dimensions of governance

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POG 100: Introduction to Politics and

Governance, Section 1/2/3/4

Fall 2007

October 09 2007



October 09 2007

• Review: Ideologies

• Review: Liberal Ideologies

• Review: Adam Smith• Review: Radical alternatives

• Film: The Prophets and promise of ClassicalCapitalism

• Dimensions of Governance

• Community

• Local Government



Review: Market Capitalism

• Adam Smith: Theorist most identified withcapitalism

• Key contributions – Expanded reproduction as the basis of wealth

creation – Division of labour and specialization – Self-interest as central motivation of human action

– Competition leads to improvements in production – Free trade and free market – Invisible hand as coordinating mechanism for the

market



Paragraph question

• Identify one of the major contributionsthat Adam Smith made to political

economy and write a paragraphexplaining its significance



Dimensions of Governance

The various dimensions of governancealso represent scales of governance or

Arenas of politics• Community

• Local

• Sub-national• National

• International (global)



Dimensions of Governance:

Community• Community refers loosely to a group of individuals who identify themselves

as having some form of common bond. Such common bond may signifylanguage, culture, territory, types of work, gender, race, shared experience of oppression or privilege

• Often this common bond or ties are the basis for political claims such thatform the basis for more complex political units such as municipality, province,nation, et cetera. But the term is also often used on non-political terms – community of faith, for instance

• The concept of community assumes social bonds and the political imperativeof collective self- governance

• According to Aristotle, community is the basis of a health polis

• With liberalism as the dominant ideology in the West, the concept of community helped refine the ideas of liberalism to demand that states assumeresponsibility for building the capacity of all citizens to participate fully insociety

• In Canadian society, community denotes national community, self-government, English Canada and community of nations.



Community

• Increasingly, as the concept of communityhas come into ubiquitous use

• Some have suggested that it has lost anyexplanatory value and become emptybecause it means different things to differentpeople

• Three major commonalities underlie

community: – Place – Identity – Interest



Place based Communities

• These are generally territorially bounded and defined by place, with peoplesharing a common space

• The key variable here is geographical proximity which makes rules about belonging, citizenship or ownership of property critical to maintaining thesense of common bond

• Geographical settlements such as villages, towns as well as urban centres andnation-states

• Trailer park communities, inner-city communities, low income communities,suburbs, gated communities and even reserves

• Place based communities can cover local, provincial and national geographies.Increasingly there is talk of the international community

• Spatial boundaries are a basis for comparing different political orders as unitsof analysis

• Local municipalities such as cities are a cross between complex and intimatecommunities

• Is there such a thing as an internet community situated in cyberspace?



Identity based communities

• Based on groups sharing at least one identifiable characteristic such aslanguage, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity,religion

• Denotes collective identities when then are converted into political and sociallysignificant identities

• Reproduced partly through social facilitation of group awareness of commonexperience, history, culture often as a basis for organization and political action• May make claims fro political, social, cultural rights on the basis of that identity• Indigenous movements have emerged on the basis of such identity. In Canada,

the Quebecois’ claim to some form of distinctiveness of possible self-government is on this basis

• We often refer to the Black community, the South Asian community, the Italiancommunity, the gay and lesbian community, the disabled community. Whiledifferent, it is similar to identity based forms of nationalism such as Canadiannationalism or American nationalism which demand loyalty from their members

• Some thinkers such as Benedict Anderson have spoken about thesecommunities are ‘socially constructed’. Anderson (1991) also refers to nation-states as ‘imagined communities’ and national identity



Interest based communities

• Based on shared interests whether these areeconomic, political, social or even cultural.

• Business communities, veterans communities,

environmental communities often emerge to further the specific interests of their members which oftenrequire the setting of political goals to achieve

• Some people argue that the term community doesnot apply to say, the business ‘community’

• However, since these groups operate within civilsociety, the realm outside the state, they have asmuch right to that characterization as the others do.



Communities and social capital

• Communities exist partly because they proffer a benefit to their members.

• They accumulate social capital that their members can draw fromwhen such need arises – community sentiments that help strengthenthe common bonds and add value to the community

• Social capital can be measured in shared values, common goals,quality of relationship, participation in civic life, trust,

• Putnam (2000) has argued that social capital “allows citizens toresolve collective problems more easily…and widens our awareness of

the many ways in which our fates are linked”• Community is also often contrasted with individualism as an ideology.

So Communitarianism or humanism has arisen as an expression of that idea and as an ideology



Civic Communitarianism

• Communitarianism calls for the establishment of ‘the Good society” or the “Just society” and the privileging of the Public Good over thePrivate Interest

• It rests on the moral claim of the WE as superior to the I.

