A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems: From Governance Failure to Failure Governance (Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology) [1st ed. 2023] 3031240332, 9783031240331

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN RELATIONAL SOCIOLOGY

A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems From Governance Failure to Failure Governance Peeter Selg Georg Sootla Benjamin Klasche

Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology Series Editors

Nick Crossley Department of Sociology University of Manchester Manchester, UK Peeter Selg School of Governance, Law and Society Tallinn University Tallinn, Estonia

In various disciplines such as archeology, psychology, psychoanalysis, international relations, and philosophy, we have seen the emergence of relational approaches or theories. This series, founded by François Dépelteau, seeks to further develop relational sociology through the publication of diverse theoretical and empirical research—including that which is critical of the relational approach. In this respect, the goal of the series is to explore the advantages and limits of relational sociology. The series welcomes contributions related to various thinkers, theories, and methods clearly associated with relational sociology (such as Bourdieu, critical realism, Deleuze, Dewey, Elias, Latour, Luhmann, Mead, network analysis, symbolic interactionism, Tarde, and Tilly). Multidisciplinary studies which are relevant to relational sociology are also welcome, as well as research on various empirical topics (such as education, family, music, health, social inequalities, international relations, feminism, ethnicity, environmental issues, politics, culture, violence, social movements, and terrorism). Relational sociology—and more specifically, this series—will contribute to change and support contemporary sociology by discussing fundamental principles and issues within a relational framework.

Peeter Selg • Georg Sootla  Benjamin Klasche

A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems From Governance Failure to Failure Governance

Peeter Selg School of Governance, Law & Society Tallinn University Tallinn, Estonia Benjamin Klasche School of Governance, Law and Society Tallinn University Tallinn, Estonia

Georg Sootla School of Governance, Law and Society Tallinn University Tallinn, Estonia

ISSN 2946-4110     ISSN 2946-4129 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology ISBN 978-3-031-24033-1    ISBN 978-3-031-24034-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Philartphace/E+/Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Paper in this product is recyclable.

Preface and Acknowledgments

In this book, we argue that moving from a substantialist to a relational approach to governance entails accepting the inevitability of governance failure and orienting oneself to failure governance. Adopting failure governance is what we propose as the most reasonable strategy for governing wicked problems. In a different vocabulary: failure governance entails true acceptance of the contingency of the social and political world as we know it. Analytically it requires moving from the presumption of the “elegant” world of bounded entities, grasped by independent and dependent variables, to a world of constantly changing and constitutive relations. Accepting these features of the world, in turn, brings in the need to also move from various toolboxes to a self-reflective ethos toward the world. It is similar to moving from various ethical imperatives—be they categorical or hypothetical—to the underlying ethical mechanisms themselves. To bring an even more robust parallel: it would be a movement from a list of jokes to a sense of humor. To say, “I know a lot of jokes” makes sense, but to say, “I have a sense of humor” makes way less sense since sense of humor is something that emerges out of a complex network of relations and practices (of which telling jokes could be an important part) through which one “acquires” one’s sense of humor. Also, a sense of humor is never fully given but manifests itself in practice. One cannot say that now they finally “have” a sense of humor for good or that they soon are going to have sense of humor. Bottom line: like power and governance, sense of humor is an example of phenomena that should be approached in relational terms. But it is a huge leap—if it even is possible to take it at all—to v

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propose normative guidelines for how to have a great sense of humor. Similarly, in this book, we propose a relational approach to governance of wicked problems. Analytically this has been way easier a task than normatively. It is easier to imagine a world in which nothing is fixed or given than to envision some “positive program” of governance for such a world, let alone policy advice, a notion so heavily contaminated by “tools talk,” which presumes “variables talk” at the analytical level. But is there still hope for a positive program? Can we still hope to teach or give guidelines for failure governance? It is as tricky as asking how to gain a sense of humor, when all we have is a list of jokes. This is what we tackle in the current book. Writing it has been a wicked problem for us, and in many ways, we have practiced what we preach. We want to thank Joonatan Nõgisto for carefully reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this book. Also, we thank the Estonian Research Council for the research grant PUT1485, out of which this book emerged. Peeter would like to thank his partner Maria Koldekivi for her tremendous support and patience during the enormously difficult times of writing this book. Georg would like to thank his wife Alija, for putting up the long hours, weeks, and months of being alone when he struggled to write his chapters. Benjamin would like to thank Peeter for inviting him to participate in the project that led to this book. He also wants to thank Peeter and Georg for thinking together, without whom this book would never have been realized. Finally, he would like to thank his wife, Airi, and his daughters, Linda and Lilian, for all their love and support. Last but not least, we all thank the late François Dépelteau for making it all possible in this volume (and numerous others) on relational sociology. The breadth and depth of his work in setting the relational sociology movement truly aflame on a global scale are still partly to be discovered, but its fruits will never be forgotten. Tallinn, Estonia  

Peeter Selg Georg Sootla Benjamin Klasche

Contents

1 Introduction:  A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems  1 References 14 Part I A Relational Definition of Wicked Problems of Governance  19 2 Aren’t  All Problems Wicked? Addressing the Constructive and Destructive Critiques of the Concept of Wicked Problems 21 2.1 Should We Have an Ontological Notion of Wicked Problems in the First Place? 22 2.1.1 Some Constructive and Destructive Criticisms of the Notion of Wicked Problems 22 2.1.2 What Are Methodology and Ontology, and How to Justify Them? 29 2.2 How to Understand Problems: Alternative Typologies and Frameworks 32 2.2.1 Alford and Head’s Contingency Framework 32 2.2.2 Grint: Tame, Critical, and Wicked Problems 34 2.3 Simple, Complex, Wicked, and De-Problematized Problems  35 References 45

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3 From  Categorical Distinctions of Policy Problems to a Relational Approach to Wicked Problems 49 3.1 Substantialist and Relational Understanding of Social Processes 51 3.1.1 Process as Instigated by “Things”: The Notion of Self-action 51 3.1.2 Process as “Thing”: The Notion of Inter-action 53 3.1.3 Process as Constitutive Relation(S): The Notion of Trans-action 54 3.2 From Studying to Governing Wicked Problems: From (De)Politicization to (De-)problematization 59 3.2.1 Colin Hay’s Model of (De)politicization 61 3.2.2 Toward Discursive/Semiotic Notion of (De) politicization 63 3.3 From Discursive Approaches to (De)politicization to the Notion of (De-)problematization of Wicked Problems 67 3.4 Two Ideal Types of De-problematizing Wicked Problems: Self-active and Inter-active Governance 69 3.4.1 Self-active Governance as Politics of De-problematization: Individualism and Structuralism 69 3.4.2 Inter-active Governance as Politics of De-problematization: Networks 71 References 74 4 From  Governance Failure to Failure Governance: A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems 77 4.1 Trans-Active Governance as Politics of Problematization: Governing Wicked Problems as Un-Owned Processes 77 4.1.1 The Contingency of the Socio-Political 78 4.1.2 From Contingency to Failure: Bob Jessop on Metagovernance 80 4.1.3 From Governance Failure to Failure Governance 86 4.2 Governance Failure: How and Why De-problematization Occurs 91 4.3 Looking Ahead: Policy Theories as Sources of Problematization and De-problematization 96 References 98

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Part II The History of the Present of the Theories of the Policy Process: From Self-Action to Trans-Action 103 5 A  Genealogy of Self-Active Governance in Policy Theories105 5.1 The Inception of “Policy Orientation”: The Context and Key Principles of the Normative Model of the Policy Process107 5.1.1 The Policy Orientation107 5.1.2 Policy Process: Knowledge Production vis-à-vis Politics110 5.1.3 Policy as Finding Solutions to Problems112 5.1.4 Policy as Decision-Making Process114 5.1.5 Policy as Causal Chains of Functionally Linked Activities115 5.2 The Discursive Context of Policy Sciences117 References120 6 Problematizing  Theoretical Understandings of Problems: From Self-actionalist to Inter-­actionalist Approaches in Policy Sciences123 6.1 What Is a Problem?124 6.2 What to Do with Problems?128 6.2.1 Problem Solution128 6.2.2 Problem Resolution135 6.2.3 Problem Dissolution136 6.3 Beyond the Givenness of Problems140 6.3.1 From Problem-Solving to Policy as Design140 6.3.2 From Problem Resolution to Problem Structuring as an Analytical Strategy142 6.3.3 Policy in the Context of Contingency and Chaos: An Inter-actional View149 6.3.4 Inter-actional Approaches to Ensuring Substantive Outcomes in the Policy Process153 6.4 In Sum: From Self-actionalism to Inter-­actionalism in Policy Theories—Toward Increasing Recognition of the Contingency of the Socio-political157 References160

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7 The  (Re)turn to the Political: Deepening the Grasp of Contingency in the Theories of the Policy Process167 7.1 On the Constitution of Policy Problems: Bringing the Political Back In172 7.1.1 From Street-Level Bureaucrats to Backward Mapping: The Problem of Policy Implementation172 7.2 Four Basic Patterns in Theorizing Policy as a Contingent Process176 7.2.1 The Theory of Policy Streams176 7.2.2 The Theory of Advocacy Coalitions177 7.2.3 “Thick” Institutionalism in Rational Choice Theory178 7.2.4 The Theory of attention shifts178 7.3 The Emergence of the Theories of Policy Networks179 7.4 The Emergence of the Notion of Governance as Governing Through Networks182 7.4.1 The New-Institutionalist Roots182 7.4.2 Mixing Theories and Practices: The Roots from New Public Management183 7.4.3 The Roots from Organization Studies and Political Science185 7.4.4 Multi-Level Governance and/as Network Governance187 References191 8 Speaking  Truth to Power? The (Political) Constitution of Knowledge and Rationality in Policy-Making and Governance199 8.1 Sources and Roles of Knowledge in the Policy Process: From Knowledge as Representation to Knowledge as Active Ordering200 8.1.1 Herbert Simon and the Problem of (Bounded) Rationality201 8.1.2 Lindblom Against Professional Social Inquiry: “Muddling Through” the Plurality of Policy-­ Relevant Knowledge210 8.1.3 The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis212 8.2 Knowledge, Truth, and Experts214 References219

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9 From  De-Problematized Expert Knowledge to Politics of Critical Dialogue: Toward Process-Relational Policy Theories223 9.1 Beyond Policy/Politics Dualism224 9.2 Institutionalization of Politics in Policy Networks232 9.3 The Political Constitution of Policy Through Issue Framing236 9.4 Frame Reflection as Practical Bridging of Frames239 9.5 The Politics of Critical Dialogue250 References257 Part III Theory and Practice of Failure Governance and Governance Failure 265 10 A  Theory of Governance as Problematization and De-problematization267 10.1 Inter-actional and Trans-actional Orientations in the Analysis of the Policy Process267 10.2 A Political Semiotic Theory of Governance as Problematization and De-problematization273 10.2.1 A Theory of Political Semiotics274 10.2.2 Methodological Consequences of the Political Semiotic Theory of Governance283 10.3 A Dialogical Understanding of Theory in Case Study Research286 References289 11 The Whole-of-Nation-Failure-Governance: Taiwan’s Politics of Problematization of COVID-19293 11.1 C1: Taiwan as an Epitome of Success293 11.2 Taking Stock of Alternative Explanations295 11.3 A1: The Whole-of-Nation-Failure-Governance of More Than 100 Measures299 11.4 C2: Taiwan’s Poor Performance at the Beginning of the Vaccination Phase of the Crisis307 11.5 A3: From Domestic Politics to Geopolitical Crisis309 11.6 Conclusion311 References312

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12 Making  America Do Their “Own Research” Again? Trump’s Politics of De-problematization of COVID-19315 12.1 C1: The US as an Epitome of Failure315 12.2 Taking Stock of Alternative Explanations318 12.3 The Fauci/Trump Dialectics and the Constitution “Doing Your Own Research”322 12.3.1 “It’ll Go Away”322 12.3.2 From “It’ll Go Away” to “New Hoax” of the Democrats to “It’s Totally Harmless”325 12.3.3 “A Cheerleader for the Country” Meets Fauci325 12.4 Conclusion: Making America Do Their “Own Research Again”? On the Epistemic Authority Crisis of the US328 References331 13 Germany’s  Road from Failure Governance to Governance Failure335 13.1 Introduction335 13.2 Operationalizing the Ethos of Failure Governance338 13.3 The Beginning of the Crisis: Embracing the Ethos of Failure Governance340 13.3.1 The German Leadership341 13.3.2 Germany’s Institutional Starting Conditions and Administrative Culture346 13.4 From Failure Governance to Governance Failure350 13.5 Conclusion356 References358 Part IV Concluding Remarks 363 14 In  Place of Conclusions: Failing Better or Waiting for Godot in a Clumsy World of Wicked Problems?365 References380 Index385

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 7.1 Fig. 10.1. Fig. 10.2 Fig. 11.1 Fig. 11.2

Alternative types of complex problems. (Source: Alford & Head, 2017, p. 402) Mapping the political realm. (Source: Hay, 2007, p. 79) Politicization and depoliticization. (Source: Hay, 2007, p. 79) Principles, tactics, and tools of depoliticization. (Source: Buller & Flinders, 2006, p. 299) Elegant (single-mode) solutions to global warming. (Source: Grint, 2010b, p. 24) Clumsy solution for the wicked problem of global warming. (Source: Grint, 2010b, p. 25) The pattern of the iterative policy process. (Source: Conklin, 2006, p. 10) Semiotic categories for constitutive explanation of the political. (Source: Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 242) Semiotic categories for explaining governance as a process of problematization and de-problematization. (Adapted from Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 242) Conditions of an effective whole-of-nation approach. (Source: Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 311) The drastic upsurge of COVID-19 deaths in Taiwan in spring and summer of 2021 (Source: Johns Hopkins University CSSE COVID-19 Data—retrieved October 4, 2022)

33 61 62 64 88 88 170 278 278 298 309

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3

Three types of problems of governance 36 Four categories of problems of governance 39 Criteria for distinguishing different problems represented as a truth table 41 Table 3.1 Three approaches to problems as social processes 59 Table 4.1 Governing simple, complex, and wicked problems 91 Table 6.1 Decision strategies 149 Table 6.2 Development of substantive policy outcomes in normative (self-­actional) and inter-actional perspectives on the policy process154 Table 10.1 Comparing inter-actional and trans-actional orientations in the analysis of the policy process 268 Table 13.1 Healthcare spending 2020 349

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems

At the core of this book sits the endeavor to make the transition from the more common sense understanding of the world to the (processual-)relational perspective we are proposing more intuitive. To start, let us point out that our spontaneous view of the world is substantialist, the opposite of relational: in our language, we express the world as being composed of substances, rather than of emerging, unfolding processes and relations. However, as we argue, we should be relational when we think about social phenomena that we call wicked problems. Yet spontaneously, we presume a world of substances (“things,” “objects,” “subjects”) that have properties (“tall,” “heavy,” “red”) and are engaged in activities (“running,” “standing,” “walking”). Even though our everyday language is substantialist, there are some phenomena that we tend to take spontaneously as relations rather than bundles of things with properties. Take, for instance, “distance.” The distance between two trucks is definitely a relation between them, not a thing, property, or even action of either of them. Distance has various features that make it easier to illustrate several crucial points about relational approaches. For instance, distance is always symmetric: A’s distance from B is also B’s distance from A. Thus, you cannot be simply an A that “has” a distance; A needs at least some B to “have” any distance. This means, in turn, that the distance between A and B is not reducible to either A or B. Moreover, while the distance is not reducible

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_1

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to A or B, it is always between them and not conceivable as a separate “entity” that could be made sense of without those very As and Bs. Thus, “distance” seems to be a thoroughly relational concept in that it refers to a phenomenon that can only be understood as a relation. However, there are still certain limitations to sticking to the figure or metaphor of distance when rendering the relational approaches we put forth in this book. Namely, “distance” is not a concept that captures dynamic, unfolding, processual relations between As and Bs that are not only irreducible to and reciprocal between As and Bs, but are also constitutive of those As and Bs. It is precisely these kinds of relations that processual-­relational scholars are talking about when they are thinking about the nature of reality in general. When it comes to social reality or to social phenomena more specifically, they presume that not only are the relations between As and Bs incomprehensible without those As and Bs (as is the case with distance), but those As and Bs, in turn, are not comprehensible without the relations between them. This is where the figure of distance becomes limiting. For instance, we do not tend to think that moving one truck away from another truck somehow alters the character or “essence” of either of those trucks. If we want to get a spontaneous insight to what is called “deep” relational thinking (see Dépelteau, 2013; Selg, 2016b), or processual relationalism (Selg & Ventsel, 2020; Selg et al., 2022) then we need different metaphors than distance for bringing this point home smoothly. This is where the concept of “sense of humor” becomes useful, as argued by one of us before (Selg, 2018). What is so significant about the sense of humor, is that in our common sense language, we tend to treat it as a property or capacity that people “have” (or “have” not). It is not even treated as something people “do.” We do not regard utterances like “She has a sense of humor” as utterly nonsensical as we would view enunciations like “She has a distance.” But the more you think about it, the less it makes sense to treat a sense of humor as a property of people. If we truly understood sense of humor as a property, then there would not be any crucial difference between the first-person form and other forms of description of this phenomenon. But there is. What we mean is the following: There is a multitude of “things” like pieces of furniture or parts of the body that can be spoken about in the first-person form without losing much accuracy: there does not seem to be anything wrong if someone utters “I have a hammer” or “I have two eyes.” Those statements seem to be at least prima facie evidence that somebody has a hammer or two eyes. But think about the sentence “I

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have a sense of humor.” Leaving aside the fact that it makes sense grammatically, we could ask: is this sentence evidence—even prima facie evidence—of someone having a sense of humor? There are various grounds for saying no. For instance, people who say that they have a sense of humor usually do not have it. The reason is not so much related to the issues of proper humility or improper arrogance, but to the fact that A’s sense of humor is a relation rather than a property, capacity, or resource of someone. That is why we intuitively tend to regard the first-person description as bizarre, at least when it comes to sense of humor. We tend to acknowledge that a self (A) cannot “have” a sense of humor without some relation to an other (B). In that sense “distance” and “sense of humor” are similar. They are relational concepts, even intuitively: they refer to reciprocal relations (although distance seems to be referring not to just reciprocal, but symmetrical relations—an issue that does not have relevance yet). But they part company in one important respect: unlike with distance, it is up to the other, at least to a certain extent, to attribute a sense of humor to the self. In that sense, unlike distance, sense of humor is an action-concept: an other (a B) has to do something in order for a self (an A) to “have” a sense of humor. But does it mean that, unlike distance, someone’s sense of humor is reducible to the other or the action of the other? No. And the reason is that not every other is equally adequate to perform the attribution of sense of humor to a self. Consider this: if James is some random stranger who just pops in and says “John has a sense of humor” about a particular John, then we spontaneously regard this utterance as less credible than we would regard the same sentence coming from a Mary, who is a close friend of John. And the reason is that not only is it up to the other to attribute sense of humor to a self, but it is also up to the self to position the other as the one who is able to attribute this sense of humor to him/herself. The colloquial term for this positioning is joking. But again, minimally speaking John’s joking becomes John’s joking only when Mary gets his joke(s). However, Mary can get the joke only if John is, in fact, joking, and in that sense, John is positioning Mary to get the joke, which in turn becomes a joke only if Mary does get the joke as a joke and so on. It can get very messy! It could be that Mary reacts to John’s dead serious talk as if he was joking. Can we say that John has made a joke anyway? Probably not. How many jokes does John have to make and Mary (or Jane or Jim etc.) have to get for John to have a sense of humor? This cannot be settled here in our

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theoretical reflection. It is very much context dependent. But what is certain is that someone’s sense of humor is not only a relation between a self and an other, but also a dynamic process in which various actors are inextricably linked to each other and constituted as elements of the very dynamic relations of which they are part (as jokers, receivers of jokes, audience, laughers etc.). And it is these kinds of dynamic processual complexes that the processual relationalists presume to be the primary unit of sociological analysis, not those Johns, Marys, and other “elements” (with their properties, etc.) themselves. Overall, three different research strategies can be used for studying sense of humor: 1. If we were to analyze sense of humor from our spontaneous substantialist point of view as being analogous to an object (like a hammer or a chair) or property (like hair color) then we would be interested in questions such as: What features of A form A’s sense of humor? 2. If we treated sense of humor as being basically analogous to “distance”—reciprocal, but not dynamic and constitutive relation—then we would be interested in questions such as: Which As are regarded as having sense of humor by which Bs and based on which actions of As? 3. The final research strategy for studying sense of humor would focus on the network of dynamic relations through which certain actions by the As emerge as jokes through meeting certain reactions of the Bs, and through which As and Bs are constituted as jokers, laughers, and so on and are in a constant process of mutual (re)constitution, elements of which can be considered separately, but not as being separate. What the third research strategy wants to bring to the fore is actually very intuitive: we cannot say that a person who has never made anyone laugh has a sense of humor, which would be possible from the viewpoint of the first strategy, that would treat a person’s sense of humor as a property or capacity of that person. This would be analogous to analyzing causes without effects or, more technically speaking: claiming causation without correlation. Similarly, we cannot say that a person who has never intended to make any joke has a sense of humor even if she has made somebody laugh, which would be possible from the viewpoint of the second research strategy, since it would be up to the other to attribute the sense of humor to the self: it would be a situation where the A would be deadly seri-

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ous, but nevertheless, B would act as if A were joking. This would be analogous to a situation where there are effects without causes or correlation without causation. In the third strategy, thus, sense of humor is treated as an unfolding, dynamic, and constitutive relation, whose elements can be considered separately, but not as being separate. This rules out such extreme cases as reducing sense of humor to the intentions of the joker (action) or those of the laugher (reaction): sense of humor is neither action, nor a combination (sum) of actions and reactions, but an emerging phenomenon that is always in the making and unmaking. It is a process that is not “owned” by anyone—at least not exclusively—or, we could even put it more strangely: nobody “has” a sense of humor. Does that make sense? If it does, then we have been able to convince the reader that it is worth a while to approach at least some phenomena around us as if they were bundles of unfolding relations and processes rather than things someone “has.” The reader has doubts, we are sure, whether “things” like hammers are in need to be treated this way.—“I have a hammer—see!”—“Ok, I see it.” This substantialist dialogue makes sense. But there seems to be something disturbing—we hope the reader is with us on that—when it comes to an analogous dialogue:—“I have a sense of humor—see!”—“Ok, I see it.” What is the disturbance here? One of the prominent representatives of relational sociology, Norbert Elias, has reflected on that in terms of “process-reduction” that takes place in our everyday (substantialist) language: “We say, ‘The wind is blowing,’ as if the wind were actually a thing at rest which, at a given point in time, begins to move and blow. We speak as if wind could exist which did not blow” (1978, p. 112). In other words, we talk about wind as if it wasn’t an emerging process but a subject engaged in an action (“blowing”). Similarly, “standing by a river we see the perpetual flowing of the water. But to grasp it conceptually, and communicate it to others, we do not think and say, ‘Look at the perpetual flowing of the water’; we say ‘Look how fast the river is flowing’” (ibid.). He points out that such “reduction of processes to static conditions, which we shall call ‘process-­ reduction’ for short, appears self-explanatory to people who have grown up with such languages” (ibid., pp.  111–112). We leave aside here the question of why our languages are substantialist and process reducing in that sense, but it is hard to deny that they often are. Let us instead ask a different question: what would a worldview look like according to which not some, but all phenomena should be treated as bundles of unfolding

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relations and processes? This would be a worldview in which not only the second dialogue about sense of humor would be weird, but also the first one about hammer. It would recognize that What a hammer is, is defined relationally. Qua physical object or body, a hammer does not even exist. A thing is not a hammer unless and until it is used as a hammer, which is to say, put to human uses (driving nails, building shelters, etc.) by human beings (carpenters). A hammer is what it is by virtue of its being a constitutive element in an ensemble of relations, and not merely by virtue of its size, shape, weight, or other physical characteristics. (Ball, 1978, p. 105, italics added)

In view of this, saying “I have a hammer” makes very little sense because this is the worldview that sees reality in terms of un-owned processes. This is quite counterintuitive. In its extreme form, it amounts to saying that nobody “has” hammers. This worldview is defensible, and the entire movement of processual thinking since Bergson, Whitehead, Dewey, and Bentley (or Heraclitus, for that matter), and others have been trying to articulate it (see Abbott, 2016; Dépelteau, 2018a, b; Morgner, 2020; Raud, 2021 for recent works on that) and with good reasons. We can take it as a given that such a worldview is defensible. However, we ask, is it always sensible? By that, we mean roughly the following: is it always sensible to treat hammers as un-owned processes, as something nobody has? In a more technical parlance of Elias: is it always sensible to avoid process-­ reduction? We do not think it is. In many practical contexts, process-­ reduction is a sensible thing to do. Although it is defensible that a hammer or a chair “is not an individuated object, but a relation which is viewed abstractly, i.e. one-sidedly” (Ball, 1978, p. 104), it is nonetheless sensible to ignore this when someone asks you to hand her the hammer on the table, so she could use it for driving a nail to the wall. This is because the problem of driving a nail to the wall is an example of what we would call simple problems: it has a clear formulation and a clear solution (also clear criteria for judging whether progress has been made in solving it). There is no need to understand the relations and processes (or relations as processes) such as the capitalist mode of production, gravity, evolution, civilization, etc. constituting the hammer, the wall, the nail, and the need to have a nail on the wall etc. to address the problem. There is no sensible contestation among affected parties regarding the problem or its solution. But what we also argue in this book, is that it is not sensible either to view

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phenomena like the Covid-19 or Climate Crisis “abstractly, i.e. one-sidedly.” This would be a form of process-reduction we call “de-­ problematization” and we argue that it is the primary reason for failure in governing such problems. This is because the Climate Crisis constitutes for humankind a problem that is not simple, but wicked. The notion of wicked problems emerged in the late 1960s, and was made famous by Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber in their seminal article “Dilemmas in general theory of planning” (1973). We argue that reducing wicked problems to “objects” that can be owned or even processes that can be owned is not sensible, we argue. It is more reasonable to see them as un-owned processes, the handling of which should avoid process-­ reduction. What such handling means is the crucial topic of the current book. But to use the analogy with humor here, like wicked problems, humor is not a regional category. We cannot say that humor is a certain domain of human relations or society; rather, in principle, all human forms of life can be conceived to be relevant for one’s “having” a sense of humor. To get properly attuned to this insight, the readers should just visualize for a moment the best comedians they know. These comedians definitely “have” a sense of humor (from the readers’ point of view, at least). Now, can the reader honestly say that this is because they are specialists in a certain field called “making jokes” in a manner that one can be a specialist in using hammers or tables? Probably not. The thing is that it is likely that their jokes are never about jokes, but “stuff” like “economic processes,” “knowledge relationships,” “sexual relations,” and so on. In that sense, jokes are immanent to them. At the same time, all those different relationships and processes are immanent to the jokes. The point is actually very simple if we express it in non-technical terms: understanding a sex joke presumes that the audience understands something about sex, not only about jokes; and similar logic is, of course, involved in understanding an economics joke, knowledge joke etc. In other words, there is no “sense of humor” as such that can be put to use or not; someone’s sense of humor is a process that emerges from a multiplicity of practices that constitute its participants as jokers, laughers, audience, successful and failed jokes, and so on. People who “have” a great sense of humor (think of comedians who are very widely admired) usually “have” it through relations with very different audiences and by having created very different jokes. It is hard to imagine a popular comedian telling similar jokes over time; and it is impossible to imagine a comedian using the same joke over time. Therefore, one

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of the inevitable conclusions of this is that it is impossible to locate the sources of sense of humor. They can potentially be found everywhere and derived from everywhere. This is because a sense of humor is an unowned process that is not reducible to any “doers” in the final analysis. And exactly this is what, in our view, needs to be kept in mind when addressing wicked problems. But are all processes unowned? Well, yes and no: it is defensible to treat them as if they were, but in many practical contexts it is not sensible to do that. Are all problems wicked? Again, the same answer. What is at stake in these answers is the topic of this book. Even more so, the topic of the book is the interdependence of these answers. We claim that although wicked problems cannot be made sense without processual-­ relational approaches, nevertheless, many problems can (and have been) grasped through substantialist approaches reasonably enough. But why should this matter in the first place? Well, here we point to Brian Head, a prominent researcher of wicked problems, who mapped 45 years of research on the topic and conceded: “The literature on ‘wicked problems’ since 1973 has grown exponentially, but often in ways that disconnect discussion from the insights available in the fields of policy studies and public management, not to mention the broader social sciences” (Head, 2019, p. 4). We are taking Head’s cue and bring in the “broader social sciences” into the conceptualizing of wicked problems. This leads us to ask: how to govern wicked problems? We claim that a certain form of governance is better suited for wicked problems than other available forms, both in theory and practice. But first, we need to answer the question: what is governance? In most general terms governance can still be defined as “the process of making and implementing collective decisions for a society” (Pierre & Peter, 2005, 133). The character of this “making and implementing” (and their mutual relationship) is changing, though. This change stems from the fact that governance needs to address wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973; Roberts, 2000; Conklin, 2005; Camillus, 2008; Grint, 2010; Head & Alford, 2015), such as climate change, pandemic diseases, global economic crises, etc. The latter can be seen to “challenge a linear, scale-free, and static worldview that has guided large parts of the scientific study of society and politics” (Duit & Galas, 2008, 311). At the same time, it was more than 20 years ago when “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology” was published (Emirbayer, 1997), declaring exactly what is at stake in this challenge: “Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as consisting primarily in

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substances or in processes, in static ‘things’ or in dynamic, unfolding relations” (p. 281). It is the second, processual view, preoccupied primarily with dynamic unfolding relations that is at the core of “relational thinking.” Two decades later, theoretical and methodological discussions of the “relational turn” thrive in disciplines as diverse as geography (Jones, 2009), sociology (Dépelteau, 2013, 2018b; Prandini, 2015; Crossley, 2010), political science (Selg, 2016a, 2016b), international relations (McCourt, 2016; Pratt, 2019), leadership (Uhl-Bien & Ospina, 2012), or psychoanalysis (Carmeli & Blass, 2010). Only very recently, a “relational turn” has also entered into the discussions in public administration (see Bartels & Turnbull, 2019). We argue that this “turn” needs to be taken from theoretical/methodological discussions to its normative/policy implications since relational thinking is most pertinent when it comes to wicked problems. Wicked problems are problems that are not only unsolvable but are at the same time in urgent need of solutions, entailing that decision-makers have no option to ignore them. In addition, they are problems that are processual all the way down, so much so that they refuse to remain identical to themselves, being in constant change and this way making struggle over their definition part of their very constitution. In that sense they can be seen as akin to complex adaptive systems “whose constituent entities change qualitatively overtime—new types of entities come into being, and existing types disappear” (Richardson, 2007, 202; see also Waddock et al., 2015; Duit & Galas, 2008; Wagenaar, 2007). But they are complex adaptive systems with a vengeance, since “[t]he planner has no right to be wrong”: as Rittel and Webber say (1973, p. 166). This is why, wicked problems, unlike philosophical problems—that are also unsolvable—are different: one has to take action, one has to “solve” them. But these problems change into something else whenever someone tries to put forth a solution. Thus, for instance, what has become known as “the European migration crisis” was only very briefly an issue of an overflow of migrants to Europe and the humanitarian crisis related to that. Already several years ago, it was conceptualized as a “‘wicked problem’—one characterized by: (1) multiple, potentially conflicting values, (2) strong political passions on different sides of the issue, (3) substantive uncertainty on how best to solve the problem, and (4) multiple independent arenas for social deliberation and action” (Geuijen et al., 2017, 622). This is because the European Migrant Crisis is

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a problem that could be seen simultaneously as: a humanitarian crisis based in the suffering of individuals who had abandoned their homes; a geopolitical conflict ranging across countries and continents; a security threat for both receiving and transit countries; a potentially heavy financial burden on already overtaxed states; and the breakdown of collaboration in the network of EU member states. (Geuijen et al., 2017: 622, italics added)

This recent example points to a general challenge of governing wicked problems: it needs to take into account that wicked problems are dynamic unfolding processes whose constituent elements cannot be grasped separately from the flows of relations within which they are embedded and vice versa. This is exactly what the tradition of “relational sociology” has been proposing as a general view on social reality with the corresponding perspective on social research (e.g., Elias, 1978; Somers, 1994; Emirbayer, 1997; Tilly, 2000; Mische, 2011; Dépelteau, 2008; Erikson, 2013; Donati, 2010; Crossley, 2010; Fuhse, 2009; Mützel, 2009; Dépelteau & Powell, 2013; Powell & Dépelteau, 2013; Dépelteau, 2018a; Selg, 2018). It is, therefore, quite remarkable that virtually no one has linked governing wicked problems to relational sociology. This book aims at doing exactly that. In Chap. 2, we address the constructive/destructive critiques of the concept of wicked problems and discuss whether we should have an ontological notion of wicked problems in the first place. Among other things, we distinguish between simple, complex, wicked, and de-problematized problems along two crucial axes: whether there is an agreement on the definition of problems and their solutions among the affected parties. This establishes that (1) simple problems are such that all the parties agree on the definition and the solution; (2) that in case of complex problems there is an agreement on the definition of the problem at hand, but no agreement on its solution; (3) that wicked problems are problems in which there is no agreement among parties on neither the problem’s definition nor its solution; (4) and that de-problematization is a process through which a ready-made ideological or ritual “solution” is offered to problems whose definition is not agreed upon. This is often a very compelling way of “addressing” problems in politics. In Chap. 3, we outline the difference between substantialist and relational understanding of social processes by utilizing the distinction between self-action, inter-action, and trans-action as it was put forth by John Dewey and Arthur Bentley already in 1949 and used by many since

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Emirbayer’s classic “Manifesto for a relational sociology” in 1997. We distinguish between three understandings of social processes. First, the form of process-reduction of self-actionalism, which reduces processes to their instigators. Second, the form of process-reduction of inter-­actionalism that reifies processes to “things” or “variables.” Third, the processual-­ relational approach of trans-actionalism which aims to avoid process-­ reduction as far as possible and sees social processes as constitutive relations among elements. Then we move to the problem of governing wicked problems from the processual-relationalist point of view by analyzing its opposite: the de-problematization of wicked problems, which is, in essence, reducing them to their instigators or just measurable variables (including timelines, implementation plans, development plans, etc.). We also discuss the notion of depoliticization found in governance literature and put forth an essentially semiotic or discursive approach to problematization and de-problematization of wicked problems. Finally, we propose two ideal-typical forms of governance as de-problematization, what we call self-active and inter-active governance. In Chap. 4, we outline the form of governance that, we argue, should be the preferred form of governing wicked problems: trans-active governance as politics of problematization, which would be governing without process-reduction, and treating them as un-owned processes. This leads us to discussing the contingency of the socio-political world and the role of failure in governance. Consequently, we put forth an approach that we call “failure governance,” which would not see governance failure as an aberration, but as something to be presumed from the beginning and governed through self-reflective irony, requisite variety of responses and reflexive orientation. Here we draw heavily on Bob Jessop’s notion of metagovernance. Finally, we discuss why governance failure goes hand in hand with managing wicked problems. This is the concluding chapter of Part I of the book, whose aim was to set the stage for a relational understanding of wicked problems. In Part II, we present a genealogical “history of the present” of policy theories and trace the increasing realization of the contingency of the social and the inevitability of failure in policy-making by these theories. This is not a historical overview but a conceptual analysis that utilizes the distinctions of self-actional, inter-actional, and trans-actional understandings of the social world as outlined in Part I.  In Chap. 5, we start the genealogy of self-active governance by analyzing the “policy orientation” going back to Harold Laswell in the early 1950s. This is the so-called

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normative or textbook model of policy process, which sees policy as finding solutions to problems; policy as a decision-making process; and policy as causal chains of functionally linked activities. We also analyze the discursive context for the emergence of policy orientation. In Chap. 6, we zoom in on the very meaning of (policy) problems and on three understandings of dealing with problems: their solution, their resolution, and their dissolution. We then move away from the presumption that problems are somehow pre-given to the policy process and that policy is a problem-solving activity. We do this by taking steps toward understanding policy as design, toward seeing problem structuring as an analytical strategy to view policy in the context of contingency and chaos. Consequently, in this chapter, we start moving from self-actionalism to inter-actionalism in policy theories by increasingly recognizing the contingency of the socio-political world of both problems and their governance. In Chap. 7, we move even further away from self-actualism, by deepening the grasp of contingency in the theories of the policy process. We look at attempts to bring an understanding of the political constitution of policy problems back into the theories of the policy process, by looking at different interpretations of policy implementation ranging from the concepts of “street-level bureaucrats” to those of “backward mapping.” Then we move to four basic patterns in theorizing policy as a contingent process: the theory of policy streams; the theory of advocacy coalitions; “thick” institutionalism in rational choice theory; and the theory of “attention shifts.” This provides the basis for making sense of the emergence of theories of policy networks and the notion of governance as governing through networks. We discuss various additional roots of the notion of governance, such as new-institutionalism, new public management, organization studies and political science, and multi-level governance and/as network governance. In Chap. 8, we pose the more existential question regarding policy analysis: can we speak “truth to power” as the famous slogan reads already since the eighteenth century, or are knowledge and rationality in policy-­ making constituted politically? We move away from the representationalist understanding of knowledge—the notion that knowledge represents reality—to an understanding of knowledge as an active ordering of reality. For this, we have to take a closer look at the contributions of two great social/ political thinkers: Herbert Simon, who introduced the concept of bounded rationality, and Charles Lindblom’s work against the so-called Professional Social Inquiry where he proposed that policy process is “muddling

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through” the plurality of policy-relevant knowledge. We also introduce the “the argumentative turn” in policy analysis, to be unfolded in more detail in the next chapter, and reflect on changing understanding of the relationship between knowledge, truth, and experts. In Chap. 9, we take the final steps toward process-relational approaches to theories of the policy process by first moving beyond the politics/policy dualism in them. Next, we analyze the institutionalization of politics in policy networks and the political constitution of policy through issue framing. We conclude our discussion with the notion of politics of critical dialogue, which we see as most consistent with the trans-actionalist approach we are proposing in this book. This is the concluding chapter of Part II, whose aim was to take stock of the “history of the present” (in Foucault’s sense) of policy theories to formulate the model of governance as a multidimensional process of interdependence problematization and de-problematization. Chapter 10 proposes the model just mentioned. Yet it starts by summarizing the main differences between inter-actionalist and trans-­actionalist understandings of the policy process. Furthermore, a political semiotics understanding of governance is proposed that distinguishes six interdependent forms of governance based on the semiotic model of communication of Roman Jakobson, the cultural semiotics of Juri Lotman, and the Essex school of post-structuralist political theory of hegemony (Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and others): governance as threat, governance as stoicism, governance as cynicism, governance as hierarchy, deliberative governance, and metagovernance. Also, the methodological consequences of the political semiotic theory of governance are spelled out, and a dialogical understanding of theory in case study research is proposed for the three case studies of failure governance and governance failure that follow in Chaps. 11, 12, and 13. All of them are related to the governance of the COVID-19 crisis of 2020–2022 which could be seen as a wicked problem. In Chap. 11, the case of Taiwan is explored. Taiwan could be seen as the epitome of success of pandemic management. Based on various resources, we found over 100 measures in place against the pandemic, and we can call Taiwan the whole-of-nation-failure-governance. We also discuss the poor performance of Taiwan at the beginning of the vaccination phase of the crisis and bring in the changing situation where the country had to deal with, instead of domestic politics of containing the virus, with a geopolitical crisis related to vaccine supply (and the intervention of mainland China).

