Urban Governance and Democracy: Leadership and Community Involvement

The issue of local governance is currently high on the institutional agenda of many local and regional authorities throughout the OECD countries. This book explores the relationship between two key issues for urban governance - leadership and community involvement - and how making these two elements more complementary one to the other can lead to more effective as well as legitimate policy outcomes. The authors examine the dilemmas involved in ensuring effective governance, focusing on issues such as legitimacy, citizen participation, economic performance and social inclusion. *Part I identifies the key themes and provides the framework of the main arguments in the book, offering an overall conceptual model. *Part II develops this model providing a detailed discussion of key elements such as multi-level and multi-actor governance, leadership, community involvement and performance indicators etc. *Part III explores the policy and practice implications. This book will be of interest toacademics and practitioners concerned with questions of local governance and local democracy, in the fields of political science and urban studies and regional planning.