SISP Conference 2023

The section hosts panels on the factors and conditions that favor or inhibit innovation and learning in democracies in times of turbulence. The invitation is to deal with transversal issues that can be addressed from multiple perspectives and dimensions: reforms, the public-private relationship, science and new technologies, evaluation, human rights, the role of experts, big data, social and environmental sustainability.
In an era of global change, such as the climate crisis, the pandemic emergency linked to the spread of Covid-19, and the transformation of the balance of power at the international level, the ability to plan, effectively implement, and evaluate the impact of policies and services on beneficiaries will be an important yardstick of public intervention in the coming years.
In this vein, the section calls for panels tackling the complex challenges that governments and communities at various levels – local, national, and supranational – face through the Next Generation EU framework. How can government policies and administrations provide credible answers to new programming and investment opportunities?
Identifying and testing innovative solutions implementing and evaluating their effectiveness regarding old and new problems and needs is now the challenge to measure the success and failure of policies. Moreover, government action’s not always positive impacts suggest considering the potential and limits of new ideas, tools, strategies, governance systems, and new forms of citizen involvement in decision-making processes. In this sense, transversality, coordination, and policy coherence represent new theoretical and methodological challenges.
The section invites proposals of panels, workshops, and round tables on topics that, although traditional, can be treated with innovative techniques and points of view. It also invites the community to reflect on continuity and innovation within the public policy analysis field itself. It invites proponents to reflect on the significant challenges posed, for example, by big data and the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and on the stimuli coming from new approaches, such as the behavioral public policy and the experimental approach to public administration that enrich more consolidated methods and paradigms. Lastly, proposals would also be welcome that relate to: (i) the implementation of devolved policies in a framework of (potential) differentiated autonomy (law decree 1 February 2023); (ii) the digitalization of the public sector and of public policies (e.g. e-health); (iii) administrative capacity building, recruiting and career development of PA staff, also in the light of crisis management, foresight and risk management; (iv) the future directions of public policy and public administration research, and the theories of policy and public administration change, and theory development. Papers that couch the Italian case in wider comparative analyses will be particularly welcome. While paper and panel proposals will be received in both Italian and English, efforts will be paid to organize at least one panel in the English language to attract scholars from abroad.

 

The past decade has no doubt witnessed an increase in the number of thorny issues (or, to put it another way, wicked problems) that governments at different levels and in various countries have had to deal with. Examples include the recent pandemic crisis, the environmental hazards and natural disasters related to climate change, as well as the ongoing impact of international turmoil on energy policies and related sectors (e.g., transportation, industry, household income relief etc.). All these issues, which call for complex, innovative and not ready-made solutions, challenge the institutional actors' responsiveness and shed light on the paucity of information and knowledge available to policy makers. Indeed, the latter are at the same time puzzling over the formulation of problems and solutions and must find effective ways to communicate decisions to citizens, whose compliance is often essential to avoid policy failure. As a result, public decision makers are more than ever resorting to outside expertise to design policy interventions as well as to provide legitimacy to the choices they make.
The growing role of professional expertise in contemporary policy making has received increasing scholarly attention. So far, however, the debate has focused mainly on policy advisory systems, paying less attention to addressing the broader relationship between science and policy making. The dialogue between science and policy making is inherently a tricky game: scientists and policy makers have (at least in theory) different goals, different views on the production and use of evidence, different accountabilities, and – not least – a different perception of time. Yet, as we have learnt from the management of the pandemic and the vaccination campaign in Italy, the collaboration (or lack thereof) between scientists and public decision-makers both in policy design and in communication to citizens is a factor of notable importance in affecting both the quality of interventions and target audience perceptions.
Against this background, the panel aims to host papers that, from various perspectives, reflect on the relationship between science and decision-making in the design and communication of policies geared toward solving thorny issues and wicked problems. Papers that address the issue from a comparative perspective will be particularly appreciated, although case studies are not excluded. Both quantitative and qualitative studies are welcome.