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In Chap. 12, the case of the USA under the Trump administration is analyzed. The country can be considered an epitome of failure, with more than a million COVID-19 deaths in less than three years. Often the explanations proposed for such a huge failure are structuralist/institutionalist, pointing to the neoliberalization of health care or the New Federalism that has made it very difficult to coordinate the country with its 50 states. We, however, propose to focus on Trump’s governance and analyze how his politics of de-problematization of the health crisis through stoic and cynical governance that often engaged in discrediting expertise and science has led to the disastrous outcome. In Chap. 13, we explain Germany’s path from failure governance to governance failure when it comes to the COVID-19 crisis. During the first one and a half years of the crisis, the country was quite successful in governing it. Various strategies of failure governance were adopted that we could conceptualize in terms of self-reflective irony, reflexive orientation, and requisite variety of responses to constantly changing circumstances. However, when it came to the vaccination phase of the crisis, the country was surprisingly poor in its performance. Various aspects could be seen as contributing to such changes: the stoic refusal to take tough measures against COVID in view of the federal elections in September 2021, the mixed messages regarding vaccines and the ignoring of scientific expertise, to name a few here. We look at both German leadership as well as the institutional build-up of the country in our explanation. In our concluding remarks (Chap. 14), instead of just reiterating our basic findings in this book, we take our discussion to the next level and reflect on the lessons learned from failure governance and governance failure in view of the biggest wicked problem that our planet is facing: the climate crisis. We also discuss the role of scientific and, especially social-­ scientific knowledge and education in the face of the world where more and more policy-problems—locally and globally—are wicked, and how to deal with the haunting temptation to de-problematize them.

References Abbott, A. (2016). Processual sociology. The University of Chicago Press. Ball, T. (1978). Two concepts of coercion. Theory and Society, 5(1), 97–112. Bartels, K., & Turnbull, N. (2019). Relational public administration: A synthesis and heuristic classification of relational approaches. Public Management Review, 1–23.

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Camillus, J. (2008). Strategy as a wicked problem. Harvard Business Review, 86(5), 98–106. Carmeli, Z., & Blass, R. (2010). The relational turn in psychoanalysis: Revolution or regression? European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 12(3), 217–224. Conklin, J. (2005). Dialogue mapping: Building shared understanding of wicked problems. John Wiley. Crossley, N. (2010). Towards relational sociology. Routledge. Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73. Dépelteau, F. (2013). What is the direction of the “relational turn”? In C. Powell & F.  Dépelteau (Eds.), Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues (pp. 163–185). Palgrave Macmillan. Dépelteau, F. (Ed.). (2018a). The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology. Palgrave Macmillan. Dépelteau, F. (2018b). The promises of the relational turn in sociology. In F.  Dépelteau (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology (pp. v–xiv). Palgrave Macmillan. Dépelteau, F., & Powell, C. (Eds.). (2013). Applying relational sociology: Relations, networks, and society. Palgrave Macmillan. Duit, A., & Galas, V. (2008). Governance and complexity—emerging issues for governance theory. Governance, 21(3), 311–335. Donati, P. (2010). Relational sociology: A new paradigm for the social sciences. Routledge.. Elias, N. (1978). What is sociology? Columbia University Press. Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281–317. Erikson, E. (2013). Formalist and relationalist theory in social network analysis. Sociological Theory, 31(3), 219–242. Fuhse, J. (2009). The meaning structure of social networks. Sociological Theory, 27(1), 51–73. Geuijen, K., Moore, M., Cederquist, A., Ronning, R., & van Twist, M. (2017). Creating public value in global wicked problems. Public Management Review, 19(5), 621–639. Grint, K. (2010). Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: The role of leadership. In S.  Brookes & K.  Grint (Eds.), The new public leadership challenge (pp. 169–186). Palgrave. Head, B., & Alford, J. (2015). Wicked problems: Implications for public policy and management. Administration and Society, 47(6), 711–739. Head, B.  W. (2019). Forty years of wicked problems literature: Forging closer links to policy studies. Policy and Society, 38(2), 180–197.

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Jones, M. (2009). Phase space: Geography, relational thinking, and beyond. Progress in Human Geography, 33(4), 487–506. McCourt, D. M. (2016). Practice theory and relationalism as the new constructivism. International Studies Quarterly, 60(3), 475–485. Mische, A. (2011). Relational sociology, culture, and agency. In J.  Scott & P.  Carrington (Eds.), The Sage handbook of social network analysis (pp. 80–98). Sage. Morgner, C. (2020). John Dewey and the notion of trans-action. Palgrave Macmillan. Mützel, S. (2009). Networks as culturally constituted processes: A comparison of relational sociology and actor-network theory. Current Sociology, 57(6), 871–887. Pierre, J., & Peter, B. G. (2005). Governing complex societies: Trajectories and scenarios. Palgrave Macmillan. Powell, C., & Dépelteau, F. (Eds.). (2013). Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues. Palgrave Macmillan. Prandini, R. (2015). Relational sociology: A well-defined sociological paradigm or a challenging ‘relational turn’ in sociology? International Review of Sociology, 25(1), 1–14. Pratt, S. F. (2019). From norms to normative configurations: A pragmatist and relational approach to theorizing normativity in IR. International Theory, 0(0), 1–24. Raud, R. (2021). Being in flux: A post-anthropocentric ontology of the self. Polity.. Richardson, K. (2007). Complex systems thinking and its implications for policy analysis. In G.  Morcöl (Ed.), Handbook of decision making (pp.  189–221). CRS Press. Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. Roberts, N. (2000). Wicked problems and network approaches to resolution. International Public Management Review, 1(1), 1–19. Selg, P. (2016a). Two faces of the ‘relational turn’. PS: Political Science & Politics, 49(1), 27–31. Selg, P. (2016b). ‘The fable of the Bs’: Between substantialism and deep relational thinking about power. Journal of Political Power, 9(2), 183–205. Selg, P. (2018). Power and relational sociology. In F.  Dépelteau (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology (pp. 539–557). Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, P., Klasche, B., & Nõgisto, J. (2022). Wicked problems and sociology: Building a missing bridge through processual relationalism. International Review of Sociology, 1–26. Selg, P., & Ventsel, A. (2020). Introducing relational political analysis: Political semiotics as a theory and method. Palgrave Macmillan.

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PART I

A Relational Definition of Wicked Problems of Governance

CHAPTER 2

Aren’t All Problems Wicked? Addressing the Constructive and Destructive Critiques of the Concept of Wicked Problems

Much has been written about wicked problems since Rittel and Webber’s classical piece (1973) that set the discourse in motion (e.g., Grint, 2010; Roberts, 2000; Van Bueren et  al., 2003; Verweij & Thompson, 2006; Head, 2022). Despite the contested nature of the concept, we believe it is possible to put forth an analytic definition of it (see also Selg et al., 2022). A useful starting point is the descriptive summary of the ten features of wicked problems that travel from one account to another since Rittel and Webber: 1. Wicked problems are difficult to define. There is no definite formulation. 2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. 3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false but good or bad. 4. There is no immediate or ultimate test for solutions. 5. All attempts to solutions have effects that may not be reversible or forgettable. 6. These problems have no clear solution, and perhaps not even a set of possible solutions. 7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique. 8. Every wicked problem may be a symptom of another problem. 9. There are multiple explanations for the wicked problem.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_2

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10. The planner (policy-maker) has no right to be wrong. (Peters, 2017, p.  388; cf. Rittel & Webber, 1973, pp. 161–173; Head, 2022, pp. 26–27) Moving from a descriptive presentation to an analytical one involves two major steps: comparing them, first, with other problems discussed in governance literature and, second, considering the underlying ontological commitments regarding social processes they tacitly presume. In this chapter, we take up the first step. However, before we can embark on even this task, we should seriously ask the question that has informed several prominent analyses of the concept in recent years: should we have an ontological concept of “wicked problems” in the first place?

2.1   Should We Have an Ontological Notion of Wicked Problems in the First Place? Various constructive and destructive criticisms of the notion of wicked problems exist (e.g., Peters, 2017; Turnbull & Hoppe, 2019; Alford & Head, 2017). In this section we will look at only a couple of them to illustrate certain contours of this critical discourse rather than to give a literature review. In one way or another, they touch on the ontological status of “wicked problems,” which provides us with a platform to argue for the need to formulate the ontological commitments of our approach (a task which we start in the concluding section of this chapter and develop more fully in the next chapter). 2.1.1   Some Constructive and Destructive Criticisms of the Notion of Wicked Problems For Alford and Head, “the term ‘wicked problem’ has become inflated and over-used” (2017, p. 398). They point to other terms that have been put forth for the same concept (ibid., p. 401) such as “messy” policy problems (Ackoff, 1974), “ill-structured” problems (Simon, 1973), “intractable controversies” (Schön & Rein, 1994), “unstructured” or “incorrigible” problems (Hisschemoller & Hoppe, 1995; Hoppe, 2010), “tangled problems” (Dawes et al., 2009); “complex problems” (May et al., 2013). The notion of wicked problems is supposed to have various unfortunate consequences. The first is what they call “totalization.” It refers to “regarding

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the problems as intractable masses of complexity, so conflict-prone and/or knotty that they defy definition and solution” only to lend “comfort to those who wish to avoid grappling with such problems” (Alford & Head, 2017, p. 399). Related to this totalization is presuming that ‘wicked problems’ require transformational responses. This apocalyptic style of analysis describes big, fast-moving problems that require big, fast-moving solutions. There is pressure to get it right, with little time to ‘slow-cook’ small interventions. Its proponents seek a dramatic transformative intervention that settles things decisively. (Ibid.)

This might lead to the cult of unsuccess or to “invoke[ing] a conception of ‘success’ which is almost impossible to achieve” (ibid.). It is supposedly an all or nothing approach or a binary choice between either transformative success or ongoing defeat. Because a wicked problem is seen as a tangled, tightly knit cluster of phenomena, dealing with any part of it is seen to require somehow dealing with its other parts at the same time, as a knot or a mass of difficulty. (Ibid., p. 400)

This seems to undermine small-wins tactics or the understanding that “[w]e do not so much solve wicked problems as make progress towards improving them or towards better managing them” (ibid.). For Alford and Head, it is also problematic that the level, degree, or rate of wickedness is not discussed, and that “each situation has been seen in binary terms as either wicked or tame. But the fact that proponents of this generic framework refer to ‘tame’ problems as the obverse of wicked ones suggests that there may be mixed situations between these two extremes” (ibid.). Related to that is the lack of attention to “analysing what might be the constituent elements of these problems, into which they might be decomposed for more fruitful analysis. Rather, the wicked problem remains as one big complex entity—a ‘black box’ whose inner mechanisms constitute a mystery” (ibid.). Let’s try to open up this “black box,” using Head’s own understanding of Rittel and Webber. For the latter, according to Head, “even the best available policy responses are highly provisional rather than enduring” (2019, p.  182). They draw attention “to the inherently political and conflictual dimensions of how enduring problems are defined and scoped” and “to the limits of scientific expertise in shaping appropriate policy responses to

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contested social issues” (Head, 2019, p. 182). So the first component of the “black box” seems to be “the political”: enduring policy problems are constituted politically. This is one of the reasons why hard science seems to be quite helpless in tackling wicked problems: As distinguished from problems in the natural sciences, which are definable and separable and may have solutions that are findable, the problems of governmental planning—and especially those of social or policy planning— are ill-defined; and they rely upon elusive political judgment for resolution. (Not “solution.” Social problems are never solved. At best they are only re-solved—over and over again.) (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 160)

For Rittel and Webber wicked problems “include nearly all public policy issues—whether the question concerns the location of a freeway, the adjustment of a tax rate, the modification of school curricula, or the confrontation of crime” (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 160). In that sense they presume the primacy of the political—reliance “upon elusive political judgment”—in thinking about policy issues. The political is not some sphere or realm of society—it penetrates and permeates it whenever there is a question of organizing society. To make further sense of it, let’s look at Rittel and Webber’s distinction between tame and wicked problems: The problems that scientists and engineers have usually focused upon are mostly “tame” or “benign” ones. As an example, consider a problem of mathematics, such as solving an equation; or the task of an organic chemist in analyzing the structure of some unknown compound; or that of the chessplayer attempting to accomplish checkmate in five moves. For each the mission is clear. It is clear, in turn, whether or not the problems have been solved. (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 160)

Rittel and Webber intended their figure of “wickedness” to evoke certain connotations: we are calling them “wicked” not because these properties are themselves ethically deplorable. We use the term “wicked” in a meaning akin to that of “malignant” (in contrast to “benign”) or “vicious” (like a circle) or “tricky” (like a leprechaun) or “aggressive” (like a lion, in contrast to the docility of a lamb). (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 160)

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So, there is no mission to be accomplished that can be imagined from scratch. As Head summarizes it: The attraction of the ‘wicked problem’ concept is that it seems to provide additional insights concerning why many policies and programs generate controversy, fail to achieve their stated goals, cause unforeseen effects, or are impossibly difficult to coordinate and monitor. (Head, 2008, p. 103)

The other “black box” component is clustered under the keyword “values.” Something that tends to be forgotten in various technocratic approaches to society is that values cannot be adjudicated through “doing more science,” but “value differences need to be managed through broad processes of argumentation and conflict resolution among stakeholders” (Head, 2019, p. 182). Thus, there is little room for “technical approaches” that “are bound to overlook the values, perspectives and lived experience of the stakeholders and citizens who are directly or indirectly assisted or involved in these interventions” (Head, 2008, p.  102). The notion of wicked problems brings to prominence the fact that “the growth of scientific and technical expertise alone cannot resolve difficult policy problems” (ibid.). Another intervention is framed by Alford and Head (2017). They do not propose doing away with the notion of wicked problems altogether but suggest to elaborate it into a more continuous framework that would take into account various degrees and sources of “wickedness” (see also below). Peters seems to have a similar attitude in his “rather skeptical discussion of the concept of wicked problems [which] should not be seen as a complete dismissal of this idea” (2017, p. 393). His worry is mainly that “[t]he existence of difficult problems should not… become an excuse to stretch the concept of wicked problems to the point that for analytic reasons it becomes almost meaningless” (ibid., p.  395)—something particularly handy for policy-makers of Western countries that are most interested in securing short-term power gains. We move to much more destructive criticism of the notion when we look at Nick Turnbull and Robert Hoppe’s recent intervention (2019). For them, “wicked” is just “a rhetorical term (similar to ‘fuzzy’, ‘messy’ and even ‘complex’, but with additional rhetorical force in persuasively garnering attention), both in practice and in scholarship” (2019, p. 325). Their argument deconstructs the ontological basis of Rittel and Webber:

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Contrary to what is presupposed in much of the subsequent literature, Rittel and Webber’s wicked/tame problem distinction does not, in fact, aim to distinguish different types of policy problems. In actuality, they use the distinction to differentiate between societal problems and those of the natural sciences. (Turnbull & Hoppe, 2019, p. 318)

They refer to Rittel and Webber’s point that in the case of social planning “the expert is also the player in a political game, seeking to promote his private vision of goodness over others. Planning is a component of politics” (1973, p. 169). Turnbull and Hoppe conclude that “the wicked/ tame problem distinction is simply the old false distinction between social and natural sciences, rewritten in the language of policy and planning” (2019, p. 318). They have a harsh diagnosis for “the subsequent effort by scholars to delineate which societal problems are wicked, or even to what degree they are wicked”; for them, it is just a pursuit of a definition never intended by Rittel and Webber, given that they argue all societal problems, including those of planning and policy, fall into the wicked category. It is unsurprising that scholars have been unable to put their finger on wickedness as a category that varies within an ontological subset of policy problems. (Ibid.)

They strengthen this claim by pointing to prominent works in the sociology of science and technology which claim that “strict, ontological demarcation of wicked and tame problems according to the branches of science is a serious misconception, and as such very misleading” (ibid.). Turnbull and Hoppe, go further by arguing that non-social problems can also be wicked. The pollution and other material externalities crises in, for example, agriculture and food, health, forestry, water and climate of the late 20th and early 21st centuries broadened the circle of ‘wicked’ problems to ‘environmental’, ‘technological’ and ‘ecological’. But what is overlooked by most scholars is that, for Rittel and Webber’s problem distinction, this has devastating consequences. If not only social problems can be wicked, but problems deeply involving the natural sciences as well, then the distinction between the ‘ill-defined’ problems of the social sciences and the ‘well-defined’ or ‘tame’ problems of science (i.e. logic, mathematics and the sciences of the non-human world, especially physics) and engineering is also obsolete. (Ibid., p. 319)

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This, however, seems to be a misfire in their criticism. For instance, global warming might only be understood as a wicked problem insofar as it has consequences for humanity or societies (and many other species on the planet—but we leave that aside for now). From a geological or planetary point of view, this is a routine process, and planet Earth has endured larger climate changes than the current one. If we add here that the change is overwhelmingly caused by human beings themselves and that there might be a chance to at least slow down the change if those same beings would alter something in their conduct—then we have some ground for talking about wickedness in the first place. Our planet does not need saving—it has been in way worse conditions and still survived, as natural sciences can tell us. It is ourselves who need saving. It does not get more “social” than that. In addition, we argue that what Rittel and Webber are quarrelling about in their classical paper is not natural sciences per se—the term occurs only once in this piece—but the discourse of “professionalism” and (social) “engineering” when it comes to social planning. The latter two topics are all over this little paper of just 15 pages, the research problem of which is captured in the concluding paragraph of their opening section Professionalism has been understood to be one of the major instruments for perfectability, an agent sustaining the traditional American optimism. Based in modern science, each of the professions has been conceived as the medium through which the knowledge of science is applied. In effect, each profession has been seen as a subset of engineering. Planning and the emerging policy sciences are among the more optimistic of those professions. Their representatives refuse to believe that planning for betterment is impossible, however grave their misgivings about the appropriateness of past and present modes of planning. They have not abandoned the hope that the instruments of perfectability can be perfected. It is that view that we want to examine, in an effort to ask whether the social professions are equipped to do what they are expected to do. (Rittel & Webber, 1973, p. 158)

Nevertheless, in view of their criticism, Turnbull and Hoppe’s recommendation is: let’ us not play a “scientific language game” when it comes to wicked problems: generations of scholars have followed in playing a scientific language game of essentializing and ontologizing ‘wicked’ problems via attempts at classifying them by looking for the (variable) presence of their properties. … In

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their unstoppable taste for innovation, they have recently “discovered” the properties of “super-wicked” problems. (Turnbull & Hoppe, 2019, p. 319)

From what they call “ontological reading of wicked problems” follows another issue: the presumption … that problems can be analysed from above, as though ontologically distinctive and autonomous from social activity around those problems. That is, the problem ‘as such’ is assumed to have an autonomous, unique nature of its own … which can be discovered, much like bacteria observed by a scientist through a microscope. But this isolates the problem itself from the surrounding context, including from the theory-dependence of the observer. (Ibid., p. 320)

They conclude: “This analytical ontology [can there be a non-analytical ontology?] combines reductionist thinking about problems with the decontextualization of policy analysis via this ‘view from nowhere’” (ibid.). Against such “views from nowhere,” they make a quite self-evident point, at least from the relational perspective: All problems are only problems for those involved in experiencing or treating them, which means they are inevitably viewed from somewhere, such that bound up in their viewpoints are innumerable interpretations, perspectives and social relations with other interested actors. (Turnbull & Hoppe, 2019, p. 321)

This is exactly what we meant when we said that our planet is not in need of saving, but we are. That is why environmental changes are never problems “as such,” wicked or not. They are always relations. Even more so, they are constitutive relations, entailing, among other things, that problems “become” problems given the solutions they are approached with. This retroactive logic where solutions make up problems they are supposed to solve makes perfect sense from the relational point of view. Turnbull and Hoppe actually seem to be presuming the same logic when they suggest reframing wickedness “in terms of practice, i.e. how it is experienced in the context of practical action around policy problems, faced by policy workers” (2019, p. 322). But, they see it as “an alternative framework for understanding policymaking, which is not ontological but based on questioning, thus allowing each element—problem, solution, process—to maintain its problematic qualities” (ibid., italics added). In

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the next chapter we untangle the italicized part of this quote—the “ontological”—and show that what they propose to understand as ontology “defining any general properties of wicked problems” is only one possible understanding of the concept of ontology (self-actionalism) and that what they propose as alternative to “ontological” framework is, in fact quite consistent with the relational ontological commitments we offer for better grasping wicked problems. Indeed, we argue in the next section that there cannot be any sensible research program with no ontological commitments. Thus Turnbull and Hoppe are in fact, “doing” ontology when they claim that they “have a better, alternative conception of a higher/lower degree of problematicity or structuredness of problems, which is not ontological but lies along a continuum from unstructured to structured” (2019, p. 333). They have an ontology or ontological commitments that conceptualize the political world as a continuous flow. This is different from the ontology of discrete entities with their bounded properties— entailing that problems are either wicked or tame—which they attribute to Rittel and Webber and their followers (not entirely fairly). But to say that their framework is not ontological, makes little sense. Every methodology presumes ontological commitments—no matter how tacit and unexamined by the researcher they are. Thus, the question of what are methodology and ontology and how to justify choices between varying alternatives of them needs to be addressed briefly. 2.1.2   What Are Methodology and Ontology, and How to Justify Them? By methodology, we do not mean any specific methods as in the “methodology” sections of most (neo)positivist research papers in the social sciences. For us, to quote Hay (2006), [m]ethodology relates to the choice of analytical strategy and research design which underpins substantive research. Although methodology ­establishes the principles which might guide the choice of method, it should not be confused with the methods and techniques of research themselves. (p. 83)

However, a take on ontological issues is unavoidable since they are “antecedent to epistemological and methodological choices…[which] cannot be fully appreciated in the absence of sustained ontological

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reflection and debate” (Hay, 2006, p. 79). In other words, methodological and ontological debates are not only mutually complementing each other, but methodology is always based on ontological presumptions or, “ontological commitments” as they are often referred to after Quine (1951, 1953, pp. 1–19). The Quinean notion of ontological commitment is summarized in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, one of the most prestigious sourcebooks of philosophy: “The ontological commitments of a theory are, roughly, what the theory says exists; a theory is ontologically committed to electrons, for example, if the truth of the theory requires that there be electrons” (Bricker, 2016). It is clear that there cannot be any methodology without ontological commitments. This holds even if some particular researchers do not make those commitments explicit. But the question that might arise is: how can one justify particular choices of ontology? The frontlines in these debates have been relatively crystallized in the developments in analytic philosophy over the past 75 years. A straightforward attempt at empirical falsification of whichever ontology cannot possibly suffice, as it is precisely the categories we would appeal to in empirical research that are under question in the first place. Or, as Hay (2006, pp. 87–88) puts it, our ontology preinforms what is “seen” in any observation, and thus, there can be no empirical license for ontological claims and assumptions. This points toward what Carnap distinguished as the difference between internal questions about the existence of entities within a given framework and external questions about the existence of the frameworks themselves. Answers to the latter would be, for Carnap, a “pseudo-statement without any cognitive content” (1956, p.  206). Following Carnap, we hold that external questions about the reality of ontological frameworks are a dead-end and—at the very least—can be bracketed within the context of this book without anything of note being lost. If there are no criteria for establishing a correspondence to reality that could adjudicate between ontological frameworks, then we must appeal to some different principle. Here we find common ground with the neo-­ pragmatist philosophers such as Richard Rorty, who reiterates a similar point: “there is no such thing as ‘the best explanation’ of anything; there is just the explanation which best suits the purpose of some given explainer” (2006, p. 60). This quote points us toward an alternative justification for

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our ontological commitments—one based on practical purposes, or, borrowing from Dewey, “its functional or instrumental use in effecting the transition from a relatively conflicting experience to a relatively integrated one” (Dewey, 2012, p.  75). Some ontological frameworks may simply work better in making sense of what is happening to us or what we hope to do, but as our purposes vary, so can our underlying assumptions. Notice that according to this Deweyan approach to inquiry, there is only a modest demand for a relative integration of experience rather than for absolute knowledge. We are thus led to embrace a (meta)ontological pluralism which entails pragmatic accommodation toward various ontological frameworks with different conditions of veridiction—as there is no “God’s eye” view to judge whether the ontology presupposed by a theoretical framework corresponds to the way things “really are,” our ontologies are justified by their use. We can shift between ontological frameworks depending on our particular aims without ever being forced (or able) to appeal to a metalanguage to adjudicate how well any of them represents reality. Hence, the following sections and chapters can be seen as justifying a particular set of ontology and their methodological consequences. This justification is pragmatist at its core, entailing that this book should not be seen as giving a “True” representation of the reality of wicked problems, but as proposing a new relational framework for speaking about wicked problems that, we claim, allows us to do it more conceptually than we can within conventional (substantialist) frameworks. Our general point is that although ontologically speaking one can consider the “simplest” of governance problems (e.g., organizing the paving of one street in a small municipality) as wicked problems, it would, however, seldom make sense both theoretically and methodologically on the one hand (when it comes to their research), and practically on the other hand (when it comes to their governance). Therefore, we state that it makes sense to distinguish between different problems or, as we later discuss in more detail—between different forms of problematizations and de-­ problematizations. But what kind of distinctions are there available between different problems of governance and policy? We will consider some of them before we move to our own distinctions.

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2.2  How to Understand Problems: Alternative Typologies and Frameworks 2.2.1   Alford and Head’s Contingency Framework According to Alford and Head, “understanding a wicked problem entails a reflexive or iterative analysis” (2017, p. 403). They put forth a toolbox for such an analysis, which they call “the contingency framework.” For them, it is a movement “from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model to one where the choice of intervention type depends on and fits with the circumstances” (ibid., p.  407). A starting point for such a framework is “[t]he broad matrix [with] two dimensions, one relating to the problem itself, the other to the people involved. These dimensions constitute merely scaffolding for ordering the more detailed dimensions. They are not meant to offer any particular insights in themselves” (ibid., italics added). From there, two major research questions for further investigation emerge. First: what is the nature of the problem or “its level of intractability in itself” (ibid.)? They argue that “in themselves” problems are either tame, analytically complex, or cognitively complex. Tame problems are such that “the nature of the problem and the solution may be clear to the decision-makers in question. This can encompass even issues that seem at first sight to be quite complicated, such as the technical and planning challenges underpinning the construction of the Channel Tunnel between France and England” (ibid., p.  403). Analytically Complex problems, in turn, are problems whose “nature and causes… may be known, but the solution is not—and indeed, it is difficult to find a sound solution owing to analytical or political complexities” (ibid.). In case of cognitively complex problems “[n]either the problem itself nor the possible effective solutions are clearly known to the decision-makers in question” (ibid.). Overall, the variable of the “level of intractability of the problem itself” is presumed to have three truth values: low, medium, and high. The second research question emerging from their framework is: what people are involved in (in terms of their knowledge, conflicting interests, and relative power)? Here the essential consideration “is the propensity or otherwise of those involved to enable the problem to be properly addressed” (ibid.). Considering “the people involved” requires thus reviewing (a) “the locus of important knowledge about the problem” and “whether it rests substantially with the policy manager in question or is fragmented and held by multiple stakeholders” (Alford & Head, 2017,

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Neither problem nor solution is clear

Problem clear, solution not clear

Both problem and solution clear

Increasing complexiy of problems

p. 403, italics added); (b) “the extent to which managers and stakeholders have divergent or conflicting interests, including within each grouping” (ibid., pp. 403–404); and (c) “the relative power of the policy managers and the stakeholders” (ibid., p. 404, italics added in all quotes). This variable again, is supposed to have three values in terms of knowledge, interests, and power. Suppose we put the possible combinations of responses to those research questions together we get a checklist matrix for locating the wickedness of the problem under consideration, as depicted in Fig. 2.1. We can say that this figure represents a more continuous approach than the supposedly binary distinction between tame and wicked problems, since it brings in more truth values than the latter. However, at the same time, the vertical axis is missing the equivalent of what we call below “de-problematized problems” where the problem is unclear, but the solution is clear.

Cognitively complex problem

Conceptually contentious problem

Very wicked problems

Analytically complex problem

Complex problem

Politically turbulent problem

Tame problem

Communicatively Politically complex complex problem problem

Increasing difficulty re stakeholders/institutions Co-operative or indifferent relationships

Multiple parties, each with only some of relevant knowledge

Multiple parties, conflicting in values/interests

Fig. 2.1  Alternative types of complex problems. (Source: Alford & Head, 2017, p. 402)

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2.2.2   Grint: Tame, Critical, and Wicked Problems According to Grint a tame problem might be complicated but is resolvable through unilinear acts because there is a point where the problem is resolved and it is likely to have occurred before. In other words, there is only a limited degree of uncertainty and thus it is associated with Management. … Examples would include: timetabling the railways, building a nuclear plant, training the army, planned heart surgery, a wage negotiation—or enacting a tried and trusted policy for eliminating global terrorism. (Grint, 2005, p. 1473, italics added)

We could say that basically we have here problems that are suitable for administrative/bureaucratic approaches to governance (management)— they require either individual specialists or cooperation among specialists. A wicked problem, on the other hand, is complex, rather than just complicated, it is often intractable, there is no unilinear solution, moreover, there is no ‘stopping’ point, it is novel, any apparent ‘solution’ often generates other ‘problems’, and there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer, but there are better or worse alternatives. In other words, there is a huge degree of uncertainty involved and thus it is associated with Leadership. (Ibid., italics added)

Leadership is different from management: “The leader’s role with a Wicked Problem is to ask the right questions rather than provide the right answers because the answers may not be self-evident and will require a collaborative process to make any kind of progress” (ibid., italics added). Instead of cooperation among specialists, what is needed here, is collaborative knowledge building, where the knowledge is not just a sum of specialized knowledges, but has already emergent properties. It is a post-­ specialized knowledge. We will come back to this issue in Chap. 4 where we untangle our understanding of governing wicked problems in comparison to other approaches (including Grint’s understanding of leadership). In addition, Grint distinguishes critical problems: “Here there is virtually no uncertainty about what needs to be done—at least in the behaviour of the Commander, whose role is to take the required decisive action— that is to provide the answer to the problem, not to engage processes (management) or ask questions (leadership)” (Grint, 2005, p.  1474).

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Usually we have critical problems in times of crises. However, one of the mechanisms for turning critical problems into wicked problems, is, as we argue later, governance as a threat, that can take various forms ranging from warlordship to securitization (see also Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 5). Essentially this is a form of addressing problems through calling attention to external or internal threats instead of to the problems to be addressed. Although often necessary in times of war, natural disasters, etc., in the long run it might have the following negative effect: “since we reward people who are good in crises (and ignore people who are such good managers that there are very few crises), commanders soon learn to seek out (or reframe situations as) crises” (Grint, 2010, p. 19). According to Grint problems and their responses do not exist “out there,” but “the social construction of the problem legitimizes the deployment of a particular form of authority” (Grint, 2005, p. 1475). The three forms of authority (legitimate power) “Command, Management and Leadership are, in turn, another way of suggesting that the role of those responsible for decision-making is charged with finding the appropriate Answer, Process and Question to address the problem respectively” (Grint, 2005, p. 1475). For Grint, thus, the notion of wicked problems as a separate category makes much sense as it does for us, but for different reasons. Extracting from the distinctions between different policy or governance problems thus far and adding to the various discussion we have not covered here, we put forth a distinction of policy problems that we start to unfold throughout this book.

2.3   Simple, Complex, Wicked, and De-Problematized Problems We agree with Head that divergent ‘framing’ of policy problems generates conflict about the nature of these problems and about how to address them. Competing policy perspectives and viewpoints are inevitable. These differences are often entrenched or resistant to change, owing to their complex anchoring in values, interests, emotions and ideological assumptions. Such perspectives about the nature of the issue, and about actions to be taken, are not derived from the ‘agreed facts’ about an issue—they are more likely to be influenced by a combination of ideological orientations, economic interests, political identities, professional or managerial assumptions, and past institutional legacies. (2022, p. 8)

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In view of that, we can tentatively classify all problems of governance into three categories: simple, complex, and wicked problems (see also Roberts, 2000; Alford & Head, 2017; Van Bueren et  al., 2003; Head, 2022, Chap. 1; Selg et al., 2022; Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 3). The criteria for classifying problems into these categories are the following: we can analytically distinguish two aspects of problems based on how they are “framed” among stakeholders: (a) the definition/formulation of the problem; (b) the solution to the problem. In addition, there are two options for each of these aspects: the relevant parties might be in agreement on (a) and (b), or they are in disagreement on them (leaving aside at the moment whether the disagreement is “genuine” or “staged”). This initially gives us three possibilities which we label simple, complex, and wicked problems as summarized in Table 2.1. Of course, these are ideal types. In practice, there could be partial disagreements and agreements and so on, but these details need not concern us yet. More importantly, a fourth option emerges: a situation where there is disagreement on the definition of the problem and agreement on its solution. This is rarely explicitly discussed in governance literature where simple, complex, and wicked problems are distinguished (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 3), but it is a valuable addition that finds its most clear-cut expression in debates over depoliticization as a form of governance (see Hay, 2007; Jenkins, 2011; Fawcett et al., 2017). We will take stock of these debates later by analyzing what we call “de-­problematization.” However, we should add a few comments about Table 2.1, which represents the “mainstream” distinctions between three types of problems in governance literature. Many problems of governance are simple, meaning that both the problem and its possible solution is clear and uncontested by the affected parties: Table 2.1  Three types of problems of governance Type of problem

Definition of the problem

Solution to the problem

Simple Complex Wicked

Agreement Agreement Disagreement

Agreement Disagreement Disagreement

Source: Selg et  al. (2022, p.  7), based on Roberts (2000), Alford and Head (2017), Van Bueren et al. (2003)

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Owing to their narrow scope, they are more likely to be managed and resolved with a high level of agreement. In short, simple policy problems tend to be defined precisely by the policy actors and stakeholders. The latter agree on the knowledge base for understanding the problem, relevant technical parameters, cost-effective options and the locus of responsibility and capacity for addressing the problem. (Head, 2022, p. 12)

Solving simple problems requires specialists. All the routine activities of executive power ranging from issuing IDs and delivering pensions to regular border control activities, are simple governance problems. Complex problems differ from simple problems mainly by the following aspect: although there is agreement among the affected parties on the meaning and definition of the problem at hand, there is disagreement and contestation over its possible solutions. Solving complex problems requires cooperation among specialists. Implementing educational policy priorities could be an example of a complex problem. While the government, the opposition, the educational researchers, as well as parents, teachers, and other affected parties, might agree that the quality of education needs to be increased, there could be disagreements over how to achieve this goal. The classical list of wicked problems includes governing climate change, fighting terrorism or poverty, and planning sustainable social policy in view of an aging population. Wicked problems differ from both simple and complex problems qualitatively in two respects: first, there is no agreement among the affected parties on the definition of the problem at hand and its possible solutions. Second, unlike simplicity or complexity, wickedness is determined neither by the nature of the issue nor disagreement about its definition and solution alone. It is (partly) for this reason that we have to view disagreement about the definition of the problem and the solution as being interdependent or mutually constitutive and not as just different phases of problem-solving. Thus [i]f, for example, it is claimed that the fundamental cause of wicked problems is lack of scientific knowledge (e.g. about climate change), this claim already implies a solution—more scientific research is needed to fill gaps, reduce uncertainty and provide the base for clear and agreed solutions. On the other hand, if the fundamental problem is seen to be divergence of viewpoints, the implied solution is to establish processes of participation, debate and mediation that lead to a workable consensus. (Head, 2008, p. 106)

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Out of this interdependence or mutual constitution of problem and solution emerge the features often associated with wicked problems: uncertainty, complexity, and disagreement among stakeholders. These features make addressing the problems through mere expertise or aggregation of specialist knowledge very problematic. The mutual constitution of problems and solutions makes the processual character of wicked problems explicit and widely visible. This is different from simple and complex problems, where unidirectional piecemeal movements from problems to solutions with their discrete phases and units is more feasible. The governing of wicked problems requires to presume the following: “If there is no single ‘root cause’ of complexity, uncertainty and disagreement, and therefore no root cause of ‘wickedness’, it follows that there is no single best approach to tackling such problems” (Head, 2008, p. 106, italics added). Now, since “wickedness” is not determined by the “nature” of the problem alone but also by the mutual constitution of agreement over its definition and solution, there is, in practice, always a possibility where there is a disagreement about the problem at hand, but at the same time an agreement about the solution (leaving again, for a moment, aside whether this agreement is “genuine” or “staged”). This is an important perspective on the study of wicked problems since politics often involves imposing ready-made solutions to unsolvable problems, intentionally or out of sheer ignorance. Drawing parallels with various discussions in political science on “depoliticization” (see Hay, 2007) “as the set of processes (including varied tactics, strategies, and tools) that remove or displace the potential for choice, collective agency, and deliberation around a particular political issue” (Fawcett et al., 2017, 5) we can call this form of addressing wicked problems “de-problematization.” It is an approach to “solving” problems by displacing them from the realm of contingency and decision-­ making into that of necessity. This can take various forms—and we will discuss them throughout the book—and can be more or less intentional. Table 2.2 summarizes the (ideal-typical) criteria for distinguishing different kinds of problems of governance according to the agreement on their definition and solution. Thus, we have taken the first step from the purely descriptive notion of wicked problems to an analytical one by delimiting it as an ideal type along two axes: problem/solution and agreement/disagreement. The result is Table 2.2, which represents problems belonging to exclusive static categories. These kinds of typologies—be they more discrete or continuous—are

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Table 2.2  Four categories of problems of governance Type of problems

