The Myth of Formality in the Global North: Informality‐as‐Innovation in Dutch Governance

Why has urban informality in the global North received so little attention? We suggest that this neglect can be explained in part by the tendency of scholarship to reproduce the myth of Northern formality: the widely held belief that informality occurs only in corrupt and clientelist ‘developing countries’. This myth has allowed activities and connections that would generally be framed as clientelist or corrupt in the global South to be rebranded as policy innovation in Western Europe and North America. In this brief paper, we challenge the myth of Northern formality by focusing on two empirical cases of informality in Dutch governance that demonstrate how the state frames the toleration and deliberate use of informality as policy innovations. Specifically, we focus on strategic, uncodified and non‐transparent deviation from legal procedure in order to achieve compliance and/or effectiveness. Relying on ethnographic methods and secondary sources, we discuss firstly the governance of Amsterdam's red light district and secondly participatory infrastructure projects in the surrounding province of North Holland. The first case highlights the strategic non‐enforcement or non‐application of laws, while the second case points to the use of personalized relationships and non‐transparency in participatory governance.     

Institutional analysis for new public governance scholars

ABSTRACT

Over the past several decades, prominent public management and policy scholars have repeatedly identified institutional analysis as a promising tool for empirical research, particularly for the study of ‘new governance’ phenomena where policy is enacted and implemented by actors that span organizations, sectors, jurisdictions, and governance levels. Yet, relatively few empirical studies directly measure and model institutions in management and policy settings. In a systematic review of the literature, we identify challenges and barriers that may prevent management and policy scholars from engaging with institutional analysis, along with examples of studies that illustrate how to overcome these challenges in practice.     

Constructive Pressures And Incentives To Reform: Globalization and its impact on public sector performance and governance in developing countries

Contrary to widespread pessimism regarding the effects of globalization on nation states and the quality of governance in developing countries, this contribution stresses that several of its features can be made instrumental, and be beneficial, in terms of public policy making and state capability. Four ‘constructive pressures’ stemming from globalization could be seized constructively by citizens and governments in the developing world: First, better informed and better connected citizens, and an emerging global civil society, demand improvements in service delivery, transparency, and participation. Second, subnational governments, often backed by local NGOs and businesses, and keen to attract foreign investment, increasingly exert pressure vis-à-vis central governments. Third, global investment strategies by private businesses increase the demand for appropriate institutional arrangements within developing countries as well as credible government policies. Although with mixed results, forth, International Organizations, in particular IFIs, have been addressing public sector modernization in developing countries, also sponsoring global public policy networks in critical areas. Moreover, policy coordination and cooperation among states increases significantly, constraining arbitrary action by governments. Globalization, thus, advances the discussion about, and the demand for, new institutional arrangements, clearly with new opportunities for improvements in state capability and governance.     

Fast Parallels? Contesting Mobile Policy Technologies

This article extends recent examinations of incomplete or disrupted policy mobility by examining the politically volatile case of policies to manage the regional impacts of decarbonization in Australia. The article's extended case study shows how political interests differently incorporated figments of circulating policy into longstanding debates and how more‐than‐local political networks defeated an antipolitical, technocratic exercise in ‘new regional’ governance. ‘Follow the policy’ methods could not have revealed the complexities of this case. The article concludes that mobilities approaches need to be more attentive to institutional arrangements, to the contested politics of policy formation and to the ambiguities of perceived policy likenesses. This case highlights the importance of considering how antipolitical institutional architectures facilitating policy mobility relate to established political power networks.     

Facilitative Leadership and the Challenge of Renewing Local Democracy in Italy

Participatory arrangements have become a popular way of addressing modern challenges of urban governance but in practice face several constraints and can trigger deep tensions. Facilitative leadership can play a crucial role in enabling collaboration among local stakeholders despite plural and often conflictual interests. Surprisingly, this style of leadership has received limited attention within debates linking urban governance and participatory democracy. We summarize the main insights of the literature on facilitative leadership and empirically develop them in the context of participatory urban governance by comparing recent participatory processes in two Italian cities. Whereas in one city facilitative leadership gradually emerged and successfully transformed a deep conflict into consensual proposals, in the other city, participatory planning further exacerbated pre‐existing antagonism, and local democratic culture was only later slowly reinvigorated through bottom‐up initiative. These diverging pathways explain how facilitative leadership is: (1) important for making things happen; (2) best understood as situated practices; (3) an emergent property of the practices and interactions of a number of local actors and (4) a democratic capacity for dealing with continuous challenges. Key to this style of leadership is understanding participatory urban governance as an ongoing democratic process.     

