Network Governance and Energy Transitions in European Cities

Timea Nochta

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000177749
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Energy Industry
• Index: Business

This book investigates and evaluates the opportunities and limitations of network governance in building local capacity for energy infrastructure governance.

Presenting a comparative analysis of three city cases from across Europe- Birmingham, Frankfurt and Budapest- this book demonstrates how local factors shape the prospect of network governance to support low-carbon energy transitions. It maps out existing governance networks, highlighting the actors involved and their interactions with one another, and also discusses the role and embeddedness of networks in the urban governance of low-carbon energy. Drawing on case study evidence, Nochta develops a comparative analysis which discusses the intricate connections between network characteristics, context and impact. It highlights that organisational fragmentation; the complexity of the low-carbon energy problem and historical developments all influence network characteristics in terms of degree of integration and vertical (hierarchical) power relationships among network actors. Overall, the book concludes that understanding such links between context and networks is crucial when designing and implementing new governance models aimed at facilitating and governing low-carbon urban development.

Low-Carbon Energy Transitions in European Cities will be of great interest to scholars of energy policy, urban governance and sustainability transitions.

1 Network governance in urban sustainability transitions

Introduction

This chapter presents the development of the concepts of networks and governance in public policy-making and implementation, and links the different perspectives emerging from this field to the use of network governance in theories and frameworks for governing urban sustainability transitions. The term ‘governance’ is used to refer to the outcome of all coordination mechanisms developing from hierarchical, market-style and network interactions among multiple actors throughout this book (Meuleman, 2008; Torfing, 2012). In contrast, ‘network governance’ is understood as a process that emerges from interactions (e.g. collaboration, negotiation or bargaining) among network actors as a horizontal mode of coordination (Rhodes, 1997; Klijn and Skelcher, 2007). The ‘network’ (governance network) denotes the set of (public or private) actors connected through the web of interactions (Torfing, 2005).

The importance of facilitating interactions and network forms of governance among societal actors as a form of coordination is often emphasised in studies on urban sustainability transitions. Here, two specific approaches are discussed in detail which explicitly refer to networks in governing low-carbon transitions: Transition Management (Loorbach, 2010; Nevens et al., 2013; Wittmayer et al., 2018) and the intermediation perspective (Hodson, Marvin and Bulkeley, 2013; Kivimaa et al., 2019). However, the role of local contextual factors in terms of their impact on network structures and processes, and by extension the potential of governance networks to support low-carbon transitions, remains unaddressed. This leads to a risk of potentially overestimating the impact that governance networks can deliver in different cities, without sufficiently engaging with the conditions necessary for them to function well (Lewis, 2011; Nochta and Skelcher, 2020).

In order to unpack this issue, the chapter reviews the emergence of network forms of governance in academic research and practice from a historical perspective. It presents the different ways in which network concepts have appeared in public policy-making and implementation, such as policy networks, inter-organisational (service delivery) and collaborative inter-governmental networks. Building a more nuanced understanding of networks and governance is important to highlight gaps in the conceptualisation of networks and the network mode of governance in the literature on urban sustainability transitions. The identified gaps form the basis of the research agenda set out to be addressed through the comparative analysis of the case studies of low-carbon transition networks in three European cities.

The emergence of the network concept – a historical overview

The shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ in the field of public policy and administration refers to a move away from the state-centric hierarchical model towards a more polycentric social-organisational context in which a multiplicity of state and non-state actors participate in the formulation and implementation of public policy (Mayntz, 2019). Historically, the hierarchical model of public policy-making and implementation, based on the centrality of the state, was predominant in the post-war era Europe and North America. Here, the state was conceptualised as a sovereign entity, governing through command-and-control mechanisms (Bevir and Rhodes, 2016). Starting from the 1970s, parallel developments including the advancement of social science research, technological progress and periodic economic crises contributed to a shift in thinking about the role of the state in society in conjunction with the emergence of the view that the welfare state had become overloaded, unaffordable and ineffective (Bevir, 2011). The task set out, therefore, was to ‘modernise’ the public sector through the adoption of techniques borrowed from the market to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of the state (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011).

Market-style reforms were aimed at focusing state operations on core tasks and responsibilities, and introducing a managerial approach to public administration. Seeking improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, these ‘managerial reforms’ (or ‘New Public Management’; Dunleavy and Hood, 1994) included the internal restructuring of the public sector through separating politics (strategy) and administration (execution), and dividing large organisations into small, specialised units. In terms of process, public service provision was to be improved through introducing performance-oriented evaluation (output measurement and key performance indicators) and creating individualised incentives for public managers (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Regarding the role of the public sector vis-à-vis the private domain, the routine contracting-out of service provision outside the identified core services contributed to a blurring of boundaries between the public and private spheres (Homburg, Pollitt and van Thiel, 2007). The privatisation of state assets created new revenue flows and boosted the public budget. The role of the public sector has been reoriented towards a steering role of safeguarding free and fair market competition and consumer rights. Citizens in these new arrangements have been redefined as ‘service users’ or ‘customers’. Although the reforms have initially concentrated on the Anglo-Saxon world from where they had originated, over time and in diverse forms they spread to other countries, creating location-specific combinations with different cultures and structures of governing (Pollitt, 2003).

