Smart Hybridity

In our current society, governments face complex societal issues that cannot be tackled through traditional governance arrangements. Therefore, governments increasingly come up with smart hybrid arrangements that transcend the boundaries of policy domains and jurisdictions, combine governance mechanisms (state, market, networks and self-governance), and foster new forms of collaboration. This book provides an overview of what smart hybridity entails and of its potentials and challenges. It includes empirical analyses of hybrid arrangements in five policy domains, and reflections upon these studies by internationally renowned governance scholars. They show that the smartness of the new hybrid arrangements does not lie in realizing quick fixes, but in participants’ capacities to learn, adapt and arrive at sustainable and legitimate solutions that balance various public values.