Occupational health and safety in transitional Lithuania

Using the example of occupational health and safety regulation, this article examines the tensions between neo‐liberalism and social democratic policy approaches in the context of pre‐accession transitional Lithuania. It is argued that attempts to provide a ‘business‐friendly’ investment climate may be creating a ‘race to the bottom’ as legislative failures to provide for employee voice come into conflict with assumptions of the so‐called European social model.     

New Public Spheres in Brazil: Local Democracy and Deliberative Politics

Brazilian cities have been the sites of significant experiments in participatory and deliberative governance. Participatory budgeting has to be singled out as one of the most important of these. After the landmark experience in Porto Alegre, participatory budgeting has been expanded to 170 Brazilian cities. Is the expansion of participatory budgeting equivalent to the expansion of the deliberative and distributive characteristics of the Porto Alegre experience? This article argues that the conditions that account for the emergence of participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre are unique to that city’s social or political characteristics. It focuses on the role of existing civil society associations in the emergence of participatory budgeting, as well as in its institutional format. It also shows that the presence of civic associations is linked to the deliberative and distributive results of participatory budgeting and that these conditions may not be present in other participatory budgeting experiences.     

Building Innovation Excellence of World Class: The Cluster as an Instrument of Spatial Governance in the European Union

European spatial governance is becoming an intriguing mix of ideas from the economic, political and cultural spheres. This article asserts that, in the EU's spatial planning, the cluster is increasingly part of a hybrid spatial politics, here named the ‘cluster gaze’, based on the interplay of innovation‐oriented political rationality and spatial governance. To study this process, the article provides an empirical investigation into selected EU documentation. The investigation is based on two perspectives. First, the cluster is analysed as a mediating instrument to stimulate and rescale transnational market developments in the EU. Second, the cluster is studied as an instrument of spatial management — one that builds on a business managerial ethos and endorses a specific hierarchical spatial imaginary and a cluster evidence base to assess the productivity and efficiency of European clusters. Both of these perspectives pave the way for a European ‘politics of cluster excellence’ that is about the constant sharpening of cluster practices, continuous evaluation and ranking, and the enhancement of cluster performance to rise from the ‘European league’ towards the ‘world class’.     

Liberalising the German model: institutional change,organisational restructuring and workplace effects

Institutional change at supranational, European Union level affects national and firm level institutions in various ways. This article traces effects of liberalisation measures in the airport industry enacted in two airport firms in Germany. The study, based on qualitative empirical research, found that EU liberalisation facilitated company creation of subsidiaries (subsidiarisation) and elevated shareholder interest in corporate governance. These factors affected institutional practices and cultural norms within the German industrial context that in turn influenced significant alterations in employment and workplace relations. Considerable disruption of the German social partnership model of corporate governance and industrial relations was observed. However, in addition to patterns of convergence towards neoliberal practices and outcomes frequently observed in Anglo‐Saxon systems, the study found some elements of effective retention of cultural institutional resources of the German model. Both ‘path departure’ and social embeddedness appear to coexist.     

An institutional theory perspective on the UK's Private Finance Initiative (PFI) accounting standard setting process

This article examines the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) accounting standard setting process from an institutional theory perspective. It identifies three forms of institutional pressures and examines their impact on the PFI standard setting process. ‘Coercive’ pressure, exerted by the Treasury, and ‘normative’ pressure, exerted by the accounting profession, were influential in shaping respondents' comments on the PFI accounting Exposure Draft (ED). It is argued that the views of the accounting profession seem to have prevailed in the PFI standard setting process. This might stem from its institutional legitimacy and close ties with the Accounting Standards Board (ASB). In line with its broader policy objective of adopting private sector business practices in the public sector, the Treasury has eventually ‘acquiesced’ to the final PFI accounting standard issued by the ASB.     

