In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

In this feature authors discuss recent research findings that are of interest to readers of Beleid en Maatschappij.

Governments around the world responded at roughly the same time but in several different ways to the emerging threat of COVID-19 in early 2020. This article sets out the nature of the different strategies that emerged over the course of the pandemic, focussing on the policy tools deployed. Some of these efforts were successful in containing the coronavirus while others were not, in some cases due to poor initial choices and in others due to poor implementation of the chosen strategy. Although the initial understanding each government had of the nature of the disease was the same, different state capacities and different levels of preparedness and effective leadership can be seen to have resulted over time in the emergence of six distinct approaches to the pandemic which, once deployed, proved difficult, although not impossible, to change as the pandemic unfolded.

Dutch social policies are aimed at the integration and participation of all people. This creates challenges for persons with a mental vulnerability and their neighbourhoods. Five municipalities in the province of Flevoland asked us to help them improve the move from protected living to living in the neighbourhood. We used an arts-based participatory action research design and we followed ‘hot topics’, topics that sparked people’s energy and emotion, and which led to empowerment and participation. Focusing on these topics, which initially might not seem to be closely connected to the main research topic, might produce more information, and energy to take action on it, rather than rigidly sticking with the initial research topics. In this article, we focus on the first phases of the project. The emotions that people with mental vulnerabilities expressed when talking about their dogs, led us to the core of what really mattered to them in terms of inclusive living and participation. The dog functioned as an unexpected ‘hot topic’. In a symbolic sense, ‘the dog’ stands for a diverse range of lifeworld topics that can act as a creative catalyst for social change.

Vooraf

Participatief actieonderzoek en responsieve evaluatie staan volop in de belangstelling bij beleidsmakers en onderzoekers. Dit type beleidsonderzoek en -evaluatie beoogt democratisch, inclusief én impactvol te zijn. Het gaat om onderzoek mét in plaats van óver mensen. En het is actiegericht: onderzoek wil bijdragen aan concrete oplossingen door met betrokkenen gezamenlijke (verbeter)acties te ontwikkelen in de praktijk, en daarop te reflecteren en van te leren. Dit alles met het oog op sociale inclusie. Het zijn mooie idealen, maar wat betekent dit in de alledaagse, vaak weerbarstige onderzoekspraktijk?

Op 20 januari 2020 organiseerde prof. Abma daarover een symposium, getiteld ‘Responsive, Participatory Research: Past, Present and Future Perspectives’ (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam). De rode draad op het symposium was de vraag wat goed en ethisch verantwoord participatief onderzoek is, en wat dit vraagt van onderzoekers en beleidsmakers. Drie lezingen op deze conferentie zijn nadien omgewerkt tot essays om lezers van Beleidsonderzoek Online vanuit verschillende perspectieven beter kennis te laten maken met deze vorm van onderzoek:

Prof. Weerman en haar team focussen in hun bijdrage op het zich in de praktijk ontwikkelende onderzoeksdesign en het inzetten van creatieve methoden om participatie te bevorderen. Ze gaan na welke kwaliteitscriteria aan participatief actieonderzoek worden gesteld en hechten daarbij met name aan eisen ten aanzien van participatie, samen leren en verschil maken (zie BoO juli 2021). Ze benadrukken het belang van creativiteit en flexibiliteit.

Prof. Abma bespreekt in haar artikel de normatieve dimensies en de ethiek van participatief actieonderzoek (zie BoO september 2020). Ze illustreert met een voorbeeld uit de crisishulpverlening aan GGZ-cliënten dat participatief actieonderzoek niet slechts een methodisch-technische exercitie is, maar een sociaal-politiek proces waarbij bestaande machtsverhoudingen verschuiven om ruimte te geven aan nieuwe stemmen en kennis. Dit omvat het zien van en stilstaan bij ethisch saillante dilemma’s en morele reflectie.

