Suchergebnisse

Governments are increasingly challenged by self-organizing community initiatives that seek to contribute to or even take the lead in public value creation. The reason for citizen-led instead of government-led public value creation is part of two larger governance trends. The first is the increased specialized, mission-oriented approach to large social challenges by government agencies. The second trend is the increased emphasis on accountability, productivity, and efficiency, following the New Public Management philosophy. As a response to these trends, community initiatives challenge the usual mechanisms, principles, and practices of government agencies. These initiatives are characterized by more integrated and inclusive approaches for dealing with societal problems. In turn, government agencies struggle with the way they can organize productive responses to the initiatives communities take in creating public value. In this study, we explore the rationales behind processes of public value creation in which communities take the lead. We explored these processes in Dutch water management. In this highly functionally specialized domain, we compared two cases in which communities take on leadership for integrated initiatives, including other societal functions and tasks adjacent to water management.

The rise of citizens' initiatives is changing the relation between governments and citizens. This paper contributes to the discussion of how governments can productively relate to these self-organizing citizens. The study analyzes the relation between the social production of invited spaces and the invitational character of such spaces, as perceived by governments and citizens. Invited spaces are the (institutional, legal, organizational, political and policy) spaces that are created by governments for citizens to take on initiatives to create public value. We characterize four types of invited spaces and compare four cases in Dutch planning to analyze how these types of invited spaces are perceived as invitational. From the analysis, we draw specific lessons for governments that want to stimulate citizens' initiatives. We conclude with a general insight for public administration scholars; in addition to formal rules and structures, scholars should pay more attention to interactions, attitudes and meaning making of both government officials and citizens.

Delta areas can be considered complex adaptive socio-ecological systems. The Dutch Southwest delta, facing serious flood risks, vulnerability to ecological decline, and various challenging issues of agriculture, industry, harbor development and energy provision, is a case in point. Still, many institutional barriers exist towards governing and planning this complex whole as such. In this article we therefore develop and test a method for the development of integrative, complexity-sensitive spatial concepts: First, stakeholder analysis techniques are used to disclose the diversity of system understandings amongst the actors involved. Moreover, the method mobilizes these constructivist techniques to gain insight into the CAS property of co-evolving subsystems. Through the subsequent inventory, classification and synthesis of such 'intersections' between subsystems, the method helps identify the delta's crucial clusters of interdependent subsystems, or 'configurations'. We present three of such configurations, to illustrate how this method informs the step from systems analysis to spatial design.

In the network society, the capacity to deal with societal issues is spread among interacting actors in governance networks. Knowledge about this capacity, often called "governance capacity," is still fragmented and quite incoherent. The aim of this study is therefore to gain an integrated understanding of governance capacity. To do this, we conducted a literature review and organized focus groups. This resulted in the selection of five elements of governance capacity: (1) collective action, (2) coordination, (3) resilience, (4) learning, and (5) resources. We used these elements to form the first contours of a governance capacity framework.