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In this paper we present a Multimodal Echoborg interface to explore the effect of different embodiments of an Embodied Conversational Agent (ECA) in an interaction. We compared an interaction where the ECA was embodied as a virtual human (VH) with one where it was embodied as an Echoborg, i.e, a person whose actions are covertly controlled by a dialogue system. The Echoborg in our study not only shadowed the speech output of the dialogue system but also its non-verbal actions. The interactions were structured as a debate between three participants on an ethical dilemma. First, we collected a corpus of debate sessions with three humans debaters. This we used as baseline to design and implement our ECAs. For the experiment, we designed two debate conditions. In one the participant interacted with two ECAs both embodied by virtual humans). In the other the participant interacted with one ECA embodied by a VH and the other by an Echoborg. Our results show that a human embodiment of the ECA overall scores better on perceived social attributes of the ECA. In many other respects the Echoborg scores as poorly as the VH except copresence.

This article engages with critiques of multilevel governance (MLG) perspectives on asylum governance andidentifies two additional points of concern. First, it highlights the importance of empirically groundingreflections on the limits of the MLG approach, beyond the activism of city actors, by examining localasylum dynamics from the vantage point of mayors inrural and small urbanmunicipalities. It examineshow Dutch mayors in rural and small urban municipalities in the Dutch province of Zeeland experiencedand framed asylum governance in a multilevel setting between 2015 and 2016. Second, this articlebrings into focus internal dynamics, interactions between mayors and municipal actors within themunicipality, alongside external interactions and pre-existing local and regional challenges, such as ruralcrisis. It argues that even in the context of cooperative modes of governance, mayors navigate variouschallenges. In terms of framing, this article shows how mayors in this multilevel context commonlyframed municipal involvement in asylum governance as a duty rather than as a burden or benefittotheir localities. It argues that this framing reflects a local‘politics of consensus’rather than‘localpragmatism’

People seem to hold the human driver to be primarily responsible when their partially automated vehicle crashes, yet is this reasonable? While the driver is often required to immediately take over from the automation when it fails, placing such high expectations on the driver to remain vigilant in partially automated driving is unreasonable. Drivers show difficulties in taking over control when needed immediately, potentially resulting in dangerous situations. From a normative perspective, it would be reasonable to consider the impact of automation on the driver’s ability to take over control when attributing responsibility for a crash. We, therefore, analyzed whether the public indeed considers driver ability when attributing responsibility to the driver, the vehicle, and its manufacturer. Participants blamed the driver primarily, even though they recognized the driver’s decreased ability to avoid the crash. These results portend undesirable situations in which users of partially driving automation are the ones held responsible, which may be unreasonable due to the detrimental impact of driving automation on human drivers. Lastly, the outcome signals that public awareness of such human-factors issues with automated driving should be improved.

The transition literature attributes various transition tasks to government to support socio-technical transitions toward overcoming societal challenges. It is, however, difficult for civil servants to execute these transition tasks, because they partly conflict with Public Administration (PA) traditions that provide legitimacy to their work. This dilemma is discussed in neither the transition literature nor the PA literature. In this paper, we ask civil servants about the normative arguments that reflect their role perception within the institutional structures of their ministry, when it comes to executing transition tasks. We see these situated and enacted normative arguments and underlying assumptions as implicit rules determining legitimacy. The arguments civil servants used confirm that transition tasks are currently difficult to execute within the civil service. We found seven institutionalized rules that explain this difficulty and highlight the inadequacy of civil servants to adhere to the PA traditions while trying to execute transition tasks.

This study focuses on an important yet often neglected topic in public personnel competency studies: competencies required for digital government. It addresses the question: Which competencies do civil servants need for data-driven decision-making (DDDM) in local governments? Empirical data are obtained through a combination of 12 expert interviews and 22 Behavioral Event Interviews. Our analysis shows that DDDM as observed in this study is a hybrid process that contains elements of both “traditional” and “data-driven” decision-making. We identified eight competencies that are required in this process: data literacy, critical thinking, teamwork, domain expertise, data analytical skills, engaging stakeholders, innovativeness, and political astuteness. These competencies are also hybrid: a combination of more “traditional” (e.g., political astuteness) and more “innovative” (e.g., data literacy) competencies. We conclude that local governments need to invest resources in developing or selecting these competencies among their employees, to exploit the possibilities data offers in a responsible way.

Changing a specific health behaviour can be highly com- plex and is often influenced by many personal, social, and environmental factors. Therefore, interventions that aim at behaviour change cannot be one-size-fits-all solutions, and no behaviour change technique is effective for everyone. One potential solution could be to support individuals in finding interventions through self-experimentation. This research explored the requirements for an explorative self- experimentation intervention and developed tools that sup- port users in the process, complementing developments in quantitative self-experimentation. Based on a research through design approach, we developed three different prototypes for supporting a change in health-related behaviour, which were used and evaluated by fourteen par- ticipants over a four-week period. A thematic analysis of interviews with participants led to seven themes, which can be used as a starting point when designing for explorative self-experimentation.

Public innovation is distinctive from private sector innovation by being set in a political system rather than a market. The roles of citizens and elected politicians as well as public servants and other stakeholders are frequently relevant. Public organizations can be creators, funders, orchestrators or sense-makers of innovations, which are carried out with the aim of benefitting society. This book provides a comprehensive insight into the theory and practice of public innovation using a wide range of research evidence about the processes, drivers and barriers, stakeholders and outcomes of innovation. Using the lens of public value, the book offers a stimulating discussion of how public innovation is valued and contested in current societies. Valuing Public Innovation aims to help develop a deeper understanding of innovation and how to use that knowledge in practical ways. This is essential reading for academics and students in the fields of innovation, organisation studies, public administration and public policy, as well as for policymakers and practitioners.

Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, and underline common aspirations, or to protect vested (private) interests. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book.An international line-up of contributors with long-term engagement in this field shed light on these politics in cities on four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theoreticalisation perspectives. They analyse the ‘city society’, the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today’s globalised and often deeply unequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the ‘right to the city’. Most importantly, the chapters highlight the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or – in times of COVID – health care.Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, and at times also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban.

Algorithmic decision-making in government has emerged rapidly in recent years, leading to a surge in attention for this topic by scholars from various fields, including public administration. Recent studies provide crucial yet fragmented insights on how the use of algorithms to support or fully automate decisions is transforming government. This article ties together these insights by applying the theoretical lenses of government legitimacy and institutional design. We identify how algorithmic decision-making challenges three types of legitimacy—input, throughput, and output—and identify institutional arrangements that can mitigate these threats. We argue that there is no silver bullet to maintain legitimacy of algorithmic government and that a multiplicity of different institutional mechanisms is required, ranging from legal structures and civic participation to closer monitoring of algorithmic systems. We conclude with a framework to guide future research to better understand the implications of institutional design for the legitimacy of algorithmic government.

In many regions around the world, the governance of migration increasingly involves local authorities and actors. This edited volume introduces theoretical contributions that, departing from the 'local turn' in migration studies, highlight the distinct role that legal processes, debates, and instruments play in driving this development. Drawing on historical and contemporary case studies, it demonstrates how paying closer analytical attention to legal questions reveals the inherent tensions and contradictions of migration governance. By investigating socio-legal phenomena such as sanctuary jurisdictions, it further explores how the law structures ongoing processes of (re)scaling in this domain. Beyond offering conceptual and empirical discussions of local migration governance, this volume also directly confronts the pressing normative questions that follow from the growing involvement of local authorities and actors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Previous research shows that eating together (i.e., commensality) impacts food choice, time spent eating, and enjoyment. Conversely, eating alone is considered a possible cause of unhappiness. In this paper, we conceptually explore how interactive technology might allow for the creation of artificial commensal companions: embodied agents providing company to humans during meals (e.g., a person living in isolation due to health reasons). We operationalize this with the design of our commensal companion: a system based on the MyKeepon robot, paired with a Kinect sensor, able to track the human commensal's activity (i.e., food picking and intake) and able to perform predefined nonverbal behavior in response. In this preliminary study with 10 participants, we investigate whether this autonomous social robot-based system can positively establish an interaction that humans perceive and whether it can influence their food choices. In this study, the participants are asked to taste some chocolates with and without the presence of an artificial commensal companion. The participants are made to believe that the study targets the food experience, whilst the presence of a robot is accidental. Next, we analyze their food choices and feedback regarding the role and social presence of the artificial commensal during the task performance. We conclude the paper by discussing the lessons we learned about the first interactions we observed between a human and a social robot in a commensality setting and by proposing future steps and more complex applications for this novel kind of technology.

