This is an author-produced blog post to introduce upcoming Urban Affairs Review articles. This article is available in OnlineFirst.
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Explaining ‘power to’: incubation
and agenda building in an urban regime.
Stefania
Ravazzi is assistant
professor of Political Science at the University of Turin, Italy, and
Vice-President of the LaPo-Laboratory of Public Policy. Her
current research focuses on urban governance and deliberative democracy. Her recent contributions on these
topics were published in Métropoles
and Journal of Public Deliberation. She may be reached at: stefania.ravazzi@unito.it
Silvano
Belligni is
professor of Political Science at the University of Turin, Italy. His current research focuses on urban governance and corruption.
His scholarly publications have analyzed urban power structure, local élites, water policy,
the theory of governance, and corruption mechanisms.
From the urban governance
perspective, although not free from structural constraints, local actors can
exercise a significant influence on urban policies and affect the life conditions
of residents. Within this paradigm, the urban regime theory, developed from the
works of Elkin and Stone, has placed the decisional power of urban policy-makers
in the foreground. From the urban regime perspective, not only can local actors
systematically affect the context through their public decisions but, in
particular situations, stable and enduring governing coalitions can even change
the whole consolidated policy mix of a city through the implementation of a new
policy agenda. Stone has labeled ‘power to’ as being the capacity to promote
and sustain new urban agendas and to foster great changes in the social and
economic context.
