Deconstructing social cohesion: towards an analytical framework for assessing social cohesion policies

Abstract

Academics as well as policy-makers consider social cohesion as an important quality of cities. A high level of social cohesion is associated with a wide variety of positive characteristics of cities: for instance low crime rates, high economic growth, low unemployment and happy citizens. This has lead to a wide variety of policy initiatives explicitly or implicitly aimed at increasing social cohesion. The perceived importance remarkably contrasts with the lack of a clear definition and a widely agreed-upon analytical framework. The lack of conceptual consensus may be explained by the complexity of the concept. It has multiple dimensions and can be found on different institutional levels: from the level of states to the level of local neighbourhoods. In this article I develop an analytical framework that builds upon these multi-dimensional and multi-level characteristics and connect this with an attempt to classify policies aimed at increasing social cohesion.