by Nicolai De Wulf, Joris Voets and Astrid Molenveld
Cities nowadays are confronted with a wide range of complex societal issues and, correspondingly, the expectations and challenges for local governments have grown. Within this context, they are often praised for their dynamism and their ability to achieve results. As a consequence, local governments often enjoy a large degree of trust from their citizens. But what are the barriers local policy makers face when trying to coordinate and integrate policies? Our recent article in Policy & Politics, entitled ‘Policy coordination and integration in local government: perspectives on barriers’ shows that three distinct perspectives emerge, which we describe in more detail below.
Complex societal issues mentioned are difficult to approach from within one single policy domain. Take, for example, the issue of sustainable mobility, which encompasses mobility, sustainability and the environment, urban planning, the local economy and so forth. Policy issues that span multiple policy domains (horizontally), also involve multiple political and administrative actors and interests (vertically). As such, complex societal issues challenge the traditional modes of collaboration between politics and administration.
So in order to achieve policy coordination and integration when dealing with such complex policy issues, it’s crucial to understand the barriers perceived by local policy makers, both political and administrative. From our research , using Q-methodology, three distinct perspectives emerged.
The first and dominant perspective focussed on the relationship with the central government(s). Respondents from this view reported that, although local governments have gradually been delegated a growing array of tasks, activities and powers, the necessary funding has not always followed. In addition, the institutional environment is very complex to deal with, so local policy makers have to bring together often conflicting relevant departments across multiple institutional levels. Moreover, cities would benefit from having fewer politicians in their executives, as the resulting fragmentation of these additional responsibilities does not enable a holistic approach to policy making.
The second perspective pertains to ‘political stress’, or in other words, stress within the politics of the city. Voter volatility and permanent electoral stress negatively affects the city policy makers’ capacity to focus on longer term aims. Furthermore, combative party politics make it more difficult to operate as a collective in coalition governments. During the interviews, the negative impact of social media was also stressed, reinforcing the preference for short-term policy goals.
Thirdly, the ‘core administration perspective’ was led by a rule-driven and internally oriented role of Chief Administrative Officer, rather than a more dynamic and policy-oriented approach. This, in combination with an overestimation of the capacity of the administration, led to politico-administrative tensions.
Overall, our research findings showed that effective policy coordination and integration are not merely an internal, technocratic matter of applying the right policy tool, instrument or measure to a certain policy issue. We urge future research to adopt a holistic approach, taking into account external factors (e.g. other levels of government and contingency factors such as social media), as these have been shown to have a significant impact.
The first author of this study, Nicolai De Wulf, is a PhD student at the Department of Governance and Management at Ghent University, Belgium. You can follow his work via LinkedIN and Twitter.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics:
De Wulf, N., Voets, J., & Molenveld, A. (2023). Policy coordination and integration in local government: perspectives on barriers, Policy & Politics, 51(3), 530-549 from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16844319692777
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Gibson, M., van Lier, F., & Carter, E. (2023). Tracing 25 years of ‘initiativitis’ in central government attempts to join up local public services in England, Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2023) from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16837266852569
Heinmiller, B. T. (2023). Advocacy coalitions, power and policy change, Policy & Politics, 51(1), 28-46 from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16569341758199
Wagner, P. M., Ocelík, P., Gronow, A., Ylä-Anttila, T., & Metz, F. (2023). Challenging the insider outsider approach to advocacy: how collaboration networks and belief similarities shape strategy choices, Policy & Politics, 51(1), 47-70 from https://doi.org/10.1332/030557322X16681603168232
