Evaluating the contribution of the URBACT III program (2014-2020) to improving governance capacity of municipalities for integrated policy – The case of the city of Turin (Italy) and Braga (Portugal)

The aim of this thesis is to analyze whether and how the URBACT program by the European Union (EU) supports municipalities in developing their governance capacity. Municipalities, today, face complex issues such as climate change, an increasing demand for social housing and a more and more competitive economy which they have to find solutions for. While it is recognized in the academic debate that policies need to be designed and implemented in a sustainable and integrated manner to address these issues properly and find long-term solutions, it requires cities to obtain skills to address cross-cutting issues, work with diverse actors in the policy domain and involve non-governmental partners. The URBACT program by the EU, specifically URBACT III from 2014 to 2020, has been chosen for analysis since its aim is to promote sustainable urban development among cities by supporting their governance capacity to create integrated policies. By participating in the program, networks among cities are established to collaborate on the issues they face and to design policies or implement exiting plans to promote sustainable urban development. Therefore, the program requires the involvement of diverse stakeholders within each city and the exchange of experience and knowledge to do so. Furthermore, capacity building activities within URBACT are promoted as a key aspect to further develop governance capacity. Thus, the program provides a framework to promote governance capacities of participating cities. Whether this framework eventually supports municipalities in enhancing their governance capacity will be investigated in this thesis. Regarding the structure of the paper, first, the URBACT program is outlined to understand the program’s structure and how it intends to promote governance capacity. As a basis for the analysis, the theoretical concept of governance capacity is discussed, and the definition provided by Howlett & Seguin (2014, 2018) will be adopted for this paper. In order to empirically analyze governance capacity, the concept by Wu et al. (2015) is used as it provides an operational framework. Due to the limited scope of the thesis, two sub-categories, namely, political, and managerial capacities that develop at the organizational and system level were selected. They are explained in detail referring to Wu et al. (2015) and including other author’s contributions such as Howlett & Seguin (2018), Capano et al. (2015) and Domorenok et al. (2021) who discussed and added onto the concept of Wu et al (2015). In order to conduct an analysis and find out whether URBACT III contributes to enhance the governance capacity of participating cities, two case studies were executed. The city of Turin, Italy, and the city of Braga, Portugal, were chosen due to their active participation in URBACT III comprising three projects in the last funding period from 2014 to 2020. Both vary in geographical location, economic characteristics and size which allows for an analysis of governance capacity independent of the cities’ specific profiles. Regarding the structure of the analysis, first, a short description about the cities was provided. Then, the three URBACT projects each city has participated in were analyzed according to their purpose, role, organizational resources, output produced, and capacities which were required to execute the project. Moreover, the local strategies of each city between 2014 and 2020 were reviewed to understand if capacities already existed and whether projects following a similar scope were conducted outside of URBACT III. This supports to understand whether the two cities enhanced their capacities by applying capacities obtained in URBACT III to the local level. Interviews with representatives of both municipalities were conducted to gain an in-depth view.