What is the primary focus of this conference?

The conference focuses on public policy and management, offering a platform for intellectual exchange and research dissemination in Bangalore, IND.

What is the duration of the conference?

The conference spans several days, providing ample time for presentations and discussions in Bangalore, IND.

XXI International Conference on Public Policy & Management

Name: XXI International Conference on Public Policy & Management
Start: 2026-09-02T00:00:00Z
End: 2026-09-04T00:00:00Z
Location: Bangalore

Sep 2–4, 2026Bangalore, IndiaIn-person

Starts in 25 daysRegistration open

The XXI International Conference on Public Policy & Management is scheduled to convene in Bangalore, India. This event serves as a platform for in-depth discussions and the presentation of research findings related to public policy and management. Participants will engage with contemporary issues and explore innovative approaches within the field, reflecting the dynamic nature of governance and administration.

Committees & topics

Topics
The Evolution and Challenges of Public Policy · Management: From Scientific Origins to Global Practice · Atma Nirbhar Bharat: India's Self-Reliance Mission · Strengthening Domestic Capabilities · Institutions and Development · Industries and Industrial Policy · Technologies and Strategic Competition · Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century

Why it matters

This conference is particularly significant as it takes place in Bangalore, IND, a city at the forefront of technological and economic development within a major emerging economy. The discussions held here will likely influence policy discourse not only within IND but also in other developing nations grappling with similar challenges in public administration and governance. The insights shared can contribute to more effective policy formulation and implementation globally.

For policymakers, academics, and practitioners, the conference offers a crucial opportunity to understand evolving trends in public policy. The exchange of ideas and research findings can help bridge the gap between theoretical frameworks and practical application, fostering a more evidence-based approach to governance. This is vital for addressing complex societal issues, from economic development to social welfare, in an increasingly interconnected world.

How to prepare

To effectively engage with the conference's themes, participants should consider conducting a thorough What Is Stakeholder Mapping? exercise. Understanding the various actors involved in public policy and management, including their interests and influence, is crucial for navigating complex discussions. This preparatory step can enhance one's ability to contribute meaningfully to debates and identify potential areas for collaboration.

Furthermore, applying Dynamic Analysis to current public policy challenges will be beneficial. This approach allows for a deeper understanding of how policies evolve over time and the various factors that influence their outcomes. Considering the diverse perspectives that will be present, an understanding of Gender Dynamics Across Cultures can also provide valuable context, particularly when discussing inclusive policy frameworks.

Given the international scope of the conference, participants should also prepare to engage with a variety of Engagement Strategies. This includes being open to different cultural approaches to problem-solving and policy implementation. Familiarity with the policy landscape of IND, the host country, will also provide a strong foundation for understanding the local context of many discussions.

Country perspectives

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

India

As the host nation, IND is a central focus for discussions on public policy and management, particularly regarding its unique developmental trajectory and governance challenges.

Role in topic

IND serves as a critical case study for public policy and management, showcasing innovative approaches to development, poverty alleviation, and technological integration within a democratic framework. The conference in Bangalore offers a platform to highlight IND's experiences and learn from its policy successes and challenges.

United States

The USA often provides a comparative perspective on public policy, with its federal structure and diverse policy approaches offering insights into governance models.

Role in topic

Researchers and policymakers from the USA frequently contribute to global discussions on public policy, offering insights from its advanced economy and complex political system. Their perspectives can provide valuable comparisons and contrasts to policies implemented in other nations.

United Kingdom

The GBR offers historical and contemporary examples of public administration, influencing policy theory and practice globally.

Role in topic

With a long history of public administration and a well-developed policy framework, the GBR's contributions can illuminate discussions on institutional design, regulatory practices, and the evolution of public services.

Singapore

SGP is often cited for its efficient public administration and strategic policy planning, serving as a model for effective governance.

Role in topic

SGP's experience in urban planning, economic development, and public service delivery provides valuable lessons for other nations. Its focus on long-term strategic planning and effective implementation makes it a relevant voice in public policy discussions.

Germany

DEU's approach to social market economy and federal governance offers a distinct model for public policy discussions.

Role in topic

DEU's policies on social welfare, environmental protection, and economic stability are often discussed as benchmarks. Its federal structure and cooperative governance models provide a rich context for comparative policy analysis.

