Epistemic Communities in Unlikely Regions: The Role of Multi-level Governance in Fostering Regionalism

Mattiuzzi, Elizabeth; Chapple, Karen

doi:10.1177/0739456x20937287

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Considering local values helped bridge local understandings of resilience with definitions used in state, federal, and philanthropic funding applications. 19 Planners and nonprofits involved in volcano and pandemic recovery worked to bridge the gap between definitions of resilience that are about stasis or resisting nature and local values by employing a more transformative definition of resilience as improving people's lives in harmony with nature, according to interviewees. Institutional definitions of resilience tend to borrow from engineering, with a primary lens on an individual's ability to withstand a shock, while community development practitioners more often focus on community resilience, including the overall health of social and public infrastructure systems, in addition to that of individuals.…”

Section: Recovery and Resilience Planning On Hawaiʻi Island Focused O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Bouncing Forward” from Disasters on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island: Lessons for Equitable Recovery and Future Resilience

Mattiuzzi¹,

McElvain²

2022

CDRB

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Recovery planning and implementation on the island of Hawaiʻi following a federally declared disaster provides an example of equitable, forward-looking disaster preparation and resilience. Community development professionals in other geographies can learn from the way planners and nonprofits used a regional equity approach to improving household and community resilience, broke down silos to have flexible funding from multiple sources ready for future disasters, and worked to build community through “resilience hubs” that provide disaster-related and ongoing services that help promote economic participation. These efforts also provide lessons for potential future Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activity that helps prepare communities for disasters.

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Section: Recovery and Resilience Planning On Hawaiʻi Island Focused O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“Bouncing Forward” from Disasters on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island: Lessons for Equitable Recovery and Future Resilience

Mattiuzzi¹,

McElvain²

2022

CDRB

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“…Additionally, the federalist setting chosen, and relations examined are more suggestive of intergovernmental relations than MLG, so while demonstrating the utility of combining a research focus it delivers more limited wider applicability. A similar issue can be observed in a more recent study from the regional planning literature by Mattiuzzi & Chapple that examines the relationship between the formation of epistemic communities and regionalist governance within three American states (Mattiuzzi & Chapple, 2020). However, once again, their epistemic communities are conceived as incorporating nonexpert actors that stretches the concept beyond meaningful application in political science.…”

Section: Joint Studiesmentioning

confidence: 59%

Falling Down Before the Divine Right of Experts? Exploring the significance of epistemic communities in multi-level governance arrangements

Williams¹

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Public policy is increasingly made and governed using experts across many levels of ‘governance’ – from the international to the local. But how experts influence the design of this ‘multi-level’ governance is not well understood. This thesis investigates this puzzle by examining how groups of experts, conceptualised as ‘epistemic communities’, and those processes of multi-level governance influence each other. But the design of those processes can also be influenced by matters such as national identity. Therefore, the thesis also explores the extent to which experts holding a linguistic cultural identity, which highlights the importance of language and associated culture, influences the epistemic community-multi-level governance relationship. This study uses a specific definition of expertise to describe epistemic communities, which concerns the mastery of the language and practice of a field of knowledge, to make an original contribution to the literature. A further important contribution is made by examining the relationship between epistemic communities and multi-level governance in new settings. The cases of the development of the Loi sur le patrimoine culturel and the Historic Environment (Wales) Act in Québec and Wales show the usefulness of cultural heritage policy in these territories for understanding the two concepts. Epistemic communities were found to ‘frame’ policy problems, especially those that were technical or uncertain, in ways that created demands for more expertise. The design of multi-level policymaking processes was shown to be frequently shaped by these frames to different extents. Linguistic cultural identity shaped epistemic community actions too, at times, especially when it was perceived as politically relevant. This influenced multi-level policymaking designs primarily by reducing the number of different actors and different fields of knowledge represented. The findings imply that experts can be very important for shaping the design of policymaking processes but that this may limit their effectiveness and legitimacy.

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Urban climatological research informing environmental policy and planning in Fukuoka, Japan: What makes an epistemic community successful locally?

Mabon,

Machoň

2024

Env Pol Gov

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Interest in knowledge politics driving urban environmental policy is growing. The aim of this paper is to assess the conditions that enable an epistemic community of experts to influence policy in a specific locality. We evaluate an epistemic community of urban climatology researchers in Fukuoka, Japan, who have successfully engaged with local policy despite documented knowledge circulation failures for urban climatology elsewhere. The research is based on a process tracing‐derived methodology, analysing archival and documentary sources. Its results show the epistemic community has conducted observational and modelling‐based research in Fukuoka over decades, networking with peers across Japan and globally and making recommendations for policy interventions locally through government expert committees and collaborative projects. These findings reflect the importance of professionalisation and modes of persuasion – especially visuals, such as maps showing heat islands – in explaining how epistemic communities come to be effective. We argue, however, that institutions constitute epistemic communities as well as individuals. The conclusions display, however, that even if an epistemic community is effective in influencing policy, this will not necessarily translate into practical interventions in the built environment. Understanding how epistemic communities define and measure their own ‘success’ is thus an area for future research.

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Epistemic Communities in Unlikely Regions: The Role of Multi-level Governance in Fostering Regionalism

Cited by 5 publications

References 48 publications

“Bouncing Forward” from Disasters on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island: Lessons for Equitable Recovery and Future Resilience

“Bouncing Forward” from Disasters on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island: Lessons for Equitable Recovery and Future Resilience

Falling Down Before the Divine Right of Experts? Exploring the significance of epistemic communities in multi-level governance arrangements

Urban climatological research informing environmental policy and planning in Fukuoka, Japan: What makes an epistemic community successful locally?

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