Public Policy as Interactive Governance: Insights and Generalisations Across Domains

Abstract

Public policy reforms and developments nowadays unfold in governance environments characterised by complexity, uncertainty, and contestation. Thus, the traditional models that conceptualise policy-making as a process driven by clearly defined problems, stable institutions, and authoritative decision-makers struggle to capture how contemporary governance works. In nowadays practice, policy problems, solutions, and even the identities of relevant actors are continuously shaped through interaction among political authorities, experts, administrative systems, target groups, and wider publics. This panel discusses interactive governance as a conceptually fruitful lens for understanding public policy reforms and changes under these conditions. Interactive governance directs attention to policy-making as a relational and processual phenomenon. Institutions, interests, and preferences are approached with a view on how they emerge, evolve, and are negotiated through ongoing interactions. Public policy reforms are not merely technical exercises in institutional redesign or implementation; they are arenas of political struggle in which competing rationalities—such as technocratic efficiency, democratic legitimacy, expertise, and lived experience—intersect and often collide. These interactions shape policy outcomes and also the meanings of governance problems, the legitimacy of public authority, and the capacity of governance systems to adapt over time. The relevance of interactive policy development is particularly evident in periods of reform and crisis. Large-scale administrative reforms, local governance restructuring, participatory innovations, and sustainability transitions all expose tensions between hierarchical control and collaborative problem-solving, between expert-led solutions and democratic inclusion, and between long-term objectives and short-term political pressures. The insights suggest how such tensions are managed, transformed, or left unresolved within policy processes. By focusing on interaction, discourse, and practice, the panel contributes to broader debates in public policy and governance studies on policy capacity, legitimacy, and change. It seeks to move beyond domain-specific explanations and identify patterns and mechanisms that travel across policy fields and governance levels. In doing so, the panel positions interactive governance not as a normative ideal but as an empirical and analytical framework for understanding how public policy reforms are actually produced—and why they succeed, stall, or generate unintended consequences—in contemporary governance systems.

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