Towards flexible evaluation schemes in areas with lacking information: a case of waste governance in Mexico
| Author | Dolores Elizabeth Turcott Cervantes,Beatriz Adriana Venegas Sahagún,Amaya Lobo García de Cortázar |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00208523211017970 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Towards flexible
evaluation schemes in
areas with lacking
information: a case of
waste governance in
Mexico
Dolores Elizabeth Turcott Cervantes
Secretary of Environment and Land Management of the State
of Guanajuato, Mexico
Beatriz Adriana Venegas Sahag
un
University of Guadalajara, Mexico
Amaya Lobo Garc
ıa de Corta
´zar
University of Cantabria, Spain
Abstract
Local governments face the need to achieve sustainability in the provision of public
services, and to do so, proper governance is essential. This work proposes a method to
assess governance in local waste management systems based on a set of indicators that
are flexible and robust enough to allow objective and reliable evaluation even where the
information that is available is deficient. The proposal is based on a set of indicators
divided into six categories that represent an increasing order of governance maturity:
institutional framework; government effectiveness; transparency and accountability;
network creation; participation; and corruption control. The article presents the pro-
posal and a first test in two Mexican municipalities, which are an example of municipal
solid waste management systems in an incipient stage of development, where there may
Corresponding author:
Beatriz Adriana Venegas Sahag
un, Universidad de Guadalajara, Centro Universitario de Ciencias Econ
omico
Administrativas, Departamento de Estudios Regionales INESER. Perif
erico Norte No. 799, N
ucleo
Universitario Los Belenes, CP 45100, Zapopan, Jalisco, Mexico.
Email: beatriz.adriana@cucea.udg.mx
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
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DOI: 10.1177/00208523211017970
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2022, Vol. 88(4) 1228–1249
International
Review of
Administrative
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be serious limitations in terms of access to information. The results show that the
methodology can be replicated in different contexts and can be useful for making
decisions about improvements in municipal solid waste management systems or for
comparing them with others. In addition, sufficient information was obtained for a first
diagnosis of the cases studied, which indicates the coherence of the proposed
framework.
Points for practitioners
Proper governance is essential to achieve sustainability in the provision of public serv-
ices. The assessment of local governance must be robust enough to motivate changes
and, at the same time, flexible enough to allow reliable evaluation where the quality of
service and the availability of information may be scant. We propose a new framework
for the assessment of governance in municipal solid waste management systems that
meets these requirements, based on a set of indicators clustered according to gover-
nance maturity.
Keywords
governance, indicators, local level, municipalities, municipal waste
Introduction
In recent decades, local and national governments have prioritized environmental
issues and sustainability in public agendas (Peterson and Hughes, 2017; United
Nations, 1992, 2017). Environmental problems can affect large areas but environ-
mental prevention and protection actions have to be targeted toward every level,
putting into practice the axiom think globally, act locally (United Nations, 1992).
Municipal solid waste management (MSWM) is a primary service covered by
local governments. One of the most important challenges they face is to achieve
“integrated sustainable waste management” (ISWM), a term coined by Van de
Klunder and Anschu
¨tz (2001) to capture the need for a multidimensional approach,
in which stakeholders, technical and operational elements,and sustainability aspects
must be considered when planning waste management (WM) solutions. Moreover,
ISWM must take into account the general principles of the WM hierarchy
(European Commission, 2008) and adapt them properly to the local social, econom-
ic, and environmental context (Mourad, 2016). This is a complex objective for local
authorities, especially in developing countries, since many of them do not have
sufficient institutional capacity or are affected by periodic changes of government.
It is, therefore, essential to ensure adequate governance in order to promote service
quality. Hence, local authorities should monitor the quality of not only the service,
but also the governance processes (Bovaird and L€
offler, 2003).
Assessing governance and thus detecting its weaknesses and strengths is the first
step toward improving it. However, it is precisely those WM systems with poorly
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Turcott Cervantes et al.
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