Multiple interpretations of governance

From analytical approaches to normative views

A generalized idea and an all-encompassing logic

On urban governance

Diffusion of urban governance in the South

Decentralization, municipal learning and overlapping governances in Burkina Faso

Public administration reforms and participatory approaches in Viet Nam

Urban Democratic Forums, participatory tools in Bulgaria

Urban governance – a challenge and a permanent state of construction

References

Multiple interpretations of governance

The word “governance” seems to be ever present and to have a variety of meanings depending on whether it is interpreted by World Bank laboratories or development programmes, by political arenas or civic demands, by scientific studies or advertising slogans. For some people this concept has ambiguities which mask the uncertainties linked to globalization. For others it shows itself to be the organizer of modern values creating a new world order. There is no lack of digressions between a simple promising “aggiornamento of aging styles of government” (Gaudin, 2002), “a central pre-condition for social and economic progress” (van Dok, 17), or the principle of a new world humanism and of a global political order (Morin, quoted by Gaudin). Another interpretation is the need for renewal after the end of the great mobilizing political narratives of the 20^th century (liberalism, communism and socialism), where governance comes under a search for progress deeply embedded in Western values with a “modernity label” (Gaudin, 2002).

Admittedly, this is a new regulation which lies within the constellation of ideas produced by 1990s globalization, but where did it come from and where is it going ? Is governance merely a fashion or a fundamental change ? In the vagueness surrounding this notion several features emerge. The first presents itself with certainty : its origin is localized in Western societies where styles of government and institutional balance change, and academic analyses respond on the principles of collective decision-making and public action. The second feature of governance is that it has duality – it is both analytical and normative – in the sense that it puts forward categories of analysis and prescribes models for action, the best known being the good governance of the World Bank. Although this dual position explains governance’s current following and the extent of its diffusion, it also increases the surrounding confusion. The third feature is the multidimensional potential of governance that corresponds to political, economic, social, environmental, administrative and cooperative fields.

Dealing more specifically with urban governance, as the offspring of governance, it is important we take a brief historical detour on this concept because urban governance, which has a smaller, less well-defined public, finds its roots in governance.

From analytical approaches
to normative views

With our brief historical perspective, we see that the actual concept of governance was not born in the United States in the 20^th century but first appeared in France in the 13^th century, meaning the rule over bailiwicks (Moreau Defarges, 2003), and later, in the 17^th century, in the debate on the balance of parliamentary and royal powers regarding the importance of guidance (Gaudin, 2002) [1]. Today’s use of the term came around the 1990s but it had already appeared in the 1970s in several studies, where governance is understood as meaning the capacities of guidance of public action [2].

Over the past twenty years a movement of unity has grown, symbolically marked by the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is discovering a world that is multipolar and more flexible, a universalistic international dynamic, a growing practice of partnerships, creating uncertainties with regard to the responsibilities of different actors in collective action, a relativization of State power at different levels, and the definition of new rules for the institutional game. It has come to mean taking a new look at power and at the evidence of current changes that require guidance. Far from being the concept of one researcher or of one specific discipline, governance comes from a collective product of several areas : political science, the economy, public administration and sociology. Reflections and analyses have developed mainly around three perspectives : modern governance, multi-level governance and corporate governance (Gaudin, 2002). In political science the examinations concern the guidance of public action, the modernization of organizations and their strategies of adapting to change, the diverse situations of interaction between public and private actors, between public administrations and firms [3].

Thus, in political science, the debate arises from a twofold calling into question : on the one hand the very conditions for producing public policies and on the other the legitimacy of public power (Jouve, 2008). Reflection around a State regulation crisis aims to define the public space made up of a complex network of interests, interaction among actors and levels of political intervention. There, governance appears as a complex decision-making process beyond plain government concerning legitimacy and the constitution of the public space, the distribution of power among the governing and the governed, negotiations among social actors, and decentralization of authority and of its functions (Solinís, 2003). Another founding theme is that of corporate governance which in an American context has developed in the economy by observing the signs of transformation in productive processes through organizational restructuring seeking minimization of costs.

The scientific analyses that explored the new principles of politic relations were followed by a search for solutions as a direct response to challenges of public action. In 1989 in the climate of criticism on the excesses of the interventionist State, the World Bank launched its normative concept of good governance which intervenes as a model of public administration to open the way to expansion of the market economy in the global South and East. The Bank adapted certain elements of corporate governance approaches to new neo-liberal development strategies (in a straight line down from the so-called “Washington Consensus”). The Bank put forward its strategies for African countries from its own reading of the difficulty of promoting an economic project without the minimal conditions of political legitimacy, social order and institutional effectiveness (Africa : Crisis in governance, 1994). According to the World Bank’s position papers, “good governance” involves three essential dimensions : reduction of public spending, public sector accountability, fiscal transparency via privatization of public services and banking rules (bancability) of operations.

