LIST OF PANELS

General objective: We live in turbulent times and political scientists and public administration scholars have for some time now discussed how the public sector can advance its ability to make and implement robust policy solutions under turbulent circumstances characterized by high degrees of uncertainty, irregularity and unpredictability (Capano & Toth, 2023; Howlett & Ramesh, 2023; Ansell et al., 2024; Sørensen & Warren, 2024). This panel aims to take theory development and empirical inquiry one step further by inviting papers that contribute to answering the following research question: How can public policies contribute to making societies more robust? The scientific relevance of this research question is that it shifts the perspective in the research from what robust policymaking and governance looks like to how and when public policies and policy making processes contribute to building robust societies. The latter can be defined as societies that possess the ability to change what they do and/or how they do it when disruptive events render existing ways of thinking and acting ineffective and illegitimate. The basic idea guiding the inquiry is that societal robustness is a product of policies that allow for, and maybe even encourage, continuous adaptation and innovation of perceptions of what it entails to promote effectiveness and legitimacy (re-articulation of policy purposes) and/or of the ways they seek to do so in practice (re-structuration of governance institutions and processes). As such the panel encourages researchers to take part in developing a generative perspective on policy and policymaking (Ansell & Torfing, 2021) that asks how policies can release a society’s transformative capacity and guide and deploy it in ways that support the promotion of effective and legitimate governance. There are already interesting literatures considering how generative AI government policies guiding and encouraging a purposeful use of AI can enable situated societal responses to change, how metagovernance tools and reflexive law can facilitate collaborative governance and co-creation of solutions to challenging demands and events. Another interesting and potentially relevant literature is discussing how social capital can enhance the stamina of societies (Young, 2017; Terrinham, 2021; Hubbard et al., 2022; Cheng & Wu, 2024). These strands of research have hitherto not been fully deployed in discussions about how to build robust societies.

References:

Ansell, C., Sørensen, E., Torfing, J., & Trondal, J. (2024). Robust Governance in Turbulent Times. Cambridge University Press.

Ansell, C., & Torfing, J. (2021). Public governance as co-creation. Cambridge University Press.

Capano, G., & Toth, F. (2023). Thinking outside the box, improvisation, and fast learning. Public Administration, 101(1), 90-105.

Cheng, K., & Wu, H. (2024). Policy framework for the utilization of generative AI. Critical Care, 28(1), 128.

Howlett, M., & Ramesh, M. (2023). Designing for adaptation. Public Administration, 101(1), 23-35.

Hubbard, R., Paquet, G., & Wilson, C. (2022). Stewardship. University of Ottawa Press.

Sørensen, E., & Warren, M. E. (2024). Developing a theory of robust democracy. Policy & Politics, 1-20.

This call for papers invites papers written by young as well as by more experienced researchers. We also encourage researchers from all corners of the globe to contribute to the debate. We are eager to receive theoretical as well as empirical and methodological papers that can each in their specific way add to the development of a generative perspective on policy and policymaking as tools for building robust societies. We welcome theoretical papers that conceptualize generative public policy, identify its composite parts, and consider the benefits and limits of various policy strategies and tools for advancing the robustness of societies. Another interesting question is how different forms of knowledge can inform generative policy making and how they can cross-fertilize each other. How can political knowledge, expertise and lifeworld insights, respectively and in unison inform generative policies that build robust societies. Related to such considerations is the question of how politicians, public administrators, public professionals, organized stakeholders and citizens can contribute to providing such knowledge and what their role would be in such an endeavor. The research could also benefit from further reflection and theory building on how hybrid policies combining market, hierarchy and network governance can enhance societal robustness, and what multi-level and multi-actor policymaking has to offer in that respect. We also welcome empirical papers that analyze generative policies and their impact on the robustness of society. Such studies could take the form of both comparative and single case studies of concrete policy programs or policies that advance or delimit the robustness of specific societies. A focus in comparative papers could be the mapping of differences between policy areas e.g. environmental policy and educational policy, or between regimes such as autocracies and democracies. Empirical studies could also report findings from studies of how a turn to generative policies affect the role distribution and power relations between political elites, public employees and citizens. Of particular interest are studies that investigate how the design of concrete generative policies and policy processes affect societies’ ability to solve pressing societal problems that call for speedy and manifest action from not only the public sector but from society as such. Papers that consider methodological challenges related to assessing the impact of policies on societal robustness are also appreciated.