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Politicians’ Roles in Planning: Seen or Ignored? What Do We Know About Politicians’ Roles in Planning?

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Innovation in Public Planning

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Abstract

Planning is an inherently political activity that neither can nor should escape politics. In this chapter, we draw on a systematic literature review that includes articles and books on mainstream planning theory to provide an overview of how politics and politicians have been regarded by the most widely read and quoted contributors to the mainstream planning theory debate. We provide a similar overview of the latest major evaluation of Norwegian planning, EVAPLAN. As innovation becomes increasingly evident in planning practices and theories, we must ensure that the discussion also encompasses politicians and politics. Therefore, we suggest a much-needed new research direction: one that explores the roles of politicians and political activity in planning, including the whole area of political innovation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The EVAPLAN research was financed by the Norwegian Research Council in the DEMOSREG II-programme and conducted during 2014–2018. The project was led by the Norwegian Institute of Urban and Regional Research (NIBR) in cooperation with nine national and international research institutes and universities. HiNN (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences) and Ulla Higdem also participated in the research project.

  2. 2.

    Altogether, there were 11 case municipalities, but no data were available from 3. In addition, we refer to a survey that mayors also answered; however, there were too few to establish a representative sample.

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  1. Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway

    Aksel Hagen & Ulla Higdem

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  1. Aksel Hagen
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  2. Ulla Higdem
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Correspondence to Aksel Hagen .

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  1. Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway

    Aksel Hagen

  2. Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, Lillehammer, Norway

    Ulla Higdem

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Hagen, A., Higdem, U. (2020). Politicians’ Roles in Planning: Seen or Ignored? What Do We Know About Politicians’ Roles in Planning?. In: Hagen, A., Higdem, U. (eds) Innovation in Public Planning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46136-2_4

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