Exploring citizen participation in smart city development in Mexico city: an institutional logics approach

We explore smart city development, with a focus on the modalities of citizen participation, using an institutional logics approach. Taking Mexico City as our case study, we describe the presence and dynamics of several logics influencing smart city development. At an organizational level we identify the bureaucratic and technocratic logics underpinning the practices of the governmental agency leading smart city development. Characterized by centralization and the pursuit of efficiency, and framed by a discourse of austerity and financial control, these logics promote a modality of citizen participation that is limited and unidirectional in nature, with citizens positioned largely as users. At a supra-organizational level, we identify a logic of active citizen participation in urban governance that is formalized in city laws. However, this logic is itself entangled in a logic of clientelism and patronage, manifested through networks of power. These logics work synergistically to limit broader, inclusive citizen participation in, and realization of benefits from, smart city agendas. We conclude that a richer understanding of institutional logics enhances the analysis of the social construction of the smart city in particular, situated contexts.Economic and Social Research Council | Ref. ES/S006710/

Decision-making and choice in the adoption of a municipal enterprise form in public healthcare organisations - Reasoning, goals, legitimacy and core dilemmas

siirretty Doriast

How does an Exogenous Shock Affect Institutional Change? The Case of Digitalization in Konkurransetilsynet and COVID-19 Pandemic

Denne kvalitative casestudien utforsker korleis eit eksogent sjokk kan påverke institusjonell endring, med å analysere digitaliseringa i Konkurransetilsynet, som starta før og fortsette inn i COVID-19-pandemien. Med å bruke ein eksplisitt og nyansert definisjon av institusjonar, som inkluderer eit breitt utval av måtar institusjonar strukturerer åtferd, nytter eg ein teori om institusjonell endring som gjer det mogleg å forstå endringsprosessar med og utan eksogene sjokk. Eg designar eit fortolkande casestudium og rekonstruerer prosessen med å analysere data frå ni semistrukturerte intervju med aktørar i Konkurransetilsynet og sju relevante dokument. Eg finn at digitaliseringa var kjenneteikna av ei medviten inkludering av mange aktørar for å ha brei deltaking og representasjon. Blant dei viktige aktørane var Digitaliseringsgruppa i Konkurransetilsynet, konkurransedirektøren, administrasjonsdirektøren, ein seniorrådgjevar i administrasjons- og organisasjonsavdelinga og sikkerheitsleiaren. Både medvitne og umedvitne institusjonelle reglar og element var kjelde til endring i digitaliseringsprosessen. Det var ein høg grad av skjønn når det kom til regjeringsdokumenta, men ein lågare grad av skjønn når det kom til Konkurransetilsynet si digitaliseringsstrategi. Digitaliseringa var bevisst ein langsam prosess, og inkluderte nye digitale verktøy og måtar å gjennomføre arbeidsoppgåver. Dei fleste respondentane opplevde nye institusjonelle reglar og element på toppen av dei gamle, men somme opplevde endra verknad og neglisjering av gamle reglar. COVID-19-pandemic hadde ein avgrensa påverknad på digitaliseringa i Konkurransetilsynet. Pandemien bremsa ned somme initiativ, som introduksjonen av skytenester. Men på den andre sida forankra pandemien også initiative, som dei nye kommunikasjonsverktøya som dei tilsette såg nytten av då dei jobba heimanfrå. Denne studien viser at påverkinga eksogene sjokk har på institusjonelle endringsprosessar er mangesidig og kompleks, og medan denne oppåva belyser dette fenomenet, er det framleis mykje meir å lære.Master's Thesis in Public AdministrationAORG351MASV-PUBA

A breathless race for breathing space : Critical-analytical futures studies and the contested co-evolution of privacy imaginaries and institutions