Definition of the problem

Solution to the problem

Simple Complex Wicked De-problematized

Agreement Agreement Disagreement Disagreement

Agreement Disagreement Disagreement Agreement

Source: Selg and Ventsel (2020, p. 58)

always tendential starting points, as has been realized since Rittel and Webber’s original dichotomy between “tame” and “wicked” problems. Sooner or later, the boundaries between categories start to blur. Besides, the possibility of generally placing any governance problem into a strict category, is questioned by many interpretivist policy scholars (e.g., Fischer, 2003; Yanow, 1996) and even by their intellectual precursors from the 1970s that are sometimes called “political rationalists” (Bacchi, 2016, p. 3). The latter forms a family of theorists who “object to the impression conveyed by technical rationalists that policy is a straightforward matter of finding technical answers (solutions) to readily identified problems” (Bacchi, 2016, 3). Thus, for instance, Rein and White (1977), from this family, dismiss the “problem-solving image” of policy-making that “rest[s] on the conviction that policy expresses a theory of action that includes: (1) a definition of the problem; (2) a set of possible courses of action; and (3) a goal or goals one seeks to achieve” (p. 250). They regard such a view as a “myth” and counter it with the following: “policy formation involves: (1) problem setting as a step toward issue setting; (2) mobilization of the fine structure of governmental action; and (3) achievement of settlements in the face of dilemmas and trade-offs among values” (Rein & White, 1977, pp. 261–262). Hence, the problem definition is by no means the start of the problem, but it often only follows a period, often quite extended, during which various indications of stress emerge in the system. It is not clear problems, but diffuse worries, that appear. Political pressure groups become unusually active, or their activities become more telling; formal and informal social indicators give signs of unfavorable trends, or of trends that may be interpreted unfavorable. There are signals, then, of a problem, but no one knows yet what the problem is. (Ibid., p. 262)

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The role of beliefs and ideologies is crucial in the “problem setting,” where each competing group attempts to define or “frame” the problem in a way that favors certain coalition building (ibid., pp. 262–266, see also Rein & Schön, 1977; Fischer, 2003, Chap. 5). Similar influences can be expected to “sabotage” the understanding of solutions and their implementations. This often leaves us at best with compromises and at worst with inaction when it comes to policy outcomes. Interpretivists understand problems as intersubjective, which means that depending on different viewpoints, some situations might be serious problems for one affected party while being no problems at all for another. In that sense, what is labeled a “problem” often depends on the most dominant interpretation (Fischer, 2003, p. 80). The same holds for “solutions”: policies that can be seen as attempts to solve a problem should not only be seen as “instrumentally rational, goal-oriented statements … but also as expressive statements … which have meanings for individuals” (Yanow, 1996, p.  22). Therefore, policies are also expressions of public discourse, validations of shared values, beliefs, feelings, and self-esteem (Yanow, 1996, p. 22). Hence, a “genuine” agreement can never be found as it is, again, dependent on viewpoints and values. Interpretivists also point out that solution-attempts (and ultimately also their success) are often connected with political narratives or story-lines—e.g. “‘there is nothing we can do’ or ‘we must take immediate action’” (Fischer, 2003, p. 86). At the macro level, hegemonic discourses (Fischer, 2003, p. 89) can also position certain problems as non-existent (e.g., systemic racism or the climate crisis) or as particularly in need of attention (e.g., growth of the economy). All this is pertinent to whichever policy/governance problems. However, especially in the case of wicked problems, we anticipate this situation where both the problem and the solution are heavily loaded with interpretive baggage, political story-lines and hegemonic discourses, making agreement utterly impossible. This is related, as we saw, to Turnbull and Hoppe’s proposition to completely put aside the idea of wicked problems as they view it often as a cop-out for practitioners when faced with policy failure (2019, p. 316). Their criticism also derives from the admittedly problematic dichotomy that all societal problems can be classified as tame or wicked along the lines of Rittel and Webber (2019, p. 317, see also Alford & Head, 2017; Peters, 2017). We agree with dismissing dichotomies (or whichever exclusive categorizations for that matter), and this informs our attempt to put forth an approach to wicked problems based on explicit ontological commitments

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with direct methodological consequences for their research. Even further, post-structuralism, an approach ontologically compatible with relationalism (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020, especially Chap. 3), would like to do away with the mainstream understanding of “wicked problems” (see Bacchi, 2016, pp.  7–8). Instead, the approach focuses on “how the particular issue (the ‘problem’) has been understood and represented (problematized)” (Bacchi, 2015, p. 6). Foucault-influenced post-structuralists recommend constant problematization of existing problematizations (conceptualizations of problems) to continuously critique the problem definitions (Bacchi, 2015, p.  9). This is something close to our aim of providing an analytical approach to wicked problems based on relationalism and, in fact, points to the fact that the usage of problem categorization as an ideal-typical tool is merely a first step for moving toward such an approach. In essence, Table  2.2 is a binary truth table with two variables and could be represented as in Table 2.3. Such truth tables grow exponentially even if only one variable is added. Therefore, various more continuous and processual tables and models can be imagined by increasing the number of variables and truth values (partial agreements and disagreements, etc.). Also, changing levels or degrees of “wickedness” are often discussed, as seen in the previous sections (see also Head, 2022, Chap. 2). All these movements are taking the direction we are about to radicalize by taking the second step toward a truly analytical conceptualization of wicked problems. The current table does not represent well the dynamics of wicked problems and—as we will see later—their de-problematization. We argue that wicked problems need to be viewed as unfolding processes all the way down. They cannot be handled in a piecemeal manner by dismantling them into discrete elements that can be addressed separately. This message can be derived from the literature on Table 2.3  Criteria for distinguishing different problems represented as a truth table Type of problems

There is an agreement over definition of the problem

There is an agreement over solution to the problem

Simple Complex Wicked De-problematized

True True False False

True False False True

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wicked problems quite unambiguously, especially when parallels are drawn between wicked problems and complex adaptive systems (e.g., Wagenaar, 2007; Waddock et  al., 2015; Peters, 2017). However, in this book, we interpret this message through the lenses of relational sociology to put forth a notion of wicked problems based on ontological presumptions with direct implications for their research and governance. These ontological assumptions have already “contaminated” our discussion above, pulling it from the purely epistemic or “framing” related presentation—in terms of the agreement/disagreement between the affected parties (Tables 2.2 and 2.3)—toward claims about their form of being, that is, their ontological presentation. We hinted that the wickedness of a problem is not merely dependent on the existence of disagreement between parties but also on the complexity and uncertainty of the problem. Equally important is that complexity and uncertainty do not determine wickedness either: There are many complex economic and social phenomena (with their respective ‘maps’, e.g. regional economic activity modelling) which are difficult to estimate precisely, but which are not thereby wicked. Likewise, mere disagreement among stakeholders does not make a problem wicked, but when serious disagreements are combined with complexity and uncertainty we have crossed a threshold. (Head, 2008, p. 103)

Complexity entails various important features, as has been argued in multiple versions of complexity theory, whose underlying assumptions entail the “rejection of the validity of analytical strategies in which things are reducible to the sum of their parts” (Byrne, 1998, p. 14). Thus, “complex systems are always ‘on the move,’ mutating from one phase into another” (Wagenaar, 2007, p. 25). When it comes to complex adaptive systems, we are dealing with systems that are “diverse, nonlinear, consisting of multiple interactive, interdependent, and interconnected sub-­ elements. They are adaptive and self-organizing, tending toward ever-greater complexity operating at the ‘edge of chaos,’ and therefore in a constant state of innovation and dynamic equilibrium” (Waddock et al., 2015, p. 996). But where does this complexity come from? This is a tricky question. If one adopts the presumptions of complexity theory then complexity “in itself” is assumed to be a characteristic of all systems no matter how “simple.” In this sense, the answer to the question is: complexity comes from everywhere. But what does it mean to understand complexity as complexity? Our response is that complexity comes from adopting a

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processual-relational perspective on reality. This can be deduced from complexity theory itself. For instance, Cilliers has pointed out that one of the presumptions of complexity theory is that “the interaction among constituents of the [complex] system, and the interaction between the system and its environment, are of such a nature that the system as a whole cannot be fully understood simply by analysing its components” (1998, p. viii). Thus, it is not only or even primarily about the components, but about the relations of the components. Wagenaar points toward the same direction: “the core aspect of complexity is the density of the interactions in a system—more so than the number of its parts” (2007, p. 23). Even further, “[s]ystems with relatively few parts can be complex because of the intensity of interaction between those parts. Interaction is also dynamic in the sense that its strength changes over time” (ibid.). In the vocabulary of processual relationalism, all this is but another way of saying that complexity and uncertainty come from viewing social problems or social processes as un-owned processes whose constituent elements cannot be considered separately from the changing relations they are embedded in and vice versa. In the case of wicked problems, we argue, this is the view that should be adopted, even though in much of everyday discourse of simple or complex problems, we are doing fine (or even better) if we reduce our surrounding social processes to owned processes. However, avoiding such reduction as far as possible is, in turn, the core of the relational approach to social reality we propose. One of the consequences of such a view is that representing social processes in terms of variables and their values, as we initially also did in this subsection (Tables 2.2 and 2.3), is highly questionable since “variable-centered” approaches, in general, are considered the opposite to relational approaches in most path-­breaking treatments of relationalism (most notably in Emirbayer, 1997). Characterizing an approach as “relational” is not simply pointing out that it highlights the importance of relations between social entities. It is hard to imagine a social scientific approach that would not presume social relations to be a crucial focus of social research. But at the same time, “[w]e can study social relationships in an un-relational way” (Desmond, 2014, p. 548, Note 1). So, something else must make an approach relational. Initially, we could say that it is not just relations per se that are important from the processual-relational perspective, but that those relations are seen as constitutive of the elements of relations (Selg, 2020; Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 2). It entails that A’s relation to B is always B’s relation to A and vice versa. Even more radically: A is A only due to its

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relation to B, and B is B only due to its relation to A.1 This is the core of relational thinking that might take various forms. We, however, put forth the methodological prescriptions of the so-called processual-relational thinking as it is developed in various recent and classical works in sociology (e.g., Abbott, 2016; Dépelteau, 2008, 2013, 2018; Elias, 1978; Emirbayer, 1997; Morgner, 2020; Selg & Ventsel, 2020). For processual relationalists, relations are not only seen as constitutive of the elements but also as dynamic, unfolding processes. Thus, for instance, from the processual-relational perspective, A cannot be a subordinator of B without B’s complying with A’s subordination, and B cannot comply without A’s subordination. Here the relation of subordination is presumed to be an unfolding, dynamic process composed of various actions2 (like complying) that need to be empirically analyzed as they unfold in time. Put simply: someone’s being taller than another is also a relation, not a property of either element; but it makes little sense to study someone’s being taller than other as a form of action that constitutes the elements (even though, until certain age it might be of interest to study the process of someone’s “growing taller” than the other). Subordination can also be analyzed as a static relation if we reduce it to merely structural relations of hierarchy. This would be almost equivalent to studying subordination as if we were studying someone’s being taller than the other. In that case, there is no need whatsoever for processual-relational analysis, and the crudest form of structuralism will do (see the next chapter). Structuralism and processual relationalism have different ontological commitments, research designs, and criteria of relevance. We argue that processual relationalism is of special significance for approaching wicked problems. At the same time, structuralism might be way more relevant for analyzing various other problems (simple or even complex problems in the sense outlined in this chapter). Consequently, we claim that processual relationalism is nothing other than adopting two ontological commitments: (a) presuming that relations between/among entities are constitutive of elements (which is what processual relationalism shares with other forms of relationalism); (b) presuming that those relations, as well as the entities they constitute, are dynamic unfolding processes of action. In the next chapter, we will untangle these points in turn, starting with what it means to view social phenomena, such as wicked problems, as un-­ owned processes.

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Notes 1. For the sake of expository clarity, we bracket here the fact that social entities are always already immersed in not just one, but multiple constitutive relations with multiple entities. 2. More specifically: not just “actions” but “trans-actions,” as we discuss in the next chapter.

References Abbott, A. (2016). Processual sociology. The University of Chicago Press. Ackoff, R. L. (1974). Redesigning the future. Wiley. Alford, J., & Head, B. W. (2017). Wicked and less wicked problems: A typology and a contingency framework. Policy and Society, 36(3), 397–413. Bacchi, C. (2015). The turn to problematization: Political implications of contrasting interpretive and poststructural adaptations. Open Journal of Political Science, 5(1), 1–12. Bacchi, C. (2016). Problematizations in health policy: Questioning how “problems” are constituted in policies. SAGE Open, 6(2), 1–16. Bricker, P. (2016). Ontological commitment. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Winter 2016 ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2016/entries/ontological-­commitment Cilliers, P. (1998). Complexity and postmodernism. Understanding complex systems. Routledge. Carnap, R. (1956). Empiricism, semantics, and ontology. In R.  Carnap (Ed.), Meaning and necessity: A study in semantics and modal logic (pp.  205–221). University of Chicago Press. Byrne, D. (1998). Complexity theory and the social sciences: An introduction. London: Routledge. Dawes, S., Cresswell, A., & Pardo, T. (2009). From “Need to Know” to “Need to Share”: Tangled problems, information boundaries, and the building of public sector knowledge networks. Public Administration Review, 69, 392–402. Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73. Dépelteau, F. (2013). What is the direction of the ‘relational turn’? In C. Powell & F.  Dépelteau (Eds.), Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues (pp. 163–185). Palgrave Macmillan. Dépelteau, F. (2018). From the concept of ‘trans-action’ to a process-relational sociology. In The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology (pp.  499–519). Palgrave Macmillan. Desmond, M. (2014). Relational ethnography. Theory and Society, 43(5), 547–579.

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Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. Roberts, N. (2000). Wicked problems and network approaches to resolution. International Public Management Review, 1(1), 1–19. Rorty, R. (2006). Is natural science a natural kind? In R. Rorty (Ed.), Objectivity, relativism, and truth (pp. 46–62). Cambridge University Press. Schön, D., & Rein, M. (1994). Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. Basic Books. Selg, P. (2020). Causation is not everything: On constitution and trans-actional view of social science methodology. In John Dewey and the notion of trans-­ action (pp. 31–53). Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, P., Klasche, B., & Nõgisto, J. (2022). Wicked problems and sociology: Building a missing bridge through processual relationalism. International Review of Sociology, 1–26. Selg, P., & Ventsel, A. (2020). Introducing relational political analysis: Political semiotics as a theory and method. Palgrave Macmillan. Simon, H. (1973). The structure of ill structured problems. Artificial Intelligence, 4, 181–201. Turnbull, N., & Hoppe, R. (2019). Problematizing ‘Wickedness’: A critique of the wicked problem concept, from philosophy to practice. Policy and Society, 38(2), 315–337. Van Bueren, E., Klijn, E. H., & Koppenjan, J. (2003). Dealing with wicked problems in networks: Analyzing an environmental debate from a network perspective. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 13(2), 193–212. Verweij, M., & Thompson, M. (Eds.). (2006). Clumsy solutions for a complex world: Governance, politics and plural perceptions. Palgrave Macmillan. Waddock, S., Meszoely, G. M., Waddell, S., & Dentoni, D. (2015). The complexity of wicked problems in large scale change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(6), 993–1012. Wagenaar, H. (2007). Governance, complexity, and democratic participation: How citizens and public officials harness the complexities of neighborhood decline. The American Review of Public Administration, 37(1), 17–50. Yanow, D. (1996). How does a policy mean? Interpreting policy and organizational actions. Georgetown University Press.

CHAPTER 3

From Categorical Distinctions of Policy Problems to a Relational Approach to Wicked Problems

We claimed in the previous chapter that wicked problems should be treated as “un-owned” processes, which amounts to the call for avoiding “process-­ reduction” (Elias, 1978; Emirbayer, 1997) as much as possible—both in their research and in governance. Process-reduction occurs in our natural languages constantly, making it difficult to adopt a truly processual perspective. As noted, we say things like “the wind is blowing” as if the wind were an instigator of the process of blowing or as if there could be a wind that did not blow (see Elias, 1978, pp. 111–112). Process-reduction is not problematic in itself—it is almost indispensable when it comes to simple and complex problems of governance. When we are talking about it in the context of social research, process-reduction amounts to reducing a continuous process into discrete, tangible pieces of a puzzle with concrete parameters, measures, etc.; in the case of governance, it comes to implementation plans, deadlines, and criteria for measuring progress. However, what does the opposite of process-reduction mean? What does it mean to treat something processually? Relational sociology has been at the forefront of untangling this puzzle. And it is here that we must move head-on to the distinction between relational and substantialist accounts of social processes, which we referred to above. In this chapter, we mostly engage with ontological and epistemological issues of this puzzle, and save the direct methodological consequences for later chapters (especially Chap. 10).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_3

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In an early attempt to bring the insights of processual-relational sociology to bear outside sociology, Jackson and Nexon distinguish between two modes of process: “owned” and “un-owned” (1999, p. 302). This vocabulary comes from the works of Nicholas Rescher, who puts forth a general characterization of these understandings: Owned processes are those that represent the activity of agents: the chirping of birds, the flowering of a bush, the rotting of a fallen tree. These processes are limited to particular substances that perform or undergo them. They relate to the doings of things. Unowned processes, by contrast, are free-­ floating and do not represent the doings of actual (i.e., more than nominal) agents: the cooling of the temperature, the change in climate, the flashing of lightning, the fluctuation of a magnetic field. From the process philosopher’s point of view, the existence of unowned processes is particularly important because it shows that the realm of process as a whole is something additional to and separable from the realm of substantial things. (Rescher, 2000, pp. 28–29)

Jackson and Nexon relate this distinction directly to the distinction between substantialism and (processual) relationalism they borrow from Emirbayer (1997), and argue: Owned processes are “doings” attributable to a particular “doer”. Un-owned processes are “doings” which are not attributable to a particular “doer”. Processes in substantialist accounts are owned—entities instigate processes, or processes are reified as entities. (Jackson & Nexon, 1999, p.  302, italics added)

What does it mean to view processes in a substantialist manner—as instigated by entities or as being reified as entities? To respond to this, we can turn to the literature produced by relational sociologists that, like Jackson and Nexon, uses Dewey and Bentley’s (1949) distinction between self-action, inter-action, and trans-action for delineating substantialist and relational accounts of social processes.

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3.1   Substantialist and Relational Understanding of Social Processes The dilemma between substantialism and relationalism is captured by the opening lines of Mustafa Emirbayer’s “Manifesto for a Relational Sociology”: “Sociologists today are faced with a fundamental dilemma: whether to conceive of the social world as consisting primarily in substances or in processes, in static ‘things’ or in dynamic, unfolding relations” (1997, p.  281). The first view—seeing substances and static “things” as primary—is referred to as “substantialism,” while the second view—seeing processes, dynamic, unfolding relations as primary—is characteristic of “relational” approaches. They have different consequences for making sense of social processes. Substantialism, in turn, is divided between understanding those processes in terms of self-action and inter-­ action. We start with the former family of approaches. 3.1.1   Process as Instigated by “Things”: The Notion of Self-action Self-action, as the prefix “self-” indicates, refers to an action that is taken up by individual entities that are presumed to be “acting under their own powers” (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p.  108). The entities contain all the required capacities and resources for taking up the action in question. The self-actional worldview or self-actionalism has two forms: individualism and structuralism. In the case of individualism, the self-acting entities are presumed to be individual or collective actors (persons, groups, organizations). But as Emirbayer and others (see Selg et  al., 2022; Selg, 2016, 2018; Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 2) have pointed out, self-actionalism also manifests itself in various “holistic theories and ‘structuralisms’ that posit not individuals but self-subsistent ‘societies,’ ‘structures,’ or ‘social systems’ as the exclusive sources of action” (Emirbayer, 1997, p. 285). The self-actionalist worldview is the first form of substantialism referred to by Jackson and Nexon above: it views whichever processes in the world to be “owned” in the sense of being “instigated by entities” (individuals or structures). When it comes to social problems, it presumes them to be analyzable and solvable by dividing them into discrete, manageable units that can be addressed separately. Analyzing processes would mean asking for their instigators, more concretely, the persons, institutions, states and other entities responsible for them. In Dewey and Bentley’s terms:

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“Self-Action: Pre-scientific presentation in terms of presumptively independent ‘actors,’ ‘souls,’ ‘minds,’ ‘selves,’ ‘powers’ or ‘forces,’ taken as activating events” (1949, p. 122, last italics added). Abbott contrasts this approach to his processual sociology (trans-actionalist approach, as we point out below) to such self-actionalism. When it comes to the latter, he talks about “individualists” and “emergentists.” For the former, “social systems are the additive results of individual phenomena, aggregated through simple structures like markets”; for the latter, “social systems constitute an independent level, whose fully social structures coerce individual phenomena ‘below them.’” (Abbott, 2016, p.  34). Self-actionalism in these two forms divides reality into various “levels.” When it comes to the levels of entities involved in making sense of (social) reality, for individualists (e.g., researchers in microeconomics), the entities are biological individuals. Social entities are mere appearance. For the emergentists [structuralists], whether they use mechanical or organic metaphors, social entities are real, while individual behavior displays only random variation around socially determined averages. (Abbott, 2016, p. 73)

Abbott (who, in fact, does not use this Dewey/Bentleyan terminology but makes the same conceptual claim) highlights an important point about self-actionalism: In the atomic view of microeconomics, actors/entities have no relations. They act independently in the face of the market realities established by aggregate supply and demand. […] In the emergentist perspective there are typically quite strong views about interrelation of units. These can be more or less rigid or mechanical, or they can reflect a fixed or varying (and therefore “organic”) division of labor. (ibid.)

In view of this, it makes sense that self-actionalism reduces social processes to its instigator(s): the question is, basically: “who started it?” (biological individuals?) or “what started it?” (structures such as division of labor). Where does such a worldview come from? Abbott argues that its origins lie in the precursors of social sciences: political economy and political theory. These have, in one way or another, been dealing with the issue of scarcity of social resources (as in political economy since Mandeville) (2016, p. 126) or the “incurable excess of and inevitable conflict between human desires” (as in political theory since Hobbes) (Abbott, 2016,

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p. 132). Even though Dewey and Bentley regarded their contemporary social sciences (of the 1940s) to be “still largely on a self-actional basis” (1949, p. 67), i.e., “prescientific,” we can agree with Emirbayer (1997) and Dépelteau (2008, 2013) that current social science is largely “inter-­ actionalist” or “co-deterministic”—and by that, still substantialist. 3.1.2   Process as “Thing”: The Notion of Inter-action Unlike self-actionalism, which presents the world “in terms of presumptively independent ‘actors,’ ‘souls,’ ‘minds,’ ‘selves,’ ‘powers’ or ‘forces,’ taken as activating events,” inter-actionalism presents “particles or other objects organized as operating upon one another” (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 71). This is essentially a Newtonian ontology of action-reaction. Thus, while “the older approach had most commonly seen self-action in ‘the facts,’ the newer approach took form under Newton as a system of interaction, marked especially by the third ‘law of motion’—that action and reaction are equal and opposite” (ibid., p. 120). Inter-action, as the prefix “inter-” indicates, refers, thus, to an action that takes place between/among entities that themselves are fully constituted independently of actions. In an inter-actionalist view of the world, “thing is balanced against thing in causal interconnection” (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 108). Like in self-actionalism, the “thing” is presumed to “remain fixed and unchanging throughout such interaction, each independent of the existence of the others” (Emirbayer, 1997, pp. 285–286). Unlike in the self-actionalist worldview, “entities no longer generate their own action, but the relevant action takes place among the entities themselves” (ibid., p.  285). In the social sciences, inter-actionalism is the “variables-­ based” approach (Emirbayer, 1997, p.  286; Abbott, 1988, 2016) that methodologically “detaches elements (substances with variable attributes) from their spatiotemporal contexts, analyzing them apart from their relations with other elements within fields of mutual determination and flux” (Emirbayer, 1997, p. 288). Inter-actionalism involves the second form of substantialism in Jackson and Nexon’s sense, the “reification of processes as entities”: it amounts to seeing processes as “things” that might be between or among other things (1999). This can be explicated by Dewey and Bentley’s presentation of the general features of inter-­ actionalism from the viewpoint of description, naming, facts, elements, activity, and organism and environment (1949, pp.  113–114, emphasis added). We learn that inter-action

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1. “is inquiry of a type into which events enter under the presumption that they have been adequately described prior to the formulation of inquiry into their connections”; 2. “is found where the various objects inquired into enter as if adequately named and known prior to the start of inquiry, so that further procedure concerns what results from the action and reaction of the given objects upon one another, rather than from the reorganization of the status of the presumptive objects themselves”; 3. “is procedure such that its inter-acting constituents are set up in inquiry as separate ‘facts,’ each in independence of the presence of the others”; 4. “develops the particularizing phase of modern knowledge [about elements]”; 5. “views things as primarily static, and studies the phenomena under their attribution to such static “things” taken as bases underlying them”; and 6. “assumes the organism and its environmental objects to be present as substantially separate existences or forms of existence, prior to their entry into joint investigation.” Thus, we could say that although self-actional and inter-actional approaches to research or governance might be process-oriented, they are not processual, since their orientation is to either find an instigator of the process (self-actionalism) or reify it (inter-actionalism). Only the trans-­ actional approach that self-reflectively aims to avoid this kind of “process-­ reduction.” Moreover, we contend that trans-actionalism—a processual-relational approach in the strict sense—is best suited for conceptualizing wicked problems. This is because trans-actionalism treats social phenomena as un-owned processes, as “doings” which are not attributable to a particular “doer.” Let us land the offhand peculiar notion of “trans-action” for the reader by starting, again, with the term itself. 3.1.3   Process as Constitutive Relation(S): The Notion of Trans-action Trans-action, as the prefix “trans-” indicates, refers to action that transcends the entities, which are seen as constituted within this action. This already implies that the constitutive social processes involved in such an action cannot be treated as “owned” by the entities. To adopt, for a

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moment, an essentialist common-sense vocabulary: the actions that the entities are or have been involved in are defining parts of their very nature; they are what they are in virtue of being involved in various (trans-)actions. But to abandon this essentialist vocabulary now, we can say that those “essences” of entities are in constant change and motion and cannot be presumed to be fully constituted at any given moment. This is exactly what we pointed out about “wicked problems”: any attempt to solve them redefines their “essence”—a feature not characteristic of simple and complex problems. Thus, they need a trans-actional approach. In the latter— whether in research or governance—we should take a thoroughly non-essentialist perspective as it is rendered in an oft-cited passage by Dewey and Bentley regarding trans-actionalist approaches: systems of description and naming are employed to deal with aspects and phases of action, without final attribution to “elements” or other presumptively detachable or independent “entities”, “essences”, or “realities”, and without isolation of presumptively detachable “relations” from such detachable “elements”. (1949, p. 108)

We can take stock of the discussion of a relational understanding of social processes by expanding on recent interventions by one of us (Selg, 2016, 2018, 2020) on relational approaches to power and social science methodology. We borrow from these works the following necessary and sufficient conditions for categorizing an approach as a processual-­relational understanding of social phenomena. The approach has to consider phenomena as (1) relations among entities (2) that exist in practice; (3) and can be considered separately, but not as being separate. “Practice” in (2), of course, refers to “social process” which is our main concern. It is the second and the third conditions that count as sufficient for a processual-­ relational approach, while the first necessary condition is something that the approach shares with inter-actionalism (but not with self-actionalism). The third condition—let us refer to it as “separately, but not as being separate” condition—delivers the crux of relationalism home succinctly, while the second one highlights the processual form of this relationalism. The third condition radicalizes the first two and is the differentia specifica of trans-actional approaches. The figure of “separately, but not as being separate” itself comes from Norbert Elias (1978, p. 85), and entails that even if in some analytical steps we could talk about entities and their actions/ relations separately, we should view them all as parts of “unfolding,

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ongoing processes … in which it makes no sense to envision constituent elements apart from the flows within which they are involved (and vice versa)” (Emirbayer, 1997, p. 89). This “separately, but not as being separate” condition brings to light that processes are not “owned”: neither are they reduced to “things” as their instigators nor are they reified into “things” among other “things” that can be represented as values of variables. To illustrate the difference between substantialist and relational approaches, Jackson and Nexon provide an example of different research strategies on how to study a spread of a rumor: [I]f we study the rumor as an owned process, we are not really studying the “spread” of the rumor. Rather, we are studying how interactions of individuals changed the rumor—we have independent variables (the situational or individual variables of each dyad, a “sender” and a “receiver” of information) and a dependent variable (the content of the rumor itself). This is not particularly useful if we want to study how the process, which is the spreading of the rumor, alters the relations which constitute the group—the bonds between group members, the separation between members of the group and those outside of it, and so on. (1999, p. 302, second italics added)

The processual rather than just process-oriented research on the spreading of a rumor starts with presuming it to be an un-owned process that cannot be reduced to (self-/inter-)actions of entities (persons in the current example). The spreading of the rumor as a process is constitutive of the rumor, and in that sense, “the rumor [as a process] exists independently of the actions of those communicating it, even though it does not temporally precede the group in any ‘real’ sense” (ibid., p. 303). This is somewhat paradoxical thinking from the viewpoint of self- and inter-­ actionalism, which addresses a phenomenon by reducing it to discrete elements; how can a rumor exist “independently” of those who communicate it? Jackson and Nexon propose to “treat the spread of a rumor as a causal mechanism which changes the relations within the group, or even the composition of the group […] with full recognition that the relations within the group and the composition of the group is critical to the way in which the rumor spreads” (ibid.). In fact, this proposal is nothing other than a paraphrase of the “separately, but not as being separate” condition of trans-actionalism. The issue is not whether the spread of rumor is caused by the group relations/composition or the group r­elations/

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composition caused by the spreading of the rumor. The issue is how the spreading of the rumor and the group composition/relations are interdependent or mutually constituted within the process whose constituent elements cannot be considered separately from the flows they are part of and vice versa. Such an approach generally presumes “that knowing is co-operative and as such is integral with communication” (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p.  97). Knowing that is “growing out” (metaphorically speaking) of inquiry is itself an unfolding process, not a fixed “result” that is “out there” (again, metaphorically speaking). The trans-actional perspective, thus “installs openness and flexibility in the very process of knowing. It treats knowledge as itself inquiry—as a goal within inquiry, not as a terminus outside or beyond inquiry” (ibid.). Thus, dividing reality into discrete elements, the observations of which can be considered values of variables (quantitative or qualitative)—the crux of inter-actionalism—is not an option. Related to that Dewey and Bentley comment: The current philosophical notion of observation is derived from a psychology of “consciousness” (or some version of the “mental” as an isolate), and it endeavors to reduce what is observed either to some single sensory quality or to some other “content” of such short time-span as to have no connections—except what may be provided through inference as an operation outside of observation. (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 115, italics added)

In contrast, trans-actionalism presumes research that reports and describes observation on the same basis the worker in knowledge—astronomer, physicist, psychologist, etc.—employs when he makes use of a test observation in arriving at conclusions to be accepted as known. We proceed upon the postulate that knowings are always and everywhere inseparable from the knowns—that the two are twin aspects of common fact. (Dewey & Bentley, 1949, p. 115)

Trans-actionalism is based on a postulate “that all observations belong in system, and that where their connections are not now known it is, by postulation, permissible to approach them as if connection could be established” (ibid., p. 123). This is, in essence, the ontological postulation of the “primacy of relations” over entities that lies at the foundations of processual relationalism.

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Analogously to the six features, we discussed regarding inter-­actionalism in the previous subsection, we now briefly trace the similar features of trans-actionalism that Dewey and Bentley propose regarding research. Dewey and Bentley (1949, pp. 113–115, emphasis added) discuss research, again, from the viewpoints of description, naming, fact, elements, activity or action, and organism and environment. We learn that trans-action 1. “is inquiry of a type in which existing descriptions of events are accepted only as tentative and preliminary, so that new descriptions of the aspects and phases of events, whether in widened or narrowed form, may freely be made at any and all stages of the inquiry”; 2. “is inquiry which ranges under primary observation across all subjectmatters that present themselves, and proceeds with freedom toward the re-determination and renaming of the objects comprised in the system”; 3. “is Fact such that no one of its constituents can be adequately specified as fact apart from the specification of other constituents of the full subject-matter”; 4. “develops the widening [contra particularizing] phases of knowledge, the broadening of system within the limits of observation and report”; 5. “regards extension in time to be as indispensable as is extension in space (if observation is to be properly made), so that ‘thing’ is in action, and ‘action’ is observable as thing, while all the distinctions between things and actions are taken as marking provisional stages of subject-matter to be established through further inquiry”; and 6. “assumes no pre-knowledge of either organism or environment alone as adequate, not even as respects the basic nature of the current conventional distinctions between them, but requires their primary acceptance in common system, with full freedom reserved for their developing examination.” This is the general epistemological stance of trans-actionalism that we espouse in this book via Dewey and Bentley. This directly affects our methodological positions regarding the nature of explanation, the role of case study research we take in Chap. 10 of our book. Now, what about problems of governance? Using the rumor analogy: if we study a wicked problem in a self- or inter-actionalist way by reducing it to its changing content that is communicated from one stakeholder to

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Table 3.1  Three approaches to problems as social processes Approach to social processes

Process as …

Approach to problems as social processes

Self-actionalism Inter-actionalism Trans-actionalism

Owned Owned Un-owned

Problems reduced to their instigators Problems reified as separate entities Problems treated as constitutive processes

Source: Authors

another, we are not really studying the wickedness of the problem, which is the process that continuously constitutes the very meaning of the problem, the possible and actual solutions to it, and the identities of the stakeholders involved. This is the core of the analytic/ontological part of the trans-actional view of social reality: it views social processes as un-owned processes. Table 3.1. summarizes three approaches to problems in terms of processes. What about the normative consequences of trans-actionalism? What kind of governance are we talking about when we are talking about governing wicked problems as un-owned processes? Here, again, it is didactically easier to start with the opposite: what would it mean to govern wicked problems as owned processes? To us, this is governance as de-­ problematization, the topic of our next section. We will start explaining the mechanisms of de-problematization through a detailed review of the literature on depoliticization. After that, we articulate the notions of self-­ active and inter-active governance as forms of de-problematization.

3.2  From Studying to Governing Wicked Problems: From (De)Politicization to (De-) problematization

Depoliticization can be defined as “the range of tools, mechanisms and institutions through which politicians can attempt to move to an indirect governing relationship and/or seek to persuade the demos that they can no longer reasonably be held responsible for a certain issue, policy field or specific decision” (Buller & Flinders, 2006, pp. 295–296, cited in Jenkins, 2011, p. 158). Jenkins (ibid.) adds the following specifications to this definition:

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First, the aim of depoliticisation as an appropriate goal can, and should, be set apart from the ‘tactics’, strategy and techniques deployed. Second, depoliticisation involves an attempt to remove something—whether this is to remove responsibility, politics or, more extensively, human agency.” It follows that the reverse process, politicization “entails adding or supplementing responsibility, ‘politics’ or ‘agency’.” (ibid.)

At the core of the notions of both politicization and depoliticization is the contingency of the social world. Regarding contingency, many authors (Hay, 2007, p. 72; Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Glynos & Howarth, 2007) point out that politics can be contrasted with fatalism and necessity. Fatalism limits a person’s ability to decide, act and change things. Various keywords mark the reverse of politics: finality, inevitability, immutability, fixedness, fate, predestination, resignation, etc. What depoliticization amounts to is essentially “succumbing to the presentation of our everyday lives in terms of a predetermined, necessary or taken-for-granted fate, rather than allowing ourselves the capacity to make choices and perhaps enact change” (Jenkins, 2011, p. 159). But this is also highly political as it limits the possibilities for politics. This specifies a particular limit of reason which appears both as though it cannot be traversed and is the only admissible way of seeing. Such forms of fatalism hold us captive by concealing and reducing the inherent contingency of political processes. (ibid.)

In the terms discussed in Sect. 3.1 the political act of depoliticization is none other than process-reduction of social-political problems. Politicization would be an attempt to avoid such process-reduction. It would be “question[ing] the inevitability of processes previously left to the benign stewardship of fate, and bring[ing] them once more under human influence and design” (Hay, 2007, p. 67). It would be making the processes that were previously considered to be owned in the sense of being instigated by fate (or whichever forces out of control), or reified into “natural” things that cannot be changed, into un-owned processes that can be addressed as “subject[s] of deliberation, decision-making and human agency where previously they were not” (ibid., p.  81). Here we see an important corollary: making owned processes into unowned processes— politicization—means starting to take the processes as contingent. And, reversely, “a strategy of depoliticisation entails forming necessities, permanence, immobility, closure and fatalism and concealing/negating or

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removing contingency” (Jenkins, 2011, p. 160). How are these opposing strategies regarding the contingency of the social conceptualized? Roughly put, both politicization and depoliticization “may relate either to political arenas or to perceptions and perspectives” (ibid., p.  158). Usually, of course, the two are interdependent: taking issues on/off the political arena entails rearranging perceptions and perspectives, and vice versa. Still, we can analytically distinguish more arena-oriented conceptualizations and more perceptions/perspectives-oriented conceptualizations of politicization and depoliticization. As an example of the former, let us briefly immerse ourselves in Colin Hay’s important work (2007) on the topic. 3.2.1   Colin Hay’s Model of (De)politicization Colin Hay’s topographical map of reality is depicted in Figs. 3.1 and 3.2. It consists of the (potentially) infinite “realm of necessity” or the “non-­ political” and its opposite, the “realm of contingency and deliberation” or the “political,” which, in turn, is divided into various spheres: private, public, and governmental. The more one moves issues toward the peripheral spheres of the political (as depicted in Fig. 3.2), the more one depoliticizes them until they become utterly non-political; and the more one moves them toward the center, the more one politicizes them. The numbers 1, 2, and 3, indicate types of (de)politicization, not steps or stages— meaning that one does not have to move necessarily from 1 to 2 in order

Governmental sphere

Non-governmental sphere

Public and governmental

Public and nongovernmental

Realm of necessity (‘non-political’)

Private sphere

Realm of contingency and deliberation (‘political’) Fig. 3.1  Mapping the political realm. (Source: Hay, 2007, p. 79)

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Realm of necessity (‘non-political’) Private sphere Public sphere

Governmental sphere Depoliticization 1 Depoliticization 2 Depoliticization 3

Politicization 3 Politicization 2 Politicization 1

Fig. 3.2  Politicization and depoliticization. (Source: Hay, 2007, p. 79)

to get to 3: sometimes issues move, for instance, from the “non-­political” straight to “governmental” sphere without “taking a rest” at the “private sphere” on their way. In Hay’s typology, fatalism would be a type 3 depoliticization, and it does not matter whether this fatalism is optimistic or pessimistic. For instance, when it comes to depoliticizing climate change, a pessimistic fatalism would amount to “suggesting that the point beyond which human intervention can no longer prevent the slide to environmental catastrophe has now been reached” (Hay, 2007, p. 87). But as Hay points out, [e]qually depoliticizing is perhaps the most optimistic view of the process of environmental degradation. This suggests either that the slide to environ-

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mental catastrophe will be averted by the planet’s capacity for self-correction (the mechanism, of course, remaining unspecified) or that (again in some unspecified manner) our unbounded capacity for scientific and technological innovation will avert, presumably just in time, global environmental meltdown. (ibid.)

