Posts Tagged ‘Netherlands’
New modes of governance for long-term societal challenges
Modern industrialized societies are confronted with immense long-term challenges. But Derk Loorbach of Erasmus University says that two dominant ways of managing those challenges — top-down steering by government or the free market approach — are inadequate. In the current issue of Governance (23.1), Loorbach describes a new governance approach, “transition management,” drawn from experience in the Netherlands. Broad-based innovation networks created under the banner of transition management produce shared visions for social reform while preserving space for short-term innovation. These networks, says Loorbach, “are increasingly influencing regular policies in areas such as energy supply, mobility, health care, agriculture, and water management.” Read more: Transition Management for Sustainable Development: A Prescriptive, Complexity-Based Governance Framework.
What happens to democratic representation in the era of “network governance”?
What happens to conventional understandings about democratic representation when responsibility for policy formulation moves to new “governance networks”? Carolyn Hendriks explores this question in the current issue of Governance (22.4). Examining participants in networks engaged in Dutch energy reform, Hendriks finds a “complex mix” of understandings about roles, which often “have little to do with conventional democratic understandings.” Network participants, she says, “were mostly autonomous elites whose ‘democratic work’ is reduced to promoting symbolic messages when politically necessary.” Read the article: The democratic soup: Mixed meanings of political representation in governance networks.