 

The past decade has no doubt witnessed an increase in the number of thorny issues (or, to put it another way, wicked problems) that governments at different levels and in various countries have had to deal with. Examples include the recent pandemic crisis, the environmental hazards and natural disasters related to climate change, as well as the ongoing impact of international turmoil on energy policies and related sectors (e.g., transportation, industry, household income relief etc.). All these issues, which call for complex, innovative and not ready-made solutions, challenge the institutional actors' responsiveness and shed light on the paucity of information and knowledge available to policy makers. Indeed, the latter are at the same time puzzling over the formulation of problems and solutions and must find effective ways to communicate decisions to citizens, whose compliance is often essential to avoid policy failure. As a result, public decision makers are more than ever resorting to outside expertise to design policy interventions as well as to provide legitimacy to the choices they make.
The growing role of professional expertise in contemporary policy making has received increasing scholarly attention. So far, however, the debate has focused mainly on policy advisory systems, paying less attention to addressing the broader relationship between science and policy making. The dialogue between science and policy making is inherently a tricky game: scientists and policy makers have (at least in theory) different goals, different views on the production and use of evidence, different accountabilities, and – not least – a different perception of time. Yet, as we have learnt from the management of the pandemic and the vaccination campaign in Italy, the collaboration (or lack thereof) between scientists and public decision-makers both in policy design and in communication to citizens is a factor of notable importance in affecting both the quality of interventions and target audience perceptions.
Against this background, the panel aims to host papers that, from various perspectives, reflect on the relationship between science and decision-making in the design and communication of policies geared toward solving thorny issues and wicked problems. Papers that address the issue from a comparative perspective will be particularly appreciated, although case studies are not excluded. Both quantitative and qualitative studies are welcome.

 

Policy Advisory Systems are configurations of actors who compete to formulate policy recommendations and to influence policy decisions. To better understand the composition of the PAS, the existing literature has been primarily focused on the role of different administrative traditions in shaping who are the relevant advisors inside and outside the public sphere, but there is little empirical evidence regarding what is the stock of policy analytical capacities at the level of the government and how different types of technical capacities impact on the composition of the policy advisory systems in a given policy sector. At the same time, the literature has emphasized how the level of ideational cohesion and accessibility of the policy subsystem matter to the dynamics inside the PAS in a given sector, but very few studies looked at how the political conflict impacts on the dynamics of cooperation or competition in the policy advisory system.
Therefore, a relevant research question is: do the analytical capacities and the political conflict matter to the configuration of the policy advisory system in a given country? What combination of technical capacities and political/procedural competences makes the advice more influential?
This is both a theoretical and empirical question, which could be investigated by focusing on the case of Italy, a country with a scarcely institutionalised PAS where Evidence Based Policy Making is usually scarce and the content of policy advice often mingles technical capacities with political expertise. Therefore, the Italian case offers a high variability of PAS configurations across sectors and in time, against a backdrop where policy capacities are unevenly spread across policy sectors.
This panel thus welcomes a collection of papers aimed at assessing:
1. The level of policy analytical capacities at the level of central government and its relevance for different types of policy work
2. The dynamics of PAS in the Italian Administrative Reforms
3. The dynamics of PAS in the Italian Education Reforms
4. The dynamics of PAS in the Italian Labour Market reforms
5. The dynamics of the PAS during the Pandemic at the subnational level

 

Policy Advisory Systems are configurations of actors who compete to formulate policy recommendations and to influence policy decisions. To better understand the composition of the PAS, the existing literature has been primarily focused on the role of different administrative traditions in shaping who are the relevant advisors inside and outside the public sphere, but there is little empirical evidence regarding what is the stock of policy analytical capacities at the level of the government and how different types of technical capacities impact on the composition of the policy advisory systems in a given policy sector. At the same time, the literature has emphasized how the level of ideational cohesion and accessibility of the policy subsystem matter to the dynamics inside the PAS in a given sector, but very few studies looked at how the political conflict impacts on the dynamics of cooperation or competition in the policy advisory system.
Therefore, a relevant research question is: do the analytical capacities and the political conflict matter to the configuration of the policy advisory system in a given country? What combination of technical capacities and political/procedural competences makes the advice more influential?
This is both a theoretical and empirical question, which could be investigated by focusing on the case of Italy, a country with a scarcely institutionalised PAS where Evidence Based Policy Making is usually scarce and the content of policy advice often mingles technical capacities with political expertise. Therefore, the Italian case offers a high variability of PAS configurations across sectors and in time, against a backdrop where policy capacities are unevenly spread across policy sectors.
This panel thus welcomes a collection of papers aimed at assessing:
1. The level of policy analytical capacities at the level of central government and its relevance for different types of policy work
2. The dynamics of PAS in the Italian Administrative Reforms
3. The dynamics of PAS in the Italian Education Reforms
4. The dynamics of PAS in the Italian Labour Market reforms
5. The dynamics of the PAS during the Pandemic at the subnational level

