Christopher Ansell – författare

This is an open access title. It is available to read and download as a free PDF version on Oxford Academic and is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. Barack Obama is often lauded as a 'pragmatist,' yet when most people employ the term, they mean it in the vaguest sense: that he's practical and willing to compromise to get things done. However, the public philosophy of pragmatism, which has been the subject of a rich revival in the past couple of decades, is far more than this. First developed in the late nineteenth century, pragmatism is primarily a way of thinking--an anti-dualist philosophy that attempts to overcome the dichotomies between self and object, nature and culture, mind and body, theory and practice, and fact and value. When applied to governance, pragmatists advocate the use of tactics like third party mediation and problem-solving to achieve anti-dualist principles: cosmopolitan localism, analytical holism, progressive conservatism, and

Barack Obama is often lauded as a 'pragmatist,' yet when most people employ the term, they mean it in the vaguest sense: that he's practical and willing to compromise to get things done. However, the public philosophy of pragmatism, which has been the subject of a rich revival in the past couple of decades, is far more than this. First developed in the late nineteenth century, pragmatism is primarily a way of thinking--an anti-dualist philosophy that attempts to overcome the dichotomies between self and object, nature and culture, mind and body, theory and practice, and fact and value. When applied to governance, pragmatists advocate the use of tactics like third party mediation and problem-solving to achieve anti-dualist principles: cosmopolitan localism, analytical holism, progressive conservatism, and processual structuralism. In Pragmatist Governance, Chris Ansell begins with a theory of the concept and then explains why the approach is ideal for addressing today's governance problems. For instance, while many think that bureaucracy's unchecked growth is the fundamental problem facing democracy today, pragmatism suggests the opposite: that public agencies can effectively manage the relationship between governance and democracy if they focus on building consent for public problem-solving. Ansell argues that wishing away bureaucracy will not do given what we know about the indispensible role of institutions in contemporary governance. Utilizing pragmatist concepts, Ansell rethinks the design of institutions, arguing that they are neither the simple products of rational design that can be endlessly tinkered with nor 'congealed taste'--where institutions represent the timeless customs and values of a people. Along with overcoming this dualism, Ansell also challenges us to rethink our approach to governance. Instead of moving from one extreme to the other--from bureaucracy to 'post-bureaucracy' or 'public entrepreneurialism'--pragmatism would not merely seek to replace one (hierarchical bureaucracy) with the other (a 'flat,' entrepreneurial organization), but rather to hitch the two approaches together in an innovative amalgam where organizational leaders constantly interact with and learn from street-level bureaucrats. Pragmatist Governance concludes that if government is to regain public trust, the technical knowledge of experts must be brought together with sensitivity to local problems, situations, and knowledge. The answer lies not, however, in a diminished bureaucracy. That may only deepen distrust. Rather, the emphasis should be on taking the best of both sides to find innovative and effective ways to solve enduring public problems.

While innovation has long been a major topic of research and scholarly interest for the private sector, it is still an emerging theme in the field of public management. While ‘results-oriented’ public management may be here to stay, scholars and practitioners are now shifting their attention to the process of management and to how the public sector can create ‘value’.One of the urgent needs addressed by this book is a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design. This book brings together empirical studies drawn from Europe, the USA and the antipodes to show how these dimensions are important features of public sector innovation in many Western democracies with different conditions and traditions.This volume provides insights for practitioners who are interested in developing an innovation strategy for their city, agency, or administration and will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of public policy and public administration.

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public bureaucracy, private markets and self-organized communities. Inspired by the successful use of co-creation for product and service design, this book outlines a broad vision of co-creation as a strategy of public governance. Through the construction of platforms and arenas to facilitate co-creation, this strategy can empower local communities, enhance broad-based participation, mobilize societal resources and spur public innovation while building ownership for bold solutions to pressing problems and challenges. The book details how to use co-creation to achieve goals. This exciting and innovative study combines theoretical argument with illustrative empirical examples, visionary thinking and practical recommendations.

