Deliverables Comparative analysis of complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement across Europe and beyond This result is the most important of the PLUS results as it draws comparative conclusions on the basis of the 18 case studies carried out in nine countries. It identifies the pre-conditions of effective forms of complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement (CULCI) and identifies those conditions, which can be controlled by decision-makers and those, which cannot. In the end, it sets a benchmarking device, assisting municipal authorities to assess their own performance towards urban sustainability. It includes an analysis of the context in which particular CULCIs have proven to be successful as there is no guarantee that successful practices in a particular place will be successful everywhere. The role of political leadership and community involvement in different social, political and cultural contexts is made clear by comparing the findings of the case studies. The overarching academical results of the comparative analysis are presented in a book entitled Leadership and participation: lessons from sustainable cities. The practical outcome is the production, dissemination and use of a guide on benchmarking institutional performance. This guide offers both results benchmarking, i.e. a comparison of the relative performance of different cities in two policy areas (economic competitiveness and social inclusion) and more importantly, a process benchmark, i.e. the identification of successful forms of complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement. On the basis of these benchmarks cities will be able to measure their performance, define their weaknesses and threats and identify areas for improvement. Assessing local complementary of urban leadership and community involvement across Europe and beyond: Case study analysis This result is composed of nine case study reports and will facilitate the comparison of countries and cities. Each case study report includes: - A description of structure and context (including specific information on the policies and initiatives being pursued in the case study city in the areas of economic competitiveness and social inclusion), - Data gathering on the quality of life and approach to governance, - A performance analysis of the local governance system. Each report will be disseminated to the local authority concerned and key findings outlined in press releases co-written by the local partners. In view of the sensitive nature of the performance assessment covered in each case study, the key user group for each case study report is anticipated to be the leader and local authority being investigated, who are expected to react and/or act upon the assessment carried out. To ensure maximisation of result findings, it is anticipated that country reports will be eventually released to the general public as each case study report brings new knowledge on leadership and community participation to the fore. Empirical data gathering and country case study analysis are expected to be completed by November 2003. Complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement: A new theoretical approach to urban governance The main objective of this result is to present a common conceptual framework providing a theoretical frame for the central research questions, guiding the empirical research and delivering perspectives for comparative conclusions. First, it helps to understand why the assumption of a complementarity of leadership and community involvement in modern urban governance is a worthwhile object of study. Second, it paves the way for an assessment of this complementarity within a comparative perspective. Third, it leads to a vision of "good governance" and institutional performance in cities that transcends simplistic notions of sustainable policies. The complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement is seen in the context of changing policy challenges for cities resulting in a mix of traditional forms of government and new forms of governance. These challenges are described by reference to three dimensions of democratic legitimation: - Input-legitimation (authentic participation), - Throughput-legitimation (transparent accountability) and - Output-legitimation (effective problem-solving). The three dimensions are brought into a relation-ship with crisis phenomena in the perception of the performance of local government throughout Western democracies. Reforms of formal local government institutions and governance (governing within networks) are considered as important, yet insufficient aspects of attempts to cope with these challenges. Meta governance (B. Jessop) is presented as the central challenge for urban leaders and practices of community involvement, i.e. a flexible and reflexive way of choosing and changing modes of governance. Specific cultural contexts (notions of democracy, traditions of local government) are linked with the question of what good governance and democratic legitimacy can mean within a comparative perspective. Notions of urban leadership and citizen involvement are situated within this models of legitimacy. A comparative understanding of institutional performance is provided, and the characteristics of economic competitiveness and social inclusion are systematically linked with this understanding. Obviously, conceptual frameworks cannot have direct socio-economic relevance or be directly implemented. However, the conceptual framework developed within the PLUS project so far does make proposals for an improved understanding of the performance of urban governance which might be useful for cities and policy makers on higher levels. Performance indicators often stick to objective indicators of policy outputs (decisions) or outcomes (actually