Of course, in Hay’s model, the actions of politicization and depoliticization are presumed to be also actions constituting the meaning of policy/ political issues: one constructs them as being part of the world of contingency (the arena of the political) or that of necessity (the arena of the non-political). In that sense, Hay sees these processes in discursive terms. Nevertheless, we can speak of approaches to (de)politicization that focuses more directly on the level of constructing perceptions and have less to do with locating issues in terms of arenas (public, non-public, etc.). They are closer to the insight we want to bring to the fore through our conceptual pair problematization/de-problematization. Namely, making an issue public or political does not necessarily mean problematizing it but could mean exactly the opposite. As an initial approximation, one can think of various populist political strategies that aim to bring many issues to the public realm, but they do it by taking them off the agenda—in other words, they de-problematize them. (De-)problematization is essentially a semiotic process, and its correlation with (de)politicization is purely incidental and needs to be scrutinized empirically, not presumed theoretically (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020). Therefore, before moving to the concept of (de-)problematization, we have to take an intermediate step and consider some examples of explicitly discursive approaches to (de)politicization. 3.2.2   Toward Discursive/Semiotic Notion of (De)politicization Discursive (de)politicization consists of “the rhetorical recognition or denial by humans of their capacity to alter their collective practices, institutions and social conditions” (Wood, 2015, p. 10; emphasis in the original, cited in Fawcett & Wood, 2017, p. 221). Thus, [p]oliticization takes place when the underlying assumptions that guide society are disputed, whereas depoliticization takes place when such assumptions are entrenched to the extent that they are no longer questioned or disputed. Thus, a discursive approach to depoliticization highlights how processes of depoliticization can overlap but also how they are embedded in “everyday life”. (Fawcett & Wood, 2017, p. 221)

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Buller and Flinders’ (2006) framework for the analysis of depoliticization presumes the distinction (originating from Marks & Hooghe, 2004) between “Type 1” and “Type 2” forms of (multilevel) governance. The former is related to more formal structures of public decision-making (e.g., the legislative and the executive branches of government). The latter relates to less juridically fixed (quasi-)public decision-making processes and bodies (various councils, task forces, private-public partnerships, etc.). The issue of (de)politicization, in Flinders and Buller’s approach, is mainly linked to the second type of governance: it links “Type 2” forms of governance to Anglo-American “faced” theories of power (Hayward, 2000; Selg, 2016) and works on political economy. Depoliticization here mainly includes “Type 2” forms of governance with three “principles,” “tactics,” and “tools” of depoliticization: institutional, rule-based, and preference-­ shaping (see Fig. 3.3). Fawcett and colleagues elaborate: Prinicipled Commitment to Depoliticisation? No

Yes Macro-Political Level Tactical Choice

New Public Management

Neo-liberalism

Examples

Preference Shaping

Globalisation

Internal e.g. Golden Rate

Rule-Based

External e.g. Exchange Rate Mechanism

Non-ministerial department Non-departmental public body Independent statutory body

Institutional

Meso-Political Level

MicroPolitical Level

Fig. 3.3  Principles, tactics, and tools of depoliticization. (Source: Buller & Flinders, 2006, p. 299)

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The first refers to the creation of delegated agencies to advise on and make policy decisions, the second involves setting binding rules on policymakers, and the third includes discursive “acts” aimed at making policy issues appear non-political. These are linked to Steven Lukes’ seminal “three faces of power” and connect MLG with studies focused on the power of the state. (2017, p. 10)

Flinders and Buller’s notion of “preference shaping” alluding explicitly to Steven Lukes’ third “dimension” of power1 consists in invoking “ideological, discursive or rhetorical claims in order to justify a political position that a certain issue or function does, or should, lie beyond the scope of politics or the capacity for state control” (Buller & Flinders, 2006, p. 307). In view of this insight, various approaches talk explicitly about “discursive (de)politicization” (DD). For instance, Landwehr refers to “‘discursive depoliticization’ wherever contingent political decision-making is denied or obscured” (2017, p. 52). Papadopoulos, for whom DD is not necessarily something to be lamented for, brings the example of policy debates: the more arguments are framed in technical terms, the more a reflective and problem-solving atmosphere prevails, the more consensus is sought and fundamental contestation is avoided, the fewer competing and conflicting preferences, interests and values, and power games leading to a choice between them are apparent, and the less winners and losers from policy outcomes are clearly discernible, the more one can talk about discursive depoliticization. (2017, p. 141)

Fawcett and Wood (2017) tie discursive (de)politicization to practices of meta-governance. They do this through the notion of storytelling “as a strategy of meta-governance,” arguing that “statecraft works through meta-governance, meta-governance works through storytelling, and storytelling can take the form of politicizing and depoliticizing narratives” (Fawcett & Wood, 2017, p.  218). That “storytelling” is an important mechanism of meta-governance has been argued before: Through storytelling, it is possible to shape images of rational behaviour through the construction of interests, images of friend–enemy relations, and visions of the past and possible futures for individuals and groups and for society at large. Hence, storytelling represents a forceful hands-off means of influencing formation of political strategies among a multiplicity of self-­

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governing actors without interfering directly in their strategy formulation. (Sørensen, 2006, p. 101, quoted in Fawcett & Wood, 2017, p. 222)

It is crucial for Fawcett and Wood, however, that their notion of storytelling is “of a ‘two-way’ concept; stories from government compete with and seek to manage and respond to stories from other policy actors, and both politicizing and depoliticizing narratives have the potential to shape preferences” (ibid., p. 224). Thus, they take the notion of (de)politicization to be, if not explicitly a relational concept, but at least as referring to a multiplicity of mutually related discourses within the general discursive field of the political. The explicitly dialectical and process-relational understanding of (de)politicization comes from various representatives of post-­ structuralist political theorists who have what they call “a ‘thick’ theory of discourse, which goes beyond ‘talk and text’” (Griggs et al., 2017, p. 203). As we have argued extensively elsewhere (Selg, 2018; Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chaps. 3, 4 and 5; Selg & Ventsel, 2022), post-structuralism is inherently a trans-actional—i.e., processual-relational—approach to the political. In our context, it is worth quoting in full what is at stake in this “thick” theory of discourse when it comes to the issue of (de) politicization: In this view, discourse is constitutive of all social relations, in which all objects and phenomena are discursively constructed. In other words, discursive depoliticization cannot be usefully contained to one of the multiple faces of depoliticization; all practices of depoliticization are discursively produced and reproduced... In fact, our approach presupposes a world of contingent elements, which are linked together in different ways in various social and historical contexts. This relational understanding of discourse assumes that discourses are actively predicated on the exclusion of certain elements or an “other”. Politics thus involves acts of power and the creation of antagonisms, as actors engage in hegemonic struggles to establish a temporary political order, articulating political frontiers between “insiders” and “outsiders” by way of the definition of a “core opposition” between “friend” and “enemy” ... It is in these hegemonic struggles, and the dislocatory events that disclose the exclusions which constitute discursive regimes, that the “dialectal interplay” between politicization and depoliticization, or the messiness and complexity of politics, comes to the fore (Griggs et al., 2017, p. 203, emphasis added)

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Thus, Griggs, Howarth, and MacKillop present a thoroughly relational approach to (de)politicization, laying the ground for its “cousin” notion of (de-)problematization. But why should we prefer the latter notion when it comes to governing wicked problems? A brief response is given in the next section.

3.3  From Discursive Approaches to (De) politicization to the Notion of (De-) problematization of Wicked Problems As we already alluded to in Sect. 3.2.1, one of the advantages of the notion of (de-)problematization is that it highlights the fact that making an issue public or political does not necessarily mean problematizing it but could mean exactly the opposite. The totalitarian populist strategy of constructing a robustly delineated “enemy of the people” that is constantly addressed “publicly” is understood as politicization. Still, at the same time, it definitely does not make that “enemy” an object of public deliberation—that is part and parcel of politicization in the models we discussed—but rather it becomes an antagonistic “other” who is dismissed as illegitimate element and targeted overwhelmingly in emotional or affective terms. Thus, the conceptual pair of problematization and (de-)problematization brings to prominence the issue of how, not only what (who) is brought to the public. This, of course, can be made sense of only in terms of a semiotic analysis of the constitution of public communication (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 5). Moreover, in these terms, we can also make sense of the logic pertinent to various forms of governing the COVID-19 crisis that we analyze in Part III of our book: namely, depolitization of societal problems does not entail de-problematization. Based on our research, we argue that, for instance, Taiwan’s success in governing the COVID-19 crisis can at least partly be explained by their strategy of problematization through depoliticization. As Lee (2021) has put it: Taiwan’s COVID-19 “policy making is largely orchestrated by expert-led government agencies … rather than politicians with little expertise in epidemiology and immunology” (p. 29), leaving “little room for politicians and bureaucrats to manipulate the situation to their advantage” (ibid., pp. 35–36). In that sense, there was a prevalence of politics of problematization over politicized populist power-games seeking to politicize the

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pandemic through de-problematizing it into a black and white antagonism (the latter strategy was prevalent in the US, UK, and various countries in Continental Europe who, compared to Taiwan, all failed miserably in governing COVID-19). In addition, de-problematization highlights the mechanism of “dislocating” problems: the mechanism is none other than process-reduction, as we highlighted in the previous chapter. Besides that, our approach is strictly relational in the sense that it highlights the mutual constitution and interdependence of problematization and de-problematization: “by problematizing (or bringing to the center) something one always de-­ problematizes (relegates to periphery) something else. Therefore they can be analytically viewed separately, but should not be treated as being separate in actual political practices” (Selg & Ventsel, 2022 [forthcoming], p. 5). Related to that is the task we take up in the next chapter, where we put forth concrete categories for analyzing this mutual constitution and interdependence. These are the main considerations for preferring the notion of (de-)problematization. Having said that, we want to highlight that these notions are quite intimately related, and we definitely do not deny our great debt to the works on (de)politicization. Similarly to depoliticization, de-problematization involves removing or displacing contingency from problem definitions and their solutions: either problem definition, its solution, or both are presented as “natural,” “inevitable,” and “uncontested.” While the notion of depoliticization relies on a spatial metaphor—displacement of issues from one sphere/realm to another—de-problematization involves a temporal metaphor—reducing processes through postulating an instigator of it or reifying it into some sequence of discrete elements that can be considered separately. Given that de-problematization relies on a temporal metaphor, it is not related to a certain locus of society: (de-)problematization can take place in any site of social relations—governmental and non-governmental public sphere, the private sector, and even the realm of necessity in Hay’s (2007) sense. Thus, the process (and ways of its reduction) should be our focus when outlining strategies for governing wicked problems.

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3.4  Two Ideal Types of De-problematizing Wicked Problems: Self-active and Inter-active Governance Now that we have the notion of de-problematization, we can distinguish three major ideal types of (de-)problematization, by introducing the notions of self-active, inter-active, and trans-active governance of wicked problems. In the remainder of this chapter, we outline the first two of them, while the third one deserves a lengthier treatment that we take up in Chap. 4. First, note that we have changed the suffix to “-active” instead of “-actional” when we characterize different forms of governance. We take it as a given that governance is not only analytical/ontological conception but also normative.2 To highlight the double meaning of governance, we will alter our vocabulary a bit: the “-actional” in our vocabulary will point to analytical/ontological part of a perspective. With prefixes “self-,” “inter-,” and “trans-” it captures the above-outlined positions on how social reality works. The suffix “-active” (with the respective suffixes “self-,” “inter-,” and “trans-”) refers to normative views on how one should govern, given how social reality works. Therefore, in discussing different forms of governance in the normative sense, we use the vocabulary self-active, inter-active and trans-active governance from now on. Our hyphenated forms highlight the genetic relation to the original Deweyan/ Bentleyan vocabulary we outlined in Sect. 3.1. We illustrate the three approaches (in this and the next chapter) by considering the example of governing illicit drug abuse. 3.4.1   Self-active Governance as Politics of De-problematization: Individualism and Structuralism Self-active governance takes two forms—market and hierarchy—as does its underlying ontological position of self-actionalism that informs these views of governance: individualism and structuralism (see Sect. 3.1.1. above). Obvious versions of individualist self-active governance are “exchange perspectives” on governance which presume individual self-­ actors to be the key to solving problems of governance (see March & Olsen, 1995, pp. 7–26; Jessop, 2016, Chap. 7). In other words, governance problems as social processes are reduced to their instigators—the exchanging actors. “Exchange,” according to Jessop “involves ex post coordination based on a formal, procedural rationality that is oriented to

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the efficient allocation of scarce resources to competing ends” (2016, p. 167). When it comes to structuralist forms of self-active governance, all the modern state-centric perspectives on governance are pertinent here (usually referred to as “government” in the “from government to governance” literature [see Jessop, 2016; Rhodes, 2017; Fukuyama, 2016, pp. 94–97]). A mechanism for this form of governance is “command” in the widest sense, including enforced laws, bureaucratic directives, performance assessments, and immediate coercion by force structures which is one of the functions of the police. Command in general “involves ex ante imperative coordination in pursuit of substantive collective goals set from above (hierarchical command in the firm, organization, or state” (Jessop, 2016, p. 167). Historically speaking, self-active governance has probably been the most influential view of governance flourishing in its structuralist and individualist form in most modern political theory works since Hobbes and political economy since Mandeville (see Abbott, 2016, p. 126). Given the distinctions made above, we could say that self-active governance— whether in its market or hierarchical form—is well suited for simple, bounded problems with well-established criteria for success and failure and identifiable instigators of the process(es) that has led to the problem. Reducing problems as processes to definite formulations and their solutions to chains of exchanges or commands makes a lot of sense in many settings but not in the case of wicked problems. The conceptual pair of two ideal types of self-active governance helps us consider various identified failures of governing wicked problems. For instance, Alford and Head analyze the wicked problem of controlling illicit drug use. In our terms, they argue, first, that the structuralist self-­ active governance in the form of “deterrence—increasing either the penalties or enforcement efforts against illicit drug use” which is “popular among politicians seeking to project an image of ‘strong leadership’” is “generally ineffective, if not counter-productive when banned substances are seen as attractive ‘forbidden fruit’” (2017, p. 408). The same holds for individualist self-active governance in the form of “market disruption— applying law enforcement to interdict drug supply” (ibid.), making the exchanges in the market suboptimal for the parties involved. It is different from structuralism in the sense that here, not ex ante controlling the demand side (the drug user) through punishments (deterrence) is supposed to do the trick, but the interference into the supply side (drug dealers) competition is based on ex post coordination. The success of this kind

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of governance is inconclusive, to say the least, and consequently “may increase drug prices and redouble the efforts of surviving drug dealers” (ibid.). The issues of “forbidden fruit” and the possible increase in drug prices and the effectiveness in surviving drug dealers are de-problematized out of the illicit drug abuse by approaching it through self-active governance and reducing this wicked problem as a process to its putative instigator—either the drug dealer or the drug user. What about inter-active governance of illicit drug use? 3.4.2   Inter-active Governance as Politics of De-problematization: Networks Inter-active governance best matches what has been characterized as network governance with its underlying theories and methods (Sørensen & Torfing, 2007; Bogason & Zølner, 2006). This is sometimes called governance in the narrow sense (see Bevir, 2010; Meuleman, 2008). The leading author who defines governance in a narrow sense, specifically in network terms, is Bob Jessop, who also uses the notion of “heterarchy” to distinguish networks from anarchy (market) and hierarchy (state). Heterarchy is what we can call inter-active governance properly (cf. Torfing et al., 2012; Kooiman, 2003; Kooiman & Jentoft, 2009). It is generally considered an effective mode of governance for what we have defined as complex problems—where there is an agreement over the definition of the problem but a disagreement over its solution. Reducing the problem to definite formulation is sensible in the case of complex problems. At the same time, searching for its solution is dependent on the main mechanism of network governance—dialogue—involving “a continuing reflexive self-­ organization based on networks, negotiation, and deliberation that is oriented to redefining goals in the light of changing circumstances around a long-term consensual project” (Jessop, 2016, p. 167). When it comes to illicit drug use, inter-active governance is expressed in various policies that are oriented not only to addressing the supply or the demand side of drug abuse but, instead, to entering into possibly constructive dialogue with a section of the affected parties: the addicts and their close ones. Alford and Head discern two forms of this governance: (1) “rehabilitation,” “as when a judge requires an offending addict to undertake a methadone programme as an alternative to prison”; and (2) “harm minimization,” an approach “which entails accepting that addicts will inevitably consume drugs, in particular with needles, and seeks to

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minimise the danger of infection or overdose by providing for safe injection houses or needle exchanges” (2017, p. 408). The shortcoming of the “rehabilitation” approach is that “it is by its very nature applicable to only a minority of affected people,” since “only those who have been caught abusing drugs can be subjected to this method” (ibid.). The danger of “harm minimization” is that “it may serve to make drug use easier and therefore more persistent” (ibid.). Even though, arguably, inter-active governance is more efficient than self-active governance of deterrence or market disruption, it still has some limitations when it comes to tackling wicked problems like illicit drug abuse. The approach is more dialogical in the sense of not reducing one of the major downsides of drug abuse— addiction—to its “instigator” or the drug abuser. Yet, there is still a form of de-problematization through reification involved (the second form of process-reduction—see Sect. 3.1.2): through policies of “rehabilitation” and “harm minimization” the wicked problem of illicit drug use is reified into an issue of addiction as a status around which various networks for implementing technical solutions—needle and methadone supplies, etc.— are built. In fact, a more general point can be made about the de-­ problematizing character of inter-active governance of illicit drug use. We are dealing here with the complexity aspect of wicked problems (see Sect. 2.3 in the previous Chap. 2) that is discussed in complexity theory under the notion of emergent properties or “properties of the system that the separate parts do not have and that are produced by the interaction between the parts” (Wagenaar, 2007, p. 23). This has important consequences for governance: It basically means that the usual strategy of bringing expert knowledge to bear on policy situations is flawed, or at the very least of limited value. Because expert knowledge is primarily aimed at the understanding (and alleged control) of the separate parts of the system (e.g., members of ethnic minorities, food suppliers, school dropouts, employers, etc.), it threatens to miss the emergent properties of the system entirely. Policy outcomes are an emergent property of complex social networks. (Wagenaar, 2007, p. 24)

Thus, due to its process-reducing character de-problematization can lead to missing the emergent properties of wicked problems. But let us be clear again that even though the two forms of process-reduction—inter-­ active and self-active governance—entail de-problematization of wicked problems, we are not arguing that self-active and inter-active governance

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are useless. On the contrary, most everyday problems are quite “tame” to use the opposite of “wicked” in Rittel and Webber’s (1973) classical sense. Process-reduction might be efficient and justified in their governance, and either individualist self-active anarchy of the market, structuralist self-­ active hierarchy of the state, or inter-active heterarchy of networks might be fruitful. Even complexity theorist support this point: “just because all phenomena/systems are the result of complex, nonlinear processes it does not follow that simple, linear models are obsolete—aspects of complex systems can indeed be modeled as if they were simple, even if only approximately and temporarily” (Richardson, 2007, p. 213). But in tune with the presumption of complexity theory that “simple behavior is a special case of complex behavior” (ibid., p. 194), we argue that for wicked problems the mentioned self-active and inter-active governance might exacerbate the situation considerably by de-problematizing the problems through their characteristic process-reduction. In other words: self-active and inter-­ active governance have limits when addressing wicked problems; and even more concisely, substantialist approaches to governance have a limited effect when addressing wicked problems. This is both an opportunity and a necessity for the emergence of relational approaches to governance—the topic of our next chapter, where we sketch out the ideal type of trans-­ active governance.

Notes 1. The third face is power as preference-shaping: “A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants” (Lukes, 2005, p. 23). 2. We follow here our earlier takes on the issue (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020, ch. 3; Heiskala & Selg, 2021, sect. 8.7.2). For influential general works on governance that through their exposition of the notion either explicitly or implicitly point out that the concept of governance is both analytic—related to how the world is (including how it has changed)—and normative—how things ought to be, see, among others, Fukuyama, 2016; Newman, 2001; Kooiman, 2003; Kooiman & Jentoft, 2009; Bevir & Rhodes, 2006; Bevir, 2010; Torfing et  al., 2012; Sorensen & Torfing, 2007, 2009; Sorensen, 2006; Jessop, 2011, 2016, ch. 7).

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References Abbott, A. (1988). Transcending general linear reality. Sociological Theory, 6, 169–186. Abbott, A. (2016). Processual sociology. University of Chicago Press. Alford, J., & Head, B. W. (2017). Wicked and less wicked problems: A typology and a contingency framework. Policy and Society, 36(3), 397–413. Bevir, M. (2010). Democratic governance. Princeton University Press. Bevir, M., & Rhodes, R. (2006). Governance stories. Routledge. Bogason, P., & Zølner, M. (Eds.). (2006). Methods in democratic network governance. Palgrave Macmillan. Buller, J., & Flinders, M. (2006). Depoliticisation: Principles, tactics and tools. British Politics, 1(3), 293–318. Dépelteau, F. (2008). Relational thinking: A critique of co-deterministic theories of structure and agency. Sociological Theory, 26(1), 51–73. Dépelteau, F. (2013). What is the direction of the “relational turn”? In C. Powell & F.  Dépelteau (Eds.), Conceptualizing relational sociology: Ontological and theoretical issues (pp. 163–185). Palgrave Macmillan. Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1949). Knowing and the known. Beacon Press. Elias, N. (1978). What is sociology? Columbia University Press. Emirbayer, M. (1997). Manifesto for a relational sociology. American Journal of Sociology, 103(2), 281–317. Fawcett, P., Flinders, M. V., Hay, C., & Wood, M. (2017). Anti-politics, depoliticization, and governance. In P. Fawcett, M. V. Flinders, C. Hay, & M. Wood (Eds.), Anti-politics, depoliticization, and governance (pp.  3–27). Oxford University Press. Fawcett, P., & Wood, M. (2017). Depoliticization, meta-governance, and coal seam gas regulation in New South Wales. In Anti-politics, depoliticization, and governance (pp. 217–241). Oxford University Press. Fukuyama, F. (2016). Governance: What do we know, and how do we know it? Annual Review of Political Science, 19, 89–105. Glynos, J., & Howarth, D. (2007). Logics of critical explanation. Routledge. Griggs, S., Howarth, D., MacKillop, E., Fawcett, P., Flinders, M., & Hay, C. (2017). The meta-governance of austerity, localism, and practices of depoliticization. In Anti-politics, depoliticization, and governance (pp.  195–217). Oxford University Press. Hay, C. (2007). Why we hate politics. Polity. Hayward, C. R. (2000). De-facing power. Cambridge University Press. Heiskala, R., & Selg, P. (2021). Power, regulation, and social order in the intersection of political and social theory. In Handbook of classical sociological theory (pp. 169–192). Springer.

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Jackson, P. T., & Nexon, D. H. (1999). Relations before states: Substance, process and the study of world politics. European Journal of International Relations, 5(3), 291–332. Jenkins, L. (2011). The difference genealogy makes: Strategies for politicisation or how to extend capacities for autonomy. Political Studies, 59(1), 156–174. Jessop, B. (2011). Metagovernance. In M. Bevir (Ed.), The Sage handbook of governance (pp. 106–123). Sage. Jessop, B. (2016). The state: past, present, future. Polity. Kooiman, J. (2003). Governing as governance. Sage. Kooiman, J., & Jentoft, S. (2009). Meta-governance: Values, norms and principles, and the making of hard choices. Public Administration, 87(4), 818–836. Laclau, E., & Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: Towards a radical democratic politics. Verso. Landwehr, C. (2017). Depoliticization, repoliticization and deliberative systems. In P.  Fawcett et  al. (Eds.), Anti-politics, depoliticization, and governance (pp. 49–67). Oxford University Press. Lee, W. H. (2021). South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Covid-19. In Covid-19 and governance: Crisis reveals (pp. 29–40). Routledge. Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A radical view (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan. March, J. G., & Olsen, J. P. (1995). Democratic governance. New York: Free Press. Marks, G., & Hooghe, L. (2004). Contrasting visions of multi-level governance. In I. Bache & M. Flinders (Eds.), Multi-level governance (pp. 15–29). Oxford University Press. Meuleman, L. (2008). Public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks and markets: The feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations. Springer Science & Business Media. Newman, J. (2001). Modernizing governance: New Labour, policy and society. Sage. Papadopoulos, Y. (2017). Multilevel governance and depoliticization. In Anti-­ Politics, Depoliticization, and Governance (pp.  134–166). Oxford University Press. Rescher, N. (2000). Process philosophy: A survey of basic issues. University of Pittsburgh Press. Rhodes, R. (2017). Network governance and the differentiated polity. Selected essays, volume I. Oxford University Press. Richardson, K. (2007). Complex systems thinking and its implications for policy analysis. In G.  Morcöl (Ed.), Handbook of decision making (pp.  189–221). CRS Press. Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. Selg, P. (2016). “The fable of the Bs”: Between substantialism and deep relational thinking about power. Journal of Political Power, 9(2), 183–205.

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Selg, P. (2018). Power and relational sociology. In F.  Dépelteau (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology (pp. 539–557). Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, P. (2020). Causation is not everything: On constitution and trans-actional view of social science methodology. In John Dewey and the notion of trans-­ action (pp. 31–53). Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, P., Klasche, B., & Nõgisto, J. (2022). Wicked problems and sociology: Building a missing bridge through processual relationalism. International Review of Sociology, 1–26. Selg, P., & Ventsel, A. (2020). Introducing relational political analysis: Political semiotics as a theory and method. Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, P., & Ventsel, A. (2022). Cultural semiotics as the foundation of political semiotics. Social Semiotics (forthcoming). Sørensen, E. (2006). Metagovernance: The changing role of politicians in processes of democratic governance. The American Review of Public Administration, 36(1), 98–114. Sørensen, E., & Torfing, J. (2007). Theories of democratic network governance. Palgrave Macmillan. Sørensen, E., & Torfing, J. (2009). Making governance networks effective and democratic through metagovernance. Public Administration, 87(2), 234–258. Torfing, J., Peters, G., Pierre, J., & Sørensen, E. (2012). Interactive governance: Advancing the paradigm. Oxford University Press. Wagenaar, H. (2007). Governance, complexity, and democratic participation: How citizens and public officials harness the complexities of neighborhood decline. The American Review of Public Administration, 37(1), 17–50.

CHAPTER 4

From Governance Failure to Failure Governance: A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems

Our tactic in sketching out a processual-relational approach to governing wicked problems is to, first, gain some insight from some extant approaches to governance that are conceptually in tune with processual-relational ontological commitments but use different terminology. After that, we move to Bob Jessop’s “strategic-relational” approach that explicitly uses the same “relational” vocabulary, is conceptually in tune with relational ontology, and considers the consequences for governance that he offers through his notion of “metagovernance.” Finally, we clarify the key features of our relational approach to governance, which we dub failure governance. At the core of failure governance is governing wicked problems as un-owned processes.

4.1   Trans-Active Governance as Politics of Problematization: Governing Wicked Problems as Un-Owned Processes Let us think again about the issue of responding to the wicked problem of illicit drug use we discussed in the previous chapter. Suppose we do not only see it as an issue of deterring drug use or disrupting markets (self-­ active governance) or as rehabilitating drug users and minimizing their harm (inter-active governance). In other words, suppose we do not see the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_4

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issue of “illicit drug use” as mainly an issue of either drugs, their users and suppliers, but an irreducible un-owned process within society/community as a whole with multiple interdependent relations that constitute it as a problem in the first place. It is this insight that informs the argument “for strengthening primary prevention strategies, most commonly drug education of one kind or another,” programs that “take into account young people’s developmental context and experiences and seek to address the social precursors to drug use, such as troubled family life, low self-esteem, poor schooling” (Alford & Head, 2017, p. 408). These are approaches that try to “reinforce the work of professional drug educators with involvement from schools, parents and the community” (ibid., pp. 408–409) and take into account “that proposed interventions need to be aligned with the circumstances in which they apply” (ibid., p. 410), or, even further, recognize that “[i]f there is no ‘root cause’ of ‘wickedness’, there can be no single best approach to tackling such problems” (ibid.). In our terms, this would move from self- and inter-active governance toward trans-­ active governance. Underlying this movement would be an increasing realization of the contingency of the social and political world. In fact, highlighting the contingency of the socio-political world is an almost immediate consequence of trans-actionalism that views social problems as un-owned processes. It is, therefore, necessary to make this connection explicit. 4.1.1   The Contingency of the Socio-Political At the core of trans-actionalism sits the contingency of the social. Let us recall that according to Dewey and Bentley (1949, p. 108), the trans-­ actionalist perspective presumes that our conceptual schemes (“systems of description”) are always preliminary: we cannot attribute “essences” or “realities” to some “elements” or “detachable or independent ‘entities.’” The second point they make is that not only are our conceptual schemes preliminary but they should be used without isolating “relations” from “elements.” Hence, It makes little sense to talk about specific individuals, states, or even problems in isolation from the relations they have with other individuals, problems and the like. Now, if we take these analytic points to bear on the governance literature, they correspond to the insistence on the contingency of the social/political world. According to this view, there are no fundamental essences or “root causes” for social problems: they are contingent upon the interweaving

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and constitutive relations from which they emerge and re-emerge, transform, develop, and re-­develop in the first place. This is what contingency implies. And, of course, as our discussion above about deproblematization showed, the latter is all about displacing contingency around problem-definition and solutions. At the same time, insistence on the contingency of the social world is an insight found in various “post-foundational,” “post-structuralist,” “interpretive,” or “decentered” perspectives on governance. In that sense, the form of governance they propose first is problematization, the opposite of de-problematization. For instance, setting the stage for his edited volume Governance as Social and Political Communication, Bang argues that “governance signifies a break with essentialism, bringing contingency, convention, culture and risky, context-bound choice to the forefront of political and social analysis” (2003a, p. 4), leading to the “recognition that there is no naturally given social or political order, only temporary islands in time and space” (ibid.). Concluding the same volume, he argues that “governance is becoming a common logic of all societal systems in a world where complexity means being forced to select, where selection implies contingency, and where contingency signifies risk” (Bang, 2003b, p. 242). Highlighting the contingency of the social and thoroughly political character of governance is the central message of post-structuralist or post-foundationalist political theory (e.g., Laclau & Mouffe, 1985; Mouffe, 2005; Marchart, 2007). The central normative message from this theoretical movement— in the form of radical or agonistic democracy—is politicization; or in governance terms, politics of problematization of issues. It is captured by Sørensen and Torfing when they conclude their edited volume on democratic network governance (2007): Social antagonisms are an intrinsic part of public governance and they must find ways of expressing themselves at the level of democratic policy making, but they must be tamed by the development of a democratic ethos and a grammar of democratic conduct that turn “enemies” into “adversaries” and replace “antagonistic clashes” with “agonistic respect” based on the recognition of the contingency of all political interest, beliefs and values. (Sørensen & Torfing, 2007, p. 315)

But what is the form of this politics of problematization or “recognition of the contingency of all political interests, beliefs and values”? Bevir,

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who instead of “post-structuralism” uses the term “postfoundational interpretivism,” brings out a crucial aspect of it: Postfoundational interpretivism undermines the idea of a set of tools for managing governance: because governance is constructed differently, contingently and also continuously, we cannot have a tool kit for managing it. Interpretivism thus encourages us to forsake alleged techniques or strategies of management for a practice of learning by telling stories and listening to them. (2004, p. 622, italics added; see also Bevir & Rhodes, 2006)

We can see several important implications of the recognition of contingency or problematization here: Bevir points to the futility of thinking about governance in terms of sets of tools and techniques—a common-­ sense presumption in self- or inter-active governance. He is in line with Dewey and Bentley when they characterized trans-actionalism: “tools” of governance are at best preliminary and in continuous need of redefinition; it is better to “forsake alleged techniques and strategies” altogether and substitute them with a certain ethos of governance that is built up through learning by listening “governance stories” as the title of one of Bevir and Rhodes’ celebrated book reads (Bevir & Rhodes, 2006). We argue that the shift from “tools talk” to what we could call “ethos talk”—seeing governance in terms of particular ethos grounded in shared stories rather than in terms of certain (replicable) techniques or tools—is what is most important for conceptualizing trans-active governance. In fact, putting this normative point together with points about the analytic level made above: the movement from “tools talk” to “ethos talk,” is a consequence of a movement from “variable-centered” analysis of inter-actionalism to a relational and processual approach of trans-actionalism. The thinker in taking those steps has been Bob Jessop in his version of metagovernance and his underlying strategic-relational approach to social reality. 4.1.2   From Contingency to Failure: Bob Jessop on Metagovernance Metagovernance as a concept has been widely used in recent decades (see Meuleman, 2008, 2013; Sørensen & Torfing, 2007, 2009; Sørensen, 2006; Kooiman, 2003; Kooiman & Jentoft, 2009). We focus here mainly on Jessop’s contribution not only because he was one of the pioneers in bringing this notion into the discussion, but also because his break with

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“tools talk” is most radical and in our view most consistent with the notion of trans-active governance we are proposing. Jessop’s strategic-relational approach (SRA) is consistent with the “trans-actional” approach (Selg, 2016, p. 198; 2018, p. 552). The SRA sets out to expand “on the claim that the state is not a subject or a thing but a social relation” (Jessop, 2016a, 10). We need to explicate, however, how Jessop’s view of metagovernance embedded in SRA could be a way of formulating a relational approach to governance in the normative sense. For Jessop (2011, 2016a, 2022), governance in the narrow sense is a response to state and market failure. In our terms, it is none other than a response to the failure of self-active governance by introducing inter-active governance. Jessop’s point, however, is that governance in a narrow sense or inter-active governance is bound to fail, too: “given the growing structural complexity and opacity of the social world, failure is the most likely outcome of most attempts to govern it” (Jessop, 2003, p. 106). What he calls metagovernance is a response to the inevitability of failure of governance. If one has a trans-actional view of reality as outlined above, emphasizing complexity and opacity of the social world comes naturally. Jessop’s normative point is that we should focus on governance failure rather than governance success. This, too, comes naturally when we move from governance to metagovernance or from inter-active to trans-active governance. We should start by thinking that failure is not an aberration or happenstance but a constitutive feature of the social/political world. This is implied by the very idea of trans-actionalism presuming the preliminary nature of whichever systems of descriptions of reality and the impossibility of final delimitation of whichever entity outside the always changing relations they are embedded in. The centrality of failure in the constitution of society is not made explicit in Dewey and Bentley. Jessop himself does not refer to them. Instead, he cites Malpas and Wickham, who argue: Much twentieth-century western life, including the conduct of sociology, is characterized by a refusal to recognize the centrality of failure and the inevitability of incompleteness. Thus, failure is seen as the exception rather than the rule, and as something to be eventually overcome through improvements in knowledge or technique. (1995, p. 39)

Malpas and Wickham do not deny the possibility of success as such for governance. In our terms, there might be simple or complex problems

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that “can be said to constitute a project with a clear criterion of success” (ibid.). Nevertheless, they argue that such fragments of social life are better understood within much broader frames and, indeed, that such fragments can only be properly understood as significant in relation to much larger, ongoing projects. But such larger projects, we claim, are always failing. (Ibid.)

Wicked problems are, of course, the opposite of projects with clear success criteria: no definition of the problem or the solution can be unambiguous, and no established criteria of progress exist. The central and constitutive role of failure must be presumed in governing them. This is where Jessop (2003, 2011, 2022) steps in with his normative perspective on metagovernance consistent with the failure-oriented perspective of trans-actionalism. Jessop explicitly highlights that metagovernance cannot be reduced to questions of how to solve issues of a specific technoeconomic, narrowly juridico-political in character, tightly focused social–administrative, or otherwise neatly framed problem. This is not only because of the material interconnections among different problem fields in a complex world, but also because every governance—and, a fortiori, meta-­ governance—practice affects the balance of forces. (2016a, p. 178, italics in the original)

This is but another way of saying that metagovernance is oriented to wicked, not simple or complex problems. Therefore, three principles inform the suitable ethos for metagovernance: (1) requisite variety; (2) reflexive orientation; (3) self-reflexive irony. We interpret those principles as forming an example of trans-active governance—the form of governance consistent with trans-actional ontology—conceived as a certain ethos rather than a set of techniques and tools. These are elaborated most succinctly in Jessop 2011 and 2003 (but see also Jessop, 2002, pp. 242–245, 2004, 2009, 2016b). In essence, these principles informing the ethos of metagovernance are nothing but different aspects of the orientation to problematization, the opposite of de-problematization, we discussed in the previous chapter. First, “requisite variety” or the “deliberate cultivation of a flexible repertoire of responses” (Jessop 2011, p. 117) is the result of the recognition that simple governance solutions will not be able to tackle wicked

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problems effectively. Thus, it is a constant readiness to problematize readymade policy responses “so that the governance mix can be modified … flexib[ly] in the face of failure” (ibid., p. 118). These considerations would be redundant in a world of simple or complex problems for which self- or inter-active governance might be appropriate. In fact, “this requirement might seem inefficient from an economizing viewpoint because it introduces slack or waste” (ibid.). But once we acknowledge the “wickedness” of governance problems “it also provides major sources of flexibility in the face of failure” (ibid.). Next, the principle of “reflexive orientation” captures the disposition for addressing the preparation for the failure of governance processes, which remain hard to predict. Therefore, reflexive orientation describes the admittance that “a reflexive observer … cannot fully understand what she is observing and must, therefore, make contingency plans for unexpected events” (ibid., p. 117). It further requires defining what would be an acceptable policy outcome in the case of incomplete success. This aspect of metagovernance as politics of problematization means the inquiring in the first instance into the material, social, and discursive construction of possible objects of governance and reflecting on why this rather than another object of governance (or the policy problems with which it is associated) has (have) become hegemonic, dominant, or simply taken-for-­ granted. (Ibid., p. 118)

Finally, the principle of “self-reflexive irony” is needed for “tackling often daunting problems of governance in the face of complex, reciprocal interdependence in a turbulent environment” (ibid., p. 118). Here, Jessop turns to the Rortyan notion of irony (see Rorty, 1989) that “combine[s] the ‘optimism of the will’ with ‘pessimism of the intelligence’” (Jessop 2011, p. 119). Most importantly, ironist accepts incompleteness and failure as essential features of social life but acts as if completeness and success were possible. She must simplify a complex, contradictory, and changing reality in order to be able to act— knowing full well that any such simplification is also a distortion of reality and, what is worse, that such distortions can sometimes generate failure even as they are also a precondition of relatively successful intervention to manage complex interdependence. (Ibid.)

