In this seminar, Bátorová presents a research proposal for her post-doctoral research focused on the internationalization of urban governance. With the growing importance of towns and cities in the global fight against social and environmental issues, the internationalisation – process of planning and implementing products and services which can meet the needs of users in many countries – is an unavoidable trend for local politicians and public administrators. This trend has been extensively supported also by many financial mechanisms of the European Commission (e.g. URBACT, or INTERREG). In the former EU programing periods, the funding was focused mainly on creating international partnerships, mutual learning, sharing of best practices, or creating common action plans. In the new programing period 2014-2020, the focus turns to more tangible outcomes of such partnerships. In their transnational urban governance networks and consortiums, EU towns and cities together with their business and NGO partners are encouraged to find and actually implement common solutions for complex problems (e.g. greener transportation, integration of Open Data, sustainable renovation of living areas, etc.).

Although the vision of these EU integration practices sounds very optimistic, it is still rather questionable whether the local politicians and local civil servants are fully prepared for cooperation in the multi-national, multi-sectorial and often hierarchy-free project-teams. Do they have appropriate knowledge and skills for assuring that the objectives and implementation plans agreed on the transnational level are fully in line with the interests and needs of their own local governments? Do they have appropriate knowledge and skills for assuring that the objectives and implementation plans agreed on the transnational level are implementable (feasible) in their own local governments? 

In order to answer these raised questions, Bátorová’s objective is to study selected EU-funded transnational and multi-sectorial consortiums and focus on a) the decision-making models applied in these consortiums, b) local politicians and civil servants’ decision-making skills and techniques applied inside these consortiums, c) local politicians and civil servants’ decision-making skills and techniques applied in their own local governments in order to implement the objectives of the transnational consortiums. 

The results of this research are expected to lead to the updated list of decision-making skills and techniques necessary for successful performance of local politicians and civil servants in the transnational urban governance projects.