Engineering the Financialization of Urban Entrpreneurialism: The JESSICA Urban Development Initiative in the European Union

Urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberal urban governance are assuming new forms under finance‐dominated accumulation. We examine and contribute to theorizing the mechanisms through which urban governance is financialized, taking as a case study JESSICA, one of the European Union's initiatives to implement an ‘urban sensitive’ policy for sustainable and integrated development. Like other initiatives promoting financialization, JESSICA deploys the logic of finance to select and fund urban social initiatives and development projects on the basis of their potential return on investment (ROI). Understanding this process requires placing questions of political economy—how urban governance is shaped by the broader political‐economic context—with questions of governmentality—how stakeholders are enrolled in and come to take for granted new governance initiatives. Following the multi‐scalar institutional infrastructure is crucial to understanding how this works. Taking a relational multi‐scalar approach, we trace how changes at the supranational scale filter down to shape urban policy selection and performance in Sofia, Bulgaria, where we document how ROI calculations conflict with social welfare priorities. Contrasts between the trajectory of financialization of urban governance in the European Union and the United States demonstrate how this is geographically variegated, shaped by the broader context/conjuncture within which such financialization is embedded.     

To Thine Shareholders Be True? Linking Large Corporate Ownership to Firms’ Use of Commitment Human Resource Practices

Human resource practitioners and academics have increasingly realized the importance of corporate governance for firm human resource activities. This study investigates how one important form of corporate governance, namely, ownership within large, publicly traded firms, is associated with a firm's use of commitment human resource practices (CHRPs), specifically, the use of incentive compensation, profit sharing, and participative decision making. Our findings indicate that the types of large investor, namely, family and institutional, are differentially associated with the likelihood of the firm using these CHRPs. Specifically, family owners with their long‐term investment horizon, as well as their stakeholder orientation, increase the likelihood of the firm using these practices. In contrast, large institutional owners with their shorter‐term investment horizon, as well as their investor orientation, decrease the likelihood of the firm using these practices. Furthermore, among institutional investors, transient institutional investors are negatively associated with these practices, while dedicated institutional investors are not associated with these practices. Taken together, our results regarding the positive association of family ownership and this subset of CHRPs and the negative association of transient institutional investors and this set of practices, have important implications for human resource professionals who not only need to understand how ownership affects HR practices but also how to articulate the value of these investments in order to attract investors. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Climate Change and Reorganizing Land Use: Flood Control Areas as a Network Effect

Although climate change appears to be a relatively new public issue, it has not emerged onto a tabula rasa; it affects ‘traditional’ policy sectors. How, then, does this ‘new issue’ interact with established organizational processes, and how is climate change ‘operationalized’ in local practice? Since major events linked to climate change include such things as desertification, climatic migrations, floods and landslides, one might assume that one of its main implications would be a substantial change in land use, or at least a transformation in land organization and management. This article explores the implementation of a ‘flood control area’ as an adaptation practice in the face of climate change. What theoretical and empirical tools should analysis adopt to account for the multiple actors, types of knowledge, artefacts, socio‐technical systems and governance configurations engaged in developing such practices? In other words, to what extent does climate change become a reorganizing category? This article adopts a theoretical approach inspired by actor‐network theory and considers adaptation practice not as a standardized top‐down solution, but as the result of specific local connections among actors, materials and discourses. The analysis suggests that climate change is indeed a reorganizing category, but one that depends on the specific local materializations of the adaptation measure.     

Training and development deficiencies in ‘high skill’ sectors

Policy debates across advanced industrial economies are stressing the centrality of skills and training to compete in the new ‘knowledge economy’. In the UK increasing importance is being placed on improving workplace learning, yet policy has so far failed to confront the issue of employers' lack of investment in training and development. This article examines whether the high skill sectors that exist within the UK can provide a model of workplace learning for other such sectors to emulate. By using case study research from the aerospace and pharmaceutical industries, training and development practices are examined in relation to the requirements of the business and individual employees. The article will argue that the companies in question, despite their favourable product market position, remain constrained by the broader institutional environment.     

Global Urban Policymaking in Africa: A View from Angola Through the Redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda

A burgeoning literature looks into the processes and actors involved in the adoption and emulation of best practices and models of urban policy and development across the globe, often with the aim of attracting investment and making cities more competitive. With its focus on leisure, tourism and global capital, the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda, in the capital of Angola, echoes the rhetoric, policies and projects underpinning such practices. Yet, a deeper interrogation reveals that the redevelopment forms part of a predominantly inward‐looking project driven by the highest echelons of the national government and its ruling party. While these actors mimic and appropriate the language and tools of entrepreneurial cities, their aim is not necessarily to make the city more internationally competitive but to achieve domestic political legitimacy and stability. The argument presented in this article builds on McCann's ( 2013 ) call for scholars to also consider the ‘introspective’ politics of urban policy boosterism from the perspective of a context in which power is highly centralized. The article thus contributes to a growing literature that advances more adequate and provincialized theorizations of urban policy and city governance in the global South, with a particular focus on the African context.     

