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Cultural heritage governance and management has been shifting from the sole authority of the state and public bodies towards approaches that list multi-actor partnerships in several combinations involving public actors, civil society, private actors and community. This paper examines the public–civil, public–private and public–private–community partnerships through expounding rationales, conceptual backgrounds and theoretical framings for each partnership, followed by a systemic review and analysis of the academic literature sourced through the PRISMA protocol. The analysis objective was to assess the main advantages and disadvantages of each of the partnerships in governing and managing cultural heritage, noting the levels of representation of each governance and management approach. The results have shown that the public–civil and public–private–community partnerships have similar advantages and disadvantages, with the public–civil partnership being the least represented approach in the literature, while the public–private partnership has the highest level of representation with advantages and disadvantages that are inclined towards more pragmatic aims than those of the other two examined approaches. The so-called ‘new governance models’ of heritage were also detected in the analysis; however, they represent only a variant of the already analysed models.

This paper examines the complex, multilateral and polycentric governance of the climate agenda, as well as the knowledge management architecture around the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Noting the difficulty involved in this governance, the paper shows how it has been capable of making progress in combating the climate crisis. Climate action governance resembles a network of networks, a dense web of public, private, social, technological, knowledge-based and intersectoral initiatives. Ensuring compliance with agreements is, without question, complex in many respects, but to date it has proven to be the only viable path. Highly dependent on the global context, the green transition is an opportunity to make a qualitive leap forward, against the backdrop of an energy crisis triggered by the invasion of Ukraine.

Cultural heritage governance and management has been shifting from the sole authority of the state and public bodies towards approaches that list multi-actor partnerships in several combinations involving public actors, civil society, private actors and community. This paper examines the public–civil, public–private and public–private–community partnerships through expounding rationales, conceptual backgrounds and theoretical framings for each partnership, followed by a systemic review and analysis of the academic literature sourced through the PRISMA protocol. The analysis objective was to assess the main advantages and disadvantages of each of the partnerships in governing and managing cultural heritage, noting the levels of representation of each governance and management approach. The results have shown that the public–civil and public–private–community partnerships have similar advantages and disadvantages, with the public–civil partnership being the least represented approach in the literature, while the public–private partnership has the highest level of representation with advantages and disadvantages that are inclined towards more pragmatic aims than those of the other two examined approaches. The so-called 'new governance models' of heritage were also detected in the analysis; however, they represent only a variant of the already analysed models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the complex, multilateral and polycentric governance of the climate agenda, as well as the knowledge management architecture around the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Noting the difficulty involved in this governance, the paper shows how it has been capable of making progress in combating the climate crisis. Climate action governance resembles a network of networks, a dense web of public, private, social, technological, knowledgebased and intersectoral initiatives. Ensuring compliance with agreements is, without question, complex in many respects, but to date it has proven to be the only viable path. Highly dependent on the global context, the green transition is an opportunity to make a qualitive leap forward, against the backdrop of an energy crisis triggered by the invasion of Ukraine. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The geopolitical situation in Europe has put a premium on the risk governance of petroleum infrastructures. • The situation demonstrates complex connectedness; between institutions, sectors, nations, analytical levels, and between safety and security risk problems. • We propose a new research agenda to enable safety science to analyze and contribute to the governance of risks of this nature. • The article outlines a theoretical framework for holistic risk governance of risks with complex connectedness. The geopolitical situation following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caused instant concern regarding the security of European petroleum infrastructures, with the sabotage against the Nord Stream pipelines visible manifestations of the weaponization of energy infrastructures. In this article, we use the sudden shift in the security situation around Norwegian petroleum infrastructures as an example to highlight the intersection between security and safety risk problems, and the relationship between different analytical levels in the subsequent risk governance. The example presents an opportunity for analytically capturing complexity and connectedness in a way that enables empirical study and conceptual development. We argue that there is a need for a reoriented research agenda for how safety science deals with multi-level, multi-actor and cross-sectoral risk governance, if safety science is to be able to study, theorize, and ultimately contribute to the solving of some of our major contemporary societal risks. To this end, we suggest a theoretical framework for holistic risk governance, that facilitates the empirical study of and theoretical development around risk problems that contain both safety and security dimensions, and crosses sectoral borders and political-administrative levels, including the international level. Utilizing conceptual lenses from the social sciences, the suggested theoretical framework emphasizes intra-organizational dimensions of risk governance, intersectoral coordination challenges, and multi-level dimensions of risk governance under processes of securitization. This framework should have relevance beyond our empirical example, and may serve as a steppingstone for further scholarship