Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS

Success in Public Governance: Assessing and explaining how public problems are sometimes addressed remarkably effectively

Objective

Societies cannot survive and thrive if they are not governed well. The public’s business – e.g. security and safety; health and well-being – needs to be managed effectively. Achieving this in the current era of connectivity, transparency, accountability and assertive, skeptical and empowered citizens deeply challenges the institutions of government, which were largely designed for a drastically different era. We urgently need to learn how we can govern societies successfully under the new circumstances.

However, in both the popular and academic discourse, the focus is on the frailty and fallibility of our government institutions. We excel in explaining how policies fail, reforms falter, public money is wasted, public leaders are distrusted, and public institutions eroded. So much so that robust knowledge about the practices that produce good governance is hard to come by. And yet good governance is all around us, allowing us to learn from successes as well.

This proposal seeks to address the imbalance. It offers a constructive, yet rigorous and systematic investigation of ‘success’ in 21st century governance. An innovative combination of theoretical perspectives, comparative approaches, and mixed methods is developed to answer five questions:

1. How is success in public governance defined and assessed by those who engage in it and those who experience it?
2. Why are some public policies enduringly successful?
3. Why are some public organizations enduringly successful?
4. Why are some interactive, collaborative governance initiatives enduringly successful?
5. How do these successful examples jointly contribute towards understanding the principles of a theory for governance success?

The inquiry will increase our insight into the pivotal yet ill-understood phenomenon of governance that ‘works’. It will enrich the field with new methodologies, provoking the discipline to reconsider the emphasis on failure and undertake the systematic study of success.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant

See all projects funded under this funding scheme

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

(opens in new window) ERC-2015-AdG

See all projects funded under this call

Host institution

UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 2 019 022,50
Address
HEIDELBERGLAAN 8
3584 CS Utrecht
Netherlands

See on map

Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 2 019 022,50

Beneficiaries (1)

My booklet 0 0