Multi-level Governance Arrangements Research Articles

Local multilevel governance arrangements for climate change planning and management in Kumasi, Ghana

Institutions play crucial roles in addressing and building resilence to climate risks. Whereas planning for and addressing climate change issues through multilevel goverence (MLG) has become inevitable, there has been a disparity in the attention given to different levels of MLG. The focus of MLG research has predominantly centered around supranational and national levels, with limited empirical studies on subnational MLG governance; hence, this research. This study thus focuses on the city of Kumasi (specifically, Kumasi Metropolitan Area) in Ghana as a case study to examine the role of MLG at the subnational level in climate change planning and management. Seven relevant climate change and local/city planning agencies were sampled purposively for appropriate data. It was clearly revealed that these actors who operate at various levels and jurisdiction, address climate challenges in accordance with their respective primary responsibilities. While such MLG arrangement exists for addressing climate change in the city of Kumasi, there are many challenges that derail effective collaboration and any meaningful outcome within such governance framework. The collaboration among the authorities involved in planning and managing climate change action in Kumasi remains weak coupled with overlaps in their formal roles and responsibilities. Additionally, there is no evidence of any meaningful action being undertaken within such governance arrangement to address climate change contrary to the expectation that MLG should have enhanced interactions in terms of planning for climate change. The study recommends that the MLG framework should encourage learning across different levels and facilitate interactions among various organizations, promoting innovation in climate adaptation and mitigation initiatives.

Implementation of a Climate Policy Monitoring System in Brazil: Political Challenges for Coordination on Multilevel Governance Arrangements

Implementation of a Climate Policy Monitoring System in Brazil: Political Challenges for Coordination on Multilevel Governance Arrangements

The political economy of electricity system resource adequacy and renewable energy integration: A comparative study of Britain, Italy and California

The need to integrate growing shares of variable renewable resources, like solar and wind, into the power system has initiated a new wave of resource adequacy policy reforms. Securing adequate resources on the system, particularly flexible and peak capacity, is indeed crucial for ensuring long-term grid reliability amid increased supply variability. While extensively explored from a techno-economic perspective, the political economy drivers and implications of these changes are frequently overlooked. Yet, power system evolution is not merely shaped by logics of techno-economic optimisation, it is also inherently political, rooted in specific liberalisation histories, political and institutional settings.This paper contributes to the literature by conducting a comparative political economy analysis of recent resource adequacy reforms in Britain, Italy, and California. It explores how differences in the technical and political economy contexts of these jurisdictions affected their strategies for securing resource adequacy capacity and investment between 2013 and 2021. Conclusions draw on the analysis of over 134 policy documents and 53 in-depth interviews with power system stakeholders.All jurisdictions introduced significant changes in resource adequacy policy, including explicit out-of-market mechanisms to remunerate resource adequacy capacity. The energy transition is thus reconfiguring state-market relations in the power sector, even in traditionally liberal countries. However, variation exists in the scope of reform, mechanism designs, policy trade-offs, and technological outcomes. This stems from context-specific political priorities, state-market relations, national and multi-level governance arrangements, market structures and stakeholder interests. This has important implications for power sector governance, as discussed in this paper.

From grassroots to centralization—the development of local and regional governance in the german energy transition

In the process of sustainability and especially electricity transition, the local and regional levels gain a new importance. Both social movements as well as governments from different levels (state, federal) are mobilizing and/or addressing local actors. The way this has been done and the capacities for local actors to have a say in the way transition processes do unfold, however, has changed significantly over the last decades in Germany. The paper will use the example of wind energy projects to analyze how multilevel governance arrangements have changed over time. The main thesis will be that the available repertoires of activities for local actors have become increasingly limited due to increasing policy management activities by state and federal governments. Especially the creation of artificial markets and auctioning devices have severely limited the scope of action for local actors. The article will reconstruct the changes in the multi-level governance structure and assess the effects on the development of wind energy by studying in detail two cases.

Autonomy of Indigenous peoples in the Federation of Malaysia: a tale of three institutional settings

ABSTRACT Previous research has offered mixed results regarding whether federalism and other mechanisms of multilevel governance (MLG) present advantages or disadvantages for civil society and, in particular, impoverish ethnic minorities. Since self-determination is a key element of the political autonomy of Indigenous peoples (IPs), this paper explores under which circumstances different mechanisms of MLG foster the rights of IPs in the Federation of Malaysia from the perspective of Indigenous activists. This work relies on face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with Indigenous activists, advocates and stakeholders from different states of the federation, with different levels of self-government and quality of democracy. The main findings suggest that any attempt to evaluate the performance of MLG arrangements in the fulfilment of the rights of IPs should consider the relationship between Indigenous organizations and state and local governments – a relationship that depends on the distribution of Indigenous populations – and the degree of political accountability in specific territories.