dealing with the governance of complex, inter-organizational, cross-sectoral, multi-actor and multi-level risks at the intersection between security and safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship has been increasingly promoted as a means to achieve women’s empowerment in the pursuit of gender equal societies by international development organizations, NGO’s as well as national and local governments across the world. Against this, the paper explores the role and influence of multi-actor engagement on successful empowerment of women based on a case study of Kudumbashree program in a regional context of Kerala, in South India. Our objective is to examine the women empowerment outcomes of the Kudumbashree initiatives, implemented within a multi-actor engagement framework supportive of women’s empowerment through capacity building and social inclusion programs. The case study demonstrates ‘how multiple-level engagements help enhance women’s development and support broad sustainable social change, in view of their sensitivity to the embeddedness of women’s agency under specific socio-political and cultural contexts’. We find that Kudumbashree programs, through its multi-actor engagement, strives for an equilibrium between social change through policy and regulatory change (top down) and social change via mobilizing the people (bottom-up). From a policy angle, the key learnings from the successful outcomes of Kudumbashree may be considered for designing rural and urban community development programs with a focus on the multidimensional empowerment as well as social and economic inclusion of women and other marginalized communities.

By engaging the frameworks of boundary organizations and social worlds, this article examines the emergence of non-certified organic agri-food in China by studying its pioneer organization - the Beijing Farmers' Market (BFM). Based on tri-angulated analysis of texts, semi-structured interviews and on-site observations, we show that BFM allows diverse organic agri-food actors to cooperate by constructing a market configuration that accommodates elements of their diverse social worlds. This study contributes to studies that explore the expanding 'civic' spaces in China by explaining how civic actors mediate a public problem under the radar of State regulation. It sheds light on how some seemingly 'ungoverned' objects are indeed regulated through social interactions in margins of the mainstream food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue is one of the first systematic attempts to map and investigate relevant transnational actors in European knowledge governance, highlighting the differences and commonalities in their structures, identities, and roles, as well as the links in which they are embedded, and the influence they can exert in knowledge policy formation. The introduction sets the stage for five empirical contributions focusing on different types of actors – an expert group, two university alliances, three student unions, the academic associations, and an advocacy coalition of individuals with strong institutional positions in one national science policy system. It provides an overview of various theoretical perspectives informing these studies, explores connections between them and discusses implications for a future research agenda. The introduction demonstrates how transnational actors matter for the European governance of knowledge, and calls for a cross-fertilization of different disciplinary perspectives, in particular comparative politics and organizational sociology, as a way forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several university alliances have been established in Europe in an attempt to influence the development of policies in research and education. As such, these alliances can be seen as being new players in the increasingly complex multi-actor, multi-level governance in this policy domain. The paper compares two key university alliances in Europe; in particular, how membership differences are related to their positions in the policy arena, their policy agendas and their policy formation and lobbying practices. The study contributes to understanding of, first, the role of university alliances in European level policy processes concerning higher education and research; and, second, the implications their involvement might have for future shaping of European initiatives in the knowledge domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Agricultural Policy can be seen as a partial success story because it has resulted in increased food production at reasonable prices for consumers. However, its main focus was on agricultural productivity and economic growth. Although recent CAP reforms have led to better integration of agricultural and rural policies there is a need for more recognition of the role of multi-actor governance in aligning farm modernization with sustainable rural development. In this paper we explore how multi-actor governance systems are being implemented and the limiting and enabling factors involved. Our analysis is based on eleven case studies carried out as part of the trans-disciplinary RETHINK research programme. In this paper we first identify five strategies that we interpret as responses to the challenge of reconnecting farm modernization and sustainable rural development. Based on the experience within these strategies we discuss six vital conditions that cut across these different strategies: they include the role of informal networks, effective coordination, polycentricity, bottom-up initiatives, agency and trust and transparency. Although most of these conditions are recognized by the scientific world, in practice they are rarely translated into effective policy strategies to support territorial development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-actor governance, in which a broad mix of actors collaborates to deal with complex societal problems, requires a leadership approach that can take into account the dynamic interdependencies between the involved actors. A relational approach to leadership, focusing on processes and practices, is more adequate for that purpose than approaches focusing on individuals and positions. Complexity leadership theory offers such a relational approach to leadership within organizations. In this article, we use complexity leadership theory to capture the emergent leadership processes between organizations. We focus on the characteristics of the informal relations between representatives of different organizations that enable dealing with the often-conflicting goals and values in multi-actor governance. The case of a landfill mining initiative for sustainable materials governance is used as an illustration to clarify the main concepts and arguments.

