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A Sociological Institutionalist Approach to the
Study of Innovation in Governance Capacity
Sara Gonza
´
lez and Patsy Healey
[Paper first received, June 2004; in final form, June 2005]
Summary. This paper draws on institutionalist approaches as developed in the fields of policy
analysis and planning, to develop a methodological approach for assessing how the governance
capacity for socially innovative action might emerge. After introducing the problematic of the
search for governance relations which have the capacity for social innovation, the second and
third parts of the paper summarise the emerging social-constructivist ‘institutionalist’ approach
in policy analysis and planning. The fourth part draws on a three-level analytical model of
governance dynamics to explore the dynamics and dialectics of urban governance transformation
processes, illustrated with a case study of a socially innovative area-based initiative. The final
section considers the power dynamics of episodes of socially innovative governance arising from
within civil society and their potential to transform wider governance processes and cultures.
1. Governance and Social Innovation
In the context of this Special Topic, this
paper provides a methodological strategy
with which to analyse the qualities of govern-
ance capacity to promote socially innovative
initiatives. It draws on sociological institu-
tionalist analysis to develop a three-level con-
ception of governance dynamics with which
three questions are addressed. First, how do
we identify and assess that urban governance
is changing and that new emerging forms
might have the potential to transform sig-
nificantly existing ways of doing things?
Secondly, once we have identified that sig-
nificant transformation of institutional dyna-
mics is happening, how do we evaluate
whether the emerging forms allow for social
innovation? Thirdly, what kinds of power
dynamics are mobilised in initiatives which
promote socially innovative local develop-
ment and what resistances are encountered
by such initiatives in their struggles to
expand and institutionalise?
By social innovation, we mean changes in
governance institutions and agency that
intend to or have the effect of contributing to
improving quality-of-life experiences in a
socially inclusive and socially just way. We
are interested in particular in transformations
in urban governance which expand the under-
standing of the daily-life conditions of people
who suffer from poverty and marginalisation
in an urban context and which give voice
and power to those who can both express
this understanding and raise issues neglected
in established governance discourses and
practices.
Urban Studies, Vol. 42, No. 11, 2055–2069, October 2005
Sara Gonza
´
lez is in the Institute for Policy and Practice (IPP) and in the Global Urban Research Unit (GURU), University of New-
castle, Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK. Fax: 0191 222 6008. E-mail: Sara.Gonzalez@ncl.ac.uk. Patsy Healey is in the Global Urban
Research Unit (GURU), University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NE1 7RU, UK. Fax: 0191 222 6008. E-mail: Patsy.Healey@ncl.ac.uk.
The authors wish to thank Geoff Vigar for his contribution to the fieldwork and their colleagues in the SINGOCOM team for their
many comments on earlier drafts of this paper and to acknowledge the resultant improvements. Its deficiencies, however, remain the
authors’ own!
0042-0980 Print=1360-063X Online=05=112055 –15 # 2005 The Editors of Urban Studies
DOI: 10.1080=00420980500279778
Because we are interested in governance
qualities that promote change and innovation,
our concern is focused on development, on
setting in train a momentum which changes
material conditions and people’s sense of
well-being and which provokes deeper struc-
tural changes which transform the on-going
routines of government practices. By develop-
ment, we understand a multifaceted pheno-
menon which not only involves economic
growth, but also engages in the relationships
between economic, social, cultural, political
and environmental dynamics, their logics and
their various forms. Such a concept of develop-
ment opens up a wider perspective of factors
which might help to improve the quality of
life of people, such as good education, rich
social interaction and political participation.
We also see development as having a more
active meaning, as the activity aimed to trans-
form relationships and shift trajectories. Any
significant transformation would by impli-
cation achieve the capacity to endure, to be
sustained over time. From this point of view,
socially innovative development is not a pre-
dictable trajectory but a search for the mecha-
nisms to achieve a better quality of life and
social justice. In this process, there are path-
dependent elements but there are also random
and unexpected ones.
Our particular concern in this paper is with
the qualities of governance capacity. The term
governance is itself a problematic word (see
Swyngedouw, in this issue). For some, it
refers to a shift from the government arrange-
ments associated in Europe with the post-war
welfare settlements which gave a strong role
to the state in supporting the economy and
civil society, towards a form of governance
with a stronger role for the economy and
civil society in self-managing what had pre-
viously been provided by the state (Harvey,
1989; Jessop, 2001). Following Le Gale
`
s
(2002) and Cars et al. (2002), we use the
term with a more descriptive meaning, to
refer to the organisation of collective action
in general. From this perspective, we explore
the different and changing ways in which
formal government, the worlds of ‘politics’
and ‘administration’, connect with other
social worlds to generate the many ways in
which state and civil society interact, how
these are changing and what opportunities
may open up for more socially innovative
governance practices. By governance capacity,
in the urban context, we mean the ability of
the institutional relations in a social milieu
to operate as a collective actor. In the
context of this Special Topic, our particular
interest is in the development of a capacity
to recognise and promote socially innovative
area development and the extent to which
governance initiatives from civil society
‘grassroots’ are able to grow and expand. To
sum up, innovative governance capacity is,
therefore, the ability of the institutional
relations to work collectively towards the
creation of better and fairer quality living
environments.