Seeds for countless alternative futures already exist in anticipatory imaginaries and projects, and in possibilities for action. The novel approach of critical-analytical futures studies enables systematically studying anticipatory future-making processes and possibilities for agency. Critical-analytical futures studies develops the tradition of critical futures studies by incorporating an understanding of historical processes, causal mechanisms and negotiation among actors with future-oriented projects. Privacy in the digital age seems to be simultaneously a grand challenge and a relatively minor issue. Currently actors are breathlessly racing to ensure and define breathing space. In other words, they debate the meanings of privacy in a context where datafication seriously undermines privacy. This dissertation investigates the anticipatory co-evolution of imaginaries and institutions in making futures of privacy in Europe. Privacy protection is defined as a social institution at the intersection of three types of anticipatory practices: anticipatory institutional change, surveillance practices and anticipation in everyday life. By regulating surveillance, privacy rules maintain a societal future orientation that leaves space for creativity, imagination and human agency. The analytical framework is operationalised through four stages for qualitatively studying anticipatory institutional change: 1) historical context, 2) investigation of actor storylines, 3) analysis of deeper imaginaries, and 4) identification of latent future possibilities. This approach, developed in this dissertation, is termed CASIL (context, actor storylines, imaginaries and latents). The five original studies develop different aspects of the four methodological stages. The overall temporal landscape features two competing imaginaries, continued growth and tragic loss. Decision-makers in the European Union are navigating between these imaginaries and trying to maintain a positive role for Europe. The discussion section identifies numerous latent possibilities for promoting a systemic understanding of privacy as ‘breathing space for futures’. However, there is a strategic tradeoff for privacy advocates between increasing the regulation of surveillance practices and taming the roots of surveillance.Lukemattomien tulevaisuuksien siemenet ovat olemassa imaginaareissa ja toiminnan mahdollisuuksissa. Uusi kriittis-analyyttisen tulevaisuuksientutkimuksen lähestymistapa mahdollistaa tulevaisuuden tekemisen prosessien ja toimijuuden mahdollisuuksien tutkimisen. Kriittis-analyyttisessä tulevaisuuksientutkimuksessa kehitetään kriittistä tulevaisuuksientutkimusta tutkimalla historiallisia prosesseja, kausaalisia mekanismeja sekä toimijoiden ja projektien välistä neuvottelua. Digitaalisella aikakaudella yksityisyys näyttäytyy samanaikaisesti suurena yhteiskunnallisena haasteena ja verrattain vähäisenä kysymyksenä. Toimijat pyrkivät hengästyneesti määrittelemään hengitystilaa, eli he väittelevät yksityisyyden merkityksistä tilanteessa, jossa dataistuminen heikentää yksityisyyden edellytyksiä. Väitöskirjassa tutkitaan imaginaarien ja instituutioiden koevoluutiota yksityisyyden tulevaisuuden tekemisprosessissa Euroopassa. Yksityisyyden suoja määritellään yhteiskunnalliseksi instituutioksi, joka on kolmenlaisten antisipatoristen käytäntöjen välissä: antisipatorisen institutionaalisen muutoksen, valvontakäytäntöjen ja jokapäiväisen ennakoinnin. Yksityisyyssäännöt säätelevät valvontaa ja pitävät yllä luovuuden ja inhimillisen toimijuuden mahdollistavaa tulevaisuussuuntautumista. Antisipatorista institutionaalista muutosta tutkitaan laadullisesti nelivaiheisen kehikon avulla. Vaiheet ovat 1) historiallisen kontekstin huomioiminen, 2) toimijoiden tarinalinjojen tutkiminen, 3) taustalla olevien imaginaarien analysointi sekä 4) piilevien mahdollisuuksien tunnistaminen. Väitöskirjan viisi artikkelia käsittelevät kehikon eri osia. Kokonaiskuvassa voidaan nähdä kaksi kilpailevaa imaginaaria: jatkuva kasvu ja traaginen menetys. Euroopan unionin päätöksentekijät navigoivat näiden imaginaarien välillä ja yrittävät ylläpitää Euroopan positiivista roolia. Väitöskirjassa tunnistetaan piileviä mahdollisuuksia edistää systeemistä ymmärrystä yksityisyydestä, jossa yksityisyys nähdään ”hengitystilana tulevaisuuksille”. Yksityisyyden puolestapuhujat ovat strategisen valintatilanteen edessä, jossa toisella puolella on valvontakäytäntöjen sääntelyn lisääminen ja toisella puolella valvonnan juurien kesyttäminen

IT-enabled rationalization of public administration in developing countries: essays on Ghana’s customs modernization

