Networked Governance

BA thesis, 2016

Innovative architecture and networks for learner-centred, local education and life-long-learning are receiving growing attention. Yet, practitioners still require practical guidance, given the challenge of involving and interacting with new and diverse stake-holder groups, such as architects and politicians, or the community at large. With the goal of advancing scientific and practical frameworks, this thesis approaches how stakeholders in ‘education-centred urban development’ (ECUD) can be helped to accomplish mutual understanding and more effective communication and interaction during planning. Assuming the organizational theory of ‘networked governance’ (NG), a literature re-view is conducted across ‘institutional learning space development’ (ILSD) and the ‘learning city / region’ discourse (LCR), in order to discuss stakeholder involvement in planning. Six key themes are summarized and tested against a case study of ‘Hume Global Learning Village’ (HGLV), Australia, using a document analysis and expert online interviews. The review finds the following themes: First, the concepts of ILSD and ECUD can be very abstract to comprehend, and stakeholders’ varied understandings of ‘learning’ demands an open, continuous dialogue. Next, individual leadership needs to initiate a vision, and multiply buy-in and followers. Securing sustainable funding sources is a precondition to foster participation and commitment. Long-standing organizational ‘silo-thinking’ has to be opened up towards cultures of sharing, collaboration, and innovation. Facilitation capacities are crucial to provide an inclusive planning process where con-sent and commitment is fostered. Lastly, change and positive learning effects may take a long time to show – this expectation has to be internalized by all stakeholders. Despite few optimal interview sources, the case study confirms the themes, and illustrates that excess leadership can ensure the other conditions. This suggests that the six themes can serve as a framework for practitioners to conduct successful stake-holder involvement in planning. However, they are not unique among good-case literature. Moreover, the review shows a literature gap in how a suitable degree of stakeholder involvement can be selected. It is recommended to consolidate the various, alternative planning processes and models, and further triangulate local experiences, in order to close this gap and derive more comprehensive and universal tools for practitioners.

Globally, sex workers have highlighted the harms that accompany anti-prostitution efforts advanced via anti-trafficking policy, and there is a growing body of social science research that has emerged documenting how anti-trafficking efforts contribute to carceral and sexual humanitarian interventions. Yet mounting evidence on the harms of anti-trafficking policies has done little to quell the passage of more laws, including policies aimed at stopping sexual exploitation facilitated by technology. The 2018 passage of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the corresponding Senate bill, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), is a case study in how efforts to curb sexual exploitation online actually heighten vulnerabilities for the people they purport to protect. Drawing on 34 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with sex workers and trafficked persons (n = 58) and key informants (n = 20) in ...

During the past twenty years all over Europe the proliferation of networked governance forms can be experienced, which do not harmonise with statutory state spaces. Parallel with this, in the planning theory, there is a discussion about the modernisation of planning and the birth of new spatial categories. 'Soft spaces', make state boundaries fuzzy and allow the space construction for public-private networks. The precondition of this process has been the rescaling of the state territories and the decentralisation or devolution of state power to new, multi-scalar spatial entities. This also means that sub-national governments, city-regions have been mobilised and were given new fields of action for the assertion of their interests, while national governments have kept their control over them.
The paper will reveal the different characteristics of territorial governance efforts in CEE, especially in Hungary compared to highly developed countries. Significant hindrances in adaptation of governance structures can be recognised horizontally on the one hand, and weak vertical connections between the different political levels, owing to the rejection of decentralisation by the state, on the other hand. The analysis based on the institutional and regulatory environment proves the lack of desired authorisation of the local and subnational levels for network-building and taking part in the national planning scheme.

Fragmentation of power and responsibility due to a constantly growing networked landscape of governmental bodies is one of the characteristics that lead to a complex environment for civil servants. This paper explores jazz improvisation as a possible coping mechanism for this complexity and has synthesised five cohesive preconditions for civil servants. The correlation beyond the metaphor of jazz improvisation is in the highly trained abilities of both musicians and civil servants, who operate in dynamic environments, to demand constant and swift assessments on public responsibility, leadership, control and to the end, achieve a qualitative performance. The individual qualities, interrelationships, repetitive nature and strong leadership found in jazz improvisation are of added value, generating the flexibility to anticipate and react on current and changing conditions that these complex governance networks demand. It also showed the possible interpretation of options to express creativity through the medium of established works and rules in compositions and arrangements. The lessons drawn from jazz improvisation create opportunities and challenges for further research on the possibilities and effectiveness of renewed skills for civil servants.