As argued by Swyngedouw (in this issue),
in Europe at the turn of the century there has
been an increasing emphasis on the signifi-
cance of governance capacity and its relation-
ship to changing trends in the organisation of
the state and civil society. This is linked to a
recognition that this capacity is not just
defined by formal laws and organisational
competences, but is embedded in the dyna-
mics of governance practices, with their
complex interplay of formal and informal
relations. Increasingly, it is being understood
that these governance practices are not just
attached to a specific organisational form
which can be created and shifted in a straight-
forward manner by the formalised institutions
of politics as these impact on formal rules and
organisational structures (Cars et al., 2002;
Gualini, 2001; Le Gale
`
s, 2002). Instead,
governance practices evolve in an historically
and geographically situated way, through all
kinds of synergetic encounters, contradic-
tions, conflicts and active struggles. Political
agendas are formed in a wide range of govern-
ance arenas and political outcomes are shaped
by many, often transecting, conflicting politi-
cal dynamics, raising difficult questions of
representation, accountability and legitima-
tion (see Swyngedouw, in this issue).
In these processes, exogenous forces and
endogenous forces interact in complex ways,
2056
SARA GONZA
´
LEZ AND PATSY HEALEY
with the result that trajectories of transform-
ation of governance capacity are diverse and
contingent. By implication, an action which
may promote socially innovative initiatives
in one context may produce a different
outcome in another. One consequence is that
there are serious limitations in the use of
‘best practice’ models to identify and assess
socially innovative practices, as these are
never fully transferable. Identifying insti-
tutional sites where social innovation may be
developing, or in contrast may be suppressed,
therefore requires sensitive methodological
tools with which to assess when, where and
how governance processes with social inno-
vation potential may be emerging.
Recent ‘sociological institutionalist’ work
on governance dynamics in the fields of
policy analysis and planning seeks to develop
such tools (Fischer, 2003; Hajer and Wagenaar,
2003; Hall and Taylor, 1996; Healey, 2004;
Lowndes, 2001; Muller and Surel, 1998;
Peters, 1999). The next section of this paper
reviews this approach and its general contri-
bution to understanding innovation in the
context of the formation, maintenance and
transformation of governance capacity. The
third section applies a sociological institution-
alist approach to the identification of innova-
tive governance capacity, answering our first
question. The following section then develops
this further to examine more closely the micro-
dynamics of governance transformation and
thereby addresses our second question. The
final section returns to the third question
raised at the start of this paper and comments
on the generative power of socially innovative
governance practices and the resistances they
encounter.
2. Sociological ‘Institutionalism’ in Planning
and Policy Analysis
‘Sociological institutionalism’ is part of a
broad wave of ideas in the social sciences in
the late 20th century (Moulaert and Ailenei,
in this issue; Peters, 1999). It has much in
common with the ‘holistic’ conception
referred to by Moulaert and Nussbaumer (in
this issue). These ideas have filtered into
planning and policy analysis
1
in an uneven
way, from economics, political science, the
sociology of organisations and through the
struggle within planning and policy analysis
to understand the nature of ‘implementation
processes’ and the relation between strategy
and action. Within this wave, two strands
have been particularly influential. One strand
has developed transaction cost and social
choice approaches (Alexander, 1995; Sager,
1994, 2001; Webster and Lai, 2003). The
other strand takes a more sociological and
social constructivist direction (Fischer and
Forester, 1993; Fischer, 1995, 2003; Hajer
and Wagenaar, 2003; Healey, 1999, 2004).
In this paper, our concern is with the latter
strand of work, because of its sensitivity to
analysing changing governance dynamics as
embedded in institutional settings.
Within planning theory, this ‘sociological
institutionalism’ has developed as a way of
locating policy actions and practices in geogra-
phically specific governance contexts and con-
necting the phenomenology of micro-practices
to wider structuring forces (Fainstein, 2000;
Gualini, 2001; Healey, 1997a, 1999, 2004).
It has also enriched the discussion of insti-
tutional design and raised questions about
the role of state-centred interventions in pro-
moting social innovation.
This infusion of ideas shifts attention, in
the discussion of policy processes, from the
design of projects and policies and the poten-
tial impact on material outcomes, to the
design of the institutional infrastructure
which frames what projects and policies
emerge and to impacts on identities, know-
ledge resources and cultural assumptions/
mores as well as material outcomes. Planning
analysts in this intellectual strand consider
who gets involved in governance processes
and through what modes or styles of govern-
ance. They explore the ways in which con-
cepts and discourses become embedded in
practices (Healey et al., 1988; Hillier,
2002; Jensen and Richardson, 2000, 2004;
Murdoch and Abram, 2002; Richardson,
1997; Vigar et al., 2000; Zonneveld, 2000).
2
Context and activity, structure and action, are
treated as co-constitutive and co-generative
INNOVATION IN GOVERNANCE CAPACITY 2057
(Gualini, 2001). Governance processes come
to be understood as variable and contingent
in their focus, forms and modes, although all
kinds of wider forces can be identified
shaping specific instances. Such analyses are
inherently situated in a specific institutional
space, with concrete manifestations of power
and possibility, and with a particular pattern
of ‘moments’ which could allow transfor-
mational trajectories to get established. By
implication, these analyses reconceptualise
‘the state’ not as a homogeneous force,
but as a
specific institutional ensemble with multiple
boundaries, no institutional fixity and no
pre-given formal or substantive unity
(Jessop, 1990, p. 267).
where a multiplicity of intersecting relations
and arenas, discourses and practices, each
with their own links to economic relations
and civil society, take place.
