LIST OF PANELS

There are a number of common, potentially existential, policy challenges confronting advanced market capitalist democracies at the dawn of the 21st Century. These threats include, among other things, growing income inequality, declining trust, economic stagnation, large cutbacks in the size and role of the public sector, increased immigration flows, ineffective financial regulation and climate change. Unfortunately and, perhaps, as a result of some of these trends, a number of these countries’ polities have become increasingly polarized politically, making consensus on needed reforms or remedies difficult or impossible to reach. This panel explores the challenges of developing and implementing public policies that address such fundamental threats in an era characterized by growing political polarization, as evidenced by populist political movements in numerous countries in North America and Western Europe.  Both academics and practitioners need to better understand the sources of this growing political polarization as well as ways it may be managed or curtailed so that policy solutions to these threats to a sustainable, prosperous and peaceful future may be developed and implemented. Research guidelines for the panel include seeking out papers with a comparative focus so that meaningful comparisons on political polarization and policy formulation and implementation could be made across countries.  Case-studies of single countries are welcome if they contribute to our generalizable knowledge. Efforts will also be made by the panel chairs to ensure an appropriate mix of studies from different countries, so that academics and practitioners can obtain a good theoretical foundation on how countries around the world deal with this issue. 

This panel is being organized by the Transnational Initiative on Governance Research and Education Network, or “TIGRE Net,” which is an international group of scholars, students and field specialists dedicated to identifying the opportunities and challenges public managers confront in the global economy and to providing them with the strategies and skills necessary to overcome obstacles to domestic, cross-border and international coordination. Outputs from the TIGRE Net include several academic conferences and workshops, which have been supported by a grant from the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) and academic partners in the US, Italy and Canada. Research from these events has been published in a number of academic outlets, including journals such as the International Journal of Public Administration (IJPA), the International Journal of Public Sector Management (IJPSM), an edited volume by CRC Press entitled Multi-Level Public Management: Stories of Success and Failure from Europe and North America and an edited volume published by the Taylor and Francis Group entitled Governance and Public Management: Strategic Foundations for Volatile Times. Core partners of TIGRE Net include universities in the US (Central Michigan University & California State-Long Beach), Italy (the University of Rome “Tor Vergata” & the University of Macerata) and Canada (York University (Toronto) and Brock University (St. Catharines)). The topic of our panel, policymaking in polarized political systems, is described in further detail in the call for papers we provide below. This theme has been chosen for several reasons. First, we have witnessed heightened levels of polarization in the home countries of each of the core partners of the TIGRE Net, as well as within numerous other developed democratic systems. Significantly, this polarization presents challenges to policymakers at multiple levels of political authority in the federal systems of Canada, Italy and the US, presenting complex political challenges that impede the policy process and thus inhibit resolution to numerous problems. Second, previous research, as well as conference and workshop experiences with practitioners from several countries, has highlighted the importance of successfully managing the political arena in order to accomplish policy objectives. As such, we seek to further our understanding of political polarization so that strategies and recommendations for overcoming this dilemma may be developed.  Finally, we hope that by organizing the panel described below and participating at the Second International Conference on Public Policy (ICPP) will enable us to grow this network and further develop collaborative opportunities in Europe and North America.