• According to Communitarianism, the public good is defined as “thatwhich benefits society as a whole and leads to… public happiness”(Bellah, 1985)

• Communitarianism has often been associated with localism and it issuggested that its greatest appeal lies among those who use traditionalsocieties as reference points.

• However, it has also been presented as a critique of modern capitalismand its tendency to atomize and alienate people from their families,communities, and environments.

• It represents the vitality of collective action versus the atomization andfragmentation of individualism and the ideologies of capitalism andthe market that promote such individualism



Cosmopolitan Communitarianism

• Cosmopolitan communitarianism argues that urban society is socomplex that you need to define the concept of community morebroadly even as you seek to ensure the right equilibrium betweenuniversal individual rights and the common good.

• Can communitarian values enhance individual or group autonomy or dothey by definition curtail individual and group rights?

• How do communities balance the equal rights of free citizens and thegroup and collective rights?

• Further, does the need to strike that balance only apply within aparticular community or should it traverse the boundaries?

• Should the ‘international community’ be the community of record when

it comes to genocide and human rights abuses or should the relevantcommunity be the nation-state?• Should more democratic societies have a responsibility to export

democracy?



Local Governance

• Involves the governance of municipalities, cities, towns, villages,school boards

• Often associated with active political participation because it isthe level of government considered closest to the everyday lives

of the people• The level of government that delivers some of the most tangibleservices such as water, hydro, garbage collection, recreation,social services, policing, fire, transit, road maintenance, publichealth, housing, planning and zoning, restaurant quality control

• Increasingly cities are not local in the parochial sense but are

great global regional centres of economic, cultural and politicalactivity. Global cities such as London, New York, Tokyo, MexicoCity, Beijing, Toronto represent both the local and globaldimensions of modern society and are the centre of what hascome to be known as the global-local nexus



Global-Local nexus

• Modern cities are an expression of the globalizing nature of societies and its complexity

• They are centres of wealth creation and power as well as thesites of intense exploitation and marginalization. Often the very

well to do live side by side with those in extreme poverty• They are magnets for people of all kinds, from those migratingfrom rural areas and declining or restructuring economic sectorssuch as Agriculture and resource extraction to those migratingfrom other countries

• In the case of Canada, over 80% of the population lives along

the southern most part of the country where most of Canada’smajor cities are.• 90% of Canada’s immigrant population (18.5% of Canada’s

population, second largest in the World, only to Australia) live inCanada’s urban centres



Local government

• Local governments are the creation of ‘senior’ governments -mostly the sub-national (provincial or state governments) infederal nation states or the central government in unitary states

• Local governments have a constitutional, legal and operational

relationship with the senior governments• In some cases they deliver services under the mandate of thesenior government such as social services in the case of Toronto (child care, housing, education, social assistance)

• City governance has received new impetus as globalization hasshifted power and authority towards the global level, leaving the

local level as the level of greater democracy and accountabilityto the population,• City governance represents a manageable scale of human

political action and allows for some control over political events



Canada’s municipalities

• While 80% of Canada’s population lives in 27 urbancentres, over 50% lives in the five largest metropolitanareas - Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary Edmonton

• These are highly cosmopolitan centres and highlyethnically diverse.

• Diversity is the norm in terms of race, gender, ethnicity,sexual orientation, age - young people are attracted to thecity centres for career opportunities and for the lifestyle

• These are also politically sophisticated centres, yet therepresentative political structures don’t necessarilyrepresent the diversity of the cities



Municipal governance structure

• Cities are typically governed by councils composed of a Mayor or Regent and councilors representing residents of differentwards. Council is the policy making body - City Plan

• The mayor or Regent is often an equal among equals, and

her/his vote counts as just one vote. However is some systems,the Mayor has more clout and can control others members evenwithout a party system. The mayor also runs the governmentwith the help of a professional bureaucracy

• Participation in local elections, held every three years, isgenerally low despite the claim that cities are the closest level of government to the public. In Canada, it is routinely as low as30% and even fewer participate in on-going policy development

• Generally, women are underrepresented in municipalgovernment as are other marginalized groups such asimmigrants



Political representation

• Representation is largely outside the political party structure andin many cases local interests cross party lines - non-partisan?

