Introduction to Volume 59, Issue 2

This issue brings us new insights into urban governance and policy change. Urban governance has been a major focus in the urban politics and policy literature in recent decades. With the transition from “city government” to “urban governance,” scholars emphasize the interaction between various state and nonstate actors at multiple levels, through both formal institutional arrangements and informal exchanges (Kaufmann and Sidney 2020; Peters and Pierre 2012; Hambleton and Gross 2007). While the concept of urban governance first emerged in the Western European academic milieu in the 1990s, there is an exciting emerging literature exploring the processes and consequences of urban governance in a cross-national context and diverse issue areas. We find that the articles in this issue investigate different aspects of urban governance, including policy change, policy implementation, political economy, and officer-involved killings.