions of local democracy, can become problematic if the processes of decision-finding and -making take place in a non-public area, and if results cannot be attributed to formally responsible persons. This means that ideas to strengthen extra-administrative actors will not necessarily lead to a strengthening of democracy. If decision-making is organised in a transparent way, and responsibilities are clearly defined, the integration and participation of actors external of administration and politics should be organised in such a way that transparency is improved, responsibilities are not blurred and aspects that concern all relevant actors do not get out of sight. The challenge is to link and balance efficiency- and democracy-oriented dimensions, getting simultaneously (a) to a more efficient participation of various investors like the private business, housing associations or voluntary agencies as providers of key social services in the respective city quarters and (b) to a participation of the concerned public of citizens and of various communities and interest groups: The latter then has to overcome a mere decorative level. (c) Sustainability Finally, speaking about new forms of governance within a process of change and transition which is characterised by lots of bareers and and contradictions, there is the issue of sustainability of these new forms of governance. It is an open question whether local cooperation networks, interdepartmental cooperation, public private partnerships and other elements will survive the time-limited funding programme Social City, or whether the usual range of traditional routines or mere managerial concepts of modernising governance will become dominant some years later. In order to achieve long-term sustainability, it is necessary to acompagny the programme Social City by a process of learning in the administration that changes routine games into cooperative decision finding processes under the responsibility of the local administration. Moreover, to some degree the style and the content of the new forms of cooperation are rivalling with the managerial logic of administrative reform as represented by the NPM. Therefore, it is questionable to what degree these new practices will entail exactly those democratic participationist elements that are completely missing in the NPM concepts. 11

12 4. Cooperation Networks in the Social City - Theses on their Evaluation To prepare the research in 18 Social City quarters in Hessen, an analysis of the relevant literature on local networks, the development of disadvantaged quarters and the programme Social City and its guidelines was carried out. We then started a series of interviews with the local persons responsible. During our visits in the 18 city quarters, we participated in a guided tour and each time interviewed at least the coordinators in the public administration, the head of the city quarter community centre and one representative of the population. We also carried out a detailed research of a set of quantitative and qualitative data on the quarters, their problems, the actions and projects and the development concepts. Based on this material, we worked out an analysis of each local cooperation network as well as a comparative analysis concerning key features of the steering and cooperation processes set forth by the local networking processes; finally, after debates with respresentatives from the Land and the municipalities, a bundle of policy recommendations has been developed. The results of the comparative analysis as well as the recommendations will be presented in a condensed version in this paper. Most of the quarters were situated at the periphery of their cities and located in the southern, more densely populated part of Hessen close to Frankfurt am Main. We also examined quarters in the middle and northern part of Hessen. In examining Policy Networks, we concentrated on two aspects: 1) The formal core elements of local networks, that is structures of participation and cooperation that are scheduled formally and regularly. Informal cooperation structures that have existed prior to the programme or have come into existence just recently were not examined, 2) The horizontal dimension of the networks. We have not dealt much with the question of cooperation with potential partners on the Land- and Federal level. The results of our research and analysis will be presented in the form of theses which are grouped under the central aspects of efficiency / effectiveness; democracy, and sustainability. Some of the theses concerning all of these aspects, have been placed under the one aspect we see the closest relationship to Effectiveness and Efficiency Here, the range of actors and organisations participating in the cooperation, the rules, games and intransparencies in the cooperation networks, the lack of clearly defined targets and 12

13 deadlines as well as the aim to raise extra local funds through the programme application are important. Often status, role and identity of actors, institutions and knod-points in the networks are not clearly defined. Status, role and tasks of network actors and institutions such as a City Quarter Community Conference or the City Quarter Community Work Centre and its staff are often not clearly defined. Moreover, different network actors often have different opinions concerning these questions if they remain unsolved and unharmonized, the resulting lack of consensus in the definition of roles, status and targets may reduce the efficiency of the network cooperation. In the quarters we visited, we found practices that differed very much. An example for this is the organisation of the City Quarter Community Centres. The organisational blueprint proposes to give the same impact to the tasks of town planning, community work and network organisation and to equip each domain with equal staff. In reality, mosty only one of these tasks is taken up in the centres, and the centre managers are often subdued to the city administration. Differences and unclear roles like these mostly result from an unlucky combination of existing cooperation structures and rules, real or imagined responsibilities for local actors and organisations, and the real or imagined demands of the programme. They can lead to misunderstandings and overlappings of tasks and responsibilities, latent conflicts and delays in the programme s accomplishment. Clearly defined targets and deadlines in the network cooperations are rare. The practice concerning working structures that is currently adapted in most of the cooperation networks we analysed, is very open and consists in a sort of permanent-learningprocess or, to put it more bluntly in a muddling through. Even if we would principally welcome this practice, a negative effect is up to now mostly a lack of clearly structured and defined targets and deadlines. If targets or deadlines are defined, in most cases, there are structured project schemes with defined success indicators. Their shere existence can have positive effects as they are a form of self-obligation and -control. This is all happening, even though the cities have to hand in project schemes with their applications at the Ministry of the specific Land, and even though they have to report on the progress made each year. However in practice this is not taken very serious and delays in project realization and the resulting frustration of the inhabitants are seen as a natural consequence of the programme by most of the responsible actors. 13

