Exploring Concepts of 'Governance'

The following article discusses the various aspects of 'Governance' - a catch word often used without appreciation for the depth of complexity. The article is dense in theory but provides a large breadth of information.

Peace, Order, and New Governance: Ontario Municipalities in Transition.

Peace, Order, and Good Government.

It is a phrase repeated by schools, politicians, and the media across Canada. On one hand, it is seen as a symbol of Canadian values just as “liberté, égalité, fraternité” is to the French, or “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is to Americans. Alternatively, it is regarded as a means by which the federal government may, at times, take on extraordinary powers or intervene with provincial jurisdictions.

Section 91 of The Constitution Act 1867, authorizes the federal legislature, “to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government” of Canada.

Most individuals will have relatively similar normative understandings of what the words “Peace” or “Order” should represent. However, what exactly is “Good Government”? How do we distinguish it from “Bad Government”? Is it a stable thing or must it reflect and evolve alongside a changing civil society?

Creighton’s (1939) report to the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations argued that good government referred to good public administration but also had echoes of the concept of Good Governance within a neo-liberal context. This incorporated the idea of self-governance by civil society actors, since one element of good government within federalism was thought to be the concept of subsidiarity. (Eyels et al 2013:7)

Even considering the concept of “Good Public Administration” the idea of governance reemerges. For example, Kernaghan and Siegel, (1995) have argued that due to its large scope there is no generally accepted definition. Shields (1998;199) provides a more pragmatic view that:

“it deals with the stewardship and implementation of the products of a living democracy.” (Shields 1998;199)

Having simply replaced the words ‘Good Government’ with ‘Good Governance’ means we are no closer to any answers. Thus;

• What is Governance?
• How does it look like?
• Is it something new or different from the past?
• Are we heading towards this structure, process, mechanism, ‘strategy’ or ‘thing’?

Moreover, a great deal of literature appears to frame Governance as a ‘growing body of European literature’ (Peters & Pierre, 1998). How does this fit into the Canadian model? Furthermore, how is responsiveness balanced against political democratic accountability?

Providing insights into these topics is what this article will attempt to pursue.

To do this we will first zoom into the structures and processes of local municipal government in Ontario and investigate if a transition has occurred, what it looks like, and how municipalities balance ‘stewardship of products’, local representation, and political democratic accountability.

The central question to consider is:

‘How do Ontario Municipalities balance the need for ‘responsiveness’ against ‘political democratic accountability’?’

Although constitutional recognition of municipalities is limited to the mere role of being ‘creatures of the province’, the inherent principle of subsidiarity within federalism, in combination with the increase ‘squishiness’ (Subjective Social Issues), ‘messiness’ (Jurisdictional entangled issues), and ‘wickedness’ (interconnected issues) of modern problems, means municipalities play a crucial and growing role in ensuring effective responsiveness from the State which must still ensure accountability to citizens.

Theoretical Framework

Definitions and Boundaries

Governance has become a catch word used in several contexts (Klijn & Koopenman, 2000). Levi-Faur (2012:8) points out that the term ‘Governance’ has four meanings.

• First, as a structure, it is the architecture of formal and informal institutions.
• Second, as a process, it signifies the ongoing steering of policy making.
• Third, as a mechanism, it is the institutional decision making procedures of compliance and control.
• Forth, as a strategy, it signifies the design, creation, or adaptation of governance systems.

He further explains what it is not: governance is neither a unified, homogenous and hierarchical approach, nor a theory of casual relations, nor is it ‘government’ (2012;10).

Though the term may be new, political scientists have been studying governance concepts for a long time without calling it so, instead using terms for this negotiated order such as ‘corporatist’, ‘private interest government’, or ‘issue networks’. For Levi-Faur, governance is;

“an interdisciplinary research agenda on order and disorder, efficiency and legitimacy all in the context of the hybridization of modes of control that allow the production of fragmented and multidimensional order within the state, by the state, without the state, and beyond the state.” (Levi-Faur, 2012:3)

Where Levi-Faur found four definitions, Rhodes (1996) found six distinct uses of the concept which could broadly be placed into two groups:

1. a reduction in government Vis-à-vis ‘steering’ (or ‘doing more with less’), and,
2. his working definition that governance is “self-organizing, interorganizational networks”, (Rhodes, 1996; Klijn & Koopenman, 2000) that account for the interdependence of public, private, and semi-private actors.

