How to Measure the Autonomy, Coherence and Relevance of Local State-Society Relations

As shown in the typology suggested in previous chapter, networks between local government and societal actors can be characterized using three dimensions: their autonomy, group coherence and relevance. In this chapter, an operationalization is developed in order to provide the basis for the analysis of particular local state-society relationships to be found in individual European countries—presented in the following chapters of this book. Each of these dimensions was subdivided into a number of attributes, transformed into questions that are easy to answer with regard to the networks to be characterized.