14 In most of the quarters we analysed, a realistic third way has to be found between harsh and inflexible project plannings and deadlines executed top down and the current method that leaves nearly everything open in the local cooperation process, except for the definition of some commonplace targets. Different groups of relevant actors are represented in the cooperation networks in unequal proportions: the formal cooperation networks we analysed show strategic gaps at important points. In contrast to the broad range of cooperation partners the programme guidelines proposes, issues and actors concerning the policy fields of economic development and employment policies are marginalized in the programme application of the quarters we have researched. This does not only concern representatives of the private economy, but also public institutions such as the Federal Office of Employment or the local Public Office of Economic Development. Moreover, there are no clearly defined targets for the inclusion of actors representing these policy fields. The educational system with its cultural, social and vocational dimensions is marginalized as well, even if representatives of local schools are integrated quite often. But up to now there is a lack of concepts for the integration of the educational system all together. These holes partly reflect the circumstance that some policy fields (education and employment) and actors have not been integrated into the programme conception from the beginning that is, on the ministry levels of the federal government and the Laender. The programme is one of the programmes of the federal ministry of planning, infrastructure and traffic. These deficiencies at the more central level have mostly been followed by very much the same organisational lacks on the local level. Concerning the degree of representation, three actor groups can be differentiated in the networks we analysed: Inhabitants, welfare and non-profit organisations, housing associations and schools are represented in most of the local networks. In most quarters, non-profit organisations are traditional providers of social services, and they often are partners in the provision of the City Quarter Community Centre. Housing associations own a large part of the apartments in the quarters. Schools show a contradictory participation pattern: while many school representatives, like members of the teaching staff or school sponsorship funds, cooperate in projects or fund room capacities, official heads of schools or representatives of the education policy system are very rarely officially taking part. Thus, the aspects of education and 14

15 vocational training of the quarter s children and teenagers cannot be treated successfully by the network in most cases. A second group of participating actors shows a medium degree of representation. Public service providers such as childcare institutions, work integration enterprises, but also city quarter s parliaments or official representatives of the foreign population are directly involved in projects in many quarters be it as planners, contract partners, or as actors that provide the project s political support and legitimization. A third group of actors is represented in the cooperation networks rarely. The sector of local economy and employment, which should be represented by the Federal Office of Employment, the Economic Development Agency or the local Chamber of Commerce, only have a small importance in the reality of the local programme implementation. The same has to be said about the regional district s government, which is responsible for important policy issues especially for smaller cities. In a nutshell: the cooperation networks we found in quarters participating in the programme Social City are still very much located on a traditional axis between urban planning and social and community work. Consequently, the cities mostly concentrate on projects in social and urban development, while cooperation projects concerning economic development and improvement of the employment situation are rare. This limitation in the range of the cooperation partners and objects can endanger the programme s success as an integrated strategy for city and quarter development, that gets both popular social support and economic support as well. There is only little emphasis on the mobilization of local resources from social and private partners. The cities raised a considerable amount of extra-programme resources, but among these, resources from local cooperation partners were rare. The extra funds mainly came from housing associations, which were not integrated in the participation-oriented process of city quarter development. Moreover, the cities concentrated on top-down resources from public authorities like the Land, the federal government or the EU and their programmes. A considerable amount of extra-programme funds came from the city budget and from non-profit organisations when they were engaged in community work in the context of the programme. Where local actors invested extra-programme funds into the quarters, like housing associations, they mostly would have done so anyway. This means that the local cooperation 15

