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Abstract
Researchers in the field of housing studies only seldom employ a ‘politics perspective’, analysing the political games and processes of housing provision and the political institutions of relevance to these processes. Instead political aspects are largely discussed either in terms of structural and cultural conditions and constraints on the macro level (‘Structure’ in the title), or as rather descriptive narratives about specific governments, elite actors and institutions, without the theoretical linkage necessary to draw more general conclusions (‘Thatcher’ in the title). This article introduces and develops some basic theoretical elements of a research agenda within housing studies exploring political actors (in a wide sense) and institutions, and allowing middle-range theorising and generalisation. It is discussed how such a perspective can be applied to the field of housing with its political specificities, in particular the central role of markets. Some earlier research of relevance to housing politics is reviewed, and ways forward are suggested.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Policy-oriented housing research is certainly important; what is argued in this article is only that it should be complemented with studies of housing politics. The policy dominance was confirmed by a search on Google Scholar for the period 2000–2008, when 185 articles in the four journals Housing Studies, Housing, Theory and Society, International Journal of Housing Policy and Journal of Housing and the Built Environment had the word ’policy’ in the title while only 10 titles included ’politics’ (Bengtsson, Citation2009, p. 16). In a new search in the same journals covering the period 2009–2014, 75 titles were found with the word ’policy’ (or ‘policies’) and 8 with the word ’politics’.
2 Foucauldian perspectives on housing issues represent a more recent constructivist (and critical) approach (e.g. Flint, Citation2004; McKee, Citation2011).
3 ‘Political game’ is used metaphorically here, meaning any more or less strategic form of interaction between political actors. Such interaction may sometimes, but not always, be fruitfully analysed in terms of formal game theory.
4 Housing policy' has been defined as ‘any sustained course of action designed to affect housing conditions’ (Donnison & Ungerson, Citation1982, p. 13). In empirical work, of course, the demarcation line between housing policy and housing politics is not always clear-cut.
5 Again, political scientists have no precedence to this type of imagination—as will be clear from several of the studies presented below.
6 A theory of the middle range is a clear, precise, and simple type of theory which can be used for partially explaining a range of different phenomena, but which makes no pretence of being able to explain all social phenomena (Hedström & Udéhn, Citation2009).
7 This of course only touches upon what is really a wide-ranging methodological discussion. See Elster (Citation2007) for a comprehensive account of this form of theorising, and Somerville & Bengtsson (Citation2002) for a discussion of how it can be applied to housing studies. Bengtsson & Hertting (Citation2014) is a recent contribution that also gives examples from housing research.
8 ‘Policy theory’ can be defined as ‘the total of causal and other assumptions underlying a policy’ (Hoogerwerf, Citation1990).
9 Another, more general problem with Wilson's model is that the very classification of a policy is often part of what is politically contested, which would make it difficult to agree on the distributive character as well (cf. Fischer, Citation2003, pp. 64–66).
10 Oxley & Smith (Citation1996, pp. 2 and 3) make a similar observation about the role of the state in housing provision, though not related to a discussion on policy theory; cf. also Lund (Citation2006, pp. 1 and 2).
11 This delicate balance—or complementarity—between state and market in housing is what makes national housing regimes appear to be ‘monstrous hybrids’ (cf. Christophers, Citation2013).
12 Recent trends of new public management and network governance in welfare state implementation have differentiated the forms of state allocation in other sectors and may to some extent have moved them closer to housing, where markets have always played a central role.
13 Several authors have claimed that the concept of housing tenure has been used too widely and too abstractly in housing research (e.g. Ball et al., Citation1988; Barlow & Duncan, Citation1988). Hulse (Citation2008, p. 217) suggests that ‘…the position of housing tenure as the key explanatory concept in housing research is at best inflated and at worst can obscure the relationships between households and housing’. Actually what these authors warn against seems to be a simplified analysis where e.g. owner-occupation is tacitly taken to represent the same thing in different housing regimes. However, always observing the important distinction suggested by Ruonavaara (Citation1992) between (ideal) types and (existing and specific) forms of tenure should take care of that problem. Precisely in the analysis of housing politics and institutions, the concepts of tenure and tenure policy appear to be not only useful but absolutely crucial.
14 There is an unexplicated, and unrealistic, power and politics perspective informing this type of analysis, one of central governments having important formative influence, almost to pick and choose between different housing systems (Kemeny & Lowe, Citation1998, pp. 163 and 164).
15 Historical institutionalism takes time seriously, ‘specifying sequences and tracing transformations and processes of varying scale and temporality’ (Pierson & Skocpol, Citation2002, pp. 695 and 696).
16 Malpass (Citation2011) is a more theoretically oriented contribution to path dependence and housing, also discussing British housing history.
17 Bengtsson & Ruonavaara (Citation2010) presents the approach and the main results in English.
18 Norris (Citation2014) interestingly discusses the development of the Irish rental sector in relation to Kemeny's distinction between dualist and unitary rental markets.
19 Some earlier examples are Birchall (Citation1988) on housing cooperatives in Britain, Jensen (Citation1995) on Danish social housing, and Glasze (Citation2005) on gated neighbourhoods in a perspective of ‘shareholder democracy’.
20 Political opportunity structure has been defined as ‘… consistent—but not necessarily formal or permanent—dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations for success or failure’ (Tarrow, Citation1994, p. 85). Such factors are certainly of relevance to the relation between local elite actors, activists and residents in urban housing.
21 Among other things, such research on political actors and institutions may help explain why seemingly rational and reasonable policy proposals are often not implemented or even ignored.