3. Identifying the Qualities of Governance
Capacity that Promote Social Innovation
The ‘sociological institutionalist’ perspective,
despite its diversity, focuses the analysis of
these micro-dynamics through a set of com-
monly accepted concepts. These general con-
cepts can be used to address our first question
in this paper, that is, how to identify the quali-
ties of emerging governance dynamics and
their transformative potential?
First, institutions are typically distinguished
from organisations. Institutions are under-
stood as the frameworks of norms, rules and
practices which structure action in social con-
texts (Giddens, 1984; DiMaggio and Powell,
1991). They are expressed in formal rules
and structures, but also in informal norms
and practices, in the rhythms and routines of
daily life.
Secondly, and consequentially on the first
point, the focus of institutionalist analysis is
interactions, not decisions per se.
3
Further,
these interactions do not occur in a vacuum,
nor in a clearly bounded ‘action space’.
Institutionalised norms, rules and practices,
argue Dimaggio and Powell (1991, p. 13),
“penetrate the organisation, creating the
lenses through which actors view the world
and the very categories of structure, action
and thought”. They ‘frame’ how the new
situations are perceived (Fischer, 2003;
Schon and Rein, 1994). This is not a one-
way relation. Interactive processes are both
shaped by their institutional inheritance and
help to shape it, in mutually constitutive and
generative processes (Gualini, 2001).
Thirdly, analysts working with these con-
cepts emphasise how institutions change and
the role of intentionality in promoting such
change (Dimaggio and Powell, 1991; Hajer,
1995). This links the visible world of actors,
performing in formal and informal social
arenas where collective action is mobilised
and realised, to the deeper structuring of
their social relations—that is, to the inter-
relation between structure and agency,
between macro and micro levels of analysis.
Fourthly, while some analysts focus on the
micro-politics of interactions between specific
actors in particular arenas, sociological insti-
tutionalists have a strong interest in the issue
of governance capacity itself (for example,
from the UK, see Vigar, 2001, on transport
policy; Raco, 1999, 2002, and Wood et al.,
1998, on local economic development;
Healey, 1997a, 1997b, and Coaffee and
Healey, 2003, on area regeneration initiatives;
and Wood et al., 1999, and de Roo, 2000, on
sustainable development policy).
Fifthly, within the planning field, socio-
logical institutionalists have been concerned
with issues of identity and place and the inter-
connection between these two (Healey, 2002).
Richardson and Jensen (2003 and 2004) have
called this approach a cultural sociology of
space which deals with the dialectic rela-
tionship between material practices and the
meanings that social agents attach to their
environment. From this perspective, planning
practices can also be understood as an unequal
encounter between different spatial imagi-
nations, geographical languages, urban narra-
tives that different groups hold about the same
place and which are all embedded in the pol-
itical economy of a concrete time and space
(Gonza
´
lez Ceballos, 2003).
2058
SARA GONZA
´
LEZ AND PATSY HEALEY
The qualities of emerging innovative
governance forms and their transformation
potential can then be identified following
these principles. Innovative governance capa-
city is understood as located in the practices
through which governance relations are
played out and not only in the formal rules
and allocation of competences for collective
action as defined by government laws and pro-
cedures. Thus, innovations in governance
need to be identified and evaluated in terms
of their impact on practices and not only in
terms of their outcomes in relation to govern-
ment objectives.
Within these practices, the search for trans-
formative energy is focused on the complex
and contradictory interaction of driving
forces of governance change and the power
of agency to innovate and change the
trajectories of these forces. Methodologically,
a sociologically institutionalist perspective
implies that innovation in governance could
be found in many different institutional
relations and arenas of governance. To
address this, research on governance
capacities and modes examines actors and net-
works, stakeholders, arenas, discourses and
frames of meaning, practices and routines.
An attempt to identify potential for transform-
ation thus needs to probe the governance
relations which lead to a specific action and
the relations which develop following a
specific action. Critical innovations therefore
are ones which change these relations in
some way.
It is difficult to pre-assess where govern-
ance capacity might stem from because it is
a continually evolving social dynamic, devel-
oping through innovation and struggle in all
kinds of institutional sites. As we will show
later, innovative governance capacity there-
fore needs to be conceptualised in ways
which encompass a range of levels of power
and consciousness, from episodes of inter-
action to the deeper structuring of ways of
enacting governance. Innovation similarly
may not merely be ‘invented’ by conscious
effort and design, but may well up from
imaginations and contradictions which indi-
vidual actors may find hard to identify and
express. This means that, when looking for
socially innovative practices, analysts also
need to study deeper frames of reference
and cultural practices which structure how
people make sense of their collective worlds
and engage cognitively and bodily in their
day-to-day routines (Hajer, 1995; Healey
et al., 2003; Innes and Booher, 2003; Hillier,
2002).
