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Understanding Good Urban Governance:

Essentials, Shifts, and Values
Article in Urban Affairs Review · July 2014

DOI: 10.1177/1078087413511782
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Understanding Good Urban Governance: Essentials, Shifts, and

Values
Frank Hendriks
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Essentials, Shifts, and uar.sagepub.com
Values
Frank Hendriks1
Abstract
Building on the relevant international literature, as well as empirical research
on urban cases, this article determines and discusses five core values of
good urban governance: responsiveness, effectiveness, procedural justice,
resilience, and counterbalance. The quest for good governance can take
various forms. This article focuses on urban governance, and identifies four
different shifts, with increased emphasis on the real decision makers or the
ordinary citizens, with increased attention to selective choice or integrative
deliberation as modes of urban governance. Urban governance and good
urban governance are not synonymous. This article advocates critical
reflection, moving beyond the performance bias that tends to accompany
governance reform.
Keywords
urban governance, good governance, democracy, rule of law, responsiveness,
effectiveness, procedural justice, resilience, counterbalance, urban regime,
urban market, urban trust, urban platform.
Good Urban Governance Revisited

This article combines discussions about urban governance with discourse on
good governance, taking the latter back into the urban realm. Contemporary
1Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
Corresponding Author:
Frank Hendriks, Public Administration, Tilburg School of Politics and Public Administration,
Tilburg University, Warandelaan 2, Tilburg 5037 AB, Netherlands.
Email: F.Hendriks@uvt.nl

554 Urban Affairs Review 50(4)
urban cases are, thus, connected to the long-standing debate, in which the
Italian town of Siena plays a pivotal role.
In the Siena town hall, we find the world-famous fourteenth-century paint-
ings by Lorenzetti depicting the precepts and effects of good governance in
the city. The painting Effeti del Buon Governo in Città shows citizens living
peacefully together, engaging in transactions and alliances. Lorenzetti sug-
gests that these good effects follow from “good governance,” illustrated by
his Allegoria del Buon Governo in Città. This painting nicely exemplifies
that good governance is more than “doing good things.” Good governance is
about doing things in a sound institutional setup, characterized by effective
checks and balances and countervailing powers—as we have subsequently
come to call them in the wider framework of the democratic rule of law. As a
medieval artist, Lorenzetti did, of course, not use these terms but worked with
images. His allegory of good governance depicts a diversified institutional
setting that knows no absolute power, but power checked by Lady Justice as
well as a train of free citizens, and led by cardinal virtues such as prudence,
temperance, magnanimity, and fortitude.
If we were to make a Buon Governo in Città for today’s urban areas, what
should we highlight as essential? What qualities and characteristics of urban
governance need to be stressed? In addressing this question—in social sci-
ence language rather than painting—this article will link up with the relevant
literature, which has gone through a much-discussed “shift from government
to governance” (Bevir 2010; Kjaer 2004; Pierre 2000; Rhodes 1996, 2000)
and appears to be witnessing a further shift from governance to “good gover-
nance” (Ahrens, Weingarth, and Caspers 2010; Bovaird and Löffler 2003;
Mulgan 2006; Rothstein and Teorell 2008).
The aim of this article is not to present an exhaustive overview of all the
literature on governance and good governance. The aim is, more modestly, to
determine the essential elements and dimensions of urban governance and to
develop a framework for understanding good urban governance. The relevant
international literature constitutes a means to this end, in addition to empiri-
cal research into the quest for good governance (QGG) in a series of Dutch
cities.1
Although the terminology on governance has its shortcomings (more
about this in the next section), it has two major advantages for present pur-
poses. First of all, the governance concept calls our attention to the fact that
governing in the urban realm involves more than “city hall” as a metaphor for
monocentric government in the city. “Local government” is no more (and no
less) than one constituent part of “urban governance.” Second, and perhaps
more importantly, if we widen the concept of governance to “good gover-
nance,” this will encourage us to reflect more systematically on what quality

Hendriks 555
is in the art of administration, opening the door to a rich and diversified

understanding of administrative value(s). The urban realm is a suitable test-
ing ground for doing so (Pierre 2005; Stoker 2000).
Urban Governance: Essential Features

As a theoretical construct, “governance” has all the characteristics of a con-
tainer concept. It contains a lot, and it is hard to tell where it exactly begins
and ends. In Public Administration, not the only discipline that works with
the concept, governance usually refers to the steering of service domains or
problem areas characterized by interdependence among various involved
parties and organizations (Kjaer 2004; Rhodes 2007). The often invoked
image in governance discourse is that of a hampered government system,
characterized by limited steering capacity, far removed of a steering monop-
oly (Hajer and Wagenaar 2003; Pierre 2000; Swyndegouw 2005). Alternative
steering models would be indispensable in the light of profound technologi-
cal, economic, and social transformations (Rhodes 1997). This would drive
the fundamental shift “from government to governance,” whereby the former
is understood as vertical, monocentric, and unilateral steering, and the latter
horizontal, pluricentric, and multilateral (Bevir 2010; Pierre 2000).
In the international literature, the general concept of “governance” has
acquired a great many definitions, some of which do and some of which do
not coincide (Rhodes 2000). All those definitions will not be reproduced
here. The aim is the reduction, not the reproduction, of complexity. Here, the
concept of—urban—governance refers to the more or less institutionalized
working arrangements that shape productive and corrective capacities in
dealing with—urban—steering issues involving multiple governmental and
nongovernmental actors. The following subsections will give some further
explication of the essential elements of this definition.
Working Arrangements, More or Less Institutionalized

