Parallèlement à son développement économique, la Chine connaît à l'heure actuelle une évolution de son organisation territoriale, la réforme des « districts provinciaux ». Mais de quel type de réorganisations territoriales s'agit-il ? Et quels en sont les enjeux ? Cette thèse s'attache à analyser le mouvement de décentralisation en Chine à partir de l'étude de ce processus dans deux provinces, à savoir celle du Zhejiang et du Sichuan. L'hypothèse développée est que la déconcentration de l'État et le mouvement de décentralisation locale constituent un nouveau mode gouvernance locale en Chine. Cette thèse repose sur la combinaison de plusieurs perspectives d'analyse : une perspective nationale et historique d'abord, centrée sur les évolutions du système centralisé et la genèse de cette réforme ; ensuite, une autre perspective visant à rendre compte du changement de la relation intergouvernementale au sein de la province et de la formation d'une confrontation entre les partisans de la croissance effrénée du pays faisant face à de plus en plus de résistance de la part du mouvement « anti-croissance ». Ces deux types d'analyse permettent de montrer que le mode de gouvernance dépend non seulement du système national, mais plus particulièrement du mode d'action publique associée à un territoire. Les niveaux administratifs : districts/régions, zones urbaines/rurales, les acteurs sociaux comme les entreprises et les associations de protection de l'environnement ainsi que les dynamiques individuelles jouent un rôle de plus en plus important dans ce mouvement de déconcentration / With its economic development that enhanced the power of local governments, China is experiencing an evolution of its territorial organization called the « provincial Districts » reform. But what kind of territorial reorganization is it ? And what are the stakes? This thesis aims to analyze decentralization reforms in China through the cases of two provinces, Zhejiang and Sichuan. The hypothesis is developed that the devolution of state and local decentralization movement present a new model of local governance in China.This thesis is based on the combination of several analytical perspectives: first, historical and a national perspectives, focusing on the evolution of centralized system and the genesis of this reform; then another perspective accounts for the change in the intergovernmental relations under the level of province and the formation of« growth » coalition and the « anti-growth » coalition. These two types of analysis show that the governance depends not only on the national system but especially on what is the local public action associated with a territory, such as the action of Districts / urban areas/ province, social actors, such as entrepreneurs and green associations and individual dynamics which become more and more important

La thèse s’inscrit dans une perspective générale d’analyse des dynamiques d’action publique territorialisée du développement rural dans une zone de front pionnier amazonien : le territoire « Portal da Amazônia », au Nord de l’État du Mato Grosso, au Brésil. L’étude comparative concerne deux expériences en cours : l’initiative du Ministère du Développement Agraire (MDA) via le Programme National de Développement Durable des Territoires Ruraux et les Consortium Inter-municipaux de Développement Économique et Socio-Environnemental mis en place par le gouvernement de l’État du Mato Grosso (Programme MT Régional). En quoi ces deux dispositifs d’action publique territorialisée contribuent-ils à la construction d’une dynamique de développement rural durable et de nature territoriale pour l’agriculture de cette zone ? Nous verrons, plus particulièrement, comment se construisent les nouvelles modalités de gouvernance locale mises en place dans le cadre de ces politiques publiques territorialisées de développement rural. À travers une approche combinant les apports de la géographie sociale et de la sociologie du développement, nous nous intéresserons notamment aux processus de gouvernance locale et de territorialisation mis en œuvre par ces deux dispositifs. Pour ce faire, au cours du travail de terrain, nous nous sommes attachés à observer les espaces de concertation et de négociations dans lesquels s’élaborent les projets mis en place dans le cadre de ces programmes. / The thesis fits into a general analysis of the dynamics of public territorial action of rural development in an area of ​​Amazonian pioneer front: the territory "Portal da Amazônia", North of the state of Mato Grosso, Brazil. The comparative study involves two ongoing experiences: the initiative of the Ministry of Agrarian Development (MDA) through the National Program for Sustainable Development of Rural Territories and the Inter-municipal Consortium of Economic and Socio-Environmental Development implemented by the State of Mato Grosso’s government (MT Regional Programme). How these two territorial public action mechanisms contribute to build a dynamic sustainable rural development for agriculture in this area? In particular, we will see how new forms of local governance are carried out in the context of territorial public policies for rural development. Through an approach that combines the contributions of social geography and sociology of development, we focus particularly on the local governance procedures and the territorialisation processes performed by these two mechanisms. To achieve our goal, we observed during the fieldwork the areas of consultation and negotiation where the projects for each one of these programs are conceived.

