ALBERT

Description: Evaluation research can provide policy advice on the basis of evidence that it is increasingly expected to rely upon. At the same time, policy advice itself can take on the role of the evaluandum and become the very object of evaluation. Both these dimensions of the evaluation-advice interface merit attention. However, while there are criteria for the evaluation of policy advice, the use of evaluation for policy advice remains a black box, as this is part of less formal communication and consultation. This notwithstanding, this article will offer an introduction to the various reasons for – as well as various contexts of – evaluation’s increasing importance in policy advice.

Description: The IASS – and the research project Co-creation and Contemporary Policy Advice, in particular – aim to support policymakers in their efforts to address complex societal challenges within the context of a broad transformation towards sustainability. These challenges are interwoven with other issues and embedded within dynamic contexts that are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty, making it difficult to develop a unified approach to their resolution. In response to this, this IASS Discussion Paper presents a model for the development of co-creative policy advice that is intended to support actors from policymaking and public administration in addressing such complex challenges. The primary goal of the process outlined here is the development, in cooperation with relevant stakeholders, of an in-depth understanding of a specific challenge – before appropriate strategies and measures for its resolution are put in place. The insights gained in this scoping process shape the development of tailored solution generation processes and the allocation of public procurement contracts for the implementation of societal transformation processes. In this approach, the policy advice process begins well before potential solutions are developed and presented to policymakers and administrative bodies. Rather, this model responds to the need to develop an integrated understanding of societal challenges in close cooperation with the people and institutions affected on the ground before public procurement processes for their resolution are launched.

Description: There are various approaches to facilitation in deliberative mini-publics, yet the scholarly literature remains relatively underdeveloped in identifying which approaches to facilitation are useful in achieving certain deliberative goals. This article compares facilitation approaches based on their potential to achieve different deliberative goals by examining three cases of deliberative mini-publics on urban transformations in the German city of Magdeburg. All three mini-publics were given the same task but were implemented using a particular approach to facilitation: (1) self-organized; (2) a multi-method approach; and (3) dynamic facilitation. We analyzed video recordings and surveys conducted among participants and found that differences in facilitation influence the process of deliberation in numerous ways. While deliberation can happen without a facilitator, certain deliberative goals can be better achieved when the process is professionally facilitated. More stringent or involved facilitation, however, may not serve every purpose of deliberation equally. There are trade-offs when designing, convening, or facilitating deliberative processes, and no approach fits all mini-publics. We conclude the article by identifying the implications of our findings for the scholarship and practice of citizen deliberation in structured forums and beyond.

Description: At their core, the UN Climate Change conferences known as “COPs” are the primary international venue for negotiating how countries should act and cooperate to avoid dangerous climate change. The 2015 Paris Agreement is its most recent notable success. Although the climate negotiations are a state government-led process, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) community has increasingly recognized the need for dialogue and engagement with non-governmental stakeholders in acknowledgement of the critical role they will play in mobilizing and implementing climate change solutions. Non-governmental stakeholders include science, civil society, the private sector, and local communities. Such non-governmental stakeholders also attend the COP in large numbers, where they aspire to influence the negotiations, make their voices heard, and generally contribute to advancing climate action. Indeed, the COP has tremendous convening power, annually bringing together tens of thousands of people working on diverse aspects of climate policy, science, and advocacy in one place at the same time. Despite this enormous collective potential, a communication culture has developed that relies heavily on conventional presentation and panel formats that are not conducive to mutual engagement and learning. We therefore see a need to reinvigorate the COPs through new formats of dialogue that can better foster collaboration and co-creation of climate change solutions. Against this backdrop we make the following three recommendations to foster reflection, dialogue, and collaboration among diverse actors at the UN Climate Change conferences, focusing on the interactions that take place outside the formal negotiations. These recommendations are intended to be actionable by different types of meeting hosts at the COP, including observers, Party delegates, the UNFCCC Secretariat and the COP presidency.

Description: The international UN Climate Change conferences known as “Conferences of the Parties (COPs)” have an enormous convening power and are attended annually by tens of thousands of actors working on climate change topics from a wide range of perspectives. In the COP spaces outside of the formal negotiations, the communication culture is dominated by “side events,” a format that relies heavily on conventional presentations and panels that can be informative, but is generally not conducive to mutual engagement, reflection, or dialogue. There is an urgent need for new dialogue formats that can better foster learning and community-building and thereby harness the enormous latent potential for climate action represented by the diverse stakeholders that gather at the COP. Against this backdrop, and drawing on our experience with the development and implementation of the Co-Creative Reflection and Dialogue Spaces at COP25, COP26, and COP27, we make recommendations for further developing the communication culture of the COPs. At the level of individual sessions, we provide recommendations for designing participatory dialogues that can better support reflection, interconnection, and action orientation. In addition, we offer guidance for scaling up these practices, for instance through networks and communities of practice to support a shift of the overall communication culture of the COPs. Our recommendations focus on interactions and exchanges that unfold outside of the formal negotiation sessions, with a view toward enabling and accelerating transformative action by non-state actors.