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In terms of complexity theory, “self-reflexive irony” would entail the recognition that “holism is not the solution to complexity” (Richardson, 2007, 211). The temptation for “holism” stems from several crucial underlying assumptions of complexity theory: If we assume that everything is connected to everything else (which is not an unreasonable assumption) and that such systems are sensitive to initial conditions (at the mercy of every minute perturbation) then, indeed, there would seem to be little basis for rational intervention. To take these assumptions seriously we would have to model “wholes” only, or, extend our modeling boundaries to the point at which no further connections could be found. This is more than an argument for wholes, and is really an argument that suggests that to be rational in any complete sense of the word, one must model the Universe as a whole. This is the holistic position taken to an absurd extreme. (Ibid.)

“Self-reflexive irony” would rather prescribe what in complexity theory is referred to as the recognition of “the limited and provisional nature of all understanding” (Richardson & Cillier, 2001, p. 22) or the “humility about the complexity of the world coupled with a hopeful belief in the potential of human beings for doing something about it” (Byrne, 1998, p. 46; see also Richardson, 2007, p. 193). Consequently, “[c]omplexity thinking is the art of maintaining the tension between pretending one knows something and knowing one knows nothing for sure” (Richardson, 2007, p. 194). In our terms, “self-reflexive irony” would be a constant awareness of the process-reduction involved in every act of governing wicked problems. To put it another way: it is an awareness of the failure-bound character of attempts to own an un-owned process that each act of governing wicked problems necessarily involves. This awareness should lead to problematization without stumbling into fatalism, stoicism, opportunism or cynicism which are the usual responses to “the centrality of failure and the inevitability of incompleteness” (Malpas & Wickham, 1995, 39). Jessop explicitly distinguishes his self-reflexive irony from these responses: Fatalism leads to inaction, stoicism rests on passive resignation in the pursuit of familiar routines, opportunism is expressed in avoiding or exploiting the consequences of failure for self-interested motives and cynicism leads to the stage management of appearances to claim success in the face of failure. Cynicism is the realm of symbolic politics, accelerated policy churning (to

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give the impression of doing something about intractable problems), and the “spin doctor”—the realm of “words that work and policies that fail”. This is particularly evident in the highly mediatized world of contemporary politics. (2011, 118)

In our terms, these responses are forms of de-problematization. At the center lies the fear of failure or at least the need to displace it rather than address it. However, when it comes to wicked problems, failure should be, in a way, an assumption, not an unexpected result or something to be hidden from view in each attempt at governing them. Failure to govern wicked problems might not result from lack of competence, finances, good will or even luck. That is why we suggest taking failure head-on. Understanding that wicked problems are un-owned processes and that the process-relational approach requires, among other things, constant awareness of the fact that the process involved is not in principle reducible to elements and their action as the latter are constituted and reconstituted within this process. Furthermore, in that sense, failure is bound to be central in any attempt to govern this process. Hence, our proposal to call this form of governance “failure governance.” The principles of “requisite variety,” “reflexive orientation” and “self-­ reflective irony” can be summarized as a reorientation from governance failure to failure governance. In all of them, failure and limited and preliminary character of whichever solution or measure (“system of description”) for addressing problems is presumed. In practice, it could serve “to counter the rhetoric of partnership which leads commentators to highlight achievements rather than failures” (Jessop, 2003, p.  106). Countering such rhetoric seems to be ever more pertinent, given that it is virtually impossible to acknowledge all the conditions of action and anticipate all the consequences when it comes to significant objects of governance of our time such as climate change, terrorism, illicit drug use, migration or pandemics. Jessop stresses that “[t]he issue of unacknowledged conditions of action and unanticipated consequences is particularly problematic where the objects of governance are liable to change, or where the environment they are embedded in is turbulent, making strategic learning difficult” (Jessop, 2016a, pp.  180–181). Being in constant change in a turbulent environment is, of course, characteristic of governing wicked problems.

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4.1.3   From Governance Failure to Failure Governance To recap our argument in a nutshell: moving from a substantialist to a relational approach to governance entails accepting the inevitability of governance failure and orienting oneself to failure governance. In a different vocabulary: it entails true acceptance of the contingency of the social and political world as we know it. Analytically it requires moving from the presumption of the smooth world of bounded entities, grasped by independent and dependent variables, to the world of continually changing and constitutive relations. Accepting these features of the world, in turn, brings in the need to also move from various toolboxes of governance to a self-reflective ethos or orientation toward the socio-political world. This self-reflective ethos (accompanied by reflexive orientation and requisite variety) can again be highlighted through recourse to complexity theory, which, in turn, can be seen as a strategy for managing the limits of our knowledge: Although there are many tools and concepts available to assist in the understanding of complex systems and to inform policymaking, it is also apparent that we need a strategy for managing the limits to what we can know about them. A naïve realism that is overly confident in one’s ability to represent complex systems is inappropriate regardless of how many analytical tools are developed to deal with complexity head-on. (Richardson, 2007, p. 212)

In fact, this naïve realism and its concomitant celebration of ever more intricate tools of governance is not short-sighted in the technical sense— there is an undeniable advantage in having technological break-throughs, even if most of the everyday technologies are designed to become outdated and obsolete in an increasingly rapid pace, as is clearly evident in information and communication technology. It is, rather, a myopic perspective in another sense: it fails to recognize that “all boundaries, or stable patterns, in a complex system are emergent, critically organized, and therefore temporary” (Richardson, 2007, p.  212) entailing that “an awareness of both the contingency and provisionality of the analysis is far better than a false sense of security, the latter being a very risky state of affairs indeed. It is clear, though, that there are ethical implications for all boundary judgments” (ibid., 218). The reference to ethical implications here helps us put in perspective a crucial difference between the simplifications involved in failure governance and governance as de-­problematization we discussed above. Ethics here entails that “in being unable to know it

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all … one must accept the inevitability of choices that cannot be backed up scientifically or objectively … One must accept that decisions are based on incomplete analysis, and that potentially adverse outcomes might occur as a result of an inability to ‘see’ everything” (Richardson, 2007, 216). Failure (or mistake at least) is the focus of this kind of decision-making, aware of its own contingency. De-problematization, however, would purport to provide solutions to cultivate a sense of security. Maybe we should not do away with the problem-solution vocabulary completely when characterizing failure governance as a relational approach to wicked problems, but at least the “solutions” we would have in mind are closer to what has been called “clumsy solutions” based on Mary Douglas’s cultural theory of governance (e.g., Grint, 2010a, 2010b; Ney & Verweij, 2015; Verweij & Thompson, 2006). Clumsy solutions combine multiple forms of decision-making—individualist, egalitarian, fatalist, hierarchical—presuming none of them (and none of their possible configurations) to be finally decisive or uncontested. These are contrasted with “elegant solutions” that relate to what we have called de-­problematization of wicked problems. “Clumsy solutions” are essentially “solutions” informed by requisite variety, self-reflective irony, reflexive orientation, since they presume “eschew[ing] the elegance of the architect’s approach to problems—start with a clean piece of paper and design the perfect building anew—and adopt the world of the bricoleur, the do-it-yourself craftworker” (Grint, 2010b, p. 24). “Elegant solutions” are essentially ready-made responses to whichever societal problem—these solutions are specified only in very specific details, but stories they contain end up in ideological principles. For example, one can consider the approach to the wicked issue of global warming. Figure 4.1 depicts the four “elegant solutions” to the problem that all basically reduce the problem to its instigators: structures (hierarchists) or individuals (fatalists, individualists, egalitarians). In that sense, they represent self-active governance in our terms (Chap. 3). Figure 4.2 depicts the “clumsy solution” space for the wicked problem of global warming. It is based on an understanding that global warming may not be solvable, in the sense that we can go back to the beginning and reclaim an unpolluted world, and because different interests are at stake in different approaches to the “solution”, the best we can hope for is a politically negotiated agreement to limit the damage as soon as possible. That calls for a non-linear, nay “crooked”, response, to stitch together

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High

GRID: Rules & Roles

FATALISTS

HIERARCHISTS

There’s nothing that can be done People are selfish AKA: we’re all doomed

The rules are inadequately enforced: get a disciplinarian in charge to sort it out

INDIVIDUALISTS

EGALITARIANISM

We need to facilitate individualism & competition. Innovation & market forces will resolve the problem

We need to rethink our consumption & decentralize to self-sustaining communities

Low

High

GROUP ORIENTATION

Fig. 4.1  Elegant (single-mode) solutions to global warming. (Source: Grint, 2010b, p. 24)

Individualists Technical innovations to address global warming at every level AND ...

Hierarchists Stronger global regulation of carbon emissions AND ... Clumsy Solution Space

Egalitarians Change in consumption patterns & more sustainability AND ...

Fig. 4.2  Clumsy solution for the wicked problem of global warming. (Source: Grint, 2010b, p. 25)

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an inelegant, or clumsy, solution combining all three modes of understanding, and making use of the fatalists’ acquiescence to go along with the changing flow of public opinion and action. (Grint, 2010b, p. 25)

The “clumsy solutions” approach has even been explicitly related to agonistic political theory as a form of “agonistic governance,” which “is defined as an approach to decision-making that is premised on the acceptance that complexity generates paradoxes and contradictions and organizational actors must have the agency to positively embrace these, rather than try to eliminate them” (Fraher & Grint, 2018, p. 224). This takes the link to failure governance that we advocate even further, since it includes a positive approach to errors that are the inevitable consequence of acting in complex and contradictory environments. Thus, we challenge the widespread assumption that in most contemporary organizations failure— the F word—is something to be avoided under all circumstances. (Ibid.)

It also brings out that “the contradictions of decision-making in complex situations are precisely the key to explaining success: the search for a logical, elegant, unilinear answer is the problem not the solution” (ibid., p.  229). Consequently, “agonistic governance” brings to prominence what our approach of failure governance or trans-active governance has been presuming all along, given the trans-actional foundations of it: [W]e typically assume that success derives from internally consistent (“Elegant” in the terms of Douglas…) approaches to problem solving but if part of the problem is the cultural norms that operate to prevent us seeing beyond those cultural norms then perhaps part of the solution is to engage an approach that consciously goes beyond the cultural conventions and embodies countercultural models and techniques into their conventional approach—so called Clumsy approaches. (Ibid., 234)

Failure governance and clumsy solutions also pose a challenge for social science education and organizational learning since, in practice (even if not in theory), they mainly revolve around elegant solutions or de-­ problematization. In organizational learning, the distinction between zero-, single- double- and triple-loop learning has been theorized for decades (see Bateson, 1973; Argyris & Donald, 1996; Tosey et al., 2012). Romme and Van Witteloostuijn, provide the following differentiation between three levels of learning: “Are we doing things right (single-loop

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learning)? Are we doing the right things (double-loop learning)? Can we participate in making well-informed choices regarding strategy, objectives, etc. (e.g. triple loop learning)?” (1999, p. 452, italics added). It is important to note that these “loops” of learning do not form a hierarchical order of levels of learning but rather a nonlinear and interdependent sequence of recursive moments within the same process. Articulating the connection between organizational learning and failure governance is one of the critical tasks ahead for a relational approach to governance. One of the starting points is Kooiman’s distinction between different orders of governance (2003) and his explicit association of them with varying loops of learning (Kooiman & Jentoft, 2009). When it comes to social science education, Brewer (2013, Chap. 5) has argued for the need for “new public social science” which would address the “‘wicked problems’ of culture, the market and the state in the twenty-­ first century” (p. 169). In terms of teaching, it is a challenge to move— again—from solution-oriented teaching to problem-oriented teaching. But it is a huge leap since, in our education system, we are mostly assessed by how well and quickly we solve problems with solutions. One can think of various tests like IQ, SAT, etc. that segregate the haves and have-nots among US citizens by their late teens. These tests measure a person’s ability to recognize regularities underlying problems. In our vocabulary: these tests measure people’s ability to solve simple and complex problems. More importantly, these tests measure people’s capacity for self- or inter-active governance oriented toward governance success and accumulating knowledge about best practices. This book proposes to reorient this logic in governance: failure governance is the best practice we can have in a situation where there cannot be “best practices” in the first place. This is exactly what is at stake in governing wicked problems since, as Rittel and Webber highlighted already in 1973, not only are wicked problems impossible to define and impossible to solve—but they are also “essentially unique” (pp.  164–165). This is why failure governance could borrow its maxim from Jessop: “If one is likely to fail, one can at least choose one’s preferred form of failure” (2011, p. 118). Table 4.1 summarizes our argument in this and the previous chapter for what we call failure governance. This would be our term—catchphrase if you like—for the more technical notions of trans-active governance or process-relational approach to governing wicked problems. Empirically, various ongoing crises in the world are informative for lessons in failure governance. We can look at the economic crisis of 2008, the

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Table 4.1  Governing simple, complex, and wicked problems Form of governance

Examples of governance theory

Problems of governance

Focus of governance

Self-active structuralism Self-active individualism Inter-active governance Trans-active governance

Hierarchy/bureaucracy Market Network Metagovernance, post-foundationalism Market, hierarchy, network

Simple Simple Complex Wicked

Solution Solution Solution Failure

Wicked

Solution

Governance as de-problematization

European migrant crisis of 2015, and the most recent COVID-19 pandemic that must be considered a wicked problem based on the changes in society and the economy in not even months or weeks but days. And, of course, last but not least—the climate crisis for which the conditions for a turn to failure governance with its self-reflexive irony, requisite variety, reflexive orientation have been available for decades but still face the intricate resistance of “elegant” de-problematization. Why is the politics of de-problematization so prevalent? We take a brief look at the works of various researchers on wicked problems that reflect this issue.

4.2   Governance Failure: How and Why De-problematization Occurs Brian Head has probably written most extensively on wicked problems over the past 15 years. He points out that the disagreements involved in the constitution of the wickedness of problems “arise because key stakeholders’ viewpoints are anchored in different assumptions, values, interests and capacities” (Head, 2018, pp. 3–4). This leads to the constitutive interdependence between the problem-solution nexus “since the way in which a problem is defined or scoped is closely linked to preferred remedial actions to address the identified problem” (ibid., p.  4). This often poses a challenge for our “elegance”-ridden political culture since addressing wicked problems needs coherent action rather than a solution or project management: “the challenge for decision makers is to demonstrate that the issues are being well managed rather than fixed or ‘solved’” (ibid.). As Conklin adds: “You don’t so much ‘solve’ a wicked problem as you help stakeholders negotiate shared understanding and shared

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meaning about the problem and its possible solutions. The objective of the work is coherent action, not final solution” (2006, p. 5). Therefore, claims about “solving” or “fixing” a wicked problem should in most cases be replaced by the language of tackling, managing, coping and addressing wicked problems … Moreover, wicked problems cannot be properly “tamed” or “fixed” by dissolving them into multiple elements which are then reassembled in a manner suited to a series of small projects. (Head, 2018, p. 4)

This, of course, requires adopting the trans-actional perspective on reality that aims at avoiding process-reduction as far as possible—or, normatively speaking, having a self-reflexive ironic attitude in view of the unavoidable process-reduction entailed by decision-making. Politicians, however, “have a fondness for distributing cheques, unveiling plaques, and cutting ribbons” (Head, 2008, p. 108). In other words, they are more interested in de-problematization: “[t]he political attempt to convert messy unstructured problems into ‘well-structured’ micro problems begs the question of whether it is possible to resolve messy issues by converting them into ‘technically controllable’ issues” (Head, 2018, p. 4). How does this de-problematization work? Head summarizes it as follows: Depending on the situations faced by government, the politics of responding to policy problems and to urgent crises will generate diverse tactics among political leaders—ranging from avoidance and denial, symbolic reassurance, blame attribution, establishing expert inquiries, through to strategic engagement forums with key stakeholders. Sometimes the entrenched differences in knowledge and values can be reconciled or accommodated, but sometimes the differences are simply suppressed by government through exercising power and overriding dissenting views. The claim by some politicians that tough problems (e.g. illegal immigration) can readily be “solved” by bold actions (e.g. enhanced border protection), is often part of a rhetorical tactic indulged by leaders seeking electoral support. Indeed, there are instances where political leaders are not really interested in resolving the problem, but prefer cynically to intensify group conflict, inflame emotional identities and “stir the pot” if this tactic serves their political interests. (Ibid., p. 5)

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Problem-framing is one of the mechanisms of both problematization and de-problematization, as discussed extensively in Part II of our book. Framing is “a way of selecting, organising, interpreting and making sense of a complex reality to provide guideposts for knowing, analysing, persuading and acting” (Schön & Rein, 1994, p.  146). Why is framing important? Well, “because the way a problem is defined is very closely tied to the type of solution that is proposed” (Head, 2018, p.  6; see also Bacchi, 2009). For example, [i]f poverty is largely seen as an individual-centred problem, generated by deficits in personal skill and motivation, the solutions proposed will be oriented toward encouraging individuals to develop their skills and work orientation. By contrast, if poverty is largely seen as an enduring structural feature of society, generated by economic systems and market forces, the solutions proposed are likely to be oriented toward social security systems, employment programs and income safety nets. (Head, 2018, p. 6)

Framing can lead to de-problematization: The analysis of complex issues requires special care, however, because such problems are often politically contentious and marked by “framing contests” that oversimplify the problems and recast them in more emotional and value-laden terms. This has become typical within the recent “post-­ truth” policy debates, fuelled by the manipulation of social media channels. (Ibid., p. 7)

But framing is also part of policy design—an approach to (meta)governance that, in a quite decisive manner, does away with the idea of “solving” problems. According to Head, the idea of policy design has often been used to emphasize the creativity, innovation and learning dimensions of the search for policy alternatives, in contrast to the mechanistic metaphors of design derived from computational approaches to data analysis and planning. Policy design practices are clearly vital for engagement with wicked problems. (Ibid.)

Elements that get to be repeated in various approaches to policy design are “understanding causation, the evaluation of alternatives, and understanding how interventions operate”; “identification and scoping of the problem, deliberation on the choice of instruments and procedures and

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the evaluation of implementation including longer-term outcomes” (ibid.). This is all about problematizing problems. Why, then, do we slide to de-problematizing them? One keyword is uncertainty. After summarizing a huge amount of literature on wicked problems and managing complexities, Head generalizes that “[u]ncertainties can arise from knowledge gaps or conflicts, from value differences and from organizational or regulatory complexities. These are all likely to exacerbate tensions inherent in addressing wicked problems” (ibid., p. 10). The other keyword is crisis. When an issue is framed as a crisis, then its management generally involves rapid response by leaders and managers, rather than lengthy consultations among stakeholders, but preventative action (such as the preparation of contingency plans) is regarded as important for mitigating the likely harmful effects. Crises can also act as circuit-breakers in providing opportunities for new thinking, where old practices are manifestly inadequate. (Head, 2018, p. 10)

While placing a high priority on policy learning and continuous refinement of options allows adaptation to the changing circumstances typical of wicked problems, “the widespread political culture of risk aversion may undermine the actual acknowledgement of the fact that solutions are provisional and require continual adjustment” (ibid., p. 13). The “culture of risk aversion” is directly related to what Grint calls “the pressure to act decisively,” which “often leads us to try to solve the problem as if it were a tame problem” (Grint, 2010b, p.  17). That wicked problems require leadership, instead of command or management, makes it even more difficult: since wicked problems are partly defined by the absence of an answer on the part of the leader, then it behooves the individual leader to ask the right kind of questions to engage the collective in an attempt to come to terms with the problem. In other words, wicked problems require the transfer of authority from individual to collective because only collective engagement can hope to address the problem. (Grint, 2010b, p. 18)

This is the “irony of leadership,” that leads to de-problematization of wicked problems. Leadership remains the most difficult of approaches and one that many decision-makers will try to avoid at all costs because it implies that: 1) the leader does not

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have the answer [self-reflexive irony]; 2) that the leader’s role is to make the followers face up to their responsibilities (often an unpopular task) [reflexive orientation]…; 3) that the “answer” to the problem is going to take a long time to construct and that it will only ever be “more appropriate” rather than “the best” [reflexive orientation]; and 4) that it will require constant effort to maintain.[requisite variety]. (Grint, 2005, p. 1475)

But de-problematization occurs because “[i]t is far easier … to opt either for a Management solution—engaging a tried and trusted process— or a Command solution– enforcing the answer upon followers—some of whom may prefer to be shown ‘the answer’ anyway” (ibid.). Even more generally, the ever-haunting specter of de-problematizing wicked problems derives from our inclination to become prisoners of our own cultural preferences—hierarchists become addicted to command, egalitarians become addicted to collaborative leadership, and individualists become addicted to managing all problems as if they were all tame. In effect, we become addicted to elegance, when we ought to be cultivating a clumsy approach if and when our own approaches prove inadequate to the task. (Grint, 2010b, p. 32)

As many practitioners know, “[p]oliticians are often keen to pursue ‘solutions’ even when the evidence is uncertain or when the citizens disagree on key issues” (Head, 2008, p. 107). Similarly to Grint, Head points out that leadership tends to be substituted by command or management. And if one adds here the budgeting logic with discrete outputs, development plans, etc., then the politicians more often than not will not wait for all uncertainty to subside before they choose to act. Such politicians generally like to be seen as “decisive”, by taking action to address issues. Sometimes this preference is driven by ideological zeal. However, others take a more cautious and conservative approach, unwilling to over-­ commit their governments to finding a solution to intractable issues. In practice, the majority of politicians tend to focus on highly visible or tangible pieces of the puzzle, rather than insisting on a comprehensive approach to issues. This preference is reinforced by administrative and budgeting processes which are predisposed towards tangible outputs and the measurement of incremental changes. Political and financial accountability systems encourage the specification of discrete and finite items rather than large amorphous interlinked outputs. (Head, 2008, p. 107)

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We have given an initial glimpse on both what trans-active governance of problematization of wicked problems, as well as what ideal types of selfand inter-active governance look like, and take our discussion to another level by giving a “history of the present” or “genealogy” (both roughly in the Foucauldian sense—see below) of theories of the policy process. We argue that it is not only the case that the often normative theory of policy processes is correct but that the practice spoils it all when it comes to implementing the theory. Curiously, it is almost the other way around in many other cases. Be that as it may, we highlight next an important aspect of our thinking about policy and governance that is usually ignored in explanations of de-problematization and problematization (or depoliticization and politicization, for that matter)—the theoretical models themselves.

4.3  Looking Ahead: Policy Theories as Sources of Problematization and De-problematization In Part II, we trace the evolution of theories of policy process with a particular focus on their movement from substantialism toward a processual-­ relational approaches. Chapter 5 starts with the normative (or textbook) mode of theorizing about the policy process and its internal methodological controversies. This model—self-actionalist in its core presumptions— was never explicitly formulated, but it was defined and re-defined in the discourse and practical arrangements of policy-making in the period when “policy orientation” (Lasswell) had not yet become an integrated science. After that, we move further by taking a closer look at various developments in neighboring sciences, political science and organizational sciences (including shifts in operations research as the core of the normative model), and focus on the key qualitative shifts in the interpretation of the policy process toward the inter-actional model. This way, we expect to provide the reader with diverse background knowledge necessary for making sense of the trans-actional interpretations of the same dimensions of the policy process, which we turn to in Chap. 9. Thus, we aim to transfer the highly analytical trans-actional concept of social order (ordering) to the terrain of government sciences and to demonstrate how the trans-­ actional paradigm of social ordering could be useful for exploring the process of governance as a policy process. From this viewpoint, policy theory could enable not only to explore governance in the context of a high level

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of contingency but also to reconsider basic dimensions of governing— e.g., politics, policy knowledge (ordering), and institutionalization—from process-relational or trans-actional perspective, i.e., as eternally unfolding innovation of the context of dis-equilibrium. Our task to propose a geneaology or history of the present of policy theories is too complicated for receiving full rendering. This is because, on the one hand, it is difficult to give an unequivocal description of even the normative model that insists on increasing the scientific dimensions of policy-making. Although based on scientific analysis, policy conceptions are generalizations of certain practical experiences and outcomes of empirical data analysis. In other words, as a rule, those theories do not pretend to be universal but aim for practical reliability and applicability of a conception in the case of certain types of policy processes in specific contexts. The more the policy becomes the subject to conceptual analysis, the more it becomes obvious that the policy process is not a separate phenomenon but a dimension of governance to be explored. Yet, on the other hand, in theories of the policy process, we find surprisingly few profound self-­ reflections (like Ostrom, 1998; Wagenaar, 2011; Hay, 2011) on the methodological (epistemological and ontological) background of theories/ conceptions. A notable exception was the debate initiated by Paul Sabatier in his handbook Theories of the policy process (see Dudley et  al., 2000), aimed at drafting a borderline (or wall) between classical scientific (facts/ data-based) policy analysis and the approaches which are based on different rationality and methods. There are excellent overviews (and attempts to systematize) of theoretical developments (e.g. Parsons, 1995; Hoppe, 2010; Klijn & Koppenjan, 2015); or attempts to refine one’s own methodological positions (Bevir, 2003; Bacchi, 2016), aimed at creating convincing background analysis of one’s own theoretical positions, to some extent via simplification of alternative methodologies. Our approach intends to demonstrate at the analytical level the key conceptual dilemmas which already emerge in the self-actional normative model of the policy process and to follow their solutions in the course of the developments toward inter-actional policy conceptions. Then we compare different basic presumptions of inter-actional and trans-actional epistemologies in analyzing and interpreting mechanisms of the policy process. Finally, we try to demonstrate why and how these opposite analytical presumptions could both support the empirical analysis of the policy process in its different dimensions analytically. This is similar to Bohr’s notion of non-reductive complementarity that he takes from William James (Wendt,

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2015). In other words, we expect that various methodological presumptions and, even more, different practically oriented policy theories are becoming increasingly asymmetrically linked, when trying to explore the same empirical phenomena (i.e., contingency, complexity, practice, institutionalization as collective action, etc.) from different angles. Due to their practical orientation and the rather deep influences of pragmatist methodology, various theories have developed toward similar research agendas: first of all, toward exploring the purposive action (Chia & Holt, 2009) in the contingent action environment; and secondly, toward relying on different rationalities and their instruments (models, frames, narratives). This enabled them to develop different answers to similar research questions and their mutual complementation in exploring reality.1

Note 1. Mayer et al. (2012, 2013) summarizes this trend at least tentatively.

References Alford, J., & Head, B. W. (2017). Wicked and less wicked problems: A typology and a contingency framework. Policy and Society, 36(3), 397–413. Argyris, C., & Donald, S. (1996). Organizational learning II: Theory, method and practice. Addison-Wesley. Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing policy: What’s the problem represented to be? Pearson. Bacchi, C. (2016). Problematizations in health policy: Questioning how “problems” are constituted in policies. SAGE Open, 6(2), 1–16. Bang, H. (2003a). Governance as political communication. In H.  Bang (Ed.), Governance as social and political communication (pp.  7–23). Manchester University Press. Bang, H. (2003b). A new ruler meeting a new citizen: Culture governance and everyday making. In H.  Bang (Ed.), Governance, as social and political communication (pp. 241–266). Manchester University Press. Bateson, G. (1973). Steps to an ecology of mind: Collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. University of Chicago Press. Bevir, M. (2003). A decentred theory of governance. In H. Bang (Ed.), Governance as social and political communication (pp.  200–221). Manchester University Press. Bevir, M. (2004). Governance and interpretation: What are the implications of postfoundationalism? Public Administration, 82(3), 605–625. Bevir, M., & Rhodes, R. (2006). Governance stories. Routledge.

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Brewer, J. (2013). The public value of the social sciences. An interpretive essay. Bloomsbury. Byrne, D. (1998). Complexity theory and the social sciences: an introduction. London and New York: Routledge Chia, R., & Holt, R. (2009). Strategy without design. The silent efficacy of indirect action. Cambridge University Press. Conklin, J. (2006). Dialogue mapping: Building shared understanding of wicked problems. John Wiley. Dewey, J., & Bentley, A. (1949). Knowing and the known. Beacon Press. Dudley, G., Parsons, W., Radaelli, C.  M., & Sabatier, P. (2000). Symposium. Theories of the policy process. Journal of European Public Policy, 7(1), 122–140. Fraher, A., & Grint, K. (2018). Agonistic governance: The antinomies of decision-­ making in US Navy SEALs. Leadership, 14(2), 220–239. Grint, K. (2005). Problems, problems, problems: The social construction of “leadership”. Human Relations, 58(11), 1467–1494. Grint, K. (2010a). Wicked problems and clumsy solutions: The role of leadership. In S.  Brookes & K.  Grint (Eds.), The new public leadership challenge (pp. 169–186). Palgrave. Grint, K. (2010b). Leadership: A very short introduction. Oxford University PRess. Hay, C. (2011). Interpreting interpretivism interpreting interpretations: The new hermeneutics of public administration. Public Administration, 89(1), 167–182. Head, B. W. (2008). Wicked problems in public policy. Public Policy, 3(2), 101–118. Head, B.  W. (2018). Forty years of wicked problems literature: Forging closer links to policy studies. Policy and Society, 38(2), 180–197. Hoppe, R. (2010). The governance of problems. Puzzling, powering, participation. The Policy Press. Jessop, B. (2002). The future of the capitalist state. Polity. Jessop, B. (2003). Governance and metagovernance: On reflexivity, requisite variety and requisite irony. In H. Bang (Ed.), Governance, as social and political communication (pp. 101–116). Manchester University Press. Jessop, B. (2004). Multilevel governance and multilevel metagovernance. Changes in the EU. Jessop, B. (2009). From governance to governance failure and from multi-level governance to multi-scalar meta-governance. In B.  Arts, A.  Lagendijk, & H. J. v. Houtum (Eds.), The disoriented state: Shifts in governmentality, territoriality and governance (pp. 79–98). Springer. Jessop, B., (2011). Metagovernance. In: M. Bevir (ed). The Sage handbook of governance (106–123). London: Sage. Jessop, B. (2016a). The state: Past, present, future. Polity. Jessop, B. (2016b). Territory, politics, governance and multispatial metagovernance. Territory, Politics, Governance, 4(1), 8–32. Jessop, B. (2022). Putting civil society in its place. Policy Press.

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Klijn, E. H., & Koppenjan, J. F. M. (2015). Governance networks in the public sector. Routledge. Kooiman, J. (2003). Governing as governance. Sage. Kooiman, J., & Jentoft, S. (2009). Meta-governance: Values, norms and principles, and the making of hard choices. Public Administration, 87(4), 818–836. Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1985). Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. London: Verso. Malpas, J., & Wickham, G. (1995). Governance and failure: On the limits of sociology. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 31(3), 37–50. Marchart, O. (2007). Post-foundational political thought: Political difference in Nancy, Lefort, Badiou and Laclau. Edinburgh University Press. Mayer, I., van Daalen, E., & Bots, P. (2012). Policy analytical styles. In E. Araral, S. Fritzen, M. Howlett, M. Ramesh, & X. Wu (Eds.), Routledge handbook of public policy (pp. 255–270). Routledge. Mayer, I., van Daalen, E., & Bots, P. (2013). Perspectives on policy analysis: A framework for understanding and design. In W. Thissen & W. Walker (Eds.), Public policy analysis. New developments (pp. 41–64). Springer. Meuleman, L. (2008). Public management and the metagovernance of hierarchies, networks and markets: The feasibility of designing and managing governance style combinations. Springer Science & Business Media. Meuleman, L. (2013). Cultural diversity and sustainability metagovernance. In L. Meuleman (Ed.), Transgovernance (pp. 37–81). Springer. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the Political. London and New York: Routledge. Ney, S., & Verweij, M. (2015). Messy institutions for wicked problems: How to generate clumsy solutions? Environment and Planning. C, Government & Policy, 33(6). Ostrom, E. (1998). Behavioural approach to the rational choice theory of collective action: Presidential address. American Political Science Review, 92(1), 1–22. Parsons, W. (1995). Public policy: An introduction to the theory and practice of policy analysis. Edward Elgar Publishing. Richardson, K. (2007). Complex systems thinking and its implications for policy analysis. In G.  Morcöl (Ed.), Handbook of decision making (pp.  189–221). CRS Press. Richardson, K. and Cilliers, P. 2001. Special Editors’ Introduction: What Is Complexity Science? A View from Different Directions. Emergence: Complexity and Organization, 3(1), 5–23 Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169. Romme, G., & Van Witteloostuijn, A. (1999). Circular organizing and triple loop learning. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 12(5), 439–454. Rorty, R. (1989). Contingency, irony, solidarity. Cambridge University Press.

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Schön, D., & Rein, M. (1994). Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. Basic Books. Selg, P. (2016). “The fable of the Bs”: Between substantialism and deep relational thinking about power. Journal of Political Power, 9(2), 183–205. Selg, P. (2018). Power and relational sociology. In F.  Dépelteau (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of relational sociology (pp. 539–557). Palgrave Macmillan. Sørensen, E. (2006). Metagovernance: The changing role of politicians in processes of democratic governance. The American Review of Public Administration, 36(1), 98–114. Sørensen, E., & Torfing, J. (2007). Theories of democratic network governance. Palgrave Macmillan. Sørensen, E., & Torfing, J. (2009). Making governance networks effective and democratic through metagovernance. Public Administration, 87(2), 234–258. Tosey, P., Visser, M., & Saunders, M. N. K. (2012). The origins and conceptualizations of “triple-loop” learning: A critical review. Management Learning, 43(3), 291–307. Verweij, M., & Thompson, M. (2006). Clumsy solutions for a complex world: Governance, politics and plural perceptions. Palgrave Macmillan. Wagenaar, H. (2011). Meaning in action: Interpretation and dialogue in policy analysis. Routledge. Wendt, A. (2015). The quantum mind and social science. Unifying physical and social ontology. Cambridge University Press.

PART II

The History of the Present of the Theories of the Policy Process: From Self-Action to Trans-Action

The development of policy theories has been far from being a linear and sequential process of replacement of less-effective theories with more effective ones. Our conceptual reflection is thus not aimed at a historical overview of the evolution of knowledge, but rather we try to find triggers and conflicts of key conceptual dilemmas; the inner logic of their emergence, suppression, disappearance, and re-discovery in different discursive contexts in the sense that Foucault envisioned his genealogical approach (Foucault, 2009, p. 81). We also try to apply as much as possible the logic of re-active sequences (Mahoney & Schensul, 2006), which resembles the genealogical method of representation of events in the present. Our special interest is, of course, the genealogy of the very idea of wicked problems, which questioned the relevance of problem–solution nexus in producing policy outcomes, leading to approaching policy as a bottom-up development and accomplishment of binding collective agreements (praxis in the Aristotelian sense). Finally, we intend to reflect on policy as an institutionalization process in the context of a high level of contingency and disequilibrium, which means exploring the policy process as a type of institutionalization, understood also from the processual-relational or trans-­ actional perspective (Lawrence et  al., 2009; Hay, 2016; Wagenaar & Wenninger, 2020). In this process, we reveal many tentative or implicit shifts in the paradigm of understanding policy process (like Rittel’s notion of wicked problems), which were later rediscovered and re-defined in a rather different discursive context.

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Note 1. According to Andersen’s succinct summary (2003, p. 19), “[t]he purpose of genealogy, for Foucault, is not … a description of actual events. Genealogy is a history of the present designed to outline the historical conflicts and strategies of control by which knowledge and discourses are constituted and operate, and to use these descriptions as a counter-memory.”

CHAPTER 5

A Genealogy of Self-Active Governance in Policy Theories

In this chapter, we start tracking the internal developments in policy sciences, from the self-actional normative model to the inter-actional theories of the policy process. These developments have congealed over the last two decades, indicating the exploratory limits of the inter-actional view. But in our view, this also signals a need to interpret the policy process from a trans-actional perspective, highlighting public policy as a dimension of governing viewed as a dynamic unfolding phenomenon. We analyze the trends toward an inter-actional view simultaneously through three lenses. First, we trace the evolution of methodological agendas in the study of the policy process, which results in different concepts and vocabulary. Here we focus on changes in several key dimensions of policy theories: (a) changes in the interpretations of the problem-­solving process; (b) transformations from the image of a linear sequence of causally linked stages to iterative models of the policy process, which flattened the elitist image of policy decisions toward network type of patterns of actors; (c) the considerable changes in understanding the role of knowledge and ways of its formation for the policy process, including the role and organization of specialized expertise and lay (practical) knowledge in it; (d) the restoration in the understanding of the policy process of the central role of politics (although understood now in terms of rather different roles and mechanisms) whose impact through the competition among private interests was in the initial policy-politics dualism presumed to be a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_5

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restrained one. We highlight crucial turning points in these dimensions, which within roughly 50 years substantially changed the understanding of the mission and role of the policy from the normative self-actional to much more flexible inter-actional presumptions, accepting many new ontological and epistemological premises. Since the resulting explorative policy sciences were truly empirical-­ practical undertakings and not normative-hegemonic forms of knowledge anymore, we should, secondly, also explain these shifts at least partly as an outcome of changing societal context and discursive formations in the policy process. There were at least four of them. First, the discourse which evolved after WWII in the context of global military competition and discourses over the role of democratic vis-à-vis technocratic (totalitarian) value horizons in promoting integrated public policies (Lasswell, 1951; Hayek, 1948/1957). Second, the crisis of welfare states in forming the core of public policy and the failure of extensive forms of globalization. Third, the period of rapid extension of states that, after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc, (re)adopted the democratic governing system as well as mechanisms of a globalized market economy. This stage paradoxically caused de-problematization and instrumentalization of public policy innovations in the developed world and the relapse to largely unresolved dilemmas posed by the welfare state to the governance process. This trend strengthened especially in the context of the war on terror and the EU enlargement. During this period, the major discourse over perspectives on post-welfare policy and democracy was overshadowed by the launching of new democracies and the democratization of authoritarian regimes in Eastern Europe. Hence, the governance discourse and especially its capacity to govern the failures of traditional democratic institutions was crippled. Fourth, after the 2008 global economic crisis, the discourses over the capacities of liberal democratic public policy practices moved to the forefront. The authoritarian populist alternatives to liberal-democratic polity re-emerged and spread widely. The impasse in legitimizing liberal democratic values in practice (for instance, in immigration matters) appears to be an especially favorable context for actualizing the perspective to trans-actional reconsideration of the theory and practice of public policy. Finally, the third prism of our analysis is the interpretation of the nature of these shifts in the understanding of public policy as a way of moving from self-actional normative epistemology of government and public policy toward the different versions of process-based, inter-actional interpretations of the policy process.