Klijn (2008) found that four major definitions of governance dominated the literature, however more interestingly is his explanation that governance is becoming more popular because societal demands are becoming more “multifaceted and increasingly horizontal” (or ‘squishy, messy, and wicked’), which;

“only through collaborative action … can be resolved”

Offe (2009) was more skeptical of the term governance. From a grammatical point of view he points out that it is a subjectless word. While governments can govern their members, and members can be governed by governments, governance is something that can only be observed and experienced but which no one can in fact do.

One cannot be engaged in governancing or be the subject of having been governanced.

Beyond this, governance is not exclusively restricted to governments and can be conducted by other actors. He has argued that to investigate governance, two demarcations are necessary:

1. A first boundary is around the “spontaneous” coordination of action which occurs through the market.
2. A second boundary is the core sphere of state institutions which encompass the concept of government (ibid).

With Levi-Faur’s definition and Offe’s boundaries on the concept of Governance, (AKA;‘Associations’, ‘Private Interest Government’ (Streeck & Schmitter, 1985), ‘Experimentalist Governance’ (Sabel & Simon, 2011)) - a conceptual model is provided below.

To select an encompassing definition: governance is defined as:

“self-organizing, interorganizational networks” (Rhodes, 1996) which emerge to provide ‘collaborative action’ to resolve the ‘multifaceted and increasingly horizontal’ problems (Klijn, 2008) of society which is demarcated from the “spontaneous” coordination of actors as well as from the concept of government. (Offe, 2009)

On one hand this definition provides a tangibly and understandable structure of governance (i.e. the place where ‘governancing’ occurs), on the other hand, it provides the less tangible, interconnected, self-emerging, self-organizing network of processes and mechanics which occur within governance structures.

Beyond these reasons, it also shares a connection to Creigton’s (1939) interpretation of the Constitution Act that good federalism involves a notion of subsidiarity (Eyels et al., 2013) where horizontal self-organizing civil societal actors are the appropriate group for stewarding and producing the products of a living democracy. (Shields, 1998).

The model provides a location of the ‘Negotiate Order’ where governance systems exists and illustrates the infinite inter-organizational networks which may occur within it. 

As mentioned, political scientists have studied this negotiated order for a long time through other names such as: Corporatist, Private Interest Government, and Issue Networks. Two important systems which this article will focus on are; New Public Governance (NPG) (Osborne, 2006) Experimentalist Government (Sabel & Simon, 2011)

Osborne (2006) has argued that NPG is an evolution of traditional Public Administration (PA) and NPM has been a transition phase. Where PA is vertically integrated and focused on hierarchies, and where NPM attempts to disentangle policy making from implementation and is focused on dispersed competition, NPG is rooted within network theory.

It recognizes the fragmented and uncertainty within public administration and is thus horizontally integrated with a focus on inter-organizational relationships and the governance of processes.

Experimentalist Governance resembles NPG in its focus on the governance of processes. An important difference is its focus on reliability, that is, on the inter-organizations capacity to learn and adapt to new information and problems which occur within different local units in a polycentric system (Sabel & Simon, 2011). The knowledge experienced by one local unit may provide signals of larger problems not yet known to other entities or may lead to improvements of existing processes (ibid).

Polycentrism

Polycentrism can be understood as a combination of the word poly Greek for ‘many’, and the word centric for center, or a system of ‘multiple centers’. Polycentric Governance can be viewed as a natural evolution of liberal-democracy.

From Locke’s (1689) view that the citizen-state relationship was not paternal but a governed relation, to Adam Smith’s (1776) argument for free markets, to Kant’s (1796) demarcation between the State and Civil Society, social order has been understood as a bipolar structure between State and Market. In 1841 The philosophical Communitarianism view added the importance of communities shaping individuals and more recently, Dube et al. (2014) argue that they provide specialized local knowledge and are key intermediaries.

Figure 2: Polycentric model based (Aligica & Tarko, 2012)

Knowing where governance is located provides an initial understanding of how it interacts within civil society. However, to understand what occurs within this system itself, a higher level of abstraction is needed. Levi-Faur (2012) has described governance as a ‘fragmented and multidimensional order’ and Rhodes (1996) as a ‘self-organizing network’. To understand this order or network one must take a polycentric view.

In a Polycentric Governance system, local units become loosely coupled nested hierarchies within a framework of rules where they act independently while also mutually adjusting to one another (Dube et al. 2014). They emerge bottom-up and the raison d'être of system learning and adaptation is to improve the original subset levels in their task execution (ibid).

