Governance, Participation & Sustainable Development
The field of activity ‘Governance, Participation and Sustainable Development’ focuses on participatory, cooperative and network forms of societal interaction and decision-making. Problem-oriented, inter- and transdisciplinary research explores structures, processes, contexts and outcomes of governance. Activities contribute to conceptual debates, developing and applying novel methodologies for empirical research with a particular focus on knowledge aggregation and integration through comparative and meta-analytical methods.
Specific areas of research include:
- Effectiveness of public participation in environmental decision-making
- Collective learning and Social Network Analysis
- Environmental / sustainability conflicts: mediation and consensus building
- Complexity and uncertainty aspects of sustainability
- Environmental information: monitoring and assessment
- Global and multi-level governance and institutional scaling
- Public discourse and the role of the media
- Transformation and decay of social-ecological systems
- Water resources management, coastal protection and coastal zone management, brownfield revitalisation and land use planning
Current research projects:
- EDGE - Evaluating the Delivery of Participatory Environmental Governance using an Evidence-Based Research Design
01.04.2011 - 31.03.2016 - GoScaLE - Governance, Participation and the Implications of Scales on Democratic Legitimacy and Effectiveness (Part of the Joint Project WaterScale - Water Governance and Problems of Scale - The Example of Institutionalizing River Basin Management through the EC-Water Framework Directive)
15.07.2010 - 14.07.2013 - ECOPAG – Environmental Consequences of Participatory Governance. A comparative meta-analysis of case studies in environmental decision-making
01.08.2009 - 31.07.2012
Finished research projects are available in the archive section.