Governance literature and practice show that working arrangements may be
of very different kinds. Government does not always play a leading role in
this. Sometimes government barely seems to matter: “governing without
government” as Rhodes (1996) called this in a famous and controversial
phrase (cf. Peters and Pierre 1998). In the urban realm, one might think of the
residents’ associations that govern and manage certain neighborhoods in Los
Angeles seemingly by themselves. Local government in the traditional sense
seems to play a relatively modest role indeed, but even here it has not disap-
peared out of the picture altogether. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD),

to mention just one department, can still intervene, even when private secu-
rity does a lot of the day-to-day surveillance.
“Governance without a lot of government” is by no means the only theo-
retical variant. Lowndes and Skelcher (1998), Pierre and Peters (2000),
Kooiman (2003), Bovaird (2005), and others distinguished different “modes
of governance,” which would include “networks,” “markets,” and “hierar-
chies.” These are three basic modalities that occur in various blends in exist-
ing urban governance models. In the Los Angeles blend of urban governance,
the market mechanism and the mode of self-organization are comparatively
more prominent than, for example, in the Dutch mixture of governance
modalities, in which government and top-down planning remain relatively
important (Hendriks and Musso 2004).
In a realistic approach to urban governance, government and hierarchy
may be downplayed, as city hall is indeed not a city’s control center, but they
cannot be defined away altogether (Stoker 2011). The idea that modern gov-
ernance is a web of purely horizontal, nonhierarchical relations is an unreal-
istic one, as is the idea that working arrangements in dealing with public
problems could be purely nonformal, without any official strings attached.
Governance is a compound of both horizontal and vertical, both nonformal
and formal arrangements that have structural significance for public issues,
here in the urban realm (cf. Haus, Heinelt, and Stewart 2005; Peters and
Pierre 1998; Stoker 1998).
To do something in a particular way, for a limited amount of time (ad hoc),
does not yet amount to “governance.” This would require some regularity, a
certain level of institutionalization. The working arrangements of urban gov-
ernance can be understood as institutions in the sense of “rules in use” (E.
Ostrom 2005).
Productive and Corrective Capacity in Multi-actor Settings

The focus is on working arrangements that shape productive and corrective
capacity in dealing with—urban—issues by multiple (non)governmental
parties. This involves, on one hand, the mobilization of organizing and per-
forming abilities, and, on the other, the mobilization of controlling and
counterbalancing abilities.
Contemporary literature on urban governance tends to focus mostly on
productive capacity, on the working arrangements that are instrumental in the
production of public goods and services, in getting things done in the urban
realm. A good example is the urban regime approach by Stone (1989, 2006).
With his seminal study on Atlanta, Stone (1989) cut right across the “com-
munity power debate” between elitists and pluralists. In Stone’s view, both

Hendriks 557
these parties were too obsessed with power over (who was having power over
whom), rather than with power to (how are things actually accomplished?).
Flyvbjerg (1998), in his detailed study of Aalborg, Denmark, indeed observed
that the heart of the matter was not so much “Who governs?” but more “How
is the governing being done?” and how is power being executed in this.
Although just as important, the issue of how checks and balances and
countervailing powers are institutionalized has received less attention in
today’s urban governance literature. These issues are usually associated with
national constitutions. Yet discourse on corrective capacity originated in
highly polycentric urban domains. As highlighted in the introduction, the
allegory Buon Governo in Città was all about the checks and balances pro-
vided by institutions and powers around the government of a city like Siena,
comparable with cities like Florence, Genua, Venice, and other city-states
(Finer 1999). One of the most spectacular examples of “multiactor gover-
nance” in a sprawling “urban field”’ manifested itself still earlier: Republican
Rome (not to be confused with the latter-day Empire).2
It is remarkable and a pity that, in the contemporary debate on urban gov-
ernance, the framing of checks and balances is given less consideration than
in the current discourse on corporate governance, in which the “constitu-
tional” relations between CEOs, boards of directors, supervisory boards,
assemblies of shareholders, and other stakeholders have been hotly debated
(Pietrancosta 2009). In urban governance, there are many fragmented
“offices” that can and should be understood in terms of countervailing forces:
local councils, neighborhood councils, mayor and aldermen, urban district
coordinators, higher level co-governments, civil service departments, ombud-
spersons, audit committees, housing corporations, welfare organizations,
community work agencies, municipal advisory councils, chambers of com-
merce, residents’ organizations, neighborhood management companies, indi-
vidual citizens, and so on. Their added value should be assessed not only in
productive or instrumental terms but also in terms of corrective capacity (cf.
V. Ostrom 1982).
Shifts in Urban Governance: Main Directions

One of the clichés of contemporary Public Administration is the so-called, and
presumably relatively recent, “shift from government to governance.” Such a
dichotomous “from A-to-B” scheme is a misrepresentation of reality. As said,
ancient Rome and the city-states of Northern Italy already displayed a lot of
governance. The same could be said of the equally polycentric urban field of
the seventeenth-century Dutch Republic (Israel 1995). So, urban governance
is far from new, although it is real, important, and constantly developing.

