SESSION 7

NATIONAL GOVERNMENT ACTORS IN URBAN DEVELOPMENT: BEYOND "CITY" RETHORIC

Whereas development policy and rhetoric have emphasised building local government capacities for governance and financing of urban development, in practice it is arguable that the urban turn in international development policy has diminished local agency and concentrated funds and power in national government institutions. This session therefore invites papers to review empirical evidence of these trends, and to interrogate the role and interests of national government actors in urban development in different African contexts. National government actors routinely shape urban investments, planning and infrastructure development: initiating projects, negotiating finance, determining timing, overseeing implementation. In specific circumstances, these actions might constitute ‘statecraft’ or forms of ‘negotiated statehood’, but we are interested in looking more closely at the actual forms of power and interests which are operative through the activities and agency of government actors and entities. If “state” actors and “state” institutions shape urban developments, what power relations do they stand for? Case studies might draw attention to negotiated forms of public authority and state capacity or state-craft; or may reflect on the role of political party dynamics, electoral processes, associational networks, peremptory and violent forms of power, or private and personal interests (often associated with ‘corruption’) in the complex transcalar dynamics shaping urban developments, including negotiations with international funders or community resistance. If international development actors behave and make decisions as if city governments, “stateness”, “state” interests and “government” exist, what consequences does this have? And what are the theoretical implications concerning understandings of the “state” in urban development?