The current scientific debate on algorithms in the public sector is dominated by a focus on technology rather than organizational patterns. This paper extends our understanding of these patterns by studying the algorithmization of bureaucratic organizations, which is the process in which an organization rearranges its working routines around the use of algorithms. To explore the algorithmization of bureaucratic organizations, we conducted a comparative empirical analysis of predictive policing in Berlin (Germany) and Amsterdam (Netherlands) through in-depth qualitative research. Our study identified two emergent patterns: the ‘algorithmic cage' (Berlin, more hierarchical control) and the ‘algorithmic colleague' (Amsterdam, room for professional judgment). These patterns result from administrative cultures and reinforce existing patterns of organization. The study highlights that two patterns of algorithmization of government bureaucracy can be identified and that these patterns depend on dominant social norms and interpretations rather than the technological features of algorithmic systems.

Collaborative governance is popular among practitioners and scholars, but getting a grip on the performance of collaborations remains a challenge. Recent research has made progress by identifying appropriate performance measures, yet managing performance also requires appropriate performance routines. This article brings together insights from collaborative governance and performance management to conceptualize collaborative performance regimes; the collection of routines used by actors working together on a societal issue to explicate their goals, exchange performance information, examine progress, and explore performance improvement actions. The concept of regimes is made concrete by focusing on the specific routine of organizing a collaborative performance summit; a periodic gathering where partners review their joint performance. Such summits are both manifestations of the performance regime and potential turning points for regime change. Using three local public health collaborations as illustration, this article offers a framework for understanding collaborative performance regimes, summits, and the dynamics between them.

The refugee crisis of 2015-2016 prompted European governments to quickly institute new asylum seeker centres. Often however, plans for opening new reception centres are met with protest in surrounding localities. Gaining public support for new ASCs has become a pressing governance issue facing local governments. This research looks at whether a policy strategy of ‘giving back’ to the neighbourhood rather than ‘giving in’ to the demands of protesters can minimise local opposition and alleviate negative attitudes . A door-to-door survey of N = 511 neighbourhood residents is combined with semi-structured interview data of N = 31 neighbourhood residents. We find that attitudes were already neutral to fairly positive shortly after the centre opened and fears of nuisance and crime did not materialise. Those who became involved in the ASCs’ courses and activities are a small and selective group who were already fairly accepting of the centre. Contact between asylum seekers and neighbours developing within and beyond the ASC was valued but did not develop into stronger ties due to frequent moves of asylum seekers and early closure of the ASC.

In this programmatic essay, we argue that public governance scholarship would benefit from developing a self-conscious and cohesive strand of “positive” scholarship, akin to social science subfields like positive psychology, positive organizational studies, and positive evaluation. We call for a program of research devoted to uncovering the factors and mechanisms that enable high performing public policies and public service delivery mechanisms; procedurally and distributively fair processes of tackling societal conflicts; and robust and resilient ways of coping with threats and risks. The core question driving positive public administration scholarship should be: Why is it that particular public policies, programs, organizations, networks, or partnerships manage do much better than others to produce widely valued societal outcomes, and how might knowledge of this be used to advance institutional learning from positives?