Figure 1. Shifts in urban governance.
Another thing that we should be aware of is that, in today’s urban arena,

there is still a substantial role cut out for government within the context of
urban governance. City hall is not the city’s “cockpit” where all the steering
comes from, but mayors, city councils, and other official actors, some of
them supra-local, continue to play a role that often goes beyond the “shadow
of hierarchy” metaphor coined by Scharpf (1997). The building of an urban
ring road still needs public funding, the development of a new business park
depends on zoning, and the weaker parties in the proverbial urban jungle still
rely on government protection and support.
Rather than thinking in terms of a singular replacement of one thing by
another, we should be thinking in terms of varied shifts in more or less insti-
tutionalized working arrangements, involving both new and old types of
steering, both nonformal and formal rules, and both horizontal and vertical
types of relationships.
Tracking Urban Governance: A Typology

Varied shifts in working arrangements were clearly visible in the Dutch QGG
research, on which the argument here is partly based (see Note 1; Hendriks
and Drosterij 2012). Dutch cases of urban governance, extensively analyzed
in the QGG research, will serve to illustrate the typology of shifts in urban
governance proposed in Figure 1, but this typology has heuristic value for
tracing such shifts in urban fields elsewhere in the Western world.3 Emerging

Hendriks 559
modalities of urban governance in places like Berlin, Milan, Ghent, Dublin,

Munich, and Melbourne can and will be linked to the ideal-typical patterns
proposed below.
To make sense of contemporary shifts in urban governance, Figure 1 dis-
tinguishes between four main directions in which such shifts can be traced:
•• There may be increased attention to and emphasis on “real decision

makers”—social and economic elites—in the urban realm (A) or, con-
versely, on “ordinary citizens” in the various neighborhoods and dis-
tricts (B).
•• There may be increased attention to and emphasis on “integrative
deliberation” as a more communicative, comprehensive way of
approaching alternatives and making collective decisions (C), or, con-
versely, on “selective choice” as a more competitive, exclusive mecha-
nism for weeding out the options and getting to public choice (D).
Track A, emphasizing real decision makers, is founded on the idea that, if

you really want to accomplish anything in the urban domain, you need to
accost the business elites and other key figures in society and involve them in
decision-making processes (cf. Hunter 1953; Lauria 1997; Stone 1989).
Track B, stressing ordinary citizens, proceeds from the idea that democratic
government should not only be for citizens but also by citizens and that the
widespread tendency to govern while ignoring citizens themselves ought to
be rectified as much as possible (Box 1998; Hoggart and Clark 2000;
Swyndegouw 2005).
Track C, focusing on more integrative deliberation as a mode of coordina-
tion, is a response to the feeling that a DAD (Decide-Announce-Defend) type
of rule is outmoded and that talking things through is a better response to
complex issues; the round table is an apt metaphor here for a more delibera-
tive, communicative, and comprehensive mode of decision making (Berry,
Portney, and Thompson 1993; Goodin 2008; Uitermark and Duyvendak
2008). Track D, underlining more selective choice, could be captured in the
metaphor of free nature, comprising the evolutionary logic of natural selec-
tion. It is founded on the conviction that it is better to have the free play of
forces do the weeding-out than to expect loquacious conference rooms or
integral planning cycles to do the work (cf. V. Ostrom 1973; Sunstein 2008;
Surowiecki 2004).
Following and combining such tracks, urban governance in a particular
area may distinguish itself from other areas, which is not to say that it will be
completely distinctive. There are, for instance, almost always planners and
other policy specialists active in urban governance, and there is bound to be

a minimum of rules and regulations for urban planning almost everywhere.

Figure 1 abstracts from these commonalities and focuses on the divergence in
urban governance: comparatively strong tendencies to involve real decision
makers or ordinary citizens, to rely on selective choice or integrative delib-
eration. Four ideal-typical combinations of such tendencies will be discussed
below, but beforehand, it should be noted that these are indeed ideal types to
which realities can be compared but never reduced. Some urban areas show
not a lot of these tendencies—think about some French departments where
official rule tends to dominate—while other areas display a great deal, pos-
sibly even a variety of types. But to detect such idiosyncrasies, we first need
more analytical clarity.
The Urban Market

Combining a distinctive individual citizens orientation (B) with a marked
leaning to a selective mode of choice (D) gives us, in Figure 1, the ideal type
of the “urban market” (II). While market-like governance was surely boosted
by Anglo-American New Public Management, which has gained a lot of
ground over the past two decades, it cannot be simply reduced to it. Already
in the early 1960s, well before the advent of New Public Management as we
now know it, V. Ostrom demonstrated how metropolitan governance in the
United States was strongly predicated on transactional relations between
decentered suppliers of public goods on one hand and individualized choices
of citizens on the other (V. Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren 1961; cf. Keating
1991; Toonen 2010). Individual choices of this type are not free of socioeco-
nomic pressures. The urban market tends to be selective rather than compre-
hensive (choices shall be made).
The contemporary customer choice arrangements described by Pierre
(2000) connect to this variant, as do the many forms of comparative assess-
ment in which public goods, services, policies, and providers are being rated,
ranked—and, thus, indirectly steered—by citizens cum consumers. The pub-
lic domain is viewed here as a marketplace, and the citizen is seen as the
central, demanding actor vis-à-vis a scattered supply of public goods and
services. The urban market hinges on direct consumer input and critical feed-
back related to delivered output.
In urban-market governance, citizens “vote” with their feet, hands, purses,
Facebook likes, and other electronic thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The actors
competing for these “votes” can not only be exogenous providers, but they
can also be citizens themselves. An example is provided by the town of
Dordrecht in the Netherlands with its participatory budgeting project Citizens
Turn! This initiative allows ordinary citizens to submit proposals for their
neighborhood, which are then trimmed down to just a few winning proposals

Hendriks 561
in voting procedure that is competitive and exclusionary at the same time

(Boluijt, Drosterij, and Hendriks 2012a). Boroughs in the city of Berlin pro-
vide similar choice mechanisms, embedded in a wider process of participa-
tory budgeting (Franzke 2007).
Electronic “information markets” as described by Surowiecki (2004, pp.
79–83) and Sunstein (2008, pp. 103–45)—in which many individual “bets”
are aggregated to a collective assessment—are not (yet) common in urban
governance. In theory, they can help in predicting, for instance, the use of a
new metro line, the cost of developing a new town square, or other urban
developments about which people have dispersed independent and real bits
of information.
The Urban Regime

The ideal type of the urban regime (I) combines a distinctive focus on real
decision makers (A) with a selective way of making deals and taking deci-
sions in the urban arena (D). In Stone’s version of an urban regime, the selec-
tion mechanism is highly implicit and quasi-evolutionary. Only a small
selection of societal and political elites—the strongest parties with the most
scarce and vital resources—“survive” the process of regime formation. They
seek each other out and enter into a rather exclusive and long-standing joint
venture, as the black political elite and the white business elite did in Atlanta.
Not only their alliance but also their agenda was selective (Stone 1989). For
a European example, we can look at the joint venture of “port barons” and
political top dogs that drove the immense growth of the Port of Rotterdam in
the postwar period (C. Wagenaar 1992).
In the Dutch QGG research, a version of an urban regime was found in the
case of Brainport Eindhoven, with a select gathering of urban government
officials and top dogs from major knowledge institutions and knowledge-
intensive businesses (most notably Philips) collaborating to boost the knowl-
edge economy in the Eindhoven area (Van Ostaaijen and Schaap 2012). The
Brainport regime has a marked elitist and instrumentalist focus in common
with the urban regime type found in places like Atlanta and Chicago (Stone
1989, 2006) but is explicitly “tripartite” where the American cases typically
bring two different worlds together. The quasi-corporatist, tripartite twist to
the urban regime is also visible in another European case: the Northern-Milan
Development Agency working on the basis of a three-party agreement, forged
in the 1990s, between state government, trade unions, and private-sector rep-
resentatives (Gualini 2005).
An urban regime can be highly productive, but the social and political
legitimation tends to be problematic, as Stone (1989) frankly acknowledged.
There is little room for ordinary citizens, but this is not to say that the urban

regime only serves the interests of the city’s top dogs; their connected power
is not so much “power over” (controlling) but rather “power to” (productive),
and this may well be in the citizen’s best interest—at least, according to urban
regime theory (cf. DiGaetano and Klemanski 1993; Harding 1994; Lauria
1997; Stoker 1995; Stone 1989).
The Urban Trust

Combining a strong focus on a decision-making elite (A) with an emphasis
on a more integrative and deliberative approach (C) produces the heuristic
type of the urban trust (III). The urban trust brings “trustees” of a wider range
of interested parties together in a more communicative and inclusive fashion
than the urban regime. An apt illustration is the Let’s Make This Town
Together initiative in the Dutch city of Zwolle (Boluijt, Drosterij, and
Hendriks 2012b). The definition of “Together” accommodates a wide array
of constituencies and institutions. One of these is the city library, an institu-
tion that would be an unlikely candidate for participation in an American-
style urban regime. Citizens, however, remain in the background; much is
expected from cooperating trustees.
The urban trust finds a good breeding ground in the constitutional setting
of the European Rhineland, where consensualism, consociationalism, power-
dispersal, and power-sharing are strongly institutionalized (Daalder 1987;
Lijphart 1999). Another good illustration is the ROM (Ruimtelijke Ordening
en Milieu) network developed in and around the Belgian city of Ghent (De
Rynck and Voets 2005). This is typically a multilevel and multisectoral net-
work, connecting not only leading figures of various levels of government
with responsibilities in the canal area of Ghent but also many stakeholders
with economic, environmental, and spatial interests. The name of the game is
“integral planning,” and the approach is comparatively inclusive. The ROM
initiative has won a number of prizes in spatial planning, and is generally
perceived as a successful cooperative, but De Rynck and Voets (2005, pp.
177–82) also noted that citizens were far removed from the deliberations,
which tended to “fly over their heads” at a high level of abstraction and
technicality.
The urban trust model may find fertile soil in the European Rhineland, but
it is not confined to it. The SPCs (Strategic Planning Committees) developed
in a city like Dublin, Ireland, come remarkably close to its logic (Callahan
2005; Loughlin 2011). SPCs can work for various purposes (economic devel-
opment, transport, housing, environmental and general services), but they are
always composed of political representatives (two-thirds local councilors,
9–12 members) and representatives of various social interests (one-third
societal stakeholders, 3–4 members). This governance model reaches out to

Hendriks 563
civil society, but it does not come as close to the citizenry as the urban plat-
form aspires to come (Noveck 2009; H. Wagenaar and Duiveman 2012).
The Urban Platform

