Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 353-367). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Köln.

Thesis--Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires. / Cover title: Los cabildos en el siglo XVI.

Processes of ecological modernisation – where ecological protection becomes increasingly viable and attractive, whether through market forces or by state intervention and regulation – have received considerable attention within the academic literature. However, extant theory in this respect has focused almost wholly on the nation state level and has yet to account for the role played by local governments. This thesis seeks to address that deficiency by developing conceptual tools to study local government behaviour in order to understand why local governments contribute differently from one another to processes of ecological modernisation. A model of local environmental policy capacity is proposed (using insights from new theories of institutionalism, policy entrepreneurship and policy networks) and is applied to the ‘zero-carbon homes’ policy agenda of England in the period 2006 to 2015. This agenda is chosen because it both illustrates ecological modernisation and centres on a key field of responsibility for local government – local planning. Two local governments are chosen for in-depth study to assess the value of the model. Oxford City Council, on the one hand, which showed reluctance in contributing to the agenda, and Cambridge City Council, on the other, which has been more proactive. The research provides useful insights on reasons for the differences between the two cities, these reflecting, above all, the dialectical relationship between policy entrepreneurship and institutions. Empowered entrepreneurs operating within an institutional context conducive to both change, and with a focus on sustainability, are important conditions for action. The key contribution of the thesis lies in its revelations about the processes of ecological modernisation at a local level, and the argument that, if ecological modernisation theory is to be useful in explaining the processes of change in this regard – as it claims to be – then it needs also to take account of local government’s contributions.

The research establishes a context-specific sense of strategic risk in English local authorities. Uncertainty is found to be central to understanding risk but current practice is found not to reflect this, presenting risks with a false and misleading precision. Risks are identified to have varying, multiple characteristics. Risk assessment models which embrace these characteristics are developed and tested using a consistently applied bespoke risk data set developed for the research. Issues of control confidence and the betrayal of stakeholder trust are explored within these risk assessment models. The research proposes an accessible, fuzzy risk assessment model with an ability to inform decision-making beyond the mere ranking of risks provided by current practice approaches.

It has been recognised that organisational learning (OL) possesses considerable potential for developing workers and, through them, organisations. Although its relevance to the public sector has been acknowledged, a relatively small amount of empirical work has been undertaken. Where it has been, emphasis on learning embedded in daily practices has been lacking. This study fills a significant gap by providing a holistic and empirically-based exploration of OL within the public sector based on three diverse case studies in the Welsh Government. This study illustrates how OL practices in the Welsh Government emerged from mediations between individuals and six structures – namely physical, accountability, development, management intervention, workplace social and work task-based. OL is shown to be a locally formulated and pluralist phenomenon, based on the capacities of individuals involved and the highly nuanced dynamics created by and among the six structures. A new framework for the comprehensive investigation and analysis of OL emerges from the analysis. Some key findings from the study are that learning involving identifying and assessing new ways of doing things was neither practised nor required in all areas, that engagement in change during the undertaking of day-to-day work activities was a stimulant for learning, that different work tasks presented different possibilities for making and remedying mistakes, that the absence of a target-driven environment was an important enabler for staff to pursue off-the-job learning, that different work tasks presented varying opportunities for engaging with people, that engagement with people tended to happen only when staff felt that it would result in them being able to perform their roles more effectively, that inter-OL was not generally part of working life and that efforts to capture knowledge were generally not made unless there was a clear purpose or value seen for doing so.

The thesis is an exploration of the elections and governance in a contemporary Chinese village. It is a qualitative case study of one village in Shandong Province, China, using in-depth interviews with villagers, village candidates, township officials as well as national, provincial, township and village documents. It reveals how the clientelist system functions in and shapes the process of the village elections and governance. Drawing upon the qualitative data and empirical evidence collected in the field site, the thesis challenges the liberal-democratic view that the implementation of direct village elections and self-governance, which is generally considered to be “village democracy”, has empowered villagers to resist the state and may mark the beginning of a bottom-up democratization in China. In contrast, it argues that even procedurally “free and fair” village elections largely fail to deliver meaningful results, and that village governance, although in the name of self-governance, actually continues to be dominated by the Chinese local state. This is because clientelist structures, embodied in vertical patron-client alliances between political elites and villagers, have strongly influenced the actors and functioned to facilitate and supplement the authoritarian control of the state. The thesis also contests interpretations of village elections and self-governance that stress the state’s formal administrative capacity over controlling and manipulating village politics. While it shows some of the formal mechanisms by which township government control village affairs, it demonstrates also that after the implementation of the “village democracy” the state is still able to maintain its authoritarian capacity by taking advantage of the informal clientelist interaction between local state officials and the village elites.