This Element aims to build, promote, and consolidate a new social science research agenda by defining and exploring the concepts of turbulence and robustness, and subsequently demonstrating the need for robust governance in turbulent times. Turbulence refers to the unpredictable dynamics that public governance is currently facing in the wake of the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the inflation crisis etc. The heightened societal turbulence calls for robust governance aiming to maintain core functions, goals and values by means of flexibly adapting and proactively innovating the modus operandi of the public sector. This Element identifies a broad repertoire of robustness strategies that public governors may use and combine to respond robustly to turbulence. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This Element aims to build, promote, and consolidate a new social science research agenda by defining and exploring the concepts of turbulence and robustness, and subsequently demonstrating the need for robust governance in turbulent times. Turbulence refers to the unpredictable dynamics that public governance is currently facing in the wake of the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the inflation crisis etc. The heightened societal turbulence calls for robust governance aiming to maintain core functions, goals and values by means of flexibly adapting and proactively innovating the modus operandi of the public sector. This Element identifies a broad repertoire of robustness strategies that public governors may use and combine to respond robustly to turbulence. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

The thoroughly revised and updated Handbook on Theories of Governance brings together leading scholars in the field to summarise and assess the diversity of governance theories. The Handbook advances a deeper theoretical understanding of governance processes, illuminating the interdisciplinary foundations of the field.Chapters review key concepts and ideas that form the backbone of modern governance studies, offering vital insights into how this contributes to the development of social science research. The comprehensively updated second edition provides new insights on governance in the contemporary political landscape of global authoritarian populism, emergent progressive movements and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Delivering a foundational conceptual toolkit for research, this Handbook reveals the diversity of contemporary governing practices as changing political dynamics lay the groundwork for the next generation of theories of governance.Sketching a comprehensive map for governance research, this Handbook is a crucial resource for scholars and researchers of governance, as well as those in political science, public policy and public management in need of a solid understanding of core governance theories. It also offers policymakers and practitioners an agenda for navigating the future of governance in a rapidly changing global political order.

Are theories of governance useful for helping policymakers and citizens meet and tackle contemporary challenges? This insightful book reflects on how a theory becomes useful and evaluates a range of theories according to whether they are warranted, diagnostic, and dialogical.By arguing that useful theory tells us what to ask, not what to do, Christopher Ansell investigates what it means for a theory to be useful. Analysing how governance theories address a variety of specific challenges, chapters examine intractable public problems, weak government accountability, violent conflict, global gridlock, poverty and the unsustainable exploitation of our natural resources. Finding significant tensions between state- and society-centric perspectives on governance, the book concludes with a suggestion that we refocus our theories of governance on possibilities for state-society synergy. Governance theories of the future, Ansell argues, should also strive for a more fruitful dialogue between instrumental, critical and explanatory perspectives.Examining both the conceptual and empirical basis of theories of governance, this comprehensive book will be an invigorating read for scholars and students in the fields of public administration, public policy and planning, development studies, political science and urban, environmental and global governance. By linking theories of governance to concrete societal challenges, it will also be of use to policymakers and practitioners concerned with these fields.

We need new governance solutions to help us improve public policies and services, solve complex societal problems, strengthen social communities and reinvigorate democracy. By changing how government engages with citizens and stakeholders, co-creation provides an attractive and feasible approach to governance that goes beyond the triptych of public bureaucracy, private markets and self-organized communities. Inspired by the successful use of co-creation for product and service design, this book outlines a broad vision of co-creation as a strategy of public governance. Through the construction of platforms and arenas to facilitate co-creation, this strategy can empower local communities, enhance broad-based participation, mobilize societal resources and spur public innovation while building ownership for bold solutions to pressing problems and challenges. The book details how to use co-creation to achieve goals. This exciting and innovative study combines theoretical argument with illustrative empirical examples, visionary thinking and practical recommendations.

The modern state protects citizens from many different harms, from industrial accidents to airline crashes. This Element illuminates a distinctive politics of protection that transcends policy sectors as diverse as criminal justice, consumer protection, and public health. Adopting a comparative and historical perspective, the Element identifies common drivers of protective state-building as well as cross-national differences in the politics of protection. The Element concludes by examining political theories of the protective state, which seek to defend and critique the obligations for and the limits of state protection.

