Enablers and barriers to policy innovation: addressing sustainability challenges in cities of the developing world

Abstract

Cities are central to the formulation of public policies to tackle global and complex sustainability challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity and others included in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, national and local governments alike have been criticized for failing to address these challenges and many of the SDGs. Scholars from various fields proposed public sector solutions for the wicked problems the SDGs pose, but little has been done to develop tools on how governments can achieve that. In this context, this project aims to advance the understanding on how to foster policy innovation in cities to tackle sustainability challenges in developing countries. To achieve that, a heuristic framework is proposed using the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) as a guide to analyze four cases of policy innovation. The cases will be selected among urban policies in developing countries that address sustainability issues in an innovative way. In these cases, the enablers and barriers to policy innovation will be identified as well as their relationships with innovation type, policy outcomes and context. The expected contribution of this project lies in the potential development of support tools to identify effective strategies to foster urban policy innovation for sustainability challenges in developing countries. (AU)