Topics & background

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

The Evolution and Challenges of Public Policy

Public policy as a distinct field of study and practice emerged in the mid-twentieth century, drawing on political science, economics, and public administration to analyze how governments make and implement decisions. The post-war expansion of the welfare state in Western democracies, coupled with decolonization and state-building in the Global South, created enormous demand for systematic approaches to policy design, implementation, and evaluation. Foundational thinkers such as Harold Lasswell framed policy as a process, while later scholars including Elinor Ostrom and Amartya Sen broadened the field to include collective action, capabilities, and institutional analysis. Contemporary public policy operates under conditions far more complex than its founders anticipated. Globalization, climate change, demographic shifts, and digital transformation have rendered traditional sectoral policymaking inadequate, pushing governments toward whole-of-government and evidence-based approaches. The 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic exposed weaknesses in regulatory capacity and crisis response, while the rise of populism has challenged the legitimacy of technocratic policymaking. Today, debates center on how to balance expert-driven design with democratic accountability, how to incorporate behavioral insights and data analytics, and how to align national policy with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Key players

Management: From Scientific Origins to Global Practice

The discipline of management took shape in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management, Henri Fayol's administrative theory, and Max Weber's analysis of bureaucracy. These frameworks responded to the demands of industrialization and the rise of large corporations, hospitals, and state agencies. The post-war period saw the emergence of strategic management, operations research, and the modern business school, with Peter Drucker reframing management as a liberal art concerned with human productivity and institutional purpose. In recent decades, management thought has shifted from hierarchical command-and-control models toward networked, agile, and stakeholder-oriented approaches. The 1980s wave of privatization and New Public Management blurred the line between corporate and government practice, while globalization spread Japanese lean production, American venture-style scaling, and European codetermination across borders. Today, management theory contends with remote work, ESG obligations, the governance of algorithmic systems, and questions about whether shareholder primacy remains tenable. Debates over the purpose of the firm, ethical leadership, and the management of complex public-private partnerships now sit at the center of the field.

Key players

Atma Nirbhar Bharat: India's Self-Reliance Mission

Atma Nirbhar Bharat ('Self-Reliant India') was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in May 2020 as a roughly ₹20 lakh crore economic package in response to the COVID-19 shock. While the slogan echoed earlier Indian traditions of swadeshi and the import-substitution policies of the Nehruvian era, the 2020 framing explicitly rejected protectionist autarky and instead positioned self-reliance as integration with global value chains from a stronger domestic base. The mission rests on five pillars: economy, infrastructure, technology-driven systems, demography, and demand. Flagship instruments include the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes across 14 sectors—electronics, semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, telecom, solar PV, and others—as well as defence indigenization lists, the Semicon India programme, and reforms in agriculture, labour, and the financial sector. Outcomes so far are mixed: mobile phone manufacturing and pharmaceuticals have seen significant import substitution and export growth, while semiconductor fabrication and advanced defence platforms remain works in progress. Critics question fiscal cost, capture by large conglomerates, and tensions with India's WTO obligations, while supporters point to rising FDI in manufacturing and the strategic logic of derisking from China amid Indo-Pacific tensions.

Key players

Strengthening Domestic Capabilities

The push to strengthen domestic capabilities has gained traction worldwide as governments confront the fragility of hyper-globalized supply chains. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed dangerous concentrations in personal protective equipment, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and semiconductors; Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine highlighted energy and fertilizer dependencies; and intensifying US-China rivalry has accelerated technology decoupling in advanced chips, AI, and critical minerals. In response, major economies have rolled out industrial policy at a scale not seen since the 1970s, including the US CHIPS and Science Act, the EU Chips Act and Net-Zero Industry Act, and China's Made in China 2025. For developing economies, strengthening domestic capabilities involves a broader agenda: upgrading manufacturing, building R&D ecosystems, deepening human capital, expanding digital and physical infrastructure, and reforming regulatory frameworks. India's PLI schemes, Indonesia's nickel downstream policy, and Brazil's reindustrialization plans all reflect this turn. The core policy debate concerns sequencing and selectivity—how to identify sectors of genuine comparative advantage, how to avoid rent-seeking and white elephants, and how to reconcile capability-building with open-trade commitments under the WTO. The risk of a global subsidy race and fiscal strain on developing states looms large.

Key players

Institutions and Development

The centrality of institutions to economic and political development was crystallized by Douglass North's work on institutional economics in the 1990s and reinforced by Acemoglu, Johnson, and Robinson's research linking inclusive institutions to long-run prosperity. Institutions—formal rules such as constitutions, property rights, and regulatory bodies, as well as informal norms—shape incentives for investment, innovation, and political participation. The World Bank's 1997 World Development Report 'The State in a Changing World' marked a turning point, restoring attention to state capacity after a decade of market-fundamentalist reforms. Contemporary debates focus on how institutions adapt to disruption. Democratic backsliding documented by V-Dem and Freedom House, judicial independence struggles from Poland to Israel, and the weakening of multilateral institutions such as the WTO Appellate Body all raise concerns about institutional resilience. Simultaneously, new institutional forms are emerging: independent fiscal councils, data protection authorities, climate councils, and digital regulators. In developing contexts, the challenge is building institutions that can deliver public goods at scale without succumbing to capture, while in advanced economies the task is preventing erosion of accountability mechanisms under polarization and executive aggrandizement.