In order to implement good governance, the Bank developed training and reflection programmes [4] with an educational mission aimed not only for government decision-makers but also for new community leaders, academics and technicians. This development model quickly found connections in multilateral and bilateral cooperation, NGOs and international, specialized bodies. Thus the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in its conception of human development took the idea further from the World Bank’s reductive and functional notion to the market affirming the primacy of law. In 1997 a basic UNDP document defines the three interactive areas of good governance - the State, civil society and the private sector -, and sets out the criteria as follows : participation, responsibility, equity, effectiveness and transparency, which were largely adopted in the world of international coopération [5]. In addition, governance was not only a model for poor countries but it was also applied to rich countries like the United Kingdom under the aegis of Anthony Giddens who was an adviser to Tony Blair (2002) and the European Union (White Paper on European Governance, 2001).

Among the many debates on the normative applications of good governance there emerge two principal criticisms. The first is on the World Bank’s philosophy that implicitly assumes the domination of the logic of the market. In the context of countries of the South, this would constitute the most complete form of conditionality and political interference (Ormont, 1998 ; Solinís, 2003) and represent an attempt to move power from the public to the private sector. Similarly, attention paid to civil society remains ambiguous as it accompanies a certain detachment on the part of the State by encouraging the action of private operators as, for example, in access to urban services such as water and electricity. Another criticism is the generalized application of norms created in capitalist Western societies to developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In their study “Is good governance a good development strategy ?” (2007), Nicolas Meisel and Jacques Ould Aoudia start with a critical analysis of development which is not just on economic growth but also represents a medium- and long-term process of transformation of institutions. Although since the 1990s “good governance” was imposed as a universal requirement of development policies, even considered as “the mantra of development in developing countries” (UN-Habitat, 2009), there are now emerging serious questions as to its transferability and effectiveness in terms of growth. In effect, international financial institutions have provided an operational tool copied from existing institutions in developed countries, with “good governance” involving respect for individual rights, secure contracts, effective administration, democratic political institutions. But the transition that developing countries go through is marked by a long process of depersonalization of the social regulation systems which does not bring with it an immediate change to formal Western-style institutions.

A generalized idea
and an all-encompassing logic

This brief perspective on the emergence of governance shows not only the complexity and proliferation of this idea but also the vast area of its interpretations and applications, from spheres of science to those of public administration and international aid cooperation.

Definitions of governance vary according to the field of application, the level of intervention, the tools adopted, the legitimacy and responsibility of the actors, and the theoretical degree of analysis. Given the plurality of conceptions, this paper will aim to focus on the component parts of governance and not its ideological yoke. The set of keywords – guidance, regulation, complexity, interdependence, diversified actors, multipolar powers, fragmented decisions, multi-level negotiations, opening up, partnership, competition and cooperation – all place governance as a process. It is displayed in a context of transformation, bringing with it transitions where globalization, neo-liberalism, the multipolar dynamic, State weakening, the emergence of civil society and private actors – all shape a new world. The old orders are crumbling and new principles of organization are being formed in an overall logic of market. Thus, in sum, governance as a new paradigm has three pillars : public and private actors working together, negotiated rules of the game, and interactive, collective decisions which can be made at several levels from local to transnational and from an organization to a region or State.

In short, governance was born in a context of geopolitical and ideological transformations : globalization, neo-liberalism, the opening-up of a multipolar world and environmental crises. It became confirmed as the new founding paradigm of the end of the 20^th century. While governance was born in a complex world that appeared disorganized and barely intelligible, the response came not only from a theoretical revision as described earlier but also from a practical revision aiming to forge a new tool for action. Now it appears that the practical solutions prevail in the contemporary world. Governance dominates in a modern negotiation conception, integrating rules of the market with a call for accountability to guarantee its effectiveness.

Before talking about urban governance, we should discuss the current applications of governance. The main difficulty of governance comes from its generalized reference as a sort of super-regulation that rules over all development practice in different areas : poverty, security, taxation, the environment, etc., under one single, vague acceptance of collective decision-making. Generalization and imprecision make for different interpretations. The second difficulty is that governance is not politically neutral as it is often deemed to be. It came into being with Western foundations defining its criteria and values, and it is generally applied without considering the cultural and institutional gaps  taking place in other contexts. In addition, it is marked by the dominating neo-liberal current that promotes the market economy, thus directing its application in development cooperation and the expected results. So, far from being neutral, the application of governance shows that it has the “Western label” as regulation system and development model with universal scope. Moreover, while governance represents a major stake within the framework of international aid, it is more often seen as a controversial idea by countries on the receiving end because it brings with it interference and conditionality. A third difficulty arises in the generalized, almost unconscious use of a normative approach, and in its instrumentalization which intervenes with an operational structure defining the exercise of power and a doctrinal structure controlled by the World Bank aiming for success in a project with barely discernible economic interests. The fourth difficulty is the vagueness that surrounds the concept of governance which in most discussions is confused with democracy and the ambiguity of its representative, participatory or technical dimensions linked to a project.

