Power and contingency in planning
Transcript of Power and contingency in planning
1
This is a revised personal version of the article that is published in Environment and Planning A.
Please cite as: Van Assche, K., Duineveld, M. & Beunen, R. (2014) Power and Contingency in Planning.
Environment and Planning A, 46 (10): 2385 – 2400
More papers can be found on the website governancetheory.com
Power and Contingency in Planning
Kristof Van Assche, Martijn Duineveld, Raoul Beunen
Kristof Van Assche is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Extensions, University of Alberta, Canada, Wageningen University, the
Netherlands and Centre for Development Research, Bonn University, Germany | Martijn Duineveld is Assistant Professor at the Cultural
Geography Group at. P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, the Netherlands [email protected] | Raoul Beunen is Assistant Professor at
the Faculty of Management, Science & Technology, Open University, and visiting researcher at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Abstract. In this paper we analyse the role and reception of poststructuralist perspectives on power in
planning since the 1990s, and then ask whether a renewed encounter with the works of poststructuralist
theorists Foucault, Deleuze, and Luhmann could add something to the points that were already made. We
make a distinction between the power of planning (the impact in society), power in planning (relations
between players active in planning), and power on planning (the influence of broader society on the
planning system), to refine the analysis of planning/power. It is argued that an interpretation of Deleuze,
Luhmann, and Foucault, as thinkers of power in a theoretical framework that is based on the idea of
contingency, can help to refine the analysis of power in planning. Planning then can be regarded as a
system in other systems, with roles, values, procedures, and materialities in constant transformation, with
the results of each operation serving as input for the next one. The different power relations constitute the
possibilities, the forms, and the potential impact of planning.
Keywords: power, contingency, acting space, governance, evolution
Introduction
Power is an important and often debated concept and issue in contemporary planning. This
importance is reflected in the literature on the political character of planning practices
(Flyvbjerg, 1998b; Swyngedouw et al., 2002), on the ways planning deals with conflicting
interests and perspectives (Pløger, 2004; Hillier, 2002; Gunder and Hillier, 2009), and on the
possibilities for planners to make a difference in society (Grange, 2012; Miraftab, 2009).
The current prevalence of the topic owes much to the efforts of a group of power
theorists in the 90’s, who opened the door to a renewed reflection on power in planning, after a
period of relative silence. We can mention among others Flyvbjerg (1998b; 2001; 2004), Hajer
(1995; Hajer and Versteeg, 2005), Yiftachel (1998, Yiftachel and Huxley, 2000), Allmendinger
2
(Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2002), Hillier (2002, but already Hedgcock et al., 1991),
Throgmorton (1996), Tewdr- Jones (Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger, 1998), Crush (1994), or
Fischler (2000). Their appearance in planning can be seen as a belated arrival of post-
modernism in planning, a tardiness understandable in a discipline and field often closely
associated and identifying with governments steeped in high modernist ideologies of knowing,
steering and remoulding society through spatial interventions (Scott, 1998; Ferguson, 1994;
Hillier, 2002).
Many of these theorists were inspired by authors now often described as post-
structuralist: including Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Barthes. Foucault, who explicitly focused
on power relations in government and society, and on the functions of expertise in governance,
figured most prominently in the thinking of the power theorists in planning. With all the
differences between the early post- structuralists from the 60’s and 70’s (in the case of Lacan
arguably even earlier) and between the later planning theorists, one can say that what seeped
through in most cases was the idea of a social, discursive, construction of reality. Science lost its
privileged access to truth and science- based planning had to be scrutinised carefully in its
claims.
Planning in the Foucault- inspired perspective introduced then, appears as inherently
political, and ought not to present itself as a value- neutral and/ or scientific endeavour
(Flyvbjerg, 1998a). It operates in a field of contested and shifting forms and expectations of
state power and within that, planning power (Hillier, 2002; Hajer, 1995). It requires a mix of
formal and informal institutions to exert influence (Wood, 2009; Van Assche et al., 2012a).
Planning, in this perspective, takes place in a fragmented society, marked by networks mixing
state and non- state actors, and all of these can use or oppose planning (Rydin, 2010; Booher
and Innes, 2002; Munro, 2000). Moreover power and knowledge are intimately entwined in
any institutionalised form of planning. This is the case in each step of the process, from the
definition of issues, actors and procedures, to the forms of reinterpretation in implementation,
and the strategic uses of maintenance and neglect (Scott, 1998; Ferguson, 1994; Gunder, 2010).
By now many planning scholars believe reflections on planning should carefully re-
examine its assumptions, like its discursive construction and the embedded power relations,
and carefully avoid mixing up wish and reality, description and prescription (Yiftachel, 1998;
Yiftachel and Huxley, 2000; Fischler, 2000). Since the wave of power theory in planning in the
nineties many of these ideas have become commonplace. Nonetheless, we argue, there are a
couple of reasons for further reflection.
Firstly, both in theory and in practice, some of the lessons have sunk in only
superficially. Many authors pay lip- service to some of the tenets above, but then happily
proceed to mix prescription and description, to exaggerate the power of social engineering, to
assume a unity of community that is clearly fictitious, to omit any substantial reflection on
3
assumptions or on the form of democracy that is implied in research, planning and/ or the plan
(for the critiques, see Gunder, 2010; Moulaert and Cabaret, 2006; Van Assche and
Verschraegen, 2008; Wood, 2009; Allmendinger and Haugton, 2007). Some of this is can be
ascribed to funding politics, and to existential anxiety in the (anticipated and feared) absence of
modernist forms of government. It can also be ascribed to the influence of neighbouring
disciplines where a positivist mind-set lingered on for a longer time, e.g.: environmental
studies, transport studies and development studies (Abbott, 2012; Ferguson, 1994; Latour,
2004; Miller, 2002). Another reason is that in the analysis of power, in planning and in other
disciplines, much has happened, and one cannot purely present recent developments as filling
in the details of the picture that emerged in the nineties. Different lines of post-structuralist
investigation continued to alter and expand the repertoire of images of planning and power, e.g.
the recent work on complexity and non-linearity (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008; De Roo
and Silva, 2010).
