This article investigates whether, how and under what conditions European Union (EU) capacity‐building programmes actually contribute to improving the action capacity of target actors in view of ...common policy objectives. The empirical analysis focuses on the European Local Energy Assistance (ELENA) technical facility that aims to enhance local authorities' project development and management capacities in the field of renewables and energy efficiency. Our findings show that favourable contextual conditions and the actual functional demand for more capacities cannot explain the implementation dynamics of this programme across EU countries. Conversely, the availability of basic starting resources or the ability to draw from EU funds emerge as key factors behind these dynamics. Evidence is provided demonstrating that the effectiveness of such programmes can be hampered by a persistent capacity trap if barriers to their implementation are not carefully considered in advance.
In recent years, a growing number of citizen‐led gardens have appeared in the urban public spaces of large cities across the world. While many of these projects are initially launched informally ...without any support from the state, they gradually become integrated into the social fabric of the city. To understand the evolution of the formal–informal boundaries of the practice, we argue that we should be paying attention to the specific institutional contexts that frame gardeners’ interactions with public authorities. Drawing from a study of citizen‐led gardens in Mexico City, we show that informal urban gardening becomes a disconnected‐from‐the‐state practice. On the one hand, the Mexico City government has shown a growing interest in regulating urban agriculture. On the other hand, gardeners are increasingly trying to find their own ways to formalize and perennate their practice. We suggest that this disconnection between gardeners and the state is best explained by the weakness of the institutional context in which their interactions take place. A top‐down policymaking process, along with the incapacity and unwillingness of the multi‐leveled city government to implement policies effectively, reinforces norms of mistrust and generates low expectations among gardeners as they interact with local authorities.
This study explores the nexus between socio-demographics and building attributes on the one hand, and the 311 non-emergency services - a state-of-the-art self-reported data source reflecting the ...residents' noise complaints on the other. While inevitable and bothersome regardless of the location or lifestyle, noise demonstrates people's exposure to it on different scales. This study performs various spatial and statistical analyses integrating spatial, socio-demographic and building factors associated with noise complaints in Dallas, Texas. These analyses reveal the broader environmental and urban planning implications associated with noise. The results confirm that socio-demographic characteristics show different relationships at various degrees. Vulnerable populations do not opt for reporting noise complaints while building-related attributes, particularly the number of building permits and businesses better explain the association between noise complaints and building characteristics. The study also proposes the key takeaways for developers, planning practitioners and local authorities.
To date, 79% of Local Authorities (LAs) in England have a climate plan to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 or sooner. Yet questions remain over the collective impact of these plans and ...targets in terms of their contribution to a national net zero carbon budget given that the LA targets are voluntary and largely uncoordinated. There is therefore scope to explore if and how the LA target-setting process could be improved. We evaluate regional ambition in the emissions targets of 311 English LAs. We assess whether the subnational targets are aligned with a national net zero carbon budget and whether LAs take proportionate action based on their respective capabilities. It is also unclear whether LAs have the resources to implement the often highly ambitious targets they have committed to. Using a composite indicator approach, we assess the relative capability of different LAs to decarbonize, as well as the degree of ambition they are demonstrating. We find that many LAs are not taking as much action as other LAs that may have less capability to act. This suggests that burden-sharing between regions and LAs is inequitable. We offer a series of policy recommendations to improve the fairness and effectiveness of the LA target-setting process as a climate governance mechanism, including establishing a statutory target-setting requirement with appropriate resourcing, and introducing a national net zero indicator framework to monitor progress. This framework could be used in England, or in other countries, to assess progress. It would also allow funding and resources to be better directed to regions and LAs that require more support to reach net zero emission targets, rendering the transition more 'spatially just' and enabling its delivery.
Key policy insights
The English LA targets contribute to achieving a national net zero carbon budget. However, there is still a 1.2 GtCO
2
gap in achieving this by 2050.
The most ambitious LAs did not necessarily score highly in terms of capability.
Seven of the ten LAs with the highest capability scores were in London; the least capable LAs were more dispersed.
Greater standardization, oversight and coordination could improve the effectiveness and fairness of LA target-setting, and help direct resources from the central government to less capable LAs and regions. This could render the targets 'spatially just' and enable their delivery.
This could be achieved by developing a statutory target-setting requirement and national net zero indicator framework such as the one laid out in this paper.
Although the points systems for hukou conversion in Chinese megacities have been discussed in detail, the issue of policy equity has received scant attention. Drawing on policy documents and on ...interviews with urban-to-urban migrants in Beijing and Shenzhen, this article examines the issue of equity in the current points systems. Our analysis is based on three features of policy equity: policy declarations of equity, equity in conditions of hierarchy, and lack of transparency. The difference in perceptions of equity between the migrants in Beijing and those in Shenzhen, and their implications in terms of policy implementation were also analysed. Shenzhen's points system was perceived as more equitable than that of Beijing's. We found inequities arose from variations in the policy design between different levels of government and in the policy implementation between cities. To promote consolidation of policy equity, we need to create a governance model that will not only encourage local authorities to promote equity in their policy-making but also ensure effective oversight of the implementation of the resulting practice.
