whose adoption is considered to be mandatory to induce the changes required
to establish a climate of renewed confidence.
The main aspects of this new interpretation of governance, albeit different in
nature, are closely interconnected and concern the relations between the
ongoing processes of territorial re-definition and the changes induced by the
processes of globalization and the change in both forms and modalities of
collective action in the urban and community fields.
Other equally important dynamics are linked to the first aspect, including the
processes of European integration, the loss of centrality and the partial
dissolution of government powers on the part of the Nation-State as well as the
resulting required territorial re-configuration by means of re-scaling processes
(Brenner, 1899), that are meant to re-organize, re-arrange, and re-define
territorial scales and transform the related levels of government. The changes
that have characterized the Nation-state, according to Jessop (1994), have
resulted in the transfer of some levels of competence of the State to a growing
number of macro-regional, transnational or international governments while
other powers have been assigned to local or regional governments within the
same State. Still other capacities have been taken up by horizontal networks
made of both local and regional authorities that go beyond the boundary of
“the central government” and link local or regional governments of other
countries”.
A second aspect is linked to a different approach, whereby traditional planning
is replaced by forms of partnership, inter-institutional cooperation and
strategic planning (Healey et al., 1955; Healey, 1997; Le Galès, 1995; 1998).
To this aspect are related in particular urban and territorial modalities of action
as it involves the entire public sector and seems to be more pronounced where
policies are put in place to allow for competence and power decentralization
from central to local governments questioning the new theories on the models
of collective action. The traditional approach which, was focused on the notion
that the management of water resources, being a service of public utility, had
to fall within the range of local policies, is losing ground to a new approach of
a global nature under which public and private sectors interact and new room
is left to new entrepreneurial realities. The management of water services in an
environmental perspective has called for the working out of a detailed action