Unpacking ambiguity in ideational change: the polysemy of the ‘Europe of Knowledge’

Pagliarello, Marina Cino

doi:10.1080/01402382.2021.1918429

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 60 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Thus, our work provides evidence on the polysemic nature of smart city policies (cf. Béland and Cox, 2016;Cino Pagliarello, 2021). In our case, multiple interpretations of the smart city concept were facilitated by the regional design of the call for tenders as city-level policy-makers were to provide project proposals in the application form within different policy fields (energy and environment, governance and citizenship, and mobility and logistics).…”

Section: A Polysemic Policy Instrument To Address Multiple Societal I...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting digital governance at the municipal level: Evidence from smart city projects in Belgium

Esposito

Terlizzi

Guarino³

et al. 2023

International Review of Administrative Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article adopts an interpretive approach to investigate how local policy-makers portray and justify their own visions of digital governance initiatives at the municipal level. Our investigation focuses on smart city projects submitted by various Belgian municipalities in the framework of the ‘Intelligent Territory’ call for proposals initiated in 2019 by the Walloon Region. We use Boltanski and Thévenot’s theory of orders of worth and combine quantitative and qualitative content analysis to categorize the different justifications elaborated by municipal governments. The empirical results point to the polysemic nature of the smart city concept and highlight the diversity of opportunities offered by smart city policies according to municipal policy-makers. Overall, our study contributes to the understanding of the varieties of interpretations underpinning the construction of digital governance initiatives. It therefore supports the argument according to which there is no one-size-fits-all approach to smart city policies as local policy-makers may attribute different meanings to them and may formulate place-based ICTs solutions to what they perceive as the most pressing problems of their territories. Points for practitioners Smart city projects can be used by governing authorities as instruments to achieve a variety of policy goals Examples of policy goals are to boost local economic development, to improve the effectiveness of municipal service provision, to strengthen social bonds across local community members, to promote the ecological preservation of urban environments and to improve the collaboration between citizens and public administrations Local governments can adaptively use smart technologies as instruments to overcome multiple place-based environmental, social and economic problems Local governments should frame smart urban technologies as means to solve different societal problems and achieve different policy goals – rather than an end per se

show abstract

Section: A Polysemic Policy Instrument To Address Multiple Societal I...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpreting digital governance at the municipal level: Evidence from smart city projects in Belgium

Esposito

Terlizzi

Guarino³

et al. 2023

International Review of Administrative Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, much recent work has examined what are referred to variously as “vehicular” (McLennan, 2004), “chameleonic” (Smith, 2013), “polysemic” (Béland & Cox, 2016; Hannah & Baekkeskov, 2020) or “multidimensional” (Skogstad & Wilder, 2019) ideas. Here, ideas such as “sustainability” or “the Europe of Knowledge” are said to be “coalition magnets,” as their capacity for varied interpretation by diverse interests and stakeholders enables formation of multi‐sectoral coalitions (Béland & Cox, 2016; Cino Pagliarello, 2022). These more loosely formed coalitions may help to understand the resilience or adaptability of policy in the face of crisis.…”

Section: A Critical Review Of Ideas‐crisis Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ideas and crisis in policy and administration: Existing links and research frontiers

Hannah¹,

Bækkeskov

Tubakovic

2022

Public Administration

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The study of ideas and crisis in public policy and administration has generated two literatures with shared interests, but often distinct approaches. In this Symposium introduction, we argue that crisis studies and the "ideas school" have much to learn from each other. To facilitate cross-pollination, this article reviews key insights from the two literatures with relevance across the divide. In our view, crisis studies offer important parameters that can help realize some of the ambitions expressed in the ideas school, such as how different crises and crisis stages affect opportunities for institutional and policy change. Similarly, ideational studies show new ways for crisis scholars to approach coherence in coordination among crisis actors, network information, and public communication. We conclude by assessing the contribution of the three Symposium papers to drawing new links between the fields and suggest future avenues for research. | INTRODUCTIONCrisis and ideas are core subjects of study in public policy and administration. On the one hand, empirical and theoretical accounts have traced the management of economic and environmental crises, natural disasters, public health events, and terrorist attacks, to name a selection. Managing crisis is not simply about responding after an event, though active and coordinated crisis response is critical. It also includes a cycle of risk management and prevention, creating and maintaining preparedness, crisis detection and recognition, recovery and normalization, and evaluating

show abstract

“…As for the building site of mechanisms, in this collection Lesch and Millar (2021) take insights from political psychology and behavioural economics, and investigate across different levels of analysis a mechanism of 'bounded ideational emulation' which has been at play in several domains of Canadian tax policy. For Cino Pagliarello (2021), polysemy as cognitive mechanism explains the stability of policy choices and how policy entrepreneurship is enabled in a context of ambiguity.…”

Section: Reconstructing Ideational Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Don’t think it’s a good idea! Four building sites of the ‘ideas school’

Kamkhaji

Radaelli

2021

West European Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ideational explanations of policy change are popular in the fields of political economy, comparative politics and policy analysis. And yet, to make the case for ideational explanations, we must make further progress on the nature of ideas, where they come from, what they consist of, and how they change over time. We highlight four critical building sites concerning the definitional aspects of ideational explanations, micro-foundations, mechanisms and the difference between ideational and cognitive analysis. We make recommendations on how to carry out work in the building sites and describe the range of suggestions and ways forward found in the articles of this Symposium. We also suggest cross-fertilising political science with the findings of neighbouring disciplines that have developed empirically robust models of ideation and cognition.

show abstract

Unpacking ambiguity in ideational change: the polysemy of the ‘Europe of Knowledge’

Abstract: Her research focuses on European Integration, education policy, populism, citizenship, and on the role of political and economic actors in framing public policies. She has recently published her research in Comparative Education and in the Journal of Contemporary European Research.

Cited by 16 publications

References 60 publications

Interpreting digital governance at the municipal level: Evidence from smart city projects in Belgium

Interpreting digital governance at the municipal level: Evidence from smart city projects in Belgium

Ideas and crisis in policy and administration: Existing links and research frontiers

Don’t think it’s a good idea! Four building sites of the ‘ideas school’

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About