Key players

Industries and Industrial Policy

Industries have been the engine of modern economic transformation since the Industrial Revolution, with successive waves—textiles, steel, chemicals, electronics, and now digital and green technologies—reshaping the global economic hierarchy. The post-war Bretton Woods order initially permitted active industrial policy, enabling the rise of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan through directed credit, export discipline, and protected learning. The Washington Consensus of the 1980s and 1990s discredited such interventions in mainstream policy discourse, but the 2008 financial crisis, the China shock, and the climate emergency have brought industrial policy decisively back. Today's industrial policy is shaped by three intersecting pressures: the green transition, which demands rapid scaling of clean energy, EVs, and grid technologies; geoeconomic competition, particularly in semiconductors, AI hardware, and critical minerals; and resilience concerns following pandemic-era supply chain shocks. Governments are deploying production subsidies, local content rules, export controls, and sovereign investment vehicles. The risks include trade frictions, fiscal strain, and capture by incumbents. Developing economies face the additional challenge of premature deindustrialization, where manufacturing employment peaks at lower income levels than historical precedent, raising urgent questions about pathways to prosperity.

Key players

Technologies and Strategic Competition

Technology has moved from a sectoral concern to the central axis of geopolitical and economic competition. The convergence of artificial intelligence, semiconductors, quantum computing, biotechnology, and clean energy is reshaping production functions and military balances. The US October 2022 export controls on advanced chips to China marked an inflection point, formalizing a technology-decoupling logic that has since spread to equipment, talent, and outbound investment. The EU has responded with its Chips Act, AI Act, and economic security strategy, while China has accelerated indigenous innovation through its New Whole-Nation System. Governance of frontier technologies has also emerged as a defining policy challenge. The 2023 UK AI Safety Summit, the EU AI Act, the US executive order on AI, and the UN's Global Digital Compact reflect competing visions for how to regulate general-purpose AI systems. Parallel debates concern data sovereignty, platform regulation, biosecurity in the era of AI-enabled biology, and the equitable diffusion of climate technologies to the Global South. The risk of a fragmented 'splinternet' of incompatible technology stacks, and the concentration of frontier capabilities in a handful of firms and states, are central concerns for global governance.

Key players

Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century

The concept of human capital, formalized by Gary Becker and Theodore Schultz in the 1960s, reframed education, health, and skills as investments with measurable returns rather than mere consumption. The framework underpinned the expansion of mass schooling, the World Bank's human development lending, and the UNDP Human Development Index. The 2018 World Development Report and the World Bank's Human Capital Index further operationalized the concept, ranking countries on the productivity their children can expect by age 18 given current health and education systems. The twenty-first century has reshaped the human capital agenda in three ways. First, demographic divergence: aging in East Asia and Europe contrasts sharply with youthful populations in Africa and South Asia, creating mismatches between labor supply and global demand. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic caused unprecedented learning losses estimated by UNESCO and the World Bank, with the deepest impact on poorer countries. Third, AI and automation are reshaping skill premiums and threatening routine cognitive work, forcing a rethinking of curricula, lifelong learning systems, and social protection. Policy debates now center on early childhood investment, vocational and digital skills, female labor force participation, and the management of large-scale labor migration.

Key players

Resources

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Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Dynamic Analysis

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Policy Brief Writing

Crisis Management

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

XXI International Conference on Public Policy & Management

Sep 2–4, 2026Bangalore, IndiaIn-person

Starts in 25 daysRegistration open

Committees & topics

Topics
The Evolution and Challenges of Public Policy · Management: From Scientific Origins to Global Practice · Atma Nirbhar Bharat: India's Self-Reliance Mission · Strengthening Domestic Capabilities · Institutions and Development · Industries and Industrial Policy · Technologies and Strategic Competition · Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century

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.

India

As the host nation, IND is a central focus for discussions on public policy and management, particularly regarding its unique developmental trajectory and governance challenges.

Role in topic

United States

The USA often provides a comparative perspective on public policy, with its federal structure and diverse policy approaches offering insights into governance models.

Role in topic

United Kingdom

The GBR offers historical and contemporary examples of public administration, influencing policy theory and practice globally.

Role in topic

Singapore

SGP is often cited for its efficient public administration and strategic policy planning, serving as a model for effective governance.

Role in topic

Germany

DEU's approach to social market economy and federal governance offers a distinct model for public policy discussions.

Role in topic