Scaling migration network governance? City networks and civil society in multilevel policymaking dynamics

AbstractAlthough existing studies have documented the capacity of migration city networks (CNs) to mobilize on the vertical/intergovernmental dimension, there is less evidence of how CNs can contribute to scaling up network governance with societal actors beyond local jurisdictions and favour the emergence of multilevel governance arrangements. In this article, I aim to contribute to deepening our understanding of migration CN horizontal state‐‐society relations by throwing new light on how CN leaders’ agendas affect the policy actions undertaken by two migration CNs in Europe and one in the United States. Evidence shows that migration CNs engage differently with non‐public actors depending on agendas that reflect the aims of their leaders. These agendas can be more or less conducive to scaling up migration network governance. When horizontal/state–society relations are conceived as subordinate to vertical relations, lobbying and political advocacy prevail with little room for the emergence of multilevel governance.

At the interface between the formal and informal, the actual and the real: a realist study protocol for governance and accountability practices in urban settings focusing on adolescent sexual and reproductive health and rights

BackgroundThis paper presents the protocol of a study that aims at exploring how different multi-level governance arrangements impact on sexual and reproductive health of adolescents living in informal settlements. The overall objective of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the causal chains underlying accountability in sexual and reproductive health for adolescent girls and young women living in urban informal settlements in low-and middle-income countries.MethodsThe overarching methodology is realist evaluation. The study adopts a case study design, through which governance and accountability practices in Mumbai, Delhi, Cotonou and Kampala will be examined. Different social science methods to develop and test a programme theory will be used. Heuristic tools for the analysis of the accountability ecosystem and mapping of governance arrangements, drawing from contextual political analysis and critical realism, will be developed in order to identify the intervention-context-actor-mechanism-outcome configurations.DiscussionThe methodological approach is geared towards building robust case-based explanation with due attention to context and the roles of different actors. The combination of different social science methods will lead us to a better grasp of the inherently political nature of social accountability.

ЦИФРОВІЗАЦІЯ МІСЦЕВОГО САМОВРЯДУВАННЯ В УМОВАХ ДЕЦЕНТРАЛІЗАЦІЇ ВЛАДИ: ТЕОРЕТИЧНІ ТА ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙНІ АСПЕКТИ

The article analyzes the main promising areas of digitalization of local self-government in the context of management science. It is proved that such areas are: opening public information about the activities of local selfgovernment; introduction of e-democracy technologies; digitalization of management processes in local self-government; digitalization of public services by local self-government; introduction of smart technologies into community infrastructure at various levels. The choice of priority depends on the needs and priorities of a particular community and local self-government. As the scope of digitalization widens across society at large, multilevel governance arrangements have become more complex and more consequential to the coherence, performance, and accountability. While this assertion has arguably been true for quite some time, the emergence of Covid-19 has magnified its importance. At the moment, Ukraine already has positive examples of the use of «digital» technologies. The advantages that municipal structures receive from the introduction of digital technologies in their work have been shown. The results show that there is a relationship between the degree of digitalization in a municipality and the perceived satisfaction among its citizens. The findings show that outdated laws and the culture of paper document flows were institutional barriers to the digitalization. Other barriers included non-use of an integrated system implementation approach as well as inadequate and unreliable online access for all the participating units.

How Does Multi-Level Governance Create Capacity to Address Refugee Needs, and with What Limitations? An Analysis of Municipal Responses to Syrian Refugees in Istanbul

Abstract A multi-level governance (MLG) framework is used to investigate how municipalities in Turkey have coped with the arrival of 3.6 million Syrians amid limited resources, an ambiguous legal framework, and changing national policy priorities. Qualitative research in Istanbul, which hosts the largest number of refugees, shows how municipalities have generated capacity by working with actors at other governance levels and in non-governmental spaces, via formal and informal networks. MLG arrangements did not however imply the retreat of a powerful central state. Rather, they were decisively influenced by existing power relations and governing traditions, specifically a strong state, weak local government, and mistrust of civil society. The research illuminates the complex, and sometimes surprising, relationships between tiers and spheres of governance in shaping local responses to refugee needs. The research demonstrates the explanatory power of MLG in a highly centralized unitary state, outside of the democratic (and mostly federal) contexts where it is usually applied.

