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The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the relevance and impact of a number of factors on the role of local councils in local policy-making in Erbil province/Iraq.

This research theoretically based on literature review and adopted an analytical approach to clarify the related concepts through the policy cycle approach. On the empirical side, the research adopted a descriptive analysis for research questions and used statistical analysis to test the research hypotheses.

The results of the study reveal that variables of the local policy-making process, political factors, interaction patterns and the role of other actors have relevance in the role of local councils. In addition, the study concludes that technical feasibility, budgetary considerations, public opinion, coalition building, civil society, executive bodies, administrative organs and non-governmental organizations have a positive effect on the role of local councils in local policy-making in Erbil province, while interest groups have a negative effect on the role of local councils in local policy-making in Erbil province.

The findings and recommendations of this research can practically use by the local councils to achieve effective local policy, particularly in Erbil province/Iraq.

This research has interesting implications in theory and practice, as it provides several contributions to the literature, as well as the practical contribution for local councils in the local policy-making process.

The purpose of this study is to navigate the challenges irregular migratory flows generate for cities and urban systems. The migration and refugee crises that challenged Europe in 2015-2016 revealed that the developed world cities and urban areas are largely unprepared to address challenges that irregular migratory flows generate. This paper queries the smart and resilient cities’ debates, respectively, to highlight that migration-related challenges and opportunities have not been explicitly addressed in those deliberations. This creates a disconnect between what these debates promise and what cities/urban systems increasingly need to address on a daily basis. Subsequently, a way of bridging that disconnect is proposed and its policy-making implications discussed.

To suggest ways of navigating irregular migration-inflicted challenges cities/urban areas face, a nexus between the smart cities and resilient cities’ debates is established. By placing advanced sophisticated information and communication technologies (ICTs) at the heart of the analysis, a novel dynamic ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems is developed. The framework’s dynamics is defined by two hierarchically interconnected levers, i.e. that of ICTs and that of policy-design and policy-making. Drawing from qualitative analysis and process tracing, the cross-section of policy design and policy-making geared towards the most efficient and ethically sensitive use of sophisticated ICTs is queried. Subsequently, options available to cities/urban systems are discussed.

The ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems integrates the effectiveness of migrants and refugees’ policy design and policy-making in human-centred thinking, planning and policy-design for resilient urban systems. It places resilient approaches in the spotlight of research and policy-making, naming them the most effective methods for promoting a humanistic smart cities and resilient urban systems vision. It highlights critical junctions that urban systems’ stakeholders must consider if the promise of emerging sophisticated ICTs is to be employed effectively for the entire society, including its most vulnerable members.

First, when designing ICTs’ enabled integrated resilient urban systems, the key stakeholders involved in the policy-design and policy-making process, including local, national and regional authorities, must employ a holistic view to the urban systems seen through the lens of hard and soft concerns as well as considerations expressed by the receiving and incoming populations. Second, the third-sector representatives, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other actors, need to be seen as peers in integrated humanistic networks, thereby contributing critical, unbiased knowledge flows to infrastructures, which promote fair and inclusive participation of migrants and refugees in local economies.

The ICTs’ enabled integrated framework for resilient urban systems promotes a humanistic smart cities’ and resilient urban systems’ vision. It suggests how to design and implement policies apt to meet the needs of both receiving and incoming populations along value chains specific to smart and resilient cities. It promotes emerging sophisticated ICTs as the subtle, yet key, enabler of data ecosystems and customized services capable of responding to critical societal needs of the receiving and the incoming populations. In addition, the framework suggests options, alternatives and strategies for urban systems’ stakeholders, including the authorities, businesses, NGOs, inhabitants and ICTs’ providers and vendors.

The value added of this paper is three-fold. At the conceptual level, by bringing together the smart cities and resilient cities debates, and incorporating sophisticated ICTs in the analysis, it makes a case for their usefulness for cities/urban areas in light of challenges these cities/urban areas confront each day. At the empirical level, this analysis maps the key challenges that cities and their stakeholders face in context of migratory flows and highlights their dual nature. At the policy-making level, this study makes a case for a sound set of policies and actions that boost effective use of ICTs beyond the smart technology hype.

