ERC Advanced Grant awarded to Professor Paul ’t Hart for research into successful public governance
, professor of public administration at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ School of Governance has received a prestigious >2M€ Advanced Grant from the . The money will fund a research team looking into ‘the secret’ of enduringly highly-reputed and highly effective public organizations, collaborative networks, and public policies. The Advanced Grant is the highest form of personal research funding within the ERC’s grant portfolio. It is the first time that a Dutch public administration scholar has received such an award.
Why is it that in a population of organisations with an identical public task - such as social security agencies, health & safety inspectorates, police forces or ombudsman agencies – only some succeed in combining excellent performance with a strong public reputation, and manage to maintain both for a substantial period of time? Why do some policy programs that aim to change the attitudes and behaviours of citizens – in areas such as drink- driving, waste management or climate adaptation –maintain consistently higher rates of impact and public recognition in some jurisdictions than in others? It is these sorts of questions that ‘t Hart and the team of postdocs and PhD students the grant allows him to build will investigate. The group will focus on the interplay between institutional, situational and personal factors that make the difference, and will benefit from the larger, interdisciplinary context offered by the UU’s strategic research theme Institutions for Open Societies, in which it will be embedded.
Theoretical as well as applied focus
The team’s objectives are academic: to discover patterns and to build theories of success in government, which is a frequently occurring, yet underappreciated and sorely understudied phenomenon. But applied ambitions are integral to the project. ‘t Hart and one of the postdocs in the project dr Scott Douglas are close to reaching agreement with the Association of Dutch Municipalities about extending the project to studying the conditions for success in and of Dutch municipalities, and translating these findings into professional development programs for public office-holders and public managers in local government
Project description
Read more about the project’s aim and design.
Additional information
Please contact p.thart@uu.nl if you wish to know more, or want to engage with the project, which will commence in mid-2016 and run until mid-2021.