Aligica & Tarko (2012) tentatively define polycentricity as:

‘a social system of many decision centers having limited and autonomous prerogatives and operating under an overarching set of rules’.

These complex systems are ‘systems embedded within systems’, or as Ostrom (2005) has explained:

“what is a whole system at one level is part of a system at another level”.

McGinnis (2011) has described that a typical polycentric system of government combines multiple types, levels, sectors, and functions, which interact with one another to determine under which condition authorities are authorized to act, as well as their constraints. Figure 3 provides a model of the complexity of overlap a single entity may have.

Figure 3: Polycentrism Characteristics (McGinnis, 2011)

Polycentric Examples

Polycentricism is visible in discussion related to amalgamations. The argument for amalgamation is to create one large socio-economic-political community which is functionally integrated. However, as argued by Ostrom (2011) and others (Tindal & Tindal, 2009:138, Kitchen, 1995), different services scale at different economies of scale with no single optimum scale for all existing.

Bish (2001) states that apart from small municipalities under 20,000 people, 80 percent of local government activities do not possess economies of scale. Thus, if societies objective is to deliver the ‘products of a living democracy’ (Shields, 1998) as efficiently as possible then a single governing unit is not the optimum choice.

Instead, a network with multiple centers (individual municipalities) under a framework of rules (Provincial Municipal Act) should provide services themselves and only overlap (regional and inter-municipal agreements) when economies of scale exist.

Where the question of amalgamation involves determining ideal economies of scale, governance is self-organizing and thus may involve different services offered in different ways across different regions.

In a sense, this idea can be connected to the Tiebout Hypothesis where local governments would act as a quasi-market offering different services and voters would “vote with their feet” for the best package. (Tiebout, 1956)

An example within the healthcare industry is provided by Addy (2014) where the Quebec government partnered with the largest private family foundation in Canada to create a common financial pool of $480 Million Canadian dollars over 10 years for the promotion of healthy lifestyle and the environment. This fund then allocated 75% ($360 Million) to be deployed to local communities to execute their own (self-organized) strategic plans upon.

Decision Making

One may ask, how can a polycentric system with multiple decision centers coordinate and provide a coherent policy?

Tuohy (2003) describes that where traditional PA uses command-and-control hierarchies to centralize decision making, NPG operates differently.

In a NPG approach, multiple stakeholders with individual specialized knowledge are brought together to achieve a common end (Tuohy, 2003). In the context of local governments, each municipality could be seen to hold the specialized knowledge of their local contextual issues.

This dispersed specialized knowledge creates an interdependence between actors and results in increased importance of horizontal over vertical relations. (Klijn, 2002:8)

One of the strongest systems developed is Sable's Experimentalist Governance. With its focus on learning and adapting alongside a formalized connection between the multiple stakeholders involved.

This is created through coordination on initial framework goals and regular reporting between groups and decision centers where deviations to the norm are discussed, explained, and analyzed for signals or changes that could be created by the other local units within the polycentric system. (See Figure 4)

Figure 4: Experimentalist Governance (Zeitlin, 2013)

Accountability

With the gained understanding of the concept of governance, where it is located, and how it interacts with civil society, as well as with other entities within a polycentric system of embedded hierarchies, we can now turn to the questions of accountability structures.

As Tuohy (2003) explains accountability is the flipside of control. However, networks, such as those in a polycentric system, complicate the application of controls such as sanctions. How then can the government of Quebec ensure that the $360-million dollars being allocated to local communities is properly spent? (Addy, 2014)

All social systems have some form of accountability regime. Traditional Weberian Public Administration (PA) accomplished this through bureaucracies, hierarchical structures, and fixed rules. The market creates controls via the invisible hand of supply & demand and dispersed competition. Communities create accountability and control via the continuously negotiated norms and values between its members. (Figure 5)

Figure 5 – Social Systems Control Mechanisms

Problems with Mixing Accountability Systems

Accountability mechanisms also have their drawbacks and incompatibilities between systems. For example, Weberian bureaucratic hierarchy causes a loss of efficient when used in the market. Conversely, the market is not effective in dealing with some issues such as problems related to ‘free riders’ or negative externalities.

Mixtures of systems may cause new accountability issues. NPM attempts to utilize the strengths and minimize the weakness of state and market systems by ‘doing more with less’ and using government as a ‘steering’ system.