This dissertation is an evaluation of some of the basic assumptions of the literature on governance and their utility for understanding a specific case - that of Mexico. It argues that Mexican municipalities, like their counterparts in Europe and the United States, have experienced a change towards a way of policy-making based on broader policy-networks, fragmentation in governmental and societal bodies, participation of an increasing number of self-organised actors, and the resulting blurring boundaries between the public and private spheres. Mexican urban municipalities are evolving from traditional patterns of governmental interventions to dynamisms of local governance. This shift, however, has taken place in an uneven way, shaped by factors such as the complexity of urban problems, the political alternation, the federal policies on transfers, the different policy areas and issues, the looseness of networks and the way in which they operate. As a result, Mexican local governance has been developed in policy sectors that have a high legitimising potential or that are in great need for citizens’ resources. This has generated a picture of ‘patches’, where stronger policy networks and citizens’ involvement in policy-making coexist with traditional governmental mechanisms. The dissertation is a contribution to the differentiated accounts of local governance recently developed, which use diverse contexts to argue that there is not a ‘one size fits all’ form of governance. It is a reconsideration of the importance of local contexts in shaping policy-making through networks, as opposed to the initial context-free governance understandings. The conclusion recognises the relevance of the main arguments of governance literature. The thesis makes use of empirical evidence gathered in three urban municipalities. It employs qualitative methodological criteria, discussed in the methodological appendix. The main research techniques used were elite interviewing and documental analysis.

This neo institutional study analyses the dynamic interaction between formal/informal rules and agents’ behaviour inside a political institution, examining these relationships through primary research on local partnerships in Greece. The theoretical assumptions of this analysis derive mainly from normative neo institutionalism but also include insights from rational choice and the historical institutionalism. Consideration is also given to the way in which theories of the structure/agent duality are related to neo institutional propositions on the relationship between rules and agents’ strategic behaviour. The neo institutional approach to local partnerships is also situated in relation to concepts and empirical observations from the literature on urban governance, urban regimes and Europeanisation. This research adopts the critical realism stance which acknowledges a reflexive approach to reality and it applies an embedded case study strategy. The case study consists of two local partnerships in the region of Crete, which were established under the EU Community Initiatives Programmes EQUAL II and LEADER+ and coordinated by the Local Development Agency of Heraklion. A triangulation method is selected, making use of interviews, storytelling, a short questionnaire, direct observation and secondary analysis of documentation. The research data reveal that the formal rules of the partnerships are not indicative of what actually happens. It is the configuration of formal and informal rules that offers a deep understanding of partnership. It is concluded that some formal rules are realised (albeit with deviations along the way), like partnership and programming, while others are remained mostly on paper, like community participation, decentralisation and innovation. In these cases, the informal rules appear to be conflicting with the formal rules, leading to different results than those expected. The research also shows the importance of agents' intentionality in the process of institutional change. Specific actors within the partnership, such as established local leaders and institutional entrepreneurs, select and reinforce particular features of formal rules that restrict partners’ freedom and promote values of efficiency within the partners. Moreover, the findings confirm a gradual changing of local policy making and an increase of local social capital. EQUAL II and LEADER+ partnerships create new possibilities for the empowerment and participation of new actors such as NGOs and vulnerable groups in the local policy-making process. They also promote the establishment of policy networks and enhance the development of collaborative learning processes (trust building and sharing understanding). Finally, they lead to the re-articulation of mayors-chief executives’ relationship inside local authorities and of central state’s position by creating new possibilities for broadening local authorities’ autonomy.

Over the last 20 years or so, local government in Britain has been experiencing a relentless, rapidly changing environment. With successive Conservative governments introducing policies to encourage a new and improved managerialist approach during the 1980s and 1990s, there has been a shift away from the bureaucratic and professionally dominated type of administration to a more customer-focused, private sector style of management and service delivery. The impact of these changes has provoked many local authorities to adopt a more strategic approach. This thesis examines the strategy process in one such authority, a London Borough, during the mid-nineties following the appointment of its new chief executive. The process is seen as one essentially driven by the need for the authority to respond more effectively to the internal and external exigencies facing local government. As a case study, it explores the way the leadership, both executive and the political, moved the authority away from the former professional bureaucracy towards a more corporate way of working and management style. The thesis traces the perceptions, speculations and behaviour of the senior elected members of the political administration as well as those of the new chief executive and describes how these influenced the strategy process.