 

The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza - PNRR), funded by Next Generation EU, has the potential to transform the economic policies and to reform the trajectories of the Italian public administration for the years to come. After a historical period characterised by austerity policies and across-the-board budgetary cuts (a period that began, for Italy, well before the European sovereign debt crisis of 2010/2013), the launch of the PNRR represents a unique opportunity not only to pursue active fiscal policies, but also to put in place those horizontal and structural reforms that have been postponed for too long because of the narrow fiscal space that has historically characterised Italian public finance. Within this set of reforms, the one devised to improve the performance of the judicial sector plays a fundamental role in fostering fairness, efficiency, and economic competitiveness of the country. For decades, in fact, both European institutions and the Italian civil society have lamented, among other: the slowness of proceedings (especially civil and commercial ones) and its impacts on economic activities; the difficult conditions of prisons and judicial buildings; and the poor digitalisation of the judicial sector.
The PNRR, besides supporting several procedural reforms – to civil, criminal and insolvency proceedings, has devised three specific investment lines aimed at strengthening human capital, digitalisation and judicial real estate for a total of EUR 2.827 billion. The bulk of these resources (EUR 2.26 billion) is absorbed by the investment line named “Trial Office (Ufficio per il Processo – UPP) and Human Capital”, which provides for the temporary recruitment of 21,910 staff members to be employed in the first and second instance offices and at the Court of Cassation. Considerable resources are also assigned to multiple digitalisation initiatives (among these: digitisation of the civil and criminal process; document management and digital notifications; archiving and management control systems; up to the use of artificial intelligence in the judicial field). In addition, a portion of the PNRR funds devoted to the justice sector has been allocated, through specific competitive bids, to public universities with the aim of supporting judicial offices in the implementation of reform lines and co-designing new forms of collaboration between academic and professional actors.
Against this background, the panel primarily aims at gathering the early experiences of those universities that have collaborated, and are still collaborating, with the Ministry of Justice and its territorial articulations in the implementation of the various aspects of the PNRR-led reform. The panel particularly welcomes research contributions focused on the stabilization of the UPP as a new organizational structure and on tools and strategies for the digital transition of the sector. The panel is interested both in theoretical contributions that frame the reforms within the main models of public policy analysis, political science and public management, and in empirical contributions aimed at presenting and critically discussing implementation choices, processes and challenges. The identification and diffusion of good practices, as well as the launch of a debate on the evaluation of PNRR-related investments, constitute another focus of the panel.
Finally, the panel welcomes studies that approach the PNRR-led transformations in broader theoretical terms, allowing for more externally valid reflections on the reform trajectories of the Italian public administration in the context of its European peers and its membership in the EU.

 

La tavola rotonda prende spunto da un recente evento: l'inserimento dell'analisi delle politiche tra le materie per il reclutamento della dirigenza pubblica nel quadro del IX Corso concorso SNA per dirigenti dello Stato, attraverso il quale vengono reclutati il 50% dei dirigenti delle amministrazioni centrali, che si svolgerà nella seconda parte del 2023. Questa notizia si accompagna con la creazione presso la Scuola Nazionale dell'Amministrazione di un apposito dipartimento dedicato all'analisi delle politiche pubbliche.
Si tratta di un cambiamento che invita la comunità epistemica alla riflessione su potenzialità e sviluppi della sub-disciplina e della scienza politica nel suo complesso, a confronto con altri rami del sapere delle scienze sociali che hanno svolto fino ad oggi un ruolo dominante, come il diritto, o che si erano inserite con successo recentemente, come l'economia e il management.
In questa prospettiva, ci si chiede come e in quale misura l'analisi delle politiche pubbliche possa svolgere un ruolo utile e significativo nella selezione della classe dirigente e nella sua formazione, anche in considerazione della sempre maggiore centralità delle competenze trasversali nel reclutamento dei dirigenti, come previsto dalle "Linee guida sull'accesso alla dirigenza pubblica", tra le quali sono previste anche diverse competenze di policy. Ci si attende che la discussione ruoti di conseguenza sulle prospettive della disciplina, sulle strategie di affermazione e consolidamento, sui necessari passaggi di sviluppo e sulle risorse da acquisire, gli apprendimenti da compiere e le sfide da affrontare.