Local Governments and SDG Localisation: Reshaping Multilevel Governance from the Bottom up

ABSTRACT As acknowledged in the literature on Sustainable Human Development, the involvement of local levels of government in delivering the SDGs is an important issue and one that needs to be examined also through the capability approach. Through an analysis of the current state and evolution of the SDG localisation movement, and even in the response to the COVID-19 crisis, the paper identifies entry points that can be leveraged to enhance institutional capabilities to deliver sustainable development. Indeed, the SDG localisation movement is expanding in almost all regions, showing an increasing polysemy of meanings and modalities for local governments and stakeholders. The movement has witnessed valuable progress with the expansion of Voluntary Local and Subnational Reviews (VLRs and VSRs respectively), the transformation of limited consultative approaches into an enhanced involvement of a plurality of actors, including citizen participation, and the evolution from restricted spaces for dialogue to ambitious multilevel governance arrangements and multistakeholder co-creation efforts that, following the capability approach, recognise the diversity of abilities. These improvements have fostered local ownership and catalysed opportunities for joint achievements. After all, local governments, as the level of government closest to the population, are best placed to respond to their needs and priorities, and to leverage their collective capabilities and agency to develop common pathways using the SDGs as enablers of change. All these efforts promote the production of collective knowledge which can progressively transform local institutions and support the evolution of multilevel governance processes.

Small wins for grand challenges. A bottom-up governance approach to regional innovation policy

ABSTRACT Grand societal challenges as a policy target have received increasing attention in regional innovation policy. To date, concrete governance strategies to address such challenges with local solutions are underexplored. We propose a small wins approach as a new governance strategy to deal with wicked societal problems. A small wins strategy focuses on accelerating bottom-up initiatives guided by a shared mission. The aim is to activate propelling mechanisms to support and couple self-organizing change processes. We studied 17 regional initiatives for plastic pollution removal in the Netherlands, which show that i. institutional barriers are the hardest for small wins to overcome and achieve wider impact; ii. bottom-up propelling mechanisms reinforce each other, but are generally too weak to transform existing practices due to limited policy support; and iii. systemic propelling mechanisms are largely absent to achieve robust change processes across scales. We see a key task for regional policy to activate systemic mechanisms that help local solutions upscale. This requires policy to learn about the plurality of change processes ‘on the ground’, and to use multi-level governance arrangements to create coherent policies to scale up bottom-up solutions.

Multilevel governance framework on grievance redressal for patient rights violations in India.

The notion of patient rights encompasses the obligations of the state and healthcare providers to respect the dignity, autonomy and equality of care-seeking individuals in healthcare processes. Functional patient grievance redressal systems are key to ensuring that the rights of individuals seeking healthcare are protected. We critically examined the published literature from high-income and upper-middle-income countries to establish an analytical framework on grievance redressal for patient rights violations in health facilities. We then used lawsuits on patient rights violations from the Supreme Court of India to analyse the relevance of the developed framework to the Indian context. With market perspectives pervading the health sector, there is an increasing trend of adopting a consumerist approach to protecting patient rights. In this line, avenues for grievance redressal for patient rights violations are gaining traction. Some of the methods and instruments for patient rights implementation include charters, ombudsmen, tribunals, health professional councils, separating rules for redressal and professional liability in patient rights violations, blame-free reporting systems, direct community monitoring and the court system. The grievance redressal mechanisms for patient rights violations in health facilities showcase multilevel governance arrangements with overlapping decision-making units at the national and subnational levels. The privileged position of medical professionals in multilevel governance arrangements for grievance redressal puts care-seeking individuals at a disadvantaged position during dispute resolution processes. Inclusion of external structures in health services and the healthcare profession and laypersons in the grievance redressal processes is heavily contested. Normatively speaking, a patient grievance redressal system should be accessible, impartial and independent in its function, possess the required competence, have adequate authority, seek continuous quality improvement, offer feedback to the health system and be comprehensive and integrated within the larger healthcare regulatory architecture.

