What Motivates Local Governments to Invest in Critical Infrastructure? Lessons from Chile

Abstract

In this study, we identify institutional factors and processes that foster local government decisions about disaster risk reduction, especially critical infrastructure investments and maintenance. We propose that municipal institutional capacities, organization, leadership, and multilevel governance will affect critical infrastructure investments by local governments. To examine these ideas, we employ qualitative analysis to compare two representative medium–sized cities in Chile. Our results suggest that there are two main institutional factors that constitute the foundation for improvements in critical infrastructure in Chile: municipal institutional context and the local administration’s links with decision makers at higher levels of governance. These results imply that future interventions to strengthen local government efforts for disaster risk reduction in terms of critical infrastructures would benefit from a pre-intervention diagnosis of the target location’s existing institutional context and linkages with external governance actors.

Causes and Consequences of Local Government Efforts to Reduce Risk and Adapt to Extreme Weather Events: Municipal Organizational Robustness

“…First, we draw on a broad literature to articulate a theoretically plausible set of hypothetical relationships between municipal institutional arrangements, governance relationships, and local governments investment decisions for critical infrastructure. While numerous previous studies have pointed out that local institutional arrangements are often important determinants of adaptation performance, and our previous work has helped identify several relevant factors [4], this research contributes more specific knowledge about how municipal organizational dynamics matter. Second, we used mixed research methods to assess these relationships empirically for a large number of local governments in Chile.…”

“…It is relevant to know more about the institutional causes and consequences of multiple efforts to reduce risk and adapt to extreme weather events. International frameworks, academic studies, and empirical evidence converge around the urgent need to increase efforts to improve critical infrastructure as a way to reduce vulnerability and improve coping capacities and resilience [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]12,13]. Local governments share the responsibility to provide resilient infrastructure [3,13].…”

“…The conventional literature on infrastructure approaches the subject mainly from a technical-economic perspective [9][10][11]14,[29][30][31][32][33]. The literature on sustainable development, DRR, climate change mitigation, and adaptation in cities and municipalities (hereafter sustainable cities literature) has integrated research frameworks and theories on organizational behaviors and governance relationships [1][2][3][4]13,34,35]. Some studies analyze experiences or compare cases of local governments that often are already committed to a transition [1][2][3][34][35][36].…”

“…We focused our research on understanding how municipal institutional arrangements and governance processes interact with both capacities of local governments and political qualities of the mayoral leadership (hereafter political leadership attributes). Capacities and political leadership attributes that support motivation have been identified by one part of the sustainable cities literature as key factors in shaping outcomes [1][2][3][4]13,[35][36][37][38]. Hence, we start from the assumption that in order for municipalities to be effective adaptors in terms of critical infrastructure Investment, they need to be organizations with resources (capacities) and have highly motivated agents with political leadership attributes (e.g., networks, support, continuity).…”

“…The effect of political leadership attributes of the mayors and/or senior staff in their own right are documented by a large number of sustainable cities studies [1][2][3]37]. Some attributes that enable actions of leaders are agency and power in terms of electoral, political, and institutional support, and continuity [3,4,36,37]. Alternative 2: Municipal organizational arrangements or governance relationships affect the direction and strength of the relation between leadership and outcomes.…”