For the past two decades, interest in the performance of local governments has become high in public management. The wave of performance consciousness has thus far diffused from developed countries to developing countries where decreasing public confidence and trust in government has made the implementation of performance management policies a way of improving public perception of government performance. Meanwhile, the implementation of such policies is often based on untested assumptions some of which constitute gaps in the literature. For instance, it is understood that performance management systems enable public organisations that provide services to satisfy citizens’ demand for services. It is also assumed that mechanisms for managing organisational performance recognise and address the interests of multiple stakeholders in an organisational environment and that once performance management systems generate performance information, decision makers are likely to use that information to advance the goals of their organisations. This study explores these assertions by investigating performance management practices of local government authorities in Ghana. It sets out to understand how local governments manage organisational performance and what shapes their performance. It also examines the scope of a performance enhancing policy to determine whether it addresses multiple perspectives of organisational performance and the extent to which local government managers use performance information to improve service delivery. The study adopts a qualitative research approach by using data from interviews, focus group discussions, observations and documents to construct and interpret research findings. This research identified internal and external mechanisms for managing local government performance and found that central-local government relations allows the former to influence the latter’s priorities by imposing on them, the national development policy, in ways that define development planning, performance reporting and local government controls. Following Kaplan and Norton (1992), a Balanced Score Card framework was used to examine the scope of performance indicators used to assess the performance of local governments under the District Development Facility. The findings reveal that performance indicators tend to be skewed towards financial and internal organisational aspects of performance rather than incorporating citizens’ views about local government performance or promoting organisational learning, innovation and accountability. The findings offer insights for re-examining multiple principal-agent relationships at the local government level where the assessment of local government performance excludes the opinions of local residents and affects local governments’ accountability to citizens. Although developing a culture of performance emerged as a key factor for improving local government performance, the findings revealed that the use of performance information by local government managers to make decisions on service delivery depends on the importance of performance information, their commitment to central government’s priorities, reporting requirements of externally funded projects and public service motivation. This study concludes that the utilisation of performance information to improve service delivery is necessary but not sufficient without adopting an all-inclusive, citizen-centred approach woven into the formulation, implementation and evaluation of performance management systems in a developing country context.

This study examines the potential for the Internet, or more specifically the World Wide Web, to enhance local democracy and local governance by providing a networked public sphere. It is located in post-industrial theories of social and political transformation, which see a new, uncertain and complex society emerging which may transform the political significance of the 'local'. Whilst a number of causes are identified as culpable in this process, it is the ICT revolution and the development of the Web in particular, that is seen as possessing a democratising potential that, if realised, may bring greater resilience to geographic localities. The potential of the Web to provide a new networked public sphere is based upon contested views that its topography, its hyperlinked structure, can enable the ordinary citizen's voice to be heard above those that traditionally dominate political discourse. However, there has been no attention paid to this potential being realised at a local governance level within which, this study argues, a favourable environment should exist for a local online networked public sphere to prosper. Accordingly, this prospect is empirically explored here through a case study of the use made of the Web by a variety of local civic, political and institutional actors during a 2008 local (Manchester, UK) referendum on introducing the largest traffic congestion charging scheme in the country. This research applies a distinctive mixed method approach within a conceptually defined internet mediated domain of local governance. Relational Hyperlink Analysis is used to analyse the structural significance of the captured congestion charge. This analysis uses Social Network Analysis (SNA) and an associated statistical technique, Exponential Random Graph Modelling (ERGM) to render the network visible and understandable. To further illuminate how the network was used by local civic and institutional actors involved in the referendum the research draws upon a network ethnography approach which uses SNA to identify subjects for qualitative investigation. The study offers some evidence of the Web providing 'just enough' links in this local context to suggest the structural existence of a networked public sphere. However, further evidence from the narratives and the statistical model paint an alternative picture. This suggests that, in the main, hyperlinking behaviour and use made of the network corresponds to a 'politics as usual' scenario where cliques are more likely to proliferate and powerful economic and media interests dominate online as they do offline. If the ordinary citizen's voice is to be heard in this context then there is a requirement for policy intervention to establish a trusted local networked public sphere or online civic space, independent of vested interests but linked to the local governance decision making process. In addition to this there is a requirement for greater education, particularly aimed at senior local governance policy makers, in the culture of online engagement.

