Enhancing policy innovation by redesigning representative democracy

Policy innovation is a key aspect of public innovation, which has been largely overlooked. Political leadership, competition and collaboration are key drivers of policy innovation. It is a barrier in traditional models of representative democracy that they provide weak conditions for collaboration. Two Danish case studies indicate that collaboration between politicians and relevant and affected stakeholders can promote policy innovation, but also that a redesign of representative democracy is needed in order to establish a productive combination of political leadership, competition and collaboration in political life.</jats:p

Towards a multi-actor theory of public value co-creation

This essay suggests changes to the theory of public value and, in particular, the strategic triangle framework, in order to adapt it to an emerging world where policy makers and managers in the public, private, voluntary and informal community sectors have to somehow separately and jointly create public value. One set of possible changes concerns what might be in the centre of the strategic triangle besides the public manager. Additional suggestions are made concerning how multiple actors, levels, arenas and/or spheres of action, and logics might be accommodated. Finally, possibilities are outlined for how the strategic triangle might be adapted to complex policy fields in which there are multiple, often conflicting organizations, interests and agendas. In other words, how might politics be more explicitly accommodated. The essay concludes with a number of research suggestions