Content uploaded by Raoul Beunen
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Raoul Beunen on Jan 19, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Innovation in Governance
Abstract
In this chapter we develop a theoretical framework, deriving from the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann and Evolutionary Governance Theory, to grasp the paradoxes of current notions of innovation in governance, and to outline an alternative approach. A renewed reflection on innovation we deem essential for an understanding of the potential for delineating the limits and possibilities of managing, steering or planning innovation in such endeavor. Innovation, it is argued, has to be understood as a post-hoc interpretation of previous decisions and actions, emerging in shifting networks of actors and allies. It is a risky and unpredictable operation at the intersection of incompatible understandings of the world. Managing, steering or planning innovation, then, has to be understood as the creation of conditions for reflection, including the reflection on the redistribution of risks engendered by innovation.
... We use an evolutionary perspective on environmental governance, specifically, an EGT lens (Evolutionary Governance Theory), which argues for continuous observation, strategizing, and coordination to identify limited options available at a particular time for achieving governance goals [7,[34][35][36][37]. Governance here refers to a form of coordination among actors and institutions in taking collectively binding decisions within a community and place. ...
... Governance here refers to a form of coordination among actors and institutions in taking collectively binding decisions within a community and place. We make a clear differentiation between government and governance, which means that governance is never the domain of just the formal governments, but a combination of decisions by formal and informal actors and institutions [35]. There is no perfect procedure or design for governance, since it is heavily dependent on the time and context where it is observed. ...
In this paper, we explore the complex entanglements between ongoing land conflicts and climate shocks, and their implications for risk governance paths and evolution. We focus on ways in which concepts of shock and conflict can be incorporated into social–ecological systems thinking and applied to risk governance practice in a southern cities context. Through a qualitative inquiry of two slum redevelopment projects in Bhubaneswar city in India, we trace the origin and evolution of conflict around land tenure and eviction in informal settlements, as well as its interaction with local manifestations of climate shocks. Climate policies, as responses to climate shock and intended to mitigate climate risk, are observed as constructed, interpreted, framed, and used strategically by formal actors to further urban development objectives, while the local knowledge systems, risk perceptions, and adaptations are ignored in practice. This study helps to re-think the complexities of climate risk governance in southern urban spaces where multiple risks overlap and interact within the diverse realities of informality and vulnerability. A singular focus on one type of risk, on the formal order to manage that risk, is likely to overlook other risks and opportunities. Hence, shocks are likely to produce more unanticipated effects, conflicts function as the unobserved middle term, and the formal policies and plans to mitigate climate risk contribute to the creation of new risk.
... Evolutionary approaches to understand Governance pathways Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT) by Beunen et al. (2015) provides a theoretical lens to understand the governance process from an evolutionary perspective. EGT considers coevolution as the central idea-a system is characterized by an ongoing system of change, in which existing structures are constantly at interplay, changing and shaping each other. ...
Smart city imaginaries have emerged in southern cities driven by neoliberal logics in the urban space. Scholarly work in India has continued to engage with sweeping accounts of cities as opposed to detailed empirical studies of local projects. This paper attempts to address this gap through an in-depth ethnographic inquiry of a slum redevelopment project in the city of Bhubaneswar, India. The key objective is to understand the ways in which informal residents adapted to and changed smart city policies in India in recent years. Using an evolutionary lens, and drawing on participant observation; document analysis; and semi-structured interviews, the paper puts forth a descriptive cases that advances the notion that smart cities imaginaries have resulted in abrupt changes in the institutional context while getting entangled itself within the legal system. The paper also demonstrates how smart cities discourses counter-intuitively result in emergent spaces of resistance in the form of counter-hegemonic practices, thus allowing spaces for the evolution of new actors and imaginaries from unfamiliar territories. The paper concludes by discussing that city planning and governance pathways in India risk creating complicated path dependencies and rigid governance future pathways that may amplify conflict.
Climate governance studies suggest that the way climate risk and vulnerability are conceptualized, defined, and managed has consequences for people and places. In this paper, we analyze how different climate risk discourses and their vulnerability portrayals are constructed and have evolved in Bhubaneswar city in India. We conduct a Critical Discourse Analysis of various climate action plans and policy documents, as well as a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews to interpret their discursive positions on climate issues. Based on our findings, we highlight three main discourses through which risk is constructed – discourses of inevitability, collocation, and intrinsic necessity. The vulnerability portrayals across these discourses are undergoing a transition from a pure outcome vulnerability approach toward a context-based approach, while their framings range from vulnerability to events, places, and social groups. The intertwining of discursive constructions of risk and vulnerability contributes toward constantly forming and re-forming risk and governance objects (and subjects), and the reproduction and resistance to certain forms of knowledge that limit and enable governance responses to climate change at the same time.