In a collaboration between TU Delft and Utrecht University, the authors recently wrote a qualitative study on the gap between regulatory (ethical and legal) frameworks and the daily practices of data professionals. This People of Data highlights the importance of collaboration in the success of interdisciplinary research and the responsibility of data scientists in safeguarding the public and ethical values.

Governments wield awesome powers, but what do those at the very top of governments actually do? In this dissertation, Erik-Jan van Dorp studies senior civil servants up-close and personal. Based on rare direct observations, elite interviews, as well as quantitative data, he illustrates the inner workings of Dutch government through the beliefs and practices of civil servants. He observed them at work: advising ministers, managing, juggling the important and the urgent. Drawing on the literature of managerial work, craftsmanship and politicisation, this study conceptualises the work of senior civil servants as craftwork. The book presents analyses of what makes senior civil servants rise to the top. It then reveals what they do when they get there, and how they do it. Gripping qualitative case studies, situated in the prime minister’s office, provide in-depth knowledge of how senior civil servants deal with the politicians and politics in the 21st century. Moreover, having observed senior civil servants for hundreds of hours, Van Dorp brings to life the everyday practice that is senior civil servants’ craftwork: serving and shaping, taming chaos, and performing visibly backstage. These findings are powerful and practical, both for academics, students, and practitioners.

Serving as an introduction to the volume, this chapter begins by setting out some of the recent dynamics in migration governance, including devolution, recentralization and the increasingly proactive stance taken by local authorities in this domain. This, in turn, brought about a “local turn” in migration scholarship. Although generally transdisciplinary and integrative of various methodologies including quantitative, historical, and ethnographic studies, scholarship on the “local turn” has failed to consider legal perspectives where it rescales analyses of migrant reception and inclusion away from the state. This chapter interrogates the relegation of the law to mere context or epiphenomenon and discusses the analytical implications of this curious demotion of a central dimension of governance. In the second instance, this contribution introduces the three themes of this volume as potential launchpads for the further theorization of migration governance based on analyses of legal debates, processes and principles. For this purpose, it offers a brief account of the already existing relevant literature that can inform empirical, conceptual and normative engagements with law as migration governance. The overview of the three themes is, in each case, complemented by a short description of the contribution that the various chapters make to their discussion.

This article focuses on understanding the dynamics of citizen participation in smart city initiatives. The literature identifies citizens as key actors, however, our understanding of their roles and influence is underdeveloped. Using modes of urban governance to provide contextual depth, alongside the literature on citizen participation in smart cities, this article conducts an in-depth examination of the roles of citizens. The results of an empirical study of citizen engagement in smart city governance in Brazil, the UK and the Netherlands demonstrate that the roles and functions undertaken by citizens are not static, they participate in a dynamic mode that evolves and changes over time. Also, identifies three emerging patterns of contextually specific citizen interaction: contestation, acceptance and collaboration. This highlights how smart city initiatives have differentiated outcomes and how the mode of governance in a societal and institutional context plays an important role in shaping patterns of citizen participation.

Collaborative governance arrangements are frequently criticized for achieving collaboration at the expense of legitimacy and accountability. We explore the conditions under which legitimacy and accountability can occur in collaborative governance, ultimately aiming to discover whether collaborative arrangements can ‘have it all’, simultaneously being both legitimate and accountable. We leverage the Collaborative Governance Case Database to analyse a diversity of cases, employing a rich, qualitative comparative analysis. We find that legitimacy and accountability do co-exist in some cases and identify competing sets of conditions for this concurrence. Based on this exploration, we formulate propositions for future research.