In this paper we want to revisit some of the post- structuralist tenets on power already
present in planning theory, bring new developments under the attention, and re- articulate a
set of older and newer insights in a new frame, organised around the ideas of positionality (the
place of planning in society) and contingency (Pottage, 1998; Teubner, 1989). Contingency, as
that what is possible, but not necessary, as that what is but could have been different, has a
philosophical lineage dating back to Aristotle. It was revived by medieval scholastics, then
largely forgotten in the Renaissance and subsequent philosophies looking for universal
principles and laws. It re-entered academic debates with structuralism (Levi- Strauss, Greimas)
and in post- structuralism it accumulated new meanings. We will investigate the utility of such
post- structuralist expanded version of contingency, for the understanding of power and
planning. We argue that planning theory can benefit from the understanding of power as
essential to the daily functioning of a planning system, the continuous evolution of a planning
system and the dynamic relations with its environment. Understanding these different
manifestations of power can shed a new light on the way planning comprehends itself and its
environment, and on the ways it tries to organise itself and its environment. We therefore
distinguish power in planning and power of planning, and we connect the steering attempts of
planning with its attempts to know itself and the world it aspires to intervene in. We also pay
attention to the influence of society on planning, on planning systems and practices, and speak
there of power on planning. Power of planning, we will argue, cannot be understood without
reference to power on planning and power in planning, and power in all these forms can only
be comprehended as interwoven with knowledge, as part of power/ knowledge configurations.
This basic conceptual structure already owes much to the insights accrued by the
application and development of various lines of post- structuralism (e.g. Foucault, Deleuze,
Derrida, Lacan, Luhmann, Latour) in more policy- oriented research. Although we cannot give a
4
comprehensive overview of both planning theory and post- structuralism here, we intend to
indicate which concepts and perspectives are still useful to rethink power in, on and of
planning. The scheme of power in/on/of planning helps to structure insights in power
dynamics stemming from different strands of post- structuralism in a way that might facilitate a
revisiting of the positionality of planning. Using the scheme as an ordering principle, we
assemble a version of post- structuralist power theory that helps to deepen the analysis of
planning practice and the role of planning in society. Leaning on the work of Alain Pottage, who
combined in novel ways Deleuze, Luhmann, Foucault and Latour in power analysis, and also
leaning directly on Luhmann, Deleuze and Foucault, we emphasise the potential role of
contingency as a cornerstone concept of a theory of power and planning. An orientation on
contingency can give a sharper delineation of the positionality of planning in society and of the
possibilities and limitations to influence that society from a certain position.
Before introducing such conceptualisation of power and planning we reflect on the
historical presence of power in planning theory. We contextualise and analyse the role and
reception of perspectives on power in planning since the sixties, a genealogy of power concepts
in the context of planning theory that adds to the understanding of that discursive landscape.
This we believe to be helpful in our reformulation and development of post- structuralist power
concepts in that same context.
Power in planning: it comes and goes as a topic of reflection
Power is not a new topic in planning. In the seventies, Friedmann (1971, 1973) discussed in
detail power relations and their importance for local and regional economic development, as
well as the restrictions they impose on planning as a practice of policy integration. Earlier
already, case studies had shown that in the delineation of preferable scenarios for future
development, and notably in their implementation, power, its use and abuse, was something
that could not be overlooked (see for example Forester, 2001; Fischler, 2000). Davidoff
(Davidoff, 1965) and other advocacy planners wanted to bring planning closer into the orbit of
politics. It was also acknowledged that planners themselves, supposedly representing ‘the
people’ in a quest for the common good, availed themselves of various power tactics and
strategies that would appear questionable now (e.g. Jacobs, 1961; Hardy, 1991). Robert Moses
in New York can be mentioned as one of the giants of planning that knew how to play the power
game to push his plans forward, against the resistance of many (Brown, 1986).
Already early on, planning had its critics, and many of those critics referred to the
questionable legitimacy of planning and planners, to the questionable accumulation of power in
the hands of planners and networks around them that escaped democratic control (Gunder,
2010). Also its steering power was questioned (Boyce, 1963; Friedmann, 1973). In the sixties
and seventies, a neo- Marxist wave of critique could be noticed in the literature of mostly
5
neighbouring disciplines, a perspective that often analysed the planning enterprise as de facto
reproducing the socio- economic status quo of certain classes and elites (Harvey, 1973; Henri,
1968; Kiernan, 1983). In the seventies, policy analysts in the line of Wildavsky added to the
choir of planning sceptics, doubting not only the realism of many planning expectations, but
also the democratic quality of both policy formation and implementation (e.g. Wildavsky,
1979).
One could observe a parallel movement more clearly located within the planning
discipline, where planners were seen as the ones that had to deal with power (negatively
defined) in their quest to further the common good (most famously: Forester, 1989). Many
planners were aware early that the plan- making process itself could be captured by various
interest groups, and that plans could be routinely ignored, reinterpreted, selectively enforced
or misrepresented after adoption (see e.g. Friedmann’s reflections, Friedmann, 2008). In other
words, from the early days, planners in the US and in Europe were forced to think about power
on a daily basis, and had to devise strategies to navigate the minefields of a practice that was
always politicised. Even when and where planning as such was embraced and theoretically
legitimised, many planners were aware that their power could not be taken for granted. They
were aware that it was not limitless, and that their work required a continuous reflection on
the balance of power. Yet, when in the late nineties, Michel Foucault’s work seeped into
planning academia, it caused a shock (Lacan, Deleuze and Latour arrived later -see below). The
works of the power theorists mentioned above all drew the attention to a widely experienced
philosophical shift towards post- structuralism, and some included in the discussion its
philosophical predecessors, such as Nietzsche and Machiavelli (Flyvbjerg, 1998b; Hillier, 2002).
Some of the critics (e.g. Forester, 2001) pointed out that not much new could be found.
A combination of factors can help us to understand both the irritation and the
fascination the ‘power theorists’ of the 90s evoked. By now, with the benefit of hindsight, it is
clear that indeed the claim of discovery of the irrational and of power games in planning was
exaggerated, partly for rhetorical effect. This exaggeration can also be explained by the
ascendance in the previous decade of communicative planning theories, often inspired by
Habermas, who portrayed power as something negative, as oppressive. Good planning was the
search for power- free deliberations (e.g. Healey, 1997; Forester, 1989; Sager, 2006). In other
words, the emphasis on (Habermasian) rationality caused a Freudian return of the repressed, a
new discovery of irrationality and of power in all its guises (e.g. McGuirk, 2001). Rediscovery of
power was rediscovery of context, of the multiple embeddings of planning in society.
Also outside that communicative paradigm, the topic of power had been lingering in
the shadows of the discipline. The spur of neo- Marxist interest in the 60s and 70s mostly took
place in geography, sociology, political science and philosophy. Many planners had gone back
easily to a silent identification with the powers that be (cf. Wildavsky, 1979; Friedmann, 1998;
6
Hoch, 1992). Baum in 1983 noticed the ambiguity many planners felt about discussing power
(Baum, 1983). Simultaneously, both in politics and in academia, many voices questioned both
the steering power and the legitimacy of steering ambitions of the state. Both neo- liberal
critiques and leftist critiques seemed to argue for a smaller state, and for a shift from
government to governance (Wildavsky, 1979; Hardy, 1991; Hajer, 1995; Hillier, 2002). This
was a fertile ground for a renewed reflection on the position of planning. And, as said, the new
theorists’ post- structuralist leanings were felt more as shocking in planning than in most other
disciplines, because of usually tacit assumptions regarding the possibility of direct access to
truth, either through (rational) science or (rational) discussions, an access seen as a
precondition for intervention (Scott, 1998; Miller, 2002).
