Inside the Living Lab: Why The Hague Is the Right Home for THGQ
Introduction: A Quarterly Built in the Open
Governance Quarterly has always believed that good ideas rarely arrive fully formed. They are tested, argued over, and refined in rooms where researchers, policymakers, and practitioners sit at the same table. That is why THGQ does not operate like a distant editorial office. It operates like a living lab.
The Centre for Innovation The Hague and the Leiden University Campus in The Hague give that approach a physical and intellectual home. Both institutions are wired for experimentation, and both treat collaboration as a method rather than a slogan.
A Campus Designed for Co-Creation
The Leiden University Campus in The Hague is not a traditional ivory tower. It sits minutes from ministries, city offices, international courts, and NGOs. That proximity matters for a quarterly that wants its articles to travel from draft to policy debate.
Editors can walk from a working session to a stakeholder meeting without losing the thread of an argument. Students can join as research assistants. Practitioners can drop in as guest reviewers. The campus turns co-creation into a daily rhythm instead of an annual event.
The Centre for Innovation as a Testing Ground
The Centre for Innovation The Hague brings a different strength: a culture of prototyping. Its teams are used to building small, fast experiments around complex governance questions, then learning from what breaks.
For THGQ, that means every issue can be treated as a prototype. A theme is proposed, a call is opened, contributors respond, and the editorial team iterates. The Centre supplies the mindset and the methods, from design sprints to feedback loops, so the quarterly keeps improving instead of repeating itself.
How the Living Lab Shapes Each Issue
The living lab model changes the production of the quarterly in concrete ways. It is not enough to commission articles and wait. The process is active, social, and iterative.
- Editors define a governance challenge with partners from the Centre and the Campus.
- Authors and practitioners co-draft pieces in open sessions.
- Reviewers test arguments against real cases and real constraints.
- Final articles are published with pathways for follow-up dialogue.
This sequence keeps the quarterly honest. It also keeps it useful, because every claim has already met a skeptical reader before it reaches the page.
Why The Hague Is the Right Home
The Hague is often called the city of peace and justice, but it is also a city of implementation. Treaties are signed here, but so are budgets, coalitions, and delivery plans. THGQ needs both worlds.
"The Hague gives us the rare chance to write about governance while standing inside it."
The Centre for Innovation and the Leiden University Campus make that chance repeatable. They offer space, expertise, and a community that expects to be part of the work. For a quarterly devoted to co-creation, that is not a nice extra. It is the foundation.
- Proximity to institutions that shape policy.
- A campus culture that rewards collaboration.
- An innovation centre that normalizes experimentation.
- A city that treats governance as a daily practice.
Inside this living lab, THGQ can do what few publications can: publish ideas that have already been stress-tested by the people who will use them.