Roles of Advisory Councils in Urban Governance

Abstract

Urban governance (UG) is a place-based network of cooperation between public and non-public actors where public authorities play a strategic role in deciding on city matters. A number of UG actors include advisory councils (ACs), characterized by a long tradition, universality, stability and objectives related to urban affairs. The article aims to identify AC roles in UG. In addition, the author hypothesizes a correlation between the number of official (statutory) and informal (not legally regulated) roles and differences between ACs in terms of the roles they play. The hypotheses were verified in qualitative research. 57 semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of the youth councils, senior citizen councils, sport councils, and councils for residents with disabilities in 16 Polish cities. The interview transcripts were uploaded to QDA Miner for encoding and analysis. It was found that all ACs, regardless of their official roles, play informal roles, and all these roles are related to UG. There is no correlation between the number of official and informal roles, which would make ACs very similar unless the mandatory character of the roles played by the council for residents with disabilities, which differs this AC from the other. The results of the study lead the author to recommend revisions to AC regulations in order to increase their participation in the UG.