Through a series of three standalone yet related essays, this thesis theorizes effects of the government administration context in developing countries on situated IT-enabled practices. It develops arguments on the capacity of the institutional logics perspective for explaining complex interactions between the broader social context and IT-enabled practices carried out by situated actors in the public administration of developing countries. We theorize IT-enabled rationalization—a process through which inefficiencies, and dysfunctional institutionalized practices are transformed through IT—as the hybridizing outcomes from the resolutions in practice of often incompatible institutional logics of administration with those introduced by IT. Through a case study of IT modernization initiatives at Ghana’s customs organization, these arguments are developed by identifying historically formed administration logics and the consequences of their interplay with idealtypic public administration logics introduced through IT. We find that rather than forcing out dysfunctional practices and replacing them with IT-driven ones i.e., replacing old logics with new, as is often an implicit goal of IT adoption in such settings, the two sets of incompatible logics are instead comingled in practice through a process identified as blending. This suggests that IT adoption in the public administration of developing countries might enable rationalization, although not independently of countervailing broader institutional context

An Analysis Of Crisis Construction In the British Post-2008 Context

My thesis presents a constructivist institutionalist analysis of the British ‘post-2008 context’, a conjuncture that I operationalise as the five-year period following the financial crash of 2007-2008. I conceptualise economic crisis as the perception of the need for ‘decisive intervention’ in response to economic policy failure. This constructivist conceptualisation asserts that the trajectory of political-economic restructuring in response to crisis is shaped by the way that policymakers ‘diagnose’ economic symptoms, and the success with which they persuade the electorate of the necessity of corresponding decisive interventions. Interpreting the trajectory of political-economic restructuring in the post-2008 context in this light, I operationalise and empirically interrogate the ‘crisis diagnoses’ and ‘crisis narratives’ of the two post-2008 governments. My empirical analysis is informed by, and speaks to, two principal literatures. The first concerns neoliberalism and ‘neoliberalisation’. The second analyses the emergence and subsequent failure of a fragile and contradictory ‘growth model’ in Britain, viewing this as an unanticipated consequence of neoliberal political-economic restructuring. My analysis indicates a more complex and contested process of crisis construction than the predominant focus on macroeconomic policy leads us to believe. I present evidence for the existence of two crisis diagnoses existing simultaneously in government – one neoliberal, one not – on the part of macroeconomic and industrial policymakers respectively. I argue that this reflects the impact of departmental boundaries on the process of crisis diagnosis. I find the neoliberal crisis diagnosis and the decisive interventions to which it points to be the predominant one, reflected in the constrained resources given over to post-2008 industrial policy and the centrality of the defence of neoliberalisation in post-2008 crisis narratives. Yet I argue that, in light of the latter literature, my findings point to the potential for contingency and categorical political-economic change in the present conjuncture

Dynamics of policy change: three Italian cases

The common research interest of this thesis’s chapters is the dynamics of policy change in the context of the Italian governmental system. The collection of three published papers each included as a chapter in the core of the thesis is preceded by an introduction explaining the theoretical approach and research strategy. The chapters are consistent in following a middle-range processual theory of the politics of public policy decisions in a country case, an event-centric approach to explaining policy choice and an elite-interviewing approach to data collection. The first two chapters, respectively entitled “Government Innovation Policy in Italy (1993-2002): Understanding the Invention and Persistence of a Public Management Reform” and “Dynamics of Electronic Government Policies: The case of Italy (1992-2003)”, examine the dynamics of public management policy change in Italy over the period of a decade, employing the case of the Policy for Government Innovation and the case of the Electronic-Government Policy. The analysis of these two newly reported cases of enduring public management reform is suited to question the argument set by previous literature; that the country’s legalistic administrative culture inevitably suppresses meaningful reform. In particular, the chapters set forth two significant reservations about this argument, namely that the outcomes of public management reform initiatives are more varied than the current literature shows and the theoretical approach in the established literature attributes exagerate causal influence to the governmental system’s legalistic traditions. The third chapter, entitled “Explaining the Unexpected Success of the Smoking Ban in Italy: Political Strategy and Transition to Practice”, analyzes the episode that unfolds in a domain that addresses a general interest reform, very visible to public opinion, unlike public management reform. The chapter follows the issue beyond the pre-decisional stage, uncovering the dynamics of transition to practice: a phase between the formal passage and the full application of a law. A concluding section compares the three chapters, explores the interactions between analytically significant features of the Italian context and the policy cycle, and distils analytical refinements to the notion of policy entrepreneurship