16 networks mostly only administer what relevant actors have invested into the programme quarter ever since. But neither they nor the cities have so far been able to stimulate local actors and organisations to a level of cooperation where they realize that extra investments be they monetary or non-monetary resources and social capital - into the programme quarter are of interest for them. In our opinion, the possibilities local cooperation networks offer to influence local actor s and organisation s priorities and activities concerning the quarters have thus so far not been sufficiently used. There are several obstacles to the accomplishment of such a task. One of the most obvious is that the hierarchically organised mechanisms of the repartition of resources have so far been internalised by most actors Democracy To strengthen democratic structures touches three aspects: there are tasks concerning the level of community work, creating and strengthening socially integrative structures and taking care of them. These structures are an important condition for better possibilities of participation in the processes of local political decision making. there are tasks concerning intermediate structures that enable information exchange and the balancing of interests, which also means the possibility to take into account decisions taken by parliaments or administrations better. representative and administrative structures are to be completed with participatory elements; the integration of weaker population groups should have a special impact. It remains unclear which level and forms of participation are wanted for actors and organisations beyond politics and administration. We cannot make general statements about the level of participation actors and organisations beyond the realm of politics and administration have in the local networks. It remains unclear if, and how far, actors exterior to the administration can really influence values, strategies and concepts of steering groups or other network parts that mainly represent the administrative system through the new official cooperation mechanisms (in contrast to the former informal ones). On the contrary, strategy building processes still seem to be a task of the political and administrative system only. Thus, in this constellation, cooperation networks can serve to improve the performance of classical strategy building processes regarding better information by taking into account the interests of weaker groups and actors. But they do not seem to 16

17 improve the formal possibilities of extra-administrative actors to participate in strategy and concept building processes. Cooperation and participation of inhabitants consists more in consent-building than in decision-making. Our results indicate that the elements in the cooperations that aim at integrating the inhabitants and also a large spectre of relevant actors, like City Quarter Community Conferences or inhabitant reunions, rather serve as a medium to communicate administrative decisions and later to make them accepted as a medium of co-decision-making and participation in the innovation process. Since the programme guidelines require this and advocate an enthusiastic image of participation in decision making, this seems slightly surprising. Indicators for this were the different degrees of participation of the inhabitants and relevant actors we noticed in the quarters. While groups of weaker persons and less forceful actors invest a high degree of work in social or community work projects and tasks, their participation in the planning of projects is mostly limited to mere information and consent building given the fact that their acceptance for issues like the master plan of the quarter s economic development. Furthermore, functional participation, needed to fulfil predefined tasks in projects like building a playground, is highly developed, while the weaker actors that participate this way have no or very limited possibilities to influence the decision-making processes that are strategically important. We found one case where the quarter inhabitants, even if participating regularly in the respective conferences, learned of an urban planning project through the press. Moreover, the official participative elements of the networks are limited in their possibilities and their importance, because the respective meetings with the broad variety of groups participating and their role as a forum do not follow a clearly defined and transparent rhythm, and they are scheduled at long temporary intervals. If a city -conference only meets once in three months for an hour, it is clear that beyond information, coordination- and decisionprocesses cannot take place there. There are sevee problems concerning the activation of weaker groups and their organised participation. Weaker social groups in the city quarter, like recipients of social assistance or young persons, are seldom organised and formally represented in the cooperation networks. This does not per se exclude the possibility of respecting their concerns in the projects administered; because 17

18 the advocacy by other and stronger groups may help such minority groups. Nevertheless success in bulding up their own associations and spokesmen are rare. It has to be mentioned here, that the chances of making oneself heard or be formally represented are not determined by the fact of belonging to a specific ethnic social or cultural group; what is counting most is the status and acceptance the respective group has gained in the quarter or city: groups that have a long tradition in the quarter, and that can be identified with it, like elder people of native German origin, have a relative high status and influence, even if they may be weak economically spoken. But other groups, like recipients of social assistance or young migrants, have lower status and less influence. Consequently, in the city quarters we researched, a high degree of formal organisation and representation is shown by elder inhabitants, and partly also by some migrant-groups that are identified with and respected in their neighbourhood. They are often directly participating in the formal elements of the cooperation network. On the contrary, unemployed persons, persons living on social assistance, immigrant that came recently as well as young people were mostly represented in the networks only by advocates or intermediaries, like individual spokesmen Sustainability Programmes for politics and administration are limited in duration, but they are supposed to initiate developments that even carry on when they are finished. Regarding local cooperation networks, the question is how much the programme Social City can contribute to a changing mode of action in politics and administration, but also of governance at large and the ways, institutions, organisations or groups from the local economy and civil society play a role in it. Local networks, cooperation structures and steering concepts are seldom regarded as part of a comprehensive strategy to develop new forms of politics and governance; consequently, there are no models for the development of a respective culture of cooperation We did not find many cities that treated Social City as part of a strategy of overall administrative change aiming at a style of administration and governance that is more public and transparency-oriented. Institutionalised politics, especially on the higher levels of hierarchy, rarely intervene in the programme process. A reflection of this fact is that the persons in the administration responsible for the programme can mostly be found on lower hierarchy levels only in 5 out of 18 quarters the coordinator was a person on the hierarchy level of a head of department. 18