Finally, analysts in the sociological insti-
tutionalist strand of thought emphasise the
importance of locating possible socially inno-
vative practices in their specific historical and
geographical contexts. They also highlight
the need, in assessing governance capacity,
to be aware of the different perceptions of
place that come together in planning practices.
In this respect, identity or the sense of belong-
ing to a place might be a powerful mobilising
force which could lead to social innovative
initiatives with transformative potentials.
4. Analysing the Micro-dynamics of
Governance Transformations
Our interest, in the context of this Special
Topic, is to develop the above ideas further
into an analytical approach through which to
identify innovations in governance capacity
with socially inclusive potential and to explore
the extent to which these are likely to
spread and become institutionalised around a
governance milieu in ways which challenge
and displace less inclusive discourses and
practices—i.e. the second question raised at
the start of this paper. To do this, in the pre-
vious section, we have located the socio-
logical institutionalist emphasis on the fine
grain of governance episodes and processes
within a conception of the interplay between
deeper, embedded cultural practices and the
conscious and visible world of routine and
strategic interactions. There are many ways
in which this has been expressed. In recent
work in Newcastle,
4
we have drawn on
Schon and Rein’s conception of levels of
cognitive framing (Schon and Rein, 1994),
on Giddens’ conception of the interaction of
structure and agency (Bryson and Crosby,
1992; Giddens, 1984), Dyrberg’s Foucauldian
INNOVATION IN GOVERNANCE CAPACITY 2059
reformulation of Lukes’ three levels of power
(Dyrberg, 1997) and on Hajer’s conception of
the structuration and institutionalisation of
policy discourses and ‘frames’ (Hajer, 1995).
To express the interplay between specific
governance episodes and the deeper structural
and cultural dynamics with which they inter-
act, we have drawn on Giddens, Bryson and
Crosby and Dyrberg to produce a three-
tiered analytical conception of the dimensions
of governance. Such a conception is shown in
Table 1.
In the next pages, we put this three-level
conceptual tool into practice to investigate a
particular instance of a socially innovative
initiative in Newcastle. First, however, we
outline the socioeconomic and political
context in which our case study is embedded.
The city of Newcastle upon Tyne is situated
in the north-east of England and is the biggest
city in this region. It has a long history as a
heartland of heavy industrial production and,
for around 30 years, a traditional Labour/
social democratic nexus has dominated the
political scene, mixing a commitment to
maintaining welfare services and attracting
job-generating industries with a strong mix
of clientelism and pragmatic ‘playing the
game’ by extracting grants and investments
from national government (Coaffee and
Healey, 2003; Healey, 1997b, 2002). The
Labour Party was in a majority in Newcastle
for 30 years, until the dramatic displacement
by Liberal Democrats in June 2004. In
recent years, both city councillors and officers
have had difficulty in adjusting to new
demands, arising in part from the national-
level efforts to ‘modernise’ local government,
but also from citizens’ demands for better
public service delivery and public partici-
pation. Meanwhile, the area of Newcastle
City, at the core of a reconfiguring old-
industrial conurbation, has been steadily
transforming as the economy has shifted
from one based on manufacturing to one
dominated by services, particularly public
administration and higher education. Recog-
nising a new geography, as well as a new
political reality, has proved particularly hard
for the city’s councillors and officers. In
1999, however, the council did initiate a new
strategic initiative, Going for Growth, which
sought to articulate a strategy for the city
and to locate area regeneration initiatives
within this strategy (Cameron, 2003; Coaffee
and Healey, 2003; Healey, 2002).
Within this context, our case study tells
the story of a community group over more
than 10 years, the Ouseburn Trust, which
has played a key role in the development of
a former derelict inner-city valley, called the
Ouseburn Valley, in Newcastle. Following
Table 1. Analytical levels of governance
Level Dimension
Specific episodes Actors: key players—positions, roles, strategies and interests
Arenas: institutional sites
Ambiences and interactive practices: communicative
repertoires (metaphors, narratives)
Governance processes through
which bias is mobilised
Networks and coalitions
Stakeholder selection processes
Discourses: framing issues, problems, solutions, interests, etc.
Practices: routines and repertoires for acting
Specification of laws, formal competences and resource
flow principles
Governance cultures Range of accepted modes of governance
Range of embedded cultural values
Formal and informal structures for policing discourses
and practices
Source: Healey (2004, p. 93).
2060 SARA GONZA
´
LEZ AND PATSY HEALEY
our three-tiered analytical tool, our research
strategy has focused on the analysis of key
moments when significant collective action
gathered around planning the future of the
Ouseburn. This has involved tracing and deli-
neating a coherent story but keeping multiple
voices. Our research was based on qualitative
methods. Over a year, we have conducted
semi-structured interviews with key infor-
mants from the community sector, local
council and market developers and we have
attended regularly the monthly committee
for the regeneration of the Ouseburn and
other events organised by the Ouseburn
Trust or other actors in the valley. We
focused on the different behaviour and strat-
egies that members of various communities
unfolded during formal planning exercises
and also looked at how other informal mech-
anisms were sought. We have particularly
been interested in how actors from different
practice communities, who have their own
particular language, norms and rules, engage
in activities to translate and allow information
to flow between these groups.