On urban governance

Urban governance falls into the sphere of application of cities involving local government as well as different levels of fragmented operations in a municipal territory, with interaction that can be supra-local, local or sub-local. As mentioned earlier, the underlying hypothesis to the idea of governance is the existence of a crisis of governability of societies which draws cities into a dynamics of transformation, and in today’s world this territorial aspect of governance underlines the growing, determining role of cities emerging as collective, political actors [6]. Between 1980 and 1990, urban power underwent great changes in the West beginning with the United Kingdom and reforms of local power initiated by Lady Thatcher involving the privatization of public services and the promotion of public-private partnerships with a view to creating “cities of enterprise”. In addition, decentralization and transfer of competence policies were implemented in several European countries. In this context of emergence, urban governance found significance with modernist visions when “developer” mayors were trying to integrate economic and social strengths around major local projects and to impose the power of some cities on competitive inter-urban situations. Without dwelling on the different lines of research in the social sciences, like Isabelle Hillenkamp (2007) we will retain two major convergent and complementary trends. The first comes from the notion of governance applied to the city as a new, decisive policy actor in the transformation of the world economic system. To this, come the acknowledged role of force for economic growth, and public and private actors’ new thinking and consequent action. The second trend runs from urban studies to the necessary inclusion of governance for an interdisciplinary, overall approach. Overcoming conventional ideas of public action, it recognizes the diversity and growing independence of social sub-systems where governance becomes a way of coordinating relations among actors, territories and sectors.

There is a convergence of approaches in some basic principles and ideas. Thus, according to Jouve (2008), urban governance refers to a process gradually setting up a readjustment in the exercise of urban power to the detriment of local governments and urban institutions and to the benefit of actors from civil society. The fragmentation of city government, the globalization of exchange, the unpredictability of the future, the disconnection between political authorities and citizens, the broken societies and non-adherence would explain the breakdown of traditional models of public action. In fact, the processes of fragmentation affect at one and the same time urban space, social groups and activities, and they meet at all spatial levels of the city. The result is regional imbalances between concentration and urban sprawl, a proliferation of institutions and networks intervening in one area, and a diversification of actors with divergent value systems and interests. This multiplication of actors leads to a crumbling away of power on both the horizontal and vertical plane. Add to this a “political crisis” with citizens whose points of reference and structures of belonging have been modified by globalized thinking, and are aware of the limitations of political institutions and demand to be included in decisions that concern them. With regard to the new kinds of partnership, some people describe them as “social constructs” where collective representations and legitimate systems of reference are formed which guide public action (Cunha et al. 1998).

Diffusion of urban governance in the South

The importance of local urban power and its role were formally recognized at international level at the “City Summit” in Istanbul in 1996. The current demographic situation is that half the world’s population live in cities. Indeed, it is a decidedly urban 21^st century, with a greater increase in population in the South (where the population doubles every 30 years) and an economic situation of wealth concentration. This trend highlights the dual role of cities. On the one hand cities are recognized as driving-forces of the economy, places of social innovation and cultural diversity, laboratories of democratic experimentation and ecological futurology. But on the other hand, they produce a concentration of pollution and environmental degradation, industrial and health risks, social exclusion and ethnic conflicts. To this is added alarming situations of the urbanization of poverty with a billion people living in slums in 2007, sanitary conditions that are shameful and improper for over two billion urban dwellers, and in the countries of the South a dominant economic and general informality means inhabitants live in insecurity and are deprived of their rights (UN-Habitat, 2006). With this structural dynamic, local public authorities have to confront – particularly in developing countries – enormous difficulties because of lack of financial and human resources.

In this context, the main international cooperation bodies see urban governance [7] as the best suited urban management method for the current situation. To put it simply, urban governance aims from now on not to “build the city” through State-imposed vertical operations but to “build with the city”, in other words in consultation with the inhabitants. Thus, the UN Agency concerned with cities (UN-Habitat) added to criteria defined by UNDP – participation, responsibility, equity, effectiveness, transparency, those of decentralization, citizenship and security – and it defined a composite index of urban governance (UN-Habitat 2004) which was promoted within the framework of the Global Campaign on Urban Governance from 1999. The Urban Management Programme (UMP, a joint UN-Habitat/UNDP programme) conceived participatory urban governance as one of its three objectives from 1996 in four regional networks (Africa, Arab States, Asia and Latin America) promoting more than 100 urban consultations [8]. As for the World Bank, from 2000, it encouraged urban governance to combat poverty by furthering inclusion and empowerment for the poor.

