Local Autonomy in Temporary Organizations: The Case of Smart City Pilots

• Date: 01 November 2021
• Published date: 01 November 2021
• Author: Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren
• DOI: 10.1177/00953997211009884
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997211009884

Administration & Society

2021, Vol. 53(10) 1485 –1511

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DOI: 10.1177/00953997211009884

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Article

Local Autonomy

in Temporary

Organizations: The

Case of Smart City Pilots

Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren1

Abstract

Local actors are to an increasing extent engaging in national and European

Union (EU)–based development and sustainability agendas. These ventures

often materialize in the form of temporary organizations such as pilots and

projects. This article contributes to debates on project-based, experimental

and temporary organizations by unpacking the organizational architecture

of pilots and analyzing how the democratic autonomy of local public actors

is formed. Through the example of smart city pilots, the study shows how

a range of intersecting relations and hierarchies enable and circumscribe

public-sector autonomy—from local actors’ attempts to align pilots with

political goals to the limitations of standardized and scalable knowledge and

strict funding requirements.

Keywords

pilot, experimental governance, projectification, temporary organization,

elements of organization, smart city

Introduction

A steady stream of funding opportunities is currently creating incentives for

local actors to participate in the pursuit of national and European Union

(EU)–based innovation agendas. These processes materialize in temporary

1Lund University, Sweden

Corresponding Author:

Dalia Mukhtar-Landgren, Department of Political Science, Lund University, Box 52,

221 00 Lund, Sweden.

Email: dalia.mukhtar-landgren@svet.lu.se

1009884AAS0010.1177/00953997211009884Administration & SocietyMukhtar-Landgren

research-article2021

1486 Administration & Society 53(10)

organizations such as pilots and EU projects, many of which are set in the

context of local public administrations (cf. Haarstad, 2017; Lange & Knieling,

2020). The general aim of pilots, which are in focus here, is “to test or develop

new solutions” (van Winden & van den Buuse, 2017, p. 51). Examples

include testing policy innovations such as new forms of democratic participa-

tion or e-government schemes, as well as sociotechnological innovations

such as autonomous buses or smart housing solutions. Pilots are performed in

collaborative settings, and several reviews have shown that local public

actors are generally included in some capacity (Bulkeley & Castán Broto,

2013; Kronsell & Mukhtar-Landgren, 2018). One reason for their inclusion is

that a large number of pilots are related to areas situated within local jurisdic-

tion, such as housing or transport planning, and another is that funding insti-

tutes often require collaboration, and the inclusion of local public actors is

often a prerequisite for the award of funding.

The increase of local administrative presence in externally funded projects

and pilots is currently being theorized in two broad theoretical debates—pub-

lic-sector projectification (Fred, 2020; Hodgson et al., 2019; Sjöblom et al.,

2015) and debates on local innovation and experimental governance (Bulkeley

& Castán Broto, 2013; Mukhtar-Landgren et al., 2019; Raven et al., 2019;

Späth & Knieling, 2020). The increasing incidence of projects and pilots in

public-sector organizations has been described as examples of broader “macro-

political trends towards de-centralised and ‘post-bureaucratic’ organisational

arrangements” (Bailey et al., 2019, p. 130; cf. Ettelt & Mays, 2019; Lange &

Knieling, 2020; Vento & Kuokkanen, 2020). In parallel, the ambitions to open

up decision-making processes to facilitate local innovation and urban experi-

mentation have indicated a tendency toward depoliticization (Caprotti &

Cowley, 2017; Cowley & Caprotti, 2019). In the context of local development,

these emerging governance forms have been described in terms of a “corpora-

tization of city management . . .” (Joss et al., 2019, p. 5), where the incidence

of network-based temporary structures and the strong influence of private

actors are being problematized (Kitchin, 2015; Söderström et al., 2014). While

these studies tend to emphasize more overarching governance processes, there

is still a lack of knowledge on the role of public actors in one of its main orga-

nizational forms—the pilot. This study contributes to these debates by specifi-

cally focusing on the democratic autonomy of public actors in pilots.

Aim and Outline of the Study

The point of departure of this study is that local autonomy is a democratic

value based in the ideal that political decisions are to be taken as close as