Plan-making for Sustainability

The New Zealand Experience

Neil J. Ericksen, Philip R. Berke, Jennifer E. Dixon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754640660
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351910965
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Local & Regional Planning Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Around the introduction of Agenda 21 at Rio in 1991, some countries like the Netherlands and New Zealand were already leading the way with quite innovative approaches to environmental planning. Focusing on the New Zealand government's innovations in sustainable and environmental planning, particularly the Resource Management Act of 1991, this book highlights planning and governance under devolved and co-operative mandates. It uses multiple methods to evaluate the quality of policy statements and district plans prepared by regional and local councils respectively, as well as the various inter- and intra-organizational and institutional factors affecting them. It also analyses the quality of the plans' implementation through the consensus or permits process, and the quality of the environmental outcomes.

PART 1

APPROACHES TO PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE

Chapter 1

Planning Mandates: From Theory to Practice

When national governments promulgate planning mandates, assumptions are made about the capabilities (commitment and capacity) of agencies in the intergovernmental hierarchy to implement them. ‘Commitment’ is the willingness of key people in national, regional and local agencies to promote goals in the mandate, while ‘capacity’ is the resources (like funds and expertise) available to agencies for achieving the goals. The levels of commitment and capacity will influence the implementation effort and hence the degree of compliance with the mandated goals. Thus, if the national agencies responsible for environmental planning are properly resourced and committed, the sub-national agencies will have their capabilities enhanced. Overall, this ought to result in good processes for preparing and implementing quality plans. There are, however, different types of planning mandate with distinctly different assumptions about capability and the processes and provisions for achieving the best results. These differences affect the plan-making process and hence the quality of resulting plans.

In this chapter we outline the theoretical range of mandates, from coercive to co-operative, for achieving capability, and illustrate them through some international examples. We then place New Zealand’s RMA in relation to the theory and practice, and offer a theoretical framework for assessing variation in plan quality.

Range of Mandates

A mandate is a policy instrument that governments use to help implement their broad policy goals. In a parliamentary system, as in New Zealand or the United Kingdom, the mandated goals of central government influence the operations of sub-national government, like regional and/or local councils. In a federal system, like the USA and Australia, the mandated goals of federal government influence the states, and those of the states influence local councils. In this discussion, we use national and sub-national governments when referring to the differing levels, except for New Zealand, which has central, regional and local governments, the latter two typically called territorial authorities (TAs).

In developing a national (or state) mandate, assumptions are made about the behaviour of people and agencies, and their readiness to sacrifice self-interest for the common good. A pessimistic view of behaviour leads to mandates that are coercive and command-driven from the centre, whereas an optimistic view of behaviour leads to mandates that are devolved from the centre and carried out in co-operation with local governments. Useful explanations of coercive and co-operative mandates in environmental and land-use planning are provided by May and Handmer, 1992; Burby and May et al. (1997) and May et al. (1996).

Coercive Mandates

A coercive mandate assumes that sub-national governments are not committed to the goals of the national government (even though they may well have the capability to comply) and are therefore unlikely to co-operate in achieving them. The primary role of the national government is inducing sub-national governments to adhere to its regulatory standards. The national government does this by, for example, monitoring local plans and regulations for their consistency with national objectives and enforcing their provisions through the use of penalties or sanctions when sub-national governments fail to comply.

The centrally driven and coercive mandate is therefore interventionist, and capability-building is of only secondary concern. Since sub-national governments are assumed to be not committed to national goals, they cannot be trusted voluntarily to develop innovative plans and measures for managing growth and environmental harms. Instead, the national government prescribes not only the plan development process, but also the content for local plans. This is done to ensure that sub-national government will meet the nation’s regulatory standards. It is expected that implementation of this mandate may be compromised by political and economic considerations that weaken the monitoring and enforcement effort of the national government.

Co-operative Mandates

A co-operative mandate assumes that sub-national governments are committed to the regulatory goals of the national government and willing to co-operate in achieving them, but do not necessarily have the capability to comply fully. The primary role of national government is to enhance not only intergovernmental co-operation, but also the capability of sub-national governments so that they are better able to comply. National government does this by, for example, technical and financial assistance, education programmes, guidelines and consensus-building forums. This in turn reinforces commitment to the nation’s regulatory goals.

The devolved and co-operative mandate is therefore facilitative rather than interventionist. While the national government may prescribe the planning processes sub-national governments must follow in developing plans, it refrains from prescribing the means by which they are to achieve the desired goals and regulatory outcomes. That is, instead of the national government prescribing the content for local plans, it is assumed that sub-national government can devise the best means for reaching the mandated national goals. This concession to sub-national government aims to foster flexibility in dealing with local problems in the hope that it will stimulate innovative solutions. Sub-national governments that successfully meet this challenge are rewarded by gaining good planning outcomes in terms of growth management and environmental threats, whereas the laggards and recalcitrants will in time learn by their mistakes and through further capability-building by national government. Thus, a relatively slow and uneven uptake of the national mandate by sub-national government is to be expected.

Mandate Form and Control

A finer distinction between mandated policies can be made by focusing on form and control, each of which can be characterized by a continuum (May, 1993; Ericksen, 1994). Mandate form has ‘programmatic policies’ emphasising planning processes and standards at one end of its continuum, and ‘prescriptive policies’ prescribing or proscribing specific activities at the other. Mandate controls for influencing local government action have co-operative provisions that facilitate action at one end of its continuum and coercive provisions that punish inaction at the other (see Figure 1.1).