taken measures). Achieving sustainability is often translated in such indicators. Although this might be useful in some contexts (e.g. as a means to make cities ac-countable for goal attainment or to strengthen competition between cities) it seems problematic in comparative respects and also with respect to democratic principles. In democratic polities goals might be defined differently; and the performance of institutions can only be fairly evaluated if one takes into account how difficult it has been in a particular setting to achieve certain (locally defined) objectives. On the other hand, these objectives are not completely relativistic; sustainability is shared as a universal guiding principle, yet interpreted and concretised in local settings. The PLUS performance model tries to cope with this difficult tension between universalism and particularism. It comprises three central elements: - The notion of institutional performance as increasing the governing capacity of a city (Clarence Stone). - The notion of good governance as referring to the mentioned three dimensions of legitimation, which can be linked to an analysis of practices within different institutional arenas. - A guide for a contextualised measurement of institutional performance. Institutional performance as increased governing capacity means that the PLUS project will look for the change over time that has been realised in the cities by certain policy initiatives and the role of leaders and societal actors within these initiatives. More exactly, performance is seen as coping with the difficulty of realising that change. We suggest three dimensions of evaluating this difficulty: - A substantial challenge (redistribution, complexity), - A procedural challenge (activation of passive actors/involvement of heterogeneous group of actors) and - An institutional challenge (building new institutions for effective action). Concerning the three dimensions of legitimation, this perspective helps to consider the question whether the increased capacity of governing within localities has also led to better governance. Further work in the project will think about the best ways to disseminate this performance approach to urban settings and their actors. Complementarity of urban leadership and community involvement as a measure of institutional performance and urban sustainability: A new methodological approach to effective urban governance This work package operationalises the conceptual framework to underpin the empirical research and ensure consistency across the case studies. It provides a guide for the qualitative and quantitative data collection, measuring the key concepts in out conceptual framework: - The contextual variables at local, national and international level; - The institutional variables at case level; - The cultural variables at the level of the cities; - The actual Combinations of Urban Leadership and Community Involvement at case level (actual behaviour of participants); - The institutional performance in achieving sustainability at the case level. These objectives will be realised by the production of three project reports: - Deliverable 7: Criteria for measuring institutional performance. - Deliverable 8: Guide for data collection in case studies. - Deliverable 9: Common questionnaires for interviews/surveys. Deliverable 7 provides the operationalisation of the institutional performance in the two policy fields of social inclusion and economic competitiveness and will result in a guide for data collection on this variable. Deliverable 8 provides the operationalisation of all other variables. The common questionnaires that result from the operationalisation of all variables are collected in deliverable 9. Methodology and scientific achievements Methodology: As far as the measurement of institutional performance is concerned we will use the self-defined policy objectives of the local policy communities in the fields of social inclusion and economic competitiveness as the basic standard for assessing performance. However, these objectives have to be put in the context of broader sustainability criteria. As the measurement of actual sustainability would need a time-frame that is far beyond the range of the project, we will on the one hand rely on opinions of informed local experts to indicate expected sustainability of policies and on the other hand on procedural safeguards aimed at integrating the basic dimensions of the sustainability concept (social, economic and ecological). The characteristics of combinations of leadership and community involvement will be described at two levels. At the level of the local institutions we will use the Institutional Analysis and Development framework by Elinor Ostrom. The different types of rules of this framework are operationalised into a set of variables that can be used to describe configurations of positions for leaders, citizens and other participants. These positions enable actors to take certain actions and prevent other actions. Within the arena that is set up by these institutions the actors develop their actual behaviour in policy processes. These actions of leaders, citizens and others form the second level where the actual combinations of leadership and community involvement (CULCI) develop and result in policy outputs. These descriptions of the policy processes will include a methodology of actor mapping (identifying actors, their resources and motivations) and a description of the actions of these actors (policy proposals presented, coalition formation, agreement and conflicts). Local political culture will be measured with panels of informed local key figures using fixed questionnaires on six dimensions of political culture. Searching for OpenAIRE data... There was an error trying to search data from OpenAIRE No results available