There is increasing criticism on the use of big data and algorithms in public governance. Studies revealed that algorithms may reinforce existing biases and defy scrutiny by public officials using them and citizens subject to algorithmic decisions and services. In response, scholars have called for more algorithmic transparency and regulation. These are useful, but ex post solutions in which the development of algorithms remains a rather autonomous process. This paper argues that co-design of algorithms with relevant stakeholders from government and society is another means to achieve responsible and accountable algorithms that is largely overlooked in the literature. We present a case study of the development of an algorithmic tool to estimate the populations of refugee camps to manage the delivery of emergency supplies. This case study demonstrates how in different stages of development of the tool—data selection and pre-processing, training of the algorithm and post-processing and adoption—inclusion of knowledge from the field led to changes to the algorithm. Co-design supported responsibility of the algorithm in the selection of big data sources and in preventing reinforcement of biases. It contributed to accountability of the algorithm by making the estimations transparent and explicable to its users. They were able to use the tool for fitting purposes and used their discretion in the interpretation of the results. It is yet unclear whether this eventually led to better servicing of refugee camps.

IMPACT: The goal of this article is to identify evidence-based building blocks for smart and sensible practices of policy design, public leadership and management, while recognizing that universal templates for success are not the right approach. It is critical that strategies to improve governance show appropriate sensitivity to context. The authors offer an alternative for high-level assessments of institutional qualities of ‘good government’. The article presents a practical toolkit to identify, assess, interpret, compare, and learn from concrete instances of public policy successes, highly successful public organizations, and collaborative, networked governance.

In de ruim vijftien jaar dat decentrale rekenkamers bestaan,is er weinig aandacht besteed aan de onderzoeksmethodendie ze gebruiken. In dit artikel staat centraal hoe deonderzoeksmethoden van decentrale rekenkamers zichhebben ontwikkeld en in hoeverre daarbij gebruik wordtgemaakt van nieuwe technologie. Laatstgenoemdetechnologie is erg veranderd in vijftien jaar, wat nieuwemogelijkheden biedt voor onderzoek, maar ook nieuwevragen oproept. Op basis van een empirische analyse vanrekenkamerrapporten kan worden geconcludeerd datdecentrale rekenkamers een standaardaanpak vandocumenten- en dossieranalyse en interviews hanteren, met(nog) maar beperkte toepassing van innovatieve technologie.Op grond van een theoretische verkenning van de relevanteliteratuur en een eenvoudige kwalitatieve analyse vanonderzoek door de Algemene Rekenkamer en het RathenauInstituut is een raamwerk ontwikkeld, waarin kansen enrisico’s van de toepassing van nieuwe technologie indecentraal rekenkameronderzoek zijn beschreven. Dit kaneen handvat bieden voor toekomstige toepassing. Decentralerekenkamers kunnen dit gebruiken voor (meer) reflectie ophun onderzoeksmethoden en vernieuwing daarin, om zich teontwikkelen tot volwassenheid en tegelijk jong te blijven. Relevantie voor practitioners: (a) decentrale rekenkamershanteren veelal een standaard onderzoeksaanpak vandocumenten- en dossieronderzoek en interviews; (b)decentrale rekenkamers zouden meer gebruik kunnen makenvan de kansen die nieuwe technologie biedt bij hundataverzameling en -analyse, en (c) kansen en risico’s vannieuwe technologie zijn uit te drukken in publieke waarden zoals doeltreffendheid, professionaliteit, rechtmatigheid,doelmatigheid, verantwoording en maatschappelijkerelevantie.

The popularity and use of Bayesian methods have increased across many research domains. The current article demonstrates how some less familiar Bayesian methods can be used. Specifically, we applied expert elicitation, testing for prior-data conflicts, the Bayesian Truth Serum, and testing for replication effects via Bayes Factors in a series of four studies investigating the use of questionable research practices (QRPs). Scientifically fraudulent or unethical research practices have caused quite a stir in academia and beyond. Improving science starts with educating Ph.D. candidates: the scholars of tomorrow. In four studies concerning 765 Ph.D. candidates, we investigate whether Ph.D. candidates can differentiate between ethical and unethical or even fraudulent research practices. We probed the Ph.D.s’ willingness to publish research from such practices and tested whether this is influenced by (un)ethical behavior pressure from supervisors or peers. Furthermore, 36 academic leaders (deans, vice-deans, and heads of research) were interviewed and asked to predict what Ph.D.s would answer for different vignettes. Our study shows, and replicates, that some Ph.D. candidates are willing to publish results deriving from even blatant fraudulent behavior–data fabrication. Additionally, some academic leaders underestimated this behavior, which is alarming. Academic leaders have to keep in mind that Ph.D. candidates can be under more pressure than they realize and might be susceptible to using QRPs. As an inspiring example and to encourage others to make their Bayesian work reproducible, we published data, annotated scripts, and detailed output on the Open Science Framework (OSF).

