What is the primary focus of the ICGPP-2026?

The conference provides a platform for sharing research and insights on governance and public policy, bringing together academics and practitioners in Santiago.

What is the format of the conference?

The conference is an academic event designed for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to share their work and engage in discussions in Santiago.

International Conference on Governance and Public Policy (ICGPP-2026)

Name: International Conference on Governance and Public Policy (ICGPP-2026)
Start: 2026-08-17 00:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-08-18 00:00:00+00:00
Location: Jeddah

Aug 17–18, 2026Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaIn-person

Starts in 9 daysRegistration open

The International Conference On Governance And Public Policy (ICGPP-2026) is set to convene in Santiago, Chile. This academic gathering serves as a crucial forum for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to exchange knowledge and discuss advancements in the dynamic fields of governance and public policy. Participants will have the opportunity to present their work, engage in robust discussions, and foster collaborations that can shape future policy directions and administrative practices.

Committees & topics

Topics
Governance in the 21st Century · Public Policy and Institutional Reform · Democracy and Citizen Participation · Leadership in Governance · Accountability Mechanisms in Public Administration · Public Policy Analysis and Evaluation · Governance Frameworks for Effective Policy · The Role of Data in Public Policy

Why it matters

Effective governance and sound public policy are fundamental pillars for societal progress and stability. This conference addresses critical issues at the intersection of these two domains, offering insights into how nations can better manage their affairs and serve their citizens. The discussions and research presented here can inform strategies for improving public services, enhancing accountability, and fostering sustainable development across various contexts.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the challenges faced by governments are complex and multifaceted. The ICGPP-2026 provides a platform for exploring innovative solutions and sharing best practices from diverse global perspectives. By bringing together experts from different backgrounds, the conference aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of governance structures and the impact of policy decisions on populations worldwide. The insights gained can be particularly valuable for countries navigating significant political, economic, or social transitions.

How to prepare

Delegates preparing for the ICGPP-2026 should focus on understanding the intricate relationships between various stakeholders in policy formulation and implementation. A thorough review of concepts such as "What Is Stakeholder Mapping?" and "Hidden Stakeholders" will be beneficial. Analyzing the motivations of different actors, as discussed in "Understanding Motivations," can provide a strategic advantage in comprehending policy dynamics.

Furthermore, participants should consider how different governance models impact policy outcomes. Employing a "Dynamic Analysis" approach to evaluate the effectiveness of existing policies and proposed reforms will be crucial. Understanding how to "Map Relationships" between governmental bodies, civil society, and the private sector can illuminate pathways for more collaborative and effective governance. The conference's setting in CHL also offers a unique opportunity to consider governance challenges and innovations within Latin America.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Chile

As the host nation, Chile provides a relevant case study for discussions on governance and public policy in Latin America.

Role in topic

Chile has undergone significant political and economic transformations, offering valuable lessons in democratic governance, public sector reform, and social policy implementation. Its experiences with decentralization and citizen participation can be particularly insightful for conference attendees.

United States

The United States offers a perspective on governance within a federal system, emphasizing democratic institutions and policy advocacy.

Role in topic

The US experience with policy development, regulatory frameworks, and the role of civil society in governance provides a rich comparative context. Discussions on federalism, bureaucratic accountability, and public administration reforms are often informed by American practices.

Germany

Germany's approach to governance highlights consensus-building, social market economy principles, and robust public administration.

Role in topic

German public policy often emphasizes social welfare, environmental protection, and strong institutional frameworks. Its federal structure and cooperative federalism offer a distinct model for comparison, particularly in areas of economic governance and social policy.

Singapore

Singapore presents a model of highly efficient and strategic governance, often characterized by long-term planning and meritocracy.

Role in topic

Singapore's success in economic development and urban planning is frequently attributed to its unique governance model. Its focus on evidence-based policymaking, anti-corruption measures, and public sector innovation offers a contrasting perspective to many Western democracies.

New Zealand

New Zealand is recognized for its innovations in public sector management, transparency, and indigenous engagement in governance.