Coming back to our analytical tool, at the
level of specific episodes, the visible world
of people and positions, we locate the inter-
action of actors in specific institutional
‘sites’ or arenas where ideas are expressed,
strategies played out, ‘decisions’ made and
power games fought out. Through involve-
ment in such episodes, people learn the dis-
courses, practices and values embedded in
established governance processes. They may
also seek to challenge and change them. At
this level, socially innovative governance
initiatives should be examined to assess how
far they involve non-traditional actors in insti-
tutional sites beyond traditional e
´
lite arenas,
with a more socially focused content than
dominant approaches. To succeed, however,
such projects have to move beyond a specific
initiative to ‘institutionalise’ in some way.
In Newcastle, at the end of the 1980s (see
Table 2), a very loose network of citizens
interested in the landscape of the derelict
Ouseburn Valley, adjacent to the city centre,
got together to challenge the council’s and a
central government development corpor-
ation’s future plans for this area which
involved the development of office spaces
(see also the story of ‘coin street’ in London
Docklands for a similar policy and property
market context; Brindley, 2000). It was par-
ticularly the event of a fire in one of the old
industrial factories in the area that provided
the energy for mobilisation. Actors came
from non-traditional arenas such as the
Church of England and promoted values
such as sustainable development and small
mixed use projects, in contrast to the dominant
emphasis on large property development pro-
jects justified by discourses of enhancing
economic competitiveness. This group then
constituted itself as a charitable trust and
found a place in the complex institutional
arena of local governance in Newcastle. The
trust has increasingly expanded its arenas
of governance involvement, having to learn
Table 2. Chronology of the case study
1987 Establishment of the Tyne and Wear Development Corporation, one of the nine Urban
Development Corporations set up by the central government in partnership with the private
sector to recuperate derelict land to the market. Newcastle Quayside was one of the selected
areas for regeneration
1988 Formation of an informal community group in the East Quayside to reflect about the
consequences of the development of the area
1989 Establishment of a community ‘monitoring panel’ for the Tyne and Wear Development
Corporation’s plans to develop the Quayside and the Ouseburn Valley
1995 Formal setting up of the Ouseburn Trust
1997 Success in getting central government funding (SRB) for regeneration and the establishment of
the Ouseburn Partnership
2002 End of the Ouseburn Partnership
2003 Establishment of the Ouseburn Advisory Committee
INNOVATION IN GOVERNANCE CAPACITY 2061
both the formal and informal rules and norms
of how things are done, particularly by the
complex organisation of Newcastle City
Council. In turn, city council officers have
been exposed to innovative ideas about how
to develop the valley in a sustainable and
community-oriented fashion.
All sociological institutionalists stress the
importance of penetrating below the level of
specific episodes to the underpinning govern-
ance processes which give arenas their par-
ticular ‘practices’ and which provide actors
with more or fewer resources. Analysis at
this level seeks to peel away the surface of
interactions to reveal the way ‘bias’ is deliber-
ately mobilised.
5
Such analysis emphasises
‘strategic projects’ for mobilising actors,
developing discourses and changing practices.
Studies of transformation processes which
focus on this level emphasise the significance
of conflict between policy communities,
between policy discourses and over practice
modes (see Hajer, 1995; Vigar et al., 2000).
They also emphasise deliberate projects to
mobilise new ‘movements’ for change,
whether initiated from within established
governance arenas or by social movements
of one kind or another. This work informs
the design of policy systems, of community
planning or land use regulation—for example,.
At this level, the search for socially innovative
movements in governance processes should
focus on how action is mobilised to open up
institutional opportunities and expand the
space for innovative actions and how far this
lets in new actors and generates new, more
socially focused, governance discourses and
practices.
In the past two decades, British urban
policy has been slowly moving towards a
more participatory agenda involving more
diverse stakeholders and opening government
structures to alternative processes (Atkinson
and Moon, 1994; Hill, 2000). This move has
crystallised in the establishment of partner-
ships between government agencies and com-
munity groups. In the example used above,
the Ouseburn Trust mobilised around the
development of the valley and established a
formal partnership with the City Council to
obtain and manage funds from central govern-
ment’s Single Regeneration Fund (SRB). This
partnership, the Ouseburn Partnership, has
engendered trust between civil society and
state actors and has created its own pro-
cesses and practices, empowering some
non-traditional actors and discourses, thus
opening space for new ideas but also dis-
empowering other actors that do not share
the collective vision for the development of
the valley. After the SRB partnership ended
in March 2002, both the City Council and
the Trust have maintained their collaboration
through the formal structures of the local
authority, setting up an Advisory Committee
where members of the community equal the
number of councillors. This has provided the
Trust with a limited opportunity to change
agendas and practices such as the decisions
over planning permission in the valley, plan-
ning specifications for developers and the
relationships between property developers
and the Council. The former strong ‘edge’
between state and civil society as it impacted
on the Valley and its concerned civil society
actors has thus been softened, with some
mutual shaping of discourses and practices.
