Transnational Municipalism in a Europe of Second Cities

Abstract

The relationship between globalization, urban-industrial change, and municipalism is one that has been reconfigured in recent years. The British school of public administration, in particular, has lent credence to the view that local authorities, or municipalities as they are taken here, have been virtually powerless to satisfactorily manage the transition of local economies into a postindustrial global society.1 The explanations have been clearly formulated: from the late 1970s successive Conservative governments rolled back the frontiers of the state, stripped the powers of a constitutionally weak local state, privatized a multitude of services, and curbed municipal rating powers. Globalization, indeed Europeanization, merely accelerated this pattern, heralding the final demise of the British municipality and introducing a homogeneity that characterized municipal governments from Birmingham to Barcelona. In an urbanized world, the political and economic forces of globalization and Europeanization signaled the Pyrrhic victory of the British central government in its long struggle with municipalities over the governance of modern society. Concurrently, the increasing interest taken by the European Community (EC) in transnational strategies transformed urban governance, leaving national governments to shape policy making by reforming the institutional superstructure, directing the flow of its resources, and shaping the channels through which policies filtered vertically downward to municipalities.2

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