| Research undertaken under the first edition of Rethinking Politics has shown a wide range of new organizational arrangements in between classical institutions to be emerging along-side traditional (inter-) governmental arrangements in an attempt to deal with these problems. Such arrangements reflect novel forms of problem solving or conflict management and new ways of coordinating and implementing policies. But their often transitory nature and lack of transparency may render them incapable of authoritatively articulating values and interests, adjudicating conflicts and identifying solutions to pressing problems in a way that is compatible with democratic legitimacy. As if these two trends weren t challenging enough, confusion exists concerning the responsibilities and accountability of different (types of) actors, given multiple political identities and the sometimes overlapping, sometimes clashing political arrangements in which they emerge. These various developments, of course, raise difficult questions about what the actual or desirable relations are between different institutional arrangements operating in the same issue area. There is, in short, an urgent need to understand the ongoing shifts in (various) domains of politics in response to (various) contemporary problems. It is the core business of our political science to better understand the re-ordering of the political landscape, the changing manifestations of the political, and to ask which conceptions of democratic governance for just and sustainable societies may fit contemporary socio-political circumstances. This implies the need to investigate changing political identities, (the recognition of) new inequalities and, related to that, new modes of political mobilisation, from government-initiated consultation processes to initiatives that are reflect different modes of bottom-up or personal politics. The Rethinking Politics programme, thus, studies the interaction and confrontation of traditional and new organizational arrangements that entail big changes in the nature and possibilities of politics. Such a conception of politics raises particular theoretical challenges that broadly guide the research program. |