This chapter examines the relations between local civil society organizations and the European Union as a way to assess the functioning of multi-level governance in the field of employment policy.

The chapter draws on primary organizational survey data collected in the EU FP7 funded project entitled ‘Youth, Unemployment and Exclusion in Europe’ (Younex, grant agreement n.216111) and for the approach it places itself in the tradition of critical civil society–EU relations research.

For more than two decades, civil society has occupied a prominent position in the rhetoric of European Union multi-level governance. The EU rhetoric conceives of the inclusion of civil society in policy making as a necessary step towards linking the various levels of government (from local to European) as well as the different societal and institutional actors implied by a multilevel governance approach. Moreover, the rhetoric of civil society also serves the goal of tackling the multi-faceted issues of a democratic ‘deficitaire’ EU. This chapter, however, offers a critical appraisal of such a rhetoric by confirming what other studies had unveiled: access to European institutions requires substantial human (‘capital in knowledge’) and economic resources and as such the link existing between the European Union and local civil society organizations is a very thin one, one which is limited to a very few, rich in resources, organizations. The rhetoric of civil society as the connector of levels and types of actors in the multi-level governance approach promoted by the EU should thus be mitigated. The European policy process should be conceived of more pragmatically as an arena where European institutions and member states still act as gate keepers that select and decide which societal interest and voice should have a place within the European agenda. What consequences this has for the overall democratic quality of the European policy process is an issue which should concern us all.

The chapter allows scrutinizing horizontal and vertical dimensions of multi-level governance while expanding knowledge on civil society at both local and European level. Although multi-level governance has become a popular concept it still lacks a consistent empirical assessment, which is something the data discussed here do. Thus, the chapter has implications for research on civil society and citizens’ engagement in public affairs but it is also relevant for scholars working on EU policy-making issues.

Civil society organizations could contribute improving the quality of policies at European level as well as strengthening EU legitimacy to rule. The findings contribute explaining which factors limit civil society access to EU institutions and how these could be overcome.

The chapter corroborates critical views of the EU–civil society relations, the findings suggest that the EU should work with further commitment to offer local civil society organizations and citizens groups real opportunities for their voices and expertise to be heard and considered.

The chapter adopts a critical view of EU–civil society relations challenging the EU multi-level governance rhetoric and discusses the features obstructing civil society actors’ engagement with policy making at the EU level.

Peru’s recent macro-economic success has not translated into significant changes in the capabilities of the state to shape economic activities like Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) through specific policies, even though the country has drafted a national action plan, Agenda Digital del Perú, with stakeholders’ participation, as well as a National Broadband Plan. While there are some state programs that have been considered successes and are potentially examples for Peru and the region, the intent of having a full set of “information society” policies, as in the European Union, has failed.

The paper explores two sets of issues: the diffusion of internationally sourced policies and the capabilities of governments to impact the use of ICT. In the Peruvian case, the state has not been capable of both designing its own set of policies while still following the lead proposed at international fora. To understand the lack of success, it is necessary to differentiate between the shortcomings of local policy-making and the international agenda. Policy makers’ insistence on an “information society” approach is particularly prominent, as the term has been ever present as a policy objective while still lacking actual meaning.

This paper will explore the role of policy-making and the failures of digital policies. It will also consider the contradictory nature of a policy-making process that privileges policies stemming from international bodies over locally driven understandings of ICT policy needs.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent the initiatives of local governments to launch modernisation processes are facilitated by local autonomy, which is increasingly important in both the theory and practice of public policy and management.

Local government reforms are distinguished according to the institutional structure at which they are directed and local autonomy is assessed as a multidimensional concept. Drawing on a multilevel analysis of the Swiss case, this paper combines data stemming from a survey conducted at the local tier with secondary data from the regional tier.

The main empirical findings are threefold. First, when local governments undertake managerial or political reform initiatives, their autonomy with respect to higher levels of government matters. Second, it is not local autonomy but rather the perception of structural problems that is the force driving territorial reforms. Third, it is not the autonomy enjoyed by local governments vis-à-vis local factors, but rather the pressures stemming from that context that may lead to reforms.

By adopting a comparative approach to local autonomy, this paper shows that local governments which have sufficient latitude for local policy making are likely to take initiatives to improve service delivery in accordance with local preferences.

