City-regional governance in Flanders : the potential of mobility regions as a critical juncture

This chapter explores the potential of functional administrative reforms as a basis for city-regional governance. An analysis of the case of Flanders, a strong regional government which is currently developing new territorial policy approaches, is presented. We discuss the recent administrative reform that has led to the creation of so-called mobility regions and raise the question to what extent this reform breaks with the existing politico-administrative constellation in Flanders. Our findings suggest that the design of the mobility regions contains elements that could be described as critical junctures in the Flemish institutional history. Nevertheless, the reform programme also does not question some of the core issues of the current politico-administrative system, which may strongly impact the institutional outcomes of this new governance arrangement