Review of Public Administration and Management

Abstract

Sustainable Development and Public Administration: Challenges and Innovation in Citizen Engagement

William McDonald

This article explores the challenges and practices of citizenship engagement in sustainability policymaking in the local governments worldwide. The analysis focuses on 52 case studies from the ICLEI-local governments for sustainability database. Cases document successful sustainability experiences from 48 urban communities in 20 different countries. The article offers a broader-than-national overview of existing public administration practices to advance our understanding of how they evolve in response to the global environmental challenges. The analysis concludes that successful sustainability policies may take place disregarding the size or geographical location of the urban community, which is consistent with previous literature on the topic. Moreover, the study explores in detail cases with the strongest citizen engagement and suggests that bottom-up public participation is particularly strong when citizens have to deal with a specific problem. The strongest government-led frameworks of support for citizen engagement have been found in the medium-size European cities.