Citizens’ views on governance in two Swedish city-regions

ABSTRACT

Starting from metropolitan governance theory, this article explores and discusses place-specific institutional preferences among Swedish citizens with regard to city-regional governance. City-regional tendencies in the Swedish political context are described and, specifically, survey data from the Umeå and Göteborg areas in Sweden are utilized in two ways. First, three ideal-typical governance categories are conceptualized drawing on empirical patterns in the survey material. Preferences for the three emergent categories Status Quo, Regionalization, and Consolidation are then tested against independent variables measuring personal resources, sense of place, mobility, political view, and city-regional context. By way of multiple regression analysis, the article concludes with a discussion about some expected and unexpected results. In the final analysis, individual preferences for the three different models of city-regional governance seem to be influenced first and foremost by level of education and sense of place and whether or not the individual resides in a municipality which belongs to the core or to the periphery of the area.

Notes

1. They also suggest a fourth type, which they call rescaling and reterritorialization, mainly driven by the effects of globalization (cf. LeGalès & Lequesne, 1998). This type is omitted here for three reasons. First, although the “regional mess” in Sweden, which was alluded to in the foregoing, can be interpreted as an ongoing process of change in national political structures, there is as yet no indication as to where this institutional change might lead. Consequently, no guidance can be found as to the effects upon the different forms of city-regional governance. Second, the relationship between globalization and political steering in local settings, whether they be direct or indirect, remain ubiquitous in social research (cf. Fraser, 2003; Hays & Kogl, 2007). Place, in other words, matters (cf. De Leon & Naff, 2004; Saegert, 2006). Third and most important, globalizing forces or tendencies were not covered by the survey.

2. Table 2 and the ensuing analysis presents the model run for both the Göteborg and Umeå data sets. To run the model separately for the two sets might be expected to yield interesting similarities and differences. Testing for this, the patterns however remain the same for both sets. There is only one important exception, which is why no tables are presented in the appendix. Differences between city and suburb remain significant only in the Göteborg area, which can probably be understood against the background of size, the Göteborg region being much bigger than the Umeå region. It can be interpreted as a stronger city-suburb dynamic in the bigger city-region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Niklas Eklund

Niklas Eklund is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Umeå, Sweden. His current research focuses upon the administrative, distributive, and leadership aspects of major reform in Swedish policing and, in a different project, geopolitics in the Arctic and Fennoscandia. Among his recent publications are “Swedish Counterterrorism Policy: an intersection between prevention and mitigation” (w/V. Strandh, 2015, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism) and “Vision Impossible? Some Aspects of the Current Russian Debates About the Military Sciences” (2015, Journal on Baltic Security).