Conceptual frame: revisiting power and finding contingency
We define planning broadly as the coordination of policies and practices affecting spatial
organization (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008). This definition enables us to look at a wide
variety of planning practices and aspirations. Power we understand, at this initial stage of
definition, and in line with much of the Foucauldian- inspired planning literature, as something
that is always present and consist of ‘relations that exist at different levels, in different forms;
(…) power relations are mobile, they can be modified, they are not fixed once and for all’
(Foucault, 1997, p. 291-292). Power should be understood ‘as the multiplicity of force relations
immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization; as
the process which, through ceaseless struggles and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or
reverses them; as the support which these force relations find one other, thus forming a chain
or a system, or on the contrary, the disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from
one another’ (Foucault, 1998, p. 92). It produces some discourses, realities, knowledge,
subjects, objects and values and pushes others into the background (Foucault, 1998, p. 81-102,
cf. Foucault, 1994).
Alain Pottage shows, drawing on Luhmann (largely absent from planning theory) and
an extensive knowledge of the full conceptual trajectories of Deleuze (very recently
proliferating in planning theory) and Foucault, that for all three, reality consists of events, and
that over time, recursive repetition of events leads to new structures, with both elements and
structures, both objects and subjects, to be considered products of transformation and starting
points for further transformation (Pottage, 2004; Pottage, 1998). This comes close to Deleuze’s
concept of the fold (Deleuze, 1993), Lacan’s idea of a gap (Žižek, 2003; Žižek, 2012) or
Luhmann’s differentiation (Luhmann, 1989; Luhmann, 1995), as the creation of discontinuities
that need continuous reproduction to stabilise temporarily.
In this perspective, Foucault’s later assertion that ‘power comes from power’ (1994, p.
238) and his perspective that power is always relational, appears more meaningful. Power in
7
process, is power that needs to be reproduced in a recursive manner, from one event to the
next one. Pottage persuasively argues that such concept of power, away from object- subject
distinctions, away from moralising too, and away from rigid subject- structure distinctions, is
the only way to read the late Foucault consistently (Pottage, 1998). This concept of power helps
to preserve the two meanings of power, as the fuel of the universe (a Machiavellian legacy) and
as, in one small sub- domain, the potentiality emerging in relations between individuals and
structures. It allows seeing power as a relational effect and understanding the performative
effects of particular attribution of power to objects or subjects (c.f. Allen, 2003). In Deleuzian
terms, one can speak of embedded machinic assemblages, with different evolutionary speeds.
Pottage’s interpretation brings Deleuze, Foucault and Luhmann closer to each other, in
insisting on the importance of contingency concepts in structuring their theory, and their
understanding of power and strife (cf. Pløger, 2004; Mouffe, 2000). Contingency itself acquires
a new meaning in this reinterpretation of the post- structuralists: not only the idea that the
identity of something is not necessarily as it is, but more radically, the idea that literally
everything is contingent: elements, structures, relations and operations. A contingency that is
only compatible with a structured universe because of the recursive operations of power. “In
place of ontological substances and structures, 'emergence' deals instead with structures,
processes and theories that produce themselves out of their own contingency” (Pottage, 1998,
p. 3). It is this theory of emergent elements and processes that furthers the laterFoucault’s
notion of power “clearly and unequivocally distinguished from 'sovereign' or 'repressive'
power” (ibid p. 25) and that creates new linkages and compatibilities between the different
post- structuralists, between their visions of what is and what can be. Both the actual modes of
reproduction of discourses, systems, machines, and the ascriptions regarding elements,
structures and effects in this reproduction, embody power and have power effects. Such
contingency perspective is gaining ground in complexity theories and it has produced novel
insights in the working, effects and limitations of steering and coordinaton attempts in
disciplines like economics, law, and public administration (MacKenzie et al., 2007; Walker et al.,
2008; Teubner, 1989).
Structures and elements, subjects and objects, all evolve in a manner that relies on
power (Foucault, 1994; Foucault, 1976; Foucault, 1975) and none are entirely stable. In policy
and planning, this entails that no insertion of a new formal institution can be equalled to a new
de facto coordinative structure, while no new structure can alter reality by itself. It is precisely
in the continuous interaction between objects and subjects, between elements and structures,
between discourses and materialities, that realities are changing (Pottage, 2004; Duineveld et
al., 2013). As we will see, giving such contingency concept central place in planning theory
alters the perspective on the impact of plans and planning, while allowing for an agency of
space, both planned and unplanned.
8
Power in, on and of planning
Contributing to the developments sketched above, and for the reasons mentioned in the
introduction, we will now refine the analysis of planning/power and for that we distinguish
three foci of attention: power in planning, power on planning, and power of planning. Power in
planning refers to the mechanisms of power that mark the planning system itself.
Understanding power in planning is about understanding the relations in the planning
system. Power on planning refers to the influence of broader society on the relations in the
planning system. Power of planning refers to the impacts of planning discourses and practices
in society at large. This can entail literal implementation and partial implementation, but it can
also entail various political, economic, social and cultural effects. For each relation, we will
highlight contributions from different lines of research, different lines of post- structuralism to
the understanding of each relation. Some of the concepts introduced are new, others not so
much, and among those, some have been introduced previously to planning theory, others not.
We indicate, as far as possible their provenance, novelty and added value. This also helps to
further clarify the structure and genealogy of our perspective and its added value.
Power in planning
Within the context of planning, power relations define not only the strategic interactions
between actors, but also the definition of actors, issues, realities, problems, methods and
solutions (Hillier, 2002, cf. Ferguson, 1994). Following Foucault, we consider power
omnipresent in the construction of possible and desirable futures in the planning system: in
micro and macro- relations, strategies, tactics, institutions, knowledge, and in the framing of
what is real, possible and desirable (Gunder and Hillier, 2009).
The planning system needs an image of the outside world to operate on, as well as
tools to implement decisions, plans, and policies in that outside world. Complexity theory (e.g.
Chettiparamb, 2006; Innes and Booher, 2010; De Roo and Silva, 2010; Beunen and van Assche,
2013) and social systems theory (e.g. Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008; Valentinov, 2014)
argue that the reduction of complexity within the planning system enables it to reproduce itself
and to interact with society at large, while at the same time this reduction obscures many
features of that larger reality. This is similar to Foucault’s observation that the selectivity of
discourse at once opens up reality and closes alternative interpretations (Foucault, 1969;
Foucault, 1975). Internal complexity of the planning system is needed to accommodate a model
of the outside world that is subtle enough to operate upon, but on the other hand, an
established model becomes quickly entrenched and easily obscures alternative planning
options and strategies (Luhmann, 1990). The focusing of attention creates a grip on the world
but in the long run, by necessarily closing off other understandings (and their
9
institutionalization), the trade-offs can be less understanding, steering and control (cf. also
Latour, 1996).