In the ideal type of the urban platform (IV), a marked emphasis on integration
and deliberation (C) is combined with a strong focus on ordinary citizens in
neighborhoods and the city at large (B). The public realm is envisioned as a
wide and open platform on which everyone—emphatically also the individ-
ual citizen—can have a say. The urban platform revolves around dialogue,
not contest; it institutionalizes a comprehensive rather than exclusive
approach to alternatives and collective decisions (cf. Box 1998; Fung 2004;
Goodin 2008).
Dutch towns know many variations on this theme. A nice example from
the QGG research is the Neighborhood Tables initiative in Breda, a citizen
participation project involving residents, housing corporations, and the local
council. Neighborhood Tables aim to draw policy makers and citizens closer
together and to improve mutual understanding, general levels of knowledge,
and mutual perceptions in neighborhoods where such Tables are held. The
Neighborhood Tables initiative suits the increasing consideration given to
“interactive communication” and “appreciative inquiry” in this town (Van
Ostaaijen and Drosterij 2011). It can be viewed as an expression of the so-
called “third generation of citizen participation,” which brings government
officials and citizens together with an increasing emphasis on the latter (cf. H.
Wagenaar and Duiveman 2012).
Neighborhood Tables are a smaller-scale alternative to the Neighborhood
Councils that have developed in many cities, ranging from Portland and Los
Angeles in the United States to Lille and Munich in Europe (Berry, Portney,
and Thompson 1993; Cole 2011; Musso et al. 2006). Munich is an example
of a city that has widely and consistently invested in the urban platform not
only through its Neighborhood Councils but also through the “Munich
Forum,” an open platform for deliberation about the entire city and its neigh-
borhoods since 1968, when grassroots protest triggered the establishment of
such an arrangement (Hendriks 1999a, pp. 169–72). More recently, Melbourne
has developed a Planning Wiki, integrating new web-based technology and
social media, in an attempt to generate wider public input and creativity in
urban design (Noveck 2009).
Whether such shifts in governance actually manage to get any closer to
good governance is, of course, another matter. The idea that governance is
good in itself—and that, therefore, governance and good governance are
practically synonymous—is a fallacy: Varieties of governance may work

well in the urban domain but need not do so at all. This requires critical
reflection, informed by essential quality standards.
Good Urban Governance: Core Values

The “goodness” of governance cannot be taken for granted but should time
and again be assessed in connection to a solid frame of reference. This goes
for the urban domain as well as for any other field of public concern (Ahrens,
Weingarth, and Caspers 2010; Andrews 2010; Mulgan 2006).
The simplest definition of good governance is: governance that qualifies
as good for some reason. An instance of urban governance could be qualified
as good to the extent in which the pertaining working arrangements operate
well with regard to essential quality standards. But what are these? Debates
in public administration on this issue tend to be wide-ranging, mentioning a
great many things, often in a not very systematic fashion. Here are just a few
examples:
•• The United Nations (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP

1977]) have been using their own set of quality standards for quite
some time: participation; strategic vision, rule of law; transparency;
responsiveness; consensus orientation; equity building; accountabil-
ity; effectiveness and efficiency.
•• The Council of Europe (2008) defined “Twelve Principles of Good
Democratic Practice at Local Level” (comprising in fact more than 12
principles): fair conduct of elections, representation, and participation;
responsiveness; efficiency and effectiveness; openness and transpar-
ency; rule of law; ethical conduct; competence and capacity; innova-
tion and openness to change; sustainability and long-term orientation;
sound financial management; human rights; cultural diversity and
social cohesion; accountability.
•• The Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (Ministerie
van BZK 2009) drafted a Good Governance Code, defining seven core
qualities (which comprise, all in all, 11 standards): openness and
integrity, good service provision, participation, goal-orientedness and
efficiency, legitimacy and justice, self-correction and learning capac-
ity, accountability.
Appreciating Good Governance: A Catalogue of Values

Here, a somewhat different approach is taken, informed by the Dutch QGG
research (see Note 1; Hendriks and Drosterij 2012), in addition to academic
debate on quality in democracy and the rule of law (Bovaird 2005; Drosterij

Hendriks 565
Table 1. Good Governance Values Catalogue.
Input Values Output Values System Values

(What Enters the (What Leaves the (What Constitutes the
System) System) System)
Democracy as responsive Democracy as effective Democracy as resilient
‘rule by the people’ ‘rule for the people’ ‘rule of the people’
Core Value: Core Value: Core Value:

Responsiveness Effectiveness Resilience
Related input values: Related output values: Related system values:

Representation, rapport, Productiveness, Dynamic stability, self–
participation, access, efficiency, added value, regulation,
openness innovation, problem– sustainability,
solving adaptability, cohesion in
diversity
Rule of Law/Rechtstaat as Rule of Law/Rechtstaat as
‘rule by the law,’ ‘rule for the law’ ‘checks and balances’
Core Value: Core Value:

Procedural justice Counterbalance
Related process values: (*) Related system values:

