An unbreakable vicious circle? Territorial inequalities and local governance arrangements

It has been conventionally accepted that crisis tend to negatively impact on territorial inequalities. Both the Global Financial Crisis and the pandemics unevenly impacted on states and citizens. These inequalities pose particular dilemmas for local governments. Territorial inequalities stand within the wide plethora of complex issues in scope and scale that local governments need to cope with. Often encouraged by European, national and regional incentives aimed at reducing territorial inequalities, a wide range of part-nerships amongst municipalities and societal actors has emerged, with different choices in terms of the architecture and intensity of local governance arrangements. These net-works have been taken as a panacea to generate policies capable of boosting the devel-opment of the territory and, hence, tackle territorial inequalities. Entrenched territorial inequalities, however, strongly impact on the inner working of local governance network. Indeed, it has been conventionally accepted that social and economic inequalities have cross-cutting effects for representation and participation. Although the large bulk of research has focused on the benefits to be gained from ex-ploiting local governance arrangements - and, hence, scale economies - it should not be disregarded that these are often counterbalanced by the problems related to legitimacy issues and democratic control. A relevant – both theoretical and empirical – puzzle, then, emerges. If there are territorial inequalities and these generate different access to govern-ance mechanisms, how can territorial inequalities be addressed? Are these reinforced? Moreover, while offering more flexibility, local networks entail a high degree of com-plexity, which has yet to be fully explored. In order to improve performance in the pub-lic sector and devise strategic directions for the allocation of (increasingly) of scarce resources, local governance arrangements’ inner workings must be properly assessed. This paper aims to address these gaps, through the assessment of three interrelated di-mensions. First, the paper seeks to address the different types of local networks, in terms of initiators, rules, structure of coordination and level of autonomy (either from external rules; and from member organizations). Then, it explores how different types of local governance networks are permeated by uneven access to the networks and decision-making processes. Finally, the paper seeks to understand if an unbreakable vicious circle is rooted: understanding if different levels of participations and representation generate different concerns towards territorial inequalities. Empirically, this paper presents an analysis of the Portuguese case. Despite recent at-tempts to transfer competences to local governments, the country is characterized by high levels of concentration of powers, along with strong asymmetries and divergences of territorial base. Moreover, Portugal is embedded in a Southern European administra-tive culture – laggard in transparency and citizen engagement. A mixed-methods approach is used. The mapping of the characteristics of local govern-ance arrangements is performed though a national survey targeted at members of differ-ent types of networks (n=1655, with response rate of 57%). To further specify the rele-vant dimensions of analysis, 127 semi-structured interviews with mayors, and represent-atives of relevant local stakeholders involved in 49 local governance arrangements were conducted.