Description: Starting from the discussion of the concepts of formality and informality, the paper first examines and analyzes empirical findings from a survey of German and Polish political advisors, lobbyists and experts on their perceptions of the access channels to politics and of politics to experts in Germany and Poland. Which access channels are chosen and why, how open are they, and what imbalances exist in access to experts and experts’ access to politics? A second section looks at the degree of formalization of advisory processes and access channels in both countries. In a third section, the focus is on interpretations of perceptions of access channels and degree of formalization and their implications for policy advice in Germany and Poland. The Polish sub-study finds a considerable gap between the perceptions of policy experts and lobbyists. While the former group enjoys a relatively high reputation in Poland, the reputation of lobbyists is much worse. In the German sample, the sharpness of the distinction between the reputation of lobbyists/interest representatives on the one hand and expert advisers on the other is less visible than in the Polish survey. The chapter concludes that political expert cultures in Poland and Germany are not congruent with regard to the perception of access channels and the play with formality and informality, but nevertheless show fundamental similarities – above all the fundamentally positive assessment of access channels to expertise. But below some very general similarities, the different perceptions of expert cultures begin to emerge. In both countries, a technocratic culture of expert advice is held in high esteem, but in Germany the assessment of interest-driven expert advice is perceived less negative than in Poland.

Description: Wychodząc od omówienia pojęć formalności i nieformalności, w artykule najpierw analizowane są wyniki badania przeprowadzonego wśród niemieckich i polskich doradców politycznych, lobbystów i ekspertów w zakresie postrzegania kanałów ich dostępu do polityki oraz polityków do ekspertyzy w Niemczech i Polsce. Jakie kanały dostępu są wybierane i dlaczego, jak bardzo są one otwarte i jakie nierówności istnieją w dostępie polityków do ekspertów i ekspertów do polityki? Druga część tekstu poświęcona jest analizie stopnia sformalizowania procesów doradczych i kanałów dostępu w obu krajach. W trzeciej części skupiono się na interpretacji postrzegania kanałów dostępu i stopnia formalizacji oraz ich implikacji dla doradztwa politycznego w Niemczech i w Polsce. W polskim badaniu cząstkowym stwierdzono znaczny rozdźwięk między percepcją ekspertów ds. polityki a lobbystów. Podczas gdy ta pierwsza grupa cieszy się w Polsce stosunkowo wysoką reputacją, opinia o lobbystach jest znacznie gorsza. W próbie niemieckiej ostrość rozróżnienia między reputacją lobbystów/przedstawicieli grup interesu, z jednej strony, a doradców-ekspertów, z drugiej, jest mniej widoczna niż w badaniu polskim. Rozdział kończy się wnioskiem, że polityczne kultury eksperckie w Polsce i w Niemczech nie są zbieżne pod względem postrzegania kanałów dostępu oraz gry z formalnością i nieformalnością, niemniej jednak wykazują fundamentalne podobieństwa – przede wszystkim zasadniczo pozytywną ocenę kanałów dostępu do wiedzy eksperckiej. Jednak mimo pewnych bardzo ogólnych podobieństw zarysowuje się też odmienność w postrzeganiu kultur eksperckich. W obu krajach technokratyczna kultura ekspercka jest ceniona wysoko, ale w Niemczech ocena doradztwa powiązanego z reprezentacją interesów jest postrzegana jako mniej negatywna niż w Polsce.

Description: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.” This quote by Albert Einstein highlights our need for new formats of communication to address the knowledge-action gap regarding climate change and other sustainability challenges. This includes reflection, and communication spaces, as well as methods and approaches that can catalyze the emergence of transformative change and action. In this article we present and reflect on experiments we carried out at international climate negotiations and conferences.

Description: Calls for more bicycle use have been heard from across the political spectrum in Germany for years. Nonetheless, policies that lead to a transition away from car use and toward the bicycle in urban mobility remain absent. Against this background, we explore a mode of citizen engagement in the policy process in which citizens take the initiative and claim a political space to include their user expertise in the policy process. The case is a recent development in the field of urban mobility in Berlin, Germany in which citizen activists directly integrated citizen knowledge into policy outcomes. This was enabled by claiming the political space and thereby determining the spectrum of possibility, ultimately leading to an unprecedented process of co-creative legislation that marked a unique shift in German mobility policy, with the result that Berlin became the first German state to pass a bicycle law in June of 2018. We argue that the political space these citizens claimed was a key factor for enabling policy change, as previous attempts in invited political spaces had not led to a departure from the status quo. In a first empirical step, we establish evidence of citizen knowledge in policy output by comparing the citizen-authored bill with the 2018 Mobility Law. In the second empirical step based on 13 semi-structured interviews with the citizens responsible for the law, we offer a closer look at the type of knowledge relevant for enabling direct integration of user knowledge into policy output. We end with a discussion on the broader importance of the interplay of citizen knowledge for their impact on transformative policymaking.

Description: The market of political consulting and lobbying from the perspective of Polish and German parliamentarians. The number of forms, contexts and actors of policy advice and lobbying has grown over the years to such an extent that the problem of diffuse boundaries between these processes, and of capturing the specificity of the market that they form, gains in both theoretical and practical importance. This study is based on interviews with members of parliament: the Polish Sejm and the German Bundestag and concentrates on the question about how the market for political advice and lobbying is perceived by the very addressees. The comparative perspective is multi-layered and includes the cognitive, affective and normative dimensions. The image that emerges as a result offers a starting point for a discussion on the role of decision makers (who not only take part in the processes of our concern but also co-shape their regulatory framework) and on the features of a mature market of policy advice and lobbying, including mechanisms that favorably affect it.