A second aspect of the reduced internal complexity is that in a large organization, or in
a web of organizations, power is just as well the power to block as the power to push (cf.
Foucault, 1994). Blocking can take the shape of hiding information, slowing down, spreading
rumours, evading responsibility or action, undermining legitimacy or public image, and so
forth. If a planning system becomes more complex, there are many cogs to hamper it, and the
cogs tend to be less visible (Luhmann, 1990). If one considers planning an activity that is not
limited to the state apparatus, then the relation with the various faces and evolutionary stages
of power that Foucault described, have to be assessed in that light (Sayer, 2004). Indeed,
whether in the form of juridical power or bio- power (Foucault, 1976), the state cannot be seen
as a single- handed creator of objectivity and subjectivity (Kooij, 2014). It is in the game of
interactions between state and non- state actors that these actors receive their shape and role
(cf. Hillier, 2008). Such assertion is in line with the late Foucault, where power became
dissociated from intentionality and subjectivity more clearly, and with a Deleuzian perspective
of planning as assemblage (Allen and Cochrane, 2010; Pottage, 1998).
An insight from actor- network theory (a rather recent variant of post- structuralism,
tracing its lineage via Latour to Foucault) that can be incorporated here, is that in this game of
powers material objects can play various roles (Sayes, 2014). That is, objects can be more than
passive resistance. They can have agency and be actants, actively co-guiding the development
of planning (Latour, 1996; Rydin, 2010 for a pointed defence). One can think here of
infrastructure and irrigation networks, but also of physical spaces that clearly result from
previous planning efforts, as objects upholding legitimacy and underpinning the versions of
reality circulating (for strong parallels in development policies see Scott, 1998 and Ferguson,
1994; for the organizational scale Czarniawska-Joerges, 2008).
If one looks at the productivity of planning in this manner, it is also easier to reconcile
Foucault with the insight of Deleuze and Luhmann that reality is made up of events, events that
occur and leave no trace (DeLanda, 2006; Deleuze, 1988). Indeed, in our contingency concept
(introduced above), drawing on a combination of the three authors, structures appear in a
process of emergence, of recursive repetition. Moving closer to planning, and adding to the
older presence of post- structuralism in planning theory, one can say that structures, such as
discursive structures, but also configurations of actors and institutions, appear and disappear,
and are part of an emergent order that is immanent, but at the same time perfectly capable of
constraining the internal and external linkages that make up actors in a governance network
(DeLanda, 2006; Hillier, 2008). Again in Deleuzian terms, but drawing on the newly integrated
conceptual frame presented here, one can say that a planning system, as the web of actors,
rules, documents, and built spaces, that reproduces itself, can be presented as a mutual
10
imbrication of a machinic and an enunciative assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004),
together capable of producing a wide variety of effects.
Power on planning
The external influences on the planning system cannot be discussed without reference to its
internal mechanics. In A thousand plateau’s, Deleuze and Guattari (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987)
seem to dismiss planning together with the project of the modernist state intending to order its
territory by means of oppressive gestures and molar thinking. Also for the early Foucault (e.g.
Foucault, 1966; Foucault, 1969) planning would have looked as an activity strongly tied to
power/knowledge regimes that lost legitimacy. Yet, as Hillier (2008) and others have pointed
out, both planning practice and planning theory have transformed and opened up themselves in
so many ways, that the association between planning and the enterprise of high modernist
state craft does not seem warranted anymore.
If one tries to grasp the array of influences of society at large on the planning system,
and consider the multiplicity of potential relations between planning and society, it makes
sense to place Deleuze in line with many mainstream theories giving importance to complexity
and evolution, such as institutional economics and social systems theory (Van Assche et al.,
2014). Planning requires a level of complexity, a series of emergent orders enabling a structure
of interaction that is not only capable of machining, of relating various elements and producing
somewhat predictable effects, but also of stabilising itself for a while. One could argue that the
move from modernist planning to more flexible and adaptive forms of spatial governance
represents a new ‘plateau’, a new pattern of interactions that represents an evolutionary
achievement.
This does not stop evolution however. Actors in the planning system, as well as the role
of planning in society and the role of government in society will keep evolving. This irrevocably
changes the effects of society on planning, but also the effects of planning in society. The de-
coupling of power and intentionality, present with Foucault (see e.g. Fischler, 2000), Deleuze
(DeLanda, 2006) and Luhmann (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008), ought to be remembered
here. In our developing perspective, this de-coupling is compounded by a dissolution of ‘actors’,
and the emphasis on contingency, which implies that linkages between actors, intentions and
effects are observer-dependent descriptions that are or could have been different for different
observers (Borch, 2005). What counts as an actor is very different in different places and times
and the effects of their actions are related to their intentions in myriad manners (Yiftachel,
1998; Hillier, 2002; McFarlane, 2009). In addition, the consistencies in these intentions are
shaped and reshaped continuously (Hardy and Leiba-O'Sullivan, 1998; Flyvbjerg, 1998a). The
plans themselves can be called actants, and what was said about actors also applies to them.
External factors influencing their internal functioning and internal or external factors shaping
11
their role in the world, can shift at any moment, and the reconstruction of the reasons for these
shifts will often have to follow the intricate and unpredictable pathways of the rhizome,
unveiling unexpected linkages between individual or collective desires, anxieties, concepts,
objects, and instances of pure coincidence (Hillier and Gunder, 2005).
Disappointments in society with planning, or with a political party, with an ideology,
with a certain life style tied to images of collective identity, events that are felt as traumatic,
pasts that are reinterpreted, all these can cause shifts in the planning system and the position of
planning in society, and thus affect the dynamics of power there (Wildavsky, 1979; Friedmann,
1971; Gunder, 2010).
This perspective also has direct implications for the types of knowledge that play out in
the internal games of the planning system. Certain actors identify with certain discourses,
either scientific or otherwise, and in other cases they deploy them to maintain or improve their
position in the system (See e.g. Hoch, 1992, but, again, Friedmann, 1998 and especially 2008).
Competition, as a productive tensions between different perspectives, tends to speed up the
transformations of power/knowledge configurations and to speed up the selection and
delineation of actors in the system, and of shifts in the pattern of linkages between the web of
planning actors and their environment (Van Assche et al., 2011). Changes in society affect
directly or indirectly the forms of knowledge that can play out within the planning system,
either adopted by actors in the system, or by adding and removing actors (Gunder, 2010;
Hardy, 1991; Kiernan, 1983). Since planning is also a form of spatial policy integration, there
will be a need to decide on first ordering principles, in terms of types of knowledge allowed to
order space first and in terms of types of use.
