Across European cities local entrepreneurs are joining forces in new ways, forming collectives to stimulate business growth and innovation and to create a more attractive business environment. The value of such collectives is increasingly recognized by local governments and policy measures to stimulate these initiatives are being developed. Amsterdam hosts different collaborative initiatives, including 39 business improvement districts (BIDs).The Knowledge Mile is such a collective in which shopkeepers, other local SMEs, residents work together to collectively improve a large retail area. The city of Amsterdam is also a stakeholder. Government can fill an important role in enabling the creation of collective resource management in urban settings. However, if effective regulation is missing, citizens and governing bodies have to look for incentives to find new means of addressing governance. As such, the potential for collective management of urban commons may be greater than realized so far, as there is still a lack of knowledge in this area. In this paper, we aim to bridge this gap. By means of an embedded case study approach, we analyze the interaction between the stakeholders in their development of a green zone, the Knowledge Mile Park, in the Wibautstraat. In the coming years, roofs, facades and ground level will be changed through a collaboration of residents, entrepreneurs, researchers, civil servants and students in a metropolitan Living Lab. In this Living Lab, solutions for a healthy and social environment, climate resistance and biodiversity are jointly developed, tested and shown. In our study, we will analyze the role of the governing bodies in such initiatives, and make recommendations how collectives can become more mainstream with new kinds of institutions, without an undue burden on the community.
MULTIFILE
By way of a case study on the regulatory role of owners and managers of brothels and rented rooms for prostitution, this study focuses on the strategies deployed by a municipality to govern these intermediaries. The analysis is based on a typology of responsibilization distinguishing between who the responsible should govern (themselves or others) and forms of power (repressive or facilitative). The regulator concomitantly renders these entrepreneurs responsible for their own possible criminal conduct (self-governing) and empowers them to keep out traffickers and pimps and to control sex-workers (others-governing). Moreover, the municipality applies both repressive and facilitative power. Although the responsibilization strategy succeeds in having entrepreneurs govern themselves, it also unintentionally undermines sex-workers’ independence and favors the largest entrepreneurs. Our study enriches the R(egulator)I(ntermediary)T(arget) model by showing how varied and contentious the interactions between regulators and involuntary intermediaries are and by demonstrating the power game that the responsibilization strategy entails
ABSTRACT. It is now generally accepted that the quality of the regulatory arrangements should be appraised not only by looking at the institutional design, but also by evaluating the factual enforcement and implementation of regulations. It is therefore advised that national governments take a more active stance in supervising the regulatory enforcement by different regulatory agencies. However, in some cases, government’s activism might be an impeding factor in regulatory enforcement. That this is not so crazy idea shows the analysis of the regulatory enforcement by Lithuanian Competition Authority in the area of competition policy during the years of integration to the European Union. For example, not only political and financial independence of the Competition Authority was difficult to establish, but also functions and competences of the regulatory agency were changed a number of times, which hampered the effectiveness of the agency’s performance while enforcing the competition law. In addition to often changes of functions, also the scope of competences was changing. As a result, the variety of tasks attributed to the Lithuanian Competition Authority caused the growing overload of work, which further hindered its regulatory practice. The question is who can be blamed for that? Was it just the inexperience of the government who was seeking for the best institutional design and could not stop with redesigning the regulatory agency or was it the intentional behaviour guided by some concrete interests as a result of a regulatory capture? The analysis of the regulatory enforcement during the period of 15 years does not allow for disregarding of the second possibility.
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