The research investigates individual human resource capacity building for local governance within the context of decentralised human resource management in Thailand by profoundly examining its current implementation of recruitment, selection, training and development and performance management after the decentralisation policy was enacted. The human resource capacity building process in this research includes five stages of core capabilities building: committing and engaging, performing and accomplishing, building relationships and attracting resources, learning and adapting and managing trade-offs and dilemmas. The research firstly focuses on examining the consequences of decentralised human resource practices implementation in Thai local governance. Secondly, it aims to explore the ways in which human resource practices are supportive to individual human resource capacity building. Finally it proposes the prospective implications of effective capacity building through human resource practices for potential policy formulation. This research is based on three related theories: capacity building, human resource management and decentralisation. The research was conducted by using qualitative methodologies. The case study of Thailand was selected because of the uniqueness of its paradoxical decentralised-Unitarian state. Municipal officials were chosen as the unit of analysis. The first findings have illustrated that the decentralisation initiative has certainly affected the HRM at the local level of Thailand. However, this scheme has launched some degree of re-centralisation and partially confirms the pseudo-decentralisation in Thai public administration. Secondly, the research also found that HR practices can be supportive and compatible as a capacity building strategies. However, these HR practices must be designed, conducted and evaluated for the purposes of the local government only. The aim of capacitating individual staff must be taken into account as a part of policy to develop the human side of the organisation. Therefore, there have been both challenges and opportunities for human resource capacity building through HR practices. To conclude, this research has contributed to fill the theoretical gap by examining the capacity building processes through HR practices and it provides the practical suggestion that local context is decisive. The capacity building issue has never been investigated through human resource practices, especially recruitment and selection, training and development and performance management. Moreover, in practice, the research has focused on the development of the local government unit in a country of paradoxically decentralised-Unitarian state like Thailand.

O objetivo da pesquisa foi analisar se a participação de atores sociais em espaços coletivos de deliberação contribui efetivamente para melhorar a governança local em espaços rurais. Com base em duas experiências recentes de promoção do desenvolvimento regional nos Estados brasileiros de Minas Gerais e Ceará, discute-se como a interação entre diferentes atores influencia a alteração de comportamentos e a estruturação de ações coletivas que resultam em projetos territoriais voltados ao desenvolvimento. O que se destaca nessas experiências é o rompimento com a reprodução monótona, no âmbito dos vários conselhos gestores espalhados pelo Brasil, de padrões setoriais, pouco diversificados e com forte ênfase municipal da participação social. A principal conclusão do estudo é que a estruturação de espaços coletivos de deliberação e intercâmbio públicos encerram grande potencial de fortalecer a governança local e contribuir para o desenvolvimento de regiões rurais. / The purpose of this research was to analyze if the participation of social actors in collective spaces of public deliberation contributes effectively to improve the local governance in rural areas. On the basis of two recent experiences of planning for the regional development in the Brazilian States of Minas Gerais and Ceará, are argued how the interaction between different actors influences the alteration of behaviors and facilitates the sprouting of collective actions that result in territorial projects to the development. What it is distinguished in these experiences is the disruption with the monotonous reproduction, in the scope of the some participatory forums spread by Brazil, of sectorial standards, little diversified and with strong municipal emphasis of the social participation. The main conclusion of the study is that collective spaces of public deliberation and interchange disclose great potential to fortify the territorial governance and to contribute for the development of rural regions.

In Sweden, the municipalities are responsible for a good living environment, and today most municipalities work actively with climate change mitigation intending to decrease their emissions of greenhouse gases. Municipalities must decrease consumption-related emissions to achieve this. Further, this is a relatively new area that has gained focus within local governance, which asks the question, how are municipalities working to govern resident’s consumption behavior? This thesis investigate how a Swedish municipality works to steer their household consumption to become more sustainable and the experienced challenges. Bulkely & Kern (2006) three different mode of local governance: governing by authority, governing by provision, and governing through enabling will be employed to analyze how local government steer household consumption.  This thesis was carried out as a qualitative, in-depth case study, analyzing the experiences of civil servants operating in a Swedish municipality through semi-structured interviews and analyzing policy documents. Research findings show that measures to steer household consumption were performed mainly by deploying enabling governance by the municipality through information-based measures to promote sustainable consumption. The main obstacles identified are municipalities' lack of agency over household consumption behavior and the inherent complexity of environmental sustainability issues and lack of resources.

