Networks for Water Policy: A Comparative Perspective

Prof.dr. Hans Th. A. Bressers is Emeritus Professor of Policy Studies and Environmental Policy at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and founder of the CSTM, currently the Section of Governance and Technology for Sustainability. He has been vice-chairman of the official permanent Evaluation Committee of the Environmental Management Act, which advised the Minister regularly on the efficacy of Dutch environmental policy. He was also the chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Dutch Minister for the Environment for the implementation of environmental policy by local government and has been chairman of SWOME, the Dutch social science association for environmental and energy research. He also has been an independent scientific member of the Commission on Sustainable development of the Dutch Social-Economic Council (SER) and a member of the national Advisory Committee on Water. His dissertation on the effectiveness of Dutch water quality management (1983) won the annual award for best Dutch Public Administration book and was later chosen by a Dutch practitioners’ journal as one of the ten best international public administration books of the 20th century.

Laurence J. O'Toole, Jr. is distinguished research professor emeritus in the School of Public Administration's Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia (USA). His research focuses on environmental policy and management as well as policy implementation in complex institutional settings.

Jeremy Richardson is an Emeritus Fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He was previously Nuffield Professor of Comparative European Politics at Oxford. Prior to moving to Oxford had been Professor of Politics at Strathclyde, Warwick, and Essex Universities. His main interests are in the role of interest groups in the policy process, the policy change process, and the processes of European integration. He was the Founding Editor of the Journal of European Public Policy and is currently Co-Editor of the Journal. His recent publications include Policy-making Under Pressure. Rethinking the policy process in Aotearoa New Zealand (2021: Co-Edited with Sonia Mazey), and British Policy-making After Brexit (2023: Special Issue of the Journal of European Public Policy co-edited with Patrick Diamond). In 2011 he was the recipient of the European Union Studies Association award for Lifetime Achievement in European Studies.