The geographically bounded community is explored as a political jurisdiction. Jurisdictions are important sites as local factors determine which political party is in power and because different professionals work within them. Jurisdictions are, thus, arenas for the expression of public policies, which have significant societal consequences. Specifically, we analyse 18 Danish municipalities and the local constructions of a new health-care organisation's focus either upon citizens in general or upon specific groups of patients. The study shows little evidence of specifically local translations. Instead, the study suggests the choice of focus – and underlying institutional logic – is influenced by the local actors' relationships with an external institutional context. Members of local political parties adopt the ideological position of the national party. Similarly, professionals employed locally push the ideology of their profession.

Citizen participation has attracted attention in the context of decentralization. In a disaster reconstruction process, a business plan for reconstruction can be modified in line with diversified situations of disaster-affected areas by citizen participation. In Japan, the central government makes a decision about the authority in charge of an overall disaster reconstruction and the budget planning, whereas local governments are in charge of creating and implementing a business plan for reconstruction of each local municipality. Therefore, local governments play an important role in organizing citizen participation to realize the reconstruction that fits reality. It has yet to be shown as decentralization reform and citizen participation system in Japan produce the socio-spatial inequality after the Great East Japan Earthquake. However, it remains to be elucidated how local government and community have to operate the institution about citizen participation during the disaster reconstruction process. I have been doing fieldwork on three tsunami-affected sites in Miyagi Prefecture over past 4 years: Onagawa Town, Higashimatsushima City, and Natori City. I have investigated the social processes of making and implementing a reconstruction plan, and citizen participation. The findings from my fieldwork are as follows: First, citizen participation is based on organizing residents at the community level. Second, traditional community organization (such as neighborhood organization abd industrial associations) contribute to organize residents especially in the emergency phase. Third, as the disaster phase moves, local government and community organization need to change the previous participation frame to ensure residents representation and policy legitimacy.

The paper proposes to look at the transformational strategies undertaken in relation to the 1989‐1997 French administrative reform process and to examine their impact on the ministerial field services through using Burgelman's “model of the interaction of strategic behaviour, corporate context and the concept of strategy”.

Empirical research was carried out in a field service of the French Education Ministry with the presentation of the findings being structured around Burgelman's criteria for autonomous strategic behaviour. These criteria – operational slack, project champion, circumvention of the structural context and organisational champion – provided a mechanism to assess whether operational and institutional factors at field service level impeded or facilitated moves towards a more managerial logic of appropriateness as envisaged by the reform programmes during this period.

The explanatory insights of Burgelman's model show how the resilience of traditional institutional features minimised the transformational impact of the reforms.

Burgelman's model is able to facilitate a greater understanding of the 1989‐1997 French administrative reform process through identifying those conditions conducive to micro‐organisational actors exercising greater autonomy in their operational management. In this way, the organisational dynamics that constrained the transformational impact of the reforms could be highlighted and an explanation provided of why the respective reform programmes had minimal effect at field service level.

The paper will be of relevance to those interested in the effect of the new public management agenda on national administrations in Europe and the applicability of private sector models in affording explanatory insights into such processes of change.

The paper aims to draw on recommendations of Agenda 21 and communitarian theory to examine collaboration between local district community and local authorities to formulate strategies for the sustainable development of the Taupo district.

The paper adopts an interpretative methodology based on philosophical hermeneutic to understand collaboration between local community and local authorities in the Taupo district. Empirical data for this interpretive study comprise public documents, interview transcripts and minutes of meetings attended by the researchers. The paper begins interpretation of empirical data with pre‐understanding of communitarian theory and Agenda 21.

The findings indicate that historical and political factors and diversity of interests in the community affect processes and outcomes of collaboration. Local authorities play a crucial role in bringing together various groups in the Taupo community which are segregated by diversity of interests, especially between Maori and non‐Maori community groups. Without local authority facilitation, the Taupo community may remain segregated; inhibited by lack of information; and not having the opportunity to participate in sustainable development. Community participation in the Taupo district is at an infancy stage and collaboration intended to empower communities may result in local authorities recentralising their positions.

The paper integrates theory and practice and provides valuable insights for statutory agencies seeking to implement the recommendations of Agenda 21 regarding community participation in sustainable development.