Partecipanti:
Speakers:
Anna Caffarena - Università di Torino
Andrea Lippi - Università di Firenze, Coordinatore del Dipartimento Politiche pubbliche
e governance presso la SNA
Remo Morzenti Pellegrini - Università di Bergamo, Vicepresidente SNA
Greta Nasi - Università Bocconi
Luca Verzichelli - Università di Siena, Presidente SISP

 

Vi sono robuste evidenze empiriche sulle conseguenze negative della corruzione sistemica sulla qualità dei processi democratici da un lato, sui tessuti produttivi locali, la capacità di innovazione, e la solidità dell’economia dall\'altro. Tuttavia, è emersa nel discorso pubblico e nel dibattito politico - non soltanto nel contesto italiano - una prospettiva critica nei confronti delle politiche e degli strumenti di contrasto della corruzione (così come della criminalità organizzata), considerate vincoli che ostacolano spesa e investimenti pubblici e, quindi, la crescita economica; pongono barriere inutilmente onerose a processi decisionali che richiedono rapidità e \"fluidità\"; inibiscono o depotenziano l\'esercizio di poteri legittimati da un voto democratico.
Il panel invita contributi teorici o empirici che analizzino l'evoluzione degli strumenti anticorruzione e delle strutture istituzionali per il loro governo, esplorino l’interazione tra i meccanismi politici e amministrativi della corruzione e gli strumenti di intervento pubblico, e valutino la rilevanza teorica e/o empirica di questi argomenti.

 

The implementation of the NRRP policies is considered a complex and crucial phase for reforming and investing in the recovery and resilience capacity of the country. The pathways and outcomes of the implementation of policy reforms and policy change might also impact on the future political-institutional set-up, the political system and social cohesion.
The first implementation phase has started within a shared framework of rules, and objectives, defined within the Plan formulated by the Draghi government in Spring 2021, and it has already taken on peculiar trajectories in the various policy arenas, thus highlighting differentiated dynamics according to the actors involved, the policy tools and interests mobilised in support of or against the envisaged policy change.
Moreover, the alternation between the Draghi's semi-technocratic government and the Meloni’s political government, occurred in late 2022, seems to suggest some discontinuities and further differentiations in the implementation process, given the politicisation of some issues, the changing priorities, a varying value by the incumbent government to the economic and social interests at stake.
Due to such complex dynamics, in which it is not always possible to foresee the real outreach of resilience and recovery interventions, it is necessary to analyse them through the lenses of a composite analytical perspective. Such analytical framework should take into account the political context, shaped by a centralised governance, the differentiated capacities of central and local administrations, and the economic and social actors and interest effectively involved. It therefore becomes extremely useful to analyse the implementation processes in different policy sectors in order to identify the relevant actors and policy change trajectories of crucial policies such as those at the core of the Plan itself.
The interest group perspective proves fruitful in combining these dimensions within and across the sectors involved, and contributes to a better understanding of the implementation dynamics in the different fields. Analysing the interest groups’ different role – supporting or opposing – in policy implementation, therefore, offers a useful interpretation to understand the effective impact of NRRP. Nevertheless, so far this perspective is still almost a missing piece in available studies and research.
The panel welcomes papers analysing the role played by interest groups in the implementation of different NRRP’s policies. More specifically, we are interested in works investigating at least one of the following aspects: i) in what fora and through what contacts/networks/resources interests and coalitions intervene and play a role in the implementation stages; ii) how they contribute to the definition of the implementation measures or subsequently become active in supporting or resisting the planned measures; iii) what new models of interest representation and intermediation seem to emerge (if any) in the different policy arenas in relation to policy transformations; iv) if any changing patterns in interest representation can be detected with reference to the change in politics.

