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Jeroen Candel wins the Van Poelje Award for best dissertation 2016
We are very proud to announce that Jeroen Candel is the winner of the Van Poelje Award for the best dissertation in the field of public administration in the Netherlands and Flanders in 2016.
From the jury report: And the winner is… Because of its contribution to the literature on policy framing and policy integration as far as highly complex or wicked issues is concerned, because of its strong paper-based set-up and its mixed methods approach, the Van Poelje Prijs 2016 goes to… “Putting Food on the Table. In this book, Candel brings together various academic fields to study one empirical field – the field of food security. Backed by the broad central RQ – “whether and how the European Union is capable of governing the wicked problem of food security” the author relies upon governance theories, theories on wicked issues, theories on policy integration and EU governance theories to study the complex nature of food security, how food security is framed, the EU capabilities to govern food security, and the extent to which policy approaches get more integrated. Various published papers deal with these aspects, and although the study mainly rests upon interviews, at the end the sub-questions and main question are systematically answered. Candel shows that the European Union is capable of dealing with challenges, but EU food security governance is also characterized by “relatively high degrees of symbolic or discursive decision-making”. The jury members especially liked the chapters on policy integration. Although this book is a ‘public administration’ (or public policy) book, it also mainly focuses on food and food policy, with papers published in food journals. This makes it all the more present-day public administration. Academic analysis is linked to a societal issue, it traces processes at various levels, it cuts across policy arenas, and it offers both academic and practical implications, with an eye on one specific policy area.