Thursday, December 13, 2012

Governance capabilities for dealing wisely with wicked problems


Governance capabilities to deal with wicked problems (think climate change or sustainable food production) are a keystone of the research programme of the Public Administration and Policy group on "Changing governance, governing change" (see our new website www.wageningenur.nl/pap). The key question is about different approaches to observing and understanding wicked problems, different repertoires of action strategies, and the conditions that are needed to enable the action strategies. In an article by Katrien Termeer, Gerard Breeman, Sabina Stiller and myself published in Administration and Society), we have tried to lay out the fundamentals of four different governance capabilities, which in their combination provide a varied set of lenses and action repertoires to cope with wicked problems. 

This is the abstract:
This article explores an integrative approach for dealing with wicked problems. Wicked problems not only require alternative action strategies, but also alternative ways of observing and enabling. Four governance capabilities are essential: (1) reflexivity, or the capability to deal with multiple frames; (2) resilience, or the capability to adjust actions to uncertain changes; (3) responsiveness, or the capability to respond to changing agendas and expectations; (4) revitalization, or the capability to unblock stagnations. These capabilities form the basis for achieving small wins in wicked problems. We illustrate our argument with examples from sustainable food production of the Common Agricultural Policy.
The paper can is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0095399712469195 or downloaded here.

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