Deal-making, elite networks and public–private hybridisation: More-than-neoliberal urban governance.

In this commentary, we argue that augmented concepts and research methods are needed to comprehend hybrid urban governance reconfigurations that benefit market actors but eschew competition in favour of deal-making between elite state and private actors. Fuelled by financialisation and in response to planning conflict are regulatory reforms that legitimise opaque alliances in service of infrastructure and urban development projects. From a specific city (Sydney, Australia) we draw upon one such reform – Unsolicited Proposals – to point to a broader landscape of hybrid urban governance, its reconfigurations of power and potential effect on cities. Whereas neoliberal governance promotes competition and views the state and private sectors as distinct, hybrid urban governance leverages state monopoly power and abjures market competition, instead endorsing high-level public–private coordination, technical and financial expertise and confidential deal-making over major urban projects. We scrutinise how Unsolicited Proposals normalise this approach. Commercial-in-confidence protection and absent tender processes authorise a narrow constellation of influential private and public actors to preconfigure outcomes without oversight. Such reforms, we argue, consolidate elite socio-spatial power, jeopardise city function and amplify corruption vulnerabilities. To theorise hybrid urban governance at the intersection of neoliberalism and Asia-Pacific state-capitalism, we offer the concepts of coercive monopoly (where market entry is closed, without opportunity to compete) and de jure collusion (where regulation reforms codify informal alliances among elites connected across government and corporate and consultancy worlds). We call for urban scholarship to pay closer attention to public–private hybridisation in governance, scrutinising regulatory mechanisms that consecrate deal-making and undermine the public interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

在这篇评论中，我们认为需要改进概念和研究方法来理解混合城市治理重构，这些重构有利于市场参与者，但以有利于精英政府和私人参与者之间开展交易的方式规避了竞争。金融化推动了监管改革（同时也是对规划冲突的应对措施），这些改革使为基础设施和城市发展项目提供服务的不透明联盟合法化。我们借鉴了一个城市（澳大利亚悉尼）的"主动提议 (Unsolicited Proposals)"改革，以指出更广泛的混合城市治理格局、其权力的重新配置和对城市的潜在影响。新自由主义治理促进竞争并将政府和私营部门视为不同的参与者，而混合城市治理则利用政府垄断权力并摒弃市场竞争，转而支持高水平的公私合作、技术和金融专业知识、以及对重大城市项目的保密交易。我们仔细研究了主动提议如何使得这种做法常态化。商业保密保护和缺少招标程序使得一小群有影响力的私人和公共行为者能在不受监督的情况下预先配置结果。我们认为，此类改革巩固了精英的社会空间权力，危及城市功能并放大了城市面对腐败时的脆弱性。为了在新自由主义和亚太国家资本主义的交叉点上将混合城市治理理论化，我们提出了强制性垄断（市场准入被封闭，缺乏竞争机会）和法律上的共谋（监管改革将政府、企业和咨询领域精英之间的非正式联盟合法化）的概念。我们呼吁城市学术界更紧密地关注治理中的公私混合，审视那些将交易神圣化并损害公共利益的监管机制。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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