While innovation has long been a major topic of research and scholarly interest for the private sector, it is still an emerging theme in the field of public management. While ‘results-oriented’ public management may be here to stay, scholars and practitioners are now shifting their attention to the process of management and to how the public sector can create ‘value’.One of the urgent needs addressed by this book is a better specification of the institutional and political requirements for sustaining a robust vision of public innovation, through the key dimensions of collaboration, creative problem-solving, and design. This book brings together empirical studies drawn from Europe, the USA and the antipodes to show how these dimensions are important features of public sector innovation in many Western democracies with different conditions and traditions.This volume provides insights for practitioners who are interested in developing an innovation strategy for their city, agency, or administration and will be essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students in the field of public policy and public administration.

In the past two decades, governance theories have arisen semi-independently across multiple disciplines. In law and regulation, planning, democratic theory, economics, public management, and international relations, among other disciplines, scholars have sought to describe new strategies of governing. As a result, the term 'governance' is one of the most frequently used social science concepts in the world. No single theory encompasses this diverse body of work, but rather multiple theories with different aims and perspectives. The Handbook on Theories of Governance collects these theories of governance together as an analytical resource for scholars, students and practitioners. The handbook advances a deeper theoretical understanding of governance processes while illuminating the interdisciplinary foundations of the field. By reviewing key theoretical concepts, the handbook provides a basic conceptual toolkit for analyzing contemporary governance and offers important insights into how governance research contributes to social science theory development. By canvassing the different forms of governance, the chapters also reveal the diversity of contemporary governing practices. An epilogue identifies common themes across the chapters and points to opportunities for future research. In our increasingly complex, fragmented and dynamic society, this Handbook is a key resource for those who seek to deepen or broaden their theoretical understanding of governance. It will be a powerful aid for scholars, students and practitioners who wish to gauge the theoretical depth and breadth of governance studies.Contributors include: C. Ansell, I. Bache, I. Bartle, P. Blomqvist, J.N. Brass, J.M. Bryson, G. Bullock, J. de Fine Licht, J. Edelenbos, M. Egeberg, L. Ericksson, M. Flinders, A. Gash, S. Geertman, A.K. Gerlak, L. Gerrits, R. Glennon, Å. Gornitzka, S. Griggs, J. Hartley, T. Hartmann, M. Haugaard, M. Haubrich-Seco, T. Heikkila, R. Holahan, D. Howarth, M. Isailovic, B. Jessop, S.I. Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, R. Keast, P. Kenis, A. Klinke, C. Koliba, M. Lubell, W. Mattli, R. Mayntz, J.W. Meek, D. Naurin, K. Nielsen, P.O. Öberg, S. Osborne, D. Panke, Y. Papadopoulos, P. Pattberg, B.G. Peters, J. Pierre, K.S. Quick, Z. Radnor, O. Renn, M.L. Rhodes, K. Sahlin, J. Seddon, E. Sørensen, T. Steelman, K. Stephenson, S. Talesh, L. Taylor, J. Torfing, P. Triantafillou, J. Trondal, N. Turnbull, I. van Meerkerk, J. Yasuda

Crisis management has become one of the core challenges facing governments, but successful crisis response depends on effective public leadership. Building on insights from Pragmatist philosophy, this deeply nuanced book provides guidance and direction for public leaders tackling the most challenging tasks of the twenty-first century.This timely and insightful book demonstrates how Pragmatism enables leaders to strategically address the fog of uncertainty that characterizes crises. Illuminating the power of practical rationality in crisis situations, Christopher Ansell and Martin Bartenberger develop a model of Pragmatist political crisis management and contrast this with crisis decision making and meaning making guided by principle. Examining the interplay of practical rationality and principle during the US financial crisis of 2008, the authors develop empirical indicators to evaluate when and why crisis leaders may adopt Pragmatist or principle-guided strategies.Flawlessly blending theory with practice, Ansell and Bartenberger offer key insights to those active in the crisis management community. Crisis management and public administration scholars will benefit from the detailed overview of Pragmatism and its applications to concrete issues of governance, while practitioners will profit from the book's insight into crisis leadership and decision making.