Towards More Balanced Territorial Relations—The Role (and Limitations) of Spatial Planning as a Governance Approach

Decision-makers, planners and administrators involved in different policy domains at different governance levels face the important challenge of fostering more balanced, sustainable and territorially integrated development. Well-designed, multi-level, multi-sector and multi-actor governance arrangements can play a key role in this process through orchestrating the interplay between different spheres, activities, actors and interests. In this paper, we examine the role of spatial planning in improving the relations between rural, peri-urban and urban areas. We analyse the strengths and limitations of spatial planning and explore the connections with territorial development. The methodology used for this analysis combines regional case studies in seven European locations—Ede, Frankfurt/Rhein-Main, Styria/Graz, Helsinki, Lisbon, Lucca and Mid Wales, with rapid appraisals, the analysis of published data, expert judgement and triangulation. We ask under which conditions spatial planning can induce more balanced, sustainable territorial relations, and look at the contribution planning can make to achieving sustainable development goals. The problem of ineffective (or toothless) plan implementation provides the entry point into the analysis and discussion. We illustrate why mutually beneficial relations between urban, peri-urban and rural communities (and territories) cannot simply be planned. Instead, these relationships need to be supported by strategies, policy instruments and governance arrangements that foster synergies between different actors and activities. The planning process itself needs to become more transparent and participatory. We conclude that the questions addressed in this article in an exploratory fashion merit further research especially as a more sustainable and territorially integrated development is becoming increasingly important in European policy making.

Multi-level climate change planning: An analysis of the Italian case

As recognized by the Paris Climate Agreement of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), local and subnational regions are crucial actors to achieve international mitigation and adaptation commitments. Scientific literature and empirical evidence point at multi-level climate governance as a crucial factor to engage subnational levels in the achievement of national and international objectives. This work focuses on the multi-level climate governance arrangements in Italy to investigate how Italian regions/provinces/cities are contributing to the achievement of national commitments. To this purpose, the paper undertakes a review of the climate policies of different tiers of government adopted to date and of the interrelationships among them. The results of the analysis show that the effective coordination between the different government levels should be strengthened to further incentivize and support initiatives at the local level. Results also show the relevant role played by international regional and city climate networks in boosting local and regional climate planning in Italy.

Developing Sustainable and Flexible Rural–Urban Connectivity through Complementary Mobility Services

Transport can play a key role in mitigating climate change, through reducing traffic, emissions and dependency on private vehicles. Transport is also crucial to connect remote areas to central or urban areas. Yet, sustainable and flexible transport is among the greatest challenges for rural areas and rural–urban regions. Innovative transport concepts and approaches are urgently needed to foster sustainable and integrated regional development. This article addresses challenges of sustainability, accessibility, and connectivity through examining complementary systems to existing public transport, including demand-responsive transport and multimodal mobility. We draw upon case studies from the Metropolitan Area of Styria, Ljubljana Urban Region and rural Wales (GUSTmobil, REGIOtim, EURBAN, Bicikelj, Bwcabus, Grass Routes). In-depth analysis through a mixed-methods case study design captures the complexity behind these chosen examples, which form a basis for analysing the effects of services on accessibility for different groups, connectivity to public transport and usability as a “first and last mile” feeder. We further explore the weaknesses of complementary transport systems, including legal, organisational and financial barriers, and offer potential solutions to structure and communicate complementary transport systems to improve access and use. Looking ahead, we use the case studies to anticipate innovative, sustainable “mobility as a service” (MaaS) solutions within and between urban and rural areas and consider how future public policy orientations and arrangements can enable positive change. A main concern of our article and the contribution to scientific literature is through exploring the benefit of well-established multi-level governance arrangements when introducing smaller-scale mobility solutions to improve rural–urban accessibility. It becomes clear that not a one-size-fits-all model but placed-based and tailored approaches lead to successful and sustainable concepts.

Comparing Ambiguities: Municipalities, Francophone Minority Communities and Immigration in Canada

AbstractThis article analyzes the implication of municipal governments and civil society actors in immigration through multilevel and collaborative governance arrangements. It argues that studying the roles of ambiguities is critical to understanding the activism of political entities with ill-defined status and mandates, such as municipalities and francophone minority communities (FMCs). This research adds to the literature on the “local turn” by highlighting that ambiguities are both a condition—that is, a driver that makes collaborative and multilevel arrangements work—and an outcome of collaboration practices, characterized by ambiguities regarding the balance of power, the aims of collaboration in a competitive sector and conflicting forms of accountabilities. The article identifies three approaches that actors use to deal with these ambiguities in a context where resources are not equitably distributed and where the role of the federal government is critical. In this configuration, municipalities and FMCs develop adaptive, rather than transformative, approaches to ambiguities.