However, this mixed method also has potential critical weaknesses. As Osbaldeston (1989) describes, under NPM public servants face a conflict in values where they are accountable to both superiors in a principle-agent relationship but also to the market and performance standards.

Kemaghan and Charih (1997) point to a longer term systematic issue caused by NPM’s inherent tenet of increased mobility. They argue that the rapid movement between short-term jobs reduces political neutrality, while the need for efficiencies can detour the merit system.

This can then lead to an expansion of patronage appointments, causing uncertain on the length of employment, resulting in a continual search for future job opportunities.

Ultimately, Public administration values such as loyalty, and integrity, as well as market/NPM values such as service may both take ‘a back seat to the driving force of careerism.’ (ibid)

Individual Rationality - Take 2.

Ostrom’s (1998) Nobel prize winning ‘Second Generation Model of Individual Rationality’ (Figure 6) model provides insights into understanding how accountability is created within polycentric systems. This model shows a spiral relationship between: Reputation, Trust, and Reciprocity. As these attributes increases amongst members of a group the willingness to collaborate increases which leads to improved results.

Figure 6: 2nd Generation Model of Individual Rationality (Ostrom, 1998)

This model can help explain how accountability is created between individuals and groups in a NPG Governance structure.

NPG is horizontally integrated with a focus on inter-organizational relationships (Osborne, 2006) which involves multiple specialized stakeholders (Tuohy, 2003) who are interdependent of one another (Klijn, 2002:8).

Under these circumstances, to achieve results collaboration is needed between actors, which can only be achieved through a history of trust and reputation.

Ultimately, members within the network create a self-adjusting system where actors focused on individual gains over that of the collective will face resistance in future attempts for change. 

NPM is a forward mapping analysis which formulates required future; policies, expectations, activities, and expected outcomes should be. Its accountability structure is backwards looking.

Upon completion, it reviews if the initial objectives were in fact reached.

On the other hand, NPG is an organizational mapping analysis with horizontal accountability. It focuses on organizational relationships and members holding each other to account.

Experimentalism

Experimentalist Governance provides the opposite approach to NPM and an expansion of NPG. It is a backward mapping analysis which looks at what is: the problem, intentions of local units, interdependency of actors, and investigates the chain of events in order to determine a solution.

Experimentalism provides forward accountability where metrics are not decided ahead of time, rather, the focus is on how the system can be improved to enhance collective problem solving.

As described by Sabel & Simon (2011) as well as Zeitlin (2013), experimentalist governance is a continuous process of goal setting and revision which is based on comparing local approaches and local contexts to signal improvements to the rest of the system.

1. First, broad framework goals and metrics are provisionally established by central and local units as well as relevant civil society stakeholders.
2. Second, local units are given broad discretion to pursue these ends as they see fit.
3. However, the third step is that this autonomy is conditional on regular reporting of performance and participation in peer reviews.

Within these peer reviews results are compared and deviations must show they have:

1. are making progress,
2. have considered alternatives, or
3. are taking corrective measures.

If they are not, then the center provides services and inducements that facilitate the mutual learning between units. In the fourth step, the goals, metrics, and decision making procedures themselves are periodically revised by as a response to newly discovered problems or more efficient processes (ibid).

Analytical Review

This analytical review is split into three time periods with the primary focus placed on the 21st-century and rise of governance structures. The first time-period begins at the onset of the twentieth century until the rise of NPM in the 1980’s. The second period is between 1980 and 2000, and the last from 2000 until 2015.

Though local government in Upper Canada (Ontario) can trace their origins to the Baldwin Act of 1845 this period has been excluded for three reasons. First, though 1845 marks the beginning date, time was needed for it to expand across Upper-Canada. Second, it was only in 1867 that Canada became a nation and provinces granted powers over municipalities. Lastly, it was only by the turn of the century when ‘City Beautiful’, ‘City Health’, and ‘City Efficiency’ (Tindal & Tindal, 2009) reform movements gained traction replacing what could be described as ‘Cronyism Administration’ (where measuring accountability would be all but impossible) with the traditional ‘Public Administration’ (PA) hierarchy system known today.

1900-1980

The first period which will be briefly discussed is what can be described as ‘traditional public administration’. At the municipal level, systems were hierarchical which created a clear accountability structure. Within this period most western nations experienced an increase of size in government which is usually explained by an increased demand from citizens for more services (education, health care, social services). This trend was the strongest after the Second World War until the 1980’s.

