Parcelling Out Municipal Administration And Power in Amsterdam 1880-1940

Abstract

In contemporary urban studies much attention is devoted to the emergence of new governance collusions. Various 'partnerships', 'clusters of organised interests' and 'interagency networks' have been identified as part of a transition from local government to urban governance since the 1980s. On a generic level this transition involves various processes grouped under headings such as local corporatism (in the 1980s), the displacement of politics (more recently), the delegation or transfer of politico-administrative tasks from codified (democratic) institutions, such as elected authorities or executive agencies, to new governance clusters transcending the jurisdiction of public and territorial confinements.1 What is generally lacking in these contemporary analyses is reference to recurrent patterns of these processes of displacement and delegation of administrative tasks in the modern history of urban governance. Corporatism or functional representation at the local level, for instance, have been studied mainly by political scientists in the slipstream of the neo-corporatist paradigm which emerged in the late 1970s and 1980s.2 However, as recent historical studies have pointed out, similar arrangements were present during the interwar period which had an impact at the local level as wel1.3