Monika De Frantz

Bio: Monika De Frantz is an academic researcher from London School of Economics and Political Science. The author has contributed to research in topics: Politics & Globalization. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 10 publications receiving 137 citations. Previous affiliations of Monika De Frantz include European University Institute.

From Cultural Regeneration to Discursive Governance: Constructing the Flagship of the ‘Museumsquartier Vienna’ as a Plural Symbol of Change

Abstract: The article presents information on the urban globalization debate which is turning to the question of what to build and how at the local level Under the pressures of increased economic competitiveness, political decision-makers are looking to cultural flagship architecture to combine competing images of economic regeneration and socio-cultural cohesion within a shared urban symbol of civic pride The recent importance of city marketing and symbolic regeneration strategies provides analytical insights into the cultural dynamics of urban politics beyond the analysis of political economic interests and structural functions Allowing for a dynamic, plural and open-ended conceptualization of governance, cultural regeneration is defined as a political process in which normative, aesthetic and emotional motivations are as important as rational interest politics One possible long-term result and politically desirable outcome of this process might be the emergence of an urban consensus as a basis for collective political action

Culture-led strategies for urban regeneration: a comparative perspective on Bilbao

Abstract: Culture is used as a development strategy in many European cities, a means to attract capital, to improve the image of the city, and to promote unity and cooperation. Like other strategies, it has winners and losers and, in its symbolic meanings, may provoke conflict. Urban competition and growth coalitions Since the 1980s, economic development has become a principal preoccupation of European cities. Increasingly, economic development is seen as a competitive matter, in which cities struggle for advantage in national and international markets. This marks a break from the post-war years, in which cities were integrated into national economies, planning systems and welfare states, which themselves assumed the obligation to maintain some sort of territorial balance. Yet it recalls earlier eras in the early modern period or the nineteenth century, when urban leaders had more autonomy and showed a certain entrepreneurship and awareness of the need to position themselves strategically. 1 Preoccupation with economic development also invites comparison with the United States, where the idea of cities competing is a staple of the literature on urban politics. 2 Cities compete for investment, for jobs, for a larger tax base, for visitors, and for state subsidies. In a less clearly defined sense, they also compete for visibility and prestige. In the United States, where there are fewer restrictions on the part of central (or state) government, they spend relatively freely on subsidies, tax breaks, partnerships and other special deals for corporations and other investors. European cities, which generally have less fiscal autonomy, are deprived of these financial instruments, but at the same time more protected from investor demands for subsidies out of the taxpayers’ revenues. 3 However, European economic integration and pressures on national welfare state expenditures increase urban competition here as well. This leads urban leaders to follow the example of the United States and seek other means for stimulating investment and attracting mobile capital. Yet, it is not by any means clear that they are obliged to do so, or that their efforts to attract capital in practice achieves the expected returns. The economic competitiveness paradigm that depicts cities as condemned to compete in a war of ‘all against all’ to attract limited investment makes a number of questionable assumptions. First, it assumes that cities as local polities are productive units, with an internal logic and cohesion, which can

Tourism marketing and urban politics: cultural planning in a European capital

Abstract: The cultural heritage of capital cities is a local capital in the global competition for tourism income as well as a public good of urban societies and a symbol of national identities When developing cultural heritage as an asset for tourism, city marketing turns these complex urban meanings into rather simplistic commercial images Such symbolic manipulations of culture intervene in deeply affective, institutionalised structures and thus risk political conflict and public contention The strongly controversial planning for the cultural flagship district of the Museumsquartier Vienna highlighted cultural diversity as an urban characteristic that remains often underweighted in urban political economy's focus on corporate dominance or local community Enquiring into the discursive–institutional interactions which turned the political economic repositioning of urban culture into a plural political process, what lessons can we draw for tourism planning? As democratic societies meet diverse contempora

Contemporary Political Theories of the European City Questioning Institutions

Abstract: While political economic perspectives of urban globalization tend to generalize the economic pressures upon socio-political transformations of cities, recent European research has stressed the institutional context of urban collective action. However, the structural bias of the European city model merely complements the criticized economization by a culturalist essentialization of urbanity, and thus fails to conceptualize political agency. In order to elaborate the theoretical foundations of a political counterhypothesis to urban globalization, this article clarifies the different historical and normative conceptions of institutional structure and agency in the urban context. Most research of cities implies — more or less implicitly — a common urban ideal which associates centrality with a local integration potential of plural societies. However, distinguishing between a historically embedded empirical category, a normative model of public space, and an analytical ideal-type of political agency helps to o...

New Regionalism Top Down: Mobilizing National Minority Culture

Abstract: New regionalism has discovered culture as a political instrument for promoting economic development. But where local traditions have come to be associated with failure, backwardness and conflict, these negative images can become a burden for regional development. In addition to its political and economic peripherality, the Austrian province of Burgenland is characterized by a multi-ethnic heritage that has long been threatened by national assimilation. But the transition in neighbouring Central Eastern Europe has motivated Burgenland's politicians to mobilize the fragmented minority culture as an asset for regional development. Despite its weak civic traditions suffocated by political party clientelism, Burgenland illustrates a successful case of a culture-based new regionalism driven by a regional government that is strongly embedded within Austria's centralized federalism. In the absence of endogenous claims for regional autonomy, the government's policy has helped to overcome ethnic divisions by design...

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

Abstract: Neil Brenner has in the past few years made a major impact on the ways in which we understand the changing political geographies of the modern state Simultaneously analyzing the restructuring of urban governance and the transformation of national states under globalizing capitalism, 'New State Spaces' is a mature and sophisticated analysis of broad interdisciplinary interest, making this a highly significant contribution to the subject