It took a few decades for the shortcomings and limitations of the reforms to become more apparent. Managerial reforms are still being implemented in different places and policy domains today. In recent years, however, a variety of critical debates emerged centred on the unintended consequences such as decreased coordination capacity in the fragmented organisational landscape (Skelcher, 2000), and shortcomings in terms of accountability and the democratic quality in policy-making (Kersbergen and Waarden, 2004; Drechsler, 2005). Coupled with the effects of globalisation (i.e. increased collaboration and exchange between nation states), heightened awareness of the complexities involved in decision-making processes, and the changing societal perceptions about the role of public and private actors in public policy-making and implementation, these problems once again opened the way towards a quest for new forms of societal organising (Torfing, 2005).

In response, concepts of governance, networks, partnerships and participation started emerging in key debates around public policy and implementation from around the millennium (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011). Termed collectively as ‘New Public Governance’, this wave of ideas is ‘predicated upon the existence of a plural state and a pluralist state and seeks to understand the development and implementation of public policy in this context’ (Osborne, 2010, p. 7). These developments led Rhodes (1996) to conclude that hierarchies (based on command-and-control mechanisms), markets (based on free competition) and networks (based on interactions such as deliberation, negotiation, collaboration or bargaining) constitute three ideal types of governing modes, from which governments can choose according to the particular task or problem at hand. However, the extent to which these three different approaches can be deployed independently of one another in practice, and the impact this has on the outcomes of real-world decision-making processes, remains unclear.

Different perspectives on the role of networks in governance

A large body of academic and practice-oriented literature exists which investigates issues of the dispersion of power, authority and resources, and the related processes of participation, collaboration, conflict and coordination. Klijn and Koppenjan (2015) argue that the literature that is relevant to network forms of governance is concentrated around three central foci of policy networks, inter-organisational delivery networks and collaborative/inter-governmental governance (cf. Bevir and Richards, 2009). These different perspectives have their origins in different research fields – political science, organisational science and public administration respectively.

First, the policy network perspective investigates networks of actors involved in, and their influence on, particular policies or policy-making in specific domains/sectors, problematising access, mobilisation, power and influence (Börzel, 1998). It therefore emphasises differentiation between more or less powerful actors, and vertical links and flows of influence among them, rather than horizontal collaboration. Consequently, policy networks do not necessarily result in network governance as a mode of horizontal coordination (Lewis, 2011, p. 1222). This observation is particularly relevant to the sustainability domain in which networks may refer to interest groups that gather around key government departments and exert their influence over climate change politics. Networks are thus seen as vehicles for dominant actors – who most often have an economic interest in the fossil-fuel industry in some shape or form – to exert their influence over policy in an attempt to block outcomes that may have a negative impact on the economy and their profits (see for example Bulkeley, 2000).

Second, the inter-organisational (service delivery) perspective has been most prevalent in the United States, focusing mainly on networks in policy implementation and integrated service delivery (Provan and Milward, 2001). Here, network interactions are seen as being facilitated by interdependencies in terms of resources, responsibilities and tasks in a fragmented organisational context. They may also be mandated and/or overseen by higher-level governmental bodies (Provan and Kenis, 2008). The structural characteristics of the network are important in conjunction with their role in effective and efficient implementation and delivery. Related to the sustainability domain, this type of interpretation of the network governance concept has been used extensively to study inter-organisational emergency management networks in which relationships among different organisations are produced and maintained by the particular need for coordinated responses to natural disasters (Kapucu et al., 2010; Kapucu and Demiroz, 2017).

Third, the empirical focus of the research on collaborative / inter-governmental governance networks is the emergence of collaborative decision-making processes in situations where no functioning hierarchical order exists, i.e. in spaces characterised as ‘institutional voids’ (Hajer, 2003). The weak and/or absent hierarchies allow for horizontal relationships and collaboration-type interactions to emerge among network participants (Scharpf, 2001). In the sustainability domain, the management of environmental resources which cross national boundaries has become a key focus for research on collaborative inter-governmental governance. Here, network settings give rise to processes of information‐sharing, capacity‐building and rule‐setting in order to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes (for an example see Gerlak, 2015).

Whilst acknowledging that, in certain domains, policy-making, implementation and service delivery a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Network governance in urban sustainability transitions
• 2 Analysing energy transition networks in Birmingham, Frankfurt and Budapest
• 3 Case study I: Energy transitions in Birmingham
• 4 Case study II: Energy transitions in Frankfurt
• 5 Case study III: Energy transitions in Budapest
• 6 Contextualising energy transition networks
• Appendix I: Details of primary data collection and analysis
• Appendix II: Network analysis: Actor centrality scores (coregroups)
• Index