The application of analytic hierarchy process to implement collaborative governance process: The allocation of the urban structural funds in the city of Madrid

Abstract

Local governments dispose of powerful tools like development funds that can be distributed among its different constituents to compensate economic disequilibrium originated by a complex array of factors. But it is always one of the hardest decisions to assign handouts to people who could think its own expectations are not being taken properly into account. Each stakeholder has different criteria to evaluate his needs, and to demand a particular investment effort. Since resources are very limited in local levels, city hall governments are pulled apart by those conflicting demands. The challenge of addressing them at the same time can be modelled as a multi‐criteria decision‐making. The aim of this paper is to show that the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) could work out the most acceptable distribution of the funds among the different city districts and neighbourhoods. The application of the model in Madrid shows that AHP: (a) allows to incorporate opposing demands; (b) increases the transparency of the decision‐making process; (c) eases the decentralization of governmental decisions; (d) enhances the legitimation of the final outcome; and (e) it is a scientific approach with great potential to be applied in similar domains where hard political decisions are needed.

Territorios Hidrosociales: una metodología para promover la seguridad hídrica ante el cambio climático a través de la gobernanza, visión y acción participativa

“…La gobernanza y la construcción de políticas públicas requieren una aproximación racional de largo plazo que supere la visión de corto plazo orientada por el mercado. Es esencial desarrollar herramientas de toma de decisiones que tengan la capacidad de abordar los desafíos complejos relacionados con el clima, el agua y la gestión de recursos naturales (Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos [OECD], 2019 ;Miller et al, 2014;Losada Maestre et al, 2021). La participación de todos los actores, incluyendo gobiernos, empresas, comunidades y organizaciones civiles, es crucial para el éxito de las políticas pág.…”

A Multi-Criteria Decision Support Concept for Selecting the Optimal Contractor

“…By means of structured interviews as well as workshops, both groups participated in collective decision-making by expressing their view on criteria using the AHP and Saaty scale. This served not only as a participatory process in decision-making where stakeholders adopt the decisions through a majority vote [46] , but also in seeking the agreement of those who participate by generating consensus among them. This resulted in two points-of-view, that of the clients and that of the contractors, which will be discussed further in Section 3.…”

“…Typically, stakeholders think that their own expectations have not been taken properly into account. Therefore, it is of utmost importance that this procedure is transparent and all their attitudes and actions are considered as a part of the collaborative governance [46,64,65].…”

“…While some authors focused on the AHP method [25][26][27][28][29][30], the analytic network process [31] or PROMETHEE methods [20,[32][33][34][35][36][37] the important driver was given by [38] to use these methods in synergy to achieve the most in a multi-stakeholder environment [19,[39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. To tackle the problem of selecting an appropriate contractor, various authors approach the problem from the stakeholder point-of-view using the AHP or group AHP [21,29,30,31,46,47], while others consider the problem as an overall approach of managing stakeholders such as the multi-actor multi-criteria analysis methodology, i.e., MAMCA [19,39], or decision support concept, i.e., DSC [32,34,35,42].…”