 

Cybersecurity has become the main digital-related public concern in contemporary societies. The issue has rapidly scaled up the political agenda of international organizations, national governments and local authorities, gaining a stable position among the top-level priorities of governmental institutions. Further, the pandemic has boosted the digital transformation all over the world, and sharpened the complexity, the scale, the scope, and the interdependencies of cybersecurity problems. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict have triggered a series of severe cyber-attacks conducted by state and state-sponsored actors, and have highlighted the geopolitical relevance of cybernetic resources and their control.

Facing these new collective problems, private and public policies have increasingly been developed in different societal contexts and on multiple institutional levels. A fast-growing branch of policy studies is emerging to better understand these processes of policy-making, and to analyze their impact and consequences on individuals, businesses, public administrations, institutions, and international relations. Also, several political analyses are pointing out a process of institutional transformation prompted by the politics of cybersecurity, that is affecting both state organizations and key political concepts such as sovereignty, conflict, constitution, power, etc.

The main objective of this panel is to understand political and policy aspects of cybersecurity, and their interplay within transnational, multilevel, and polycentric systems of governance. It aims at convening scholars who are addressing cybersecurity policies and politics from different angles, in order to trigger a discussion about if and how cybersecurity is emerging as a specific domain of public policy, and about if and how cybersecurity is reshaping state’s powers and functioning. The panel also aims at clarifying institutional conditions and political factors affecting cybersecurity, as well as at investigating the relationships between state’s transformations and the politics of cybersecurity.

We call for papers that present new theoretical and methodological reflections, as well as empirical research, on the institutionalization of cybersecurity and the related processes of policy-making. Submissions are particularly welcome on the following possible topics:

New frameworks and methods for the study of cybersecurity policies;
Typologies of cybersecurity policy;
Policy discourses on cybersecurity;
National and transnational policy networks;
Cybersecurity strategies and policy designs, and their implementation;
Implementation and adaptation of policy instruments in the cybersecurity arena;
Evaluation of cybersecurity policies;
Cybersecurity and foreign policy;
Epistemic communities and cybersecurity policy entrepreneurs;
Cybersecurity policy and politics;
Cybersecurity policies in public administrations;
Cybersecurity policies and emerging policy principles (e.g. digital sovereignty, digital constitutionalism);
Cybersecurity policies and emerging technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, IoT, metaverse, quantum computing)
Cultures and ideologies of cybersecurity.

Accepted papers are expected to share new knowledge on cybersecurity policies and politics, including analytical frameworks, comparative analyses and in-depth case studies.

 

Cybersecurity has become the main digital-related public concern in contemporary societies. The issue has rapidly scaled up the political agenda of international organizations, national governments and local authorities, gaining a stable position among the top-level priorities of governmental institutions. Further, the pandemic has boosted the digital transformation all over the world, and sharpened the complexity, the scale, the scope, and the interdependencies of cybersecurity problems. More recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing conflict have triggered a series of severe cyber-attacks conducted by state and state-sponsored actors, and have highlighted the geopolitical relevance of cybernetic resources and their control.

Facing these new collective problems, private and public policies have increasingly been developed in different societal contexts and on multiple institutional levels. A fast-growing branch of policy studies is emerging to better understand these processes of policy-making, and to analyze their impact and consequences on individuals, businesses, public administrations, institutions, and international relations. Also, several political analyses are pointing out a process of institutional transformation prompted by the politics of cybersecurity, that is affecting both state organizations and key political concepts such as sovereignty, conflict, constitution, power, etc.

The main objective of this panel is to understand political and policy aspects of cybersecurity, and their interplay within transnational, multilevel, and polycentric systems of governance. It aims at convening scholars who are addressing cybersecurity policies and politics from different angles, in order to trigger a discussion about if and how cybersecurity is emerging as a specific domain of public policy, and about if and how cybersecurity is reshaping state’s powers and functioning. The panel also aims at clarifying institutional conditions and political factors affecting cybersecurity, as well as at investigating the relationships between state’s transformations and the politics of cybersecurity.

