Given the scientific and social importance attached to productive interactions between science and policy practices, there is a striking lack of insight into current knowledge practices and the dilemmas they lead to. Our special issue can’t solve this deficiency but it can provide an impetus for opening up current knowledge practices, reflect on the role of science in them and instigate a more systematic exchange of methods. A warning is given for the reification of boundary work and Gabrielle Bammers’ Implementation and Integration Sciences is introduced as framework for the analyses.

This article shows the relevance of Burawoy’s analytical categories on the division of scientific labour to analyse the interactions between science and practice. It argues that social scientists need to combine the roles of expert witness, social engineer and storyteller in order to develop a productive relationship with policy makers. It also emphasises the relevance of a permanent dialogue between social scientists and policy makers. However, the analysis disagrees with Burawoy’s view that knowledge is based on a consensus between scientists and their publics (consensual knowledge). Burawoy underestimates the risk of a politicisation of science inherent to a close relationship with various ‘publics’. The arguments presented in this article are based on the reception of a research project on labour migration from Central and Eastern Europe. This was a hybrid research project in which different actors participated: the Erasmus University, nine Dutch municipalities, the national government and a Dutch knowledge center on urban issues.

The research programme Urban Regions in the Delta (URD) wielded an approach worthy of emulation. Create ‘vital’ project consortia, crosslink the research project with on-going planning and policy making processes, give senior scientists a major role and engage expert process managers. These are four key success factors for knowledge co-creation in the field of area development, according to the programme (Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research; URD, 2010-2014 http://urd.verdus.nl). Within URD scientists and practitioners were cooperating from the very beginning. The scientific insight and innovations generated are considered not very visible in traditional scientific publications, but the knowledge that was developed provides considerable added value to society.

Planning research is increasingly focused on bridging the gap between practice and academia. However, this requires much effort and is not as commonplace as it seems. To ensure success, innovative research approaches, practitioners and academics are required. The experiential learning cycle of Kolb and Fry (1974) offers a research framework for the authors to reflect on their practice-oriented research on Cost Benefit Analysis processes (CBA) and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) respectively. Both research projects are compared using the learning cycle. The cycle was completed in the CBA project but only partially resolved in the TOD project. Reflecting on their experiences with applying the learning cycle, the authors conclude on the possibilities and limitations of this application and offer insight into how the interaction between theory and practice can occur.

In this interview Jeroen Slot (head of Research & Statistics, Municipality of Amsterdam) and Kees van Paridon (former chief science officer, municipality of Rotterdam) share their ideas and reflect on their extensive experience with linking scientific knowledge and local policy making. They discuss the divergence between established institutions and emergent knowledge needs and the problematic entwinement of scientific knowledge and policy development. Conditions are proposed for the design of intermediaries between the academic and governmental sectors.

A transition to a bio based economy requires social and technological innovations. Transition management theory holds that these innovations take place in niches that can bring about structural change in society, politics and the economy in a stepwise manner. However, these innovations are always subjected to systemic barriers, such as regulations and institutional structures, that need to be overcome. This was also the case in a consortium of government, industry and eco-toxicologists that collaboratively developed innovative water monitoring tools. In this contribution the authors investigate how systemic barriers can be made productive in a science-society dialogue by creating reflexivity and learning. They conducted a frame analysis of interviews and policy documents to unravel systemic barriers to innovation – in the form of discursive boundary work: the routinized demarcations of practices. Second, they experimented with a science-society dialogue to reflect on these routinized demarcations and develop alternatives to overcome these boundaries. The research demonstrates that reflective conversations occurred and that participants developed a boundary concept of ‘living water’ that enhanced their innovative collaboration and technology.

When scientific values like objectivity, validity and reliability are inadequate for designing research that enables society’s capacity for dealing with unstructured problems, which values or criteria should we use for designing adequate knowledge practices? Based on the articles in this special issue we answer this question by analysing the methods researchers have used for selecting stakeholders, knowledges, synthesis, context and outcome in new knowledge practices. Although a common language for comparison and documentation is lacking, the analysis provides recommendations for better designing interaction between scientific and other practices. The most important message however is that we need a designated platform for exchanging and evaluating experiences and discussing methods and the outcomes they yield.

Co-production is regarded as a way to actively involve vulnerable citizens with public service delivery. However, there are several critical aspects that may lead to the unexpected exclusion of this group by public organizations, which have been insufficiently addressed hitherto. On the basis of a dissertation research, these critical aspects are analyzed for three phases of co-production. In the first phase, self-selection and organizational selection may lead to the exclusion of vulnerable citizens. In the second phase, a lack of commitment of the user and organizational support increase the chance of early discontinuation of co-production by vulnerable citizens. Finally, in the evaluation phase, it is likely that disadvantaged citizens attribute potential success of co-production to themselves and do not reward the public service provider for this. This has the possible consequence that there is no recognition for the added value of co-production, which may lead to less co-production that involves vulnerable citizens in the future.

On a regular basis, the funding of football stadiums is an issue for large cities. Since football clubs appeal to the municipality for financial support, this is a public matter. Why should a municipality invest in a private project, such as a football stadium? What are the opportunities and risks? What is the public value of a stadium for the city? Based on literature reviews and case studies in Eindhoven and Amsterdam, this article examines what government involvement in stadium projects means, and what the outcomes of this involvement are. The cases show that stadiums may have social and economic spin-off effects on their surroundings, but one cannot take that for granted. Careful processes and elaborate strategies are needed for public investment in stadiums to really add value to the city. Based on the analyses, an assessment framework is presented for the benefit of new stadium project initiatives.

Forty years ago, Dutch Public Administration started as an independent academic discipline. The founding fathers considered empirical application and multidisciplinarity the most important characteristics of public administration. This article assesses the current state of the discipline in the Netherlands. The assessment is the result of a series of five debates throughout the country, focussing on different elements of the Public Administration discipline: education, academic research, consultancy and policy advice. In brief, the article argues that the discipline has reached maturity in these forty years. It has become an accepted academic discipline, on the verge of a mono-discipline. The Netherlands is considered as one of the leading countries in public administration research. However, these successes also create a gap between public administration as a successful academic discipline and its roots as a multi-disciplinary, applied science. Renewing the balance between these two will be the main challenge for the decades to come.