Integrating non-profit organizations (NPOs) and the services they provide into development planning highlights an aspect of government–NPOs relationship that frames NPOs as drivers of development. In South Africa, even though NPOs are typically regarded as private owned organizations, the nature of the services they provide in various policy fields has implications for socio-economic development. However, the development planning process is currently, more public and business sector oriented. Using a qualitative research approach, the findings suggest that non-profit services can be integrated into development planning through the processes of Reality Adjustment, Strategic Engagement, Sector Mapping and Pro-activism.
This paper discusses marine governance experiences from the Eastern Mediterranean, an area characterized by great complexities in spatial and governance terms. In particular, the paper examines experiences drawn from two research projects where multi-level and cross-sectoral governance schemes were tested as a side procedure to maritime spatial planning (MSP). The case studies represent highly complex marine environments (with great insularity, extended coastlines, formation of gulfs, etc.), where an unusually high number of national and local stakeholders are involved. Following the lessons learnt, the paper argues that (1) local governments (regions and municipalities) should have a more meaningful involvement in the MSP process that is currently a task mainly addressed by central government, and (2) certain competencies and licensing of marine activities and infrastructure can be transferred to the local governments. This paper also argues that MSP should also be performed at the local scale, where planning has a more regulatory nature and land–sea interactions can be addressed. Useful steps to achieve the above are as follows: (a) establishment of (regional) networks engaging coastal and insular regions and municipalities sharing the same (local) sea in the MSP process, and (b) establishment of local stakeholder networks having the same agendas and priorities at sea. Engaging regional and municipal authorities, as well as local stakeholders in a more fundamental way, is of paramount importance because at this (local) level, citizen science and ocean literacy prevail and can be of great use to the MSP process.
The impact of Europeanisation on domestic policies is often associated with the alignment of European policies and discourses with national ones. The Habitats Directive mandating wolf protection entailed heated debates across the EU, suggesting diverging values and interests at various levels of policy-making. I present an analysis of wolf policy and politics in Germany, where wolves have returned after a long period of extinction. Tracing the dynamics of institutions involved in wolf management in 2000–2021, I identify key groups involved, their activities and positions as well as the impact of European rules and discourses. Unlike in some other Central in Eastern European countries, German wolf policy was strongly influenced by Europeanisation that helped to sustain the institutional path of wolf conservation, despite criticism from dominant land-use actors who politicised the issue to relax conservation rules. I suggest adding safeguarding of latent policies to the catalogue of outcomes of Europeanisation.
Afghans’ protracted displacement is a geopolitical legacy from the Cold War. Although Pakistan’s return policymaking has foreseen the complete voluntary return of Afghans since the end of the Cold War, then as now, about three million Afghans reside in Pakistan. This article advances the notion of calculated informality to dissolve this seeming contradiction. Pakistan’s policymakers have excelled in calculated informality by successfully navigating the domestic and geopolitical arena over time based on practices of deregulation and ambiguity. Methodologically, the article applies Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT) to reconstruct Pakistan’s return governance path based on the analysis of legal documents, previous research and secondary literature. EGT reveals the dependencies and layering at work in return governance and points out how the geopolitical positionality of Pakistan has determined its return policymaking. The structured interconnectedness of path-, goal- and interdependencies illustrates rigidities of the governance path and why opacity and ambiguity in return governance persist.
p>This paper presents a framework for analysing the different ways in which materiality impacts environmental policy and governance. It draws on notions from the wider literature on materiality and integrates relevant insights into a theory on policy and governance. Building on a key distinction between the material and the discursive dimensions of governance, it develops the concepts of material events and material dependencies. Material events bring attention to the linkages between material changes and their observation and interpretation in governance. The concept of material dependencies is useful for analysing the different ways in which materiality structures the evolution of governance systems. The paper ends with some methodological considerations for mapping and analysing material dependencies and suggestions for further research.</p
We analyse the migration of academic and policy discourses that contributed to (de)legitimise the formation of planning policies in Argentina since the 1950s. We focus on the communicative/collaborative rationality discourses emanating from Anglo-American academic circles that played a role in the revival of the Argentine planning system between 2004 and 2015. We adopt an evolutionary approach to policy travel and policy learning, deploying the concepts of discursive migration and discursive configuration to better understand how ideas, people and goods/resources reinvent themselves when transnationally circulating policy knowledge takes root locally. The migration process in Argentina led to the reinforcement of prevalent coordination mechanisms, redirecting concerns and conflicts into governance structures already existing, involving players already present and forms of expertise already dominant. The migrating collaborative discourse (self) transformed in relation to the receiving governance environment, becoming an effective compliance-gaining technique, while national actors found ways to engage and discipline provinces they depended on more than before.