With an expanded increase in consumption and production in the last decades, the Western societies’ unsustainable way of living has started to have a destructive effect on the planet. Energy use and greenhouse gas emissions linked to production and waste control in societies can be reduced immensely with fewer goods. Through the sharing economy, goods, materials and services can be utilized to the fullest, decreasing the need for more production of raw materials. Sharing has both practical and economic gain for the consumer, the community and the environment. The aim of this research is to analyze and map the present state of sharing economy within Uppsala Municipality and evaluate how to adopt and implement sharing economy from the governance perspective of Uppsala. In this case study, a document analysis, a survey and interviews are used as analytical tools to answer the three research questions; what sharing economy practices and strategies are to be found within Uppsala Municipality; which are the identified drivers, barriers and attitude towards sharing economy within the public sector of Uppsala and how sharing economy platforms and services can be implemented in Uppsala Municipality. The results show that while some sharing economy practices and strategies can be found within Uppsala Municipality, there are no clear guidelines to be found on how to work with sharing economy. The public sector is positive towards a sharing economy and wants to see more sharing alternatives. In their opinion, the main drivers to sharing economy are saving on resources, economy and energy, while the main barriers are time consumption, uncertainty in who should be responsible for these services and complication in implementation. Finally, a shared knowledge and definition on sharing economy, a justification on why sharing economy should be implemented and a collaboration where every stakeholder finds their place in the projects seem to be the main premise of implementing sharing economy on a local governance level.

2019 was the year with the highest measured amount of GHG emissions in history, indicating that our existing way of living is unsustainable and demands substantial changes. New ways of governing environmental issues are therefore being called upon in which the local level has great potential to create change. Sustainability measures involving integrated social dimensions which questions the motive for performing or engaging in emission demanding activities are found leading to a more long-lasting change. In Sweden, the decentralized decision model makes municipalities have a large responsibility for creating change in crucial emission demanding areas. Recognizing these concerns, this study applies a multi-dimensional system perspective with a broad range of cultural, habitual and technological aspects by Jensen et al. (2019) on three front-running municipalities (Tyresö, Växjö and Lund) working to reduce emission levels. The study focuses on distinguishing between different drivers for change among sustainability measures regarding energy and mobility functions, with a specific focus on the account of incorporated social dimensions. The results indicate that there is a lack of integrated social dimensions among the selected municipalities, in which only 26% of the grand total of 220 analyzed measures involve integrated social elements which enables a system-wide change. Technical and individual behavioural changes are far more prioritized than changes which are linked to collective lifestyle aspects and involve a mixture of technology, norms, cultures and organizations within the society, which are aspects proven more likely to lead to a system-wide change. The study provides knowledge on the capability of local decision making to enforce a systemic change toward sustainability if the current measures are carried out, in which the results indicate that the change among the three selected municipalities will be limited.

Sweden wants to produce 100% of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2040 and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045. While wind power is key to this transition, the permit process for large onshore wind power projects is one of the major challenges the country is currently facing, specifically the provision on municipal approval in the Environmental Code, the so-called municipal veto. To facilitate the expansion of wind projects in Sweden, the double testing of wind power applications was abolished in 2009, and the municipal veto was introduced to preserve the municipalities’ planning influence. However, the municipal veto contributed to a less predictable and legally secure permit process and became the main reason behind the rejections of wind power applications. Today, in 2021, the Swedish Government assigned a special investigator to examine and propose possible changes to the municipal veto provision. Though the municipalities believe that the veto is essential for their self-government and planning monopoly, the Swedish Energy Agency and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency argue that the municipal authority should be exercised through the municipal general planning documents. Therefore, this thesis aims to verify the authorities’ argument by examining the relationship between the municipalities’ planning conditions for wind power and the permit decisions. The study is performed in collaboration with Westander Klimat och Energi and is based on 206 large onshore wind power applications between 2014 and 2020. The main research methods consist of a document analysis and of statistical analyses, namely simple percentages, and the chi-square test of independence, along with Cramer’s V calculation. The projects are categorized mainly based on the municipal planning conditions, and the permit decisions are analyzed accordingly. Essentially, it is shown that, even if not legally binding, the municipal general spatial planning documents constitute a valuable tool for the planning of onshore wind power projects in Sweden. Furthermore, the municipal planning conditions and permit decisions are not independent, however, their strength of association is weak. Nonetheless, the statistics indicate that in areas designated as suitable, more cases are likely to receive an approval than expected, and in areas not designated as suitable, the applications are more likely to be revoked than one would expect. In conclusion, it is important to invest resources into the strategic wind power planning at the local level. Also, the municipal plans must be kept updated to consistently reflect the municipalities’ intentions towards the use of their land and water areas.