Wicked problems ask for new, smart forms of governance beyond a singular focus on hierarchy, market or community. Based on the case studies presented in the individual articles of this special issue, this concluding article describes what smart governance could entail and discusses its strengths and weaknesses, both as a concept and a practical tool.

Traditional state-centered governance systems have failed to effectively tackle the transnational problem of the sustainability of global value chains (GVCs). To fill this ‘institutional void’, industry and NGOs established a series of global partnerships that designed standards and certification schemes for global commodities. This paper uses different theoretical lenses to address the question as to what extent these arrangements can be evaluated as smart, and for what and for whom they are smart? Despite their relative success, these partnerships face some serious challenges. Consequently, smart governance also requires adaptiveness and the prevention of path dependencies.

Scale is an important topic in the fields of public administration, political sciences, and environmental sciences. How scales are defined, studied, and dealt with varies substantially within and across these fields. This article aims to reduce the existing conceptual confusion regarding scales by disentangling three representative approaches that address both governance and scaling: monocentric governance, multilevel governance, and adaptive governance. It does so by analyzing the differences in underlying views on governing, assumptions about scales, dominant problem definitions regarding scales, and preferred responses for dealing with multiple scales. Finally, this article identifies research opportunities within and across these approaches.

Scale is one of the classic themes in the study of Public Administration. Despite much research and debate, a lot of questions remain open. This special issue introduces scale sensitive governance as an alternative concept. It relates to taking into account the context, departing from dogma's or illusions about the ideal scale, and looking for new ways to deal with issues of scale.

The theme of scale is simply too big to grasp in one special issue of this journal. However, having discussed some topical issues of scale, we denounce the illusion of an ideal scale and welcome a new perspective. We introduce the concept of scale sensitive governance and use insights from the different articles in this special issue to discuss the concept. Scale sensitive governance relates to 1) being sensitive towards different logics of scale, 2) leaving behind scale as a dogmatic concept, and (3) linking scale to broader developments in society.