P18 Tackling political turbulence through collaborative policy making

Panel Chairs

Corresponding and review group chair

• Eva Sørensen, Roskilde University. Chair. eva@ruc.dk

Co-Chair

• Ilana Schröder, University of Bern. 
• Eva Wolf, Tilburg University. 

Panel Topic Description

We live in times of social, economic, technological and environmental changes disrupting existing ways of life and established balances of power. These changes trigger rising political polarization, defined as when two sides in a conflict regard their adversaries as enemies to be eliminated rather than folks with a legitimate and ethical right to think differently (Schedler, 2023). Political polarization makes it exceedingly difficult for liberal democracies to respond effectively to mounting governance problems in ways all sides of a polarized conflict perceive as legitimate (Barber & McCarty, 2015). Unsolved problems are dangerous for liberal democracies because they create fertile ground for authoritarian populist politicians who thrive on further nurturing political polarization. Research on collaborative governance, co-creation, conflict resolution, public policy, and political negotiation points to collaboration between adversaries as a means to productively address conflict and mitigate polarization (Coleman et al., 2014; Mansbridge & Martin 2015; Ulibarri, 2024; Schröder & Wolf, 2026; Torfing, et al., 2026). However, research rarely considers whether and how collaborative forms of governance can advance the ability of liberal democracies to solve pressing governance problems in the specific context of heightened political polarization. Therefore, there is a pressing need for research on how more or less institutionalized forms of collaboration affect politicians’ policy making ability on polarized issues, and how public administrators and other actors can support policy implementation through the strategic use of collaboration between polarized stakeholders and segments of the public. This panel invites theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practical papers that consider one or more of the questions listed below:

• What role can collaboration play in promoting effective policy making and implementation on highly polarized political issues, and how, in turn, do high conflict and polarization affect collaborative policymaking?
• What are the prospects and challenges of integrating collaborative forms of governance and policy making into the larger institutional set up of representative democracy and how can they be overcome?
• How can collaboration become a productive force in solving polarized conflicts in democratic political systems characterized by high levels of competition between political parties?
• What is the role of public administrators in times of increasing polarization and how can they facilitate collaboration in polarized conflicts?

References

Barber, M., & McCarty, N. (2015). Consequences of Polarization. In J. Mansbridge & C.J. Martin (Eds). Handbook of Political Negotiation, 37- 49.

Coleman, P. T., Deutsch, M., & Marcus, E. C. (Eds.). (2014). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. John Wiley & Sons.

Mansbridge, J., & Martin, C. J. (Eds.). (2015). Political Negotiation: A Handbook. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

Schedler, A. (2023). Rethinking political polarization. Political science quarterly, 138(3), 335-359.

Schröder, I., & Wolf, E. E. A. (2026). A systematic review of policy conflict and its (un)productive consequences. Policy & Politics, 1–27.

Torfing, J., Payandeh, R., Jalili, S. M., & Banafi, M. (2026). A systematic review of conflict within collaborative governance. Policy & Politics, 54(1), 2-25.

Ulibarri, N. (2024). An analysis of micro-scale conflict in collaborative governance. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 34(2), 316-330.

Relevance to Public Management Scholarship and/or Conference Theme

The panel contributes to public management research by highlighting the still highly apparent need to consider how political developments condition public management and governance. From its very infancy, public administration research has struggled to conceptualize and identify precise boundaries between politics and public administration. The rise of political polarization, populist forms of political leadership, and the democratic backlash documented by V-DEM (Nord et al., 2026), have brought into full light how much public administrations rely on politics – that what politicians do condition what public administrations can do, and also that it has political implications how the public administration operates. Following this line of thinking, this panel calls for research on how public administration research can contribute to clarifying the ways in which governments can improve their capacity to solve pressing governance problems in contexts of fierce political polarization and rising conflict, as well as the role public administrators can play in making this happenn. In so doing the panel will add to the already surging stream of research that considers how public administrators can respond to authoritarian populism and democratic backsliding (see e.g., Bauer & Becker, 2020; Moynihan, 2022; Peters & Pierre, 2022). The panel addresses the conference theme head on by considering the political implications of the rising levels of political polarization caused by poly-crisis, turbulent events and societal changes that call upon governments to solve wicked and turbulent policy problems.

References

Bauer, M. W., & Becker, S. (2020). Democratic backsliding, populism, and public administration. Perspectives on public management and governance, 3(1), 19-31.

Moynihan, D. P. (2022). Public management for populists: Trump's schedule F executive order and the future of the civil service. Public Administration Review, 82(1), 174-178.

Nord, M., Altman, D., Fernandes, T., Good God, A., & Lindberg, S. I. (2026). Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling the Democratic Era? University of Gothenburg: V-Dem Institute. https://www.v-dem.net/documents/75/V-Dem_Institute_Democracy_Report_2026_lowres.pdf

Peters, B. G., & Pierre, J. (2022). Politicisation of the public service during democratic backsliding: Alternative perspectives. Australian Journal of Public Administration, 81(4), 629-639