- Much ado about new forms of governance – what’s behind it?
Welcome to the website of the Innovation in Governance Research Group!
We are an interdisciplinary research group examining the emergence, development, and expansion of new forms of governance.
Our aim is to devise a theoretical framework for the study of innovation in governance by implementing case studies on the global 'innovation journeys' of selected policy instruments and on their interaction with selected policy domains which delineate social-ecological contexts of implementation.
Alongside theory-based and empirical research, a transdisciplinary 'policy foresight' methodology will be developed to construct scenarios of future innovation pathways and discuss sustainability implications.
In September 2009, the group received funding for an initial four-year period from the Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) under its social-ecological research programme. It is based at the Technische Universität Berlin in affiliation with the Department of Sociology and the Centre for Technology and Society.
News
Policy Foresight Workshops
As a way of engaging with ongoing processes of policy instrument design, initiated a debate on what the future might hold in certain scenarios. In two workshops, that took place in April 2013, scenarios for "citizen panels" and "biodiversity offsets and habitat banking" were discussed with key actors, both from within and outside the field. For each of these two instruments, we presented three possible pathways up until 2030, all of which derive from our study of historical trajectories and innovation dynamics. The aim is to explore challenges with regard to sustainable development that should be integrated into the envisioning and design of these instruments at an early stage.
Jan-Peter Voß appointed Junior Professor
Jan-Peter Voß, head of the Innovation in Governance research group, has been appointed Junior Professor at the Department of Sociology of the Technische Universität Berlin. In this role, he will be in charge of the subject area Sociology of Politics, focusing on the interrelation between politics, knowledge and innovation. In this new capacity he will develop a teaching programme that majors in the sociology of politics, complementing existing degree programmes in sociology and technology studies. Jan-Peter Voß will continue to serve as head of our research group.
Upcoming Events
28 May 2013: Seminar - Hal Colebatch, University of New South Wales - Participation, expertise and the construction of policy work
Technische Universität Berlin
12-14 June 2013: Knowing Governance. Making models, making methods, shaping political reality
Schloss Ziethen
