https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01442872.2017.1384543#d1e527

Important - Rethinking the governance of wicked problem

• Holistic strategies aim to resolve wicked problems as comprehensively as possible, often without specifying any stopping rules. (i.e. wicked problems create wicked bureaucracy problems due to an overemphasis on cross-cutting collaboration both horizontally and vertically.
• Taming strategies aim to reduce wicked problems to make them more controllable and manageable, and
• coping strategies aim to reflect the fragmented, uncertain and ambiguous nature of wicked problems by relying on a more disjointed and tentative process of formulating policy responses.

Argument:

The first highlighted the importance of considering the trade-offs each alternative way of governing wicked problems necessarily involves based on the choice of evaluative criteria. This discussion was informed by the more general view that wicked problems encompass both analytical and administrative challenges, and that any strategy for the governance of wicked problems must be judged with both challenges in mind.

The second line of argument concluded that a systematic assessment of alternative approaches to wicked problems depends on a more fundamental reorientation of the debate away from the conception of wicked problems as a singular type toward the more focused analysis of different dimensions of problem wickedness.

Question: how would you evaluate the different dimensions of a potentially wicked problem?

At the very least, such a move would likely raise attention to the fact that by focusing on different dimensions of policy problems, our understanding of problem-solving necessarily shifts as well.

Notes:

One of the truisms of policy analysis is that policy problems are rarely solved. If solving wicked problems is beyond reach, research on wicked problems needs to provide a clearer understanding of the alternatives. The article identifies and explicates three distinguishable strategies of problem governance: coping, taming and solving.

The discussion reveals how coping, taming and solving, respectively aim to reflect, reduce, or resolve wicked problems according to distinguishable logics of problem governance.

As Termeer et al. (Citation2015, 685) argue, governing wicked problems is a balancing act. Yet striking a balance may not always be possible or even advisable. The discussion, therefore, recasts the question not as one of balance but of trade-offs. This points to the question of the most relevant evaluative criteria we use to assess and compare the benefits of different ways of problem governance.

Wicked problem solving - collaboration

This perspective strongly informs a literature that argues that tackling wicked policy problems has ‘more to do with problem setting than with problem solving’ (Schön Citation1993, 138).