Due process, lawfulness, correctness, Countervailing powers and
predictability; integrity and civility; responsibilities, checks
transparency and accountability; proportionality and balances, oversight
and fair play; impartiality and equality of rights and surveillance,
supervision and control
*These are called process values, because lawfulness, correctness, fair play, and the like
pertain to the entire process that—in systems theory—connects inputs to outputs. The over-
arching value of procedural justice is also in essence a process value—not confined to either
the input side or the output side of governance.
2008; Haus, Heinelt, and Stewart 2005; Heinelt, Sweeting, and Gemitis 2006;
Hendriks 2010; Mulgan 2006; Pierre 2009; Rothstein and Teorell 2008). This
has led to the construction of a good governance values catalogue, covering
five core values: responsiveness, effectiveness, procedural justice, resilience,
and counterbalance. Table 1 helps to clarify how these values interlock.
The good governance values catalogue collapses many of the specific val-
ues mentioned above into fewer and more fundamental categories. This is
done not only because the human mind can deal better with a smaller number
of items but also and primarily because the good governance debate is in dire
need of the second step in the evolutionary process of “variation and

selection.” Besides a more systematic selection, this requires a consistent

focus on values of good governance, not to be confused with values of good
politics (cf. Hendriks 1999b; Mulgan 2006). Substantial values, such as free-
dom, equality, solidarity, physical and social security, poverty-redemption,
peace-keeping, sustainability, and the like, are surely relevant to normative
political debate, but good governance values pertain to something else. They
are not so much about the “good life,” but rather about the “good order,” the
sound setup and the proper ground rules of the operating system.4
There are different ways of discussing the catalogue of values. We could
follow the columns distinguishing between input, output, and system values.
Alternatively, we could follow the rows distinguishing between values
inspired by democratic theory (the upper half of the table), and by theories of
the Rechtsstaat and the rule of law (the lower half). Below, the two routes are
combined, aspiring to call due attention to
• Responsiveness and effectiveness: the dominant values in contempo-

rary thinking about good governance in terms of inputs and outputs
(what goes in and what comes out); undeniably important, but there is
more to good governance;
• Procedural justice: a container concept for process values relating
to the entire chain of actions connecting inputs and outputs in
governance;
• Resilience and counterbalance: classic system values, nowadays
somewhat subdued, pertaining to the constitution of the system as
such (independently of what goes in, comes out, or proceeds in
between).
Responsiveness and Effectiveness

Democratic theory often refers to Lincoln, who in his famous Gettysburg
Address of 1863 declared that democracy as rule of the people (the contrac-
tion of demos and kratos) ought to be rule by the people and rule for the
people as well. Following this line of thinking, Scharpf (1997, 1999) observed
that democratic governance, whether of a direct or indirect kind, must be
prompted by the people so as to acquire “input legitimacy” and must produce
added value for the people so as to acquire “output legitimacy.”
According to Putnam (1993), good democratic governance “not only con-
siders the demands of its citizenry (that is, is responsive) but also acts effica-
ciously upon these demands (that is, is effective)” (p. 63). A governance
model may be considered responsive to the degree and way in which it has
organized representation, participation, accessibility, and openness. A model
of governance may be considered effective to the degree and way in which it

Hendriks 567
shows an ability to actually do things, solve problems, and deliver value for
money.5
In the urban domain, responsiveness and effectiveness are relevant values
that are often pursued in programs aiming to further urban governance. One
of the cases in the Dutch QGG research, the Eindhoven Brainport project,
explicitly aimed to accomplish added (economic) value for the urban region
(Van Ostaaijen and Schaap 2012). It was mostly focused on output legiti-
macy, and not so much on input legitimacy, just like the urban regime cum
growth coalition was that Stone (1989) had witnessed in Atlanta. In the case
of Breda, it was the other way around. There, Neighborhood Tables were
established to improve openness and rapport with the citizens on the input
side of the urban governance model. For the establishment of Neighborhood
Councils in cities like Los Angeles and Lille, this was also the prime concern
(Cole 2011; Musso et al. 2006; Van Ostaaijen and Drosterij 2012).
Procedural Justice
Good governance amounts to more than gratifying the citizenry, let alone a
momentary majority of citizens. This is central to the idea of the Rechtsstaat
or the “rule of law,” which complements the idea of democracy as the “rule
of the people.”6
Regarding process values, we may think of the officially-prescribed
Algemene Beginselen van Behoorlijke Bestuur (General Principles of
Appropriate Administration) in the Netherlands or similar process values
(accountability, transparency, ethical conduct, human rights, rule of law)
included in the good governance code issued by the Council of Europe
(2008). The values catalogue presented in Table 1 lists the crucial ones under
the umbrella term “procedural justice,” bringing together more legal (lawful-
ness, accountability, equal rights) and more interactionist (correctness, integ-
rity, civility) types of values. Rothstein and Teorell (2008) considered one
element out of this set—impartiality—as the essence of good governance.
However important this element is in and of itself, relying on impartiality
alone would undervalue other essential standards of procedural justice (cf.
Esaiasson 2010; Tyler and Darley 2000; Tyler and Huo 2002).
Procedural justice is no less a core value for good governance in the urban
domain than responsiveness or effectiveness. Those involved in urban gover-
nance have legitimate procedural expectations and rights, and they are fully
entitled to demand respect to them, even if urban governance is said to be
working by and for the demos at large. Especially where formal political
rights and deeply-felt social norms concerning due process converge—as in
principles such as fair play, equality, and proportionality—sensitivity to this
dimension of good governance tends to be well developed among the

citizenry. Against this background, it is remarkable that only one case out of
the eight cases in the Dutch QGG study specifically prioritized process val-
ues in the attempts to improve urban governance. Only for the Neighborhood
Tables, initiative in Breda was due process a top priority (Van Ostaaijen and
Drosterij 2012).
Resilience and Counterbalance

