Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space

Canada is a large and regionally diverse country. Over the years complex intergovernmental fiscal arrangements have been developed in order to permit relatively uniform treatment of people living in very different provinces. These arrangements have on the whole been successful in delivering services effectively to a diverse population, but they have more likely perpetuated than reduced regional economic inequality. From a political perspective, the results have been equally mixed. The system has worked in that the country has stayed together, grown respectably, and treated most citizens well and surprisingly uniformly. But the way in which this success has been achieved has reduced Canada's ability as a state to cope with the rapidly changing world environment and may, in the end, have strengthened rather than weakened regional separatism. Despite Canada's considerable success to date in adapting its system of fiscal federalism to cope with both political and economic imperatives, it thus remains unclear how long this fiscal juggling act can be continued without some more basic change in political institutions.

The democratic Constitution of 1978 established a decentralised state in Spain. Since that year, the Autonomous Communities (the intermediate level of government) have strongly increased their role and currently represent around 25% – 30% of total public expenditure. Therefore, financing autonomous government has become a crucial issue with important financial and political consequences. The present system is based mostly on grants from central government, while tax revenues and fiscal accountability are weak. The financing system can play an important, albeit complementary, role in ensuring cohesion within a decentralised state. On the one hand, it can achieve a certain level of equalisation in providing public services all over the territory. On the other hand, it can allow all regions to obtain an appropriate level of self-government. However, it is important to stress that territorial cohesion requires as a precondition, a political consensus and the acceptance of a common project among the different regions. Financial problems can certainly become political problems, but political problems can rarely be solved through financial measures alone. Therefore, we should not demand of intergovernmental finances what they cannot do.

In Switzerland intergovernmental fiscal relations have evolved gradually over 150 years. Like other institutions they reflect first of all the comparatively successful attempt to hold together a society fragmented with respect to linguistic and religious diversity along territorial lines. This system is marked by strong territorial decentralization both of taxing powers and expenditure assignments and by low equalizing incidence in general combined with important redistribution in cases of high symbolic value. However, both the internal demographic changes and the pattern of immigration in the last 50 years bring into question the sustainability of the present arrangements. Therefore, federal fiscal equalization is under review. It remains to be seen, if the outcome will sufficiently take into account the new forms of fragmentation in Switzerland.

In this paper we are concerned with the measurement of aspects of population distribution, or settlement patterns, and the use of these measures in public-policy contexts in particular. More specifically, we query the adequacy of the population-density indicator, which is widely used in statistical formulae such as those by which the British government allocates funding to English local authorities. Our approach is to work through a series of topics, starting with an introductory discussion of the ideas raised by analyses of population distribution, and followed by a section on issues involved in the measurement of settlement patterns. In the third section, we outline the types of public-policy concern which call for statistical indicators of settlement patterns, and then present a set of guidelines for measurements which will be of value in the specific context of British local-government finance-allocation systems. In the next three sections, these guidelines are used to assess the appropriateness of settlement-pattern indicators which are already in use in such systems, in each case moving on to outline an alternative form of measurement designed in the light of weaknesses of current indicators. In the penultimate section, we provide an empirical assessment of the new measures developed here, then in the final section we briefly review the appropriateness of the approach that has been adopted.

Symptoms of postproductivism are more clearly developed in forestry than in agriculture, but they have attracted less attention. The ‘postindustrial’ forest, in which the emphasis placed on timber production is reduced relative to that placed on environmental services (such as biodiversity and recreation), epitomises the character of postproductive forestry. In many parts of the industrialised world, forests have essentially become places of consumption (of amenity, recreation, and wildlife observation) by a largely urban population, rather than places of production (of timber) for a largely urban population. Changing forestry and forest policy in Britain, mainland Europe, and North America are reviewed in the light of a trend towards postproductivism, and some of the causal factors underlying this trend are explored.

The establishment of Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in the English regions will bring about an important change in UK regional governance. A key area of contention and struggle is likely to occur over the contribution of the RDAs to sustainable development. Although the pursuit of sustainable development is a stated goal of the RDAs, in this paper we argue that this goal is likely to be compromised by tensions and contradictions emerging in the evolving new governance landscape of England. In terms of promoting sustainable-development policy, the regional scale of the UK state is becoming materially and discursively significant, and a particular focus of struggles around economic and environmental issues. These struggles strategically intersect with wider processes of reregulation and rescaling in the UK state. We not only consider the practical policy implications of integrating the economy and environment at the regional scale, but also analyse emerging tensions in regional governance in the light of processes of social reregulation and rescaling within the UK state. We argue that theoretical approaches to the latter need to incorporate the uneven process of rescaling and the contingent nature of regional state forms and institutions.

Partnerships have become established as a significant vehicle for the implementation of rural development policy in Britain. In promoting new working relationships between different state agencies and between the public, private, and voluntary sectors, partnerships have arguably contributed to a reconfiguration of the scalar hierarchy of the state. In this paper we draw on recent debates about the ‘politics of scale’ and on empirical examples from Mid Wales and Shropshire to explore the scalar implications of partnerships. We investigate how discursive constructs of partnership are translated into practice, how official discourses are mediated by local actors, the relationship between partnerships and existing scales of governance, and the particular ‘geometry of power’ being constructed through partnerships. We argue that the existing scalar hierarchy of the state has been influential in structuring the scales and territories of partnerships, and that, despite an apparent devolution of the public face of governance, the state remains crucial in governing the process of governance through partnerships.