Tackling institutional nimbyism: how Competence-based Multi Criteria Analysis can foster intra- and inter-regional cooperation

Context
Inter-regional infrastructure planning is characterised by the complex institutional landscape in which decisions must be made. Institutional stakeholders, distinguishable horizontally and vertically, all have different returns on investment regarding the project in question, which complicates inter-institutional decision making. The concept of institutional nimbyism tdenotes the use of legal power by lower-level authorities to oppose higher-level projects that are conflicting with their perceived local interest.
Objective
This contribution introduces a novel structured method to overcome the inherent conflict between local and global interests, for which, current group decision-making methods are of limited use due to their inability to reflect real-world power differences between institutional stakeholders. In Multi Actor Multi Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) (Macharis, 2004), stakeholders state their preferences regarding different project alternatives independently. This contribution presents its extension, Competence-based Multi Criteria Analysis (COMCA) as a method that both identifies preferences of individual institutional stakeholders and facilitates consensus, taking power level differences into account.
Method
COMCA is based on the principle that the power of an institutional stakeholder within a given territory is equal to its competence regarding the project in question. The decisional power of a stakeholder within a project is therefore relative to the number of stakeholders with whom they share their competence, as well as the total number of competence levels involved in the project.
As stakeholders' competence corresponds to their institutional level, in COMCA group preferences are first identified horizontally, of stakeholders on the same institutional level, and then vertically, of all institutional levels together. During this process, each stakeholder holds its own objectives and criteria.
By first aggregating the preferences of local stakeholders, local interests that conflict with global interests can be neutralised. Furthermore, the method avoids conflicts between higher-level authorities (regions), as the aggregated interest of lower-level territorial institutions, which partly lie within the same region, act as a reference of global interest. Moreover, classifying stakeholders by competence facilitates project management as the attribution of responsibilities is clearly mapped out.
Application
COMCA is demonstrated by an example of a lightrail project in the Brussels Metropolitan Area. As its territory is spread out over the three Belgian regions, characterised by strong autonomy in mobility matters, negotiations over inter-regional projects are notoriously laborious. The example demonstrates the possible objectives and criteria of the different institutional stakeholders, graphically represented using MCDA software.
Results
The example shows that even if the preferences of stakeholders might greatly diverge on individual level due to local interests, differences between aggregated preferences of the different competence levels are significantly smaller. As a relatively straightforward method to identify group preferences of dissimilar stakeholders, COMCA can function as a valuable negotiation base for intra- and inter-regional cooperation.