Delving deeper still into how and why
particular modes of governance persist and
change involves investigating the complexity
of the cultural embedding of institutional prac-
tices in specific places (Gonza
´
lez Ceballos,
2002; Harding, 2000; Healey et al., 2003;
Hillier, 2000; Murdoch and Abram, 2002;
Painter and Goodwin, 2000). The analysis of
these deeper structures has informed the
attempts to apply Foucauldian genealogical
analysis to how power relations are main-
tained ‘beyond’ that of any individual actor
or particular discursive struggle, and neo-
Gramscian analyses of what it takes for a
new policy discourse, such as the neo-liberal
agenda, to become hegemonic (see Fischler,
2000; Huxley, 1994; Jensen and Richardson,
2000). In his analysis of discourse transform-
ation in environmental policy, Hajer (1995)
emphasises the importance not merely of dis-
course structuration but its institutionalisation
into discourses and routine practices across a
wide institutional landscape which a policy
2062
SARA GONZA
´
LEZ AND PATSY HEALEY
effort has to reach to have transformative
effects, generating new modes of politics.
Tolbert and Zucker (1996), discussing organi-
sational transformations, refer to the way
innovations at the level of specific episodes
and the mobilisation of bias ‘sediment’
down into these deeper structures. Govern-
ance episodes which transform, this suggests,
need to draw on the resources in this deeper
level and at the same time generate ‘sedi-
ments’ which endure within the dynamics of
deeper structures. At this level, the search
for socially innovative transformations needs
to explore the assumptions and habits shaping
emergent discourses and practices and the
extent to which these are derived from, or
deliberately challenge, dominant forms of
governance.
In our case in Newcastle, the mobilisation
around the valley challenged the dominant
forces on economic and social housing
issues and the underlying construction of
class struggle and welfare delivery which
sustained this (Coaffee and Healey, 2003).
The environmental movement has had only
limited leverage in this context. Although
the establishment of a regular and formal
relationship with a community group has sig-
nificantly shifted council policy towards the
valley area and prevented some insensitive
development, deeply entrenched values and
cultures still prevail in the local council.
Council officers have difficulties in moving
away from established routines, language
and practices and they come to the partnership
with a pre-defined behaviour and attitude. For
example, the vision of a mixed and sustainable
development for the valley challenges the
dominant policy orientation of the planners,
which emphasises, following national govern-
ment policy, dense inner-city living. At the
same time, innovative ideas get caught
within the increasing bureaucracy that the
very same innovative governance processes
bring about. An innovative governance initia-
tive arising from a non-traditional mobilisation
such as our case may simply get structured
into traditional systems. Thus, such initiatives
may have the power to be incorporated in the
dominant governance relational nexuses but
have only limited power to reframe dominant
discourses and recaste established practices.
In Table 3, we offer a summary of the
different governance practices, processes and
cultures of the three main organisations that
are or have dealt with the planning of the
Ouseburn. The Ouseburn Advisory Commit-
tee can in itself be seen as an arena in which
to build innovative governance capacity, as
well-established formal ways of doing things
in the City Council are contested and have
to be formally taken into account. This issue
links with our third question developed below.
5. Transformation or Incorporation? The
Power Dynamics of Non-traditional
Governance Initiatives
The final question in this paper is concerned
with the power dynamics mobilised in initia-
tives which promote socially inclusive devel-
opment and the power mechanisms that
prevent the institutionalisation of innovative
governance capacity. The sociological institu-
tionalist approach we have used, and developed
into Table 1, emphasises the power of agency
in episodes of governance, the power of net-
works, discourses and practices as evolved
over time and institutional space, and the
power of embedded governance cultures. It
emphasises the evolving dynamics within and
between all these levels and the endogenous
dynamics arising from struggle and contra-
dictions. But it lacks an explicit connection to
wider driving forces which give exogenous
momentum to these dynamics.
Making such a connection involves a theori-
sation of social dynamics. Some institutional-
ists provide this through a link to political
economy models, with their grounding in
struggles over the prevailing economic
order. The great strength of the urban political
economy tradition and of regulation theory is
that they offer clear conceptions of the nature
of this connection (Fainstein, 2000; Jessop,
1997; Swyngedouw, in this issue). Area-based
initiatives arising from civil society mobi-
lisation, in this argument, are unlikely to
succeed where they challenge dominant econ-
omic forces and mainstream political parties
INNOVATION IN GOVERNANCE CAPACITY 2063
Table 3. Analytical levels of governance in the case study
Level
Ouseburn Trust
(1995–)
Ouseburn Partnership
(1997–2002)
Ouseburn Advisory Committee
(2003–)
Episodes
Actors
Arenas
Ambiences and
interactive practices
Loose network of environmental
activists, local church leaders and
other people drawn to the action
because of their emotional link
with the place
Personal and emotional
commitment
Voluntary organisation, a
registered charity
Place-bounded values
A formal partnership to manage
regeneration funding from central
government between the Ouseburn
Trust and the City Council
Formal rules like progress and
financial reports and board
meetings
City Council committee formed half
by councillors (5) and half by
community members (5) (mainly
from the Ouseburn Trust)
Relatively distended atmosphere:
actors that know each other from
other informal arenas
Governance processes
Discourses
Practices
Specification of laws
Well-established and sedimented
internal repertoires based on long-
term personal relationship
Defence of habitability, ‘urban
village’, mix of uses, sustainability,
quality of urban design.
