Search results

Preface; 1. Introduction: The Intellectual and Political Background 2. Idéologie and the Pursuit of Certainty 3. From Individual Desires to Social Morality 4. The Science of Social Organization 5. Economics: The Science of "Industrie" 6. Politics: The Science of "Happiness" 7. Public Instruction and Idéologie; Appendices; Bibliography

First published in 1987. This study describes and analyses the published writings of the French philosopher Antoine Destutt de Tracy. The author focuses on the three decades from the calling of the Etats-généraux to the early years of the Restoration - the period of Tracy's entire literary production, and the period of his greatest influence and reputation. This title will be of great interest to students of history, philosophy and politics.

This is an open access book. This book offers the first overview of the 'wicked problems' literature, often seen as complex, open-ended, and intractable, with both the nature of the 'problem' and the preferred 'solution' being strongly contested. It contextualises the debate using a wide range of relevant policy examples, explaining why these issues attract so much attention. There is an increasing interest in the conceptual and practical aspects of how 'wicked problems' are identified, understood and managed by policy practitioners. The standard public management responses to complexity and uncertainty (including traditional regulation and market-based solutions) are insufficient. Leaders often advocate and implement ideological 'quick fixes', but integrative and inclusive responses are increasingly being utilised to recognise the multiple interests and complex causes of these problems. This book uses examples from a wide range of social, economic and environmental fields in order to develop new insights about better solutions, and thus gain broad stakeholder acceptance for shared strategies for tackling 'wicked problems'.

Chapter 1: Debates in public policy – problem-framing, knowledge and interests -- Chapter 2: The rise of 'wicked problems' – uncertainty, complexity and divergence -- Chapter 3: Political governance of wicked problems -- Chapter 4: Complexity, crises and coping strategies -- Chapter 5: Managing environmental and sustainability challenges -- Chapter 6: Improving social wellbeing and social equity -- Chapter 7. Policy innovation in turbulent times. .

AbstractIt is commonly claimed there is a crisis of expertise in liberal democracies and that experts who provide evidence‐based policy ideas have become widely distrusted. This paper reconsiders the nature of this perceived crisis in policy advisory systems. The literature has identified four reasons for this trend—politicisation, diversification, diminished policy capacity, and populism. Building on these claims, this paper suggests that the contestability of policy advice has been the key underlying shift in policy advisory processes. Contestability can be positively useful for testing the robustness of policy proposals. However, if the policy debate has no evidentiary standards, the contest becomes a clash of opinions and slogans. Hence, several approaches have been proposed to strengthen the role of professional expertise and improve the quality and legitimacy of evidence‐informed policymaking. One approach is the rebuilding of bureaucratic capacity to provide evidence‐informed policy advice. However, a technocratic–elitist style that invokes scientific authority would be difficult to sustain politically in relation to complex issues affecting citizen well‐being. A second approach is to improve stakeholder engagement and to enhance respect for the expertise embodied in 'lived experience'. Thus, rebuilding trust and legitimacy may require broadening the range of relevant expertise through multi‐stakeholder approaches.Points for practitioners
Types of expert policy advice have evolved and diversified, with many sources and channels both inside and outside government
Contestability of policy advice has become more widespread
Public service policy capacity has arguably been weakened through outsourcing, use of consultants, interest group lobbying, and the growing influence of ministerial advisors
Evidence‐informed advisory systems have been challenged by fast decision‐making, wicked problems, media misinformation, and populist slogans
Rebuilding capacity and trust in high‐quality policy systems requires new thinking, including more inclusive processes and a wider view of relevant expertise.

AbstractRittel and Webber boldly challenged the conventional assumption that 'scientific' approaches to social policy and planning provide the most reliable guidance for practitioners and researchers who are addressing complex, and contested, social problems. This provocative claim, that scientific-technical approaches would not 'work' for complex social issues, has engaged policy analysts, academic researchers and planning practitioners since the 1970s. Grappling with the implications of complexity and uncertainty in policy debates, the first generation of 'wicked problem' scholars generally agreed that wicked issues require correspondingly complex and iterative approaches. This tended to quarantine complex 'wicked' problems as a special category that required special collaborative processes. Most often they recommended the inclusion of multiple stakeholders in exploring the relevant issues, interests, value differences and policy responses. More than four decades later, however, there are strong arguments for developing a second-generation approach which would 'mainstream' the analysis of wicked problems in public policy. While continuing to recognize the centrality of complexity and uncertainty, and the need for creative thinking, a broader approach would make better use of recent public policy literatures on such topics as problem framing, policy design, policy capacity and the contexts of policy implementation.

"Problem Definition and the Policy Process: Wicked Problems" published on by Oxford University Press.