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5.1   The Inception of “Policy Orientation”: The Context and Key Principles of the Normative Model of the Policy Process 5.1.1   The Policy Orientation We start our story in the 1950s. The title of Harold Lasswell’s article “Policy orientation” (1951) symbolically identifies a perfectly calculated meaning of emerging policy sciences at the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1950s. This was and should be considered primarily as a leadership statement of the US research community concerning its readiness to contribute to the governing capacity of the democratic world. At the same time it indicated the reasonable directions of that contribution, however hinting about the possibility of a “garrison state” (ibid., p. 4) in case there is a dominance of technocracy over the basic cornerstones of democratic practices. In other words, this was a profoundly political initiative at that time called upon by the political context in democratic and democratizing countries (i.e., pressures of the left ideology in post-­totalitarian but economically destroyed countries) as well as in the global context and also by the need for integrated and concentrated (planned) state actions in ensuring the competitiveness in the Cold War. Lasswell, who had a rather different methodological background (including psychoanalysis) compared to the dominant empirical behaviorism1 (Parsons, 1995; Turnbull, 2008; Torgerson, 2015), intended to put this discourse into an integrated but rather normative form to support the practical-­political discourse at the time. Thus, the personal ideas of Lasswell should be separated from his statements as a leader of a concrete policy orientation strategy, although profoundly democratic and pragmatist views (Parsons, 1995; Hoppe, 1999) of Lasswell were clearly visible even in this strategic text. Hogwood and Gunn (1984), and Dunn (1981) insisted on the distinction between the normative and explorative approaches to policy sciences/ studies. The normative model of policy sciences developed as an ideal-­ typical theoretical model in the 1950s and was mobilized for practical political needs and empirical studies. The explorative studies of the policy process were initially developed not as an integrated discipline but evolved in the framework of political science, economics, organization studies, and psychology. Parallel developments in the 1950s are widely known through the debate between Herbert Simon (1964 [1957]) and Charles Lindblom (1959) on rationality in organizations and policy-making where Simon is

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unjustly identified in the literature with the adherence to the comprehensive-­ rational model of policy-making (Hogwood & Gunn, 1984; Parsons, 1995). It is important to view the initial normative model as a rational ideal of perfect policy-making. This model was formed at the stage of policy sciences’ becoming a discipline with its simplifications and illusions in a period when the modern government (and governance) by active citizens started to form in the 1960s. Later, in democratic countries, including in the renovating democracies, the normative ideal becomes the model for the official discourse, underlying also the assertion of the self-actional nature of the policy process to reify the practices, routines, and emerging power balances in particular countries and the globalizing world. This standardized policy process model started to bypass real challenges posed by emerging new inter-actional theories of the policy process, especially after the welfare state crisis became obvious (Nakamura, 1987). This model of the ordered policy process—the textbook approach—shaped the basis for teaching policy sciences at universities (ibid.; de Leon, 1999). This also forms the basis for the policy evaluation of policy proposals (Radin, 2000; Colebatch, 2011) and has become, since the 1980s, a widespread tool for grounding the hegemonic strategy aimed at legitimizing the technocratic approach to policy decisions. It emphasizes an ex ante evaluation formed in the context where the real authority for defining the policy substance and its implementation was increasingly devolved to the frontline officials and stakeholders’ networks. This reification of the old normative model by the end of the twentieth century largely accounts for the de-problematization trend associated with the new public management (NPM) ideology and practices. Based on the former (i.e., the ideal model), one should consider several contextual specificities that are conducive but also justify these normative-­ idealizing traits (see Colebatch, 2009). First, the policy orientation was a scholarly response to an extremely complicated geopolitical context and was designed to justify the strong legitimate political leadership of the government of the day. Second, it was an attempt to re-assign conventional understanding of elite policy-making as highly political and adversarial process in the context where a new type of government—regulative or even interventionist type of government—was emerging as a representative of the system’s interests. Besides, biases in this normative model could be explained by the post-WWII period, when the replacement of the traditional night-watchman government by the democratic interventionist (regulative) government was overshadowed and exaggerated by the needs

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of war economy and leadership, and by the experience of planning economy and government in the totalitarian regimes which implicitly provided legitimacy for the more centralized patterns of authority (see Lasswell, 1951, pp. 11–12). Third, this initiative was an unusual mobilization of the interdisciplinary capacity of sciences about society, especially their methods, coming from engineering, economics, and operations research (OR). This justified their intelligence in advising the military-economic sector in the USA as a country which did not have to fight on its territory, making it possible for it to retain more or less regular civic government and administration even during the country’s engagement in WWII.  This intelligence was predominantly realized in the form of quantitative-analytical methods. The policy orientation was, to a large extent, the generalization based on the successful experience in the military-defense area and economic regulation of the policy planning and implementation. In these fields, the scientific methods of analysis, especially rational choice theory and operations research methods, dominated and the experience and capacity of the RAND Corporation, in particular, have demonstrated its advantages (Radin, 2000; Colebatch et al., 2010). Fourth, we should take into account that public policy at that time was overwhelmingly oriented toward addressing median citizens’ homogenous needs and providing solutions to their common problems. Thus, it was quite understandable that researchers applied deductive methods based on rather abstract premises in elaborating relatively standardized and top-down responses to the problems of reconstructing economies. However, those, let us say, romantic contextual premises set forth rather complex conceptual and systemic dilemmas for the practical policy sciences. These created substantial restraints for the dynamic policy discourse, especially when the context started to change in the 1960s. Those dilemmas contain, at the same time, an immanent problematizing and innovation potential that directs the discourse toward qualitatively new angles in formulating and responding to controversies posed by the normative model. We would, further, like to delineate points where these idealized types have transformed into official-normative standards, which enable sustaining hegemonic roles of key political actors in the governance process. In other words, we consider the very definition of public policy formation as a device of maintaining political power and demonstrate how this aim has restrained the governmentalization of governing sciences and practices after 1980, especially at the very end of the twentieth century.

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In the following subsection, we give a concentrated summary of the main traits of this idealized normative model as a form of self-actional image of the policy process with its immanent controversies that shaped the consequent discourse toward the inter-actional conceptions from the 1960s onwards. It is difficult to establish unequivocally what has contributed more to the emergence of this image or even stereotype: either the official discourse about an optimal and simplified way of making policies, which was actually a hegemonic discourse, or the fact that this model became the most used textbook model at the introductory level of teaching (Nakamura, 1987; De Leon, 1999). As with all ideals: they are productive orientations unless they claim a status of modeling reality and become t implemented in practice. 5.1.2   Policy Process: Knowledge Production vis-à-vis Politics The initial purpose of the “policy orientation” was to complement or even to contrast the exploration of policy process (developed mainly in political science) understood as a process of competitive choices of actors in political action, and policy-making viewed as a parallel process of scientific analysis and expert advice in the policy process (Lasswell, 1951; Hogwood & Gunn, 1984).2 The latter was expected to bring the best scientific methods, analytical skills, and neutral and non-political policy actors into policy-­ making. Policy science started to develop from these two relatively autonomous branches, and the branches re-integrated only at the end of the twentieth century after the consistently inter-actional policy process theories began to dominate (Sabatier, 1999). The dual branches drew on different and sometimes even contradictory methodological premises, which can be presented along the fact/value dichotomy. On the one hand, the policy orientation in the process was expected to rationalize the policy process, relying on the expertise of advisers from science and especially on their sophisticated methods, making policy into something based on scientific generalizations and analysis. At the same time, policies become much more instrumental—focused on means-ends rationality. On the other hand, the intention was to neutralize negative impacts of politicization of the policy decisions in the sense of Lasswell’s famous title Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936), and to put it under the control of rational methods of reasoning. In this way, we argue, Lasswell and his associates tried to inhibit the political dimension of policy and also to keep deep value dimensions in the policy process because this dimension became

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under attack at the end of the 1940s in the context of The Cold War and strong influences of leftist ideology (Torgerson, 2015). Nevertheless, most commentators (see Parsons, 1995; Turnbull, 2008; Hoppe, 2010) emphasize in that context the outstanding role of Lasswell, who provided “the special emphasis … upon the policy sciences of democracy, in which the ultimate goal is the realization of human dignity in theory and fact” (Lasswell, 1951, p. 15). However, this intention remained an abstract declaration because the normative model questions the rationale of politics from the angle of policy optimality. The analytic-scientific stream was supposed to become the core of the new model of the policy process and to ensure “speaking truth to power” (Wildavsky, 1979). This offhand reasonable re-assessment of the role of politics or politicization introduced from the beginning several complicated new and more sophisticated dilemmas into theories of the policy process and governance. First of all, this normative ideal of policy brought to the forefront the basic controversy of science at that time between facts and values and gave unconditional priority to knowledge-production by neutral experts in corroborating policy decisions, if not even giving them a major role in legitimizing them. Although the final choice was reserved for politicians, the role of experts was to provide well-calculated alternatives for politicians to choose from, where the basic criteria of choice were efficiency of means and effectiveness of reaching ends. Moreover, the discourse focused explicitly on the very value of politics in the policy process because dominant theories of politics considered it also in purely instrumental terms, and institutions as outcomes were seen as aggregated interests of individuals. Such a narrow understanding of the nature of politics as a competition of private interests in public choice theory or as a communicative mechanism of authoritative but rational consensus building (in Habermas’ theory of communicative action) was an actual problem of political science theory. The pluralist theory of polyarchy (Dahl, 1989) considerably softened this private-instrumental bias in the understanding of politics and resulted in an influential theory of incremental policy process. The normative vision presumed that problems are supposed to receive solutions through the expert analysis “at the table” which foreclosed the very idea of public problematization and contestation of social-political issues as one of the main sources of public policy-making (Turnbull, 2008). Hence, the very concept of the public and the verbs related to policy (e.g., making, implementing), as referring to public processes,

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become weakly articulated compared with policy as a noun, i.e., capturing a technically perfect program composed for implementation.3 This was especially noteworthy since Dewey (1927/1946) and Lippmann provided the concepts of public policy and politics in their 1920s debate, which could be considered a precursor to the re-assessment of the very role of politics in post-welfare governance science. It is revived by Held and Leftwich in the 1980s and the Science and Technology Studies (STS) school (Latour, 2007; de Vries, 2007) in the 2000s. But what does it mean to view policy as providing solutions to problems, as envisioned by the normative view? 5.1.3   Policy as Finding Solutions to Problems At first glance, the statement that a policy should provide solutions to problems seems a truism. However, it appears to be a complex cognitive and practical problem. Its interpretation should draw on profound ontological and epistemological reflections on the mission and nature of policy. Commentators presume the affinity of Lasswell’s problem orientation in his “Policy orientation” article with Dewey’s theory of inquiry as problem-­solving process, indicating Dewey’s profound impact on Lasswell. Turnbull even ascribed to Dewey the utilitarian bias in his interpretation of the role of solutions to problems (Turnbull, 2008, p. 55). For these reasons, we devote a separate space to Dewey’s (and pragmatist) understanding of problem-solving as inquiry in practice (see also Selg, 2020). However, the normative conception of providing solutions to problems as the main mission of policy draws on fundamentally different premises. In the normative version of the policy process, the problems-solution nexus was considered narrowly as a solution to a more or less sophisticated intellectual/cognitive task via analysis. Further, it was presumed that after finding a solution, the problem could be taken off the agenda (Turnbull, 2008). In the normative conception, it was a rather mechanical transference of the logic of problemsolving—or even puzzle-solving in Kuhn’s sense—from the natural sciences to societal problems. Still, in the first decades of the twentieth century, the democratic government had a rather limited experience in directly harnessing or managing social life; its major experience was restrained either to technical issues (like defense) or economic regulation (like currency value). Thus,

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the very nature and specificity of societal problems were not seriously problematized in two senses. First, whether a social problem in a society should be handled differently than, say, the technical problem of building a reliable bridge. By that time, the responsibility for handling the public’s problems was, to a large extent, taken up by states in a manner that could be considered authoritarian (or at least not democratic by current standards). But the states handled them mainly as technical issues and in the context of full (or coerced) compliance to the government bureaucracy with a rather complaisant following of the rules. Secondly, should social problems be identified and handled in specific ways compared to, say, via measuring and accounting or experimenting? Questions also arose about social problems, what they are, how we could recognize them, and what to do with them. These questions about public problems and their handling in democratic states were raised seriously by Dewey and Lippmann (in the 1920s) in the USA, where the state was then overwhelmingly seen as a guarantee of order and rights and where solutions to these social problems via political mechanisms were considered rather inefficient. In the normative model, a problem was interpreted as an obvious objective functional deviation or suboptimality that should be corrected or managed better. Thus, policy analysis aimed to demonstrate how those deviations should be eliminated or repressed and how to avoid them in the future (Turnbull, 2008). As long as expertise precedes political choice, the role of policy advice is to offer a convincing and well-­elaborated set of alternatives to political decision-makers, inter alia, to minimize ambiguity for avoiding biased choices by politicians. As these alternatives should be based on explicit methods which enable to make strong statements about causal chains and convincing prediction of movement toward the future, the role of not only other social actors but politicians themselves in the consequent policy process becomes problematic if not irrelevant (Ackoff, 1979). This amounts, basically, to writing off decision-making as a constitutive part of the policy process since the solutions to the problems were supposed to be based on objective (scientific) expertise rather than (political) decisions. Reviving the role of the latter is an important feature of the subsequent developments in policy process theories.

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5.1.4   Policy as Decision-Making Process The initial model of policy was shaped as a model of decision-making viewed as a linear chain of sequential steps inside government and top offices, from issue identification to making political choices. The model was aptly summarized by Rittel (1979), who called it the first generation of system theories. Moreover, the policy process was initially interpreted as one loop of action because it was seen as strongly oriented to outputs and immediate impacts. Actions that did not fit in the decision-making logic were associated with public administration that was seen as responsible for enforcing those decisions. As was demonstrated by Dewey, the private and instrumental basis of politics could not provide a reliable mechanism for the representation of complex issues for the public interests. One side of the dilemma here was whether to take the side of neo-conservatism, which does not believe that the public could provide an integrated input (as Easton’s [1953, 1957] highly influential political systems model presumed) and presumed this input to be a matter of elites. The other side was to assume that there are ways that the public could define policy problems and be directly involved in the institutionalization of public agreements. The normative conception mirrors the first choice of this dilemma of interest representation. The design of policy decisions and their implementation were seen as two different activities and government processes up until the 1970s. Implementation studies started to contest the dominant view that policy failures originated in dysfunctions or even resistance to bureaucracy or the incapacity of frontline staff and citizens to accomplish designed objectives. This understanding actually reflected the state of the art at that time in liberal democracies. On the one hand, policies were either targeted to the solution of standardized objectives and toward median citizens, and these policies used limited instruments of regulations enforcement or were considered a way of redistribution of resources (allocation of values). On the other hand, although in the USA, where the government was always considered to be in service of citizens (Fabbrini, 1999), policy in the normative version was presented as processes inside government and as top-down processes vis-à-vis the citizens. Implicitly the decision-making in the policy process was considered to be assigned to the impersonal comprehensive (actually, narrow circle of elites) and rational actor, which was obviously a rationalization of unitary state action. Thus, the discourse on scientific neutrality started to

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legitimize the government as a unified and intentional actor. This was a scenario of technocratic government about which Lasswell explicitly warned in his programmatic “policy orientation” in 1951. In other words, the normative ideal of comprehensive rational actor contains in itself a seed of a fatal controversy within the theory of democratic policy process and has remained—probably until Allison’s Essence of decision (1971)— merely a heuristic device of self-actional approach to governance. Jones catches it perfectly in the first textbook, which did not draw on the “textbook approach” as the normative model is often referred to: one can distinguish among political systems by examining the characteristic of problem identification processes. In a democratic system problem identification is intended to be more subjective; in and authoritarian system it is intended to be more objective. In objectively defining problem an effort is made to employ scientific measures of the effects of events on people… There is little or no reliance on how the people interpret effects of events. Subjective processes on the other hand, place a great deal of reliance on how those affected by an event interpret their needs. (1984, p. 41)

This brings us to the issue of causality in understanding the policy process. 5.1.5   Policy as Causal Chains of Functionally Linked Activities The normative theory is based on the model of policy as a linear sequence of causally, that is, also temporally, directed or alternated activities progressing from problem identification to policy outputs. This is probably the most speculative aspect of the whole normative conception. Policy-­ making was thought of primarily as a cognitive activity, an abstraction of a rational actor as a brain, and the driving force of the linear-sequential activities was presumed to be in charge of that process. It was assumed that actors were working in accordance with the common aim. However, in this model, two different types of actors, experts-advisors and politicians, were expected to forward such a process. This led to presuming that the experts would provide the politicians with an exhaustive and clearly ordered set of proposals for fully reasoned choice. Next, it is presumed that policy is focused on the new, unknown issue and should deal with it within one shot process whose core stage is the decision-making, and this process should have an outcome in the solution, which is defined by a

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decision or analytically calculated proposal of a solution. Different authors provide considerable variations of these stages (Parsons, 1995), and, in fact, the linear model of alternation of stages emerged through attaching new relevant stages to the initial decision-making model from both ends of the process, where, for instance, the termination of a policy (Hogwood & Gunn, 1984) is extremely rare. This indicates that those stages remain at the level of normative ideas and are “only rationalizations, rhetorical constructions that touch up a chaotic process with a rational gloss” (Turnbull, 2008, p. 10). If it is presumed that policy is decision-making in a narrow sense as an analytical process of deducing the solutions to problems, then this logic is quite consistent. However, the actual logic of the emergence and proceeding of modern policy is increasingly a different story. First of all, in practice, the policy process never passes through all of these stages and is starting as well as breaking at different points. It is because most policy work is not an elaboration of the new processes but rather a focus on revising the already existing policies (governance tools), whose different components should be repaired, upgraded, or omitted. A considerable proportion of policies are adaptive changes caused by the alteration of coalitions of participants involved. That is, policy process is first and foremost an inter-action among many actors, where the patterns of actors are continuously changing. The dynamics of these patterns in its classical cases remind us of an hourglass, where at the start and the end, we observe patterns consisting of numerous actors and usually with a mess of understandings and purposes, and in the middle, we find the number of actors to be diminished and able to overcome possible disagreements in decision-­ making. In the normative model, the first stage—problem identification— is omitted because the initiating of policies is reserved for a few intelligent actors (experts, politicians). Evidently, during that period when the normative model emerged, the political-ruling elites initiated the policy as an articulation of the nationwide goals or as means for overcoming disasters. At the time of the emergence of the normative model, outside-initiated actions of the government were rare (or “pacified” as protests). So, the normative image greatly mirrors the general pattern of governmental policy-making at the time, especially in the post-war context. However, after the role of public policy as innovation extended and the role of policy merely as rule-setting and obligations-enforcing decreased, this model also became inadequate for analytical purposes. For this reason, we should carefully identify the main shifts in the democratic society, which also require changing the premises for exploring the policy process.

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5.2   The Discursive Context of Policy Sciences In addition to the shortage of methodological reflections in policy sciences, which has heavily restrained a productive dialogue in the discipline and with neighboring fields, the development of policy sciences has rarely been interpreted in the context of the discourse on its knowledge (truth) and power relations. This is even more surprising given that policy theories have been advanced largely due to extensive government-sponsored research and targeted development programs. Many of the changes in policy theory originated at the intersection of research and the needs of practitioners. At least some exploration of the discourses’ context or background is urgently needed to assess the actual agenda and the contextual limitations of the emerging/disappearing conceptual frameworks. We explore the background of the normative model as an outcome of a shared international discourse in the 1940s and 1950s, which also includes the radical change of the global standing of the USA. We emphasized that the initial normative conception of public policy was—like all new phenomena—a rather idealistic or ideal-typical (Hogwood & Gunn, 1984) projection of current contextual needs and available dominant theoretical instruments of the day into a model. This model only started to unfold into a complex set of theories with different explanatory and practical rationales in the 1960s. We also pointed to the need to distinguish this normative-ideal model from its later reified official versions of policy processes and procedures, which, especially during crises, started to dominate as hegemonic power patterns and restraints, and de-problematize the policy process in the 1980s and 2000s. Accumulation of knowledge and discourses could be more effectively linked with the increasing variation in explanatory and applicatory needs of policy sciences. We do not intend to picture the history of the policy sciences as a kind of linear succession from less perfect conceptions and understandings to more sophisticated and effective ones. Rather we argue that the basic dilemmas and presumptions of the policy science were identified at the early stage of its development. The consequent process looks more like an extension of the annual rings of trees, in which the core and later extensions come from the original understanding of key dilemmas and are accomplished later in more sophisticated conceptions and practices. Thus, in our current theoretical reflections, we should at least keep in mind the core or classical roots of the interpretation of policy processes.

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The policy orientation developed in the 1950s, had the “demand side” (Hogwood & Gunn, 1984, Chap. 3) as its focus, which, as we realized, legitimized the increasingly more powerful government in the USA. Thus, in the leading region, the development of reflections on public policy was a rather minor task, and the first serious challenge to traditional theories came from the inside, starting with the first versions of soft systems theory (Ackoff, 1971) by the young scholars of operations research themselves. The supply side focus of normative theory points to the profound dissatisfaction in the social sciences, especially in Europe, which used to be too academic and weakly linked with practical needs. This fueled pessimism about the contribution of the social sciences and led to reliance on economics. The first shift in the discourse after the emergence of the normative model of the policy process was in the 1960s. This happened because comprehensive public policy programs in the USA started to fail and challenges in the global context set forward a sharp contest of ideologies. Serious gaps in the normative conception of the policy process resulted in revisions of the traditional basis of analytical support for the policy process. Most important was the rise of different paths of empirical behaviouralism, which challenged the practical operationalizations of rational choice theories and developed the concept of bounded rationality and cognitive heuristics; and the Fresh (or sweet) water schools (US North-­ West universities), which developed a powerful path of new-institutional economics. The second conceptual shift was the emergence of the soft systems methodology, whose leaders were the new generation of operations research (Churchman, Ackoff). They challenged the OR methodological presumptions and redefined presumptions of the normative policy theory of problem-solution in the framework of positivist methodology. This shift was directly affiliated and lined with the central topic of our book. In 1967 C.  West Churchman (1967), on the eve of this turn in systems theory, introduced to the world Horst Rittel’s conception of wicked problems as a breaking approach to analyzing policy problems. Most importantly, these theoretical innovations resulted in the breaking decade of the 1970s when these ideas were imbued into theories of policy process and re-arranged the very structure of the policy sciences, making them truly empirical and phronetic. That decade, however, contains another important and much more profound shift in the policy agenda, which Rittel and Webber explored.

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In the 1960s, the new post-war generation entered the public space. Instead of the emergence of a homogenous middle class and satisfaction with the unprecedented welfare and safety, the challenge of diversity and minorities moved to the forefront of policy demands (Rittel & Webber, 1973). Intensification of global mobility accelerated this mood and created protests, up to violent outbreaks. All this means that the demand side became an actual political reality in the 1960s and 1970s. Basic foundations and paradigms were established, although not always recognized as such, like Horst Rittel’s and Peter Checkland’s conceptions of strategy design based notably on trans-actional premises in our terms. The welfare state crisis of the 1970s could be viewed as a practical challenge first of all for European democracies, where enormous difficulties in coordination of the public sector emerged, indicating that although the government bureaucracy could manage the standard production of public goods, it cannot manage the provision of individual, tailor-made services and issues of minorities. The normative public policy model was too simplified to respond to these new challenges. Moreover, the new generation who came to the fore in the 1960s (Hoppe, 2010) demonstrated its willingness to define the public policy agenda that had remained at the political elites’ discretion. It is not only the fragmentation in the expected homogenous middle-class environment but primarily the formation of active citizens who emphasized their specificity or even peculiarity that found reflection in the new model of public policy. This led to the disintegration of self-actional approaches to policy-making and governance and a transition to a more inter-actional orientation. This is the topic of our next chapter.

Notes 1. We would like to emphasize the difference between classical behaviorism in psychology and behaviouralism in sociology which was triggered by Merriam and Laswell (Falter, 2011). 2. Instead of “in” Colebatch (2011, p. 1893) uses the preposition “for” in this context. 3. However, the mission of the policy orientation and policy problems was identified in a utilitarian and instrumental manner as a kind of engineering of objects and issues of social life. The emergence of dualism of knowledge production and policy process, or more sharply between specialized expert knowledge and political (value-based) knowledge shaped the other basic premises and controversies of the normative model. This tension was solved already in the framework of inter-actional policy theory through debates with scholars from deliberative democracy.

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References Ackoff, R. (1971). Towards a System of Systems Concepts. Management Science 17(11), 661–671. Ackoff, R.  L. (1979). The future of operational research is past. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 30(2), 93–104. Allison, G. (1971). Essence of decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. Little, Brown and Company. Churchman, C.  W. (1967). Wicked problems. Guest editorial. Management Science, 14(4), 141–142. Colebatch, H. (2009). Policy. Open University Press. Colebatch, H. (2011). Policy analysis. In B.  Badie, D.  Berg-Schlosser, & L.  Morlino (Eds.), International encyclopedia of political science (pp. 1893–1902). Sage. Colebatch, H., Hoppe, R., & Noordegraaf, M. (2010). Working for policy. Amsterdam University Press. Dahl, R. (1989). Democracy and its critics. Orient Longman. de Leon, P. (1999). The stages approach to the policy process. What has it done? Where is it going? In P. Sabatier (Ed.), Theories of the policy process (pp. 19–31). Routledge. De Vries, G. (2007). What is political in sub-politics? How Aristotle might help STS. Social Studies of Science, 37(5), 781–809. Dewey, J. (1946). The public and its problems. An essay in political inquiry. Chicago Gateway Books. Dunn, W. N. (1994 [1981]). Public policy analysis. Prentice-Hall. Easton, D. (1953). The political system: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science. Alfred A. Knopf. Easton, D. (1957). An approach to the analysis of political systems. World Politics, 9(3), 383–400. Fabbrini, S. (1999). American democracy from a European perspective. Annual Review of Political Science, 2, 465–491. Falter, J. (2011). Behavioralism. In Badie B., Berg-Schlosser, D. and Morlino, L. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of Political Science (pp. 136–142). Sage. Foucault, M. (2009). Security, territory, population. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978. Palgrave Macmillan. Hay, C. (2016). Good in a crisis: The ontological institutionalism of social constructivism. New Political Economy, 21(6), 520–535. Hayek, F. (1948/1957). Individualism and economic order. University of Chicago Press. Hogwood, B., & Gunn, L. (1984). Policy analysis for the real world. Oxford University Press.

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Hoppe, R. (1999). Policy analysis, science and politics: From ‘speaking truth to power’ to ‘making sense together’. Science and Public Policy, 26(3), 201–210. Hoppe, R. (2010). The governance of problems. Puzzling, powering, participation. The Policy Press. Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions (3rd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Lasswell, H. (1936). Politics: Who gets what, hen, how? Whittlesey House, McGraw-­ Hill Book Co. Lasswell, H. (1951). The policy orientation. In D. Lerner & H. Lasswell (Eds.), The policy sciences (pp. 3–15). Stanford University Press. Latour, B. (2007). Turning around politics: A note on Gerard de Vries’ paper. Social Studies of Science, 37(5), 811–820. Lawrence, T., Suddaby, R., & Leca, B. (2009). Institutional work actors and agency in institutional studies of organizations. Cambridge University Press. Lindblom, C. (1959). The science of “muddling through.”. Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79–88. Mahoney, J., & Schensul, D. (2006). Historical context and path dependence. In R. Gooding & C. Tilly (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of contextual policy analysis (pp. 454–471). Oxford University Press. Nakamura, R. (1987). Textbook policy process and implementation research. Policy Studies Review, 7(1), 142–154. Parsons, W. (1995). Public policy: An introduction to the theory and practice of policy analysis. Edward Elgar Publishing. Pateman, C. (1976). Participation and democracy. Cambridge University Press. Radin, B. (2000). Beyond Machiavelli: Policy analysis comes of age. Georgetown University Press. Rittel, H. (1979 [1972]). Systems analysis of ‘The First and Second Generations’. In P. Laconte, P. J. Gibson, & A. Rapoport (Eds.), Human and energy factors in urban planning: A system approach (pp. 35–52). Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on “Factors Influencing Urban Design” Louvain-Ia-­ Neuve, Belgium, July 2–13, 1979. Rittel, H., & Webber, M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4, 155–169. Sabatier, P. (Ed.). (1999). Theories of the policy process. Westview Press. Selg, P. (2020). Causation is not everything: On constitution and trans-actional view of social science methodology. In John Dewey and the notion of trans-­ action (pp. 31–53). Palgrave Macmillan. Simon, H. (1964). Models of man: Social and rational: mathematical essays in a social setting. Wiley. Torgerson, D. (2015). Harold D. Lasswell and critical policy studies: The threats and temptations of power. In F.  Fischer, D.  Torgerson, A.  Durnova, & M. Orsini (Eds.), Handbook of critical policy studies (pp. 27–46). Edward Elgar Publishing.

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Turnbull, N. (2008). Harold Lasswell’s ‘problem orientation’ for the policy sciences. Critical Policy Studies, 2(1), 72–91. Turnbull, N. (2013). The questioning theory of policy practice: outline of an integrated analytical framework. Critical Policy Studies, 7(2), 115–131. Wagenaar, H., & Wenninger, F. (2020). Deliberative policy analysis, interconnectedness and institutional design: Lessons from “Red Vienna.”. Policy Studies, 41(4), 411–437. Wildavsky, A. B. (1979). Speaking truth to power. Transaction Publishers.

CHAPTER 6

Problematizing Theoretical Understandings of Problems: From Self-actionalist to Inter-­actionalist Approaches in Policy Sciences

The normative theory relies on the tacit presumptions of a technocratic elite capable, through analytical exploration of reality (i.e., its scientific representation), not only of controlling the processes in society but also of directing them toward more optimal states or structures. For this aim, the discovery of universal causal mechanisms should be provided, and people assigned with authority should be informed about them. Hence, the best analytical methods, i.e., decision theory or Operations Research, should be transferred into policy-making. The other dimension of this shift in government sciences is less known. This strategic shift saw the introduction of public managers, and it included, e.g., the development of core role patterns for chief administrative executives, which was elaborated in parallel with the Keynesian model of government regulations by the Brownlow Committee (The US President’s Committee on Administrative Management, known as the Brownlow Committee, was a presidentially commissioned panel of political scientists and public administration experts that in 1937 recommended fundamental changes to the executive branch of the US government. The abbreviation POSDCORB stands for Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Reporting, Budgeting. It comes from the memo “Notes on the Theory of Organization” (Gulick  1937), which was first presented in 1935 and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_6

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where these principles of well-oiled administration were defined. It is worth noting that the second member of the committee was Charles Merriam, an initiator of empirical behavioralism research in political studies focusing on individual behavior. Also, this artefact indicates refraining (as in case of Lasswell) from drawing strict lines between methodology of science and dominant political discourse on the subject.) Inter-actionalist innovations were a response to the policy failures of the 1960s and indicated that such a simple interpretation of the mission of policy does not work, especially in government areas where the behavior of ordinary people is a crucial variable and policy is primarily public not because of its target but because of its sources. Policy as providing largely analytical solutions to objective problems (dysfunctions) or opportunities (discovery of new sources of development) was not a satisfactory explanation anymore for why there is a need for government interventions. Thus, an initially simple logical problem-solution nexus needed a much more sophisticated analysis. This is the first dimension in which we can demonstrate how we moved from the self-actional normative model of policy as problem-­ solving to a much more sophisticated inter-actionalist understanding of the policy mission. We will start untangling it by zooming in on the notion of the problem itself in the context of public policy.

6.1   What Is a Problem? Our study is focused on exploring the concept and practices of governance of wicked problems. The statement that the mission of a policy is problem-­ solving sounds like a truism. However, the interpretation of problems and their role in policy varies tremendously. Thus, initially, we consider some definitions of different dimensions of problems, which enables us to explore these variations of the problems-solution nexus more purposefully. The first issue would be: what are public problems, and in what sense are they targets of public policy? A problem in a society could be defined in a functionalist way as some inefficiency or malfunction of social phenomena (behavior, structures, institutions), and the task is to bring these phenomena back to the initial normal condition. As it is put by Hoppe:

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Very generally, a problem is a gap between a current situation and a more desirable future one. Problem processing is usually considered to be about problem solving. It means that people start looking for ways of bridging or diminishing the gap between an “is” and an “ought”. (2010, p. 23; see also Klijn & Koppenjan, 2015)

Ackoff specifies the problem as not merely a gap: Problems are of two types: those involving the destruction, removal, or containment of something that is present but not desired, and those involving the acquisition or attainment of something that is absent but desired. The first type of problem, one that is negatively oriented, is concerned with eliminating a source of dissatisfaction, for example, a distracting noise, an illness, or a debt. The second type, one that is positively oriented, is concerned with attaining access to a source of satisfaction, for example, a friend, a good book, or money. (1978, p. 19)

For Bacchi (2009, p. x) “[t]he word ‘problem’ has two common usages. It is used either to describe something that is difficult to deal with, as in a problem child, or to refer to a puzzle or challenge that needs to be ‘solved’, as in ‘problem solving.’” Some authors distinguish between specifically public problems and other phenomena like unusual events or facts (disasters, failures, needs, etc.), events which attract attention (focusing events), issues (Hogwood, 1987; Parsons, 1995), and reflect on the ways we can understand problems as socially meaningful phenomena or facts (Hoppe, 2010). Some bring out that problems which could be relevant for public policy should be identified either via specific analytical procedures (problem structuring), processes of questioning (Turnbull, 2008, 2013; Bacchi, 2009, 2016), or—as in interpretive social sciences—by understanding the very process of their social identification via political actions/inter-actions. Thus, the problem identification (and not merely intelligence to notice them) could be an autonomous and complex social process before it comes into the focus of policy-makers. Therefore, problems are not at all obvious phenomena as starting points of policy, and the modes of their identification range from passive cognitive activities up to long-lasting and even dramatic social processes (or inter-actions) (see also Selg et al., 2022). A crucial cleavage is among those who see problems as a kind of restraint and those who not only consider reality as immanently problematic but treat problems (tensions, conflicts) as a source of vitality and innovation.

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In the latter case, these drivers could be immediately reflected and promoted to follow further discoveries of sources of vitality. Still, these driving forces could be at least partly destructive controversies, which might result in qualitative and largely spontaneous innovations. Dewey, 1993, pp. 13–14), for instance, identifies a problem as a realization of a sudden abruption of habitual state of being and as an emergence of uncertainty or a fork road situation which is presented as a dilemma (a kind of fluster or hesitation). That forces not only to “switch on” the reflective thinking but also to act in order to find practical ways out of such a fork road. However, the way a hesitation or perplexity is turned not only into hunting and inquiring (Dewey, 1993, p. 12), i.e., individual reflections, but also into collective action in constituting new actors and realities which will be the core of the trans-actional understanding of the policy mission.1 From here, we move to the central issue: what is the epistemological and ontological status of public problems? Do they constitute merely a cognitive issue (i.e., an issue of revealing hidden opportunities, capacities or ways of repressing/abolishing the problem via analysis)? Or are public problems certain social mechanisms or even contradictions that cannot be solved but can in some way be managed using various tools or strategies? What is the role of social actors in solving or harnessing problems if they are revealed? To answer some of these questions we first turn to Ackoff (1978, 1981), who was one of the first scholars who considered the actionable role of actors in the policy process: By a problem we mean a situation that satisfies three conditions: first, a decision-making individual or group has alternative courses of action available; second, the choice made can have a significant effect; and third, the decision maker has some doubt as to which alternative should be selected. (Ackoff, 1981, p. 20)

A cluster of questions emerged from this standpoint: to what extent can these actors intervene (cognitively, using practical instruments) and take responsibility for solving or directing problems? Are social processes in which we detect problems largely spontaneous and unpredictable? And does this entail that the best social actors can do, is to adapt the problems to their own needs or even to draw on those unpredictable controversies and highlight them to try to use them in purposeful ways? We emphasize here a kind of paradox. The more actors believe in the effectiveness and

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might of their interventions (or at least control), the less they could expect to achieve this in practice. And vice versa, the more pessimistically actors assess their capacities to intervene and subordinate the processes (problems), the more beneficial their impacts are, and the more real is their control over the circumstances, especially in the long term. There is also a perspective from which to consider the problem-solution nexus in cognitive terms in two dimensions. First, to interpret problem identification and problematization in terms of discourses, and second, to consider the social construction of problems as a political process. Problematization as a discourse is effectively presented in Turnbull’s (2013) attempts to ontologize problems from a realist perspective, i.e., to find hidden cognitive potentials of policy problems, and thus contribute to the understanding of de-problematizing practices. Bacchi (2009, 2016) also presented a conception based on discourse analysis. Her “What’s the Problem Represented to be?” (WPR) approach indicates how problematization is actually a power game for reaching government hegemony in developing problems’ representations. Both Dunn, 2018, pp. 88–89) and Ackoff (1978, pp. 5–7) give an analytical example of a seemingly simple task in public policy—connecting a certain set of dots through a continuous line (how to plan bus lines in local communities). This task is often unsolvable because of the incorrect problematizations of tasks in the space; or to put it in another way, the simple solution is not visible because of the existing stereotypes. Thus, cognitive capacities are quite an important component of the practical design of policies. Problematization as the social construction of the problem is present in many scholars’ works. Hoppe (2010, p. 4), Turnbull (2008), and Bacchi (2009, 2016) consider the construction of public problems in the policy process primarily in terms of the question-and-answer game of democratic politics, as “the ways in which particular representations of ‘problems’ play a central role in how we are governed” (Bacchi, 2009, p. xi). Turnbull (2013, p. 115) intends to give the process of problematization an ontological status that would discover the hidden dimensions of problems. Bacchi (2009, 2016) and Bacchi and Goodwin (2016) consider problematization not as an instrument of finding possible objective problems, but as creating specific representations of problems in the policy discourse, hence their WPR approach. Problematizing is actually the mechanism of public authority, and it intends to “influence people to behave in desired/‘desirable’ ways instead of how we can produce a just society” (Bacchi, 2016, p. 6, italics in original). It presumes that policies that emerge in such discursive

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practices are “active interventions in the co-­fabrication of worlds” and that “we are governed through problematizations, rather than through policies, signaling the importance of critically interrogating problem representations” (Bacchi, 2016, pp. 8, 9, italics in original). In sum, the problem-solution issue as the core of the normative definition of the main mission of policy has shifted from primarily cognitive dimensions to understanding that problems are rather constructions which could become a source of power and hegemony but also a source of different forms of inter-active policy.

6.2   What to Do with Problems? Ackoff (1981) presents the first integrated interpretation of problem-­ solution nexus as the core focus of policy. In fact, with his conception of policy context as a mess or a field of problems, the attention to exploring policy outputs started to shift from policy substance or content to policy as an inter-active process and to the need to manage this process. His account is presented in terms of ideal types of policy outcomes as problem solution, problem resolution, and problem dissolution. These ideal types are associated with the three basic methodologies that dominated at the time when Rittel introduced his conception of wicked problems in the mid-­1960s and continued to define the core scenarios of policy theories in the twentieth century. Those are primarily the theories of rational-choice, empirical behavioralism and soft systems methodology.2 Because of their different epistemological presumptions, they understand the nature of problems and solutions rather differently. That being said, we will now look at the first understanding that problems are solved, which is related to what we identified as the normative conception of public policy, a version of self-active governance in our terms. 6.2.1  Problem Solution According to Ackoff (1981, p. 21, italics in the original), [t]o solve a problem is to select a course of action that is believed to yield the best possible outcome, that optimizes. We call this the research approach because it is largely based on scientific methods, techniques, and tools. It makes extensive use of mathematical models and real or simulated experimentation; therefore, it relies heavily on observation and measurement and

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aspires to complete objectivity … The research approach is used mostly by Management Scientists and technologically oriented managers whose organizational objective tends to the thrival rather than mere survival; they are growth seekers.