From 1991, major research programmes enabled a panorama of the principal problems of cities in the South to be set out with the inclusion of sustainable development and poverty themes. But the notion of urban governance was created in the North and exported to developing countries with its normative view and presupposed neo-liberal ideologies, its Western institutional and organizational points of reference, and its ethnocentric cultural values [9]. Through a few concrete cases linked to decentralization in Burkina Faso, administrative reforms in Viet Nam and local democratization in Bulgaria, we propose to examine how this Western product is interpreted, adapted and implemented in more or less hybrid ways in very different cultural and geopolitical contexts.

Thus, our position of analysis refers to both multiple and single forms of urban governance, the interpretation and adaptation of which differs not only according to the continent or the temporality but also to the logics of the actors and the institutional environment specific to each urban situation. Rejecting the idea of an operational model of universal scope, we underline the diversity of mechanisms interacting, their complexity and their capacity to evolve. In addition, there are two dynamics involved, forms of exogenous and endogenous governance which can either complement each other or conflict. Next, we consider urban governance as a template of public action transformations that allow us to analyse new kinds of guidance employed in major trends of decentralization and globalization. There comes into play a decentration of power plans in the hands of administrations and local representatives and an opening up of the decision-making arena to other actors. One aim is to determine which are the processes of change of local power, organization of interests and elites, and building collective identity are setting up in new forms of cooperation or partnership. Urban governance comes into play in the kinds of arrangement that actors set up to develop a threefold capacity for action in economic development or territorial policies, for the integration of social and political groups, and for adherence to a shared view of urban development. In their new role, cities become an important place for political and social innovation. And lastly, although international cooperation agencies have made urban governance a doctrine for aid to development, we analyse this operational framework as just one exogenous governance among different dynamics.

Decentralization, municipal learning and
overlapping governances in Burkina Faso

Although the notion of urban governance introduced by international aid agencies at the beginning of the 1990s was presented as a new model for the distribution of power and responsibilities and a tool for the democratization of local life, how was this adaptation accomplished ? In the post-colonial State of Burkina Faso, the structure of this experiment was designed together with a decentralization law in 1993 which from 1995 built democratic urban communes and their framework of governance [10]. An Urban Development Programme (UDP) launched by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) in three medium-sized cities – Ouahigouya, Koudougou and Fada N’Gourma (Delsol 2004)– provided a framework for action to consolidate the municipal institutionalization process through participatory local development [11]. There were four lines of strategy : the reconstruction of markets as driving forces for the economy, sanitation operations as social leverage, the creation of a new legal structure or Municipal Public Establisments for Development as a “municipal service”, and the action-research as empowerment approach to encourage the emergence of civil society and the effectiveness of local government capacities (Lieberherr-Gardiol, 2005).

Although Burkina Faso tried in the first decades of independence to build a modern national arena with its State authority, various lines of governance criss-crossed among traditional clans systems, French colonial power, a revolutionary period, a modern “multi-party democratic” political regime and international aid creating movements of resistance or appropriation. The experience we are looking at took place in Burkina Faso at a time of great changes in attitudes, modes of socialisation and values, and in a local cultural, institutional context ill-prepared for the municipal management of public affairs. The new communes were elected in 1995 for the first time as a new socio-political organizational structure and also as a layer of local governance. How was this local governance to become the concern of the inhabitants ? How would social appropriation of the commune take place ? How would the communes be able to draw up suitable policies for the public good ?

The first actors in line were the town halls which were still weak. Typical features were lack of management experience, low levels of education and technical competence, institutional weakness of the communal structure, lack of local perspective on long-term development and its challenges, and inexperience of citizen culture. The second in line in legitimate traditional governance were the customary chiefs. Together with the political (national and local representatives) and advisory roles, they had the weight of traditional practices and values still deeply entrenched which had survived the period of colonization. However, their status, forms of reproduction and functioning were the opposite of those of democratic representatives, i.e. a hierarchical system with vertical relations based on authority and obedience against a system of equal relations and rights based on responsibility and autonomy. The survival of traditional power is a factor for integration between the old system which continues in a vague but meaningful way and the modernity of the decentralized commune bringing social relations up to date based on human rights and equity.

The third line of actors is civil society – many and varied, emerging in several places (Laurent 2004) but not yet really existing as a democratic counter-power nor as private sector. Who are the emerging local actors ? We can identify competent, motivated people with small business ventures of productive activities – goods and services (hairdressing, garages, second-hand clothes, drinks stalls, etc.), and social innovators who embark upon a variety of associations (disabled, refuse, people’s pharmacy, market traders, etc.) in a dual track of real militancy for local revitalization and striving to obtain subsidies. Among these actors we should note the dynamic role played by women and young people. These are still peripheral actors in a patriarchal social system but they are gradually emerging as agents of change, the women because they plan a different future for their children, and young people because they want a modernized future. Although they are still kept apart from local political life, they act as direct inventors of new forms of socialisation and social securitization (consumption, children’s education, clothes, leisure) in the evolving social relations marked by the weakened roles of traditional authority – patriarch or husband – the conversion to new occupations, the adoption of urban values and the role of money. In such a world bursting with vitality and new dynamics, the combined strength of new local representatives and the emerging civil society should gradually come to build a new citizens’ arena, but the boundary between public and private remains blurred. Confirmation of public interest has yet to be voiced ; the city cannot be merely the sum of individual interests. However, the “public idea” is gradually taking shape.