We call for papers that present new theoretical and methodological reflections, as well as empirical research, on the institutionalization of cybersecurity and the related processes of policy-making. Submissions are particularly welcome on the following possible topics:

New frameworks and methods for the study of cybersecurity policies;
Typologies of cybersecurity policy;
Policy discourses on cybersecurity;
National and transnational policy networks;
Cybersecurity strategies and policy designs, and their implementation;
Implementation and adaptation of policy instruments in the cybersecurity arena;
Evaluation of cybersecurity policies;
Cybersecurity and foreign policy;
Epistemic communities and cybersecurity policy entrepreneurs;
Cybersecurity policy and politics;
Cybersecurity policies in public administrations;
Cybersecurity policies and emerging policy principles (e.g. digital sovereignty, digital constitutionalism);
Cybersecurity policies and emerging technologies (e.g. artificial intelligence, IoT, metaverse, quantum computing)
Cultures and ideologies of cybersecurity.

Accepted papers are expected to share new knowledge on cybersecurity policies and politics, including analytical frameworks, comparative analyses and in-depth case studies.

 

During the last years, scholars have increasingly advocated to address societal grand challenges through social science research (Van der Byl et al., 2020). This scholarship understands grand challenges as specific critical barrier(s) that, if removed, would help address important societal problems deriving from, for example, climate change, migration, resource scarcity, technological change, urbanization, and increasing demographic imbalances. Grand challenges, by their very nature, require coordinated and sustained effort from multiple and diverse actors. The United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a perfect example of grand challenges (George et al., 2016). However, despite the collective push to achieve these goals, there remain challenging barriers.

Overcoming such barriers will involve deep government-led interventions in several policy domains including resource management, sustainable urban development, population ageing, migration, agri-food transition, climate change, ecological transition, labor market, technological innovation, and health care. Since the Covid-19 outbreak, strategic long-term and large-scale investment plans and policy interventions have even become more important (Clement et al., 2022; Esposito and Terlizzi, 2023). Indeed, as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the European Union has made available a 2021–2027 long-term budget of €1.8 trillion to fund projects with ecological and digital applications. Similarly, in the US a $1.9 trillion Covid relief plan is on the way and China has planned to expedite the rollout of 102 projects for the 2021-25 period.

This panel intends to bridge scholarships in public management, public administration, and political science to shed light on the planning and implementation of government-led interventions to strategically deal with grand challenges. It aims at exploring how governmental organizations at different levels provide visions for innovation with a view to achieve broad and widely accepted societal goals and improve public value (Mazzucato and Ryan-Collins, 2022). The strategic management of grand challenges needs capacities to organize the above-mentioned long-term and large-scale policy interventions. These capacities revolve around key governance features such as open and inclusive decision-making systems, alternative performance management systems, and active dialogue among all concerned stakeholders (Esposito et al., 2021, 2022; Esposito and Terlizzi, 2023). Articles in this panel ought to bring the focus on the understanding of policy-making around grand challenges as a complex, uncertain, and conflictual process shaped by the collective action of governments, businesses, and civil society.

The panel is open to different theoretical and empirical approaches and embraces methodological pluralism. It welcomes either single-case or comparative studies and deals with any stage of the policy process in relation to a variety of grand challenges, including the SDGs. We particularly welcome papers understanding grand challenges as wicked policy fields marked by a complex web of stakeholders’ interests and populated by problems which are resistant to a clear and agreed solution (Head, 2022). Theoretical perspectives can be drawn from policy sciences approaches (e.g. Advocacy Coalition Framework, Multiple Streams Framework, Narrative Policy Framework) as well as the literature on collaborative governance, public value creation, and policy, public and social entrepreneurship.

References

Clement J, Esposito G and Crutzen N (2022) Municipal Pathways in Response to COVID-19: A Strategic Management Perspective on Local Public Administration Resilience. Administration & Society: 009539972211003. DOI: 10.1177/00953997221100382.

