Governance of transitions as selective connectivity.docVIP

Governance of transitions as selective connectivity drs. Bonno Pel1 (EUR) prof. dr. ing. Geert Teisman (EUR) Abstract ‘Think global, act local’ is a famous dictum of sustainability activism. The combination of these two capabilities however tends to be difficult to achieve in differentiated, complex societies. Governance actors may have difficulties to ‘think global’, or may experience difficulties in translating their global ideas into appropriate and effective local action. In current societies both stable plans of actions based on overview and governance capacities to implement these plans seem to become scarce. Confronted with a variety of persistent problems the desire to change complex systems and behaviors, for instance in energy and transport production and consumption, is rising, it seems. The governance capacities to meet these desires are often lacking. What we do see is a variety of attempts to develop governance capacity. Some are aiming to develop an overarching plan of action and central governance capacity to implement this plan. Others are questioning the ability to develop an overarching insight in problems and solutions and look for governance capacity in the ability to synchronize behaviors in different parts of the governance systems by way of bottom up network management activities. Both attempts are facing large problems. The ‘super systems’ matching the magnitude and complexity of ‘persistent problems’ cannot be developed in practice and if these systems are developed they fail to achieve effective results. Bottom up network management can be found in a variety of places in governance systems nowadays. At the same time however these bottom up processes have difficulties in up-scaling their activities in such a way that not only their own subsystem problems are met, but also the more persistent joint problems. In this paper we try to add some additional insight to one of the central questions in public administration, namely ‘how the tension