Stefaan Verhulst
Essay by Jennifer Pahlka and Andrew Greenway: “..To truly reverse the dramatic decline in state capacity, governments need to take radical approaches that can win public trust. In his classic 1967 book, Inside Bureaucracy, the economist Anthony Downs described how institutions that lose their ability to adapt eventually embark on a slow death, becoming hollow shells of rules and procedures. Once they reach this point, he argued, they must be either reborn or destroyed. Today, advanced democracies around the world need to give serious attention to institutional rebirth—rebuilding state agencies into departments of now, unencumbered by people, precepts, and processes of past eras. But they also need to consider which legacy agencies are beyond reinvention and should be shut down altogether.
Not every broken institution has to be rebuilt from scratch. Governments do not have the time, resources, or political bandwidth to turn over the tables in every part of the state at once, nor would doing so be wise. Relentless, incremental improvement of existing agencies remains an important part of statecraft. But if they are going to solve the current crisis, democracies will have to get comfortable with creating new institutions. Curing what ails democracy today will require many things, but no other remedies will stick if governments can’t deliver what they promise.
TEST, LEARN, REPEAT
There is no single correct formula for institutional rebirth. An institution might be considered reborn when it has installed a new operating model that allows it to achieve its stated mission. Some legacy institutions hold valuable assets—authorities, data, know-how—that are not easy to move to a new home, so governments need to figure out how much of the existing system is irretrievably broken and what if anything needs to be preserved. It is critical to get the degree of newness right…(More)”.
Editorial to Special Issue by Annika Agger and Toril Ringholm: “Public participation, and the involvement of citizens and affected stakeholders more broadly, has become a central reference point in contemporary public sector innovation agendas (Nguyen et al., 2024). In the scholarly debate, these trends are examined through the lens of public sector innovation, with scholars typically distinguishing between two main types: democratic innovations aimed at involving more voices and enhancing opportunities for influence (Hendriks, 2023; OECD, 2025), and public service innovations focused on improving public services through co-creation with users and affected stakeholders (Brandsen et al., 2018; Escobar & Elstub, 2019).
While these two strands share an interest in strengthening participation as a response to increasing critiques of traditional participatory arenas, often characterised by low levels of representation and limited influence (Fernández-Martínez et al., 2019), they emerge from distinct strands of scholarship. Some strands are rooted in democratic theory, while others in public management and co-creation research. This not only reflects divergent analytical starting points, but also contributes to a proliferation of partly overlapping concepts and terminologies, such as citizen engagement, citizen involvement, citizen participation, inter-active governance, co-creation, co-production and civic empowerment. What is common in the different scholarly debates about the two types of innovations both in research and practice is a concern with: who participates and whose voices are being heard (Ahola, 2025; Brandsen et al., 2018; Escobar & Elstub, 2019).
In this editorial, we use the term participation in this broad sense to refer to the many ways in which citizens contribute to the shaping of policies, decisions and public services across both formalised arenas and more emergent, collaborative practices. Moreover, we define participatory innovation as:
New institutional arrangements that move beyond traditional formats of engagement by creating alternative channels for citizen involvement in decision-making, policy design, and governance.
This definition draws on the scholarly literature about public sector innovation, democratic innovation and co-creation and co-production (Hartley, 2005; Smith, 2009; Geissel, 2013; Brandsen et al., 2018; Nyseth et al., 2018; Ansell & Torfing, 2021; Aastvedt & Higdem, 2022).
Following from this, we examine ‘participation’ as a driver of public innovation and explore how different participatory formats contribute to innovation processes, outcomes, and institutional change in the public sector. The contributions to this special issue are organised around three interrelated questions, which are explored in different ways across the articles:
How do the different participatory formats affect democratic legitimacy and trust?
How do participatory innovations in the development of public policies or services shape governance logics in the contexts?
What democratic and governance-related implications follow from framing participation as a driver of innovation rather than as consultation or representation alone?
To contextualise these questions, the editorial first outlines the historical evolution of participation, then introduces the analytical lens guiding the analysis, and finally presents the four contributions followed by a discussion of their implications…(More)”.
Book by Deborah Lupton: “…offers a fresh and exciting perspective on how people imagine and make futures as part of their everyday lives. It addresses important questions about who is included in futures thinking and futures making, and who is excluded.