Role in topic

New Zealand has been a pioneer in public financial management reforms and has made significant strides in integrating indigenous perspectives into governance. Its commitment to open government and citizen-centric services provides valuable insights for policy practitioners.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Governance in the 21st Century

Governance in the 21st century has been reshaped by globalization, digital transformation, and a crisis of public trust in institutions. The post-Cold War liberal consensus that democratic, market-oriented governance would steadily diffuse globally has been challenged by the rise of authoritarian capitalism, democratic backsliding in established democracies, and the proliferation of transnational challenges — pandemics, climate change, financial contagion, and cyber threats — that exceed the capacity of any single state. The 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and successive geopolitical shocks have all exposed gaps between citizen expectations and state delivery. In parallel, governance has expanded beyond the state to include multilateral bodies, private platforms, and civil society networks. The UN's 2021 'Our Common Agenda' and the 2024 Pact for the Future called for a renewed multilateralism and 'networked, inclusive, effective' governance. Yet enforcement remains weak, and emerging powers contest Western-designed institutions while pushing for reforms in voting weights at the IMF, the World Bank, and the UN Security Council. Today the central debate is whether legacy governance models can adapt to algorithmic decision-making, climate-driven displacement, and contested sovereignty in cyberspace, or whether new hybrid frameworks are needed. States diverge sharply on the balance between sovereignty, multilateral rules, and the role of non-state actors.

Key players

Public Policy and Institutional Reform

Institutional reform sits at the heart of effective public policy: rules, agencies, and incentive structures determine whether policy intent translates into outcomes. The New Public Management wave of the 1980s–1990s introduced market-style reforms — performance budgeting, agencification, privatization — across the OECD and, via IMF and World Bank conditionality, much of the developing world. Results were uneven: efficiency gains in some sectors but fragmentation, hollowing of state capacity, and erosion of public-service ethos in others. The 2000s and 2010s shifted attention toward 'good governance,' anti-corruption, and state capability. Frameworks such as the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators and the OECD's Government at a Glance have benchmarked reform, while scholars like Francis Fukuyama and Lant Pritchett have emphasized that institutional transplantation often fails without contextual fit. The post-COVID period exposed weaknesses in procurement, regulatory coordination, and intergovernmental relations even in high-capacity states. Current reform agendas focus on digital government, regulatory simplification, civil-service professionalization, decentralization, and the integration of behavioral and evidence-based approaches. The contested questions are how to sequence reforms, how to insulate technocratic institutions from political capture without weakening democratic accountability, and how to build state capacity in fragile contexts.

Key players

Democracy and Citizen Participation

Citizen participation has long been understood as both a normative pillar and a functional necessity of democratic governance. From the Athenian assembly to the participatory budgeting pioneered in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 1989, mechanisms for direct citizen input have evolved alongside representative institutions. The late 20th century saw a wave of democratization in Latin America, Eastern Europe, and parts of Africa and Asia; the early 21st century saw the rise of deliberative democracy experiments such as citizens' assemblies in Ireland, France, and Canada. Yet successive editions of Freedom House, V-Dem, and IDEA's Global State of Democracy reports document over a decade and a half of democratic backsliding. Trust in elected institutions has declined in many democracies, while disinformation, surveillance technologies, and electoral interference have complicated the participatory landscape. At the same time, digital tools — from Taiwan's vTaiwan platform to participatory portals in Madrid, Seoul, and Reykjavik — have expanded the possibilities for structured public engagement. The contemporary debate concerns how to revitalize representative democracy through complementary participatory and deliberative mechanisms, how to safeguard electoral integrity in a digital information environment, and how to ensure that participation does not privilege already-empowered voices.