It is attractive to frame societal challenges such as climate change, terrorism and migration as ‘wicked issues’. Wickedness theory in its various guises has become popular as it connects the uncertain and political nature of issues with hopeful strategies for strengthening networks, trust and learning. In this paper we take a critical approach towards wickedness, advancing three criticisms: (1) the daily experiences of people and their practices are missing from the grand narratives about wickedness, (2) the potential of collaborations and learning to address these problems is romanticized, (3) the implications for managerial and professional perspectives are unclear. We argue that the wickedness literature can be strengthened by further emphasizing situated relations, routines and rituals, adopting the perspective of situated wickedness. This would link insight into grand wickedness to insights into daily ambiguity. We illustrate this argument with two specific cases, (counter)terrorism and forced migration/refugees.

Steeds meer gemeenten hebben hun beleid met betrekking tot de arbeidsintegratie van vluchtelingen aangepast. Kernelementen binnen het gekozen beleid lijken steevast te bestaan uit een vroege activering, het combineren van taal- en beroepstraining en het bieden van maatwerk in de ondersteuning van deze nieuwkomers. In dit artikel is deze beleidsverandering bestudeerd in de gemeenten Utrecht, Rotterdam en Amsterdam. Dan wordt duidelijk dat een succesvolle aanpak meer kans van slagen heeft wanneer statushouders aanvullende en op maat gesneden ondersteuning krijgen aangeboden. Voor alle drie de gemeenten geldt dat men zodoende meer statushouders bereikt en dat er beter kan worden ingespeeld op individuele behoeften en mogelijkheden. Ook is er zo meer aandacht voor duurzame arbeidsparticipatie. Tegelijkertijd wordt zichtbaar dat ook met deze nieuwe koers geen snelle successen worden geboekt. Met name meer kwetsbare statushouders, onder wie degenen met een laag opleidingsniveau en vrouwen, worden niet altijd door gemeenten bereikt. Ook zien we dat veel van deze nieuwkomers langdurig ondersteund moeten worden, ook wanneer ze een plekje op de arbeidsmarkt hebben gevonden. We kunnen vaststellen dat zonder aanvullende maatregelen de kans groot lijkt dat het perspectief op maatschappelijke participatie voor veel statushouders in Nederland uiterst beperkt zal zijn.

The Utrecht Refugee Launchpad was an experiment at city-level to create a more inclusive form of asylum seeker reception. The initiative used co-housing, bringing together young, local tenants with asylum seekers to improve social integration and local relations. This article examines the nature of social contact, and considers the value of relationships developed between asylum seekers and tenants, using qualitative data from interviews and participant observation. Our findings demonstrate the importance of context, as we show that the remote logics of the national asylum system imposed spatial and temporal limitations on the co-housing model to generate ‘adjacent’ and transient living. However, at times –through both accident and design– contact was developed with more ease: when there was an equal ratio, similarities between populations, low numbers (of around 80 people in total), access to shared space, and high commitment to the project’s ‘disposition to friendliness’. While we conclude that relationships proved ephemeral rather than sustained, the initiative nevertheless held promise by enabling asylum seekers brief escapes from landscapes of indifference encountered during reception. Recognising how wider institutional contexts impact on the development of contact however helps innovations like these to achieve a greater potential for transforming relationships and values in urban space.