LIST OF PANELS

The governance of societal activities, institutions and work has always been ubiquitous but never self-explanatory. With respect to addressing global problems and pursuing important societal aims, such as combating climate change, easing up urban congestion, advancing welfare or providing education, it is difficult to disentangle public policies and agencies from private efforts, economic institutions and civic activities. With hybridity the panel refers to the interaction among public, private and civil society via distinct modes of ownership, parallel but often competing institutional logics, diverse funding bases and various forms of social and institutional control. This panel “Public policies for hybrid governance” investigates the dynamic and intricate relationships, rationalities (implicit and/or explicit), tensions and dilemmas among public, private and civic domains contributing to policy outcomes at the level of societies.

There is a paradox in addressing the hybridity of policy endeavours. Societies and governments may acknowledge that governing hybridity poses a problem in how important societal impacts and forms of value are created, yet they face fundamental dilemmas with understanding why, through what mechanisms and with what impacts governing hybridity takes place. For better understanding, the panel proposes three general questions for the panel:

1)     How are public policies influenced by hybridity and hybrid forms of governance?

2)     To what extent and via what mechanisms do governments influence (foster or hamper) hybridity?

3)     How does hybridity shape the agenda-setting, implementation and evaluation of public policies?

We acknowledge hybridity both as part of policy formation, which includes goals and actors other than those of the government (hybridity of policies) and policies as a medium to govern hybridity in societies (policies for hybridity). The former view relates to grand policy challenges, for instance, in achieving sustainability, combating poverty and providing security through multilateral and multifaceted combinations of contributions. The latter refers to the reorganising and reshaping of public-private-civil society interactions through privatisation, outsourcing and other types of collaborative arrangements which increasingly require new forms of oversight and intervention.

This panel invites both conceptual and empirical contributions that explore various facets of the policies on hybridity and hybridization of societies, in view of their implications on public policy analysis.

Many ideas of governance acknowledge the variety of public, private and community actors in policy networks, but the significance and implications of this diversity to either public policy or to participating actors has not attracted enough attention. This gives rise to a number of questions that are explored in the panel.

Papers may address (among other possibilities) the following issues and questions:

What is the impact of public policies on hybridity? Do public policies increase hybrid forms of governance?

Empirical approaches to assessing the ways in which policies approach hybridity:

- How is it different from governing public agencies or private enterprises?

- Are there differences in governing or regulating hybridity across policy fields?

A comparison of the perspectives on ‘policies for hybridity’ vs. ‘policies of hybridity’ adopted by policy-relevant research and practical policy action: What new aspects does hybridity impose on the shaping of the agenda-setting and policy formation and executive government?

How do different types of hybrid organizations (e.g. state-owned enterprises, social enterprises, universities) adapt to public policies?

How do community self- and co-regulating practices in tandem with corporate social responsibility and entrepreneurial self-regulation influence public policies?

To what extent and through what mechanisms is hybridity linked to transnational governance and policy diffusion?

One objective of the panel is to present and continue our ongoing work on special issues e.g. in the Australian Journal of Public Administration and in the edited volume "Public policies for hybrid governance", (E.Elgar, In press).