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason or the exact time but at some point in the 1980’s more and more people began to question the expansive and expensive role of government, the increasing debt loans, and concerns that increasing debt servicing costs could impinge on governments ability to start new programs in the future. Governments would either have to do less, which was politically unacceptable, or find more efficient ways to deliver the ‘products of a living democracy.’

1980-2000

The 1980’s saw a dramatic shift in the view of the role of government. It is in this period that Margret Thatcher claimed that the United Kingdom had become “Ungovernable”, that Reagan (1981) claimed “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”, or that Mike Harris, Premier of Ontario, passed the ‘Fewer Politicians Act’ (1996) and pledged to ensure “less government”.

It was also in this period when Osborne and Gaebler wrote their famous “Reinventing Government” (1993) which popularized the phrase ‘steering viruses rowing’ endorsed by several high-profile converts including President Clinton, and Vice President Al Gore.

In Ontario, 1995 saw the Progressive Conservative party come to power under their, ‘Common Sense Revolution’ Platform to reduce government. Through the passing of Bill 26, the Saving and Restructuring Act (1996) they would do just that: reducing the total number of municipalities from 850 in 1995 to 445 by 2000 (Sigel, 2005:149; Miljan & Spicer, 2015)

This reforms purpose was to;

“achieve fiscal savings and promote economic prosperity through public sector restructuring, streamlining and efficiency and to implement other aspects of the government’s economic agenda” (Eves, 1996).

Though recent studies have shown that the reform was not successful in reaching these savings (Sancton, 2000; Miljan & Spicer, 2015), others point out that despite this there were some benefits as the newly amalgamated municipalities were financially stronger and better run (Gillis, 2014).

This improvement, coupled with the requirement to deliver additional services downloaded by the province, while also relying on a largely fixed revenue stream from property taxes, created a natural push towards NPM and ‘do more with less’.

Across all municipalities examples of NPM type initiatives have emerged. These examples follow the first broad group Rhodes (1996) described as government reduction approaches. To list a few common items;

1. The establishment of performance standards and customer service as a primary means of accountability for staff,
2. Time limited performance contracts to introduce competition within the labor force, and
3. Utilizing alternative service delivery (ASD) options including privatization.

2000-2015

The end of the 20th century marked a transition from traditional public administration towards more cost effective NPM strategies. It is fitting that the start of the 21st century, and rise of the internet era, shows signs of a shift towards a new collaborative and interorganizational network approach to solve the sticky and wicked problems of society.

Taylor and Bradford (2015) describe the emergence of what they label The New Localism. The new localism recognized that different communities have unique contextual factors which require unique policy approaches to solve complex problems.

Alternatively stated, the variation of the different local units requires a dispersed, polycentric, decision making process. In their article, they provide three cases which illustrate the polycentric governance and experimentalist governance approaches.

The three cases provided by Taylor & Bradford are the National Homelessness initiative, the Integrated Community Sustainability Plan, and the Local Immigration Partnership council.

Looking at these cases show that responsiveness to sticky social problem, wicked interconnected issue, and messy interdisciplinary issue requires a network polycentric approach. Moreover, that such an approach can ensure political democratic accountability.

Example 1: The National Homelessness Initiative

The National Homelessness Initiative (NHI) started in 1990 when the federal and provincial governments withdrew from social housing leaving it to municipalities to address the issue.

Municipalities and community groups advocated for a national response to the crisis and in 1997 announced it would work ‘with all its partners in all sectors to address the root causes of homelessness’ (Smith, 2004:3 in Taylor & Bradford, 2015).

This was proceeded with two-years of consultation between the federal government, provincial governments, and local consultants.

In December 1999, the 753-million-dollar National Homelessness Initiative was launched which included a 305-million-dollar Supporting Communities Partnership Initiative (SCPI).

The NHI was renewed in 2003 as well as in 2008 when it was renamed to the Homelessness Partnering Strategy (HPS) and allocated five-billion-dollars over a five-year period. (Taylor & Bradford, 2015)

The SCPI shows a strong example of a polycentric governance approach. It delegated authority to geographically designated pressure points through a flexible agreement.

This allowed large cities with existing service delivery networks to use existing plans while medium sized municipalities could follow a shared delivery model (Taylor & Bradford, 2015).

