The Political Ecology of the Metropolis

The Political Ecology of the Metropolis is a volume packed with fascinating analyses and findings, offering a wealth of data and insights into the role of the metropolis in shaping political participation and citizen engagement... Down the road, it will be exciting to see how the perspectives of this volume, its authors, and editors contribute to the continued theoretical refinement regarding how we understand and analyse political participation in light of the changing landscape of local governments and metropolitan regions. -- Christine Kelleher Palus, 'Journal of Politics'

Based on a painstaking empirical analysis of no less than eleven country cases, this study documents the pervasiveness and importance of the re-territorialisation of politics in a globalised world. This return of territory is not patterned along cleavages as we know them, but based on new territorialised contrasts within and between metropolitan areas. The thought-provoking study draws our attention to the challenge the metropolitanisation of politics poses to national parties and democratic traditions. -- Hanspeter Kriesi, European University Institute

This virtuoso work of comparative politics is filled with insights about how places condition politics. This magisterial achievement gathers uniform electoral data from different parts of the main metropolitan areas of the US, Canada, Western and Eastern Europe, and Israel, analyses them using the same methods, including multi-level analysis, and paints a definitive portrait of the changing metropolitan political terrains and their implications for national politics. A must-read for all those interested in the geography of politics. -- John Mollenkopf, City University of New York

This book starts from the observation that in recent years urbanised centres have emerged all over the world whilst also influencing their surrounding areas. Against the background of this metropolitanisation of contemporary societies, the authors reflect critically on the widespread assumption that national institutions and national political cleavages determine political conflicts, party structures and voting behaviour, not only at national but also at regional and local levels. Has the emergence of metropolitan regions changed the conditions on which this assumption has been based? And, in which way do the new metropolitanised spatial structures impact on political behaviour in metropolitan regions? These are the questions tackled by an international research team over the last ten years. The results published in this book are thought-provoking because it clearly shows that to understand political processes in contemporary societies we have to take what the authors call the newly evolved metropolitan political ecology seriously. -- Hubert Heinelt, Technische Universität Darmstadt

This sophisticated and detailed empirical analysis of political participation and partisanship in a range of countries successfully challenges the dominant nationalisation thesis that where you live increasingly does not matter to your political outlook and behaviour. In a world that is increasingly organised socio-spatially in terms of metropolitan regions, the social settings provided by metropolitan places now crucially shape the contours of mass politics. Studies can no longer ignore the critical place contexts identified so clearly in this path-breaking volume. -- John Agnew, University of California

Metropolitan space matters, whether for electoral turnout or the alignment of political parties in post-industrial democracies. And the effect of space is not simply that of compositional processes aggregating citizens of particular types and convictions in the same places. There is a political effect sui generis following from people converging in dense metropolitan areas or living in dispersed open spaces. This book constitutes an ambitious and comprehensive undertaking to drive this point home, convincing in its empirical scope, depth and rigour. It also poses new puzzles: what exactly is the experience of social space that makes people update their political dispositions? And dynamically, are people drawn to spaces that exercise such effects? -- Herbert Kitschelt, Duke University

Daniel Kübler is Professor of Political Science at the University of Zurich and co-director of the International Metropolitan Observatory Project. He has co-edited Metropolitan governance: capacity, democracy and the dynamics of place (Routledge, 2005) and authored numerous articles and book chapters related to metropolitan governance, urban democracy and public policy analysis.

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Jefferey M Sellers is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California. The author of Governing From Below: Urban Regions in the Global Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2002) and editor of Metropolitanization and Political Change (VS Verlag, 2005) as well as numerous articles and book chapters, he is co-founder and co-director of the International Metropolitan Observatory Project.

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Alan Walks is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto. He is the author of a number of scholarly articles and book chapters related to electoral geography, urban inequality, and the relationship between suburbanisation and ideology.

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Melanie Walter-Rogg is Professor of Political Science at the University of Regensburg. She is author of a number of scholarly articles and book chapters related to metropolitan governance and urban democracy as well as political culture and behaviour.

Henry Bäck is emeritus Professor of Public Administration at the University of Gothenburg. He has co-edited The European Mayor: Political Leaders in the Changing Context of Local Democracy (VS Verlag, 2006) and Urban Political Decentralisation: Six Scandinavian Cities (VS Verlag, 2005). The author of numerous books, articles and book chapters on local government and politics.

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Daniel Cermák is PhD student in Sociology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague. He works as a junior researcher at the Institute of Sociology of Academy of Sciences. He is an author of scholarly articles and book chapters related to local democracy, electoral geography and institutional trust.

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Anna Hazan teaches at the Administration and Public Policy Department of the Sapir College, Israel. She served for many years as the director of the Local Development Department of Israel’s Ministry of Interior and coauthored numerous publications on Israel’s local government, mainly in Hebrew, such as Personal Liability in Local Government in Israel (Floersheimer Studies, 2008). She has several English and French publications in books and scientific journals, such as Geografiska Annaler, Political Geography, and Environment and Planning.

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Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot is Professor of Political Science and Director of Sciences Po Bordeaux. He is the author of Le gouvernement des villes. Une comparaison internationale (L’Harmattan) and editor of Metropolitanization and Political Change (VS Verlag, 2005; French edition, CNRS Press 2007) as well as numerous articles and book chapters.

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Tomáš Kostelecký is Director of the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Prague. He is author of Political Parties after Communism: Developments in East-Central Europe (Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2002) and numerous articles and book chapters dealing with comparative politics, local government and housing.

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Daniel Kübler is Professor of Political Science at the University of Zurich and co-director of the International Metropolitan Observatory Project. He has co-edited Metropolitan governance: capacity, democracy and the dynamics of place (Routledge, 2005) and authored numerous articles and book chapters related to metropolitan governance, urban democracy and public policy analysis.

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Clemente J Navarro is Professor of Sociology and head of the Centre for Local Political Sociology and Policies at the Pablo de Olavide University. He is author of scholarly articles and book chapters related with urban governance and political participation.

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Eran Razin is director of the Institute of Urban and Regional Studies, head of Floersheimer Studies, and Associate Professor of Geography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specialises in local government and urban development. He has coauthored/edited several books, such as Employment Deconcentration in European Metropolitan Areas, Market Forces versus Planning Regulations (Springer, 2007), and Metropolitan Governance, Different Paths in Contrasting Contexts: Germany and Israel (Campus, 2011), and numerous journal articles.

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Philippe Rochat is a Political Scientist. He works at the University of Zurich and at the GfS research institute in Berne. He is co-author of book chapters and analysis related to Swiss politics, federal referenda and urban development.

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Urs Scheuss was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Democracy Studies (ZDA) in Aarau, Switzerland, until 2010 when he became a political secretary of the Swiss Green Party. He is the author of a PhD thesis on political divisions and cleavages in metropolitan areas of Switzerland that will be published in 2013.

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Pawel Swianiewicz is Professor of Economics at the University of Warsaw, Department of Local Development and Policy, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies. He is an author of numerous books and articles on local politics, regional policies and local government finance in Poland and other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.

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Jana Vobecká is a Researcher at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. Her research combines sociology and demography and focuses inter alia on spatial population dynamics and its effects on social inequalities, local governance, and historical demography. She has published in journals such as Population, Space and Place, Czech Sociological Review and Central European Journal of Public Policy.