The URBACT project ‘Cities for Sustainability Governance’ (CSG) organised an online workshop on 18-11-2024 to share experiences and successes in local sustainability governance. Experts from five cities – Espoo (FI), Gabrovo (BG), Mannheim (DE), Tallinn (EE) and Valencia (ES) – explored the strengths and weaknesses of their organizations, discussing issues such as flexibility, communication styles, and alignment between internal and external governance. The workshop followed an earlier session on the same topic, held during the Core transnational Network Meeting in Mannheim, Germany, in June 2024,
Improving sustainability governance is important because of the need to strengthen institutional resilience and capacity building in public administration, against the background of the current polycrisis which is felt at all levels of administration, and heavily at city level. To effectively implement sustainable development actions, it can be useful to switch focus from policy (‘What?’ – e.g., goal setting) to governance (‘How’? – e.g., with which mechanisms and with whom).
Understanding and combining three governance styles
To understand and manage better what kind of governance frameworks a city needs, the workshop focused on the strengths and weaknesses of, and interactions between three typical governance styles: top-down (hierarchical governance), collaborative (network governance) and bottom up (market governance). The three styles usually appear in mixed forms. Within such mixtures, some governance features may support or undermine each other. For example, a focus on legal solutions (hierarchical governance) can hamper flexibility and the use of financial tools (market governance). A legalistic approach, although often necessary to some extent, can discourage informal partnerships (network governance). On the other hand, even the most informal approaches need some structure and a responsible centre; this is an example where hierarchical governance supports network governance. The situational design and management of governance style combinations is called metagovernance (governance of governance).
Sustainability governance is cultural
From theory and practice we know that the three basic styles are culturally ingrained. A national culture or tradition often influences the kind of solutions and tools that policymakers choose. Soil protection is a good example of different ‘default’ styles on the same topic: Around 2000, Germany focused on hierarchical governance with a legal framework, the Netherlands on network governance through multilevel collaboration between national, regional, and local authorities, and England initially went for market governance with financial incentives. Another example is how multilevel governance is organised. This is usually determined by legal provisions (hierarchy) and subsidiarity (bottom-up: market governance), whereas the network approach is often missing.
The cultural dimension also plays out on a personal level, for example based on education: in an administration with a high percentage of lawyers, rules are often the preferred solution. Because the styles relate to personal team roles and profiling, is useful to have a mix of style preferences in a team to create new solutions.
Against the background of the often dominating hierarchical culture, the city representatives highlighted the importance for sustainable development of the collaborative style because this can result in joint objectives and ownership from key stakeholders, There was a general feeling that many complex challenges require the multi-actor collaboration of the network style, and the flexibility and innovation characterised by the market governance style. This is certainly the case with so-called ‘wicked’ problems like climate change which cannot be solved through centralised approach but require many small actions (‘and ‘small wins’).
Testing a self-assessment tool: Fifty features of governance
To trigger a focused discussion on strengths and weaknesses on existing governance frameworks, a self-assessment tool based on Excel was presented. The tool contains around 50 features of governance with different and sometimes very contrasting operational forms for which hierarchical governance (H), network governance (N) and market governance (M).. For example, citizens can be seen as subjects (H), partners (N) or clients (M). Organisational ‘silos’ can be seen as useful (H), need to be connected (N), and need to be broken down (M). Control works through authority (H), trust (N) or price (M). Coordination needs imperatives (H), diplomacy (N) or competition (M). Managing administrative reform is top-down (H), inclusive (N) or outsourced (M). Relations between actors can be characterised as dependent (H), interdependent (N) of independent (M).
As the toolbox was still work in progress, the workshop only used half of the fifty features. Participants could fill in, in real time, a personal assessment of the governance styles, and strengths and weaknesses of their own organisation. The personal assessments were automatically gathered in a summary sheet, to show where there are common challenges.
The reflection on the current governance style mixtures in the cities showed various challenges. In Mannheim it was considered that its strategic management had become too technical and bureaucratic and needed to become more inclusive and coordinated. It was said that this is a matter of balance: from time to time, the balance must be recalibrated again. In Tallinn, the strategic implementation programme was improved by including all the relevant SDG indicators, and an ex-ante impact assessment tool was developed that should improve decision-making in the city. One of the challenges was that different levels of hierarchy did not communicate well with each other on the problems they were dealing with: scaling up or scaling down of problems was missing. Valencia shared how citizen involvement in sustainability projects on climate and energy had been very successful. They also reflected on the impact of the 2024 floods in the area, which showed the strength and resilience of the community to help each other. At the same time, the existing silo mentality at the different levels of government in Spain made it difficult to tackle complex issues like climate change in comprehensive ways. Gabrovo highlighted establishing a transition team and developing a communication strategy for climate transition; the mostly hierarchical context is challenging because it makes things go slow. In addition, the centralised governance culture in the country implies that when there is instability at the national level, cities may directly feel the impact in their budgets. The governance styles tool can help having the right discussions when an organisational restructuring is planned. Espoo – and this was shared by all participants – found the collaboration in a multi-city platform on climate and sustainability governance like the CSG network very stimulating.
Conclusion
The joint results of the exercise were discussed in short, with the purpose to see what kind of insights could develop. First, the self-assessment tool stimulated relevant discussions on what works well, and what needs to change: using the tool stimulates conversations that normally do not take place. The exercise can raise awareness of topics not previously considered, that may become important. One example is that climate action is often considered as crisis management (hierarchical governance), whereas climate change is not only a crisis but also a complex, wicked problem that requires engagement of many actors. The assessment also puts some trade-offs on the table, for example between flexibility and reliability in addressing governance issues. The tool can help aligning internal governance and external governance.
The toolbox-test made clear that it is very useful and stimulating to engage in structured, in-depth conversations about how effective an existing governance framework is and how it can be improved. The concept of the governance styles and their 50+ features may seem complicating things at first, but it really helps understanding better why certain things go wrong and why other policies become successful. Ultimately, as the representative of Espoo concluded, this type of conversation can be a catalyser, an opener, and helps constructing new, shared, knowledge. The big question that remains is how to take the new insights forward? How to engage, how to navigate, how to make the silos ‘dance’? The answer may be different in different contexts and can be culturally determined. But in any case, it raises awareness of topics that otherwise might be left aside.
Some links to publications by the workshop moderator for further reading:
the book ‘Metagovernance for Sustainability’ (Meuleman 2018, Routledge), and several open source publications, e.g. ‘Managing the Implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals’ (Niestroy & Meuleman 2022, Publications Office of the European Union; ‘Public Administration and Governance for the SDGs: Navigating between Change and Stability’ (Meuleman 2021, Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 5914), and ‘Cultural diversity and sustainability metagovernance’ (meuleman 2013, Springer).
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