Urban Governance in Canada. Representation, Resources and Restructuring

A textbook on the political institutions of a foreign country is ideally of interest and use to more than specialists in that country. It should provide information that can easily fit into a comparative framework even when comparison is not part of the book's remit. Katherine Graham and her colleagues at Carleton University's School of Public Administration have produced a textbook on Canada's eight city regions of value to both the Canadian politics specialist and the comparativist. The presentation of the material lends itself to a comparative approach for those who need this. Of particular help in this respect is the chapter on theoretical approaches to urban politics public choice, community power (including 'growth machines' and regime theory), political economy, and feminism which explains how they contribute to contemporary Canadian debates on the role, structure and beneficiaries of urban governments, and the consequences of international developments. Although it is claimed that the book is distinctive in its focus on 'governance' rather than just local government institutions, the definition of governance used is a rather restricted one, referring to municipal authorities, special purpose bodies and the voluntary sector. Consequently the structure of the book is fairly conventional. Contemporary challenges to urban government in Canada are described at the start, and the sequence of chapters reflects these issues. Historical explanations of the origins of Canadian cities are compared and the influences of settlement, key events, topography and urban reform movements weighed up. Changes to the structure of urban government in Canada's metropolitan areas are explained through case studies of reorganisation which unfortunately do not draw upon the theoretical approaches summarised in an earlier chapter, even though the extraordinary decisions to abolish lower tier councils in metropolitan Toronto and the Halifax region cry out for the application of public choice theories of decentralization. There are chapters on electoral politics, covering the organisation of elections, the backgrounds of councillors, the role of political parties, and rules