The fourth actor, Municipal Public Establishments for Development (MPED) which were set up within the framework of the Urban Development Programme, provides technical support through its different sections of activities – infrastructure, sanitation, planning and institutional support – and the financing of the operations [12]. Through its technical and management abilities it certainly plays a decisive role for the success of the UDP, but it also plays a role that is increasingly invasive and dominating in local dynamics. There is a certain ambiguity in the distribution of roles and responsibilities as well as a certain institutional and political vagueness within the municipal structure which create conflicts regarding competence and tension between local authorities and technical agents. In fact, it is the power stakes that are being played for in the municipalities that must gradually attain technical and management competence and reduce the involvement of MPED to a support role and technical consultancy.

The fifth external actor is the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation whose UDP falls in line with Burkina Faso’s aspiration for interregional urban readjustment. Its development philosophy aims in parallel to strengthen the different actors with local governance competence, emerging citizen and democratic behaviours, and the local economic fabric by being a facilitator but without any rigid procedural structure. Through financial contributions to the infrastructure, the MPED and other social activities, SDC takes a direct part in some control of municipal operations. Thus it plays an important normative role, becoming involved in the strategic guidance of the programme and, with difficulty, finding coherence between its two roles of accompanying the process by delegating tasks and responsibilities, and of being responsible for the financing and effectiveness of the programme.

The analysis of the basic elements of the Burkina Faso experience helps us highlight the conditions for producing a new urban governance with four main features. First, this local governance came from an endogenous, voluntarist action at national level, the law of decentralization, and it was supported by an exogenous intervention of international cooperation inspired by the Swiss practice of direct democracy and the principles of international good governance. But decentralization introduces not only a new organizational framework, it also introduces new forms of access to resources and to negotiations in the public arena. Second, such an institutional change cannot be definitively introduced just like that because it operates like a graft that succeeds at varying levels through experimental stages of rejection and gradual adjustment. Various aspects of local political life have shown as, for example, the market crisis [13] whose management system based on the recovery of costs was disputed by shop-keepers, or the semi-failure of the sanitation operations which was due to a variety of factors : lack of municipal involvement, the MPED’s technical shortcomings, hesitant environmental awareness and weak mobilization of the population. The third feature was that the motivations of the different actors were often divergent and more or less conflictual depending on whether the goal was individual or general. Collective action should ideally be built around a minimum consensus that is acceptable to everyone. Fourth, the value systems moulding attitudes belongs to varying lines running through society from historical inheritance to modernist aspirations. As a specialist of sub-Saharan Africa, Jean-Pierre Elong MBassi remarked, “the aim is to tie the institutional construction of States in with the people’s experiences so that they take over public institutions despite their thinking being still very full of the traditional system of governance” (DGCID, 2008). For example, citizenship is going through a complex situation of transition where identitarian points of reference are far from being stabilized between the more traditional or modern norms of reference. And what is principally at stake – the common good – citizenship fluctuates in its strategies of material reassurance for “better living” and social reassurance for “living together”. With regard to the fine weave of democratization of this new urban governance it often finds itself confronted with political ills such as autocracy, nepotism, clientelism and marginalization of minority groups. In addition, the individualistic democratic concept developed in the West is not suited to a community-style regime where governmental structures are embedded in the other structures of society, where belonging to primary ethnic, tribal or family groups and their specific values define their political adherence (de Bruyne and Nkulu Kabamba,  2001).

In conclusion, urban governance far from operating as a simple management tool shows itself to be an institutional and organizational outcome shaping collective action and comprising multiple and hybrid values and attitudes. The coexistence of  rural and urban areas, which is to say one society based on mutual knowledge and another, superimposed and set in new relations of sociability, involving dual traditional-modern thinking. There is also the coexistence of an oral culture which respects the spoken word and a written culture based on signing a contract. Observation of community life showed how the component parts of urban governance are still uncertain and fragile : vague democratic rules, uncertain social and institutional legitimacy, new municipalities that are weak on management and technology and in their democratic culture, a hesitant civil society, and a concept of the public good not yet internalized in attitudes and representations. While there does exist the political-administrative organization structure and the exercise of local government authority, the social content involving collective duties and responsibilities still needs to be shaped into a new urban citizen membership. Thus the experience of Burkina Faso enables us to go beyond the idea of multiple governances, to urban governance as a system of hybrid governances among the more or less normative lines influenced by localized, Africanized and Westernized political ideologies.