This paper analyses the possibility of building a mutually supportive dynamics between internally and externally motivated behaviour for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services provision. To this purpose a face to face survey amongst 169 key actors of 34 highly successful and prominent biodiversity arrangements in seven EU countries was conducted. The main finding of the paper is the feasibility of combining inherently intrinsically motivated behaviours (providing enjoyment, pleasure from experimentation and learning, aesthetic satisfaction) and internalized extrinsic motivations (related to the identification with the collective goals of conservation policy) through a common set of governance features. Successful initiatives that combine internal and external motivations share the following features: inclusive decision making processes, a broad monitoring by “peers” beyond the core staff of the initiatives, and a context that is supportive for the building of autonomous actor competences. These findings are in line with the psycho-sociological theory of motivation, which shows the importance of a psycho-social context leading to a subjective perception of autonomy and a sense of competence of the actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability has many dimensions, including various aspects of environmental, social and economic sustainability. This paper proposes an analytical framework of risk-related governance for sustainability, based on literature review, focusing on two dimensions-knowledge integration and multi-actor governance. Knowledge integration necessitates wider coverage of predicted and anticipated risks and information on those risks. Multi-actor governance necessitates mechanisms that enable cooperation among actors. The relevance of this analytical framework is then checked using concrete cases of governance for reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), and the possible case of governance for sustainable phosphorus management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurship has been increasingly promoted as a means to achieve women's empowerment in the pursuit of gender equal societies by international development organizations, NGO's as well as national and local governments across the world. Against this, the paper explores the role and influence of multi-actor engagement on successful empowerment of women based on a case study of Kudumbashree program in a regional context of Kerala, in South India. Our objective is to examine the women empowerment outcomes of the Kudumbashree initiatives, implemented within a multi-actor engagement framework supportive of women's empowerment through capacity building and social inclusion programs. The case study demonstrates 'how multiple-level engagements help enhance women's development and support broad sustainable social change, in view of their sensitivity to the embeddedness of women's agency under specific socio-political and cultural contexts'. We find that Kudumbashree programs, through its multi-actor engagement, strives for an equilibrium between social change through policy and regulatory change (top down) and social change via mobilizing the people (bottom-up). From a policy angle, the key learnings from the successful outcomes of Kudumbashree may be considered for designing rural and urban community development programs with a focus on the multidimensional empowerment as well as social and economic inclusion of women and other marginalized communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-actor governance, in which a broad mix of actors collaborates to deal with complex societal problems, requires a leadership approach that can take into account the dynamic interdependencies between the involved actors. A relational approach to leadership, focusing on processes and practices, is more adequate for that purpose than approaches focusing on individuals and positions. Complexity leadership theory offers such a relational approach to leadership within organizations. In this article, we use complexity leadership theory to capture the emergent leadership processes between organizations. We focus on the characteristics of the informal relations between representatives of different organizations that enable dealing with the often-conflicting goals and values in multi-actor governance. The case of a landfill mining initiative for sustainable materials governance is used as an illustration to clarify the main concepts and arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]