Esposito G and Terlizzi A (2023) Governing wickedness in megaprojects: discursive and institutional perspectives. Policy and Society. DOI: 10.1093/polsoc/puad002.

Esposito G, Nelson T, Ferlie E, et al. (2021) The institutional shaping of global megaprojects: The case of the Lyon-Turin high-speed railway. International Journal of Project Management 39(6): 658–671. DOI: 10.1016/j.ijproman.2021.06.001.

Esposito G, Terlizzi A and Crutzen N (2022) Policy narratives and megaprojects: the case of the Lyon-Turin high-speed railway. Public Management Review 24(1): 55–79. DOI: 10.1080/14719037.2020.1795230.
George G, Howard-Grenville J, Joshi A, et al. (2016) Understanding and Tackling Societal Grand Challenges through Management Research. Academy of Management Journal 59(6). Academy of ManagementBriarcliff Manor, NY: 1880–1895. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2016.4007.

Head BW (2022) Wicked Problems in Public Policy: Understanding and Responding to Complex Challenges (Wageed. ). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Mazzucato M and Ryan-Collins J (2022) Putting value creation back into “public value”: from market-fixing to market-shaping. Journal of Economic Policy Reform 25(4): 345–360. DOI: 10.1080/17487870.2022.2053537.

Van der Byl C, Slawinski N and Hahn T (2020) Responsible management of sustainability tensions: a paradoxical approach to grand challenges. In: Research Handbook of Responsible Management. Edward Elgar Publishing, pp. 438–452. DOI: 10.4337/9781788971966.00038.

 

Food systems transition and sustainability challenges.
General Objectives and Relevance
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the food system contributes one-third of CO2 global emissions. A food system is a complex network of policies and interventions that impact a region or community's environment, society, health, and economic conditions (Tendall, 2015). The food system includes many organizational aspects and functions: from making a product to its transformation, treatment, and consumption. A food system may consist of production, processing, transportation, wholesale and retail distribution, consumption, waste management, and support systems such as education, government, governance, and emergency food providers. A sustainable food system provides healthy and wholesome food to meet current food needs, maintaining and guaranteeing the protection of the environment and healthy ecosystems that can provide food for future generations, impacting as little as possible on the environment. A sustainable food system encourages local production by making food nutritious, usable, and accessible to consumers. Still, it must intervene to prevent, mitigate and protect farmers, workers, consumers, and communities from the adverse effects of climate change, of which drought is undoubtedly one of the emerging and most worrying aspects. The current literature highlights the obstacles which hinder the transition to just food policy systems that embodies the nexus among food and nutrition security, natural capital preservation, and climatic and social justice and propose new avenues for food policy studies (Galli et al., 2020).
Call for papers
This panel will provide a space for dialogue and discussion on the relationship between EU sustainability and climate change policies and food just transition (Tribaldos, Kortetmaki, 2022) through rural development policy, agriculture development policy, and urban food policies, also in a comparative perspective. The panel will provide a space for dialogue and discussion on the relationship between EU sustainability and climate change policies and food just transition (Tribaldos, Kortetmaki, 2022) through rural development policy, agriculture development policy, and urban food policies, also in a comparative perspective. This panel acknowledges vast literature on these topics but also considers the rapid evolution of the conceptual and empirical approaches to food sustainability economically, socially, and environmentally speaking. The panel welcomes academic papers and practitioners' contributions to develop critical reflections that trigger a forward-looking perspective on food system resilience, collaborative food governance, food policy transition, and innovation. Therefore, we invite papers from different disciplines, policy actors, and NGOs that focus on any European geographic area, level of government, type of actors, governance tools, processes, and methodologies to address innovative cross-disciplinary approaches and linkages in food policymaking, policy implementation, and evaluation.