Each municipality acted as its own autonomous hierarchy and decision center, yet was embedded into an overarching set of rules (Aligica & Tarko 2012). As the Canada Public Policy Forum (CPPF) (Zussman, 2002) found in their community workshop, there was a holistic approach that went beyond the immediate needs for shelter but included coordination of health care, social supports, transitional housing, and skill developments. All of which are themselves independent nested hierarchies in other systems. (See Figure 7)

Figure 7: Illustrative example of Polycentrism within NHI.

The SCPI illustrates elements of Experimentalist Governance and how it can produce success. Within its program knowledge development and information sharing is mandated in the form of action research and analysis of best practices.

This illustrates what Sabel & Simon (2011) discuss on continuous revision through comparing different approaches and contexts that can be used to signal improvements to the rest of the system.

An interesting signal provided by the CPPF (Zussman, 2002) was that most communities found project reporting complex, time consuming, difficult and questioned the usefulness of some of the data requirements.

Beyond this, they identified duplication of information was needed to report to different levels of government.

The forum provided various recommendations including the need for clear, accessible, and consistent guidelines to be written in clear, simple language, as well as that governments should coordinate their reporting requirements.

This case illustrates that a polycentric system can act to improve the responsiveness on an issue while improving accountability.

Municipalities were provided with flexibility to take local contextual issues into account in their response to the problem. This flexibility was balanced against a degree of vertical accountability where each municipality was bound by the overarching hierarchy of rules to:

1. produce a 10-year community plan with clear targets,
2. identify the continuum of support needed to move people off the street, and
3. provide a strategy to engage with other levels of government or the private sector.

In addition to the vertical accountability the polycentric system created horizontal accountability through public forums which compared different approaches as well as identified common issues. This information was then communicated throughout the network through mandated information sharing.

Arguably this information sharing creates an even higher level of accountability for citizens compared to a traditional hierarchy as it is forward looking and identified inefficiencies (ie reporting structures) as they appear which can then be corrected.

Example 2: Integrated Community Sustainability Plan

The Integrated Community Sustainability Plan (ICSP) started in 2006 with the federal government’s announcement that a portion of the Gas Tax would be allocated to communities to help fund infrastructure projects.

The final negotiation with the provinces would be that approximately half of all Gas-Tax-Revenues, Five-Billion-Dollars, would be transferred to support local infrastructure investments in sustainability.

The funds were allocated per capita, and municipalities were required to submit annual reports on how projects contributed to the broader goals. Where differences exist between local municipalities the center provides support in the form of capacity building (Taylor & Bradford, 2015).

Although local governments must comply with the conditions placed by higher level governments they are given flexibility on projects as well as on how funds should be dispersed with additional incentives provided via open ended grants. (Adams, 2012 in Taylor & Bradford, 2015)

The concept of ‘Community Sustainability’ went beyond the basic broad framework goals of: ‘Good Transportation’, ‘Good Water’, ‘Good Sewage’ and included a diverse range of objectives.

As Infrastructure Canada explained, community plans:

“reflected and integrated social, cultural, environmental and economic sustainability objectives in community planning” (Infrastructure Canada, 2005 in Taylor & Bradford, 2015)

In some instances, municipalities could apply with existing plans that already met the requirements of ICSP, in other instances the province could step in and assume direct responsibility.

The use of funds also differed substantially between areas: larger cities tended to use funds for public transit, while smaller municipalities had a greater focus on roads and bridges (Taylor & Bradford, 2015). 

To get a view of the various types of plans which support ICSP principles, the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) provided the chart below (Figure 8) to its members:

Figure 8: AMO – Integrated Community Sustainability Plan Background 2007 (Recreated) (AMO, 2007:1)

The ICSP case shows a highly polycentric system of government which captures McGinnis (2011) description of multiple types, levels, sectors, and functions. Not only are different approaches taken in different locations, but the central actor could be a municipal government, a provincial government, or even an association of municipalities.

This system also shows elements of the ‘Broad Goals’ described in Experimentalist Governance (Sabel & Simon, 2011) At the center of the system are broad goals such as ‘Good Transportation’, ‘Good water’, and various other possible sustainability items. However, when zooming in to the municipal level, similar broad goals are provided to the various functional departments who in turn provide options on how this can be completed. (NaturalStep, 2009)

The ICSP creates responsiveness to the issue of sustainability by employing various local resources to tackle the problem from various interrelated departments while keeping a balance with the need for accountability.

