This course takes stock with classic themes and contemporary challenges for public governance research. Classic themes for instance revolve around how knowledge and policy connect, on the tensions between political and administrative decision-making and how policies can be delivered in complex networks of service providers. Contemporary challenges are for instance climate change, political polarization and diversity. The public governance literature is broad and expansive. It is hard to get a good overview, certainly when working on a highly specialized PhD-project. Having a sense of the broader field and being able to place one’s research within that field, to draw on earlier insights and to ‘speak to’ broader communities of scholars, is important for social scientists.

The course design is flexible: from a pre-selection of core themes the participants choose the most important ones we will address during the course. We will also link these to their own PhD-projects. We draw on a selection of themes identified in several attempts to canonize our field. There are several canonical texts, which are useful and have been highly influential in how research in our field has developed, yet such canonizations are also always predicated on certain assumptions and preferences. We offer a structured menu of choice with classic themes and contemporary challenges, from which participants collectively choose their canon-of-the-year to be discussed. Participants select 4 classic themes and 2 contemporary challenges. This procedure allows to both get an overview of the field but also selecting from those the topics participants find more relevant and interesting than others.

The course adopts an interactive teaching format. Particpants take the lead in critically discussing the selected themes. Lecturers link the themes together and add insights to the discussion. The course concludes with structured science-dates, in which participants discuss how their research relates to some of the classic themes and contemporary challenges.

Upon completion of the course, students will:

1. Be able to explain key themes and issues in public governance research.
2. Be able to articulate key criticisms of scholarly work in the context of broader academic debates and societal change.
3. Be able to discern the social-scientific and practical relevance of the debate, to articulate practical advice to actors involved in politics/governance that is grounded in the scholarly work on public administration and political science and to articulate implications for their own research projects.