Politics and administration

Academia meets politics

In June 2019, the Swiss Governance Forum at the University of Bern was dedicated to the topic «Governance in Switzerland». Former members of the Federal Council and academics discussed how Switzerland is governed.

Good governance is about more than just management and enforcement. The legitimation of good governance is something like a cocktail of all kinds of ingredients: trust, influence, positional power, effectiveness, communication and also legality. While over the last 25 years the concepts of New Public Management and Public Corporate Governance have led to major reforms of both administrations and public enterprises, the actual mechanics of governance have hardly been researched to date.

How well is Switzerland governed?

The third Swiss Governance Forum, which is held by the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern, therefore dealt with questions on the subject "Governance in Switzerland", examining them from a multidisciplinary point of view. What exactly does "governance" mean? How well is Switzerland governed today in comparison to other countries? What are future challenges likely to be? What makes a good government official? The forum offered new impulses for the theories of governance in Switzerland by not only limiting the examination to theoretical reflection, but also by including practical illustration. Former councilors gave their views on the academic theses. Adrian Vatter, Director of the Institute of Political Science at the University of Bern and Professor of Swiss Politics, held the keynote speech.

Swiss Governance Forum exchange platform

The Swiss Governance Forum was held for the first time at the University of Bern in June 2017. Every year it offers representatives from politics, business, academia and society an exchange platform to examine and question the opportunities and risks of established concepts from different perspectives. The exchange between academia and practice promotes the transfer of knowledge and a mutual learning effect. In a broader sense, the Swiss Governance Forum is concerned with public administration and politics. It offers anyone interested the opportunity to find out more about governance in Switzerland as well as its challenges and developments.