19 If institutionalised politics does not intervene so as to make clear that the aim is a change of governance and administration, traditional forms of local governance continue to be the standard against which the then deviating cooperation forms required by the programme can hardly be established. Part of this problem is the fact that in most cases the central task of the City Quarter Community Centres organisation has been handed to a contractor (mostly commercial management or planning bureaus) external from the administration. We only found two quarters where the centres were organised by the city administration. This must not but it can be a problem to the degree the administration is allowed by this outside support to escape from the necessities of administrative learning.the more new tasks and challenges are externalised, the more it is possible for the administration to slip by new aspects of learning and qualification. This is especially true for the externalisation of the City Quarter Community Centres, because they are nodal points for the implementation of new cooperation structures and forms. Even though the programme Social City is marked by extraordinarily high demands, it is mostly administered like other public programmes that give extra funds. In consequence of the remarks made above: innovative concepts of cooperation, steering and governance sometimes are reduced to mere decoration, while traditional methods of administration are used in application of urban planning projects. Responsible persons are nominated, but the consequences and implications new forms of governance have for politics and a learning administration - concerning for example participation - are mostly left aside. This also reduces sustainable learning effects because the dominating model in discussions on reforms of public administration and politics is NPM (Hinte 2000). NPM considers citizens, non-profit organisations and civil society members and interest groups in the first respect as clients that have to be professionally served, or as power factors that have to be taken into account. They are not, as the programme philosophy of Social City implies, seen as partners that have to be won for formal participation in governance processes, and that perhaps have to be qualified for this. The inclusion of cooperation structures that existed before the programme - a decisive factor for the development of local networks, cooperatios and governance concept is often neglected. Many quarters builded on former planning and cooperation forms that included mostly informal cooperation with actors from economy and civil society. This can generally be 19

20 considered as an advantage. If these structures can be successfully included into the programme, the resulting networks integrate a larger number of participants and may become better rooted. A negative effect that we found is the fact that these cooperation structures are often also less accessible and in some ways closed shops. Compared to traditional politics and administration the borders between intern and extern are then not more open, but just defined differently. If pre-existing structures of cooperation cannot for reasons ranging from rivalry over to neglect and different aims be successfully integrated into the programme, thiscan reduce or even hinder the programme process. 5. Conclusion Our results indicate not only gaps and difficulties in the implementation of the programme, but also gaps and difficulties inherent to the programme concept itself. Therefore, policy recommendations that we worked out, have been directed to both partners, the participating cities and the ministry. They are briefly listed below: 1. Regarding efficiency and effectiveness of local cooperation structures and network building, the dimension of local economy and concerns with the economic and private investment sides should be valued higher be better integrated. This also means the integration of representatives from the areas of local economy and employment. 2. A local cooperation network would perhaps work in a more efficient way only if after an open discussion process in the beginning it would define some clear tasks, criterias for success, deadlines as well as rules of cooperation. 3. The cooperation networks and the cities should give the mobilization of local resources a higher priority; building networks should result in the fact that participants are animated to make investments that would otherwise be missed these may be investments in terms of financing from representatives of the commercial sector but as well investments in terms of social capital by animating third sector initiatives and community development. 4. The activation of the weaker groups of inhabitants, their readiness to speak out and show up in the public formed at neighbourhood level (e.g. by means of community work) plays a key role with respect to democracy- building. It could also be carried out with more clearly defined targets. Why not set a target and deadlines for the strengthening of local associations and self-help-structures? 20