March/Olsen Honorary Lecture 2025: Prof. Thomas Schillemans

The annual March / Olsen Honorary Lecture is a celebration of James G. March and Johan P. Olsen's significant contributions to organizational theory and institutional theory. The Department of Government has had a longstanding collaboration with both March and Olsen, and their work has greatly influenced the academic direction of the department. The March / Olsen Lecture is this year a part of the GOV-Day conference. 

This year's speaker is Professor Thomas Schillemans, Utrecht University. The title of his speech is:

Struggling Out of the Garbage Can:
Towards a serious research agenda supporting the quality of governance in democracies

The Garbage Can Model, developed by Cohen, March and Olsen, is a landmark study in public policy and bureaucracy. It belongs to a family of iconic studies that use ironic metaphors – such as muddling through, redundancy and revisiting the iron cage – to reveal insights about decision-making. The model’s irony, later described by the authors as “playfully serious”, is a powerful analytical tool, assuming that democratic policymakers aim to solve problems, settle conflicts, and uphold democratic ideals. This, regrettably, is no longer self-evident, and irony risks spilling into cynicism.

The model was built on the sharp observation that policy situations often involve problematic preferences, unstable participants and unclear technology. Decision-makers may not know what they want, how to decide, or whether and how organizational actions are related to outcomes. As a result, policy decisions were compared – ironically – to pulling a problem from the garbage can and matching it to pre-existing solutions. Over the decades, scholars have used this model to highlight the often chaotic nature of policy processes and bureaucratic decision-making.

However, in an era when democratic governance is under strain – when Trump’s presidency actively erodes key bureaucratic institutions, illiberalism is rising, and cynicism dominates political debates – we must move beyond irony. The insights of the Garbage Can Model should no longer merely invite ironic reflection; they must serve as a call to action. If preferences, decision-making procedures, and policy programs are unclear, scholars of public policy and bureaucracy must work to clear the mist. This is both necessary and possible. Since the Garbage Can Model’s introduction, affluent democracies have spent billions on social science research. By pooling intellectual resources across disciplines and borders, and devoting sustained attention to fundamental governance challenges; we can meaningfully contribute to decision-making and the quality of governance. Our focus should be on identifying choice opportunities, improving decision-making procedures, and strengthening the links between policies and outcomes.

This lecture presents a joint research agenda that builds on the foundations of the Garbage Can Model, treating it as an urgent call to ‘up our game’ as social scientists. Drawing from different research fields and showcasing inspiring examples from around the world, it outlines an agenda for how social science research can enhance the quality of democratic governance. This demands a shift towards longitudinal research efforts, tackling “big” research questions, fostering broad research collaborations and prioritizing research that synthesises knowledge. At its core, this speaks to the crucial role of knowledge in public sector decision-making. Given democratic backsliding and growing but unwarranted cynicism about what governments do and can (not) do, this work is more urgent than ever.

Schillemans’ lecture relates to a new initiative launching in 2025 with Paul ‘t Hart and colleagues to establish a new Dutch institute for the quality of governance. A position paper outlining this will be available in April.

Biography

Thomas Schillemans is a Professor in public governance at Utrecht University School of Governance in the Netherlands. He is the Scientific Director of the Netherlands Institute of Governance. He teaches public policy professionals at the Netherlands School of Public Administration and is one of the associate editors of Public Administration Review. His work is marked by persistence in focus, collaboration in networks, and the ultimate aim that academic research should enable decision-makers to make better-informed decisions.

‘Accountability’ of public sector organizations is the common thread throughout his academic career. It started with his PhD thesis on the new concept of horizontal accountability, followed amongst others by a collective effort to consolidate what we know in the Oxford Handbook of Public Accountability, an Accountability Dissertation Series, an exploration of the impact of populism on accountability to studies of the behavioural effects of accountability. In his research collaboration is crucial, for instance with communication scientists and behavioural scientists as well as international collaborations with colleagues from, for instance, Oslo and Bergen.