Helmut Karl

Koordination raumwirksamer Politik Helmut Karl

Coordination of Spatial PolicyThe cross-sector and spatial coordination of sectoral policies has long been the subject of disciplinary and interdisciplinary discussion. Such discussion has its roots in the recognition that autonomous sectoral policies and the autonomous actions of political agents alone do not do justice to interdependencies between the sectors. Renewed discussion has been rendered necessary by recent research developments, social change and an increase in incidences where coordination between the various political and bureaucratic levels of the European and German system has been seen to fail. The individual papers are systematically organised to consider three variants of coordination problems, whereby a fundamental distinction is made between vertical and horizontal coordination. It can be seen that despite the distinctiveness of the local individual case studies, it is possible to observe commonalities related to the successful tackling of policy interdependencies. Against this background, cross-sectoral recommendations are formulated. On the one hand, these are concerned with reducing the need for coordination to a minimum by the skilful allocation of tasks within the federal system. On the other hand, they indicate ways in which the remaining coordination still necessary between spatially impacting policies can be undertaken so that greater efficiency is achieved than through an uncoordinated approach.
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