Public administration reforms and
participatory approaches in Viet Nam

Viet Nam in transition underwent thoroughgoing transformations one of which was the adoption of political reforms doi moi (renewal) in 1986 introducing the passage from a centralized economy to a socialist-style market economy, and the Public Administration Reform (PAR), programme launched in 1995. The PAR, which was directed towards organizational and institutional restructuring through new laws, edicts, administrative procedures and financing mechanisms, happened gradually at a slow pace, with stability as its prime objective. Thus the Socio-Economic Development Strategy 2002-2010 strengthened the reforms through a decentralization of the tasks and responsibilities from central to provincial and municipal levels, and a redefinition of relations within society from a top-down perspective to bottom-up movements involving civil society. This strategy aimed “to successfully build a democratic, clean, strong, professional, modern, effective and efficient public administration system which operates in line with the principles of the rule of law, socialism and the leadership of the Party” (Ha 2002). The convergence of an accelerated urbanization and an integration into the globalized market in this country with a centrally-planned economy tradition tested the towns’ and cities’ physical capacities on the territory and their political-administrative management structure. With regard to the urbanization process in Viet Nam, it was marked by insufficient infrastructure and public services and by the deterioration of the urban environment. In this context several international cooperation agencies set up urban development programmes.

We will tackle urban governance in Viet Nam (Lieberherr-Gardiol 2003) through two institutional transformation experiments – the One Stop Shop as a basic administrative reform and community participation as a first step towards democracy. According to the official terms, the Government decided to implement the One Stop Shop mechanism “aiming at a radical change in the relationship between public administrative agencies and citizens,  organizations, and in working procedures used by the former when addressing affairs of the latter, with a view to reducing inconvenience for the latter, preventing bureaucratic and corrupt practices and authoritarian behaviours of some cadres and civil servants, and improving state management efficiency and effectiveness” (SDC, 2003). Thus, the basic concept launched as a pilot project in 1997 was to concentrate in one single window different kinds of administrative services located in various places, from the citizen seeking advice to dealing with the matter and delivery of the documents or services. To benefit citizens using the system, who were often at a loss when confronted with administrative complications, the One Stop Shop with modern equipment and competent staff had to provide better access, transparency, equality and effectiveness. While the wording of this reform may appear evident, its application in fact involved wide-ranging transformations. This reform, which went further than simple technical measures, came up against social, institutional, political and cultural barriers, created by the systems in place and by social actors with diverging interests. It highlighted rigid administrative systems, bureaucratic mentalities and a hierarchical advancement mechanism based more on political merit than professional competence. Despite the goodwill of the municipal and provincial authorities, it appeared that resistance to change in mentalities, in social status acquired within the administrations and in the societal models of reference had been greatly underestimated. The verification of legal taxes and a free administrative service was often overridden by the informal practice of paying bribes and setting obstacles for the deferment of authorizations. The SDC accompanied the setting up of the One Stop Shop in Dong Hoi and Nam Dinh with a training system, appropriate manuals and a follow-up mechanism. An evaluation undertaken by the Ministry of the Interior in 2002 enabled the reforms to go from pilot projects to an institutionalization of the One Stop Shop in the whole of Viet Nam – regional capitals, urban districts and wards. Conceived with a view to better governance, the One Stop Shop appeared as a catalysing starting-point for more complex reforms of the PAR.

The second experience concerns a community participation programme in Nam Dinh where there was a dual strategic aim : to facilitate access to basic infrastructures for people living in disadvantaged districts and to promote a participatory approach as a prelude to local democracy (Stanley and Schubeler 2002). This programme included various environmental health activities linked to the living conditions through improving sanitation, provision of drinking water and refuse collection in the form of micro-credits, and education and awareness programmes in schools and among the population [14]. Restricted to just a few districts in 1997, the local authorities later institutionalized this reform throughout the city. It was integrated into an broader Urban Development Programme put forward by the SDC which aimed for strengthening capacity-building in management through a dual approach of hardware together with software, with a physical entry-point of infrastructure (sanitation and drainage) by bringing urbanized areas up to standard and a strategy of steadily establishing institutional capacity-building.

The software approach had two innovative aspects. First of all, community participation in accordance with international cooperation ideas came under a new line encouraged by the Government and expressed in the slogan “People and State work together”. Despite its popularity with the international community, participation remains an ambiguous, not very explicit concept. Within the framework of this Vietnamese project, participation began with official local organizations which mobilized inhabitants, making the process credible and controllable for the local authorities (Khuat 2007). In addition, the development stakes were tackled like social and technical issues, avoiding any political connotation. The second aspect, local democracy, also responded to a transition trend starting from the standpoint of a very centralist political-administrative apparatus and moving out to a better representation of the population’s interests and the gradual appropriation of a citizen’s active behaviour. In Viet Nam, civil society is still weak and a kind of urban middle class is emerging which is more oriented on a consumer culture and personal ambitions than being the bearer of public opinion for social justice and common interest. Although some kind of democratic participation in this country does represent a first step towards better governance, it is a long, slow process which questions the very foundations of Vietnamese society in its political system, its social vision, its ethical and cultural values.

