Societal and technological developments (such as the digital and energy revolutions) move faster than existing institutions can keep up with. The developments may lead to a metaphorical institutional void, which brings questions about the nature of the void, the changing rules, practices and responsibilities, and about the strategies to deal with the void. The concept has been around for a while but (again) seems relevant to understand current socio-technological innovations and challenges, that also allow us to further conceptualise the institutional void. In this introduction to the issue, we discuss the concept of an institutional void and explore how it is used in various domains of study, including public administration. We argue for how the concept is relevant today and therein also introduce the topics that are discussed in this special issue.

In the Netherlands, as in many other countries, housing supply fails to meet the rapidly increasing housing demand in already densely urbanised areas, contributing to rising housing prices and possibly gentrification. The state and local governments aim to satisfy this demand by densifying urban areas and by transforming urban brownfields and vacant office parks into residential areas, thus containing urban sprawl. However, the private actors needed to redevelop these areas operate according to a different institutional logic and discourse: the market. According to this market logic, urban transform is too expensive, even when partly subsidized, and, to some extent, sprawl is unavoidable to satisfy housing demand. The two different logics fail to deliver the housing needed. Building discourse coalitions is suggested as a possible way out of this deadlocked debate, while government actors might also aim to influence the housing market with novel, market oriented policy instruments.

The crowd increasingly plays a key role in facilitating innovations in a variety of sectors, spurred on by IT-developments and the concomitant increase in connectivity. Initiatives in this direction, captured under the umbrella-term ‘crowd-based innovations’, offer novel opportunities in socio-technical systems by increasing the access, reach and speed of services. At the same time, they signify important challenges because these innovations occur in a context of traditional, well-established institutional and governance structures and practices. This dynamic is captured in the idea of the ‘institutional void’: the tension between traditional structures and (radically) new initiatives. Existing rules, standards and practices are challenged, which raises questions about the safeguarding of public values such as quality, legitimacy, efficiency and governance of crowd-based innovations. This article argues that understanding these tensions requires supplementing empirical research with an explicitly normative dimension to reach thorough and balanced conclusions to facilitate innovation while protecting the valuable elements in existing rules and regulations. Illustrated by a number of short examples, we propose a multidisciplinary research agenda towards formulating appropriate governance structures.

Scientific knowledge plays a pivotal yet problematic role in identifying, assessing and evaluating climate impacts, and hence in their governance. This raises questions of how knowledge for adaptation policy is made. This article studies the production of authoritative and meaningful knowledge claims in the Delta Committee, regional water management and urban warming. It is argued that the conventional supply-and-demand conceptualisation with its notion of ‘knowledge transfer’ has fundamental flaws. This study shows how the wicked issue of climate change is tamed and made tractable in climate adaptation. In these processes knowledge of climate change transforms. This article presents a conceptual apparatus to study transformation. Transformation has a Janus face. While transformation brings climate change in conversation with localised meaning to create concrete adaptation responses, it also closes down and becomes blind to particular climate risks. Transformations are affected by the goals and institutions of policy fields. To overcome problems of blindness and cognitive path dependencies, more institutional change is necessary than the current piggyback approach of mainstreaming and knowledge co-creation entails.

Discussions of public service motivation tend to emphasize the idealistic side of civil servants, stressing how they are led by self-sacrifice and a commitment to the public good. This article adopts a different perspective by linking the personality trait of narcissism to public service motivation. This notion was tested through a survey among employees of three public organizations. The statistical analysis shows that personalities with narcissistic elements tend to be more attracted to the world of policy and politics. This is accompanied by diminished feelings of compassion. Although the significance of this correlation should not be overstated, it does show that the link between public service motivation and commitment to the public interest is more complex than is sometimes suggested. Given the growth of narcissistic tendencies in contemporary society, it may be effective to take account of them in recruiting and managing civil service personnel.