USG Autumn Good Reads

Boeken op een vensterbank met bomen in achtergrond
Photo: istock.com/maxiphoto

Autumn time is reading time. And why not choose a good read written or edited by researchers of the Utrecht University School of Governance (USG)? Here are a few suggestions for you, with the same variety as the coloured leaves falling from the trees. The majority is available open access.

Valuing Public Innovation

Book cover: Valuing Public Innovation

By: Rolf Rønning, Jean Hartley, Lars Fuglsang, Karin Geuijen. Palgrave Macmillan.

Public innovation is distinctive from private sector innovation by being set in a political system rather than a market. The roles of citizens and elected politicians as well as public servants and other stakeholders are frequently relevant. Public organizations can be creators, funders, orchestrators or sense-makers of innovations, which are carried out with the aim of benefitting society.

This book provides a comprehensive insight into the theory and practice of public innovation using a wide range of research evidence about the processes, drivers and barriers, stakeholders and outcomes of innovation. Using the lens of public value, the book offers a stimulating discussion of how public innovation is valued and contested in current societies.

Valuing Public Innovation aims to help develop a deeper understanding of innovation and how to use that knowledge in practical ways. This is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of innovation, organisation studies, public administration and public policy, as well as for policymakers and practitioners.

Read more: Valuing Public Innovation. Contributions to Theory and Practice.

Successful Public Policy in the Nordic Countries

Book cover Successfull Public Policy in the Nordic Countries

Edited by Caroline de la Porte, Guðný Björk Eydal, Jaakko Kauko, Daniel Nohrstedt, Paul 't Hart, and Bent Sofus Tranøy. Oxford University Press, also open access available.

The fifth and final book in the 2016-2022 ERC AG project Successful Public Governance presents twenty-three in-depth case studies of successful public policies and programs in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Iceland.

Each chapter tells the story of the policy's origins, aims, design, decision-making, and implementation processes, and assesses in which respects - programmatically, process-wise, politically, and over time - and to what extent it can be considered to have been successful.

It also points towards the driving forces of success, and the challenges that have had to be overcome to achieve it. Combined, the chapters provide a resource for researchers, educators, and students of public policy both within and beyond the Nordic region.

Read more: Successful Public Policy in the Nordic Countries

Street Football, Gender and Muslim Youth in the Netherlands

Juichende voetbalspelers

By Kathrine van den Bogert. Bloomsbury, also open access available.

Based on original ethnographic research in a multicultural neighbourhood in The Hague, this book gives detailed insights into the challenges, negotiations and resistances girls with Moroccan-Dutch and Muslim backgrounds face in the world of street football.

Kathrine van den Bogert traces the experiences of teenage girls who play football in public playgrounds, as well as in a girls' football competition the girls have set up themselves: Football Girls United. She addresses how race, ethnicity, religion, gender and citizenship are entangled in the access to and construction of the public street football spaces, such as football courts, urban playgrounds and public squares.

While Muslim girls in football are often stigmatized and excluded based on their religious and ethnic backgrounds, this book emphasizes their street football practices as critical and creative ways of belonging, both in football and in wider Dutch society. By focussing on a domain largely absent in religion and gender research, namely sport, this book brings forth new perspectives on religious and ethnic diversity in Europe. The football players show that 'Muslim' is not always a relevant identity in their lives, and hence urge us to rethink the categories of analysis that we use, and often take for granted, as feminist and intersectional scholars of gender, religion and Islam.

Read more: Street Football, Gender and Muslim Youth in the Netherlands. Girls who kick back.

Government Transparency

Book Cover: Government Transparency

By Gregory Porumbescu, Albert Meijer and Stephan Grimmelikhuijsen. Cambridge University Press.

This book argues that to understand why transparency “works” in one context, but fails in another, we have to take into account how institutional (macro), organizational (meso) contexts interact with individual behaviour (micro).

A review of research from each of these perspectives shows that the big promises thought to accompany greater transparency during the first two decades of the 20th century have not been delivered. For example, transparency does not necessarily lead to better government performance and more trust in government. At the same time, transparency is still a hallmark of democratic governance and as this book highlights, for instance, transparency has been relatively successful in combating government corruption.

Finally, by explicitly taking a multi-layered perspective into account, it develops new paths for future research.

Read more: Government Transparency. State of the Art and New Perspectives.

Theorizing Local Migration Law and Governance

Book cover: Theorizing Local Migration Law and Governance

Edited by Sara Miellet and Moritz Baumgärtel. Cambridge University Press, also open access available.

In many regions around the world, the governance of migration increasingly involves local authorities and actors. This edited volume introduces theoretical contributions that, departing from the 'local turn' in migration studies, highlight the distinct role that legal processes, debates, and instruments play in driving this development.

Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, it demonstrates how paying closer analytical attention to legal questions reveals the inherent tensions and contradictions of migration governance. By investigating socio-legal phenomena such as sanctuary jurisdictions, it further explores how the law structures ongoing processes of (re)scaling in this domain.

Beyond offering conceptual and empirical discussions of local migration governance, this volume also directly confronts the pressing normative questions that follow from the growing involvement of local authorities and actors.

Read more: Theorizing Local Migration Law and Governance.