Framing scale increase in Dutch agricultural policy 1950–2012

Maartje van Lieshout, who is close to finishing her dissertation at our group, has published an article about scale framing in agricultural policy in NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences. This time, a historical data set of policy documents dating back to 1950 serves as the basis to analyze continuity and change in the framing of scale increase in agriculture.

Framing scale increase in Dutch agricultural policy 1950–2012
M. van Lieshout, A. Dewulf, N. Aarts,  C. Termeer

In this paper, we study how agricultural policy, and particularly how scale increase, has been framed by the responsible ministers over the last six decades. We analyse the different interpretations attached to scale increase and other policy issues, in a longitudinal study of the memoranda accompanying the yearly national budget for the Ministry of Agriculture. Our analysis provides a nuanced explanation for the continuous use of the contested concept of scale increase. We show that the framing of Dutch agricultural policy has undergone considerable changes regarding issues and solutions, the role of international policy and issues from other policy domains. We find that the policy and the policy frames have become more diverse, interdependencies have increased and as a result policy has become more complex and self-referential. Part of our findings can be explained as the occurrence of a paradigm shift. However this does not explain the continuous presence of the logic of scale increase as the way forward for Dutch agriculture. We state that the self-referential agricultural policy system has aimed to continuously improve itself by means of scale increase, without discussing or critically reflecting on the functioning of the system itself. In this process language played a powerful role: changing the language helped to maintain the existing system or paradigm in which scale increase is continuously positively framed as the solution for Dutch agriculture.

The paper can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2013.02.001 or downloaded below.

Bridging knowledge frames and networks in climate and water governance

A book edited by Jurian Edelenbos, Nanny Bressers and Peter Scholten about "Water Governance as Connective Capacity" has just been published by Ashgate. Together with Marcela Brugnach, Katrien Termeer and Helen Ingram, we contributed a chapter on "Bridging knowledge frames and networks in climate and water governance". 

Here's an extract from the introduction to the chapter:

Addressing the challenge of water governance in view of climate change requires the best of available knowledge, sensible ways to deal with the inherent uncertainties, and, as we will argue in this paper, bridging diverging knowledge frames and networks. The fate of diverse knowledge frames and networks in the climate domain is directly relevant for water governance – why investing in e.g. hydropower or water storage capacity if climate change isn’t much of a problem, as climate skeptic activists and some political parties claim. In a field as knowledge-intensive as water and climate policy – without sophisticated models climate change wouldn’t even be recognized as an issue – a thorough understanding is needed of how knowledge is produced in networks, how knowledge links to conflicting perspectives or frames and how diverse ways of knowing can be bridged.

This is the reference:

Dewulf, A., Brugnach, M., Termeer, C. & Ingram, H. (2013). Bridging knowledge frames and networks in climate and water governance. In: J. Edelenbos, N. Bressers & P. Scholten (Eds). Water governance as connective capacity, pp 229-247. Ashgate.

The book is available at Amazon and also as a PDF ebook

Adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services for poverty alleviation

More than a year ago we drafted a one-page project idea about citizen science, virtual observatories, social networks and adaptive governance for the ESPA (Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation) call of the British Research Council. Then followed a number of important steps, including a brainstorming session in a coffee bar in Lima, an exercise in interdisciplinary proposal writing and a joint effort to draft a response to the reviews. Last month, Wouter Buytaert (PI of the proposal at Imperial College), David Hannah (Co-PI at Birmingham) and myself (Co-PI at Wageningen) were invited to defend our proposal in London. A week later we received the good news that the proposal had been recommended for funding by the ESPA board!

The project is meant to start in the fall, and we will be looking for a social science postdoc (3-year, full time, based at Wageningen) in this cross-disciplinary research project. This position will involve working with local researchers in  mountain regions in Peru, Ethiopia, Kyrgizstan and Nepal. The title and a summary of the project can be found below.

Adaptive governance of mountain ecosystem services for poverty alleviation enabled by environmental virtual observatories (MOUNTAIN-EVO)

Ecosystem services (ESS) management can alleviate poverty if it is embedded in local processes of adaptive governance that rely on continuous monitoring and knowledge co-generation. This is especially the case in remote mountain regions, where poverty is often interlocked with multiple ecosystem threats, data scarcity, and high uncertainties. In these environments, it is paramount to generate locally relevant knowledge about multiple ESS and how they impact local livelihoods. This is often problematic. Existing environmental data  collection tends to be geographically biased towards more densely populated regions, and prioritised towards strategic economic activities that bypass the poor. Data may also be locked behind institutional and technological barriers and monopolised by the better educated or politically connected. These issues create a “knowledge trap” for data-poor regions, which is especially acute in remote and hard-to-reach mountain regions. This project will blend cutting-edge concepts of adaptive governance with technological breakthroughs in citizen science and knowledge co-generation to break this vicious circle.

Our central research question is how recent conceptual and technological innovations in environmental sensing, data processing, interactive visualisation and participatory knowledge generation can be leveraged to implement demand-driven, interactive and multidirectional approaches to knowledge generation about ESS. Our approach to this question is built around the notion of Environmental Virtual Observatories: decentralised and open technology platforms for knowledge generation and exchange that enable participation of marginalised and vulnerable communities bypassed by the traditional mechanisms.