Turnbull (2013) views this interpretation as a repression of the problem or as a strategy for abolishing them. Ackoff severely criticized this approach which he saw as being based on traditional OR. His critique was sincere because he was one of the leading figures of OR and, from the late 1960s, called for its substantial revisions. OR, according to him, contains a principal tautology: The optimal solution of a model is not an optimal solution of a problem unless the model is a perfect representation of the problem, which it never is. Therefore, in testing a model and evaluating solutions derived from it, the model itself should never be used to determine the relevant comparative performance measures. The only thing demonstrated by so doing is that the minimum or maximum of a function is lower or higher than a non-­minimum or non-maximum. (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 97)

Hence, “[r]esearchers, more than managers, tend to resist the dilution of optimal solutions with qualitative considerations and often prefer an optimal solution of an incompletely formulated problem to a less-than-­ optimal solution of a completely formulated problem” (Ackoff, 1981 p.  21). Thus, a perfect (however universal) model gives priority to the means of implementation of a model (how to do things in optimal ways) instead of to the substantive changes of phenomena (how to do the right things). This underestimation of the very substance of the problem (whether it is the right problem at all?) is not a coincidence because this is not a version of problem-solution nexus where anything qualitatively new is created. Instead, the continuation of the present is predicted, and changes are prepared accordingly (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 101). In fact, actors can only let things happen or restrain them from happening after the optimization strategy is identified. They cannot do more. A similar tautology of model building is captured by Rittel’s statement (1979 [1972], p.  39) of the “fourth paradox of rationality” which is “self-containment”: In order to study the consequences of contemplated actions, a model (a causal description of the phenomena which are affected by the contemplated

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actions or affect the actions) is needed. Now this model should, because one is worrying about all consequences, contain and describe all those factors or phenomena which are important. But what is more important than the causal model itself which determines what can be traced as a consequence? Therefore, the model should be part of the model, because it influences what can be figured out as a consequence. In other words, a model should contain itself, and that is impossible.

In other words, these definitions of problems and solutions cannot go beyond their initial premises in case the policy actions trigger unforeseen changes and the problems, as well as contexts, are further differentiating and presume new exploratory models. Thus, the initial model of optimization, which focuses on the exact mode of policy process with an ambition to be universal, would, at best, determine whether the predicted outcome was accomplished or not. Wittrock (1991), who has thoroughly studied the issue of the interrelation of knowledge production and policy-making in the history of societies, identifies this approach as a technocratic model. In this model, research is primary, and policy is subordinated. It supposes a unitary logic between the knowledge and its object (problem) in which the only perceivable obstacles are practical and organizational (see also Turnbull, 2008). For this reason, the implementation issues (i.e., the practical appropriateness of knowledge) were ignored for a long period (up to the end of the 1960s) as an important link for reaching solutions. Apart from big policy failures, implementing policy choices or solutions was considered an automatic process inside public administration designed in accordance with POSDCORB3 canons. Another set of arguments regarding the epistemological limits of the problem-solving vision concerns the issue of forms of rationality, which we focus on in more detail below. Here we point out that often what would be epistemically rational could not be feasible as a policy program. When primacy is given to knowledge over politics, it actually neglects the role of human factors and the complexity of social practices. The concept of solution to a problem forecloses the ability to differentiate between natural/ technical problems and social problems: it considers the problem-solution process purely from the point of view of its cognitive/representational adequacy. In democratic policy-making, this means the neglect of diversity of values, meanings and differences of potential agents’ individual practical frames (or micro-worlds). The role of social practices in the problem-­ solution nexus is captured by W.  Churchman (1973 [1965]), where he

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compares the specificity of scientists’ and company managers’ models of action strategies and finds that, unlike the former, the latter should be not only analytically reliable but also practically realistic. This difference leads us to a deeper inner meaning of policy-making as primarily a purposive activity aimed at collective innovations. In the case of the scientists’ models, the knowledge of policy strategy means that the exact model draws on selected variables describing a phenomenon. For designing, say, the model of a lasting bridge, these models strip away large parts of the real event and display only the characteristics of interest. A so-called “communication map” of a company is an excellent example. Such maps display by arrows how messages and other means of communication are transmitted in the company. The map does not show anyone talking to anyone else, and yet one can easily determine from the map which persons communicate with each other. (Churchman, 1973, p. 2)

However, when the scientist-analyst is trying to provide the model to make a long-lasting bridge, which would be accepted by a local community, as in Winship’s (2006) example of areas of biodiversity and native American land, the preparation of the model (and developing the solutions) faces, according to Churchman, the “maximum loop effect”: it could be completed successfully after endless new questions of what? How? And why? Consequently, “[t]he more you want to know about one thing, the more you have to assume about everything” (Churchman, 1973, p. 9). Wittgenstein (2009, sect. 200–202) points to a similar paradox with his example of the communication between a builder and his assistant: unless the nature of the rule is not backed and explained by unarticulated background or pre-reflective realm of practice (in Heideggerian sense), very little is understandable via formal representations (words, models). This is directly relevant to exploring the trans-actional logic of policy formation (see Wagenaar,  2015). Taylor explores Wittgenstein’s idea thoroughly (Taylor, 1995, pp. 165, 167–168; see also Nicolini, 2012). He explains why native ordinary actors could easily find a way in a city following our recommendation to “follow the arrows,” whereas some outsiders, unfamiliar with the way we do things, might easily misunderstand us, and the number of potential misunderstandings is infinite (Taylor, 1995, pp.  165–166). Cook and Wagenaar (2012) identified this kind of

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bystander’s representation as “the received view” of what is knowledge (or task) given to a person who is not embedded in the context where the knowledge may be used. It differs fundamentally from knowledge constituted and tested in practice. This would mean paradoxically that one should design a model which shapes and is placed in the context of its application one knows beforehand. That is, practical knowledge cannot be provided and owned merely at the conceptual-formal level, but it is, simply put, formed in the process of learning in practice and derived as a model of action rather intuitively. Often it works via simpler forms of knowledge as images, perceptions or simply—as Tarde (2012) and Mead (1938) would say—through imitation or gestures (see Simpson, 2009; Elkjaer & Simpson, 2011). This paradox was also acknowledged by Rittel when he pointed to the impossibility of using the first generation of systems theory (or knowledge as the received view) in planning as a practical policy-­making because it entails a certain “obligation to be rational.” This means that you try to understand the problem as a whole, and to look at the consequences. This is a rather modest definition, and there is hardly any reason to argue against it, because if a person would not try to be rational in this sense he would be irresponsible, not bothering about the consequences of his actions. Let us assume somebody seriously attempts to be rational in this sense. He would then try to anticipate the consequences of the alternative courses of action: “I can do this or that or that, but before I make my choice I must figure out what the consequences will be”. In doing this, he finds out that anticipating the consequences is consequential by itself because it takes time, labour and money to trace consequences. Therefore, before I can start to trace the consequences of my actions, I should trace the consequences of tracing consequences of my actions. /…/ And each next step is not necessarily easier or simpler than the previous one, because the questions to answer become more and more fundamental. Therefore, there is no way to start to be rational: one should always start a step earlier. (Rittel, 1979 [1972], pp. 38–39)

But when a manager develops a model of her business success, she does not end up in an infinite regress of questions because she plans and acts like the builder’s assistant in Wittgenstein’s example or a person familiar with our customs of orienting in a city. According to Churchman, [t]his difference in the perception of facts makes one of the most serious differences in outlook between the manager and the scientist. The manager

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has lived with his enterprise many years and has come to recognize the practical facts of its existence. If anyone asserts the opposite of one of these facts, he is apt to think them naïve or downright foolish. The scientist, on the other hand, is very cautious about what he accepts as a fact. Not being deeply acquainted with the business, he is apt to develop a set of hypotheses that may not agree with the manager’s facts. The scientist does this because this is his manner of working. (Churchman, 1973, p. 7)

Thus, the lawyer, doctor, foreman, sailor, salesmen who “know their business,” know what reality is, and can detect an absurdity at a glance. The attitude of these men might be taken as the definition of reality were it not that they themselves sometimes differ so strongly. The researcher bent on developing flexible yet realistic models must take these attitudes seriously, but he learns not to be deceived by the mere forcefulness of the opinions of an experienced man. He must seek for some more satisfactory definition of “realistic” than the so-called facts of those who have lived long in the job. […] Here again the loop principle forces us into assumptions about the process of learning of an organization, as well as the economics of learning. To be realistic about our models, we must assume how the organization can learn, and what is the most economical learning procedure. (Churchman, 1973, p. 11)

The idea that there are, in principle, different types of knowledge and different ways of its formation and applicability is the guideline for Rittel in forming his theory or method of construction of practical knowledge, the so-called issue-based information systems (IBIS) model which explores the mechanisms of emergence of knowledge (or meaning space) from the trans-actional perspective. He emphasizes the instrumental character of knowledge involved in it: We certainly know that everyone dies because we cannot live forever, but that does not help us very much to do something really instrumental to combat this. A specific amount of knowledge is characterised by providing us with the ways in which we can change something, instrumental knowledge. It has the form, when x is done, y is the consequence. […] A planning task has been resolved when a series of sentences of this sort have been put together in such a way that one can expect to do away with the discrepancy between the “is” and the “should be” situations. A plan is a semi-ordered amount of instrumental knowledge which is brought up to date to resolve a

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problem. By implementing all these instructions it is expected that the original discrepancy between a piece of factual and a piece of deontic knowledge about a situation can be overcome. (Rittel, 1979 (1972), pp.  57–58, italics added)

Thus, the realism of the manager draws on a different type of knowledge. This topic becomes important when we will expand on the issue of design rationality (see Boland & Collopy, 2004). Scientific knowledge, understood to have universal knowledge claims, intends to know little but have the most extensive scope of knowledge about the phenomena possible. In contrast, practical knowledge aims to know much with a rather restricted scope of knowledge about the phenomena, and this functionally relevant knowledge is formed via learning. The manager’s strategy is not a plan as a representation of reality to be enforced in the future but primarily the knowledge about “the manner by which we go about inserting ourselves into reality; of creating pathways and finding our way around” (Chia & Holt, 2009, p. 126). As noted by William James and Henri Bergson (see Chia & Holt, 2009), knowledge formed through representation is actually an ex post account of past experiences. Therefore, the possibility of applying experience directly in the future is problematic. This type of past and advanced knowledge could be universal and have a fixed value in the present context. However, suppose we expect that society develops or even presume the contingency and unpredictability of that development. In that case, it is risky and of little value to extrapolate this knowledge as the model of reality into the future. The paradox Wittgenstein, Churchman, and Rittel identified above could orient us—when we expect to harness the reality in situ—toward another type of knowledge, which is rather virtual and thus weakly reflected and non-universal but capable of being transformed in situ. We need not so much a ready-made generalized knowledge but, as Lindblom and Cohen (1979) expressed, “usable knowledge.” First and foremost, we need to know exactly how such knowledge has emerged, i.e., the process of its becoming. Hence, this understanding enables us to assess those dimensions of the past that did not accumulate in the ex post, generalized models. In addition, this knowledge of becoming of the current allows us to get experience and skills to inquire about what might follow: “we are afforded a grip as we move with the flow of experience” (Chia & Holt,

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2009, p. 126). This critique leads us directly to the centrality of the ontology of becoming and process as duration, i.e., to the temporal dimension of knowledge production. The latter has been central to the pragmatist epistemology that we discussed in Chap. 3 and bring directly to the context of policy theories in Chap. 9. However, before engaging in these discussions, we have to look at yet another approach to problems, problem resolution, which is essentially a version of inter-actionalist process-­ reduction in our terms. 6.2.2  Problem Resolution The second strategy—using Ackoff’s (1981) terminology we highlighted above—is problem resolution. It amounts to select[ing] a course of action that yields an outcome that is good enough, that satisfices (satisfies and suffices). We call this approach clinical because it relies heavily on past experience and current trial and error for its inputs. […] Most managers are problem resolvers. They defend their approach to problems by citing the lack of information and time required to do anything else. Clinicians also argue that real problems are so messy as to render alternative approaches either inapplicable or inappropriate. Furthermore, they claim their approach minimizes risk and therefore maximizes the likelihood of survival. (Ackoff, 1981, p. 20; see also Ackoff, 1978, ch. 2)

This strategy hints at empirical behavioralism, but it is also a common-­ sense way for managers to handle or adapt to complex problems. From the start, empirical behavioralism draws on clear conceptual presumptions: it takes into account the limitations of human cognition in the decision process and relies on the productive role of organizational factors which reduce these limitations. For this reason, satisficing4 means that problems are identified with intentional simplifications, which are resolvable, and solutions (or outcomes) are selected based not on positive feedback (a search for the best alternative) but rather on negative feedback, with the aim to survive within complexity and chaos. The latter means that the decision-maker is acting in a way that takes into account the processual nature of reality: she, first, selects consequent options which come to hand; secondly, she is aimed at forsaking the unacceptable options and selecting the first more-or-less acceptable ones; thirdly, the analysis is simplified and could be made by ordinary people and thus could be based on

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other instruments than sophisticated calculations. Ackoff uses the example of clinical planners to render this point: Clinical planners bring together a sample of those preoccupied with each aspect of the mess or system facing it so they can formulate a consensual appreciation of the mess and a concerted attack on it. […] Having a strong attachment to the behavioral sciences, they employ a variety of sociopsychological techniques to encourage and facilitate creative and cooperative interactions between participating stakeholders. (Ackoff, 1981, p. 22-3)

Thus, this vision appreciates not only the role of practical reasoning but also actionable and participative working out of solutions and involvements of a wide array of actors. The problems that should be neglected are complexity and possible conflicts among decision-makers, which could lead to the inability to reach a consensus. Hence, the resolution strategy is aimed at “the acquisition or attainment of something that is absent but desired” (Ackoff, 1978, p. 19) and “concerned with eliminating a source of dissatisfaction” (ibid.), consequently making the approach “more likely to suppress symptoms than relieve ailments” (Ackoff, 1981, p.  23). Although the resolution strategy primarily focuses on the decision stage and the substance (content) of the policy process, this vision considers policy decisions already as more or less extensive processes of reaching practical outputs, where the dilemma of expertise and politics (decision-­ making) was at least reconciled. The resolution model was then developed further (e.g., in notions of participative decisions, consensus, decisions in indeterminate context, etc.) by followers of empirical behaviorism and in a much more sophisticated way. We return to these developments later. 6.2.3  Problem Dissolution The third basic model of exploring the problem-solution nexus is problem dissolution. According to Ackoff, [t]o dissolve a problem is to change the nature, and/or the environment, of the entity in which it is imbedded so as to remove the problem. Problem dissolvers idealize rather than satisfice or optimize because their objective is to change the system involved or its environment in such a way as to bring it closer to an ultimately desired state, one in which the problem cannot or does not arise. (Ackoff, 1981, p. 21, italics added)

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This qualitatively new definition of the problem-solution nexus also underlies the basic tenets of the “design” approach to policy development which tries to combine the strengths of “research” and “clinical” strategies for addressing problems. In fact, this is not only a strategy of dissolving existing problems (as the italicized part of the last quotation indicates) but the dissolution of the very concept of causal chain within the problem-­ solution nexus. It entails a shift to the ontology of systems instead of the singular elements and also to epistemology of problem-solving through active inter-action of involved actors and intervention in the flow of reality. This is in line with “soft systems methodology,” an approach that refrains from considering problem-solution as a mission of policy, as something to be accomplished through predicting, optimizing or removing, or through containment of sources of discord. Accordingly, the mission of the dissolution strategy ought to be the design and invention, which, instead of prediction and its accomplishment, should ensure the active control of the system’s environment and the system itself. Creative solutions to problems are not obtained by selecting the best from a well- or widely recognized set of alternatives but rather by finding or producing a new alternative (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 101). The systems view presumes that the strategy and the policymakers are not facing single issues or problems but “dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other” (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 99). Ackoff calls such situations “messes,” meaning that [p]roblems are abstractions extracted from messes by analysis; they are to messes as atoms are to tables and chairs. We experience messes, tables, and chairs; not problems and atoms. Because messes are systems of problems, the sum of the optimal solutions to each component problem taken separately is not an optimal solution to the mess. The behaviour of a mess depends more on how the solutions to its parts interact than on how they act independently of each other. (Ibid., pp. 99–100, italics added)

Hence, policy-making shifted from substantive issues (defining what to do) to the problems of management and organization—on how to reach concerted actions based on agreed (inter-active) understanding. “Managers do not solve problems; they manage messes. Effective management of messes requires a particular type of planning, not problem solving” (ibid., p. 100). For this reason, the “dissolution” view considers problem dissolution simultaneously  as an inter-active and proactive strategy (Ackoff,

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1979b, p. 189). Moreover, in Ackoff’s conception of the idealized-design process (1971), strategy-making is not based on a sequence of thinking first and acting second, but on the dialectical sequence of working out new goals in the course of actions and inter-actions and then testing their feasibility in practice. Hence, the soft systems methodology introduces (but not fully elaborates) the dimension of time and also iterations in time as ontological dimensions of the life cycle and circularity of policy strategy (Ackoff, 1979b, p. 190). This conception already points to several important features for our further discussion: the role of learning in an uncertain environment; the role of aesthetic rationality (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 99) as a form of reasoning and reflection in the policy process; the need for interdisciplinary approaches; and the inability of generalists or the purported owners of universal (scientific) knowledge to handle issues of systems re-design (Ackoff, 1979a). In other words, with this perspective, a quite comprehensive shift in understanding societal changes took place. However, it remained weakly utilized in government sciences because of the looming welfare state crisis, which fended off systems thinking in practical policy-making. However, in this version of design strategy, the turn to the new rationality and inter-active policy mechanisms is far from complete. It tends to overestimate the role of purposeful interventions as a source of change, which was the core of the welfare state discourse. Its methodological ambiguity between functionalism and process-based ontology was picked up by a new generation of soft systems theorists in Europe: Peter Checkland (1981, 1984) and Werner Ulrich (1987), who (like Horst Rittel in planning) developed a process-based view on systems design. This, however, remained for some period hidden from a larger audience (see Reynolds & Holwell, 2010). The problem dissolution approach did not do away completely with the enlightenment conception of the rational and purposeful actor and continues to overestimate the opportunities for strategic actions in social systems. In this sense, the dissolution theorists believed even more than the representatives of other views on the problem-solution nexus in the possibility of engineering social reality and organizations; e.g., they continued to hold the ideals of a controlled welfare state. We can even trace some links with planned economy societies whose apogee passed at the beginning of the 1970s before their final decline.

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We already mentioned that instead of focusing on the problem-solving process, Ackoff and his associates prescribed that systems should be designed via better planning and purposeful action. They expected that design and invention could enable active control of the system’s environment and the system itself, and suggested building holistic multilevel planning systems (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 100). When criticizing OR (operations research) and its dilemmas (described above), Ackoff recommended the following: There is a way out of this dilemma, but it requires a change of paradigm. If we can prepare for the future, we can affect it. Therefore, the paradigm of OR should be one that involves “designing a desirable future and inventing ways of bringing it about.” The future depends at least as much on what we and others do between now and then as it does on what has already happened. Therefore, we can affect it, and by collaboration with others  – expanding the system to be controlled—we can increase our chances of “making it happen.” The wider the collaboration, the more closely we can approximate the future we have jointly designed. (Ackoff, 1979a, p. 101, quotation marks in the original)

Thus, soft systems theory clearly recognized limits of intervention and emphasized a profoundly inter-active and participatory planning process as the foundation of ideal-seeking systems. However, this was too optimistic a belief that overestimated the constitutive capacity of a system’s self-­ organization. Besides, it attempted to apply this methodology for conflict dissolution in a society or aimed at a conflict-free society. Ackoff and his collaborators’ orientation to the management of big corporations and sociotechnical systems strategy did not link them organically with mainstream methodologies of the social sciences. At the same time, mainstream theories based on positivist presumptions managed effectively to adapt the ontological presumptions of systems theory and the presumption of the chaotic nature of reality, especially after the collapse of the welfare state paradigm and practices. For this reason, Ackoff and his school were poorly cited in the subsequent literature on organizational theory and management (Scott & Davis, 2006; Morgan, 1986; Daft, 2009) and rarely referred to in the works on policy design. From this point of view, Rittel’s works (1979), which contained extensive seeds of trans-actional methodology—alongside rudiments of inter-actional approach—are considerably different from the mainstream of soft systems methodology. Nevertheless,

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the concept of problem dissolution and the interventionist stance of policy-­strategic action of Ackoff and his school provided a strong background for Linder and Peters (1984, also Peters, 2018) in developing the conception of policy design, which established itself as an autonomous stream in the policy process theories.5 The notion of policy design also opens our discussion of approaches to policy that decisively do away with the self-actionalist presumption that policy problems are “given” somewhere “out there,” waiting to be “addressed.” We finally move closer to an understanding of the core issues as a problem-solution mess instead of problem-solution nexus.

6.3  Beyond the Givenness of Problems 6.3.1   From Problem-Solving to Policy as Design The theory of policy as a design relies on the soft systems theory idea that the key mission of policy is not primarily to provide solutions to problems but rather to design (which is closer to an allegory of drafting an idea) a purposeful intervention. The latter entails actions according to established goals, relying on foresight (instead of mere forecasts), and assuring the implementation of these goals by drawing on a certain set of policy instruments. It is presumed that if this mission is ex ante a purposeful activity, its final outputs will emerge through numerous adaptations of different components of the initially designed policy strategy, including innovating the established goals, instruments, correcting outputs, etc. The policy design theory, however, drops some key ideas of soft systems theory (like viewing the system as a mess, participative planning process, etc.) emphasized by selected authors (Bobrow & Dryzek, 1987; Bobrow, 2006). In other words, in the policy design theory, the process dimension of intervention was diminished. The latter was, in fact, the most innovative of Ackoff school’s theory of purposeful (planning) systems. Instead, attention was shifted back to the mechanisms and techniques of the substantive dimension of design (or policy content as a component) of the policy (products, services, etc.). In their first article Linder and Peters (1984) focused on three main elements of policy as design: the development of a model of causation or problem identification; the selection of instruments of policy implementation; and the evaluation of policy outputs aimed at in the adaptation of policy to initial intention or ideas of policy designers. At the same time, in

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Linder and Peters’ (1984) conception of policy design, the components of the policy process were presented as more or less iterative internal “cycles” of activities. This differs from the normative conception of policy process where those components were presented narrowly as merely elements of decision-making and sequentially as alternating linear stages. As Peters and Rava summarized it: [A]lthough the individuals engaged in these discussions were political scientists, much of the discussion of policy design was almost apolitical. The selection of ideas about causation and about instruments was to be done primarily on technical grounds, rather than as a means of reflecting political values or to build coalitions necessary for adopting programs. And likewise, much of the discussion of evaluation was in the terms of more technical forms of evaluation (e.g., cost-benefit analysis) rather than in terms of significant political or ethical values. (2017, p. 7)

Thus, policy design theory left aside the logic of the problem-solution nexus, which unintentionally forces one to follow the decision-making logic and is conducive to the cognitive (representational) angle of reasoning. However, Linder and Peters confined their understanding of design to the substantive issues of producing policy content, thereby downplaying the role of the inter-active dimension in it. This foreclosed for them the way to study the evolution of actors’ patterns in the policy design process, which already, through the inter-actional prism, could have explored policy outputs that could never be calculated or produced via different conceptual and ideational tools like discourse analysis. The conception of policy design became a full-scale stream in the theories of policy process after Michael Howlett (2011) with his colleagues (Wu et al., 2018) re-focused the policy design (back) on the issue of selecting policy instruments or tools and on the analysis of their application for accomplishing policy goals, public administration and public services provision. This has also been one of the points where the analyses of and in (for) the policy have met anew (see Jordan & Turnpenny, 2015). This theoretical stream developed into a well-integrated smithery of public policy analysis, which was able to integrate authors from different methodological perspectives (Araral et al., 2012; Wu et al., 2018). It created the context for a more advanced understanding of the mission of social theories with ontologies which presume contingency and dissipative systems.

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However, in the background of this largely technical-positivist stream of policy design theories burgeoned the constructivist sub-trend. The first significant contribution was that of Schneider and Ingram (1993, 1997, 2005), who studied the social construction of policy target groups. The second sub-trend is based on discourse theory and attempts to ontologize the problematization of issues (Turnbull, 2008) in policy development. Carol Bacchi provides an integrated framework of WPR (What’s the Problem Represented to be?) for discourse analyses of policy programs. However, these are studies of the formation of the policy substance (content), and could, in rather general terms, trace the policy processes or inter-active dimension of the emergence of those images, problem definitions and discursive formations. The process-relational (trans-actional) dimension of the design perspective was not seriously articulated before Buchanan (1992) attempted to revive the interpretation of design issues from the perspective of the formation of wicked problems. Schön and Rein (1994) picked up the policy design and design rationality issue in the policy process a couple of years later. One could observe in their analysis a clear analytical borderline between inter-actional (representational) and trans-actional interpretations of frames and framing. Boland and Collopy (2004) brought the creative and inter-active design issues back to the discourses on management and policy studies. This already opened up the policy process and analysis for trans-actional perspectives. 6.3.2   From Problem Resolution to Problem Structuring as an Analytical Strategy Advancements in the problem dissolution and policy design approaches initially concentrated on issues of the implementation stage of policy or the design of its products, i.e., how to achieve expected objectives as outputs. The problem resolution view focused overwhelmingly on the agenda-­ setting stage to find answers to the question of how to work out appropriate policy decisions. The resolution perspective, briefly summarized in Ackoff (1981), contains many significant seeds of the future development of the conceptual stories of the problem-solution nexus in particular and of inter-actional perspectives on policy process theories in their various directions. The problem resolution view is in policy theory associated with Herbert Simon and his colleagues/students from Carnegie Mellon and

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surrounding universities. Similarly to design strategy, problem resolution, has had almost from the start two different intratheoretical streams. A slightly simplified way to put it is that both explore how to ensure optimal or good-enough policy outputs. The first stream intends to find ways out of the complexity of identifying policy problems and the structuring of the problem situation (or messes or meta-problems [Dunn, 2018, p. 78]) by drawing on more sophisticated cognitive-analytical tools, aiming at managing the problem-solution nexus or taming ill-structured problems. This stream developed into sophisticated analytical works that sought to interpret the policy process as a whole from the angle of problem structuring and framing policy problems (Hoppe, 2010, 2018; Daviter, 2011). The second stream problematized the increasing contingency and chaos-like trends in the policy process. It turned gradually to the search for mechanisms managing or at least harnessing the policy process via appropriate design and steering of the policy arenas. From this theoretical stream, the core ideas of the inter-actional understanding of the policy process emerged. Problem structuring conception draws largely on Simon’s (1973) gradual elaboration on the issue of rationality, which has rarely been explored in detail. It is important to do it, however, to understand his profound impact on the policy process theories in the second half (and beyond) of the twentieth century, and it should be interpreted within the context of his interest and involvement in the elaboration of artificial intelligence (Simon, 1973, 1996). Simon picked up the concept of ill-structured problems presented in Reitman (1965) and developed it further in his article on the limits and possibilities of artificial intelligence (Simon, 1973). His main question was whether complexity fatally limits the human capacity to solve complex problems. Simon stated explicitly (Simon, 1973, p. 186): “if formal completeness and decidability are rare properties in the world of complex formal systems, effective definability is equally rare in the real world of large problems.” Indefiniteness and ambiguity of a problem arise firstly from problem complexity, i.e., from the interdependency of problems in a problem domain and the characteristics of problem-solving mechanism (the institutional context). At that time, Simon had also developed an alternative view on Operation Studies, but in an opposite direction than Ackoff. While Ackoff is expected to overcome problems or context complexity by integrated, purposeful actions (and planning), Simon draws his hope from the studies and capabilities of artificial intelligence. At that time (the

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mid-­1950s), the problem resolution vision draws on the presumptions of Simon for whom human actors could not reach optimal but only acceptable (satisficing) choices, which seriously eroded the prevalent normative vision of the day that policy should provide solutions to problems at least in the sense of having correct procedures. Simon’s interest was to analyze whether it was possible to compensate for the computational incapacity of human actors through the operations of artificial intelligence. Of special importance was that Simon reflected on this issue through examples of chess playing (as an obviously computable process) and the design process in architecture. Hence, his arguments are comparable with the normative concept of problem solution and with Ackoff’s conception of problem resolution that drew on the concept of purposeful action (as compared with purposive action). When Ackoff’s vision of harnessing systems as messes is considerably idealistic, aiming at establishing control over the context, Simon’s conclusion was optimistic but exact (Simon, 1973, p. 200): The recent growth of interest in semantics, in the design and construction of semantic nets, in the interpretation of instructions and in interfacing robots with external world are all movements in the directions of enriching our arsenal of artificial intelligence methods along the dimensions that will become increasingly important as we move toward more comprehensive schemes for handling ill structured problem solving. Our analysis gives us reason to be optimistic that progress will not require us to introduce mechanisms that are qualitatively different from the ones already introduced in artificial intelligence schemes—mechanisms with which we have already had some limited experience.

So, Simon expects that problem-structuring presumes extra capacities and that there are no different kinds of problems (solvable-insolvable), dismissing thereby an understanding that actually informed the self-­ actionalist approach of problem solving. The concept of problem-structuring was picked up by William Dunn (1981, 2018), who, as a policy analyst, developed a comprehensive strategy of problem structuring as a methodology for empirical analysis. On the one hand, he draws on Simon’s conception of well and ill-structured problems but considers them already in terms of institutional context (e.g., the number of decision-makers, ideational content of problems, and the contingency of the context). Dunn departed definitively from the view

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of the problem-solution process as a one-shot operation and a primarily cognitive-analytical task. Although he provided an elaborated analytical strategy for problem-structuration, he expected that this is subsidiary to the policy process. He considered the analytical activities to be recurring and iterative processes in changing contexts and presumes alternation of problem structuring practices. On the other hand, he drew on Ackoff’s understanding of system as a mess in which problems are singular and abstract issues related to concrete cases and emphasized that problems acquire (varying) meanings only in the systemic mess. Moreover, he developed a hierarchical chain of analytical steps to move from the universe of problems (meta-problems) to single (or formal) problems. Dunn did not intend to provide the model of policy process but rather a couple of analytical tools or techniques to policy experts who prepare policy recommendations for policy decisions. However, Dunn’s approach implies an active role of analysis in the problem identification and even formation and also emphasizes the subjectivity of policy problems (problems as mental artefacts) and the artificial nature of policy problems (as socially constructed, maintained and changed) (Dunn, 1994, p. 141). This means that Dunn as an analyst, follows Simon’s problem-structuring logic in the positivist framework, while Dunn as a policy theorist demonstrated explicitly his support for the constructivist understanding of the definition of policy problems. Dunn views problem-structuring as a higher-order activity, which should identify substantive problems (ibid., p. 149), large classes (ibid., p. 148) or conceptual frameworks or ideologies that identify the nature of problem fields. Dunn refers to this as policy design: a selection of priority dimensions of a domain, which is usually value-based (social issues vs. economic issues). Here, according to Dunn, are the ill-structured problems mainly located. It depends on the selection of priority dimension or value perspective whether actors are targeted to deal with the right or wrong problems. There are also first-order or formal problems (e.g., technical identification and analysis), which can be defined in quantitative terms and models. They should provide appropriate instruments or means for giving right or wrong recommendations in the way to a solution. As Dunn explains (1994, p. 138; 2018, p. 69): Policy analysis is often described as a problem-solving methodology. Although this is partly correct—and analysts do succeed in finding solutions for problems—the problem-solving image is incomplete. The problem-­

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solving image wrongly suggests that analysts can successfully identify, evaluate, and recommend solutions for a problem without investing considerable time in formulating that problem. In fact, however, policy analysis is best seen as a dynamic, multilevel process in which methods of problem structuring are essential to the success of methods of problem solving.

Here, Dunn considers analytical work also as a kind of problem-­ construction activity. Moreover, he gives different accounts (1981, 1993, 2018) for introducing deliberative dimensions in policy analysis as argumentation techniques. He draws on Toulmin’s (1958) theory of formal argumentation in the legal competitive process. However, in introducing his concept, he refers strongly to Habermas, especially when he joins with the argumentative turn (Dunn, 1993). His primary purpose was to give more substantial ground for defining and choosing second-order problems based on value-preferences to avoid the so-called type III errors, i.e., solving the wrong problems. However, the argumentative approach provides a new methodology for the policy discourse at different levels simultaneously, ranging from modelling the argumentation from formal statistical analysis to reasoning about substantial choices regarding the problem. Dunn considered argumentation also to be a mechanism of transforming a specialized, analytical level of policy analysis to a usable discursive level that enables a discourse in which a wide circle of stakeholders could be involved (Dunn, 1993, 2018). This was an early form of inter-actional policy analysis (Dunn, 1981), highlighting the communicative and steering-coordinating dimension of the policy process. However, he did not rely on Rittel’s works, although the basic ideas about problem structuring, or more precisely, problem harnessing, like multilevel argumentation, fit well with Rittel’s major innovation, especially his IBIS method of reflective questioning (Rittel, 1979[1972]). Dunn’s conception of problem-structuring was reconsidered a decade later, however, not merely as an analytical strategy for the structuration of policy problems but as a universal framework and integrated theory of the policy process as a whole. Thanks to Rob Hoppe’s works (2010, 2018), the stream of policy theory which re-asserted (after the design turn) the mission of the policy in the framework of problem-­solution nexus, found its expanded and integrated expression. This strategy brings the analytical and the normative stance (forensic analysis [Hoppe, 1999]) back to the policy theory. This way, the problem resolution tradition of Churchman

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continues to some extent, but at the same time, it misses the advantages of argumentative rationality found in the framework of the phronetic paradigm. We are warned about this by Fischer and Forester (1993, p. 13), who developed further the argumentation theory based on the concept of phronesis as practice (2006; Fischer et al., 2007). Hoppe defines unstructured problems as situations where policy-­ makers observe widespread discomfort with the status quo yet perceive persistently high uncertainty about different knowledge claims, high preference volatility in mass and elite opinion, or strong, divisive, even community-­threatening conflict over the values at stake. Rittel and Webber (1973) call such unstructured problems “wicked.” However, as we already discussed briefly in Chap. 2, Hoppe does not see much sense in the concept of wicked problems, which is a sign of analytical superficiality and inconsistency for him. He has been consistent in his interpretation, and it is edifying to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the concept of wicked problems. Like Dunn, Hoppe considers ill-structured problems as a kind of cognitive discord constituted by either lack of knowledge of the affected actors or incompatibility of their intransitive preferences, which results in irreconcilable conflicts of the actors’ values. From the viewpoint of the representational logic of knowledge, these are properties or qualities that actors have, and analysts who intend to manage the policy solution should pursue to diminish or reconcile these disparities. According to Hoppe, Simon went on to show how unstructured problems acquire their structure in the ways in which designers, using their personal, professional, organizational or institutional long-term memories during design processes, decompose an unstructured problem-in-the-large into more and more structured partial problems-in-the-small. (2010, p. 78, italics in original)

In view of this, Hoppe considers taming problems as a logical way to overcome the mess or disparities. This suggests that wicked problems could be tamed, at least partly. But how is Hoppe suggesting doing this? He starts by putting forth a typology of four classes of actors who differ in two dimensions: on the one hand, those who have either agreement or disagreement over the values at stake in the problem situation (consensus of ends), and on the other hand, those who have agreement or disagreement about relevant knowledge about this situation and ways to solve it

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(consensus on means). Those are ex ante individual problem-solving strategies. Wicked are those problems in case there is no agreement on either ends or means. However, it was Rittel who already insisted that in case of wicked problems, we cannot have an understanding of the problem unless we have already reached a solution, and this problem-solution knowledge is unique or past knowledge, entailing that we could reason about concrete problems and solutions post hoc. This knowledge or practice is not senseless, but its use (which Weick, 2009 calls sensemaking and enactment) is a sophisticated practice of organizing. In this context, also the concept of taming the problem, which will never come anew, is a kind of tautology. This is a typical classification that draws on certain knowledge variables that individual actors have. In the case of wicked problems, we cannot argue about and define in advance our preferences. Our positions in the problem situation or mess, if we expect that wicked problems are interpreted trans-actionally, are constituted within and unfolding in the process. Thus, based on this typology, we could at best identify different patterns of consensus or conflict over problems which we expect to solve according to certain scenarios. The latter is very well described by Hisschemöller and Hoppe (1995–1996). Hoppe is correct when he argues that the concept of wicked issues has not only become flawed but, to a large extent, lost its exact epistemological meaning in its different uses in the policy sciences (see also Head, 2018; Daviter, 2017). Instead, Hoppe proposes the notion of un-­ structured problems, based on two characteristics of wicked problems brought out already by Rittel and Webber (1973; see also Rittel, 1979 [1972]): they have “no stopping rules” and there are “limited possibilities for trial-­and-­error learning” (Hoppe, 2010, p. 77). In sum, Hoppe contributed considerably to retaining the analytical method of problemstructuring in the research agenda. His methodology and explorations are perfectly compatible with the quadrants identified and analyzed, including the logical form of unstructured problems lacking both variables or structuring criteria. Hence, the track created by Simon to explore the capabilities of artificial intelligence in problem structuring resulted in a fully developed analytical framework by Hoppe, which provides the comprehensive and sustainable problem-solution nexus for analyzing policy programs.