This article explores the role of the post-war new towns in Scotland in providing people with the opportunity to own their own homes. Most importantly, it traces the development of this policy prior ...to the 'Right to Buy' of the early 1980s when tenants were offered substantial discounts by local authorities, housing associations and crucially, new town development corporations. The article challenges the dominance of rented tenure in existing accounts of Scottish housing, showing that there was demand for ownership in Scotland in the decades before the introduction of incentives. This article takes a 'top down' and 'bottom up' approach to understand a period of expanding opportunity for some, though not all, of those relocating and starting new lives in East Kilbride, Glenrothes and Cumbernauld. Archive evidence exploring policy and the response of the new town development corporations is complemented by analysis of life narratives provided by those that moved to the new towns and their children. In doing so, this article contributes to a growing scholarship that challenges stereotypical perceptions of class and identity in the immediate post-war decades whilst also revealing new insights into the post-war state as an enabler of opportunity for some.
Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to shed light on new accountability relationships between Newcastle City Council (NCC) and its citizens and stakeholders in the wake of the British government's ...austerity politics and its budget cuts for local authorities. It seeks to show some of the ways in which various kinds of budgeting, for example, for alternative sources of funding, the use of volunteers for service provision, resource sharing, and asset transfers, as well as a diverse set of accounts of the social implications of resource diversions and service cuts, have been implicated in those changes. Design/methodology/approach - The authors conducted a qualitative field study of some of the uses of budgets in the shaping of accountability relationships through interviews with council officers, conversations with activists and citizens, analysis of council and other documents, and observation of public meetings and demonstrations. The approach focused on the relationship between the city's political grassroots and the NCC leadership and administration. Findings - The authors find that NCC's senior politicians and officers co-opted the city's political grassroots and managed to reconstitute local political accountability to citizenry and stakeholders as a choice between the cessation of different types of local government services, by combining appeals to the legal framework of English local authorities, the unfairness of national politics, and the fairness of local government service provision. Local government blamed the funding cuts and the resulting resource shortages on the central government. It sought to push responsibility for cuts to the local citizenry whilst reserving for itself the role of mediator and adjudicator who makes the final decisions about the portfolio of causes that will be funded. Originality/value - This is the first study to offer detailed insight into the effects of the British government's austerity budget cuts of local authority grants on the politics of accountability in a local authority.
Metropolitan governance and planning increasingly are understood as essential in managing urban growth and fostering a sustainable and climate-friendly metropolitan development. Lately, a contractual ...turn can be observed in metropolitan governance, in which traditional coordination tools are supplemented by contractual management tools between governmental layers and sectors. This article analyses two cases of metropolitan contractual management agreements, one in the Oslo region and one in the Gothenburg region. The article finds that both agreements build on regional strategies and plans to commit national authorities to invest in infrastructure in these metropolitan areas. The Oslo agreement has more layers than the Gothenburg case, in trying to align national, regional and local authorities' efforts in both land use and mobility politics. The agreements require advanced leadership competence from the core-city, curbing centre-periphery tensions in metropolitan areas and building local alliances to pressure national authorities in agreement negotiations. We argue that this requires a co-creational leadership role, which, in a multilevel governance setting, must be extended to include dimensions such as distributional balance sensitivity, delineation sensitivity and upward pressure.
Abstract
This article reports findings from a Ph.D. study that explored the involvement of older people in adult safeguarding. The aim was to gain a greater understanding of the key barriers to ...involvement in this area. The research applied a qualitative approach, underpinned by a critical realist research paradigm. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders, including social workers, advocates and family members of older people who had been involved in the safeguarding process, as well as members of the Adult Safeguarding Boards in two local authorities in the north-east of England. Observations of key strategic meetings of the Safeguarding Adults Boards and associated subgroups were also undertaken, as well as an analysis of the local authorities’ key policy and guidance documents. Thematic analysis was used to identify key themes from the data. A number of key barriers to involvement were identified and are presented within this paper. These are explored and discussed in relation to the ways in which the construction of vulnerability and the positioning of older people within society, and within adult safeguarding in particular, have contributed to them. Overall, it is argued that older people are considered to be inherently vulnerable, and that this reduces their opportunities to be engaged in adult-safeguarding processes. A number of recommendations for practice and policy are made.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government abolished the Discretionary Social Fund and Council Tax Benefit in the Welfare Reform Act 2012 as part of their programme of austerity, with ...powers to design replacement schemes devolved to local authorities in England. Discretionary Housing Payments, which had long been the responsibility of local authorities, were given an expanded role – to soften the edges of welfare reform being pursued by central government. This article presents analysis of a new quantitative dataset constructed by the author detailing variations in these three payments across local authorities in England. This analysis explores the variation in provision that now exists across England and examines the extent to which the political makeup of elected councils, as well as economic and demographic differences, can explain the variations in provision that now exist. We find that there has been substantial retrenchment in the local social security schemes in the period since their localisation, indicating that the devolution of powers alongside budget cuts has proved a successful mechanism for implementing austerity. We also find that the political makeup of elected councils is associated with the degree of cutbacks in these schemes, with Labour-led councils less likely to retrench across all three payments when compared with councils led by the Conservative party, suggesting that politics remains possible even in a harsh financial climate such as that faced by local authorities in England.
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