The Federal government maintains a degree of political democratic (backward looking) accountability through the requirement of annual reports which show how projects contributed to overall goals.

Horizontal/Forward looking accountability is created through benchmarking the performance of different units and the center providing capacity incentives to municipalities where differences exist.

Arguably, an increase in the use of forums where members defend differences could serve to increase the systems forward looking abilities and accountability.

Example #3: Local Immigration Partnership Council

Where the issue of Homelessness is a constitutional jurisdiction of the provinces (Huhlchanski 2003:9), but often argued as the responsibility of all levels of government (Hughes, 2012), and where Community Sustainability is a broad jurisdiction-less framework that applies across all levels at all sectors, Immigration, by necessity, is a federal responsibility.

Unsurprisingly, the process of immigration does not occur in a vacuum, and new residents don’t just relocate to Canada but relocate into municipalities inside of provinces.

The Government of Canada, having reviewed immigration realized that the integration process was fragmented and contained program gaps causing difficulties in integrating (Taylor & Bradford, 2015).

As a large majority of immigrants locate in Southern-Ontario the federal government approached the province in 2005 to find ways the system could be improved (ibid).

In 2008, A federal-provincial framework called the ‘Local Immigration Partnership Council’ (LIPC) was launched. This agreement provided partnership funding to municipalities upon three conditions;

1. They must represent multiple sectors, including government, settlement agencies, community organizations, and employers.
2. They must provide a strategic plan with concrete steps to provide better access to services such as education, health, employment, and housing.
3. They must provide an implementation plan which includes progress measures and transition strategies (ibid).

Like the other two cases mentioned, larger cities which already had service providers utilized their existing infrastructure whereas medium sized cities partnered with other organizations. Further, it was often encouraged that priorities vary by geography (ibid).

Once again, the concept of a polycentristic system and accountability is clearly demonstrated as each partner acts as its own embedded hierarchy within the overarching set of rules in place by the provincial-federal framework agreement. (Aligica & Tarko 2012)

Accountability as well as output legitimacy can be seen by looking at the region of Kitchener-Waterloo’s Immigration Partnership Council. It serves as an umbrella coordinating group. Under this umbrella sit three ‘pillar’ steering groups: Settle, Work, and Belong. (LIC Kitchener-Waterloo, 2016) (See Figure 9)

Figure 9: Kitchener-Waterloo LIP Structure (2016)

Between the umbrella and steering groups there is strong two-way communication. When a new need is identified between the groups then a new action group may be spontaneously created. Once it has served its designated purpose it is then disbanded. Such an approach represents the same logic present within experimentalist governance (Sabel & Simon 2011). It is the ‘meta rule’, the rule to follow when no rule applies. The various groups discuss an approach and if needed create a new entity to address the specific issue.

Vertical democratic accountability exists through the framework rules created by the system center. In the Kitchener-Waterloo example, forward looking accountability exists as members revise systems and create new action groups as new issues arise.

Beyond this, horizontal accountability is also visible as the council membership requires participation from different groups with different interests. These specialized actors are dependent on each other and thus to achieve goals must build up trust, reputation, and reciprocity to bring forth collaboration. (Ostrom’s 1998)

Arguably, one of the most interesting accountability factors revolves around the council’s composition and its relation to output legitimacy. The mandate that 1/3rd of council be made up of immigrants which are preferably from different ethnocentric groups provides a real-time feedback loop of new comer’s experience.

Not only can this increase the speed at which issues are noticed, but it shares decision making power with the most ‘principle-principle’ that would use immigrant integration services; namely the immigrants themselves.

Conclusions

This article has intended to demonstrate that the frequently used catchword of 'Governance' has a significant body of literature and theoretical underpinnings.

Through exploring;

• The historical development of the term and meanings given to 'governance',
• Creating a conceptual model on where it can be bounded and its mechanisms,
• Exploring & explaining; polycentric systems, entities, the experimentalist structure,
• Investigating how our current accountability systems are often 'backwards looking' control structures instead of 'forward looking' accountability to prevent problems.
• And, providing examples how different organizations have implemented policy and systems which illustrate the effectiveness of these approaches,

That how we design organizational networks - both public and private - matter. When organizations are designed correctly people will not only hold others accountable but also themselves. Often in business we hear statements like, "our people are our greatest resource"; To maximize this resource it means stepping away from hard-command-and-control hierarchy structures and building highly effective autonomous teams.

***

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