Speak no Evil? Local governance of security and incivility in an age of transparency

• In Event: Urban safety and neighbourliness in Spanish medium-sized cities.

Abstract

Local governance has been gaining protagonism in recent times. With the rising complexity of governance, the centralist take on public administration is giving way to a more decentralized approach. However, with growing responsibilities come higher standards of public accountability, especially when dealing with issues of security and incivility, which sometimes seem to intertwine with criminal policy, but at the lower end of the spectrum.
But the ideal of a “capillary” public administration faces challenges in practice. The local context often falls short in basic transparency and public accountability. In most municipalities, the challenges are compounded: From our data we can see that, in many ways, local governance is comparatively opaque, media coverage is scarce and superficial, and even political discourse lacks the usual verbosity visible in state policy.
We intend to show the most significant blind spots regarding the local governance of security and incivility across several Spanish middle-sized cities, while pointing at the most probable causes and the most immediate challenges.

Authors

• Dyango Bonsignore, University of Alicante

• David Castro-Liñares, University of A Coruna

• Silvia Rodríguez-López, Universidade da Coruña

• Natalia Torres-Cadavid, University of Vigo