Power of planning
The power of planning in society, as in the effects of planning in society, has to be considered,
as mentioned before, extremely varied. If we maintain the combination of contingency and
interdependency (in distributed agency) envisioned by Deleuze, Luhmann and the late
Foucault, then the effects of efforts at spatial coordination in society can be wildly varied. This
does not at all mean that planning has no use or that we have to assess the effects of plans and
planning as negative or futile, because what usually happens is different from what was at some
point predicted or desired. One does not need implementation or steering in the sense
imagined by the modernists to make ongoing attempts at coordination of spatial policies and
practices worthwhile. Rather it implies that the assessment of planning effects cannot be
reduced to a set of categories produced within the planning system (Allen and Cochrane, 2010;
McFarlane, 2009). For understanding the impact of planning in society, it is useful to remember
that although the overt function of planning is coordination, the success of planning hinges on
the dissemination of its articulations in society, that is: the distribution and acceptance of
12
concepts, strategies, forms, and materialities (Van Assche et al., 2012b). Hence Luhmann’s
famous assertion that planning is possible if people are used to being planned (Luhmann, 1997,
p. 41).
The planning system, and society at large, can be seen as interlocking assemblages,
each capable of producing lines of flight, of conceptual innovation, including new ways to
consider the future (Hillier, 2008). The imaginary order can be considered an immanent pool of
resources for these endeavours (Žižek, 2004). Planning fantasies can be potentially totalitarian,
and they can be emancipatory. Fantasies in and of the community at large can restructure the
imaginary of planning, and, under certain circumstances, it can also happen the other way
around.
‘Steering’ and ‘implementation’ look different in this unfolding perspective. Luhmann’s
assertion is compatible with what can be deduced from the late Foucault and Deleuze on
steering and implementation. Our integrated perspective therefore helps in establishing the
afore- mentioned middle ground between cynical apprehension of steering attempts and blind
belief in the possibilities of steering. Indeed, actions can have effects that are predictable to a
certain degree, but an interpretation of effects as results of steering remains just that: an
interpretation (Luhmann, 1990; Luhmann, 1995). Power in this sense, as Grange, drawing on
Dryberg, has argued, should be understood as that which authorises the retroactive
construction of the ability, authority or identity to plan, as if this was a presupposed capacity,
possible to posit in the subject (Grange, 2012; Allen, 2003; similar to Seidl, 2005 on
organizational strategy).
A further reduction of steering ideology into one concept of ‘implementation’ makes it
only more difficult to observe the process of linkages between players, objects, and knowledges
that can produce effects (Wildavsky, 1979; Scott, 1998; Ferguson, 1994). It obscures the
productive structure of the machinic and enunciative assemblages even more. A related
ideology, compounding the opacity, is that of politics (and planning as a helper) as the centre of
society, enabling it to have a full and ‘objective’ overview of society, improving its chances to
successfully intervene in society (Luhmann, 1990; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Thus,
assumptions of steering, implementation and politics, compound to veil the view of the
functioning of the assemblages from within. This combination of machining and veiling the
machining (of producing and naturalising the product) is a classic trope of post- structuralism,
but can appear now as grounded in a more generally applicable theory of power, and the link
with distributed agency makes a balanced re- assessment of steering in planning more easy.
Lacanian- inspired research in planning (Gunder and Hillier, 2007; Hillier and Gunder,
2005; Wood, 2009) and beyond (Žižek, 2003, 2004, 2012) can help us to grasp why these
steering ideologies persist, despite disappointment after disappointment, and why they
inspired successive phases of overconfidence and lack of confidence in the power of planning
13
(Both Wildavsky, 1979 and Friedmann, 2008, report this wavering). Planning is underpinned
by interlocking phantasmagoric constructions, and planning theory ought to entail a reflection
on this substructure of planning, it ought to be a traverse of the fantasy, in Lacanian terms
(Hillier and Gunder, 2005). Yet, ‘fantasy’ sounds too negative and draws one away from the
performative and coherence- creating functions of the imaginary order (Žižek, 2012; Žižek,
2003).
The imaginaries of planners, the planning community and the community at large, in
other words, can resonate in patterns that are hard to predict, with different desires competing,
sometimes attenuating, sometimes magnifying each other. In a Deleuzian perspective, each
planning process can be described as a game of de- and re-territorializations that reshape the
planning machine in each case. Yet, if planners consider this, there is still a danger of to silently
assume that what makes the planner more powerful is good for the community, so the
strategies to advocate for more planning are considered legitimate in advance (Hoch, 1992;
Fischler, 2000; Gunder, 2010; Grange, 2012). An empowering role in society could better be
described as a continuous vigilance, in making society sensitive to new combinations of powers,
actors, values, objects and places. We believe that the specific simplifications of the world
pertaining to high modernist ideologies (Scott, 1998) created indeed a powerful position for
planning in society. It also created a tendency to de- politicize planning activities, since
consensus and assumed neutrality allow for expert prominence (Wildavsky, 1979; Hoch, 1992).
It produced a nostalgia with many planners for days of prominence, and a continuous identity
crisis. Both the ideological underpinnings of planning and its cognitive limitations are forgotten
over and over again, and cognitive closure makes it harder to adapt. Friedmann noted, in 1971:
‘Wisdom has it that to be a good planner is to be acutely aware not only of what our work can
reasonably be expected to accomplish, but also what it cannot; as professionals, we have to be
aware of our cognitive limitations’ (p. 251).
Žižek, (2004), talking about the powers and dangers of cyberspace, as a place where
reinvention of futures and identities is maybe too easy, sees a way to tame the beast: ‘This,
then, opens up the possibility of undermining the hold a fantasy exerts over us through the very
overidentification with it, i.e., by way of embracing simultaneously, within the same space, the
multitude of inconsistent fantasmatic elements’ (p. 381). This might apply to planning too,
where, to open up the cognitive closure lamented by many, an exaggeration might be one
therapeutic way to become aware of the fantasmatic character of a planning ideology that
sustains itself by excluding reflection on the power- structures upholding it. Then, it might
become clear, but also easier to accept, that for some places and problems spatial planning
might not be the most appropriate answer and that where planning does emerge, it might be
without planners bearing the label ‘planner’ (Abbott, 2012). This however, should not lead us to
14
abandon the project of planning. It is just that some of the assumptions regarding the power of
planning and planners are metamorphosed remnants of a modernist ideology.