Corporate Governance in China: A Meta‐Analysis

How has the impact of ‘good corporate governance’ principles on firm performance changed over time in China? Amassing a database of 84 studies, 684 effect sizes, and 547,622 firm observations, we explore this important question by conducting a meta‐analysis on the corporate governance literature on China. The weight of evidence demonstrates that two major ‘good corporate governance’ principles advocating board independence and managerial incentives are indeed associated with better firm performance. However, we cannot find strong support for the criticisms against CEO duality. In addition, we go beyond a static perspective (such as certain governance mechanisms are effective or ineffective) by investigating the temporal hypotheses. We reveal that over time, with the improvement in the quality of market institutions and development of financial markets, the monitoring mechanisms of the board and state ownership become more strongly related to firm performance, whereas the incentive mechanisms lose their significance. Overall, our findings advance a dynamic institution‐based view by substantiating the case that institutional transitions matter for the relationship between governance mechanisms and firm performance in the second largest economy in the world.     

Governing Cross-Sector,Inter-Organizational Collaborations

Abstract

This article addresses the governance of cross-sector, inter-organizational collaboration in the context of public administration and management. It conceptualizes the governance of collaborations in terms of structures and processes that enable actors to direct, coordinate and allocate resources for the collaboration as a whole and to account for its activities. It argues that the need to pay attention to considerations of ‘collaborative governance’ and ‘governing collaboration’ in cross-sector collaborations gives rise to a number of challenges and tensions that need to be addressed if the governance form is to be sustained and the collaboration is to yield advantage.     

Metropolitan Strategies and Climate Governance: Towards New Evaluative Approaches

In the new millennium, cities have become an emerging force among new forms of subnational climate governance. Of interest is how cities act unilaterally and directly in this new climate politics via the provision of relevant tools. Since metropolitan planning strategies have been considered as important mechanisms for achieving urban sustainability in this period, this research has sought to investigate the importance of these master plans in the delivery of urban responses to climate change. For this purpose, the study has employed a qualitative research methodology with the application of a comparative case study and the progression of a conceptual framework for evaluating climate policies in metropolitan plans of two selected cities—London and Melbourne. The study's results suggest that both the ‘London Plan’ and ‘Plan Melbourne’ incorporate critical elements to enhance climate governance, including the promotion of coordination principles, innovative technologies, a participatory planning approach and a long‐term planning scale. However, the review identified a consistent omission of key principles as identified through the proposed matrix for analysing the climate policies of a city's government, which include risk assessment tools, monitoring systems, distribution, impact frame and accountability. Moreover, the research also revealed the lack of vertical integration in policy formulation and implementation of ‘Plan Melbourne’. Our study suggests that a city's governance structure influences the way it undertakes its climate actions and the potential efficacy of these on a metropolitan scale.     

Designing institutional platforms and arenas for interactive political leadership

ABSTRACT

In response to the urgent need for elected politicians to lead processes of collaborative policy innovation, this paper brings together political leadership theory and theories of collaborative and participatory governance in order to make way for the concept of interactive political leadership. The theoretical framework shows how interactive political leadership relies on platforms and arenas that bring politicians and citizens together in informed dialogues that may contribute to collaborative policy innovation. An empirical case study of institutional reforms in a Danish municipality adds flesh and blood to the theoretical argument about how to enhance interactive political leadership.     

BEYOND THE TRIAGING OF NEGLECTED THINGS: Connecting Place and Participation Across an Urban System

What is the relationship between top-down governance reform and place-based participatory and deliberative spaces? In this article I argue that in Toronto, an urban system of public participation and deliberation is intimately interwoven into partisan scalar restructuring processes, as well as enduring tensions over the ways and means by which the public can have authoritative input on solving local issues. Regardless of top-down political manoeuvring, the public mobilizes in various spaces across the city, but the urban system remains disconnected and geared towards triaging. This means that the public must work autonomously across the city and within the crevices of city processes, prioritizing how to make gains on issues that they feel are important. I discuss how to move beyond this by building on deliberative systems theory and findings from interviews with local city staff and residents, and through an analysis of public deputations at the official Special Committee on Governance. Ultimately, there is a need for spatially integrated opportunities for more people to come together and assemble in different ways. Some of these will align with autonomous activities, some are liminal and woven within institutional partners, and others are more about geographical bridge building.