The European Union quickly incorporated the concept of nature based-solutions (NBS), becoming a key promotor. This was achieved through financial support for both academic research and city implementations. Still, the processes of institutionalization are yet to be fully explored. This study aims at assessing how the scientific literature regarding NBS is addressing institutional aspects and how it is constructing the NBS narrative. This research is divided into two stages. First, it undertakes a quantitative analysis of the discourse, considering a set of preselected search terms organized into five categories: Actor, institutional, planning, policy, and regulation. Second, it adopts a qualitative analysis considering both a group of the most cited articles and of articles highlighted in the previous stage. The results indicate that the NBS concept is still shadowed by other environmental concepts such as ecosystem services. Despite being an issue promoted at the European level, the results of this exercise express the lack of concrete planning and policy recommendations, reflected by the absence of terms such as “planning objectives”. This pattern occurs in all other major categories, being the institutional category the least mentioned of all five categories. The results highlight the need to address both policies and planning recommendations more concretely, studying the institutional arrangements able to promote NBS.

Intermunicipal cooperation is being increasingly adopted in various countries to cope with the dilemmas of territorial scale and resource rationing. Despite the pressures towards the reshaping of administrative boundaries, little is known about the capacity of intermunicipal associations to function as effective, legitimate and resilient policy actors. This article aims to contribute to this debate by addressing two interrelated dimensions. First, it seeks to present a conceptual definition of governance capacity, unpacking the conceptual framework into dimensions that can be measured systematically. Second, it aims to empirically assess the governance capacity of Portuguese intermunicipal associations, drawing on a unique survey of intermunicipal associations. Overall, results suggest that despite being instrumentally driven, intermunicipal associations have proven to be efficient, with members recognizing the benefits and the spillover effects of trustworthy arrangements. However, the path dependencies affecting Portuguese local governments may impact on the relatively low levels of governance capacity. Points for practitioners: This article undertakes a conceptual analysis of the governance capacity of intermunicipal associations. This analytical framework can be crucial for leaders, practitioners and professionals working in management and administration especially those working in complex and demanding settings. Given the general trend towards intermunicipal cooperation – strongly encouraged by national and European regulations and reforms – practitioners need to be able to measure the capacity of the cooperative arrangements to be established and to be maintained. This article also strives to enlighten those professionals as to which dimensions mostly need to be strengthened so as to allow intelligent collective choices to be made and to set strategic directions for the allocation of (increasingly) scarce resources.

Territorial, economic and social cohesion in European Union (EU) regions are major challenges that regional policies are aimed at. These policies have a strong focus on innovation-driven models as key processes for reducing disparities and promoting regional development. Since the 1980s, innovation and technology policies have gained momentum and legitimacy to stimulate multiple development patterns and growth models, mainly from national economic dynamics to well performing regional systems. Theories of knowledge and learning have been developed in more successful places, producing concepts that seem unattainable for less successful ones. Given that less developed regions have been overlooked in innovation studies, this paper reviews the literature on territorial innovation models in Europe in order to understand theoretical and practical gaps for these regions and to identify trends that support the need to redirect conceptual, political and instrumental attention of territorial innovation systems. It debates the different forms of innovation in regions, the variety and role of actors, the quest for geographical and place-based resources, the determinants for innovation and the ‘how’ and ‘for what’ demands of regional development. The discussion anticipates critical questions that try to promote a ‘normative turn’ in innovation policy, propose research avenues and discuss policy implications.

Portugal is working on the reform of its local government. Although amalgamation was one of the recommended strategies, as a consequence of the European Union/International Monetary Fund bailout process, an alternative approach has been suggested. This reform is mostly a development of inter-municipal cooperation mechanisms combined with partial devolution strategies. However, as the bailout agreement was its main catalyst, the urgency to cut public administration costs required in the memorandum and the imposed deadlines gave a perverse incentive for central government to produce ad hoc and fragmented modifications. I argue that these political and economical demands, which sanctioned the argument for rushed measures, together with the country’s strong local identities, historical municipalism, political centralism and the political costs of significant territorial changes, can explain the absence of a comprehensible reform strategy and the singularities of its policies. This article explores the framework that justifies the reform and assesses the impacts of the bailout agreement.