Bringing together historical, anthropological, sociological, geographical and arts-based perspectives, this book provides a pithy yet expansive overview of social theories, research and creative approaches applied to futures thinking. Global practices and traditions of divination, fortune telling and speculation from antiquity to the present day are investigated for how they help people deal with uncertainty and engage with the yet-to-come, while also serving political and economic objectives. The book emphasises the plasticity of temporalities and lived experiences across diverse social groups, together with the role of the creatures, things, landscapes, and ecosystems with which we share our futures. The concluding chapter integrates the insights offered from each of the fields of research discussed in the book, providing ideas to spark vibrant and transformative approaches to creative futuring…(More)”
Report by Stefaan Verhulst, Adam Zable, Andrew Zahuranec, Begoña Glez. Otero, and Sara Marcucci: “…Digital Self-Determination (DSD) provides a governance foundation for earning and maintaining that social license. In practice, this means enabling affected individuals and communities to express their expectations and preferences and to influence the conditions under which data is governed and reused. DSD can therefore help data spaces develop beyond trusted technical infrastructures into trusted social institutions.
While DSD has gained traction as a guiding principle, practical approaches for embedding it into the governance of digital systems and institutions remain limited.
The Roadmap for Digital Self-Determination in Data Spaces, developed with the support of the Swiss Federal Administration, addresses this broader implementation gap through the specific context of data spaces. The roadmap is available HERE.
Four Phases and Six Tools
The roadmap operationalizes Digital Self-Determination through four phases and six tools.
- Establish governance foundations that embed agency
- The Assessment for Data Space Governance helps operators evaluate data governance readiness and identify strengths, gaps, and priorities.
- The Guidance on Costs for DSD Implementation in a Data Space helps identify the organizational, legal, technical, and financial resources needed to sustain participation, enforcement, transparency, redress, and review.
- Enable communities to express expectations, interests, and preferences
- The Guidance on Public Engagement Mechanism Selection helps practitioners choose among informational, consultative, deliberative, and collaborative approaches suited to different contexts.
- Translate expectations and preferences into operational arrangements
- The List of Governance Instruments in Data Spaces maps the legal, organizational, technical, and procedural mechanisms available for this work.
- The Model Swiss Data Sharing Agreement with DSD Clauses shows how DSD commitments can be incorporated into binding provisions concerning purpose, use, transparency, accountability, safeguards, and adaptation .
- Assess whether DSD arrangements continue to work over time
- The Options for Stress Testing Digital Self-Determination provides methods for assessing whether data space governance remains effective, fair, transparent, and supportive of meaningful control as conditions change, including expanded data reuse, security incidents, coordination failures, and disputes over authorization or withdrawal…(More)”.
Paper by Cassandra Sedran-Price et al: “…Indigenous Data Sovereignty has emerged in response to poor data practices concerning Indigenous Peoples worldwide and offers a way of returning control of data ecosystems to Indigenous Peoples. In Australia, the Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles were developed and published in 2018 and as a result, there is a growing body of academic and policy relevant literature on Indigenous Data Sovereignty. There are increasing calls from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and their organisations, governments, statistical agencies and universities for practical guidance on how to operationalise Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles through Indigenous Data Governance within data systems controlled outside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations. The aim of this paper is to guide how the Maiam nayri Wingara Indigenous Data Sovereignty principles can be applied within organisations creating or holding Indigenous data. This guide can additionally be used to review organisations’ and institutions’ progress on their Indigenous Data Sovereignty journeys…(More)”.
OECD Report: “In the face of complex societal and technological transformation, governments are turning to incubators and accelerators to help their public institutions experiment safely, act quickly and embed more adaptive, forward-looking ways of working. This paper analyses 128 cases of public sector incubators and accelerators, looking at their capacity to help governments address institutional bottlenecks and better anticipate or respond to transformative change. The cases examined indicate that incubators and accelerators act as public sector innovation enablers that can support efforts to (re)design public institutions to better navigate complex challenges and evolving reforms. The paper examines how incubators and accelerators have been adapted to the public sector, considers common barriers and enablers, and suggests a blueprint for their design that comprises five key dimensions: strategic purpose, ecosystem engagement and co-ordination, organisational context, performance mechanisms, and value creation. Finally, the paper provides a step-by-step approach to help governments tailor these programmes to their own specific contexts…(More)“.
