P39 Governing wicked problems through participatory, intersectionality-informed and accountable practices

Panel Chairs

• Carmela Barbera, University of Bergamo, carmela.barbera@unibg.it
• Hilde Bjørkhaug, NTNU, hildebj@ntnu.no
• Sonia Bussu, University of Birmingham, s.bussu@bham.ac.uk
• Antonella Di Maso, University of Bergamo, antonella.dimaso@unibg.it
• Irene Kuhmonen, University of Jyväskylä, irene.a.kuhmonen@jyu.fi
• Dulce Lopes, University of Coimbra, dulce.rdgr@gmail.com
• Lucía Muñoz Benito, University of Coimbra, lucia.munoz@ij.uc.pt
• Rebecca Warren, Northumbria University, rebecca2.warren@northumbria.ac.uk
• Anders Wästfelt, Stockholm University, anders.wastfelt@humangeo.su.se*

Description of the panel topic

Wicked problems increasingly exceed the problem-solving capacity of public organizations acting alone. Issues such as housing insecurity, climate adaptation, public health, migration, social inequality, and digital transformation are characterized by uncertainty, conflicting values, fragmented responsibilities, and unequal distributions of risks and resources (Head, 2022; Bannink et al., 2024). Food systems exemplify this complexity: climate change, biodiversity decline, and soil degradation interact with food insecurity, malnutrition, and threats to rural livelihoods, while their causes and consequences are embedded in unequal distributions of economic and political power.

Addressing these challenges requires public sector organisations to engage citizens, communities, civil society organizations, experts, and other stakeholders in the definition of problems and the development of possible responses (Ansell & Torfing, 2021; OECD, 2022), but also in the subsequent monitoring of results and impact.

A wide range of participatory and deliberative practices has emerged to support this engagement (Bua & Bussu, 2023). These include citizens’ assemblies and other deliberative mini-publics, participatory budgeting, co-production, co-design, citizen panels, community-based initiatives, living labs, collaborative planning, and digitally mediated participation. Such practices can create spaces in which institutional knowledge is combined with citizens’ lived experience, local knowledge, collective agency, and public reasoning (Elstub & Escobar, 2019).

Although these processes are generally expected to operate according to democratic principles, their democratic character cannot be assumed. Participatory practices may, indeed, reproduce existing inequalities, privilege and already organized interests (Karatzia & O'Connor, 2025; Greaves & Roy,2025), remain disconnected from formal decision-making, or be used symbolically without influencing policy. Their capacity to generate inclusive, legitimate, and actionable outcomes depends on how they are designed, resourced, facilitated, governed, and connected to public decision-making (Barbera et al., 2025; Bobbio, 2019; Bussu et al., 2022). These risks are especially visible in policy domains shaped by institutional lock-ins, entrenched economic interests, and path dependencies, which may restrict both the inclusiveness of participation and the scope for substantive change.

The design and implementation of participatory practices therefore require attention to the interaction between civic and administrative capacities (Barbera et al., 2025). Civic capacities include citizens’ agency, collective problem-solving, mutual learning, knowledge sharing, mobilization, and the ability to hold institutions accountable (Bua & Bussu, 2023; Hendriks & Dzur, 2022). Administrative capacities include coordination, facilitation, analytical competence, responsiveness, stakeholder management, institutional learning, relational capacity and the ability to translate participatory outputs into policies and public services (Ansell & Torfing, 2021; Wilson et al., 2024; Thabit et al., 2025).

This panel invites contributions examining how civic and administrative capacities interact in participatory responses to wicked problems. It asks: Under what conditions can participatory practices contribute to governing complex and contested issues? How do public administrations enable, structure, constrain, or absorb citizen participation? Which institutional and procedural arrangements support inclusion, accountability, legitimacy, learning, and policy impact? How are tensions between openness, representation, expertise, urgency, conflict, and implementability managed?

The panel welcomes theoretical, empirical, comparative, and practice-oriented papers. Relevant perspectives may include collaborative governance, deliberative democracy, co-production, public value, policy and administrative capacity, institutional design, democratic innovation, and public participation. Qualitative, quantitative, mixed-method, experimental, ethnographic, and action research are welcome. Particular interest is given to studies examining participatory practices across the policy process, from problem definition and process design to collective deliberation, decision-making, implementation, evaluation, and institutional learning.

A dedicated thematic stream within the panel will focus on the governance and transformation of food systems. Thereby, contributions covering agriculture and food across different forms and scales—from large industrial farms to small-scale and self-sufficient holdings and urban farming, and from local to national and global food systems—are encouraged. Such contributions may examine how participatory governance addresses tensions between economic imperatives and environmental sustainability and whether it helps bridge, or instead reinforces, the divides surrounding food-system transformation. Such contributions may draw on sustainability transitions, rural studies, and food policy, particularly to the extent to which they illuminate cross-sectoral and multilevel governance, policy coordination, and institutional transformation.

