Smart Governance in Practice

This dissertation focuses on smart governance - technology-enabled cooperation between the local state and citizens to collectively act in public matters. Smart governance has become a popular concept over the past decade - its promise to address the societal challenges rapidly accruing in cities is both praised and criticized. Despite this increasing interest, the theoretical and empirical understanding of this concept is inadequate, making it difficult to ascertain whether, and if so, how smart governance is actually part of today’s urban reality. The aim of this dissertation was to add to this understanding by means of an empirical study with a focus on two major aspects: 1) citizen engagement manifesting in the urban system and in bottom-up initiatives, 2) the contextual influence shaping smart governance practices. For this purpose, diverse cases in cities from Brazil, Scotland, and the Netherlands were explored. The thesis reveals the diversity in citizen roles as well as the dynamic interrelation between citizen engagement and the context, which offers a good indication of whether, when, and how smart governance actually takes place. The research also shows that the use of technology in collaboration processes is not a game-changer: it is not a catalyst for abrupt and fundamental change, but instead fosters innovation in an incremental fashion affected by place- and situation-specific contexts whereof the political-institutional setting has particularly proven to be a significant factor. Smart governance needs thus to be understood as context-contingent and kaleidoscopic technology-mediated interactions between local states and citizens, emerging in practice.