Interplay Between the Tiers in Croatian Local Government

The paper examines, analyses, and evaluates the relations between the first and second tiers of the Croatian local government system and their longitudinal and cross-sectoral dynamics. Membership in the European Union has opened new relevant horizons for national territorial governance, primarily through the advocacy of multi-level cooperative governance arrangements and by providing opportunities for the acquisition of additional resources through European structural and investment funds. These issues are evaluated by analysing formal competence distribution between the tiers, by analysing the distribution of resources between tiers and through their cooperation in regional policy domain and service delivery. Furthermore, actors’ perceptions of their mutual relations are examined via the author’s own research and the research of other scholars. After the introductory chapter, the second chapter presents a theoretical framework and context for an analysis of vertical relations within the local government system; the third chapter provides a longitudinal overview of the main features and conceptual developments of the Croatian local government system. The fourth chapter is the central part of the paper that presents and analyses the available primary and secondary data. Preliminary findings suggest several conclusions: a) areas of contact between municipal and county levels have increased resulting in their more intensive interdependence; b) relations between the levels have been differentiating and cannot be considered uniform: different kinds of relations have developed between counties and small municipalities and between counties and large towns; c) centralistic governance of the whole system stimulates the development of competition between the tiers, which endangers their collective and cooperative efforts in resolving local issues and stimulating local development; d) counties have solidified their position of an inevitable intersection of national sectoral policies and are of vital importance for their transmission to the local level.

Multilevel governance of coastal flood risk reduction: A public finance perspective

Coastal flood risk reduction (CFRR) presents a significant public funding challenge, due to its high upfront costs and long-term benefits, and this challenge will increase with future sea-level rise. The funding challenge necessarily involves multiple levels of government, due to the regional nature of CFRR public goods involved. Yet there has been little research comparing such multilevel arrangements across countries, and in particular exploring the performance of public funding arrangements for providing coastal flood risk reduction. We address this gap, applying fiscal federalism to develop a multilevel governance analysis of public decision-making and fiscal authorities for CFRR in the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Australia. For each country, we locate key decision-making and fiscal authorities in multilevel governance arrangements, and analyse their alignment with the benefits of CFRR measures (spillovers). We find diverse coastal flood risk governance arrangements ranging from highly centralised (NL), mixed arrangements, involving regional centralisation (Germany) or partial devolvement (UK), to full decentralisation (AUS). Further, we find that in accordance with fiscal federalism, multilevel coastal flood risk governance arrangements are generally reflective of the distribution of the benefits across different levels of government, with some exceptions (Germany and UK). Finally, exploring the outlook of current arrangements under sea-level rise, we find that major fiscal redistributions may be put under pressure by rising costs likely under SLR and future coastal development. This is particularly the case for those systems which operate under hazard-based, as opposed to risk-based, coastal protection policies. Further, we find that both fully and moderately decentralised arrangements may require greater central support for alternative measures, such as retreat, in light of growing financial burdens on local governments.

Interacting Capacities: The Indirect National Contribution to Subnational Service Provision

AbstractDifferent levels of government often interact on the ground, providing closely related services. While multilevel governance arrangements have been studied broadly, scarce literature has explored the contribution of national governments to achieving subnational policy goals. By reconceptualizing administrative decentralization as coexisting devolution (to subnational governments) and deconcentration (through field units), this research explores the indirect national contribution to subnational performance by delivering associated services. This article tests the following hypotheses: (1) there is a positive effect of national deconcentrated capacity on subnational policy outputs, and (2) under policy overlap, this contribution diminishes with increasing levels of subnational capacity. While Colombian schooling is decentralized, the national government indirectly contributes to education through a national agency that administers child protection services. Analyzing data for Colombian subnational governments over a decade reveals that national capacity boosts education provision while the least endowed regions benefit the most, thus providing evidence supporting both hypotheses.

Multi-Level Water Governance in The Tsavo Sub-Catchment, Kenya

Water scarcity amid soaring demand poses challenges to sustainable development, particularly when set against the backdrop of a surging global population and climate change. Despite policies that require for the incorporation of multi-level water governance arrangements to support integrated and participatory processes and ensure sustainable and equitable use of water resources, over-allocation of water resources in the Tsavo sub-catchment of southern Kenya, due to competition and scarcity, remains a hindrance. This has led to the reallocation of water resources away from ecosystems to supply irrigation and other economic activities. This study uses Governance Assessment Tool (GAT) to analyze water resource governance regime in the Tsavo sub-catchment. The results show that sub-catchment water governance is influenced by dispersed multi-level actors, some of whom were not connected to hierarchy and whose interests were diverse and conflicting. This was hindering participatory decision-making and efforts to co-produce governance arrangements that are context-specific. Water resource management regulations were developed and implemented by the Water Resources Authority (WRA) with inadequate consultation and limited consideration of local priorities.