Are theories of governance useful for helping policymakers and citizens meet and tackle contemporary challenges? This insightful book reflects on how a theory becomes useful and evaluates a range of theories according to whether they are warranted, diagnostic, and dialogical.By arguing that useful theory tells us what to ask, not what to do, Christopher Ansell investigates what it means for a theory to be useful. Analysing how governance theories address a variety of specific challenges, chapters examine intractable public problems, weak government accountability, violent conflict, global gridlock, poverty and the unsustainable exploitation of our natural resources. Finding significant tensions between state- and society-centric perspectives on governance, the book concludes with a suggestion that we refocus our theories of governance on possibilities for state-society synergy. Governance theories of the future, Ansell argues, should also strive for a more fruitful dialogue between instrumental, critical and explanatory perspectives.Examining both the conceptual and empirical basis of theories of governance, this comprehensive book will be an invigorating read for scholars and students in the fields of public administration, public policy and planning, development studies, political science and urban, environmental and global governance. By linking theories of governance to concrete societal challenges, it will also be of use to policymakers and practitioners concerned with these fields.

The thoroughly revised and updated Handbook on Theories of Governance brings together leading scholars in the field to summarise and assess the diversity of governance theories. The Handbook advances a deeper theoretical understanding of governance processes, illuminating the interdisciplinary foundations of the field.Chapters review key concepts and ideas that form the backbone of modern governance studies, offering vital insights into how this contributes to the development of social science research. The comprehensively updated second edition provides new insights on governance in the contemporary political landscape of global authoritarian populism, emergent progressive movements and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Delivering a foundational conceptual toolkit for research, this Handbook reveals the diversity of contemporary governing practices as changing political dynamics lay the groundwork for the next generation of theories of governance.Sketching a comprehensive map for governance research, this Handbook is a crucial resource for scholars and researchers of governance, as well as those in political science, public policy and public management in need of a solid understanding of core governance theories. It also offers policymakers and practitioners an agenda for navigating the future of governance in a rapidly changing global political order.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online.The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set an ambitious agenda for global problem-solving and create a framework to achieve it through the power of partnerships. Goal 17 points to the central importance of partnerships, networks, and multi-stakeholder collaborations for bringing together a broad range of actors to accomplish the first 16 goals. Only through such partnerships can the distributed knowledge, resources and capacity of government agencies, private enterprises, political activists, local communities, and international NGOs be effectively combined to produce the major breakthroughs in sustainability that the SDGs envision.Co-Creation for Sustainability sets out a strategy of partnership, with an emphasis on how global goals can be translated into local action. Co-creation brings multiple parties together—including citizens—to collaboratively engage in innovative problem-solving. The book explains this strategy and describes how to foster the conditions necessary for its success. It details how leaders can spur co-creation and manage and overcome its practical challenges.Written to inspire public and private changemakers to find fundamental solutions to the pressing challenges that confront our social and natural environment, Co-creation for Sustainability: The UN SDGs and the Power of Partnerships provides intellectual resources and practical advice relevant for those who aspire to harness the talents, energy and perspectives of different sectors to build the momentum we need to realize a sustainable future.

Crisis management has become one of the core challenges facing governments, but successful crisis response depends on effective public leadership. Building on insights from Pragmatist philosophy, this deeply nuanced book provides guidance and direction for public leaders tackling the most challenging tasks of the twenty-first century.This timely and insightful book demonstrates how Pragmatism enables leaders to strategically address the fog of uncertainty that characterizes crises. Illuminating the power of practical rationality in crisis situations, Christopher Ansell and Martin Bartenberger develop a model of Pragmatist political crisis management and contrast this with crisis decision making and meaning making guided by principle. Examining the interplay of practical rationality and principle during the US financial crisis of 2008, the authors develop empirical indicators to evaluate when and why crisis leaders may adopt Pragmatist or principle-guided strategies.Flawlessly blending theory with practice, Ansell and Bartenberger offer key insights to those active in the crisis management community. Crisis management and public administration scholars will benefit from the detailed overview of Pragmatism and its applications to concrete issues of governance, while practitioners will profit from the book's insight into crisis leadership and decision making.