Very often a responsive reaction to
policy coming from government
Formal competences and resource
flow
Registered charity, non-for-profit
development company
Governance processes subject to
scrutiny and formal regulations
Partnership led by the community
group
A stress on environment, social mix
and inclusion
Setting up of sustainability guidance
criteria
Giving coherence to the regeneration
of the area by linking projects and
groups
The committee is inserted into a
complex organisational labyrinth
and reports and informs other bits
of the City Council
A translation process occurs:
community members and some
councillors push their
environmental and social justice
values which are then translated
into formal regulations by planning
officers
Governance cultures
Accepted modes of
governance
Embedded values
Critical attitude towards formal
governance culture (city council)
Embedded cultural values: social
justice and respect for the
environment
Increasingly more formal strategies to
contest formal policy
Partnership and inclusion of diverse
actors that have a stake in the place
Inclusive governance culture centred
on a particular place
Convergence of three distinct
cultures: local activists, planning
officers and local politicians
Mutual learning process
2064 SARA GONZA
´
LEZ AND PATSY HEALEY
and ideologies (Fainstein and Hirst, 1995). In
this interpretation, our case of the valley in
Newcastle was operating in a governance
context filled with resistances embedded in
both governance processes and culture. But,
as many now recognise, the forms of this con-
nection are both dynamic and highly variable
in place and time. As a result, as Amin and
Thrift (2002) argue, there are always cracks,
spaces and moments for alternative practices,
which may just exist, but may also become
insurgent forces at all kinds of scales. In this
Special Topic, Swyngedouw argues, in a
similar fashion, that innovative political con-
ditions arise in a context of a widening and
diverse gap between state and civil society.
Innovations which manage to insert themselves
in such a ‘crack’ may, in favourable conditions,
come to have considerable power to transform
governance relations. Endogenous and exo-
genous forces are therefore not separate,
encountering each other in specific institutional
sites. They are mutually interacting and, over
time and space, co-constituting.
Following this perception, we argue that
social dynamics in specific instances are cons-
tituted through multiple forces, the specific
empirical combination and manifestation of
which are contingent and inherently unpre-
dictable. In such contexts, human beings are
skilled innovators/improvisers and adapters
to changing contexts over which they have
limited control, but which yet they shape.
They learn as they act and from experience,
and hence have the potential to act as creative
transformers. In our own work, we have
drawn on urban political economy and regu-
lation theory (Gonza
´
lez Ceballos, 2003) to
the extent of recognising that there are power-
ful driving forces which generate struggles
over governance form and that these play
out over time through and across all the
governance levels outlined above. As Jessop
(2000) and others have noted, this means
that simple indicators of governance perform-
ance (success/failure) are unlikely to capture
the complex unfolding of the impacts of inno-
vation in one time and place on future govern-
ance forms and material/mental outcomes.
‘Failure’ in a governance initiative may
inspire creative learning that may lead to
more innovation than would an apparent
‘success’. The search for socially innovative
governance initiatives should therefore focus
on the capacity for experimentation and
reflective learning, and on actions which
destabilise existing relations and open up the
‘cracks’ and contradictions, not just the most
visible innovations which introduce a new
arena, actors, repertoire, policy idea or prac-
tice. In the case used above, a non-traditional
mobilisation initiative opened a crack and
softened a boundary. This fissure in the
traditional and tight governance mechanism
has been mostly made by active linking by
key individuals across arenas, cultures and
frames often by-passing formal structures.
The ability to link across structural holes
(Burt, 2002) creates an exchange around
non-redundant information. It also creates
challenges as people used to relatively fixed
ways of doing things have to adapt to new
situations. In the Ouseburn, the networks
across different governance cultures and
settings have sustained, through their com-
mitment, a constant flow of transformative
power. Now it seems that the established
city council processes are absorbing it into
their worlds. This suggests that the initiative
has limited power. Yet more generally, at
national level, the socio-cultural movement
in values about the balance between economic
interests and environmental qualities and in
ideas about the way the authority and legiti-
macy of government action should be legiti-
mated has provided initiatives like these
with some power within local governance pro-
cesses. And efforts are being made, through
acting as a resource base for education on
local issues, to widen citizen awareness
locally about many issues neglected by
the local authority. Its capacity to generate
enduring ‘seeds’ and ‘sediments’ may there-
fore be considerable, especially if the city
council takes this initiative as a ‘best
practice’.
The particular contribution of ‘sociological
institutionalist’ approaches is to emphasise
the complexity of the interaction between
structuring dynamics and the role of human
INNOVATION IN GOVERNANCE CAPACITY 2065
agency in shaping perceptions, discourses
and frames of reference within which new
ideas and practices arise (Bogason, 2000;
Gualini, 2001; Hajer, 1995; Healey, 1997a;
Hillier, 2002; Innes and Booher, 1999;
Yanow, 1996). The approach emphasises
that the exercise of power is not only authori-
tative but generative. Seeds of socially inno-
vative governance practices may be growing
in unexpected institutional sites in unrecog-
nised ways. Yet their capacity to sustain them-
selves and diffuse elsewhere will depend both
on the wider ‘opportunity structure’ (Tarrow,
1994) in which they are situated, and their
ability to struggle and mobilise institutional
‘resources’ to challenge both embedded gover-
nance relations, discourses and practices
directly, and to leave behind resources for
future challenges.