Good governance is not only related to what goes in, comes out, or proceeds
in between, but it is also, and essentially, related to the way in which the
overarching system as such is constituted, and the way in which the constitu-
tional whole of offices, organs, positions, and relations is assembled—
robustly or not (cf. V. Ostrom 1982; Toonen 2010).
Some parts of democratic theory tend to stress the importance of resil-
ience, more specifically, the self-supporting, dynamic stability of the demo-
cratic system. A resilient, dynamically-stable democracy invests
systematically in its ability to remain standing when pressurized and to
remain united when divided, “E Pluribus Unum” (Stassen 1942). In postwar
Germany, for example, this was reflected in the notion of the wehrhafte
Demokratie: the kind of democracy that would keep centrifugal forces in
check with centripetal institutions (Almond and Verba 1980). Constitutional
thinking about the Rechtsstaat in continental Europe and the rule of law in
Anglo-American discourse tends to be more focused on systematic counter-
balance and the separation of powers. Good governance, here, is all about the
balancing of interests, the institutionalization of countervailing forces and
responsibilities, of actors, offices, and organs keeping each other in check
(Alexander 2001; Rosanvallon 2008).
System values, such as resilience and counterbalance, are often associated
with the modern state while their true cradle is really the urban polity. As
noted in earlier sections, the seeds of constitutional thinking about robust rela-
tions had been sown in Republican Rome and other European city-states many
centuries before the advent of the modern state. In thinking about good urban
governance today also, we should be paying close attention to system values.
There is every reason to do so. Cleavages and tensions between different
groups of people characterize the urban realm (Duyvendak, Hendriks, and van
Niekerk 2009; Putnam 2007). The urban world is full of planning disasters and
policy fiascos, demonstrating how the arrangement of proper checks and bal-
ances is debatable, to say the least (Flyvbjerg 2003; Hall 1982).
In the Dutch QGG study, only one out of eight cases gave top priority to
system values; the Let’s Make This Town Together initiative in Zwolle was
first and foremost dedicated to furthering resilience (in Dutch: veerkracht) of
the urban governance system. Governance reforms in the cases of Almere

Hendriks 569
and Dordrecht were only secondarily geared to system values; furthering

practical performance—improving input and output legitimacy—was
deemed more important here (Hendriks and Drosterij 2012).
The constitution of urban governance is impacted by the establishment of
new regulatory powers, decentered offices, supervisory arrangements like
urban audit offices, municipal ombudsmen, and the like. Issues of supervi-
sion and control are no less important for the urban arena than they are for the
corporate world, where such issues are nowadays hotly debated under the
title of “corporate governance” (Daily, Dalton, and Cannella 2003; Denis and
McConnell 2003). Bringing the constitution back in—not only in conceptual
discourse on good democratic governance but also in practical attempts to get
closer to this in the urban realm—seems to be a challenge for years to come.
Conclusion: Bringing the Democratic Rule of Law

Back In
If we were to paint a contemporary Buon Governo in Città, inspired by
Lorenzetti’s famous panels in Siena, what should we highlight as essential?
This article suggests the following answer: responsiveness, effectiveness,
procedural justice, resilience, and counterbalance. These can be viewed as
core values of good urban governance. (They could even be depicted by a
creative artist. The murals and stained glass windows in some of the older
European town halls might serve as sources of inspiration.)
An idealist might argue that urban governance should always strive for
flawless performance on all the five core values of good urban governance. A
more realistic approach, advocated in this article, would allow a situation-
sensitive logic of “step-dancing” (Hood 1998), alternating heightened atten-
tion to particular values, in combination with a sense of “good enough
governance” (Grindle 2007)—acceptable quality levels need to be observed
all around, but not everything can be perfect all the time.
There are several ways of promoting good urban governance values or to
attempt making improvements to some of them. Many arrangements are being
tried and tested in practice, as the various cases mentioned in the previous sec-
tions testify. Varied shifts in urban governance, divergent movements on the
conceptual map depicted in Figure 1, can be detected in the real world.
Governance theory is supposed to be indifferent as to the specifics of gover-
nance reform: moving this way or that way, more or less citizen-oriented, more
or less deliberative, in the theory of governance, it does not really matter—“if
only things work well.”
Although the pragmatic philosophy accompanying governance theory
appears to be refreshing, this article has also pointed out two problems with
this approach. First, governance discourse does not always adhere to the