Obiettivi generali e rilevanza
Secondo l'Organizzazione per l'alimentazione e l'agricoltura (FAO), il sistema alimentare contribuisce per un terzo alle emissioni globali di CO2. Un sistema alimentare è una complessa rete di politiche e interventi che hanno un impatto sull'ambiente, la società, la salute e le condizioni economiche di una regione o di una comunità (Tendall, 2015). Il sistema alimentare comprende molti aspetti e funzioni organizzative: dalla realizzazione di un prodotto alla sua trasformazione, trattamento e consumo. Tale sistema può consistere in produzione, lavorazione, trasporto, distribuzione all'ingrosso e al dettaglio, consumo, gestione dei rifiuti e sistemi di supporto come istruzione, governo, governance e fornitori di cibo di emergenza. Un sistema alimentare sostenibile fornisce cibo sano e genuino per soddisfare le esigenze alimentari attuali, mantenendo e garantendo la protezione dell'ambiente e degli ecosistemi sani che possono fornire cibo per le generazioni future, impattando il meno possibile sull'ambiente. Un sistema alimentare sostenibile incoraggia la produzione locale rendendo il cibo nutriente, utilizzabile e accessibile ai consumatori ma deve intervenire per previene, mitigare e proteggere agricoltori, lavoratori, consumatori e comunità dagli effetti negativi del cambiamento climatico, tra cui certamente la siccità è uno degli aspetti emergenti e più preoccupanti. La letteratura attuale evidenzia vari tipi di ostacoli alla transizione verso giusti sistemi di politica alimentare che incarnino il nesso tra sicurezza alimentare e nutrizionale, conservazione del capitale naturale e giustizia climatica e sociale e si rende sempre più necessario sviluppare un approccio trasformativo alla politica alimentare (Galli et al., 2020). Primo fra tutti la prevalenza di politiche a sylos che non tendono conto degli impatti trasversali delle politiche e delle decisioni.

Questo panel offrirà uno spazio di dialogo e discussione sulla relazione tra le politiche dell'UE in materia di sostenibilità e cambiamenti climatici e la giusta transizione alimentare (Tribaldos, Kortetmaki, 2022) attraverso politiche rurali e agricole multifunzionali, e politiche alimentari urbane, anche in una prospettiva comparativa. Questo panel riconosce la vasta letteratura su questi argomenti, ma considera anche la rapida evoluzione dell'approccio concettuale ed empirico alla sostenibilità alimentare dal punto di vista economico, sociale e ambientale. Il panel accoglie con favore documenti accademici e contributi di professionisti per sviluppare riflessioni critiche che inneschino una prospettiva lungimirante sulla resilienza del sistema alimentare, la governance alimentare collaborativa, la transizione delle politiche alimentari e l'innovazione. Pertanto, invitiamo i documenti di diverse discipline, attori politici e ONG che si concentrano su qualsiasi area geografica europea, tipo di attori, strumenti di governance, processi e metodologie per affrontare approcci e collegamenti interdisciplinari innovativi nella definizione delle politiche alimentari, nell'attuazione e valutazione delle food policies.

 

The Italian NRRP, worth €191,5 bn, represents the first major fiscal impetus response to a major crisis, a break with decades of austerity, and an unprecedented opportunity for the Italian government to invest in new hard and soft infrastructure and introduce long-awaited reforms. Designing and implementing the NRRP is entailing significant political and policy activism yet, while implementation is subject to temporal and procedural constraints of the RRF regulation (EU 2021/241), it is being slowed down by repeated political turnovers, lack of leadership, unresolved multi-level tensions, insufficient administrative capacity and, arguably, by internal contradictions which are intrinsic to the RRF framework itself.
Against this background, we invite papers that address the implementation of the Italian RRP, from the perspectives (among others) of crisis response instruments, multi-level governance, implementation gap, administrative capacity, and politicization. Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following: to what extent is the Italian NRRP a suitable tool to overcome crisis and lead to long-term resilience? How is implementation proceeding and what are the causes for sluggish performance in certain investment/reform areas? Are the very architecture and logic of the RRF part of the problem? To what extent is administrative capacity being reinforced to ensure a timely completion of investments and reforms? What accountability and evaluation mechanisms are being put in place to ensure, not only compliance and spend, but also impact? Are existing multi-level and fiscal arrangements undermining effectiveness and efficiency? How successfully are short- v. long-term goals and EU v. domestic ambitions being reconciled? Is the RRP leading to an increased politicization of policy-making within Italy?
Papers on national cases other than Italy, or comparative analyses are also welcome.