References

Ansell, C., & Torfing, J. (2021). Public governance as co-creation: A strategy for revitalizin the public sector and rejuvenating democracy. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108765381

Bannink, D., Sancino, A., & Sorrentino, M. (2024). Governance without we. Wicked problems and collaborative governance. Public Policy and Administration, 39(3), 301-323. https://doi.org/10.1177/09520767241239863

Barbera, C., Sicilia, M., & Steccolini, I. (2025). Exploring Government‐Citizen Interaction in Public Service Performance Assessment: Trade‐Offs, Synergies, and Critical Issues. Public Administration, 103(3), 814-827. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.13068

Bobbio, L. (2019). Designing effective public participation. Policy and Society, 38(1), 41-57. https://doi.org/10.1080/14494035.2018.1511193

Bua, A., & Bussu, S. (Eds.). (2023). Reclaiming participatory governance: Social movements and the reinvention of democratic innovation. Taylor & Francis.https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003218517

Bussu, S., Bua, A., Dean, R., & Smith, G. (2022). Introduction: Embedding participatory governance. Critical Policy Studies, 16(2), 133 145. https://doi.org/10.1080/19460171.2022.2053179

Elstub, S., & Escobar, O. (Eds.). (2019). Handbook of democratic innovation and governance. Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781786433862

Greaves, L.& Roy, R. (2025). EU-CIEMBLY Deliverable 2.3 - Theoretical Models for an Intersectional and Inclusive Citizens' Assembly. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17608113

Head, B. W. (2022). Wicked problems in public policy: Understanding and responding to complex challenges (p. 176). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94580-0

Hendriks, C. M., & Dzur, A. W. (2022). Citizens’ governance spaces: Democratic action through disruptive collective problem-solving. Political Studies, 70(3), 680-700. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321720980902

Karatzia, A.& O'Connor, N. (2025). EU-CIEMBLY Deliverable 2.2 - Analytical and Normative Framework. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17607956

OECD (2022), OECD Guidelines for Citizen Participation Processes, OECD Public Governance Reviews, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/f765caf6-en.

Thabit, S., Sancino, A., & Mora, L. (2025). Strategic public value (s) governance: A systematic literature review and framework for analysis. Public Administration Review, 85(3), 885-906.https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13877

Wilson, R., French, M., Hesselgreaves, H., Lowe, T., & Smith, M. (2024). New development: Relational public services—reform and research agenda. Public Money & Management, 44(6), 553–558. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540962.2024.2344902

Relevance to the conference theme

The panel speaks directly to the IRSPM 2027 theme by examining how public sector organisations can address wicked problems and grand challenges while preserving and expanding opportunities for participation, inclusion, collective learning, and democratic accountability. Complex public problems require not only technical expertise and administrative authority, but also institutional arrangements capable of incorporating dispersed knowledge, lived experience, competing values, and the perspectives of affected communities (Mazzucato & Kattel, 2020), valuing the intersectional characteristics of the stakeholders involved (Collins, 2019).

The panel contributes to public management scholarship by connecting research on collaborative governance, co-production, deliberative democracy, and democratic innovation with debates on policy capacity, administrative capacity, institutional design, and public value. It therefore seeks to foster interdisciplinary exchange among scholars working across public management, political science, public policy, sociology, and democratic governance. It conceptualizes participatory practices as civic–administrative infrastructures through which public problems are defined, knowledge is produced, relationships are coordinated, and possible responses are developed. It assumes that the quality and impact of participation depend not only on citizens’ willingness and capacity to engage, but also on public administrations’ ability to design inclusive and intersectional processes, facilitate dialogue, manage conflict, coordinate actors, provide expertise, respond to participatory outcomes, and integrate them into the policy and service-delivery systems (Barbera et al., 2025).

Given the specific sub-track on food systems, the dialogue is extended to scholarship on sustainability transitions, rural studies, and food policy, using food-system transformation to connect questions of state capacity, democratic governance, accountability, resilience, and policy coordination in times of interconnected crises.

The panel will identify transferable lessons on how public administrations can enable meaningful participation under uncertainty, conflict, and institutional fragmentation, thereby strengthening institutional legitimacy, responsiveness, resilience, and accountability.

References

Barbera, C., Sicilia, M., & Steccolini, I. (2025). Exploring Government‐Citizen Interaction in Public Service Performance Assessment: Trade‐Offs, Synergies, and Critical Issues. Public Administration, 103(3), 814-827. https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.13068

Collins, P. H. (2019). The difference that power makes: Intersectionality and participatory democracy. In The Palgrave handbook of intersectionality in public policy (pp. 167-192). Cham: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5209/INFE.54888

Mazzucato, M., & Kattel, R. (2020). COVID-19 and public-sector capacity. Oxford review of economic policy, 36(Supplement_1), S256-S269.https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/graa031