Discussion and conclusion
Distinguishing between power in, on, and of planning is useful to explore and disentangle the
different foci of attention in the power/ planning debates, and to integrate known and not so
familiar post- structuralist strands of thought for the analysis of planning in society. It allows us
to see planning as a system within society where power-relations constitute the possibilities,
the forms and the potential impact of planning. Using and developing the concept of
contingency, we show how the co-evolution of the planning system and its environment is
driven by the productive collisions between irreconcilable perspectives in a pattern of agency
that is far more distributed than usually assumed. It involves more relations and possible
patterns of relations, yet also more possible states of temporary stability, heightened
predictability of effects and coordinative power. Co- evolution means that changes on one side
spur changes on the other side, and that the structure and functioning of one side can be
explained by looking at the history of the two sides and their form of relation. The positionality
of planning in a particular case is therefore to be understood as the result of a coupled
evolution of planning and society. Power of and power on planning are to be analysed as two
sides of the same coin, as the dual force driving the evolution. Power in planning is framed by
that duality. The mechanics of power in planning can be deduced from the specific entwining of
the two other aspects of power. Changes in the relationship between power of and power on
planning are bound to affect power in planning, while changes in the power landscape in
planning itself only have wider effects if mediated by a particular position of planning in
society.
Actors, their patterns of interaction, and the potentiality embedded in these
interactions are emerging and contingent structures. They arise out of events, to which they
cannot be reduced (DeLanda, 2006; Pottage, 1998; Sayer, 2004). Recursive events enable
evolution and self- transformation. Power, in such perspective, is the force in the contingent
construction and reconstruction of the elements that constitute planning. Power is located in
synchronic and diachronic relations; relations in networks of discourses and materialities,
structures and elements, subjects and objects. All these networks reproduce themselves, with
the previous state of the world as the input for the next one. Such recursivity is important, since
it explains the crystallization of identities and structures in and by assemblages, social systems,
or dispositifs (for Deleuze, Luhmann, Foucault respectively). Neither individual agency, nor
structures ‘explain’ power, or are the essential point of intervention. Rather should agency be
seen as distributed, ambiguous, and evolving.
15
Remaining within the same perspective, one can also account for power in the more
narrow sense, as the potential to get things done, in planning, and for planning in society. This
potential exists, but is subjected to the mechanics of contingent reproduction of society and its
elements described above. Power as the potential to influence is continuously reshaped. The
configuration of potentialities is both the outcome as well as the precondition for the recursive
operations of power. Just as the subjects, their values, and the power attributed to them, can
only be understood as ‘folds’, or temporary discontinuities and densities in the fabric of reality,
the power relations between subjects are subjected to the same processes of self-
transformation. Cause, effect, intentionality and its cohesive version, rationality are considered
ascriptive (and a posteriori) in character. Also references to values, and associated descriptions
as oppression and subjugation emerge in the same process.
Spatial planning, as the coordination of policies and practices affecting spatial
organization, cannot assume stability in actors, values and procedures. Places assigned to
‘actors’ and the recognition as actor are already political gestures. Political gestures have to be
recognised as such, as they will confer more power and stability on these actors and make their
values more prominent. This is not an argument against planning in its many forms, like
participatory planning, it is an argument for reflexivity in planning and for the recognition of
planning as politics. Very similar points can be made and have been made about policy analysis
and public administration (Wildavsky, 1979; Miller, 2002), environmental studies (Hajer and
Versteeg, 2005; Luhmann, 1989), and development studies (Ferguson, 1994; Escobar, 1988;
Abu-Lughod, 1990). Also in management studies, steering power has been systematically
overestimated and lack of reflexive insight in power relations is mentioned as one of the main
reasons (Seidl, 2005; Czarniawska-Joerges, 2008; Hardy and Leiba-O'Sullivan, 1998). The idea
that planners can know, either in advance or during the process, what is good for a community
or what is the best procedure to get there is a trace (in the Lacanian sense of a stain) of a
modernist configuration of power. A configuration whereby planners silently take the role of
the king, the position that enables overview, a unified perspective that can define the place of
everything (Pottage, 2004; Luhmann, 1990; Scott, 1998). The stress on contingency does in no
way diminish the potential power of planning. It does undermine the hopes of ever stabilising a
planning system or of ever perfectly tying it to a community. This point, both critical and
hopeful, emerges from our integrated perspective on power, from a contingency perspective
that stresses emergence, continuous reconstruction, distributed agency and a homology
between power on planning and power of planning. It can help in finding a middle ground
between radical deconstructions of planning as oppressive or completely disconnected from
the life in communities, and, on the other hand, overly optimistic expectations regarding the
steering power of planning and a perfect fit with a community.
16
Our perspective establishes connections between power in/on and of planning. It
shows planning as self- transformation, shaped by previous states of planning, current states of
society, modes of coupling between them. It shows new sources of flexibility in planning,
unexpected effects of actions and ascriptions, and unobserved agencies that can modify
planning efforts. Discerning new linkages between power in/on/of planning makes it
impossible to define a priori each aspect. Agency and effects in any direction can only be
grasped after understanding the whole.
Looking back at the evolution of the power discussion in planning, it is even clearer
now that the reception of post- structuralist perspectives on power was deeply entwined with
the identity politics of the discipline and the profession, traditionally identifying with
government, community or civil society (Van Assche et al., 2013). Indeed, as Friedmann (1971;
1973; 1998; 2008) and others (Brooks, 1988; Hoch, 1992; Hillier, 2002; Gunder, 2010)
indicated again and again over the decades, the drive to be applied in the ‘real’ world often led
to limited theoretical efforts and a limited understanding of that ‘real’ world. This was bound to
lead to never ending disappointments in practice. Unfortunately, the self- referential character
of the planning community usually led to a further doubting of theory, or calls to tie theory even
closer to current practice (to bridge a ‘gap’). Yiftachel (in Flyvbjerg, 2001, and echoing older
observations by Friedmann and Wildavsky) speaks of ‘a normative and inward- looking
discourse’ (p. 291). The anti- intellectual slant made it even more difficult to introduce new
insights and made it more likely to jump on new, hastily assembled theories (such as
communicative planning) that seemed to promise straightforward application and a regained
prominence of planning in society. It also made it more likely to be recaptured in positions that
reinforced the status quo (Gunder, 2010; Harvey, 1973; Jaret, 1983; Scott, 1998).
Luckily, a more diversified reflection on the roles of planning in society has developed
over the last few decades. The post- structuralist power theorists of the nineties, we believe,
played a major role in this development. In deepening the engagement with theoretical
developments outside planning, and building on the insights already taken, we think a
contingency interpretation of post- structuralism, bringing Foucault, Deleuze and Luhmann
closer to each other in their conceptualization of power, is useful to consider. Such
conceptualisation offers a refinement of power-analyses in planning as well as additional
insights in the dialectical relation between planning and society. It puts forward an
evolutionary perspective that recognizes how traces of the past shape the existing structures
that are the precondition for transformation of the planning system. Contingency therewith
provides further insights in the way planning efforts build upon existing configuration of
power/knowledge and of actors and institutions, and it allows for a more realistic delineation
of the spaces for change.
