The logics and limits of “collaborative governance” in Nantes: Myth, ideology, and the politics of new urban regimes

ABSTRACT

This article characterizes and evaluates a paradigm case of urban collaborative governance: the so-called Nantes model. Stressing its positioning in the particular tradition of French politics and drawing on poststructuralist discourse theory, this article demonstrates how the myth of the jeu à la Nantaise (the Nantes game) informs a discourse of urban collaborative governance with a distinctive triad of policy goals. In the context of fiscal tightening and multiple crises, this governance practice involves various strategies designed to incorporate neighborhoods and communities in the co-production of public policies in a pragmatic way. Analyzing the grammar and forms of these practices reveals that co-governance in Nantes functions as a doctrinal abridgement, leading to a growing managerialization in an increasingly codified system of community participation. We thus conclude that one line of flight in the Nantes model signifies a movement away from an image of collaborative pragmatism as a complex praxis of governing to an ideology that conceals the complications and messiness of governing in a collaborative manner.

Acknowledgments

We thank Zachary Neal and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive engagement with our work and for their helpful suggestions on how we might refine our argument. Jonathan Davies kindly offered valuable comments on early drafts of the article.

Additional information

Funding

The research informing our argument and assessment of Nantes was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council as part of the Collaborative Governance Under Austerity project (Ref: ES/L012898/1).

Notes on contributors

Steven Griggs

Steven Griggs is Professor of Public Policy in the Department of Politics, People and Place at De Montfort University, where he is Director of the Local Governance Research Centre. His research explores poststructuralist accounts of policymaking, with a particular focus on environmental policy change and local and urban governance. He has published French Politics (co-authored with Robert Elgie, Routledge, 2000) an The Politics of Airport Expansion in the UK (co-authored with David Howarth, Manchester University Press, 2013) and co-edited Practices of Freedom (with Henk Wagenaar and Aletta Norval, Cambridge University Press, 2014). He has authored articles in a number of journals including West European Politics, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, Urban Studies, and Political Geography. He was editor of Critical Policy Studies.

David Howarth

David Howarth is Professor of Political Analysis in the Department of Government at the University of Essex, where he is currently Director of the MA and PhD programs in Ideology and Discourse Analysis, and Director of the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis. He has published Discourse (Open University Press, 2000), Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and Political Theory (Routledge, 2007, with Jason Glynos), Poststructuralism and After (Palgrave, 2013), and The Politics of Airport Expansion in the UK (Manchester University Press, 2013, with Steven Griggs). He has authored articles in journals including Political Geography, Political Studies, Journal of Political Ideologies, Parliamentary Affairs, Political Quarterly, Anthropology Today, Political Studies Review, and Mobilization.

Andrés Feandeiro

Andrés Feandeiro is a Lecturer in the Department of Applied Languages at the Université Bretagne Sud. His comparative research explores how cities and their governance actors are able to facilitate (or contest) institutional and organizational change in the context of increasing global competition between cities and regions.