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Manchester: Work in ProgressGovernance Networks for Economic Development in the Greater Manchester City Region
[Thesis]. Manchester, UK: The University of Manchester; 2011.
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Abstract
The thesis seeks to draw upon and develop theories of governance with attempts to explain the functioning of policy and delivery mechanisms within the area of economic development and regeneration within the Greater Manchester City Region. [GMCR] It seeks to identify and to understand the fine-grained processes underlying the evolution of metropolitan governance using multiple methods. The thesis provides a ‘socio-spatial biography’ of the city-region through the use of Social Network Analysis [SNA] linked to a programme of semi-structured interviews with elite policy actors. It seeks to contribute to work on metropolitan governance by considering the role of actors within meta-governance processes which define their ‘scope at scale’, or their ability to act and to exercise discretion within the structures available to them. This discretion rests upon a highly centralised form of ‘contrived randomness’ under which UK central-local relations are skewed in favour of the frames of reference of national policy makers, with local actors responsible for delivery and implementation. Empirical data are drawn from case study fieldwork within the context of the wider array of bodies, vehicles and initiatives at the scale of the Greater Manchester City Region. The thesis seeks to explore the roles of the ‘Manchester Family’ these ‘quasi-local actors and entities’ [qualgae] their forms and functions and their relationship to economic development and spatial planning in the city region. It seeks to conceptualise the qualgae as a network and to consider the relationships between formalised, mandated local government and the more recent assemblages of single-purpose strategic vehicles.The thesis highlights the tensions between actors involved in these parallel (and sometimes competing) forms of city-regional governance and the power and authority associated with strategic co-ordination and ‘joining-up’. It argues that these tensions are particularly acute where sub-national governance innovations combined with the legacy of multiple initiatives within the field of regeneration and local economic development have left complex institutional and cross-organisational structures. It argues that Greater Manchester constitutes a rich milieu from which future initiatives may spring.