These two experiences of governance display new kinds of interaction among decision-makers, administrators and city users. The first issue raised is temporality. Beyond the logic of the project and its limited time span, these two experiences tend to fall into a movement of institutional transformation which is more sustainable medium- to long-term and carried out by central and local governments in Viet Nam. They also raise the democracy question. Apart from the political-administrative and territorial structures gradually modified by the PAR, the structural framework for the population is also being modified. It is gradually opening up to negotiations where a still timid civil society can acquire the right to information and to speak out. This new citizen involvement is creating an embryo of citizenship. But depending on the modernist or outdated visions of the actors, this transition process will not be linear ; it will either progress or encounter resistance and rejection.

Urban Democratic Forums,
participatory tools in Bulgaria

While decentralization processes and administrative reforms were being carried out within the framework of a national programme in Burkina Faso and Viet Nam, the experience of democratic Forums in Bulgaria took place with the agreement of and in parallel with a municipal government exercise which resulted from an external international cooperation initiative represented by the SDC (SDC 2007). This programme of democratic Forums which affected 33 municipalities of small and medium-sized cities between 2000 and 2004, corresponded to a highly structured process of ten forums per city and brought together 60 to 80 citizens as well as around 20 experts, municipal and media people who were invited to attend for a year. In this exchange and learning arena, led by an external moderator and a local operational group, the collective discussions covered around ten priority subjects – social, economic and cultural – that had been selected at the first session and were of particular interest to the local community. During the Forums, participants listened and learned to respect the views of others, the right to speak, the expression of their personal opinions, debating through the construction of arguments and above all, the negotiation of common solutions by consensus. The idea was to develop a sense of citizen responsibility and initiative comprising two interdependent elements : an open arena for dialogue and participants’ concrete activities in the form of recommendations and small projects. The recommendations addressed to the municipalities enabled a move from the identification of problems to the proposal of solutions, while the small projects enabled ideas to become action.

How was this concept translated into Bulgarian practices and how was it adopted by local actors (Berthin and Lieberherr 2001) ? Although this experiment in urban governance was announced as going hand in hand with civil society, it was carried out with the support of the municipality which gave the process legitimate status through its presence and through the candidates’ proposals, and it played the game of democracy by receiving the recommendations. It should, however, be noted that the municipalities tended to control the Forum by pre-selecting the citizen candidates according to their local political interests, and showed themselves to be little interested in the recommendations because they were used to handling the population with the view that they knew what was good for it. What happened to the civil society actors ? Although that kind of democratic Forum presupposes social representation as egalitarian as possible, local conditions displayed the prevailing socio-political codes in representations and actions. There was a kind of “élite” attending the Forum who were known for their economic and technical expertise, active and committed women, and some young people who were far less accepted and who were often motivated by personal career aspirations. However the disadvantaged and excluded categories as ethnic or economic minorities were absent. With regard to the NGOs who were supposed to play the role of catalyser of the initiatives and mediator between social and government actors, they could be placed in the context of a centralist society with no counter-power. Generally created as “services” by international aid in the 1990s, they were rarely present at the Forums, if at all.

Democratic governance was indiscutably a new paradigm in Bulgaria at the end of the 1990s (UNDP 2000). How did it develop and what was at stake ? The first evaluations carried out among the participants in the Forums mentioned elements of success in the improvement of a democratic culture and citizen responsibility, but they also mentioned factors of weakness such as scepticism and mistrust on the part of local authorities, local administrations’ conservatism and absence of initiatives, participants’ lack of confidence, and the weak social and economic conditions of the communities. The participants’ initiative of small projects in various sectors : tourist, cultural, health or other, became the principal concern and the symbol of the Forums because these projects corresponded to the usual practice of international aid being of direct benefit to these relatively poor communities. However, their impact was very restricted because of limited understanding of short-term local and sectoral development with no regional or global perspective. During the social, institutional and economic transition process that Bulgaria is going through, the evolution starting from a traditional vertical governance system, will take place through the clarification of legal competences, making decision-makers and citizens aware of their responsibility, and strengthening civil society. Forums assessed like schools of democracy, generating ideas and initiatives, consolidating public opinion and mobilizing citizen commitment could make a positive contribution. These Forums must enable decision-makers’ authoritarianism to be overcome as well as citizens’ passiveness, clientelistic practices and localist views. The Forums must also open up to multi-power sharing, a multi-ethnic view of the community and social solidarity that goes beyond inter-family or clan solidarities. Some people spoke of a revolution of mentalities. One thing is clear : the democratic Forums have multiplied in Bulgaria and have gained a following in neighbouring countries.

