Conference Agenda

The growing adoption of free public transport in France contrasts sharply with the sustained opposition of transport experts, who consistently frame it as impossible. While public policy research has examined how solutions gain legitimacy, it has overlooked how impossibility governs the boundaries of political action. This article addresses this gap by conceptualizing impossibility as a governing category, actively fabricated, circulated, and contested by policy actors. Through a processual analysis of the trajectory of free public transport in Montpellier, based on more than 1,000 press articles and 30 interviews, I show how framings of inefficiency, unfeasibility, and inadmissibility are deployed, and how they can be reconfigured through political leadership, instrumental adjustments, and cognitive shifts. By theorizing impossibility as both a delegitimizing mechanism and a structuring force, the article contributes to rethinking the politics of feasibility and the construction of policy boundaries.

While employment rates amongst neurodivergent adults are notoriously low, little is known about their experiences in the workplace, including the public sector. At the same time, the views of colleagues and employers with regards to the inclusion of neurodiverse adults in the workforce are important. Building on a systematic literature review exploring what is known about the experiences of neurodiverse employees, their colleagues, and employers in the workplace, this paper seeks to explore the implications for public sector employment. Issues to be examined include what is known about the incidence of neurodiversity in government, and what the implications are for how information is processed and decisions reached within public sector organisations. Key facilitators and barriers for neurodiverse bureacurats are also considered, adopting employee, managerial, and organizational perspectives.

In an era marked by an increasingly complex global environment, public sector organizations struggle to keep up with developments such as the proliferation of biometric surveillance and personalized advertising, the emergence of decentralized digital currencies, and the production of lab-grown food. These rapid societal evolutions demand a more adaptive governance framework and a re-evaluation of the role which public sector organizations play in fostering innovation and societal compliance.

This paper examines the dynamic interplay between executive bodies and regulatory agencies in three sectors - data protection, finance, and food safety, across four countries – Belgium, Germany, Spain and Switzerland. Executive bodies or ministries are responsible for the development and implementation of regulations, whilst regulatory agencies oversee and enforce compliance with the regulations. Together, these actors determine how regulations are formed, supervised, and enforced.

Little is known about what shapes these actors' perceptions of regulation and regulatory enforcement, specifically why they might view both as either excessively strict or lenient. This paper investigates the drivers behind these perceptions, focusing on how individual perceptions, organizational characteristics, and political and sectoral pressures interact to shape their views on the strictness of regulation and enforcement. Therefore, this study provides valuable insights for policymakers and practitioners, potentially informing the development of more effective and adaptive regulation, enforcement and governance.

Employing a data triangulation methodology, we combine survey data at the individual and sectoral levels with coded qualitative data from regulations and policy documents. The data will be analyzed through multivariate multi-level regression analysis, examining how perceptions of regulation and perceptions of enforcement are formed.