Article by Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer: “Americans’ disconnect from their elected officials has reached crisis levels. What potential do citizens’ assemblies and participatory decision-making hold for restoring people’s trust in their democracy? This essay explores three case studies of participatory governance at three levels—in California, in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and in Fort Collins, Colorado; virtually and in person—and finds that Americans are ready and willing to participate in well-designed deliberative processes and are willing to accept the outcomes of deliberative bodies. But representativeness and accountability in those processes are essential and not easy to come by. This analysis invites the question of whether these democratic experiments can scale up to where they are needed most: our national politics…(More)”.
Article by Eva Bordos: “Periods of major political transformation confront governments with an unusual combination of opportunity and responsibility. Democratic reconstruction after a period of backsliding, accession to the European Union, post-war reconstruction, or other moments of systemic change may require governments to undertake multiple large-scale reforms within a relatively short period of time. Constitutions may need to be rewritten, electoral systems reconsidered, public administrations reorganized, and healthcare, education, or social protection systems substantially reformed. These are not ordinary policymaking moments. They are periods in which countries make choices not only about individual policies and institutions, but about the kind of state—and, ultimately, the kind of society—they want to build.
Such moments present governments with two closely connected challenges. The first is a policy challenge: how can far-reaching reforms be designed so that they are workable, sustainable, and capable of being implemented in complex institutional environments? The second is a democratic challenge: how can societies be meaningfully involved in decisions that may reshape their institutions and collective future, generating democratic legitimacy and a sense of ownership over the direction of change? Large-scale reform, in other words, requires governments to think simultaneously about the substance of reform and about the democratic process through which reform is developed.
This democratic challenge is particularly important in societies where policymaking has historically been dominated by political, administrative, and professional elites and where citizens have had relatively few opportunities to participate meaningfully in public decision-making. Democratic renewal cannot be achieved solely through institutional repair or the restoration of electoral competition. Rather, renewal also requires rebuilding the relationship between citizens and public decision-making itself[1]. Moments of systemic transformation can therefore be understood not only as opportunities for institutional reform but also as opportunities for democratic development. Inviting citizens to participate in shaping major reforms can strengthen their capacity to engage with complex public questions, create a greater sense of democratic agency, and potentially contribute to rebuilding both trust in institutions and trust among citizens themselves. The question is therefore not simply what institutions and policies should be built, but how societies can be involved in building them.
Hungary today provides a particularly compelling setting in which to consider this question. For more than a decade, the country occupied a central place in political and scholarly debates about democratic backsliding. Under Viktor Orbán and his governing coalition, Hungary became one of the most frequently cited examples of contemporary democratic erosion, variously described as an illiberal democracy, competitive authoritarian regime, electoral autocracy, or hybrid regime. As the country enters a potentially transformative political period, however, a different question comes to the foreground: how should democracy be rebuilt after a prolonged period of democratic backsliding?..(More)”.
Article by Gillian Tett: “Worrying about the state of America’s statistics might not seem that urgent, given all the other explosive political rows swirling in Washington. But voters should pay attention. For at the heart of this story are three key questions: can anyone paint an accurate portrait of what America is today? If so, how should this shape voting processes? And can this data be trusted in an era of manipulation, cyber hacks and artificial intelligence?
This matters. America’s founding fathers realised 250 years ago that you cannot create fair voting systems without measuring the population. So Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution states that Congress should carry out a census in “such manner as they shall by Law direct” every 10 years. Since 1790 census workers have always done that, crossing the country to count people, whether by horse, foot or car (or, in Alaska, on snow sleds).
The Constitution also stipulates that these census results should be used for “apportionment”, to divide the 435 seats in the US House of Representatives among the 50 states, based on each state’s population count. (The allocation in the Senate is permanently fixed.)
This makes it highly political. But it also matters economically: the census shapes how $1.5tn of state aid is distributed each year and is critical to business activity too. Civil rights activists argue this enables a fair apportionment and representation for minorities…(More)”.
Book by Virpi Oinonen: “Complexity is messy. Most explanations make it worse. This one doesn’t. We love clear causation. Root causes. Simple fixes. But many of today’s challenges in healthcare, cities, organisations or policy don’t work like that. They’re complex: tangled, adaptive, and full of unintended consequences. The trouble is that complexity is hard to explain to people who think in straight, causal lines. So I made it visible by drawing funny (and slightly irreverent) cartoons about it. Use the cartoons to understand the problem, explain it to others… or as therapy. Your choice…(More)”.