Local policy-making within the multilevel system: A study of governance in peripheral(ised) medium-sized cities undergoing socio-economic transformation in Saxony, Germany and Lower Silesia, Poland

Abstract

Our motivation for undertaking this research was to verify the scope and results of public policies aimed at supporting peripheralised medium-sized cities, and to check how these policies have been perceived by stakeholders within these cities. We selected the Polish-German borderland as a case region for this, primarily due to a particular concentration of cities experiencing the detrimental effects of socio-economic transformation. These are also cities exposed to the consequences of radicalising political discourse. We chose two pairs of cities comparable to centres behind the border: Bautzen and Görlitz (located in East Saxony), as well as Zgorzelec and Jelenia Góra (the western part of Lower Silesia). We assumed peripheralisation, left-behind places and multilevel governance to be the theoretical frameworks to capture the dynamics of processes taking place within such peripheral(ised) medium-sized cities. Our main research objective was to investigate the way the public authorities have been navigating their respective paths within the multi-level urban development / regional policy systems. The main conclusion of the research is the low institutional capacity among the public authorities in the given cities to allow them to be able to reverse negative trends.