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This paper examines how learning has been treated, generally, in policy network theories and what questions have been posed, and answered, about this phenomenon to date. We examine to what extent network characteristics and especially the presence of various types of brokers impede or facilitate policy learning. Next, a case study of the policy network surrounding the sustainability of palm oil biodiesel in Indonesia over the past two decades is presented using social network analysis. This case study focuses on sustainability-oriented policy learning in the Indonesian biodiesel governance network and illustrates how network features and especially forms of brokerage influence learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that governance network theory (GNT) has developed into a fully ledged theory that has gained prominence within public administration. The emergence of New Public Governance opens up new challenges, however , and instead of governance networks and network governance replacing the traditional public administration model and New Public Management, hybrid practices will emerge. Addressing this topic, and other new challenges, will require GNT to further develop, and perhaps even reinvent itself. This is not without risks. If GNT evolves into a theory of everything, it will lose its explanatory power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has seen a number of serious infrastructure construction accidents in recent years. The focus of this paper will be on urban rail. Much has been written about the technical and circumstantial causes for these accidents, but relatively little about the organizational framework and contractual arrangements which constitute the context within which safety measures fail to be monitored and enforced effectively during such construction projects. This article aims to show how existing contractual incentives provide incentives for various involved parties which lead them to make decisions where safety is sacrificed to the benefit of other values. By regarding the contractual arrangements as the outcome of a power game between principal, agents and sub-agents, the social mechanisms that evoke strategic behavior among key players are proposed to explain the context in which operational choices are made. The case of the Hangzhou subway construction disaster, which has been the most dramatic instance in China to date, is used to illustrate the mechanisms we propose in our theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Public transport projects, like its operations, most often have a substantial dependence on public funding. The rationale behind the public contribution is that governments on different levels want to secure certain public values by supporting public transport, e.g., mobility, accessibility, sustainability, social inclusion. These are all public values that public transport, projects and operations are expected to support. Evaluations show that the outcomes of the projects are often different than expected. The goal of the research described here was to understand what happens to the public values during the process of project realisation. Four Dutch projects were researched: ZuidTangent (a bus rapid transit project near Schiphol); ParkShuttle (a people mover near Rotterdam); Phileas (guided bus rapid transit near Eindhoven); and RandstadRail (a light rail conversion near The Hague). All the projects were initiated with innovation as one of the key elements/values. Moving away from the traditional ante-post analysis, we saw patterns in the way in which public values shift during the project. First, the projects under study show how too much focus on innovation can harm the project. Second, we see crowding out of values; high ambitions of key values during the early phases of the project lead to neglect of values which were not key to the project. Third, although more innovation was a key reason to introduce competition in the governance of Dutch public transport, it became apparent that introducing competition has complicated execution of these innovative projects significantly. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Transitions, or socio-technological transformations, towards sustainability can be considered as a long-term transformation at the level of society as a whole, which in turn consists of a sequence of short-term innovations. The direction and speed of transitions are largely determined by the collective innovation decisions of various actors. A crucial characteristic of transitions is that they involve many uncertainties. The uncertainties that actors perceive greatly influence their innovation decisions. Namely, perceived uncertainties might stimulate some actors to fulfill certain key activities that are crucial for achieving a transition, while blocking other actors from undertaking these activities. In order to understand and manage transitions, insight into the types of perceived uncertainties that dominate the innovation decisions is essential. Furthermore, we need to understand if perceived uncertainties block or stimulate transitions by analyzing how actors respond to perceived uncertainties. This article focuses on the first transition phase: the pre-development phase. An interesting case to study the role of uncertainties in this phase is the introduction of micro-CHP in the Netherlands. The main questions of this article are: Which types of perceived uncertainties are dominant for the innovation decisions related to micro-CHP in the Netherlands? How do actors react to the perceived uncertainties? The case results demonstrate that different types of uncertainties influence the innovation decisions of the involved actors. The most dominant sources of uncertainty are technological and political uncertainty. Furthermore, the case shows that responses to uncertainty vary largely between various types of actors. Perceived uncertainties seem to block some actors, but induce other actors in fulfilling key activities that are essential for achieving a transition. We discuss how these insights can be used for improving policy for stimulating transitions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]