Private Influence Preceding Public Involvement: Strategies for Legitimizing Preliminary Partnership Arrangements in Urban Housing Planning in Norway and Finland

Abstract

Neoliberal ideas have inspired new forms of public–private partnerships in urban development. Early preliminary agreement on planning goals and related investments change the possibilities for public participation while offering a privileged position for developers. The aim of the article is to investigate the way power is used in these processes and how such power is legitimized. A new framework for empirical analysis is developed applying theoretical categorizations of power and democratic legitimacy. Housing planning in Norway and Finland is studied and compared. Lukes's three dimensions of power allows the structural power relations embedded within habitual planning practices and legal frameworks to be identified, while authority and manipulation are observable empirically in case studies involving conflicts. As the study reveals, output legitimacy is emphasized, and discussion of procedural aspects of the cases is avoided.

Keywords:

• Public participation
• private–public partnerships
• power
• democratic legitimacy

Notes

1. This case had been studied in the project Participation in urban governance. From a plus factor in government to a strategy in governance, financed by the Norwegian Research Council in the programme DEMOSREG. The case is also presented in Windju (2008).

2. Another instrument called “Development Area” was also launched in the Act (§110), offering the chance to establish specific public–private arrangements for a period of ten years in challenging urban renewal areas or areas where fragmented land ownership hinders housing or economic development. The “Development Area” instrument stems from the British and American concept of “Urban Development Corporation” (UDC). However, in Finland the instrument has not been adopted into common use, at least so far, as Kurunmäki's study (2005) reveals. The familiar land use agreement has generally been regarded as sufficient as a tool in arranging public–private partnership relations in projects requiring detailed planning.

3. The description of the case draws on the report (Peltonen et al., 2006, pp. 85-92, 100-113) of the research project Maankäytön konfliktit ja niiden ratkaisumahdollisuudet kaavoituksessa [Land-use conflicts and possibilities for their resolution in planning], conducted by the Centre for Urban and Regional Studies/Helsinki University of Technology, and funded by the Finnish Ministry of Environment.

4. Michel Foucault's idea of power as “embodied self-discipline” (Foucault, 2000/1975) challenges the feasibility of Lukes's distinction between power over and power to, as, with Foucault, such power is characteristically both restrictive and productive at the same time. In the later revision of his theory, Lukes acknowledges Foucault's and his followers' (e.g. Flyvbjerg, 1998) crucial theoretical and empirical work in adding depth to our understanding of structural and “embodied” (bio)power (Lukes, 2005, pp. 88-107). On the other hand, he doubts whether Foucault has taken his conception of power too far, to become overly all-embracing at the expense of analytical clarity (p. 113). In our opinion, Lukes's three-dimensional view of power is an important step towards integrating the Dahlian interactionist and Foucauldian post-structuralist approaches to power. We believe that the two views, usually seen as mutually exclusive, can be combined as different “dimensions” in a single theoretical framework, offering sound conceptual tools for empirical analysis.

5. Although we are here concerned with the control type of power (“power over”) by the partnership, this does not mean that the capacity building type of power (“power to”) would be foreign to them.