Key players

Leadership in Governance

Leadership has been a persistent variable in governance outcomes, even as institutionalist scholarship has emphasized rules over individuals. Studies of state-building — from Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew to post-genocide Rwanda under Paul Kagame to South Korea's developmental state under Park Chung-hee — show how executive leadership can drive transformation, for better or worse. Conversely, governance failures in fragile and conflict-affected states often trace back to predatory or factional leadership rather than purely structural causes. In the 21st century, leadership has been complicated by media saturation, populist mobilization, and the personalization of politics. The OECD, the UN, and bodies such as the Apolitical Foundation and the Blavatnik School of Government have promoted public-leadership development and ethics frameworks. Multilateral institutions increasingly emphasize 'collaborative' and 'adaptive' leadership for cross-cutting challenges like pandemics and climate change, where authority is distributed across agencies and jurisdictions. The debate today centers on how to cultivate ethical, competent leadership at scale; how to balance executive decisiveness with checks and balances; and how to recruit and retain talented public leaders in an era of declining trust and intensified scrutiny.

Key players

Accountability Mechanisms in Public Administration

Accountability is foundational to public administration: officials exercising delegated authority must answer for how they use it. Modern accountability architecture combines vertical channels (elections, parliamentary oversight), horizontal channels (auditors, ombudsmen, anti-corruption agencies, courts), and social channels (media, civil society, citizen scorecards). The UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC, 2003), the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention (1997), and the Open Government Partnership (launched 2011) have built an international scaffolding for accountability reform. Despite this, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index has shown stagnation or decline in a majority of countries over the past decade. High-profile cases — from Brazil's Operation Car Wash to procurement scandals during the COVID-19 response in multiple states — have illustrated both the reach of accountability institutions and their vulnerability to political interference. Whistleblower protection, beneficial-ownership transparency, and asset recovery remain uneven globally. Emerging issues include algorithmic accountability for automated decision systems in welfare, policing, and migration; accountability for public-private partnerships and outsourced services; and the use of open data and audit analytics. Delegates will weigh how to strengthen independence of oversight bodies, align international standards, and integrate citizens directly into accountability loops.

Key players

Public Policy Analysis and Evaluation

Public policy analysis as a distinct field emerged in the 1960s in the United States, with the introduction of program budgeting (PPBS) in the federal government and the rise of policy schools. It expanded globally through OECD peer reviews, World Bank impact-evaluation programs, and the spread of cost–benefit analysis to regulatory decision-making. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics for randomized controlled trials in development policy underscored the maturation of rigorous evaluation methods. Governments now operate within a layered evaluation ecosystem: ex-ante regulatory impact assessment, mid-cycle monitoring, and ex-post evaluations conducted by independent bodies such as the UK's What Works Centres, Mexico's CONEVAL, and the US Office of Evaluation Sciences. International frameworks — OECD/DAC evaluation criteria, UN SDG monitoring, and the Global Evaluation Initiative — provide common standards. Yet evaluation findings are often under-used, and many low- and middle-income countries lack institutionalized evaluation capacity. Key debates concern methodological pluralism (experimental, quasi-experimental, qualitative, and systems approaches), the politics of evidence (whose evidence counts, and when), and how to embed evaluation in fast-moving policy areas like AI regulation and climate adaptation where counterfactuals are difficult to construct.

Key players

Governance Frameworks for Effective Policy

Effective policy depends on the surrounding governance framework: the constitutional rules, intergovernmental arrangements, regulatory institutions, and coordination mechanisms that turn decisions into action. Comparative public-administration scholarship distinguishes among Westminster, continental European, federal, and developmental-state models, each with distinct strengths in coherence, responsiveness, or capacity. International frameworks such as the OECD Recommendation on Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development (2019) and the UN's whole-of-government guidance push states toward integrated approaches. In practice, modern policy challenges — climate, migration, AI, pandemic preparedness — are 'wicked' problems that cut across ministries, levels of government, and borders. Center-of-government units (Cabinet Offices, Presidencies, Prime Minister's Offices) have grown in importance, as have arm's-length regulatory agencies. The EU's regulatory state and 'multi-level governance' model has been particularly influential, while federal systems like India, Brazil, and Germany illustrate the complexities of vertical coordination. Contemporary debates focus on how to design governance frameworks that combine democratic legitimacy with technical effectiveness; how to coordinate across silos without over-centralizing; and how to embed long-term considerations (future generations, climate, fiscal sustainability) into structures built for short electoral cycles.

