In its original form, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) struggles with cases that evolve over time. Temporal QCA (TQCA) and Time-Series QCA (TS/QCA) are among the older variants that try to incorporate time in the comparative analysis. Recently, many more alternative strategies have been proposed. This article provides an overview of all known strategies to account for time and process in QCA, so that researchers can make informed research design choices. We present the main strategies regarding: the research aspect to which it pertains (casing, calibration, and/or truth table analysis), data requirements, the nature of the results, and the type of research questions that can be addressed. The following eight strategies are discussed: a conventional QCA in a mixed-methods design, using temporal conditions, conducting multiple QCA analyses for different time periods, conducting one QCA for different time periods, Trajectory-Based QCA (TJ-QCA), TQCA, TS/QCA, and Linear Growth QCA (LG-QCA).

Policymakers in cities in the United States of America (U.S.) must tailor the right bundle of policies to promote the diffusion of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). We investigate the interplay of (non-)monetary incentives on U.S. state, city and utility-related policy levels. For doing so, we deploy fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of BEV policies in 16 cities in the U.S. to identify policy configurations that promote BEV uptake. We provide a first-ever study to systematically evaluate BEV policy bundles across different U.S. policy levels. Results indicate two policy configurations: monetary incentives received upon/after BEV purchase in conjunction with (non-)monetary incentives for home charging infrastructure extension in conjunction with recurring monetary incentives by utilities (I); the absence of recurring (non-)monetary incentives at the local level in conjunction with (non-)monetary incentives for home charging infrastructure extension in conjunction with recurring monetary incentives by utilities (II) lead to successful progress in BEV adoption.

Temporary use is used in urban planning to cope with vacant and underutilized buildings and sites. Central to this are its users who face considerable uncertainty but navigate through this differently due to their network contexts. This compels our examination of how conditions, including network position, co-occur with diverse uncertainty responses. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we compare 39 cases of temporary users in Bremen and Rotterdam. Three distinct configurations of conditions reveal how temporary users perceive and approach uncertainty: network-dependent, network-independent, and those involving network propagation and professionalization. These pathways reveal whether users respond individually or collaboratively to uncertain environments.

Integration in spatial planning remains a persistent challenge, especially amid growing environmental and societal complexities that demand coordinated solutions. While much research highlights facilitating factors for integration, less attention has been given to barriers that hinder cohesive planning, particularly within centralized governance contexts. This paper addresses this gap by investigating how Multi-Plan Integration (MPI) operates in practice within Chinas spatial planning system. Through a comparative case study of three MPI projects and one non-MPI project, we identify the effects, facilitators, and inhibitors of integration. Findings reveal that MPI can improve integration outcomes when supported by enabling institutional, instrumental, and contextual conditions, such as collaborative networks, effective process management, and adequate resources, but it does not guarantee success due to persistent challenges including fragmented expertise, low capacity of connective actors, and limited collaborative culture. Importantly, integration emerges not solely from top-down mandates but through bottom-up coordination, informal communication, and adaptive governance practices. This study contributes to spatial planning literature by highlighting pathways to integration in hybrid governance systems and provides an analytical framework for understanding the complex dynamics shaping planning integration.

A major concern for policymakers in European cities is to identify the right policy mix that promotes the diffusion of battery electric vehicles (BEV's). Existing research focuses mainly on the effect of fiscal policies at the national, aggregated level. Consequently, less is known about policy mixes that include monetary and non-monetary policies implemented at both the national and local level. Building on prior research, we deploy a two-step fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) of BEV policies in 14 European cities to identify policy mixes that successfully promote the urban adoption of BEV's.We find two policy mixes that promote BEV uptake. First, recurring monetary and non-monetary policies that address behavioral aspects of BEV-usage at the local level in conjunction with monetary incentives for home and workplace charging points as well as on-street residential charging points successfully propel BEV uptake. Second, the presence of monetary incentives for home and workplace charging points, as well as on-street residential charging points in conjunction with policies disincentivizing conventional car usage promote the adoption of BEV's.Our study shows that BEV policies must be tailored carefully across different policy levels and individually to BEV-user contexts in cities. QCA provides a helpful tool for evaluating BEV policy mixes.

Kansen voor de vergelijkende evaluatie van beleidsprocessen: recente ontwikkelingen in QCA Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is een onderzoeksmethode die uiterst geschikt is voor de systematische vergelijkende evaluatie van een beperkt aantal cases. In haar oorspronkelijke vorm worstelt de methode echter met het evalueren van cases die door de tijd evolueren, zoals beleidsprocessen. Recent zijn verschillende methodologische innovaties ontwikkeld om tijd en proces te incorporeren in de systematische vergelijking met QCA. In dit artikel bespreken we de belangrijkste innovaties en geven we aan welke strategie het beste zou passen bij een gegeven evaluatietype en -vraag. We bespreken de volgende strategieën: een conventionele QCA in een mixed-methods design, het gebruiken van temporele condities, het uitvoeren van meerdere QCA-analyses voor verschillende perioden, het uitvoeren van één QCA voor verschillende perioden, Trajectory-Based QCA (TJ-QCA), Temporal QCA (TQCA) en Time-Series QCA (TS/QCA). We vergelijken de verschillende strategieën op hun sterktes en zwaktes en geven aan onder welke voorwaarden ze toegepast kunnen worden voor de evaluatie van beleidsprocessen.

