The practices, enabling conditions and barriers of a facilitative role of local governments for citizen initiatives in waste management: Case studies in Brussels and Hong Kong
Summary
Citizens are perceived as service receivers in public policies. When a public policy cannot address a social problem adequately, dissatisfaction with the government arises. By self-organizing into citizen initiatives, citizens in the community seek alternative solutions to address social challenges. The concept of “Big Society” was first raised by the UK government, which emphasized the public policy revolution steered by citizen initiatives. Studies suggested that the role of local government does not diminish. Instead, it shifts its mode of public goods and services delivery from steering to a facilitative role for citizen initiatives. Nevertheless, the understanding of how local governments fulfil a facilitative role is unclear.
This research explores the practices, enabling conditions, and barriers of a facilitative role of local governments for citizen initiatives in waste management. The study assumes that facilitative practices of local government vary by type of citizen initiatives as well as innovation phases of projects. A comparative case study was executed in Brussels and Hong Kong. A set of twenty-four in-depth interviews were conducted and analyzed with relevant secondary data. The results found that local governments offered financial assistance, technical assistance, networking, capacity building, flexibility, and acceptance of opinions as facilitative practices to citizen initiatives. The combination of facilitative practices offered varies per type of citizen initiative. Moreover, the content of facilitative practices may differ per innovation phase. The Brussels government found openness, values, and beliefs in social innovation as relevant enabling conditions to fulfil a facilitative role. For the Hong Kong government, materialistic support and skills were more relevant. Barriers to facilitation were a lack of resources for the Brussels government, and a lack of innovation spirit for the Hong Kong government. Compared to the Brussels government, the Hong Kong government had a better view of the ideal facilitative practices expected by citizen initiatives in the city. Both local governments did not remove all the barriers faced by citizen initiatives. The divergences discovered in Brussels and Hong Kong can be explained by the differences in their environmental policies. This thesis contributes to the scientific field by illustrating facilitative practices offered by local governments in respond to barriers encountered by different types of citizen initiatives in different innovation phases.