Interest in the relational dimensions of public administration is growing. However, the significance of relationality has not been understood, nor has the diversity of relational approaches been synthesized into a coherent research agenda. Relational public administration developed from the decline of rational policy models and the advent of network governance. We draw on relational sociology to formulate a relational perspective of larger scope, integrating relational process ontology, practice theory, social network analyses, and interpretive policy analysis. A heuristic framework classifies relational public administration research in four types: Connected Actors, Co-Creation Networks, Interactive Performance, and Dynamic Systems.

While current discourse promotes social innovation as a normative good, in practice it is highly contested by institutionalised ways of thinking, acting and organising. Concurrently stimulating and resisting innovation creates a ‘double bind’ of conflicting communicative signals that weaken capacities for joint sense making and sustainable change. I develop a meta-theoretical framework that explains what is involved in these relational dynamics of change and resistance, how these can be assessed and improved, and why the double bind both necessitates and inhibits substantive change. Analysing relational dynamics in a case of neighbourhood governance in Amsterdam, I argue that social innovators should be prepared to constructively confront rationalistic evaluation, defensiveness, and experiential detachment while institutional actors should welcome fundamental relational transformations of hierarchical and competitive dynamics institutionalised in urban governance.

This article examines how social innovation (SI) research can co-produce transformative change in cities. A key challenge is to diffuse and sustain SIs in ways that transform the relational webs that constitute local spaces and their governance. The relational approach to SI is conceptually promising in this respect, but its foundations and practices need to be further developed. Therefore, I develop a relational ‘theory–methods package’ of practice theory and action research. By co-producing immediately usable insights, experiences and artefacts in the daily practice of SI, this approach enables researchers to gradually create conditions for a transformative trajectory of learning and change in urban governance. I critically appraise four research practices in the context of SI in Dutch urban governance and reflect on the transformative potential of this relational theory–methods package.

This introductory article sets out the twin goals of this special issue: “Advancing the Commonsverse: The Political Economy of the Commons”. The first is to introduce the innovative work of David Bollier and Silke Helfrich in theorizing and researching the commons. The second is to explore the possibilities and constraints of the commons and the process of commoning as they unfold in real-world political-economic settings. Bollier and Helfrich have formulated a remarkable, ‘in-the-round’, moral-empirical theory of the commons. In their social ontology, peer governance and moral economy commons form a subversive alternative to the capitalist order. Bollier and Helfrich’s theory restores an older tradition of a moral critique of capitalism in the tradition of “moral economists” such as Karl Polanyi and H.P. Tawney. It raises important questions about the socio-ethical foundations of our society and economy, the relationship between civil associations and the state, and the nature of the state. In the final part of this introduction, we discuss the complex relationship between the commons and the state. We frame this relationship as one of mutual dependency and argue for the careful redesign of our institutions of public administration and democratic governance to make them more receptive and accessible to the creative powers of the commons. Finally, we introduce the contributions to this special issue, including a reflective concluding essay by David Bolllier.

This article diagnoses that qualitative research (QR) methods courses and literature often remain silent on how to actually do QR and explores how practice theory can improve learning and teaching the practice of QR. It develops an experiential learning approach of turning experiences and emotions of doubt and excitement into a dialogical process of asking creative questions, imagining new ideas, and animating a practical relationship to the world. Based on data and observations of a summer school course in QR methods to PhD students, we present three pedagogical practices for recognizing and tolerating affective resistances to experiential learning and finding creative solutions to emergent research problems.