(The location of New Zealand’s RMA indicates a primarily co-operative-process mandate)

Figure 1.1 A schema illustrating the range of mandate designs based on form (process to prescription) and control (co-operative to coercive)

In theory, on the basis of form and control, mandates or policies could be mixed in various combinations, such as process/co-operative, process/coercive, prescriptive/co-operative, and prescriptive/coercive (see Figure 1.1). Selecting the type of mandate for implementing policies, environmental or otherwise, reflects the political ideology and preferred governance style of the ruling party, modified by electoral considerations.

Implementing Policy Goals

Governments can use various policy instruments or mechanisms to help implement their policy goals. McDonnell and Elmore (1987) provide a useful four-fold typology of mechanisms for translating national or state policy goals into local action.

The first mechanism is ‘system-changing’, which involves the transfer of authority among individuals and agencies for the purpose of altering the delivery system of public goods and services, such as changing from a command to a devolved regime in order to improve planning outcomes. The reforms in New Zealand (as summarized in the Introduction) exemplify a major system change from central to devolved control. The second mechanism is the ‘mandate’, like the RMA, which provides the rules aimed at producing compliance by governing the actions of individuals and agencies, such as through use of various coercive/prescriptive or co-operative/process measures. The third is ‘inducements’, which transfer resources to individuals or agencies for particular actions, with the aim of fostering commitment. The fourth mechanism is ‘capacity building’, which is the transfer of resources for the purpose of investing in material or human capital.

Because of their importance in facilitating plan preparation in sub-national government, we define these last two mechanisms in more detail below.

Inducements Two assumptions lie behind inducements. Without additional funding, certain valued things, such as the development of environmental plans, will not be produced with the desired frequency or consistency. Transferring funds is a main means for eliciting performance. One issue is how much variation in production of the thing of value is tolerable and how narrowly to prescribe the way the funds are to be used and for what — thus, for plan-making, how much variation in quality across jurisdictions is acceptable. The effectiveness of inducements increases when the capacity exists to produce things, like plans, that policy-makers value and when preferences and priorities support the production of those things.

Capacity-building Like all investment in material or human capital, capacity-building carries the expectation of future returns, which may or may not be certain, tangible, measurable and immediate. In general, specific individuals and institutions gain in the short-term, while society at large gains in the long-term. Capacity-building may be instrumental to both mandates and inducements.

Two assumptions underlie capacity-building. One is that, without immediate investment, society will not realize the material, intellectual or human benefit, such as from the development of environmental plans. The other is that longer-term benefits are desirable in their own right or are instrumental for other important purposes. Usually, capacity-building responses deal with fundamental failures of performance, but they are also important when introducing a new mandate, such as for environmental planning. A major problem for policy-makers is that the results of capacity-building are intangible and uncertain. Success is challenged because there are tensions between mobilising resources for the future and the immediate production of value (McDonnell and Elmore, 1987).

How do Planning Mandates Influence Plan Development?

Political science and public administration have contributed greatly to understanding how top-down mandates are implemented, especially since Pressman and Wildavsky’s (1973) ground-breaking book, Implementation. Most studies in this genre focus on the political behaviour of those involved in implementing social and economic policy. The objective is to explain why the process may or may not have gone awry (Googin et al., 1990; Younis, 1990). While planning can profit by insights from this research, there has been little parallel inquiry into the implementation of planning mandates aimed at guiding land-use and development patterns in communities in general, and quality environmental planning in particular. Talen observes that ‘Planning needs to develop its own brand of [implementation] research that is sensitive to the physical, spatially referenced side of planning — specifically, the making of plans that seek to guide the future development of cities’ (1996: 248).

A few studies have begun to address the implementation of planning mandates, but until recent publication of works by Dalton and Burby (1994), May et al. (1996) and Burby and May (1998), how a ‘devolved and co-operative’ planning mandate influences local plan quality was largely unknown. Earlier research almost always examined the influence of mandates for regulating sub-national land-use patterns and the planning process, but not on the plan itself (DeGrove, 1992; Healy and Rosenberg, 1979; Innes, 1992).

European Community

Some work suggests that specific characteristics of planning mandates do affect plan quality in different ways. Faludi (1987) found that planning in the Netherlands was successful in achieving local plan compliance with national goals because of the co-operative emphasis of the national mandate. A key pre-condition for success was that local governments were willing and capable of achieving national goals.

But he found national planning in Britain to be more coercive and thus not as successful in achieving local compliance. The mandate stipulated detailed standards for achieving national policy goals that were backed up by sanctions if local governments did not comply. As a result, the lack of local discretion stifled innovation and experimentation, and caused a weak sense of ownership of plans by local governments and a low willingness to carry out the mandate.

Cullingworth (1994) reached similar conclusions in his comparative evaluation of Dutch and British planning regimes. But, like Faludi, Cullingworth based his exploratory case studies on limited empirical observation of the links between national planning mandates and lo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Notes on Authors
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of Maori Terms
• Abbreviations
• Introduction: From Rio to RMA: Great Expectations
• PART 1: APPROACHES TO PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE
• PART 2: INTERGOVERNMENTAL PLANNING IN NEW ZEALAND
• PART 3: PLAN QUALITY AND CAPABILITY UNDER THE RMA
• PART 4: LOCAL CASE STUDIES
• Conclusion: A Decade On: Unfulfilled Expectations
• APPENDICES
• References Cited
• Index