Key players

The Role of Data in Public Policy

Data has become a core input to public policy, from census-based planning to real-time dashboards used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The open-data movement, launched with US and UK government portals around 2009, expanded into the International Open Data Charter (2015) and SDG indicator monitoring under the UN Statistical Commission. National statistical offices, administrative registries, and increasingly satellite, mobile, and platform data feed policy decisions on health, education, transport, and climate. At the same time, data governance has emerged as a contested policy domain. The EU's GDPR (2018) set a global benchmark for personal data protection; India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (2023), Brazil's LGPD, and China's PIPL show varying models. The 2024 UN Global Digital Compact frames data as a public good while recognizing sovereignty concerns. Digital public infrastructure — identity, payments, data-exchange layers, exemplified by India Stack — is reshaping how states deliver services and how they capture citizen data. Core questions for delegates include how to balance data-driven efficiency with privacy and equity; how to govern AI systems trained on public data; how to close the data divide between high- and low-capacity statistical systems; and how to ensure that algorithmic policy decisions remain contestable and accountable to citizens.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Governance and Public Policy (ICGPP-2026).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Ken Martin's DNC Autopsy Reveals Party Strugg

US Job Openings at 6.7M

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Dynamic Analysis

What Is Stakeholder Mapping?

The Power-Interest Grid

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Saudi Arabia August 2026

By committee

Frequently asked questions

International Conference on Governance and Public Policy (ICGPP-2026)

Aug 17–18, 2026Jeddah, Saudi ArabiaIn-person

Starts in 9 daysRegistration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Governance in the 21st Century · Public Policy and Institutional Reform · Democracy and Citizen Participation · Leadership in Governance · Accountability Mechanisms in Public Administration · Public Policy Analysis and Evaluation · Governance Frameworks for Effective Policy · The Role of Data in Public Policy

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

Chile

As the host nation, Chile provides a relevant case study for discussions on governance and public policy in Latin America.

Role in topic

United States

The United States offers a perspective on governance within a federal system, emphasizing democratic institutions and policy advocacy.

Role in topic

Germany

Germany's approach to governance highlights consensus-building, social market economy principles, and robust public administration.

Role in topic

Singapore

Singapore presents a model of highly efficient and strategic governance, often characterized by long-term planning and meritocracy.

Role in topic

New Zealand

New Zealand is recognized for its innovations in public sector management, transparency, and indigenous engagement in governance.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Governance in the 21st Century

Key players

Public Policy and Institutional Reform

Key players

Democracy and Citizen Participation

Key players

Leadership in Governance

Key players

Accountability Mechanisms in Public Administration

Key players

Public Policy Analysis and Evaluation

Key players

Governance Frameworks for Effective Policy

Key players

The Role of Data in Public Policy

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for International Conference on Governance and Public Policy (ICGPP-2026).

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Ken Martin's DNC Autopsy Reveals Party Strugg

US Job Openings at 6.7M

Trump's Legal Battles Impact 2026 Elections

Trump's Economic Reset

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Dynamic Analysis

What Is Stakeholder Mapping?

The Power-Interest Grid

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Saudi Arabia August 2026

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Saudi IT Security Summit 2026

International Conference on Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Strategies (ICCRPBS) 2026

Global Students Research Conference

International Conference on Historical Sociology and Political Economy (ICHSPE)

International Conference on War, Conflict, and Peacebuilding in the Middle East (ICWCPME-2026)

IEF17 International Energy Forum Ministerial

Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

Saudi IT Security Summit 2026

International Conference on Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding Strategies (ICCRPBS) 2026

Global Students Research Conference

International Conference on Historical Sociology and Political Economy (ICHSPE)

International Conference on War, Conflict, and Peacebuilding in the Middle East (ICWCPME-2026)

IEF17 International Energy Forum Ministerial

Frequently asked questions