Our case studies are 4 remote and poor mountain regions characterised by acute degradation of ESS, in particular water supply, soil fertility, and land cover. We will implement a process of participatory data collection and processing on these ESS and their trade-offs, embedded in the local NGO and educational setting. Mechanisms of continuous evaluation and improvements will be set up, and tested for usefulness, robustness and impact on human wellbeing. Our goal is not to develop specific solutions to specific problems. Rather, we will leverage the cross-disciplinary nature of our consortium to create a flexible and adaptive set of tools, methods and concepts to promote resilient ESS for poverty alleviation.

PhD position on the role of social media hypes and controversies in sustainability governance

As part of the Informational Governance research programme at Wageningen University, a proposal for a Phd project submitted by Noelle Aarts (Strategic Communication group) and myself (Public Administration and Policy group) has been granted! We are now looking for a PhD candidate on the following topic:

Social media as the new playing field for the governance of sustainable agro-food systems: Twitter hypes, controversies and stakeholders’ strategies

Governmental, business and civil society organizations engaged in the governance of sustainable agro-food systems face the challenge of dealing with an increasingly important but capricious public sphere formed by the social media. Public and private decision-making processes about sustainable agro-food systems are increasingly affected by both hypes and controversies in the social media, often through their interplay with mass media like newspapers, radio or television. Little is known, however, about what happens to information about sustainable agro-food systems when it travels through social media networks, or when and how hypes or controversies arise. To deal with this capricious public sphere, governmental, business or civil society organizations are developing and trying out strategies for monitoring or engaging with social media, but little is known about what these communication strategies entail and what their impact is. By monitoring and analysing Twitter activity related to sustainable agro-food systems, this project will study (1) when and how information leads to hypes or controversies on Twitter; (2) which social media strategies are used by governmental, business and civil society organizations to deal with this new public sphere; and (3) what the impact is on public and private decision-making processes about sustainable agro-food systems.

We are looking for someone with a keen interest in communication and sustainability governance, familiarity with social media and ICT tools, and preferably a background in both quantitative and qualitative research methods. The official job opening for a 4-year Phd position at Wageningen University can be found at www.academictransfer.com/17549. The deadline for applications is March 17th. You can contact Noelle or myself if you need more information.

Call for papers on "Puzzling and Powering over long term policy problems" at IPA 2013

Together with Martijn Vink, we're organizing a panel on "Dealing with Long Term Policy Problems: Making Sense of the Interplay between Puzzling over Meaning and Powering over Interests"  at the Interpretive Policy Analysis conference 2013 in Vienna.

Paper proposals can be submitted here: https://ipa2013.univie.ac.at/call-for-papers/ (panel 10). The deadline is February 28. Here's the call for papers:

Intrinsic uncertainty over future societies creates complex challenges for policy makers to defining what should be done today to adequately deal with problems of tomorrow. Uncertainty might amplify the ambiguity in societal understandings of what is actually at stake and how important this is to society. Accordingly, politicians and civil servants experience difficulties in developing policies for uncertain futures in plural societies, but long term characteristics of policy problems may also put politicians in the position of postponing painful policies by projecting them over multiple political cycles beyond the politicians’ accountability. Or policymakers may employ the future as a framing vehicle for telling stories and making promises which appeal to current societal concerns. Hence, the uncertainty and ambiguity which comes with long term policy problems may yield specific complexity in policymaking processes. Conflict or controversy are never far away, as we currently see in welfare state reforms across Europe, climate change policy from the global to the local level, or the developments in the European project as a whole. 

This panel aims at exploring the interface between two themes which are central to the IPA conference series: on the one hand processes of interpretation and meaning construction in uncertain and ambiguous societal contexts, and on the other hand the mechanisms of power at work in policy processes. Starting from the traditional notions on puzzling over the societal meaning to the problem, and powering over interests for getting things done (Hall 1993, Culpepper 2002, Heclo 2010), we aim to develop a better understanding of how puzzling over meaning is marked by a context of power positions and processes, and how powering over interests is marked by particular ideas and a struggle over meaning. Considering the ambiguity which comes with intrinsic uncertain futures this interplay between puzzling and powering becomes especially interesting in view of complex long-term policy issues. Therefore we are inviting contributions that conceptually and/or empirically explore the interplay relations between puzzling over meaning and powering over interests. 

Papers may examine questions as

• How does the process of puzzling and powering work in a decentred governance context? 

• What is the role of powerful interests in shaping policy frames, and what is the role of convincing ideas in shaping power relations?

• How can frame analysis, discourse analysis or other interpretive methods be used to study powering and puzzling?

• Which concepts are useful to understand the interplay between puzzling and powering? 

• How do processes of puzzling and powering over long term policy issues lead to policy action, controversy or apathy? 

These analyses could be applied to different long term policy issues, including social welfare, macro-economics, environment, food security, climate change, migration or globalisation issues.

References

Culpepper, P. D. 2002. Powering, puzzling, and 'pacting': the informational logic of negotiated reforms. Journal of European Public Policy 9:774-790.

Hall, P. A. 1993. Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics 25:275-296.

Heclo, H. 2010. Modern social politics in Britain and Sweden : from relief to income maintenance. ECPR Press, Colchester.