17
Much in line with the tradition of American pragmatism (Pellizzoni, 2003), it looks like
continuous reflection in governance, as an organisation of friction between perspectives, and
an organised sensitising for alternative world- views, is of the essence if one wants to avoid the
emergence of governance systems that are experienced as oppressive. Increased reflexivity and
flexibility might avoid a situation where planning is seen as ‘an old-fashioned, static ideology
devised chiefly to advance the interest of a few professions in climbing to positions of
dominating influence in the society’ (Friedmann, 1971, p. 317).
References
Abbott J, 2012 Green infrastructure for sustainable urban development in Africa (Earthscan, Milton Park) Abu-Lughod L, 1990, "The romance of resistance. Tracing transformations of power through Bedouin
women" American Ethnologist 17 41-55 Allen J, 2003 Lost geographies of power (Blackwell Publishers, Oxford) Allen J, Cochrane A, 2010, "Assemblages of State Power: Topological Shifts in the Organization of
Government and Politics" Antipode 42 1071-1089 Allmendinger P, Haugton G, 2007, "The fluid scales and scope of UK spatial planning" Environment and
Planning A 39 1478-1496 Allmendinger P, Tewdwr-Jones M, 2002, "The Communicative Turn in Urban Planning: Unravelling
Paradigmatic, Imperialistic and Moralistic Dimensions" Space and Polity 6 5-24 Baum H, 1983 Planners and Public Expectations (Schenkman, Cambridge) Beunen R, van Assche K, 2013, "Contested delineations: planning, law, and the governance of protected
areas" Environment and Planning A 45 1285-1301 Booher D E, Innes J E, 2002, "Network Power in Collaborative Planning" Journal of Planning Education and
Research 21 221-236 Borch C, 2005, "Systemic Power: Luhmann, Foucault, and Analytics of Power" Acta Sociologica 48 155-167 Boyce R, 1963, "Myth versus reality in urban planning" Land Economics 39 231-251 Brooks M, 1988, "Four Critical Junctures in the History of the Urban Planning Profession: An Exercise in
Hindsight" Journal of the American Planning Association 54 241-248 Brown W R, 1986, "Power and the rhetoric of social intervention" Communication Monographs 53 180-
199 Chettiparamb A, 2006, "Metaphors in Complexity Theory and Planning" Planning Theory 5 71-91 Crush J, 1994, "Scripting the compound: power and space in the South African mining industry"
Environment and Planning D 12 301-301 Czarniawska-Joerges B, 2008 A theory of organizing (Edward Elgar, Cheltenham) Davidoff P, 1965, "Advocacy and Pluralism in Planning" Journal of the American Institute of Planners 31
331-338 De Roo G, Silva E A, 2010 A Planner's encounter with complexity (Ashgate, Farnham) DeLanda M, 2006 A new philosophy of society. Assemblage theory and social complexity (Continuum,
London) Deleuze G, 1988 Foucault (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) Deleuze G, 1993 The fold: Leibniz and the baroque (U of Minnesota Press) Deleuze G, Guattari F, 1987 A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Continuum, London) Deleuze G, Guattari F i, 2004 Anti-oedipus (Continuum International Publishing Group) Duineveld M, Van Assche K, Beunen R, 2013, "Making things irreversible. Object stabilization in urban
planning and design" Geoforum 46 16-24 Escobar A, 1988, "Power and visibility: Development and the invention and management of the Third
World" Cultural Anthropology 3 428-443 Ferguson J, 1994 The Anti-politics Machine: "development", Depolicization, and Bureaucratic Power in
Lesotho (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis) Fischler R, 2000, "Communicative Planning Theory: A Foucauldian Assessment" Journal of Planning
Education and Research 19 358-368 Flyvbjerg B, 1998a, "Habermas and Foucault: Thinkers for civil society" British Journal of Sociology 49 (2)
210-233
18
Flyvbjerg B, 1998b Rationality and Power: Democracy in Practice (University of Chicago Press, Chicago) Flyvbjerg B, 2001, "Beyond the Limits of Planning Theory: Response to My Critics" International Planning
Studies 6 285-292 Flyvbjerg B, 2004, "Phronetic planning research: theoretical and methodological reflections" Planning
Theory & Practice 5 283-306 Forester J, 1989 Planning in the face of power (University of California Press, Berkeley) Forester J, 2001, "An Instructive Case-study Hampered by Theoretical Puzzles: Critical Comments on
Flyvbjerg's Rationality and Power" International Planning Studies 6 263-270 Foucault M, 1966 Les mots et les choses (Gallimard, Parijs) Foucault M, 1969 L'archéologie du savoir (éditions Gallimard) Foucault M, 1975 Surveiller et punir (Gallimard, Paris) Foucault M, 1976, "Histoire de la sexualité. Tome 1: La volonté de savoir" Paris: Gallimard Foucault M, 1994 Power. Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984. Volume 3 (The New Press, New York) Foucault M, 1997 Ethics: subjectivity and truth; the essential works of Michael Foucault, 1954-1984
(London, Allen Lane) Foucault M, 1998 The will to knowledge. The history of sexuality: 1 (Penguin Books, London) Friedmann J, 1971, "The future of comprehensive urban planning: A critique" Public Administration
Review 31 315-326 Friedmann J, 1973, "The spatial organization of power in the development of urban systems" Development
and change 4 12-50 Friedmann J, 1998, "Planning theory revisited" European Planning Studies 6 245-253 Friedmann J, 2008, "The Uses of Planning Theory: A Bibliographic Essay" Journal of Planning Education
and Research 28 247-258 Grange K, 2012, "Shaping acting space: In search of a new political awareness among local authority
planners" Planning Theory Gunder M, 2010, "Planning as the ideology of (neo-liberal) space" Planning Theory 9 298-314 Gunder M, Hillier J, 2007, "Planning as urban therapeutic" Environment and Planning A 39 467 Gunder M, Hillier J, 2009 Planning in ten words or less. A Lacanian Entanglement with Spatial Planning
(Ashgate, Surrey) Hajer M, Versteeg W, 2005, "A decade of discourse analysis of environmental politics: Achievements,
challenges, perspectives" Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 7 175 - 184 Hajer M A, 1995 The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process
(Clarendon, Oxford) Hardy C, Leiba-O'Sullivan S, 1998, "The power behind empowerment: Implications for research and
practice" Human relations 51 451-483 Hardy D, 1991 From garden cities to new towns: Campaigning for town and country planning, 1899-1946