Abstract This chapter addresses the ways in which the complexity of global governance enables or constrains political agency. An increasingly complex global institutional system—with its growing level of unpredictability and uncertainties—challenges some of the classical institutionalist tenets in respect of conditions of power and agency. For instance, the capacities of central governance institutions and their key actors to shape other actors’ preferences and to bind them by lowering transaction costs may be significantly undermined by a growing number of institutional alternatives in their environment. This chapter therefore suggests that institutional complexity should be acknowledged theoretically as a structural characteristic inherent to polycentric global governance, which alters spaces for political agency. We hold that the ability to use these spaces depends inter alia upon core organizational and epistemic qualities of political actors. These include, for example, a central position or brokerage function in a policy network, or a relatively generalist and flexible knowledge of the governance system in question. Such qualities may serve different actors in attaining and upholding meaningful political agency under a state of complexity. With a view to the three core themes of this volume, we argue that these qualities may facilitate new forms of power (e.g. nodal power in a network), techniques (e.g. forum-shopping amongst institutional alternatives) and legitimacy (e.g. peer or mutual accountability) for navigating unpredictable and uncertain institutional systems. Examples from global environmental governance will be used to illustrate how these qualities are enacted.

The re-development of abandoned industrial areas and city cores characterizes the transition from industrial to post-industrial societies in Western Europe. Shorter-term and project-based urban programs, like the re-developments of waterfronts and station areas, emerged as more sui in response to the consequences of economic, demographic, political and cultural change than long-term, top-down spatial planning. Notably, processes and outcomes of strategic spatial planning vary across European cities and may display unique characteristics. This study compares eleven urban transformations in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to shed light on the degree to which these programmatic urban transformations have been successful in shifting the urban fabric from an industrial to a post-industrial state. We examine the combinations of factors that, over time, have contributed to a qualitative urban change. Using primary and secondary sources, we perform a Trajectory-Based Qualitative Comparative Analysis (TJ-QCA) to identify recipes for successful urban transitions. Results show that there are two main planning recipes associated with successful urban transformations: either a combination of a high strategic character of the project with a leading role of public actors, or a combination of a high strategic character with brownfield redevelopment.

We describe the transfer of dissipative structure theory from thermodynamics to the social sciences. In our opinion, this transfer can contribute to a theory of social evolution where the relation between individual actions and social structures is a focal point. Central to the argument is the idea that dissipative structures emerge in social systems like they do in other open systems with inflows triggered by constraints. The transfer delivers a complexity-informed model for the different phases of social evolution. While there are average periods where the prevailing 'norms' of social behaviour do not change in a significant way, there are also bifurcation periods where the 'norm' of behaviour may change due to the amplification of deviating individual behaviour.

As Temporary Uses (TU) proliferate in praxis, scholarship intensifies its attention to TU contexts and conditions, too. Until now, much of this attention derives from single-case studies of TU with little awareness for the persistent, cross-case conditions that stabilise TU. This paper addresses this gap by assessing under what combination of the most common conditions TU stabilises in space and becomes fixed to a single location. These include entrepreneurial management, risk perceptiveness, adaptive capacity, interactive attachment, municipal support, spatial affordance, and functional compatibility. By drawing on empirical data collected between 2017 and 2019 from 40 different TU cases in the Bremen (DE) and Rotterdam (NL), as well as document analyses, we present and discuss the outcomes of a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs-QCA). Our analysis problematises and prioritises how entrepreneurial management and risk perceptiveness interact and contribute to the spatial stability of TU. Two sets of pathways of conjunctions are highlighted in this contribution. The first relates to entrepreneurial management that is empowered by municipal support in facilitating functional compatibility. The latter relates to risk perceptiveness along with adaptive capacity that can be incubated through spatial affordances. These pathways of stabilisation associate with synchronised trajectories of TU.

We observe that time is central to most social dynamics and yet remains poorly understood. The complexity sciences have contributed a wide range of concepts and tools to investigate and recast time in social systems. However, the dominant focus on quantitative models and quantification of data in the complexity sciences also prohibits a deeper understanding of time. As such, there is a need to fuse alternative notions of time with how it is commonly understood and measured in the complexity sciences. To this end, we juxtapose diverse notions of time from the social sciences and comment upon how this contrasts with notions in the complexity sciences. We will demonstrate how (qualitative) temporal casing can more appropriately capture social and causal complexity through within-case time variation. We use examples from research into megaprojects to demonstrate how temporal casing plays out in empirical analysis.

We assess to what extent a (co)evolutionary macro level approach enhances our understanding of learning in governance processes. We ask the question: in what ways do actors learn to improve their chances of long-term survival in complex governance processes? We deploy a model of collective decision making moulded upon fitness landscapes to analyze a longitudinal case study of collective (political and administrative) decision making, namely the process of developing and acquiring the F35 Lightning II fighter jet. The study demonstrates that actors learn how to ensure survival over time but create a failing megaproject in the process.

Complex planning processes bear the hallmarks of evolution, in that actors seek to obtain the results that serve their needs best. That is, seek to increase their fitness. As in biological evolution, there are multiple pathways toward fitness. With the rise of adaptive planning approaches, the question how such pathways can be identified in strategic planning processes becomes pivotal. To answer this question, we adapt the fitness landscape model from biology and analyze several strategic planning processes. The analysis demonstrates that one can trace how different pathways to fitness emerge, and which pathways are more successful given the circumstances. We then synthesize these pathways into six strategic archetypes of actor behavior and of interactions between actors.