Urban governance – a challenge
and a permanent state of construction

From a context of ideological and geopolitical transformation, whether globalization, neo-liberalism, opening up to a multipolar world and environmental crises, governance has asserted itself as a new founding paradigm of the late 20^th century. Talking of cities as strategic places of the 21^st century, characterized by the growing complexity of the processes involved, Saskia Sassen (2007) places the challenge of cities as platforms of governance. Spheres of promise and conflict, of social cohesion and exclusion, of wealth and poverty, cities represent a concrete environment for the exercise of politics, the management of public affairs and the integration of the demands of all formal and informal actors. Brought together around the municipalities, the various contributors can build a democratic sphere for negotiation between projects and institutions and where the plurality of local actors can be acknowledged (Massiah, 2003).

From our analyses of these urban governance experiences, some strong points emerge. As mentioned in the introduction to the three cases – Burkina Faso, Viet Nam and Bulgaria – our position of analysis considers multiple forms of governance whose adoption varies depending on the contexts, and various operational mechanisms which result from a dominating exogenous model in international cooperation. Thus, urban governance far from operating as a simple management tool, shows itself to be an institutional and organizational outcome shaping community action and made up of multiple and hybrid  values and attitudes. We talk of the fabrication of urban governance because it is set at the centre of socio-economic and democratic transitions, of exogenous and endogenous dynamics, of the emergence of new actors, of the construction of new rules and contracts for living together, and of the creation of a collective identity. Imprinted on them are movements of resistance and rejection, conflicting and divergent interests, development phases and phases of regression, and paralysing routines. These are all largely underestimated in projects for the promotion of governance. A new culture of participation and democratic responsibility is taking root in clannish or pre-existing centralist policies, in the local power systems in place, in the clientelist mechanisms of social sharing and in discrimination against minorities.

Overall, international cooperation in transition countries aims to improve the management of cities’ public affairs. It is a matter of applying a normative approach but which could be said to have two contrasting ideological trends : a major neo-liberal trend represented by the World Bank promoting the weakening of local authority and the domination of the market economy, and a minor trend represented by civil mobilization with a view to participatory democracy. Participatory budgeting experiences in Brazilian cities and the social and ecological management in Curitiba illustrate this second approach. However, many approaches combine to a greater or lesser degree the demand for administrative, financial effectiveness with the strengthening and mobilization of civil capacities.

As shown in the articles by Biau and Massiah, city management approaches have evolved over the past 30 years from vertical technocratic exercises, little concerned with institutional challenges, with sectoralized interventions and short-term views, to a multisectoral shared view for the city. The current context of environmental and government crises highlights the growing complexity of urban networks, the uncertainty of the future and awareness of the long-term. All these elements contribute to this global urban governance approach characterized by an opening up, by rules negotiated between public and private actors and by collective decision-making. It is the promotion of a real public-private-citizen partnership, without a supervision and control structure, including local actors’ networks in a concerted strategy of economic development, social solidarity and political participation and in a right to the city for everyone. Such a process involves commitment, expertise, political will, learning in democracy and continuity.

“Governance is the child of abundance and democracy … an idea from the rich world” where “so-called basic needs are more or less satisfied … and the market can come into play” (Moreau Defarges, 2003). This position illustrates the two principal criticisms of governance mentioned earlier, on the one hand its dominant economic dimension ruled by the market promoted by the World Bank and applied in international cooperation, and on the other hand its Western origins which transfer conditions of application direct without taking into account the vast differences in living standards, social and institutional regulations, cultural values. “A city management model that is proposed from outside means erasing any societal debate on the choice” of urban project to be developed with regard to the system of social relation governing the city (de Ponte, 2002).  There are many traps to avoid falling into in the concern for each specific local context of urban governance.

However, the direction of an ideal governance, in conformity with local specificities,  should follow the two dominant Western lines of democracy and sustainability, where democratic rules define public interest which are constantly re-negotiated with new compromises, and sustainable development, a new globalizing move, guides our consumer and production systems. This means taking into account the complex and contradictory issues of urban governance in order to bring about coherence in the diversity of interests and actors in a unified project, weighty trends and situations of emergency, conflicts of economic and ecological challenges, and power play in what is ultimately a win-win game. It also means democratic participation must be considered not simply as mobilization of the public within the restricted framework of a project but as a redistribution of power within a local community. “Democratic participation means questioning the existence of the political contract” between elective representatives and citizens, it questions the importance of what is deemed to be in the public interest and also the criterion of sharing local resources (de Ponte, 2002). It means enhancing the value of the political sphere and avoiding tendencies that reduce the mechanisms of governance to merely economic and administrative effectiveness. Thus, far from being fixed and imposed, on the contrary, governance is under permanent construction through the accountability of actors and the transparency of its rules, and in accordance with political, social and cultural local codes. Between innovation and the rehabilitation of old ideas, there is a multiplicity of solutions but none claim to be the magic formula for governance in today’s world.

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