Towards Better Territorial Governance in Europe. A guide for practitioners, policy and decision makers based on contributions from the ESPON TANGO Project

Guides help you do things. You turn to them when you need to find out how to solve a problem. They are a form of knowledge transfer, written by experts but in a way that is accessible and helpful to a wide group of users. This Guide was written by the researchers on the ESPON applied research study of Territorial Approaches to New Governance (TANGO). It aims to help those persons and institutions that are delivering territorial governance across Europ

Towards Better Territorial Governance in Europe. A guide for practitioners, policy and decision makers based on contributions from the ESPON TANGO Project

Guides help you do things. You turn to them when you need to find out how to solve a problem. They are a form of knowledge transfer, written by experts but in a way that is accessible and helpful to a wide group of users. This Guide was written by the researchers on the ESPON applied research study of Territorial Approaches to New Governance (TANGO). It aims to help those persons and institutions that are delivering territorial governance across Europe

The EU port policy in a historical perspective

This paper examines the evolution of the European Union (EU) Port Policy within a historical perspective. Analysing the changing aspects of the sectoral socio-economic context and the alterations of the institutional setting, the paper explains the slow start towards a European Port Policy (EPP), that lasted more than three decades, and then assesses why, and how, policy actors involved in the EU policy making have succeeded in carving out elements of a policy framework. The study chronicles the stages by which the EU has moved into the port policy field. Grounding on the analysis of the changing sectoral environment, the paper analyses the complex sequence of events, which have led either to legislative and political decisions or to output failures. As demonstrated by the historical analysis (1957-2004), policy integration is a dynamic, seemingly irreversible, process, which marked by the searching for a balance between liberalisation and harmonisation.peer-reviewe

Intellectual Capital Change Management in the Construction Industry—The Case of an Inter-Organisational Collaboration

Nowadays, due to the complexity of the relationships with external entities, along with the importance that traditional media and the innovative social media have in creating competitive advantages, it is necessary for companies to collaborate in order to create Intellectual Capital (IC). Although collaboration is crucial to create IC, there is a paucity in literature regarding the effects that a specific type of collaboration may have on the IC of an organisation, specifically a franchising with a mediatic actor. Moreover, literature addressing IC creation and destruction over time is scarce, especially when applied to the construction industry. This paper’s goal is twofold: understanding the longitudinal changes of a construction SME’s Intellectual Capital, regarding its creation and destruction; analysing the impact that a specific inter-organisational collaboration franchising—with a mediatic actor may have on such IC. A single in-depth case study was conducted, allowing to conclude that the actions of an organisation can develop both Intellectual Assets and Intellectual Liabilities. It was also concluded that inter-organisational collaboration, through a franchise with an actor with experience in communication, can generate, in the long term, positive and innovative effects regarding the different IC components, namely the Relational one. More specifically, the paper allowed to ascertain that an organisation’s IC changes over time in a dynamic fashion, i.e., Intellectual Liabilities which emerged before an innovative collaboration can be transformed into Intellectual Assets and create competitive advantages. This paper contributes to stress the importance of managing IC, not only when it is created, but namely in when it can be destroyed, in a context of inter-organisational collaborations applied to a construction SMEinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Coastal Resource Management in the Wider Caribbean: Resilience, Adaptation, and Community Diversity

The Caribbean Sea is the second largest sea in the world, including more than 30 insular and continental countries with an approximate population of 35 million. In addition to its highly fractionalized territory, it is characterized by a great linguistic and cultural diversity, a phenomenon enhanced by increasing internal migrations and the expansion of tourism. The implementation of coastal management programs, often embedded in top-down approaches, is therefore faced with a series of ecological and social constraints, explaining why they have had only limited success. This book presents an alternative look at existing coastal management initiatives in the North America (Caribbean); focusing on the need to pay more attention to the local community. Emphasizing the great heterogeneity of Caribbean communities, the book shows how the diversity of ecosystems and cultures has generated a significant resilience and capacity to adapt, in which the notion of community itself has to be re-examined. The concluding chapter presents lessons learned and a series of practical recommendations for decision-makers

Participatory Democracy in South West Colombia: Municipal Planning Councils and Victims' Boards

Given the attempts to improve institutions for participatory democracy in Colombia since 2011, this thesis sought to identify whether and how the institutional adjustments reached so far have contributed to the enhancement of participation. The research focused on two semi-representative local institutions involving deliberative logics: Municipal Planning Councils and Municipal Boards for the Effective Participation of Victims of the Armed Conflict (Victims’ Boards). Planning Councils were a key participatory space when these kinds of institutions were established in the country in the early nineties (first-generation). Victims’ Boards are part of a second group of participatory institutions with improved designs (second-generation). I carried out qualitative case-oriented comparative analysis with elements of a PAR approach, to examine the participatory processes within these two spaces in three Colombian municipalities: Cali, Buenaventura and Corinto. The results show that institutional adjustments such as those in the Victims Boards can improve participatory processes in terms of their inclusiveness, decision-making power and development of democratic tools and values. These effects, nevertheless, are affected by contextual challenges and complementary factors to institutional design. This thesis shares insights about the interactions between challenges, complementary factors and opportunities for further improvement of participatory democracy in Colombia. Empirical evidence suggests that contentious non-institutional participation is crucial for this purpose in the post-2016-Peace-Agreement context. Likewise, there are early indications of the potential that civil-society-led processes have for the transformation of power relations in Colombian territories when they combine repertoires of participatory and representative democracy. All these findings are worth considering in further efforts to democratise democracy and build peace in the country, as the Peace Agreement between the Colombian State and the FARC-EP, and the peace negotiations with the ELN intended to do

Sustaining local level development: What worked and what did not. Lessons from the phasing-out of Norwegian aid to the Hambantota Integrated Rural Development Programme (HIRDEP), Sri Lanka 1992 to 1999

Aid has been successful when it is no longer needed, but we all too often see how aid breeds dependency, and how both donors and recipients have difficulties preparing for termination of the relationship. This is a study of a case of planned phasing-out. Commissioned by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the Ministry of Southern Area Development, Government of Sri Lanka, it summarises the main experiences and lessons from twenty years of cooperation in the Hambantota District with a focus on the last phase from 1992 to 1999. The study looks at two broad themes. Firstly, how were the achievements of HIRDEP in building a more responsive public sector sustained within a changing government structure? And secondly, how did HIRDEP contribute to the new policies of the 1990s of strengthening economic growth, and, in particular, promote institutions able to create economic opportunities for the poor? The phasing-out did not go as initially planned. The scalingdown of HIRDEP’s expenditure was not gradual. It first peaked and then nose-dived, which indicate that the HIRDEP-organisation tried to sustain a high level of activity as long as possible. Moreover, NORAD changed the policy course mid-way as new political concerns were brought into the picture – especially private sector development. With the faltering local government reform, it turned out that the new divisions were not capable of replicating and sustaining the development approaches pioneered by HIRDEP. In general, capacity building in public institutions could only be sustained where other financial resources filled some of the vacuum after the withdrawal of HIRDEP. Probably the most lasting impact of HIRDEP will be its efforts in institution building at the grassroots, related to microcredit and the management of local infrastructure – irrigation, drinking water supply, community centres etc. HIRDEP’s attempt to establish new small-scale industries, by-and-large, failed, while its role as a midwife to the birth of Hambantota District Chamber of Commerce is a remarkable success. Twenty years of HIRDEP has demonstrated the virtues of having a development catalyst at sub-national level, and the authors make a strong plea for making use of this experience when, at this juncture, government and donors are preparing for reconstruction and development in the war-torn parts of the island

Bougainville reconstruction aid: what are the issues?

‘Today, mipela finisim war bilong Bougainville’, (‘Today, the war in Bougainville has ended’) said Sam Kauona, the Commander of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, at the ceasefire signed 30 April 1998. This followed the previous November’s truce. It had become clear by 1997 that a military solution was not possible, that the conflict ‘had many basic sources’, and that a desire for peace was widespread and growing especially in the areas most affected by the conflict (Interdepartmental Committee 1997). It was recognised also that the conflict began because of problems peculiar to Bougainville, and has extended and deepened to a large degree because of tensions within Bougainville. Any lasting solutions…must as much as possible come from Bougainvilleans. By a non-Bougainvillean, but also someone who has never even visited that Province or worked anywhere in Papua New Guinea for decades (and then only for a few months in Port Moresby at the Central Planning Office), this essay on aid issues is therefore highly speculative. It proceeds only by generalization and deduction from what appear to be comparable situations in other parts of the world. No two wars are the same. Obviously Biafra decades ago, then Mozambique, Somalia, Liberia and Rwanda more recently, Bosnia and Afghanistan still, Cambodia, and Rwanda again, are not Papua New Guinea ten or five years ago or now. But some commonalities can perhaps be found. At the time of writing (May 1998), the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea is assuring Bougainvilleans that they have his support for the task of peace and re-building in a spirit of self-reliance and autonomy. It appears that all Bougainville parties now wish for some types of aid, using mainly Bougainvillean inputs, to rehabilitate basic services so as to meet immediate health, education and local roads needs. To judge from reports of demands for more of the types of basic livelihood packs AusAID has provided thus far, this aid response seems to have been appropriate. What is not requested (nor, thus far, supplied) is aid for projects such as airport and seaport rebuilding. This is ruled out because of the strategic implications of such projects for what is feared might become a return to the ‘development’ of old in the province, before the crisis, now in its tenth year. And this, overall, is the position taken here. Contrary to the development-led approach to reconstruction proposed in an inter-agency UNDP document (Rogge 1995), this paper takes the position that ‘development’ ought not to be the watchword. Rather, as post-war aid needs for reconstruction are ascertained, it is a word in reconstruction aid discourse to watch. Humanitarian concerns, rules and conditionalities should be uppermost. Confronted with such situations, perhaps there are new challenges for ways of thinking about aid responses. This paper attempts to identify some.AusAI