Collaborative Governance in Cities under Austerity: An Eight-case Comparative Study

环境紧缩治理被定义为减少公共支出的持续议程，这对世界许多地区政府、企业和公民之间的关系组织提出了新的挑战。该项目比较了八个国家如何应对这些挑战：澳大利亚、加拿大、法国、希腊、爱尔兰、西班牙、英国和美国。长期以来，各国政府一直在寻求通过许多正式和非正式机制--我们所说的协作治理--让公民活动家和商界领袖参与决策的有效方法。我们研究的重点是协作如何有助于紧缩政策的治理。政府和公共服务领导人辩称，与企业、志愿组织和活跃的公民合作，对于应对紧缩带来的许多挑战至关重要。挑战包括改革公共服务以应对削减，改变公民预期和管理服务需求，以及通过让政府以外的人参与决策来提高困难政策决策的合法性。但与此同时，合作也可能是排他性的。例如，如果有高水平的抗议活动，政府和商业精英可能会以将普通公民边缘化的方式进行合作，以推动不受欢迎的政策。我们面临的挑战是探索不同的合作方式在管理紧缩方面是有效的还是失败的，以及在这样做的过程中它是变得越来越重要还是变得不那么重要。目的和目标我们建议比较上述国家的八个城市：雅典、巴尔的摩、巴塞罗那、都柏林、莱斯特、墨尔本、蒙特利尔和南特合作在管理紧缩方面的作用。正是在城镇，政府与公民有最直接和最密切的日常接触，因此我们选择在城市范围内进行研究。我们的主要目标是了解政府官员、公民、商界领袖和其他行为者之间的合作是否有助于紧缩治理，如果是的话，又如何有助于紧缩治理。例如，是更多的协作，还是更少的协作，或者我们正在看到不同类型的协作正在涌现？如果有人拒绝合作，那么谁会拒绝合作？这会对紧缩政策产生什么影响？合作可能是颠覆或抵制紧缩政策的一种方式吗？这项研究是比较的，这意味着它正在寻找模式，并看看世界不同地区的国家可能会从彼此身上学到什么教训和见解。应用和好处寻找与公民合作的方法对中央和地方政府来说一直很重要，尽管合作在过去20年里比以前更具政治重要性。我们的研究将告诉政界人士和政府官员，合作是如何作为一种管理紧缩的方式发挥作用的。然而，我们并不是试图“推销”合作，也不是建议那些遭受削减并希望抵制它们的人应该合作，如果他们不想这样做的话。对于公民活动人士，我们的研究将突出向权力说实话的不同策略和选择--要么与市政府和当地商业精英接触，要么拒绝这样做，或许转而专注于抗议。我们将发现协作何时服务于社区团体的目的，何时不服务于此。我们研究的参与者和其他人将有机会在一系列本地活动中讨论这些问题，我们将在会上讨论我们的发现。这项研究还将引发关于治理性质变化的重要学术辩论。通过收集和比较大量数据，我们将了解政府在紧缩政策下的角色变化，以及治理是否正在变得更加注重精英、更加偏远和等级森严，或者尽管我们生活在一个充满挑战的时代，但治理是否正在变得更加包容。

ContextAusterity governance, defined as a sustained agenda for reducing public spending, poses new challenges for the organisation of relationships between government, business and citizens in many parts of the world. This project compares how these challenges are addressed in eight countries: Australia, Canada, France, Greece, Ireland, Spain, the UK and the USA. Governments have long sought effective ways of engaging citizen activists and business leaders in decision making, through many formal and informal mechanisms - what we term collaborative governance. The focus of our research is how collaboration contributes to the governance of austerity. Governments and public service leaders argue that collaboration with businesses, voluntary organisations and active citizens is essential for addressing the many challenges posed by austerity. The challenges include transforming public services to cope with cuts, changing citizen expectations and managing demand for services and enhancing the legitimacy of difficult policy decisions by involving people outside government in making them. But at the same time, collaboration can be exclusionary. For example, if there are high levels of protest, governmental and business elites may collaborate in ways that marginalise ordinary citizens to push through unpopular policies. Our challenge is to explore different ways in which collaboration works or fails in governing austerity and whether it is becoming more or less important in doing so. Aims and objectivesWe propose to compare the role of collaboration in governing austerity in eight cities of the aforementioned countries: Athens, Baltimore, Barcelona, Dublin, Leicester, Melbourne, Montreal and Nantes. It is in towns and cities that government has the most immediate and closest day-to-day engagement with citizens and it is for this reason that we chose to locate our research at the urban scale. Our primary objective is to understand whether, and if so how, collaboration among public officials, citizens, business leaders and other actors contributes to austerity governance. For example is there more collaboration, less or are we seeing different kinds of collaboration emerging? Who, if anyone, refuses to collaborate and with what implications for governing austerity? Might collaboration be a way to subvert or resist aspects of austerity? The research is comparative, meaning that it is looking for patterns and to see what lessons and insights countries in different parts of the world might draw from one another. Applications and benefitsFinding ways to collaborate with citizens has always been important for central and local governments, although collaboration has been a higher political priority in the past 20 years than before. Our study will tell politicians and public officials much about how collaboration works as a way of governing austerity. However we are not trying to 'sell' collaboration, or suggest that those suffering from cuts and wanting to resist them should collaborate if they do not wish to. For citizen activists our research will highlight different strategies and options for speaking truth to power - by engaging with city government and local business elites, or refusing to do so and perhaps focusing on protest instead. We will discover when collaboration serves the ends of community groups and when it does not. Participants in our study, and others, will have the opportunity to discuss these issues at a series of local events, at which we will discuss our findings. The research will also engage with important academic debates about the changing nature of governance. In gathering and comparing a large body of data we will learn about the changing role of government under austerity and whether governing is becoming more elite-focused, remote and hierarchical, or perhaps even more inclusive despite the challenging times in which we live.