Contemporary governance is increasingly shaped by uncertainty, policy complexity, and interdependence among state institutions, international organizations, civil society, private actors, and transnational networks. These transformations raise a fundamental question for political science and public policy: when effective governance increasingly depends on networks that cross institutional and territorial boundaries, how should state capacity and policy capacity be understood and redefined?
This panel examines the relationship between state capacity, policy capacity, and networked governance in an increasingly uncertain global system. It moves beyond the conventional opposition between "state" and "network" by asking whether the capacity of the contemporary state may increasingly depend on its ability to create, coordinate, manage, and mobilize networks rather than solely on resources and capabilities located within formal state institutions.
The panel welcomes theoretical, comparative, and empirical contributions examining how networked forms of governance shape the analytical, operational, and political dimensions of policy capacity. Contributions may explore how policy networks strengthen or substitute for state capacities; how transnational and non-state actors compensate for or exacerbate institutional weaknesses; and how governments maintain coordination, accountability, legitimacy, and policy effectiveness under conditions of complex interdependence.
Particular attention is given to governance challenges associated with migration, humanitarian crises, war and security, climate change, public health, digital transformation, regional cooperation, and other transnational policy problems. The panel also welcomes research on cultural, communicative, and symbolic networks as an underexplored dimension of policy capacity, including their potential roles in policy coordination, legitimacy-building, resource mobilization, public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, and transnational cooperation.
By bringing together perspectives from public policy, comparative politics, international relations, political sociology, and governance studies, the panel seeks to reconsider whether state capacity should remain primarily understood as an internal property of governmental institutions or whether the ability to build, coordinate, and mobilize networks should itself be regarded as a constitutive dimension of state capacity in an uncertain global system.
