Metropolitan Democracies: Transformations of the State and Urban Policy in Canada, France and Great Britain by Bernard Jouve

Author:Bernard Jouve [Jouve, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Regional Planning, Public Policy, Science, Earth Sciences, Political Science, Geography
ISBN: 9781351153065
Google: tqSbDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-06-04T11:11:26+00:00

Conclusion

The municipal reform in Montreal has thus had different impacts depending on the various sectors of the island. Based on the neo-institutionalist approach, which takes into consideration past institutional legacy (Hall and Taylor 1997), we can hypothesise that the territorial differentiation in terms of organisation of local democracy is maintained. In fact, it is legitimate to presume that the democratic practices of both elected officials and citizens are still imbued with the legacy of previous municipal structures.

This hypothesis is supported by the current debate on the decentralisation and the demerging advocated by a great number of municipal councillors who represent the boroughs of the former suburban municipalities. These councillors, many of whom were mayors of their municipality, are expressing a desire to recover the powers they previously had. They are determined to obtain more powers and jurisdiction areas from the central city. Although it is still too early to confirm these results, a current survey indicates that the borough councils are attempting to maintain the consultation bodies and the working committees inherited from the time of the former municipalities. In other words, their goal of returning to the pre-reform situation has led them to opt for a strategy aimed at preserving previous institutional structures and practices.

The situation of the boroughs of the former central city is different. The institutional context has changed and this marks a break with the previous situation since councillors can now administer the boroughs, and is in continuity with the previous situation since the consultation bodies are highly similar to those that had been set up by the RCM. For the councillors of the former central city, and in particular those of the UCIM, the reform has created a space that even allows some borough councils to innovate and perhaps thus to meet citizens’ expectations regarding participation. For example, in the first year of its existence, the council of Côte-Saint-Luc, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce Borough presented the budget to the public. This year, it organised two special meetings on the budget to allow organisations and citizens to voice their opinions on the allocation of budgetary resources. For its part, the council of Plateau Mont-Royal has mandated a working committee to examine and make concrete proposals on participative democracy. Decentralisation has thus opened up a space where it is possible to innovate at the borough level. At the same time and paradoxically, it encourages the former suburban municipalities to maintain the status quo. This democracy with variable geometry can lead to a situation whereby, in the same city, some boroughs would be open and participative while others would remain traditional bastions held by local figures.

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