De bijdrage van prof. Cook (zie BoO februari 2021) gaat over de weerbarstige praktijk van participatief actieonderzoek. Het doel is samen leren en voorbij geijkte oplossingen komen. Zij laat zien dat dit uitdagend is voor professionals die geconfronteerd worden met burgers die feedback geven en vragen om het (deels) loslaten van vaststaande professionele kaders. Er ontstaat dan ongemak en onzekerheid, maar zo beoogt en laat Cook overtuigend zien, deze ‘mess’ (niet meer goed weten wat goed en nodig is) is productief om te komen tot hernieuwde inzichten en innovaties.

(Introductietekst opgesteld door prof. T. Abma)

After the European refugee crisis of 2015-2016, many Dutch municipalities took initiative in (re)shaping policies of asylum seeker reception and refugee integration in their own ways. We are witnessing a ‘local turn’ of integration policies with decentralization of responsibilities to the local level of governance. Besides civic integration and socioeconomic integration, social integration of asylum seekers and refugees has been a concern as these groups are often housed in superdiverse and vulnerable neighborhoods. How can municipalities best address the specific problems in their cities? This editorial introduces the four articles that are part of this special issue. We discuss three overarching topics. First, we argue that aside from targeting specific groups and issues, cities should develop mainstreamed policies and provisions to be able to handle future fluctuations and changes in their populations. Second, we observe that in policies aimed at enhancing inter-group contact, earlier immigrant groups are often overlooked. They can play a bridging role in establishing social connections. Third, we highlight the role of urban experiments and living labs in transfer and upscaling of innovative policies.

The impact of residualisation on social work has so far hardly been explored. Based on existing literature and recently started empirical research in Amsterdam we analyze several consequences. Residualisation refers to the process whereby urban social housing is strictly allocated to the lowest income groups. What does this concentration of disadvantaged households mean for the role of social workers? Firstly, for community workers residualisation mostly implies a renewed role as instigators of residents’ participation in urban renewal trajectories for social mix. Furthermore community activities are increasingly used to offer safe havens for new and old groups of residents and also to prevent expensive treatments for several residential groups. For social workers focusing on individual support or casework residualisation results in an increasingly complex caseload. Residualisation does not imply extra formation for social work, but rather extra attention for the effortful coproduction of welfare between formal and informal actors. Within this playing field, we distinguish link work as vital for both formal and informal social work. Link work is about establishing vertical and horizontal connections between different worlds, across sectoral, professional or trust gaps. We expect that in areas of residualisation successful urban social work is dependent on strong linking skills.

This article presents the research program into governance in a knowledge society of professor Albert Meijer and colleagues at Utrecht University. The knowledge society is a society in which (1) citizens are higher educated that ever before and their level of education largely determines their societal position, (2) knowledge plays a key role in administrative and policy processes and is increasingly contested and (3) technology plays a key role in every facet of societal life. Research into governance of and in the knowledge society requires a transdisciplinary and plural approach to scientific work. Transdisciplinarity entails combining insights from science with various forms of contextual and practical knowledge. A plural approach to scientific works means that we should not only do explanatory empirical work but also theoretical, normative and prescriptive research. The overall ambition of this research program is to contribute to a democratic debate about the governance of the future.

Since 2018, the Department of Public Administration of the Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences (BMS) of the University of Twente, in close cooperation with the municipality Zwolle, the Province of Overijssel and BMC advice, have been organizing the yearly Van Poelje lecture (named after administrative scientist and founder of Dutch Public Administration Gerrit van Poelje). The first lecture took place on 29 January 2018 in the ‘Grote Kerk’ in Zwolle. The subject of the lecture was the secret of successful regions: which policy works? Otto Raspe of the Dutch Planning Agency for the Environment delivered the keynote speech. Presentations from the administrative field were given by Henk Jan Meijer (mayor of the municipality Zwolle) and Staf Depla (alderman of the municipality Eindhoven) who respectively addressed the cooperation in the regions Zwolle and South-East Brabant. Bert van Delden responded from the point of view of the Home Office (he deputized for his minister, Kajsa Ollongren). After a short debate, the afternoon was closed by Marcel Boogers (senior advisor at BMC and professor at the University of Twente) with a scientific reflection on the subject of the lecture. The main message of the keynote speaker Otto Raspe was that an urban region is successful if it is able to use its agglomeration advantages. This is possible by seeking connections between clusters and the knowledge infrastructure, and between human capital and a pleasant living and social climate.

