 Hello, I'm Frank Hendricks. I'm a professor of public governance at Tilburg University. I've prepared a short knowledge clip for you about one of the many topics that we cover in our public governance program. The study of public governance is focused on the design and quality of public policymaking. To shed light on this, it brings together political and social sciences, law and economics. Public governance is about how we deal with fields of public concern, like public safety, health or education, with international trade or closer to home the local town center. How do governmental and non-governmental organizations work together on these matters? Are we as citizens getting what we want? Effective and justifiable policies. Good governance. Public governance delves into issues that are often central to public debate. This is definitely part of the attraction. I could give many examples, but for now I will take just one example of a topic that has stirred public debate in recent years, namely the referendum as an alternative direct way of decision-making. Is the referendum a blessing for democracy, as some say? Or is it a curse for governance, as others claim? Take the much-debated Brexit referendum in the UK, or the referendum in the Netherlands about the Association Treaty with the Ukraine, in Greece about the financial problems with the EU, in Hungary about immigration, in Catalonia about independence, or in Crimea about unification with Russia. These are just some examples of recent referendums that have been criticized as dubious forms of decision-making. Too rash, too simplistic, too divisive. Little orientation on the bigger picture. Little creativity in bringing things or people together. So can we simply conclude now that referendums are bad for public governance? That healthy democracy cannot be combined with referendums? Or would that be jumping to conclusions all too quickly? If we look at the highest-ranking democracies in the world, we see that they don't always stay away from referendums. On the contrary, eight of the top ten countries on a well-known league table combine representative democracy with provisions for referendums, which are more than once deployed in actual referendums. Not necessarily very often, as in Switzerland, but often enough, as for instance in Denmark, to keep public governance on its toes. As we have seen in Ireland, referendums can sometimes actively force a breakthrough on politically-frozen issues like abortion or gay marriage. In other cases where referendums work, they work from the background, as a passive force that may become active, as a Damoclean sword, so to speak, above the heads of policymakers. In other words, referendums can contribute to governance, but this depends strongly on the way they are designed and integrated in the wider system. The referendum is far from a magic bullet. For some purposes, under specific conditions, it can support good governance. Organized badly, however, it can also badly disrupt things. In that sense, referendums are not different from other institutions in public governance like political parties, civil service organizations, public planning tools, and so on. Whether such institutions contribute to good governance or not, strongly depends on how they are organized and presented to the people using them. This is what we try to get a handle on in the study of public governance. What works and what doesn't. And how to deal with this. Is this perhaps something that you also want to work on and learn more about? Then the study of public governance at Tilburg University might just be your cup of tea.