(Taylor & Francis) Harvey D, 1973, "Social justice and the city" Healey P, 1997 Collaborative planning: shaping places in fragmented societies (Macmillan London) Hedgcock D, Hillier J, Wood D, 1991, "Planning, postmodernism and community power" Henri L, 1968, "Le droit à la ville" Anthropos Hillier J, 2002 Shadows of power: an allegory of prudence in land-use planning (Routledge, New York) Hillier J, 2008, "Plan(e) Speaking: a Multiplanar Theory of Spatial Planning" Planning Theory 7 24-50 Hillier J, Gunder M, 2005, "Not over your dead bodies! A Lacanian interpretation of urban planning
discourse and practice" Environment and Planning A 37 1049-1066 Hoch C J, 1992, "The paradox of power in planning practice" Journal of Planning Education and Research
11 206-215 Innes J E, Booher D E, 2010 Planning with complexity : an introduction to collaborative rationality for public
policy (Routledge, New York) Jacobs J, 1961 Death and life of great American cities (Penguin, Harmondsworth) Jaret C, 1983, "Recent neo-Marxist urban analysis" Annual Review of Sociology 9 499-525 Kiernan M J, 1983, "Ideology, politics, and planning: reflections on the theory and practice of urban
planning" Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 10 71-87 Kooij H-J, 2014, "Object formation and subject formation: The innovation campus in the Netherlands"
Planning Theory 1473095214527278 Latour B, 1996 Aramis, or, The love of technology (Harvard University Press, Cambridge) Latour B, 2004 Politics of Nature. How to bring the sciences into democracy (Harvard University Press,
Cambridge) Luhmann N, 1989 Ecological Communication ( University of Chicago Press, Chicago) Luhmann N, 1990 Political theory in the welfare state. (Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin) Luhmann N, 1995 Social systems (Stanford University Press, Stanford)
19
Luhmann N, 1997 Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt) MacKenzie D, Muniesa F, Siu L, 2007 Do economists make markets?: on the performativity of economics
(Princeton University Press, Princeton) McFarlane C, 2009, "Translocal assemblages: space, power and social movements" Geoforum 40 561-567 McGuirk P M, 2001, "Situating communicative planning theory: context, power, and knowledge"
Environment and Planning A 33 195-217 Miller H T, 2002 Postmodern public policy (SUNY Press., Albany) Miraftab F, 2009, "Insurgent planning: situating radical planning in the global south" Planning Theory 8
32-50 Mouffe C, 2000 The democratic paradox (Verso) Moulaert F, Cabaret K, 2006, "Planning, networks and power relations: is democratic planning under
capitalism possible?" Planning Theory 5 51-70 Munro L, 2000, "Non-disciplinary power and the network society" Organization 7 679-695 Pellizzoni L, 2003, "Knowledge, uncertainty and the transformation of the public sphere" European Journal
of Social Theory 6 327-355 Pløger J, 2004, "Strife: urban planning and agonism" Planning Theory 3 71-92 Pottage A, 1998, "Power as an art of contingency: Luhmann, Deleuze, Foucault" Economy and Society 27 1-
27 Pottage A, 2004, "The fabrication of persons and things", in Law, anthropology and the constitution of the
social. Making persons and things. Eds A Pottage, M Mundy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 1-39
Rydin Y, 2010, "Actor-network theory and planning theory: A response to Boelens" Planning Theory 9 265-268
Sager T, 2006, "The logic of critical communicative planning: Transaction cost alteration" Planning Theory 5 223-254
Sayer A, 2004, "Seeking the geographies of power" Economy and Society 33 255-270 Sayes E, 2014, "Actor–Network Theory and methodology: Just what does it mean to say that nonhumans
have agency?" Social Studies of Science 44 134-149 Scott J C, 1998 Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (Yale
University Press, New Haven) Seidl D, 2005 Organizational identity and self- transformation. An autopoietic perspective. (Ashgate,
Aldershot) Swyngedouw E, Moulaer F, Rodriguez A, 2002, "Large scale urban development projects and local
governance: From democratic urban planning to besieged local governance" Geographische Zeitschrift 89 69-84.
Teubner G, 1989, "How the Law Thinks: Towards a Constructivist Epistemology of Law" Law & Society Review 23 727-758
Tewdwr-Jones M, Allmendinger P, 1998, "Deconstructing communicative rationality: a critique of Habermasian collaborative planning" Environment and Planning A 30 1975-1989
Throgmorton J, 1996 Planning as Persuasive Story-telling. The Rhetorical Construction of Chicago’s Electric Future (University of Chicago Press, Chicago)
Valentinov V, 2014, "K. William Kapp's theory of social costs: A Luhmannian interpretation" Ecological Economics 97 28-33
Van Assche K, Beunen R, Duineveld M, 2012a, "Formal/Informal Dialectics and the Self-Transformation of Spatial Planning Systems: An Exploration" Administration & Society
Van Assche K, Beunen R, Duineveld M, 2012b, "Performing Success and Failure in Governance: Dutch Planning Experiences" Public Administration 90 567-581
Van Assche K, Beunen R, Duineveld M, 2014 Evolutionary Governance Theory: An Introduction (Springer, Heidelberg) Van Assche K, Beunen R, Duineveld M, de Jong H, 2013, "Co-evolutions of planning and design: Risks and
benefits of design perspectives in planning systems" Planning Theory 12 177-198 Van Assche K, Beunen R, Jacobs J, Teampau P, 2011, "Crossing trails in the marshes: rigidity and flexibility
in the governance of the Danube Delta" Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 54 997-1018
Van Assche K, Verschraegen G, 2008, "The Limits of Planning: Niklas Luhmann's Systems Theory and the Analysis of Planning and Planning Ambitions" Planning Theory 7 263-283
Walker Edward T, Martin Andrew W, McCarthy John D, 2008, "Confronting the State, the Corporation, and the Academy: The Influence of Institutional Targets on Social Movement Repertoires" American Journal of Sociology 114 35-76
Wildavsky A, 1979 Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis (Little, Brown and Co., Boston)
20
Wood S, 2009, "Desiring docklands: Deleuze and urban planning discourse" Planning Theory 8 191-216 Yiftachel O, 1998, "Planning and social control: Exploring the dark side" Journal of Planning Literature 12
395-406 Yiftachel O, Huxley M, 2000, "Debating Dominence and Relevance: Notes on the ‘Communicative Turn’in
Planning Theory" International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 24 907-913 Žižek S, 2003, "The rhetorics of power" diacritics 31 91-104 Žižek S, 2004, "What can psychoanalysis tell us about cyberspace?" The Psychoanalytic Review 91 801-830 Žižek S, 2012 Organs without bodies: On Deleuze and consequences (Routledge)