During a disaster or crisis, the response capacity of the government is put under extreme pressure. At the same time, citizens are often resilient in times of crisis and are increasingly capable of organizing themselves. Social media and online platforms have increased the possibilities for self-organization through improved connectivity. In practice, we see that governments struggle to deal with this form of self-organization, while it also offers a unique opportunity to increase the response capacity. The smart use of citizens’ initiatives offers opportunities and can increase the effectiveness of the government’s action. This article focuses on the following question: what role do online platforms play in smartly guiding the self-organization of citizens during crises and disasters? We answer the question on the basis of two examples: the role of online platforms in the aftermath of the earthquakes in Nepal in 2015, and the coordination of the reception of refugees during the crisis in the Netherlands in the winter of 2015-2016.

Big data can be seen as vital fuel for the innovation of diverse processes in both companies and in government policies and practices. In this short article we describe local efforts in the region around the Dutch city of Alkmaar in which the (local) government, (local) companies and a nearby university (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) work together on data-related challenges in a typical triple-helix structure. The municipality of Alkmaar gathers activities in a physical location to stimulate interaction and cooperation among (potential) partners, and it engages in the formation of new governance structures to increase both the intensity and the regional spread of the activities around data. All this raises many new and interesting issues and challenges for public administration researchers and practitioners.

Given the scientific and social importance attached to productive interactions between science and policy practices, there is a striking lack of insight into current knowledge practices and the dilemmas they lead to. Our special issue can’t solve this deficiency but it can provide an impetus for opening up current knowledge practices, reflect on the role of science in them and instigate a more systematic exchange of methods. A warning is given for the reification of boundary work and Gabrielle Bammers’ Implementation and Integration Sciences is introduced as framework for the analyses.

When scientific values like objectivity, validity and reliability are inadequate for designing research that enables society’s capacity for dealing with unstructured problems, which values or criteria should we use for designing adequate knowledge practices? Based on the articles in this special issue we answer this question by analysing the methods researchers have used for selecting stakeholders, knowledges, synthesis, context and outcome in new knowledge practices. Although a common language for comparison and documentation is lacking, the analysis provides recommendations for better designing interaction between scientific and other practices. The most important message however is that we need a designated platform for exchanging and evaluating experiences and discussing methods and the outcomes they yield.

In this contribution, Gerard Nijboer of Rotterdam municipality describes several living labs in his hometown.

In this closing article we summarize the results of the individual articles of this themed issue and draw common lessons. With regard to cities as living labs, we conclude that three challenges need more attention: (1) unclear or contradictory goals and expectations, (2) organizational confusion, and (3) the lack of institutional links. Based on these, we offer a number of recommendations for research and practice in public administration.

The city is hot: solutions to the world’s everyday problems are increasingly sought at the local level. Local administrations are handed more responsibilities through decentralizations and much is expected of the pragmatic skills of mayors. A great deal of hope is directed at the self-organizing abilities of cities, which can be seen as laboratories for social change and improvement. In this themed issue we will critically review these high expectations of cities and the local level. Can cities live up to these expectations, and at what point does ‘hope’ become ‘hype’? This introductory article mainly focuses on the concept of living labs, which are presented as an accessible, innovative and pragmatic way to address social issues in neighbourhoods.

Willem van Winden has done research about and has worked in several living labs at home and abroad. In this contribution he summarizes several practical lessons based on these experiences.