• Ethnicity has been a major factor in neighbourhood selectionand political representation

• However, data showing a breakdown of Ethno-racialrepresentation from Municipal, Provincial and Federal Electionsin 2000, suggests a dramatic under-representation of the someethno-cultural groups

• Some communities are dramatically overrepresented -British, Southern Europeans and Jewish

• Others are dramatically under-represented – East andSouth East Asians, African Canadians

• Some are completely excluded – Aboriginal peoples, SouthAsians, Arabs and Latin Americans.



Local political movements

• Often when the public participates in the politics of the localgovernment, they tend to represent very specific neighbourhoodinterests, often mobilizing against low income housing or housing for persons with disabilities or half way house.

• The phenomenon is called: Not In My Backyard (NIMBY)• But political movements often arise to fight for better planning, tostop the construction of roads through neighbourhods, toadvocate for child care and recreations services or as was thecase with Toronto, to resist amalgamation and to protect localdemocracy

• Local movements can make a difference by attending andpresenting deputations at council or committee meetings,thereby inserting themselves in the policy making and prioritysetting process or the development of the City Plan



Urban Amalgamation

• The processes that led to the emergence of city-regionsinvolved the amalgamation of previously smaller units of municipal governance - often to reflect the impetus of globalization

• The argument is that service delivery is more effective in alarger municipal region than in smaller units and that city-regions competed better for global economic activity thansmaller cities

• Among Canada’s major cities Halifax, Montreal, Winnipegwere all subject to this process of municipal consolidation

• In Ontario, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo were among the city-regions that wereamalgamated in the late 1990s as part of this trend



Toronto Mega-City

• In 1998, Toronto’s six cities were amalgamated into one Mega-City

• Toronto became the largest Canadian city and the fifth largest inNorth America with a population of 2.5 million and a budget of

around $ 6.5 billion (2003 figures).• Toronto’s size is only dwarfed by the provinces of BritishColumbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec

• Concern has been expressed about the loss of democraticspace and political participation as the city government hasbecome ore remote from the people.

• Despite its size, Toronto only has 44 city councilors today,sharing 22 wards and its budget is 30% than pre-amalgamation.• Attempts have been made to establish local councils to address

this democratic deficit but is yet unclear as to their effectiveness



Global City-Regions

• The emergence of World-Cities is a sort of reversal of fortunes for cities• Sassen (1991) has argued that a general system of global city-regions is

emerging to rival nations states in size and political economic clout. In someways, this is a throw back to the pre-nation state days when the great city-states of Europe and Asia ruled world trade leading to capitalism’s emergence.

• It represents the internationalization of urban centres. Today’s world citiesinclude London, New York, Tokyo, Mexico City, Beijing, – Peter hall has referred to them as “ dense notes of human labour and

communal life” – They include cosmopolitan populations, international centres of

transportation and telecommunication links, transnational social links.

However, place remains important• City regions have been divided into Alpha (New York, etc), Beta (Toronto,etc), Gamma (Montreal, etc) on the basis of their population size and their economic clout.



State-Local relations

• Local governments are the legal creation of ‘senior’ governments -mostly the sub-national (provincial or state governments) in federalnation states or the central government in unitary states and maintainoperational relationship with the senior governments

• These relationships are sometime conflictual although they representthe same people• A 2003 survey showed that 63% of Canadians demonstrated

leadership on more issues than the provinces (59%) or the nationalgovernment (53%).

• Senior governments impose rules and mandates on local governments

- also known as cost shared programs (or more recentlydownloading of service delivery)

• Often decisions such as the amalgamation of cities are made at thesenior government level with minimal consultation



State-Local financial relations

• While local governments meet local needs with local revenues, oftenthey are dependent on senior governments that impose cost shared service delivery mandates on them

• Typically, cities raise revenues through property taxes and educational

levies, and transfers from senior governments• While senior governments transfer as much as $30 billion annually tocities and towns in Canada, it is in the form of conditional grants andis used as a means of control

• Decentralization has become a popular way of addressing the demandsfor smaller budgets during the period of decline of the welfare state

and the emergence of globalization• More recently the Ontario government passed a new City of TorontoAct that transferred more tax powers given the size of the city and itssophisticated service demands



City Governance reform

• Objective of reforms is to give the city the tools to be asuccessful 21st-century metropolitan centre

• The new City of Toronto Act:

– A strong mayor and executive committee system, where the mayor can implement long-term strategy and a budget.

– Four year to council terms. – Giving City councillors extra powers to make local planning

decisions at community councils.

– A stronger auditor general and an empowered integritycommissioner, with authority over all politicians and staff. – Provincial uploading of $500 million of Toronto's annual social-

service costs, or giving the city part of the sales tax. – Power to levy some new taxes.

dimensions of governance

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