The universal low performance of megaprojectsMegaproject forces us to think about its inherent complexityComplexity and the incompatibility of traditional project managementProject management methodology that emphasizes “control”. MegaprojectsMegaproject are strongly influenced by goals or strategiesStrategy; face unprecedented challenges in the long-term implementation process; lack experience to refer; are dominated by different key organizations at different stages of the projectProject-life cycle; require flexible and efficient cooperationCooperation and innovation to cope with unanticipated and complex challenges that continue to emerge; and therefore, a complex dynamicDynamic behavior system. We need to re-examine this complex system and propose new governanceGovernancestrategiesStrategy. Based on this perspective, in this chapter, we analyze the organizational behavior and self-organization phenomenon in megaprojectsMegaproject under the context of complexityComplexity, develop a megaprojectMegaprojectgovernanceGovernanceportfolioPortfoliosstrategyStrategyfor self-organizationSelf-organization and heterorganizations, propose a new path and direction towards more sustainable value creationValue creation in megaprojectsMegaproject to address the current and future megaproject challengesMegaproject.
Niklas Luhmann’s social theory stands in direct opposition to the dominant ‘anthropocentric’ traditions of legal and political analysis. King and Thornhill now offer the first comprehensive, critical examination of Luhmann’s highly original theory of the operations of the legal and political systems. They describe how from the perspective of his ‘sociological enlightenment’ Luhmann continually calls to account the certainties, the ambitions and rational foundations of The Enlightenment and the idealized versions of law and politics which they have produced.
Zusammenfassung
Aus einer systemischen Perspektive kann das Wissen oder die Intelligenz eines Unternehmens nicht als in den Köpfen ihrer Mitglieder lokalisiert begriffen werden. Es ist in den Kommunikations- und Interaktionsprozessen impliziert, welche die Identität der Organisation als Einheit definieren. Eine lernende Organisation ist eine Organisation, die in der Lage ist, ihre Kommunikationsregeln zu verändern. Um dies zu tun, braucht sie ein Mittel der Beobachtung der eigenen Regeln und der Bewertung, ob das in ihnen implizierte Wissen noch angemessen ist. Manager und Berater als diejenigen, die »wissen«, wie ein Unternehmen »gesteuert« wird, müssen dekonstruiert werden. Ihre Autorität kann durch die Nutzung der Intelligenz von sich selbst reflektierenden Kommunikationsprozessen innerhalb der Organisation rekonstruiert werden. Deren Ergebnis kann ihrer Aktivität zugeschrieben werden, auch wenn es der Kommunikationsprozeß war, der die Beobachtungen und - in der Folge - die Entscheidungen hervorbrachte.
Will man ein relativ unbeschwertes Bild über Organisationen gewinnen, ist es ratsam, etwa 150–200 Jahre zurückzugreifen. Als Ausgangspunkt läßt sich dann ein Organisationsverständnis erkennen, das sich gegen Begriffe wie Ordnung oder Organismus nicht deutlich abgrenzt und das in dieser Unscharfe umstandslos modernen Entwicklungen in Staat und Wirtschaft zugeordnet werden kann. Organisation ist Ausführung von Herrschaft oder Ausführung von Produktion — in jedem Falle ein Phänomen von gesamtgesellschaftlicher Relevanz. Heinrich Stephani etwa fordert, um ein Beispiel zu geben, in seinem Grundriß der Staatserziehungswissenschaft1, daß das Erziehungswesen „eine zweckmäßige, durch den ganzen Staat sich erstreckende Organisation erhalte“. Ohne Organisation „sei bei allem guten Willen nichts gedeihliches zu erwarten, weil nach einem ewigen Naturgesetz jede Kraft zu ihre Wirksamkeit Organe nöthig hat, durch welche sie sich zweckmäßig äußern kann“. Entsprechend wird die Organisation in ihrer Einheit durch ein Vernunftschema begriffen und in ihrem Fortschritt daran gemessen, in welchem Maße sie ein Ideal erreicht2. Modern gesprochen: Organisation wird nicht gegen Gesellschaft und gesellschaftliche Funktionsbereiche differenziert und nicht als ein System eigener Typik, nicht etwa als „Bürokratie“ begriffen.
In the 1990s, as the Soviet Empire lay in ruins, the Russian and Ukrainian governments undertook a project to dismantle the collective farm system that was created under Stalin and in the process privatize an expanse of farmland larger than Australia. Ordinary people were supposed to benefit from the reform, but local government leaders quietly rebelled against it. The end result was the dispossession of millions of rural people. This is the first book to explain why and how this happened through the perspective of a firsthand observer in the Black Earth region. © Jessica Allina-Pisano 2008 and Cambridge University Press, 2009.