maxim of pragmatism and ideological indifference, and often implicitly

assumes that horizontal methods are better than vertical ones, and nonformal
methods better than formal ones. It is not always acknowledged that “govern-
ment” can be of crucial importance within “governance” or that networks
often develop “in the shadow of hierarchy” (Scharpf 1997).
Second, “if only things work well” is often taken in a singular sense. Pierre
(2000) was right to criticize the performance bias, the preoccupation with
instrumental norms, and the coincident neglect of wider democratic values in
thinking about governance. This is particularly noticeable in the urban realm,
where down-to-earth concerns are never far away. The argument presented
here concurs with Pierre’s appeal to “bring democracy back in,” provided
that this is not limited to bringing the voice of the citizen back in. Surely,
citizen-responsive governance is valuable, but there is more to good urban
governance than that.
This article has made a case for bringing the democratic rule of law—
broadly defined, with all the values attached—back into thinking about good
(urban) governance. Only then can we provide a well-founded and advanced
answer to the question if and how urban governance of whatever kind will
also imply good governance.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research,
authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the authorship, and/or publication of
this article. The underlying QGG research project was financed by Nicis Institute for
Urban Research in the Netherlands.
Notes
1. In addition to the international literature, this article builds on the QGG (Quest
for Good Governance) research project, financed by Nicis Institute for Urban
Research in the Netherlands. This QGG research was focused on urban gover-
nance reforms in eight Dutch cities (Amsterdam, The Hague, Eindhoven, Zwolle,
Dordrecht, Tilburg, Almere, and Breda), resulting in an edited volume (Hendriks
and Drosterij 2012) with case studies provided by a host of authors (Bram
Boluijt, Marcel Boogers, Gerard Drosterij, Robert Duiveman, Frank Hendriks,
Koen van der Krieken, Tamara Metze, Julien van Ostaaijen, Linze Schaap,
Hendrik Wagenaar, and Sabine van Zuydam). The research was guided by the
framework presented here, which was in its turn also refined by the research. The
author acknowledges all those mentioned for, thus, sharpening the understanding
of (good) urban governance. Special thanks go to Gerard Drosterij, who helped

Hendriks 571
to prepare earlier drafts of this argument in Dutch. The editors of Urban Affairs
Review (UAR) and two anonymous reviewers are thanked for valuable com-
ments and suggestions.
2. The governance of Republican Rome was divided over many public positions
and private parties (often families), who more or less balanced each other out.
Day-to-day governing was in the hands of two consuls, elected for just one year
at a time, who were to share power with a powerful Senate, and with assem-
blies and tribunes of the people. Classic authors, such as, Polybios and Cicero
celebrated and defended the extensive system of countervailing forces, which
was codified in Roman law but even more so in cultural norms and social codes
(Finer 1999; Macchiavelli [1513] 1998).
3. Why urban areas in the Western world? In addition to practical limitations in
terms of available research and literature, there is a more fundamental point:
What urban areas in the Western world have in common is that public issues have
to be managed within the confines of the democratic rule of law, which implies a
particular constitutional framework that does not apply to urban governance in,
say, Singapore or Beijing.
4. One could apply the metaphor of a computer here, which also needs some fun-
damental prescriptions, defined in the operating system, to function properly.
Although one should never push a metaphor too far, this one does help to see
merits and limits: A sound operating system may be the basis for good programs,
but these do not automatically result from it.
5. Dahl (1994) referred to “participation” versus “effectiveness,” and Lijphart
(1999) referred to “‘representation” versus “performance,” but to all intents
and purposes, these are all about the same thing: input legitimacy versus output
legitimacy, or, in terms of their more generic synonyms, responsiveness, and
effectiveness (cf. Hoggart and Clark 2000).
6. Forcing the issue, one could distinguish input values (“rule by the law,” or gov-
ernance that abides by, follows, respects, and internalizes the law) and output
values (“rule for the law,” or governance that expresses, operationalizes, admin-
isters, and enforces the law), but the essentials of procedural justice actually
relate to the entire process connecting inputs and outputs. Therefore, the input/
output distinction is not highlighted in Table 1 when it comes to process values.
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Author Biography
Frank Hendriks is a professor of comparative governance at Tilburg University. His
research focuses on the analysis, assessment, and comparison of democratic gover-
nance at the national, subnational, and urban-regional level. He is the author of Vital
Democracy: A Theory of Democracy in Action, Oxford University Press, 2010, and
coeditor of the Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe,
Oxford University Press, 2011 (with John Loughlin and Anders Lidström) and City in
Sight: Dutch Dealings with Urban Change, Amsterdam University Press, 2009 (with
Jan Willem Duyvendak and Mies van Niekerk).
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Understanding Good Urban Governance:

Article in Urban Affairs Review · July 2014

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Understanding Good Urban Governance: Essentials, Shifts, and

The online version of this article can be found at:

The Urban Politics Section, American Political Science Association

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OnlineFirst Version of Record - Dec 4, 2013

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Good Urban Governance Revisited

1Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands

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is in the art of administration, opening the door to a rich and diversified

Urban Governance: Essential Features

Working Arrangements, More or Less Institutionalized

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Productive and Corrective Capacity in Multi-actor Settings

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Shifts in Urban Governance: Main Directions

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Figure 1. Shifts in urban governance.

Another thing that we should be aware of is that, in today’s urban arena,

Tracking Urban Governance: A Typology

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modalities of urban governance in places like Berlin, Milan, Ghent, Dublin,

•• There may be increased attention to and emphasis on “real decision

Track A, emphasizing real decision makers, is founded on the idea that, if

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a minimum of rules and regulations for urban planning almost everywhere.

The Urban Market

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in voting procedure that is competitive and exclusionary at the same time

The Urban Regime

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The Urban Trust

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The Urban Platform

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Good Urban Governance: Core Values

•• The United Nations (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP

Appreciating Good Governance: A Catalogue of Values

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Table 1. Good Governance Values Catalogue.

Input Values Output Values System Values

Core Value: Core Value: Core Value:

Related input values: Related output values: Related system values:

Core Value: Core Value:

Related process values: (*) Related system values:

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selection.” Besides a more systematic selection, this requires a consistent

• Responsiveness and effectiveness: the dominant values in contempo-

Responsiveness and Effectiveness

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Resilience and Counterbalance

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