Epistemology and Challenges of Governance and Policymaking Networks

Societies have become increasingly complex; fragmented; dynamic and variable, and different forms of governance have been created to address new governing challenges. Governance networks which in general facilitate flexibility; speed and innovation in the government, compared with traditional governance forms, are necessary to meaningfully govern smart societies. The popularity and scope of governance and policy networks researches and practice continues to expand from its divergent foundations, assumptions and methodological positions, and at the same time, it is rife with disparate typologies and conflicting terminologies, so that there is no a generally agreed definition of them. The main purpose of this research is to collect; summary; assessment; and the development of the theoretical literature related to epistemology and the challenges of governance networks and policymaking with an inductive approach and using the qualitative method of metasynthesis. The research sampling method is purposeful sampling, articles and studies have been selected that can answer the research question. For regular search of samples from different informational resources and scientific databases have been used and after qualitative analysis of selected articles and studies, common themes and concepts were extracted in relation to the subject of the research are recorded and by re-reading several times, the basic and common themes in all studies are combined together; and the dimensions and factors affecting the subject of the research have been extracted and presented, as well as suggestions for further studies and researches in this field have been presented. The conclusion of the research includes this fact that the growth of the complexity of public issues; It has made necessary the use of different types of governance and policymaking networks, despite the existence of challenges in these networks, in line with the implementation of section 10 of the third article of the country's constitution.