Good Governance, Public Sector Innovation, and the Devolved Leadership of Metro Mayors

Public sector innovation is linked to larger scale questions of what constitutes good governance, responsive public service, and ultimately democracy itself. Through an analysis of the devolved leadership of metro mayors, with their remit to cover a number of local authority areas, insight may be gained into the genesis of innovation and its subsequent implementation. This takes place irrespective of the political affiliation of individual mayors who have a shared interest in regeneration and doing things differently. Good governance is concerned with providing an environment conducive to innovation. This involves forging a balance between the inevitable risk-taking of innovation and the constraints of using public money. Good governance, rooted in local place and local need, involves transparency and accountability in another point of contrast with the possible commercial secrecy of the private sector. Metro mayors in England represent an institutional change with major implications for initiating innovative change. In theoretical terms, this goes well beyond the outmoded terms of a new public management with its roots in neoliberal concepts of competition, performance, and results.