As the literature on urban social movements
emphasises (Fainstein and Hirst, 1995; Mayer,
2000; Pickvance, 2003), local initiatives
arising from neighbourhood mobilisation and
civil society arenas have great difficulty
accumulating sufficient power to shift the
dominant governance cultures within which
they are situated. Fainstein and Hirst (1995)
suggest that such initiatives need to link to
national-level cross-class alliances, or draw
power from broad social movements, or to
compromise and accept co-optation into
formal government processes. Moulaert and
Nussbaumer (in this issue) argue that socially
innovative governance initiatives arising from
within civil society need to develop multi-
scalar alliances and networks through which
to link exogenous forces with non-traditional
local initiatives to generate a pincer move-
ment to force change in embedded urban
governance cultures.
Our approach, developed in Table 1,
expands on these arguments to emphasise
that initiatives with transformative potential
need to be prepared to accumulate power in
a diffuse governance landscape, with multiple
arenas constituted through episodes, processes
and cultural movements which move in differ-
ent time-scales. Thus episodes in socially
innovative governance mobilisation need to
be analysed not just in terms of what they
directly achieve and the resistances they
encounter. It is also important to examine
the ‘seeds’ and ‘sediments’ they leave behind
as positive and negative resources for future
initiatives. These then may help to build the
discourses and practices of governance pro-
cesses when a moment of major governance
transformation arrives. But episodes by
themselves do not produce these moments.
They arise through the interaction of the
accumulation of experiences from different
episodes combined with societal shifts in
values and the generative power of the
internal learning capacity of dominant
governance actors.
This analysis reinforces Swyngedouw’s
argument in this Special Topic that the state
and civil society are intertwined. All govern-
ance initiatives, whatever their origin, are
shaped, and have the potential to change, the
embedded cultures in which they are institu-
tionally located. But state practices, though
permeable and dynamic, are very difficult to
transform because of their internal complexity
and embedded power. Political practices and
the policy cultures of different segments of a
city council have typically been formed over
many years and, directly or unconsciously,
defend and maintain established ‘business as
usual’. Initiatives with the potential to
promote more socially innovative governance
practices therefore need to combine energetic
efforts aimed at immediate targets with
strategic attention to ways of affecting the
wider governance culture and its multi-
scalar dynamics, while at the same time
learning the dynamics of current governance
processes.
In our case, we have seen that a network
of actors coming from non-traditional arenas
can make a substantial contribution towards
the development of innovative governance
capacity by challenging existing political
boundaries and contributing with new lan-
guage and discursive practices. The Ouseburn
Trust has succeeded in turning the Ouseburn
Valley into a ‘place-for-itself’ (Lipietz, 1994),
around which collective action is gathered
and to which certain values are attached.
The Ouseburn Trust has challenged the
2066
SARA GONZA
´
LEZ AND PATSY HEALEY
vision of the valley as a ‘marketable’ space
and has successfully incorporated into the
mainstream governance processes a situated
concept of liveability. If social innovation is
about changes in governance institutions and
agency that promote the improvement of
quality of life, the Ouseburn Trust has also
succeeded in creating a more sustainable
built environment. Had the trust not existed,
we could have seen the Ouseburn Valley as
a continuation of the Quayside where mono-
functional luxury apartment blocks or offices
prevail.
In conclusion, we hypothesise that socially
innovative governance initiatives promoted
by non-traditional actors and centred around
area development projects are likely to have
the greatest potential to expand and accumu-
late the power to transform established gov-
ernance discourses and practices where they
have resonance with shifts in the dynamics
of underlying governance cultures and where
exogenous forces are also promoting parallel
ideas and practices. Alone, even if they
soften a boundary, as in the case referred to
in this paper, their destiny is likely to be incor-
poration into an established ‘mainstream’
rather than transformation of dominant
governance processes, with perhaps a few
seeds for future transformers to build on left
around in institutional memories and govern-
ance cultures.
Notes
1. The fields of policy analysis and planning
have strong interconnections but nevertheless
remain ‘parallel’ disciplinary universes. Policy
analysis retains strong linkages with the disci-
plines of public policy and political science.
Planning theory draws on a range of social
science inspirations, but its reference point
is area development and it is inspired by
work in geography and the humanities as
well as political science, economics and soci-
ology, and has been more open to the ‘cultural
turn’ in social analysis. We draw in particular
on the ‘communicative’/institutionalist stream
of ideas in planning theory and on ‘interpre-
tive’, ‘deliberative’ or ‘post-positivist’ policy
analysis.
2. Some commentators have referred to this
shift, critically, in terms of a focus away
from the ‘what’ of policy (and especially
‘who gets what’), to ‘how’ questions. Most
recent planning theory, however, emphasises
that these two dimensions are interconnected
(Healey, 1997a; Gualini, 2001).
3. This is in contrast to the emphasis in the
rational planning and policy analysis para-
digm (see Faludi, 1987; John, 1998).
4. See Healey (1998, 2004); Healey et al. (2003)
and Coaffee and Healey (2003).
5. This phraseology links explicitly to
Schattschneider (1960).
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