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on the one hand and on the other hand, the communitarian discourse also calls for the
emergence of a kind of entrepreneurial spirit, where individuals are responsible
to actively include themselves into the labour market, instead of passively relying on the
welfare state. This strategy, Hager identifies to be part of the ideology of the EU-Lisbon
Agenda, has been referred to as “workfare” (Peck 2001).
Nevertheless, the communitarian agenda also contains important traits concerning possible
socially creative strategies. For this sake, Laville’s (2005) differentiation between democratic
solidarity and forms of philantrophy or charity seems promising. The democratic character is
thus reinforced by reciprocity and equality of the participants and not by relations of personal
dependence which are often being (re-)established if private agents take over or take part in
the management of formerly state-owned services. Laville also relates to the field of economic
democracy, which would require forms of business organization which are internally
democratic as well as the chances for the citizens to participate on an equal basis concerning
their economic power. This leads to the notion of public spaces (Habermas 1962/1990;
Avritzer 2002) and associated concepts of participatory governance (Grote/Gbikpi 2002;
Fung/Wright 2003). These concepts point towards the notion of citizen’s governance, standing
somehow in opposition to governance by command, but need to be critically re-examined to
form a basis for socially innovative practices towards democratic governance. In the mode of
governance by command, the so-called public sector has been managed by state bureaucrats in
a hierarchical way, following roughly the concept of Max Weber (1922/1980) which
emphasizes impersonal hierarchies
4
. Contrary to socialist and anarcho-syndicalist tendencies
of the interwar-period – e.g. the Austro-Marxists (Bauer 1919/1976b; 1919/1976a;
Bottomore/Goode 1978) and the Dutch Anton Pannekoek (1950/2003) – who distinguished
the “socialisation” of the means of production from state management of the latter, post-World
War social democracy turned to a Keynesian strategy, where key industries and services were
nationalized (Przeworski 1980). Nicos Poulantzas (1978: 79) criticized this strategy heavily as
“techno-bureaucratic statism of the experts”, which alienates the people from the state. This
was the basis for the criticism of the social movements during the 1970s against state
involvement which was perceived as patriarchal and authoritarian. The liberal offensive to
privatize formerly state-run enterprises and services only had to simplify and channel them
into the distinction between state vs. private property or service delivery – so market-based
and multi-lateral governance (cf. tab. 2) arrangements were installed. Today, experiments of
self-managed service delivery can be seen again as a creative reaction against exclusionary
dynamics, this time created by privatization of formerly state-run services. This might improve
4
This leads to more accountability as decisions are taken on a technocratic basis – a trend which is also visible in current reforms of New
Public Management. According to Kieser (2002) this strengthens charismatic leaders, who link bureaucracy and society, fostering
de-democratization.
GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRACY
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the quality of life at the same time as it teaches civic virtues. Pointing to the notion of citizen’s
governance, these practices represent interesting socially creative strategies, to be analyzed in
case studies in this report, as well as in WP 1.1-1.4 of KATARSIS.
The case studies for the field of governance and democracy in the following chapters will
show the potentials and problems of these socially creative strategies in different contexts and
forms.
GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRACY
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3
3
.
.
C
C
A
A
S
S
E
E
S
S
T
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U
D
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I
I
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E
S
S
C
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N
N
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C
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E
R
R
N
N
I
I
N
N
G
G
S
S
O
O
C
C
I
I
A
A
L
L
L
L
Y
Y
C
C
R
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E
A
A
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T
I
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V
V
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S
T
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S
The above mentioned general dynamics can be witnessed in the following case studies in very
different ways. The case study of Barcelona deals with the territorial employment pacts, being
implemented to tackle the problems related to social exclusion by unemployment in
multilateral governance settings which have the possibility of leading to constellations where
democratic governance settings seem to be possible to emerge. The cases of Denmark and of
participatory governance in Porto Alegre are examples of participatory governance initiated by
local governments. They point out possibilities and problems associated with attempts towards
democratic citizen’s governance at the municipal scale. The case study of the Welsh
cooperative will reflect upon the possibilities for socio-economic democracy, which deals with
socio-economic citizenship and thus with democratic citizen’s governance on the local scale in
the productive sphere.
3.1.
The Territorial Employment Pacts in Spain
5
In 1997 the European Union launched the European Employment Strategy (EES), based on
entrepreneurship, employability, adaptability and equal opportunities which has incentivated
new forms of governance in terms of employment policies, integration subnational levels in
the policy-making, as well as civil society. The Committee of Regions and the European
Commission created a new pilot program, the Territorial Pacts for Employment. The original
idea was to motivate the creation of wide agreements for employment in subnational territories
that were undergoing de-industrialization processes or were suffering a long term crisis. 96
different sub-national territories were selected. One of the selected participating territories in
the pilot programme was the County of Vallès Occidental, where the different actors started a
wide agreement with EU funds. The county of Vallès Occidental has as main characteristics a
small and medium enterprises network with a strong industrial profile. Until recent times, the
industrial basis of the County of Vallès Occidental has been the textile industries. Nowadays
the crisis of the textile sector is creating employment problems in the region, which is
undergoing a process of transformation of its economy (Hermosilla 2003). As in many other
urban contexts, the strategy towards a knowledge society is becoming dominant and has non-
desired effects such as social exclusion and unemployment.
5
This chapter was written by Marc Pradel (Universitat de Barcelona).