Research of the Public Administration and Policy Group
The globe is facing multiple interconnected sustainability challenges, ranging from sea level rise, water shortages, excessive pollution, and the declining resilience of food production systems. Impacts affect different parts of the world, and different segments of societies, in divergent ways, resulting in normative questions about fairness and justice.
These challenges can be understood as wicked problems, as they involve complex social-ecological systems that behave unpredictably and in uncertain ways, while also being clouded by disagreement over the relevant norms and values that could be invoked to describe and address them. Moreover, whereas addressing these sustainability challenges requires transformative change across multiples jurisdictions at an unprecedented pace, powerful societal actors and vested interests constrain opportunities for systemic governance changes.
Governance crises
Our work is premised on the understanding that the role of public governance in sustainability transformations is of key importance. In fact, many sustainability crises can be described as governance crises – suggesting that the current depth, scope and pace of attempts to address them are falling short. Sustainability transformations which are occurring in society are not sufficiently supported, instruments and tools to trigger or invoke such transformations not used, and obstacles within government itself are not removed.
To better understand and address this situation, we developed our research programme “Changing Governance and Governing Change”. We study whether, when and how innovative governance strategies and arrangements offer the potential of governing the necessary sustainability transformations. By leveraging our disciplinary and interdisciplinary expertise, we aim to make inspiring and innovative contributions to both science and practice in the fields of water, climate, food and agricultural governance.
Our research lines
The research programme consists of three interconnected lines of research. Each of these elaborates on a particular dimension of the governance of sustainability transformations.
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Dynamics and directions of change in governance
This research line conceptualises and analyses continuity and change in policies, polity, and politics and how they enable and constrain the dynamics and directions of societal change. Because of the wicked nature of the challenges facing governance actors in the domains of climate and water and food and agriculture, it is very important that policy systems respond to new insights, and do not become locked into old problem definitions and understandings.
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Between fragmentation and connectivity
Governance systems are typically organised along specialised units, distinct competences, and specific time frames. Sustainability transformations require cutting across these boundaries between temporal, spatial and jurisdictional scales, between public and private spheres, and between science, policy and society.
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Conflict and contestations
This research line develops an understanding of the role and contestation of values in the design, process and outcome of policy making and governance around transformations. It analyses what is seen as “good” governance of transformations in terms of, for example, effectiveness, legitimacy, accountability, sovereignty, or justice - both in a normative sense and empirically across various institutional contexts and stakeholders.
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Research projects of the Public Administration and Policy Group
Our researchers are involved in a broad range of national and international research projects, in which they collaborate with scientific and societal partners on pressing questions of governing sustainability transformations. Key funders include the European Commission and the Dutch Research Council (NWO). This page provides an overview of the research projects in which the Public Administration and Policy group plays a large role, as well as the individual PhD research projects performed in our group.