Honorary degree for Adrienne Héritier
Public Administration researcher Adrienne Héritier will receive an honorary degree from Leiden University. The award is for her groundbreaking work in the field of multilevel governance, decisionmaking and institutional theory at the European level. She will be awarded the degree on the dies natalis of the University, 8 February 2018.
Héritier is an influential researcher in the field of multilevel governance, decisionmaking and institutional theory. Her work has helped give direction to the literature on the Europeanisation of policy over the last 30 years. She was professor at the Department of Political and Social Science and Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (Florence, Italy). She is Distinguished Professor at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (University of Bremen) and teaches at the Libera Universita Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome .
European policy actors
Héritier’s research shows that European policy is mainly used by national policy actors (including politicians) for domestic goals. It also reveals that European-level actors can formulate and establish policy, even if there are significant differences and the divergent interests have thrown up political blockades. Héritier also shows that policy actors use various informal practices to try to change political decisionmaking structures that they then use to consolidate their own position.
Links with Leiden
Adrienne Héritier has close links with the Institute of Public Administration and has visited Leiden several times. She lectured at an international summer school in Leiden in 2002 and at an international research meeting in Oud Poelgeest in 2004. In 2007, she helped organise a research meeting with Leiden researchers at the European University Institute. Her influential research has been a key source of inspiration for many studies that have been conducted in recent years within the research programme of the Institute of Public Administration.
Héritier will be awarded her honorary degree during the celebration of the dies natalis of Leiden University on 8 February 2018 by honorary supervisor Bernard Steunenberg, Professor of Public Administration at the Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs.