This doctoral proposal examines the adaptation of governance structures in vocational education in French-speaking Belgium, a region where schools now benefit from genuine autonomy. This change marks a significant shift from a decretal and procedural logic to one of autonomy and accountability in the field of education.

In Belgium, vocational education, referred to as "vocational schools," holds strategic importance for preparing students for skilled careers and professions. The specificity of the educational landscape in French-speaking Belgium lies in the complex interplay between regional and local governance dynamics within a federal framework.

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative case studies and in-depth documentary analyses, to explore the specific challenges encountered by vocational education institutions. It also analyzes interactions among key actors, including school administrators, teachers, and regional/local authorities.

Drawing on theories of educational governance, policy implementation, as well as concepts of educational leadership and change management, this research illuminates power dynamics, decision-making processes, and practical challenges related to implementing reform measures in vocational schools.

The study aims to contribute to academic discourse on regional and local governance by highlighting how vocational schools navigate between established governance frameworks and emerging demands. It underscores the inherent complexities of adapting governance structures to address contemporary challenges, such as demographic shifts, evolving service needs, and societal transformations.

By exploring the experiences of vocational schools in French-speaking Belgium, this research sheds light on broader challenges of modernizing educational systems within traditional government structures.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Agenda is a framework for measuring, designing and implementing integrated policies through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that tackle wicked issues while offering the possibility to shape and define tailored policies at the local level (Clement et al. 2023).

The main challenge of SDGs is their so called ‘localization’, namely the translation of the general aims of the UN agenda into concrete governance at local level investing local authorities, especially looking at metropolitan cities. But, sustainability can route at the local level in multiple ways. More than at global level, at local one the need for formulating specific and feasible policies calls for the influence by experts who support decision makers in defining interventions and adopting tools.

Experts may contribute to frame problems and develop solutions that resonate with local resources and governance settings.

The multi- sectoral and integrated perspective of the SDGs offers the opportunity to see whether sustainability is predominately framed as a matter of economic, environmental or social capacity, and thus to understand better how sustainability turns into possibly different epistemic infrastructures (Bandola Gill et al. 2022).

According to this framework, the paper is aimed at investigating the influence by experts in the urban government looking at the following questions: What is the role of knowledge in shaping the localization of the SDGs at the local level? What is their socio-graphical, professional, and relational profile? How do public institutions organize their advice? What kind of output do they deliver?

These explorative questions are aimed at the creation of a dataset of sustainability experts, thought as a first empirical survey of experts active in local sustainability, and to serve as a guide for comparative case studies on the role of expert advice in localizing the SDGs in Europe Furthermore, selected semi-structured interviews to key informants will guide the construction of the dataset of the SDGs experts, that is aimed at uncovering the SDG communities of the countries selected for the study – Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. In particular, we will interview academics and professionals active in the field of sustainability and policy designers and policymakers involved in the SDG agenda at European, national and local levels, to understand how experts can be identified at multiple levels, how experts access policymaking, and how policymakers design the localization of the SGDs by selecting and organizing the work of the experts.

This paper focuses on “national agreements” within the healthcare system in Sweden, a country where responsibility for health care is decentralized to 21 regions. These agreements are negotiated between the central government and the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR). Over the past decade, there have been approximately ten national agreements each year related to various aspects of healthcare, such as women’s health, cancer care and improved accessibility to healthcare services. In the literature on governance, these types of agreements are typically classified as soft policy instruments, based on factors such as deliberations, voluntariness, sanctionability, and vagueness. However, there is limited understanding of how these national agreements are perceived by the regions that receive them. Do the regions view these agreements as soft policy instruments, or do they see them as more akin to hard policy instruments in practice?

In this paper, we analyse the regions’ experiences with national agreements to draw conclusions about whether they are considered a “hard” or “soft” policy instrument. We examine how the regions participate in the negotiation process at the national level and how the agreements are handled and perceived at the regional level. We pose the following empirical questions: (1) How are the regions involved in the negotiation process at the national level (participation)? (2) How is the procedure designed regarding decisions about agreements at the regional level (reception)? (3) How do the regions perceive the content of the agreements (content)?

Our empirical material mainly consists of interviews with politicians and civil servants in six regions. In total, we have conducted 27 interviews for this study. The findings suggest that the agreements are developed through a participatory process. However, this process occurs at the national level, with the regions being represented by the organization SALAR. Additionally, the findings suggest that, although the agreements are voluntary in theory, the regions perceive it as nearly impossible to reject an agreement. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the agreements are perceived to vary in content. Some agreements are vague while others are detailed.

While the main conclusion of this study is that the agreements represent a soft policy instrument, there are important nuances to consider. Soft policy instruments is a multi-dimensional concept, meaning that they can be soft on some dimensions and hard on others. This is evident from the results of our investigation, which also have implications for central-local government relations. We argue that agreements present a challenge to the principle of regional self-rule, as they limit the regions’ autonomy in determining their own priorities within healthcare.

International efforts to protect biodiversity date back to the 1970s. The effectiveness of Multilateral Environmental Agreements and regional legal instruments has been influenced by national implementation. In this process, subnational governance plays a crucial role. Although policy implementation has been extensively investigated, its subnational dimension has been somewhat neglected, particularly in peripheral areas such as the Outermost Regions of Europe. These remote territories are critical areas in the global fight against biodiversity loss since their ecosystems’ richness make them biodiversity hotspots. The article applies the knowledge cumulated in policy research to the implementation of biodiversity policy in two of these territories – Reunion Island (France) and the Canary Islands (Spain) – and analyses implementation in the context of multi-level governance. The article questions whether and to what extent decentralisation benefits biodiversity policies and highlights salient trade-offs: local empowerment vs. fragmentation of competences; responsiveness vs. subnational discretion; and accountability vs. policy capture.