Report 2021
Main Conference Theme
Session Coordinators:
Juraj Nemec, Professor of Public Finance and Management, Masaryk University Brno, Czech Republic and Matej Bel University Banska Bystrica, Slovakia,
Jacob Torfing, Roskilde University, Denmark
Place: 29th NISPAcee Annual Conference, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Date: October 21-23, 2021
Main theme of the conference: "Citizens' Engagement and Empowerment - The Era of Collaborative Innovation in Governance"
The main topic of the conference "Citizens' Engagement and Empowerment - The Era of Collaborative Innovation in Governance" was covered by two key-note speeches during the opening plenary and by the sessions related to this main theme. During the plenary, the "framework” presentation was delivered by Jacob Torfing from Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark on the topic "Collaborative governance for innovation, effectiveness and democracy?” The second key-note presentation with the title "Participatory budgeting in CEE: current trends" focused on one particular form of citizens´ engagement - participatory budgeting - and was presented by Juraj Nemec from Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic.
Four papers were presented during the sessions relating to the main conference theme. Jacob Torfing was so kind to present another framework paper, focusing on how citizens can be engaged to deliver robust answers to turbulent problems. One more paper directly focused on the situation in the COVID-19 era, based on the Lithuanian situation. Two interesting examples of citizen engagement – co-creation and co-production - were also presented. One of them focused on the role of stakeholders in delivering regional development policies in Bulgaria and the second delivered interesting case studies of co-production in the area of electricity supply in Croatia.