For the last 17 years, I have worked in senior policy advice roles in central and local government. The hardest challenges I have faced in public life have not concerned technical problems of policy analysis. They have all involved working with people who want and value different things.

At the time of this writing, the COVID-19 pandemic is in full force with over four million confirmed cases and nearly 300,000 deaths worldwide. Grounded flights, shuttered schools, and medical supply shortages are just a few illustrations of the extensive shocks caused by this mighty, microscopic threat. This global coronavirus outbreak upended life as we know it. For many in the United States, the pandemic came as a surprise. Yet, public health experts warned of the potential for a viral outbreak with wide-reaching and lethal consequences. Those professionals urged learning from the past, including learning about the importance of collaboration to solve problems where coordinated action is essential and the cost of failure is enormous.

The development of the public sector over the last couple of decades is often described in terms of a more or less linear shift from traditional public administration, via New Public Management, towards New Public Governance. Increasingly, governance scholars question this view and point to the emergence of hybrid governance arrangements, due to the mix of institutional logics (Billis, 2010; Karré, 2011; Koppenjan, 2012; Skelcher and Smith, 2014). In dealing with the complexities of current societal problems and the high demand imposed upon the delivery of public services, governments increasingly combine various governance modes, seeking to combine their strengths.

The V4 countries [1], after almost 30 years of, in many respects, spectacular reforms in the field of democratization of governance systems and building market economies, now display a definite preference for governments with populist leanings; the predilection affects the region’s countries with varying intensity (the trend is particularly evident in Hungary and Poland). Likewise, the concept of illiberal democracy is gaining popularity among some of the ruling elites as well as enjoying the support of a considerable proportion of society. As a consequence, changes in the institutional arrangements underpinning governance mechanisms are becoming more and more evident.

Intermediaries can play an important role in facilitating complex forms of collaboration. For example, they may assist cross-sector partnerships in which businesses, governments, and civil-society organizations jointly address a pressing societal challenge, such as climate change, social exclusion, or an epidemic. Rather than representing a specific sector’s interests and taking on a regular partner’s decision making and implementation role, the role of the intermediary is to facilitate the collaboration process and nurture the collaborative relationships. In this respect, prior literature helps explain how and under which conditions such intermediaries strengthen cross-sector collaboration. For example, by connecting disconnected partners, they may help enlarge the collaboration’s scope. Moreover, by using incentives that motivate cooperative behavior, and by mediating between the partners’ diverse opinions and worldviews, they may help coordinate the partners’ interactions and enhance the quality of the partners’ relationships.

This article discusses how leadership training can contribute to systemic change in public administration. It discusses the nature of leadership development designed to accelerate systemic change in public leadership and to enhance capabilities for dealing with complex societal issues. It underlines the interconnectedness of public policy domains and proposes seeing the administrative system as a living and open system of activities. This article presents a case example of a long-term leadership training program in Finland, implemented during 2016-2018.

Presentation of the report drawn up in the framework of the ESADE-PwC Observatory for the Transformation of the Public Sector.

The Committee, chaired by EsadeGov Professor Àngel Castiñeira, is made up of experts in the field of public ethics and integrity and representatives of various administrations, universities, organizations and social stakeholders of Catalonia.

The EsadeGov PARTNERS Program presented this ten-point proposal, drawn up in collaboration with the EsadeGov Institute for Healthcare Management, within the framework of the 10^th anniversary of the Observatory of Public-Private Cooperation in Health and Social Policies, spearheaded in conjunction with La Unió.

The Observatory, spearheaded by the EsadeGov PARTNERS Program and La Unió, will identify successful cases of public-private partnership that have achieved the expected public policy outcomes in meeting the challenges of COVID-19.

The initiative has been developed to support the health system and all healthcare professionals in the improvement of cancer care management for long-term survivors.

The study, drafted by Manel Peiró, Director of the EsadeGov Institute for Healthcare Management, and Joan Barrubés, Associate Director of the EsadeGov Executive Master in Healthcare Organizations Leadership, addresses, among others, the following questions: How has the COVID-19 health crisis affected the evolution of telemedicine? What regulatory aspects hinder its adoption today? Are we prepared technologically?

Talk by Mònica Reig, Associate Director of EsadeGov and Director of the PARTNERS Program within the framework of the Cercle de Salut.

The President of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) participated in the closure of the Executive Program in Public Sector Governance run by the ESADE-PwC Observatory for the Transformation of the Public Sector.

In 1959, the British novelist and chemist C.P. Snow sounded the alarm about the dangerous knowledge gap between the humanities and the sciences. A gap that left leaders poorly educated and ill-equipped to solve complex social problems. Snow thought an educated person should be able to describe the second law of thermodynamics with the same ease as the plot of a Shakespeare play. Lately, I have found myself thinking about Snow’s lecture. As a philosopher who has been on the faculty of liberal arts schools and business schools for over 45 years, my concern is the opposite of Snow’s. He worried about people not understanding science and technology. I worry because the humanities are usually absent from business education and research. There has been a growing perception in academia and society that social science research is epistemically superior to the humanities. By epistemically superior, I mean that social science research not only results in a different kind of knowledge but a superior one. Like Snow, I think it is dangerous to favor one area of inquiry over another. We need both.

Article by Valentina Mele, Marc Esteve, Seulki Lee, Germà Bel, Giulia Cappellaro, Nicolai Petrovsky & Sonia M. Ospina.

Article by Averill Campion, Mila Gasco-Hernandez, Slava Mikhaylov & Marc Esteve.

Research post by Rafael Catalá and Óscar Cortés.

Post by Juan Luis Manfredi.

Post by Javier Solana, Angel Saz-Carranza & Enrique Rueda.

Publications in the press and other media.

The country narratives are too rich to summarize in a brief article, and I shall not attempt to do so. However, some themes that emerge are worth sketching out as a road map to the reader. Institutions that provide dependable property rights, manage conflict, maintain law and order, and align economic incentives with social costs and benefits are the foundation of long-term growth. This is the clearest message that comes across from the individual cases considered in my last book In Search of Prosperity: Analytic Narratives on Economic Growth.

I am delighted to present the e-bulletin published by Esade's Center for Public Governance. This newsletter will create a forum for ideas, dissemination, training, and debate with regard to public management.

The Esade Center for Public Governance consists of a group of experts in government and public sector organisations. Created in 1993, the IGDP has served to consolidate the experience already accumulated by Esade since the 1980s when it began its initial endeavours in the public management field. Since then, more than 2,000 public leaders and managers have participated in the numerous activities organised, and the extensive research, books, conferences, scientific articles, case studies and other material published attest to ESADEgov members' academic activity.

PUBLIC's editorial board would like to thank all those whose articles have made this publication possible.