Governance, Participation and In-Between. Inclusion in Policy Making and Policies for Inclusion in Four European Metropolises

This article presents a comparison of the inclusion of non-institutional actors in governing processes that has been put into practice in four Western European metropolises, namely London, Madrid, Paris and Rome. The analysis focuses on the relationships between the various inclusive initiatives and practices that are put into place within each city, which may be contradictory or consistent, incompatible or complementary with each other. Every single inclusive practice and initiative as well as the overall strategies of inclusion, if present, may have different nature and meaning, which in the article are discriminated adapting to this specific analytical need a couple of concepts – governance and participation – through which the various forms of inclusion into the governing processes have been analyzed and interpreted by political and social sciences since the nineties. Such concepts are used here in a very ideal-typical and stylized manner as the opposite and internally coherent poles of a continuum. Basing on this idealtype the repertoire of inclusive initiatives put into practice in the four cities is shortly presented. The existence (or not) of a comprehensive policy and strategy of inclusion is identified using two indicators: two indicators: (i) the presence of a programmatic document and/or an institutional regulation from which a strategy clearly emerge stating who is to be included, where, how and above all for which purposes; (ii) the presence of a political and institutional roles of coordination, supervision and harmonization of inclusive practices An interpretation about the factors that may explain the most important analogies and differences between the cases of London, Madrid, Paris and Rome is presented, based on subjective factors and exogenous constraints.