Dr. Louis Meuleman gave public lecture on Metagovernance in practice: Sustainable development and greening the economy

Dr. Louis Meuleman gave a public lecture on Metagovernance in practice: Sustainable development and greening the economy on 4th February 2015.

Abstract: The transition to sustainable societies is a huge governance challenge. It is important to note that there will not be one approach that works everywhere: successful governance must be linked to existing values and traditions. The concept of metagovernance offers an approach to develop situationally suitable combinations of hierarchical, network and market governance. This will, among others, be illustrated by how metagovernance is currently being used as a management tool for greening the EU’s economic governance.

Presenter: Dr. Louis Meuleman has an MsC in environmental biology and a PhD in public administration. He has more than 30 years of public-sector experience. As an academic he publishes about meta- and transgovernance, especially in the context of sustainable development. He was (2010-2011) Project director of the TransGov project of the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam, Germany, director of the Netherlands Advisory Council for Research on Nature, Environment and Spatial Planning (RMNO)(2002-2009), and head of unit and project director at the Netherlands Ministry for Housing, Spatial Planning and the Environment (1991-2001). He is currently a seconded national expert at the European Commission, DG Environment, coordinating the greening of the EU’s economic governance (the ‘European Semester’). Louis' PhD thesis (2008) focused on metagovernance: how to create and manage situationally successful combinations of hierarchical, network and market styles of governance. He concludes that it is not one style, but the optimal governance mixture that works in practice, and that what works where depends among others on national/regional/local cultures and traditions.