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6.3.3   Policy in the Context of Contingency and Chaos: An Inter-actional View Simon’s school at Carnegie Mellon University (and Freshwater school) triggered the other, methodologically opposite stream of inter-actional approaches to policy. It grew out of the theoretical discussions of the organizational dimension of the policy process and Simon’s criticism of the new institutional economics (and his student O. Williamson) for deducing organizational (institutional) patterns from neo-classical economic premises regarding the market (Simon, 1991). Nevertheless, based on these premises, E. Ostrom (1998) developed the theory of self-organizing institutional patterns. Additionally, studies of organizations have already developed different versions of open systems organizations (which inspired Ackoff) as internally loosely coupled patterns (systems) of complex and overlapping contexts. This gave rise to the contingency theory in organizations studies (Scott & Davis, 2006). Some of those theorists, Thompson and Tuden, constructed already a typology in 1959, which was later widely used in different analytical and disciplinary contexts, among them in attempts at defining wicked problems (see Hisschemöller & Hoppe, 1995–1996; Thissen & Walker, 2013, p. 136). This typology was interpreted as a universal semiotic square for structuring the contingency. Thompson and Tuden’s (1959) typology combines ends-means dimensions: (1) how much agreement is there among organizational participants about the goals or preferred outcomes of the system; and (2) how much agreement is there about the means or the causal processes by which these outcomes can be realized. This cross-classification produces four types of decision contexts, each of which calls for a different decision strategy. We reproduce this typology (following Scott & Davis, 2006, pp. 189–190) in Table 6.1. Table 6.1  Decision strategies Beliefs about causation

Agreement Disagreement

Preferences about outcomes Agreement

Disagreement

Computation (bureaucracy) Judgement (collegium)

Compromise (legislature) Inspiration (charismatic leader)

Source: Scott and Davis (2006, pp. 189)

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According to Thompson and Tuden, complete disagreement (ill-­ structured problems in Hoppe’s classification) characterizes the anomic organization, which is prone to system disintegration or failure. However, later Thompson (1967, p. 147) argues that this high uncertainty would produce an opportunity to make any decision, and we could expect an inspirational strategy. This corresponds to the concept of charismatic leader that Scott and Davis adapt from Max Weber. More than a decade later, colleagues of Simon modelled this situation in empirical studies of decision-making under conditions of “problematic (inconsistent and ill-defined) preferences,” “unclear technologies (misunderstood processes of organizing or operating within simple trial and error procedures),” and “fluid participation” (the shifting of actual (practical) involvement of members in decision situations) (Cohen et al., 1972, p. 1). They called this organized anarchy. The empirical object of research was the faculty of political sciences at UC Irvine. Hence empirical generalization was made based on the actual decision-making process in extremely uncertain but regular contexts i.e., not in a context of emergency but in a rather everyday context. Like Rittel (1979), they observed that the decision-making process acts opposite to the normative model of decision-making described in OR.  Instead of a linear and structured process of decision-production, they faced something similar to the “life cycle” of multiple garbage cans in a university building, simultaneously and spontaneously filled with different stuff at the corners of organization rooms. Similarly, “a decision is an outcome or interpretation of several relatively independent streams within organisations” (Cohen et al., 1972, pp. 2–3). The authors expected that the mechanism and outcome of such decisions are not structured deliberations but rather spontaneous interactions of four streams. First, problems’ stream or the multiple and contradictory concerns of participants. Second, solutions’ stream, consisting of answers that actively seek a question to identify problems and justify solutions. Third, participants’ stream, which alternates depending on their individual time budget and on the issue to be discussed. And fourth institutional expectations’ stream, where “occasions within an organisation is expected to produce behaviour that can be called a decision” (ibid.). In sum, “although not completely independent of each other, each of the streams can be viewed as independent and exogenous to the system” (ibid., p. 3, italics added). The authors of this study did not state that this is a universal decision-­ making model. Still, they expected that these traits are characteristic of

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many organizations, which are operating in the conditions of ambiguity or contingency. There is a need to expect such a context in organization studies as part of the normality, not emergency. We consider such expectation an archetype of failure governance, which aims to produce opportunity patterns for any inspirational decision. The study by Cohen and colleagues demonstrated in situ that problem-­ solution mess is far from being a theoretical abstraction: instead of being the linear sequence of causally linked and sequential stages, those would­be stages are actually loosely coupled streams of iterative and hectic activities, which could have a rather spontaneous joint output, but can simultaneously produce new opportunity patterns (ibid., p. 16). Hence, we can speak of a paradigm shift in decision-making science (organization and planning) that took place and was transferred into the policy sciences a decade later. However, many conceptual issues remained untouched, like the actors’ identities, mechanisms of policy choices, and the role of politics understood conventionally as the competition of private interests. Those issues were developed further by scholars, who were directly linked with Simon’s ideas about decision-making. We focus here on two developments that “dissolved” further the problem-solution nexus and opened the way to full-fledged conceptions of facilitating the generation of policy outputs based on the inter-actional paradigm. The Garbage can model of Cohen et  al. (1972) has two immediate theoretical follow-ups. The first was linked with the works of Simon’s colleagues March and Olsen (1983). They opened the new institutionalist debate in political science by developing a clear alternative to the rational choice version (March & Olsen, 1989). This included the “thin institutionalism” of the public choice perspective. However, many influential insights in the policy sciences came from the new institutionalist economics version of institutionalism provided by E. Ostrom. She offered a convincing continuation of Simon’s case for more rationalism in the context of bounded rationality via “thick” institutional mechanisms (Ostrom, 2004). Hence, the process of institutionalization could be detected from rather different methodological angles if one considers the powerful streams from the phenomenological angle of organizational (sociological) institutionalism (Greenwood et al., 2008). This issue will be one of the directions of our argumentation for trans-actional interpretations of institutionalization (institutional work).

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The other follow-up was the application of the ontology of contingency in the policy sciences by Kingdon (1984) in his theory of policy streams. This study did not add much to exploring the mess of problem-solution streams and demonstrating the mechanisms of coupling of those streams (In Kingdon’s model, there were three streams). Moreover, the main interest of Kindgon remained in the agenda-setting end of the policy process continuum (Zahariadis, 2003). Thus, the theoretical discourse refrained from deliberating about the further fate of the policy “primeval soup” in the policy community or subsystem after formal decisions are made. However, Kingdon contributed to reconsidering the problem-solving nexus as the mission and output of the policy process. First, he revised the understanding of actors and their roles in the policy process. He relies on the concept of policy community or policy subsystem, which is a predecessor of the notion of policy network as actors’ constellations. This erodes the image of holistic government bureaucracy; from that view, the policy process crosses the dividing line between the official/unofficial policy actors. Second, his work considerably softened the policy-politics dilemma in interpreting the nature of the policy input stage, thus considerably complementing Easton’s policy input model. Third, Kingdon erodes the understanding that policy outcomes are causally and, hence, linearly linked solutions to problems. Solutions frequently precede problem identifications and are loosely coupled, as already Cohen et  al. (1972) demonstrated. Problems are identifications of different needs and concerns by stakeholder groups and are a source of political competition in forming policy input. This is the demand side of the policy discourse. Solutions are outcomes of discourses and power games, and the identification of a solution is grounded first of all on political as well as practical feasibility. The third and also an autonomous stream is the policy context and the events happening there. From Kindgon’s study, the understanding emerges that problems and solutions are different dimensions of the policy discourse in the policy community. Fourth, the policy process ceased to be considered a one-shot sequence of activities aimed at solving existing problems but is seen as the process-based dimension of government as a continuous and institutionalized process. In other words, it is not a discrete project of solution or resolution of problems, but a continuous process of innovation, a complex set of different streams in which changes occur at different levels and in various dimensions, but which is, as a rule, a stable promotion of public purposes and interests.

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6.3.4   Inter-actional Approaches to Ensuring Substantive Outcomes in the Policy Process Mainstream theories that were based explicitly or implicitly on the concept of policy community (Kingdon, 1984; Sabatier, 1986, 1999; Zahariadis, 2003; Baumgartner & Jones, 2002, 2009 [2003]) eroded the linear understanding of emergence of policy outputs. They remained however largely focused on the outcomes of polices as agreements (programs, conceptions, worldviews) between actors of emergent coalitions, etc., which are guiding actors in their accomplishment of policies. This orientation shifted when policy process became analyzed in terms of policy arenas and networks. In this subsection we demonstrate how the emergence of those agreements on substantive policy outputs were explored, based on the analytical framework of Koppenjan and Klijn (2004) and Klijn and Koppenjan (2000, 2015). They have developed within the last two decades the most elaborated framework for exploring the substance or formation of the content of policy as governance process.6 There are two crucial changes this approach has brought about in exploring the attainment of substantive outputs. First, the authors revised the understanding of sources and ways to manage complexity, and became rather close to the conception of harnessing wicked problems, however interpreting it still in the inter-actional framework (van Bueren et  al., 2003). So, they definitively ceased to consider problem-solution nexus as a causal process of cognitive (representational) inquiry, but instead as a matter of practical inter-action of actors. Second, the policy development in networks is presented as an iterative process whose outcomes are either public goods or changes in the policy context in a particular domain. It means that the elaboration of policy content has interim and largely ad hoc outputs, which presume continuous return to the redesign of substantive decisions (positions) whenever the context, actors’ constellations, and institutional patterns of networks or policy venues change. This enables to retain policy effectiveness in the context of high level of contingency. We summarized the understanding of the substantive production of policy outcomes in Table 6.2, and comment on them only briefly, since the final summary of interactional theory will be provided in Sect. 10.3. What and how are actors doing when they expect to work out policies? Understanding the policy process in uncertain, ambiguous and unpredictable cognitive and institutional context presumes identifying how this mess could be managed or harnessed, not by taming of this contingent

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Table 6.2  Development of substantive policy outcomes in normative (self-­ actional) and inter-actional perspectives on the policy process

Strategy for dealing with complexity Sources of complexity: policy context Sources of complexity: analytical basis Problem-­ solution nexus

Traditional-normative model

Inter-actional models

Reducing complexity through early selection of goals and optimal (scientific) criteria for problem solution identification Too many components and levels of reality, limited computational capacity Lack of information for identification of causal models

Retaining complexity, avoiding early fixation, promoting a sense and space for plurality of views and preferences, identifying diversity and its sources Diverging and conflictual cognitive frames, limited experience and willingness of communication Information overload, different interpretation of information

Early focus on the problem-­ solution nexus, focus on optimizing the discussion, emphasis on clear joint definition of the solution Policy substance Ex ante formulation of development problems and goals, orientation to most optimal (majority or rational) solutions Tools of policy Analysis and proofing, development corroborating of evidence Expertise

Policy decision Premises of outputs

Policy output

Reliance on neutral expertise and advice, and on formal analytical methods Unequivocal statements Research and analysis by experts Narrowing the focus of analysis, casting off possible goals and alternatives Majority’s final decision based on reasoned optimal option

Focus on the working procedures and creating the spirit of free discussion, promoting openness of views to reveal hidden reefs of conflicts, emphasis on policy learning Ex post justification of problem definitions and goals referring to feasible policy tools and solutions, better fit with political feasibility Communication and framing, promoting reflective stance toward one’s and other’s positions Managing expert arenas in order to receive usable data from experts, at the request of political actors Packet deals on multiple streams Formation of common meaning and communication space Mapping diversity of frames (logic of perceptions), promoting concurrent design Consensual interim decision for practical testing, feedback and upgrading

Source: Authors

context but through the active ordering its different dimensions toward conceivable immediate outputs (how to act) and outcomes (what to expect as a gain) in longer-term perspective, and presuming that the latter provides landmarks for policy adaptation in the following collective actions.

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This is possible to conceive and explore if actors consider the purpose of substantive development of policy outputs not as immediate decisions or deals but as more or less coordinated and sustainable interaction and coordination process which from time to time enables to fix and to reconsider the consensus. Klijn and Koppenjan draw on the presumption, that “problems are not objective circumstances or artefacts ‘out there,’ waiting to be discovered and resolved by policymakers. Rather, they are social constructions; perceptions of actors on what makes a situation problematic” (2016, p. 45). Policy should be able to generalize these perceptions into workable action patterns. In the traditional sense the producing of solutions is the process of continuous narrowing the space for choice for selecting either the best or satisficing solutions drawing first of all on analytical reasoning and advice. There is a need to define ex ante or as early as possible the problem and objectives which the solution must meet. The development of policy outputs in networks’ venues or arenas is rather a process of developing a joint meaning space for understanding each other, a space in which actors could locate their initial perceptions and word-views with the purpose of ironing out major possible opportunities, interpretations and conflicts in networks and venues (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2016). This is primarily a communicative process, but the latter is not to be understood as information exchange but as active making (or understanding) of meaning space to map diversity, to clear miscommunications and identify inevitable conflicts. This enables to build appropriate level of trust (predictability and understanding) and to focus not on one-spot decisions on single issues but on the packet deals which involve simultaneously the wider spectrum of decisions in the network space or time. Inter-actionalist view is capable of exploring and demonstrating empirically how to come to the positive sum “packet deals” for the constituents of networks, which makes it possible to have concessions and losses for participants regarding concrete issues. There are sophisticated techniques of consensual policy decisions (Susskind et  al., 1999; Susskind, 2006) based on such inter-actional logic. In Table 6.2 we give a general overview of such principles as techniques in which inter-actional approach revolving around the notion of network (as compared with traditional normative approaches) becomes close to setting up research question that are similar to trans-actional approaches. There are, first, breaking the asymmetries of policy debates primarily through harmonizing the cultures and language, using different cognitive tools like narratives, diagrams or other image based communication tools,

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which enable approximation and contextual fit in case the other tools create communication failures. Second, hence follows the strategy to align various directly untranslatable frames of participants as micro worldviews and lenses of interpretation of current contexts. Inter-actional paradigm considers cognitive shifting or breaking frames still as a cognitive task via the development of meta-perceptions or specific reflective contexts in advancing constituents perceptions. Third, the strategy of creating and enhancing substantive variety expects that the management of substantive complexities is aimed at generating a variety of options and preventing an early fixation on specific problem formulations or solutions … The presence of a variety of options offers the parties the prospect of arriving at a solution attractive to them, and it may just provide the starting point for bridging differences. (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2015, p. 130)

At the same time, this strategy presumes the creation of creative competition and discussion of alternative scenarios and arguing on the strongest and weakest elements of each design. This mutual learning is necessary before the reflective comparisons of scenarios could begin. Fourth, inter-­ actional approach provides different techniques of policy enrichment through the intertwinement of conflicting goals and does not expect to abolish conflicting goals. The latter are expected to alternate in space or time, and the approach is oriented to providing possibilities for the meeting of pressures from controversial and ambiguous environment. Fifth, these techniques presume that, despite high uncertainty and possibilities of impasses and dead-ends of the process, there is a recommendation to avoid as much as possible too early fixations of positions, and even to support contested decisions and to create a sense of urgency. This would trigger more motivated investments into better argumentation and enrichment of the discourse. Finally, managing the selection or consensus points means that parties must reach agreements about assessment of appropriateness of policy outputs (scenarios and services) (ibid., p.  140). The nature of the parties’ involvement in selection can vary from being informed, to advising and eventually co-deciding. Selection stage is not just a question of making ex ante agreements, but rather, to a large extent, a continuous management issue: network managers must constantly be on the lookout for signs that suggest premature or belated selection (ibid.). These are techniques already far from being merely cognitive-analytical tools of creating policy output as plans or programs. However, the final

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outputs are still highly dependent on cognitive categories and, obviously, are to a certain extent exported too straightforwardly from the vocabulary of interpretive methodology (see Hay, 2011). This would not enable to leave definitively the representative strategy of solving conflicts in the policy formation (Wagenaar, 2015), whose emergence we analyze in more detail in the next chapter.

6.4   In Sum: From Self-actionalism to Inter-­actionalism in Policy Theories—Toward Increasing Recognition of the Contingency of the Socio-political Understanding policy as a contingent and unpredictable process gave the last blow to the self-actionalist idea that policy is the solution of some cognitive (scientific) task, which needs to be given political legitimacy, as was assumed in the framework of the normative model in the 1950s. Already early on, from the point of view of the empirical methodology of behavioral sciences, it was understood that policy solutions (goals, plans) are also formed as a result of a contingent process, which was initially vaguely described as loosely coupling policy-flows, which had to be explained in detail during the empirical interpretation of facts/data (Cohen et  al., 1972; Kingdon, 1984). This process is also contingent because the source of policy outputs is not some clearly identifiable actor (expert, politician, state) as the self-actionalist perspective would have it. It is even less some overarching rational actor (usually presumed to be government). It was understood that in the contingent social reality where it is necessary to achieve changes in the behavior of ordinary people, all explanations are ex ante at best, if not merely fictions, and reflect real practices in a very limited way, because in an uncertain context, policy as knowledge can emerge during its practical and step-by-step unraveling. Already at the end of the 1960s it was guessed (e.g., in Allison, 1969) that even an obviously single strategic decision in a situation of global conflict, such as the nuclear weapons deployment crisis that arose in the Caribbean, is not made by a single subject, but that the source of politics is a more or less identifiable or uncertain political community, whose participants’ actions (including those of the official actors) are largely informal, spontaneous, forming discourse-like patterns. Moreover, policy targeting and planned actions are not the result of compact policy programs (which does

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not mean that they cannot be drawn up ex ante or ex post), but rather a random yet, as a rule, practically relevant result of the more or less chaotic interaction of policy participants. Therefore, the central task of policy-making (management, leadership, governance) is not to come up with any models or plans around the table, but to organize policy participants in such a way that policy solutions propose practical and binding ways of changing and influencing reality, which would actually influence reality in the expected direction and at the same time have practical support. In policy analysis, we often focus on policy reifications in laws, action plans, statements, which from the point of view of the logic of their creation are rather post factum formalizing static summaries that are put into the language of procedures and, if necessary, implementation sanctions; but these are not the target settings and agreements that are born from the policy process and on which the policy is based and which are bindingly interpreted and understood in the same way. The substance of policy is not even texts and decisions, but a much more figuratively designed space of meaning, in which the parties move step by step toward the set goals. This is where the problem arises: policy documents, formulated agreements, which are also put into the language of mere legal or implementation mechanisms (this must also be understood as part of the policy process), usually start to reflect the logic and ways of thinking (and ideology) of experts again. It supports the actions of public power either for hegemonic purposes to ensure its levers of power (envisioned in self-­ actionalist terms) or even for non-public substantive purposes, which Churchman already warned against. This means that an understanding based on certain self-actionalist epistemology gives rise to a cycle of hegemonic dominance in a linearly conceptualized and organized policy process, which cannot be mitigated by various normative democratic tools such as participation, openness, etc. Therefore, the epistemology and ontology of becoming, in which the iterative constitution of policy in time is central, is able to overcome entanglements in such reification points (decisions), which in the traditional view are presented as policy outputs. Thus, even the discussed inter-actionalist views, which focus on the agenda-setting phase of policy formation, cannot, on the one hand, follow (and generalize) this process until the formation of the actual policy outcomes (i.e., what the theory must ultimately explain). On the other hand,

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we also saw how policy design theories, which began to focus on the practical implementation phase of policy intervention, leave policy design out of consideration as a mechanism for the birth of institutional agreements and reduce design to the technical provision of public services, in which the policy process is also already reified. From here we logically arrive at the realization, which was first observed by Rittel, that the policy process cannot be treated through its various empirical phases as components of the logic of the cognitive-analytical process, but precisely these phases and components must be put into the process-oriented language of policy outputs, i.e., into the language of iterative and agile becoming. As shown by Tsoukas and Chia (2011) and Weick (2009), this process (as contingency, which is now not in a structural but in a temporal dimension as a process of constitution or apprehension) must be understood in the so-called internal view, i.e., not in the view of the external observer but of the internal actor and its logic. This is the reason why trans-action patterns and the mechanisms of their alternation cannot be understood by representing universals; and it is also the source of the difficulties in explaining them. Traditional self-actional policy theory personified the state or government as the subject of policy-­ making or the author of actions, and this understanding functioned as the only view for a long time and was also a prerequisite for the normative version of democratic policy theory. Inter-actionalist policy theory—both in its version of policy arenas and in policy design—comes to the understanding that we cannot grasp this process through the prism of individual stages, even if our ontological assumptions are adequate. The reason for this is the conceptualization of the policy process still in the framework of spatially fixed points as a trajectory, where it is possible to identify entities, which we then conceptualize as infinitely complex things (which they also are in this view). But with this we cannot see the changes in a process-time view. Conceptualizing the policy process in the empirical view of the alternation of linear stages is, according to Bergson (on whom also the pragmatists aligned), describing the trajectory of the spatial points of the policy journey, not explaining it in the view of the immanent logic of time and process; i.e., how phenomena as patterns are born. In order to understand the policy process, it is necessary to be able to explain it in terms of the immanent logic of the process itself. We take up these topics of temporality in Chaps. 8 and 9.

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Notes 1. The latter is, however, not extensively developed in pragmatist thinking, especially when it comes to its internally conflictual and destructive site. 2. For our purpose, we should keep in mind that pragmatist theories started to revive and influence all of them from the 1970s onward. 3. See endnote 1. 4. Satisficing is a decision-making strategy that seeks to find satisfactory instead of optimal outputs. 5. We leave aside here D.  Schön’s “The Reflective Practitioner” (1983), in which a trans-actional interpretation of design was already provided, but which until the 1990s, after its linking with framing theory, did not get enough attention in the policy process theories. 6. See also Thissen and Walker (2013), Enserink et  al. (2013), Mayer et  al. (2013), Crosby and Bryson (2005), de Bruijn and ten Heuvelhof (2018), de Bruijn et al. (2010), Keast (2013), and Teisman et al. (2009).

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CHAPTER 7

The (Re)turn to the Political: Deepening the Grasp of Contingency in the Theories of the Policy Process

The self-actional normative theory (“textbook model”) is based on the model of policy process as a linear sequence of causally linked activities to progress from problem identification to problem-solutions. Policy-making is thought of primarily as a cognitive activity, an abstraction of a rational actor as a kind of brain that drives the process of linear-sequential activities. So, the model corresponds exactly to the self-actional form of process-­ reduction we discussed in Chap. 3: the policy process is reduced to its instigator. In the initial model, however, two different types of actors (experts-advisors and politicians) were expected to propel such a process. The former would provide for the latter an exhaustive and clearly ordered proposal of a fully argued choice. It is presumed that the policy is focused on solving new and unknown problems and should deal with them within one shot operation. We should note that the textbook approach had critiques right from the start. Charles Hitch (1957), head of the Economics Division of RAND Corporation, one of the leading centers for the application of these techniques, expressed a dissenting view: I believe that Ackoff is mistaken in identifying national planning, and especially investment-resource allocation at the national level, as the area in which operations research should try to make its contribution. While enthusiasm is a powerful engine for accomplishment, it can frequently, unless restrained, lead to frustration and disillusionment. I know of no evidence… © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_7

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that operations research has (as yet) much to offer at the level of national planning. On the contrary, I would make the empirical generalization from my experience at Rand and elsewhere that operations research is the art of sub-optimizing, i.e., of solving some lower-level problems, and that difficulties increase and our special competence diminishes by an order of magnitude with every level of decision making we attempt to ascend. The sort of simple explicit model which operations researchers are so proficient in using can certainly reflect most of the significant factors influencing traffic control on the George Washington Bridge, but the proportion of the relevant reality which we can represent by any such model or models in studying, say, a major foreign-policy decision, appears to be almost trivial. (Hitch, 1957, p. 718)

Why, then, was this classical self-actional model so influential? One answer is that this was a good example of the hegemony of an epistemic community, which determined the agenda in a discipline. As an extended model of decision-making in technical areas of public policy, it draws on the presumptions of knowledge as a value-free representation of reality, i.e., scientific knowledge. This view fits well with the main concern of public policy at that time—ensuring strategic competitiveness in the Cold War era. The prevalence of the normative model indicates the weakness of the empirical policy sciences of that day. The main currents where the actual policy process was at the center of study were linked primarily with the studies of Simon (1964/1957) and his school on decision-making rationality in organizations, and Lindblom’s (1959, 1979) studies of political decision-making as an incremental process. Both lines of argumentation also focused on the logic of decisions and the creation of policy substance (or content). Still, their interpretation of the role of knowledge opened, by the 1960s, avenues for refocusing the policy studies’ attention on the dimension of the policy process and policy actors. One of the symbolic events in the shift from substance to process becomes G.  Allison’s case study Essence of Decision at the end of the 1960s (Allison, 1969; Allison & Zelikow, 1999). This study demonstrated the internal complexity of a single decision process and the scope of actors/institutions involved in making the very top-level decision within limits of less than two weeks. This study is also important in understanding policy decisions as profoundly political processes.

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What is the rationale for this paradigm shift? In the traditional sense, policy-making is understood as a disruption of routine processes of government aimed at solving new emerging problems or updating the functioning/effectiveness of government. For this reason, the focus of policy is substantive problem/solution and instrumental aims: the government is, first of all, the creator of order and the persistence of authority. This is a highly elitist vision of policy. However, policy is considered a processual dimension of governing, and the mission of policy is to become sustainable in designing and steering collective action for creating public values/ goods. This is actually the process of institutionalization of public activities in different ways for producing new orderings, where “institutions are the mechanisms of governance” (Williamson, 1996, p. 5). This is not only the different ontology of governance or specific epistemology of discerning the publicness (or the political), but it challenges the very understanding of power dynamics and empowering, which—as we can see in our considerations of metagovernance—increases the actual power of the state. The emergence of this focus on the policy process proceeded in four dimensions. First, the normative policy theory seeing policy as largely cognitive decision-making activity, was complemented by an understanding of activities which were initially considered subsidiary parts of the policy process (its implementation); or as activities assisting or even competing in exercising the activities of the government (like input politics in the Eastonian sense [Easton, 1953]). So, the pre-decision and post-decision stages came to be seen as even much more extensive activities of the process, and primarily at these stages, the interruptions of failures of the linear policy path became obvious. This is because these activities were out of direct control of authority and prone to more open stages compared to a rather closed stage of decision-making involving a very limited number and types of actors. However, increasingly, the scope of actors exceeded the closed circle of elites, so the policy process should acquire a new and extensive variety of traits. Second, policy started to be viewed as an iterative process, where each constituent type of activity or step in the policy process ceased to be a unique linear stage causally linked with the next one. Instead, all activities which formerly were considered stages of the process became to be seen as reproduced in every single stage, starting from decisions up to problem identification (construction) to evaluation. Thus, the policy process is explored as a set of configurations of policy-making activities at different

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Fig. 7.1  The pattern of the iterative policy process. (Source: Conklin, 2006, p. 10)

temporal points of policy design process. Figure  7.1. below depicts an empirical shape of the design of technical solutions (Conklin, 2006). Third, policy started to be viewed as a bundle of interdependent and nested decision-implementation processes intending to redesign different dimensions of a domain at different levels of governance. These different domains are seen as independent streams with their own temporal taxonomy and logic of proceeding. So, the understanding of policy as a one-­ shot trajectory of action was “closed” in its diachronic dimension where the  policy is eternally returning and repeating as a spirally reproducing path- It was also multiplying in its synchronic dimension as coupling of different policy domains thus making the horizontal coordination of policies in and between domains acutely important. This reconsidering of the policy process pattern becomes a contingent and unfolding process, which cannot be adequately caught in terms of spatial trajectories but only in terms and through images of time as duration (see Chia & Holt, 2009; Nayak & Chia, 2011). Fourth, in order to understand its internal mechanisms, policy as a processual phenomenon per se could be refined in view of analytical and practical reasons stemming from its formal-institutional and static frames. Public policy proceeds, not only in actuality within those frames, but it is

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substantially restrained or promoted by those frames (and other self-­ actionally understood context variables). This is especially true when it responds to government and governance failures by using interventionist (self-actional) governing tools in a state of crisis or confusion. It is analytically useful to distinguish between the institutional context as a static framework, and the process of institutional design (Williamson, 1996). In fact, the mechanisms of “switching on” the hierarchy in case of governance failure are known and widely used. But there is little understanding on how to differentiate the confusion and emergency from the contingency and mess of “stable” times and use it for innovation via inter-actionalist or trans-actionalist approach to policy that normatively presumes hierarchy to be a “shadow” (Sharpf, 1997) or something in the hands of the meta-governor rather than a replacing mechanism of direct intervention. The specific craft of strategic policy choice is gradually switching off the direct interventionist regime or combining it with self-organizing strategies and tools (Jessop, 2004; Dunsire, 1993). In this connection, we expect that the conception of multi-level governance should be involved in conceptualizing the policy process as governance and metagovernance. Here we rely on the strategic-relational approach to state and its recent developments, especially in the context of EU governance issues (Jessop, 2004, 2016a, 2016b). In the meantime, these shifts in the interpretation of the policy process should be followed—as Ackoff already insisted—to strengthen the interdisciplinary character of the analysis of the policy process (see Thissen, 2013). In exploring the emergence of an iterative and inter-actional model in the theoretical landscape of policy sciences, we find affinities with the conceptual trajectories of new governance in political science (Torfing et al., 2012, pp. 21–24). In view of this dimension of policy process, the theoretical developments could also ensure a more profound understanding of the evolution of the governance paradigm. We follow the logic of conceptual evolution below, which contains a rather multifaceted and crisscrossing set of streams. This helps us to outline the main dimensions of inter-actional policy framework and thus to develop a ground for comparing inter-actional and trans-actional policy analysis and, later, policy-making.

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7.1   On the Constitution of Policy Problems: Bringing the Political Back In We start the story by focusing on the conversion of the policy-making theories into process-based approaches by elaborating on the pre-decision or political input stage. As emphasized by Jessop (2011, p.  112), with reference to earlier works of Renate Mayntz, the studies of governance have been mostly concerned with “the output and outcome of policy processes, neglecting the input side of policy formation and the relationship between both,” without asking how these problems are “socially and discursively constructed” (Mayntz, 2003, p.  32, cf. Jessop, 2011). For Mayntz, this bias leads to neglecting the problems generated by asymmetric power relations and domination. Thus, her request was “to develop a single macro-theory that integrated the problem-solving approach with a concern about power asymmetries” (Jessop, 2011, p. 112). To be fair, problem-solving as inquiry has been at the center of Dewey’s works (Turnbull, 2008). The construction of social problems has been on the research agenda for a long time in sociology already from the 1940s onwards (see Parsons, 1995). It resulted in the conception of social construction of problems in the policy process (Spector & Kitsuse, 1977). The immediate trigger of political input studies in the policy process research was provided by Cobb and Elder (1971), who developed the theory of agenda-setting and agenda control, which substantially upgraded Easton’s (1953) classical theory of input politics. As a result, politics becomes, again, an important and extensive part of the theory of policy process and complements the very concept of politics as public discourse and organizing process (Knoepfel et al., 2007). However, this issue was taken over by communication and media studies, which became an autonomous field in political science and beyond. The issue of policy agenda identification returned to the policy theories’ discourse with the “argumentative turn” in the 1990s (Fischer & Forester, 1993) and became linked with the issues of sources of policy-relevant knowledge and the role of expertise. 7.1.1   From Street-Level Bureaucrats to Backward Mapping: The Problem of Policy Implementation The extension in the mainstream understanding of the scope of the policy process was triggered first by the development of implementation studies. Implementation, i.e., policy after the decision stage, was up to the 1970s not explicitly considered a constituent part of the policy-making process

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(see Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973). The major focus of its linkage to policy as decision-making was for a long time on ensuring the “well-oiled” implementation of decisions by machine-like bureaucracies, and only in the new edition of Pressman and Wildavsky’s work (1984) they explicitely realized that policy implementation is not merely a finalizing set of activities to carry out the decisions or directives that had been adopted before, but a learning process through which goals and expected outputs might be adapted as well. However, already at the end of the 1960s, the concept of street-level bureaucracy emerged: A street-level Bureaucrat is defined as a public employee whose work is characterized by the following three conditions: 1. He is called upon to interact constantly with citizens in the regular course of his job. 2. Although he works within bureaucratic structure, his independence on the job is fairly extensive. One component of this independence is discretion in making decisions; but independence in job performance is not limited to discretion...3. The potential impact on citizens with whom he deals is fairly extensive. (Lipsky, 1969, p. 2)

Thus, supplementary identification of problems by street-level bureaucrats means that the modification of goals would happen at the implementation stage, and, hence, the policy success and failure criteria become revised. Elmore’s (1979) work “Backward Mapping: Implementation Research and Policy Decisions” actually introduced the first version of an explicitly iterative model of policy-making: The logic of backward mapping is, in all important respects, the opposite of forward mapping. It begins not at the top of the implementation process but at the last possible stage, the point at which administrative actions intersect private choices. It begins not with a statement of intent, but with a statement of the specific behavior at the lowest level of the implementation process that generates the need for a policy. Only after that behavior is described does the analysis presume to state an objective; the objective is first stated as a set of organizational operations and then as a set of effects, or outcomes, that will result from these operations. Having established a relatively precise target at the lowest level of the system, the analysis backs up through the structure of implementing agencies, asking at each level two questions: What is the ability of this unit to affect the behavior that is the target of the policy? And what resources does this unit require in order to have that effect. In the final stage of analysis the analyst or policymaker

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describes a policy that directs resources at the organizational units likely to have the greatest effect. (Elmore, 1979, p. 604)

This was a substantial revision of the understanding of the problem-­ solution nexus and the very logic of the policy process. So, it is worth quoting how Elmore’s argumentation (from a different angle than Lipsky) breaks some holy premises of the normative policy model, especially the self-actionalist reduction of policy process to its instigator, which in Elmore’s words, is the “most serious problem with forward mapping” that has an implicit and unquestioned assumption that policymakers control the organizational, political, and technological processes that affect implementation. The notion that policymakers exercise—or ought to exercise—some kind of direct and determinant control over policy implementation might be called the “noble lie” of conventional public administration and policy analysis. Administrators legitimate their discretionary decisions by saying that their authority is delegated and controlled by elected and appointed policymakers. Policy analysts justify their existence by arguing that informed, rational choices by policymakers are necessary to guide and control administrators. Neither administrators nor policy analysts are very comfortable with the possibility that most of what happens in the implementation process cannot be explained by the intentions and directions of policymakers. (…) But backward mapping explicitly questions the assumption that policymakers ought to, or do, exercise the determinant influence over what happens in the implementation process. It also questions the assumption that explicit policy directives, clear statements of administrative responsibilities, and well-­ defined outcomes will necessarily increase the likelihood that policies will be successfully implemented. (pp. 603-604.)

With this, Elmore’s model not merely reshuffles the problem-solution causal sequence like in the garbage can model (see Chap. 6). It is way more, and his drift toward a process-relational methodology has not yet gotten enough attention. Firstly, Elmore considers specific activities of actors from the very start and up to the very end as integrated but iterative events in which virtual and actual actions are combined. Relatively autonomous activities and actors could be linked into the integrated and resultative process only when all previous and later activities are reproduced at every stage of policy-making. That is, problem definition starts from sensing the needs and readiness of beneficiaries regarding the policy goals, and

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only after reproducing the process from the start to its end (or presenting the backwards model of this process) would the setting of policy objectives and purposes begin. Moreover, Elmore’s understanding of policy process presumes simulational modeling of policy in a temporal dimension as a way of constituting policy (similarly to Weick, 2009; see also Chia, 1999; Chia & Holt, 2009). In other words, the policy process flows in the virtual realm from future to present (Schatzki, 2019), reproducing the logic of the policy process in the virtual dimension step by step. Only after this is the policy formulated and triggered as if it has already happened in the past. This is also the way to turn the requisite variety of values and processual path into a source of creation of truly innovative and feasible outputs. Nevertheless, like Rittel’s “flash” of wicked problems, Elmore’s ideas did not get appropriate attention because of the narrow disciplinary interpretation of his works (see also Elmore, 1983). However, the role of implementation studies in developing a new paradigm of policy process analysis was not exhausted with the research in the USA. At the end of the 1970s, researchers at the Max-Plank Institute started to focus on issues of policy coordination at the implementation stage (Hanf & Scharpf, 1978). In other words, although the origins of the concept of policy network are frequently associated with Heclo’s (1978) conception of issue networks in US politics (Enroth, 2011; Torfing et al., 2012), policy networks (and communities) as patterns of inter-­ organizational and intergovernmental relations or governance were not only in full use in the USA (Lowi, 1964) but also in Europe already in 1978 (Scharpf, 1978; Mayntz, 1978). It referred to a specific kind of policy coordination pattern at the implementation stage, which could cross over bureaucratic jurisdictions and forms of specific patterns of horizontal organization of semi-autonomous actors in accomplishing policies (see also Hjern & Porter, 1983). Based on Mayntz distinctions, the concept of actor-centred political steering (Steuerung) approach to policymaking was quite distinct from the governance (Regulierung) approach, which is more institutionalist and deals with regulatory structures combining public and private, hierarchical and network forms of action coordination. (Jessop, 2011, p. 111; see also Mayntz, 1993, pp. 10–11)

This is a rather important nuance for assessing the German school’s contribution to the conception of policy networks and policy

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coordination. The “Steuerung” concept comes from organization studies but was at the outset “used to refer to the ability of political authorities to mould their social environments” (Mayntz, 1993, p. 11). It was affiliated with the policy processes’ political coordination (politische Steuerung).

7.2  Four Basic Patterns in Theorizing Policy as a Contingent Process The second shift in transforming the understanding of policy into processual conceptions comes with considering the policy as a contingent process (starting with the garbage can image, which we discussed in our previous chapter), which not only extends the scope of processual approaches to exploring policy outputs but also changes an understanding of the very logic of the policy process in diachronic perspective (as the eternally returning process) as well as in synchronic perspective (as the combination of multiple tracks and rounds). We are distinguishing four basic new patterns in the analysis of policy as a contingent process. 7.2.1   The Theory of Policy Streams First, Kingdon’s theory of policy streams established the traditional aim to explore the policy decision at a stage that precedes the political decision-­ making process. Although it is considered an agenda-setting theory, Kingdon, in fact, explored only how the policy community is working out routinely the policy substance (problems and solutions) and “selling” the outcome of its work (when windows of opportunities emerge and policy entrepreneurs succeed). However, it continues the production of the “primeval soup” as a substantive dimension of the policy. Thus he did not focus on the political pre-decision phase or the input policy in Easton’s terms. So the iterative logic was considered only in a very narrow sense of developing policy substance (or content) at one of the phases of the process. His main role was demonstrating that the problem-solution nexus is far from being linear and central in producing policy outputs. The model of “policy windows” made room for empirical studies of how official policy decisions become possible, as well as demonstrated how limited the opportunities were that are provided by the sequential policy processing at the official decision arenas compared to almost continuous parallel processing of policy problems-solutions in the policy community.

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7.2.2   The Theory of Advocacy Coalitions The second new image of the policy process comes from Paul Sabatier (1986, 1999). He considers policy a public issue based on immanent values and their conflicts among members of policy communities or advocacy coalitions (AC), who are attached to these values through their core beliefs. ACs are much larger than policy communities and have vague internal and external borders. In this conception, policy is structured not along the lines of facts of things but along ideational entities, which are not subjective-cognitive representations but anchoring poles of intersubjective realities in a policy area. This way, also the policy scope is identified. At the level of basic values, it is explicit, but at the level of empirical appearance, it is ambiguous and could be removed through argumentation or new evidence. The reverse is true about advocacy coalitions: at the level of beliefs, the coalitions have their integrated core of actors and different circles of more remotely and explicitly integrated actors, whereas, at the level of concrete issues, the borders between coalitions can be clearly identified. This way, the policy substance or the very content was linked with policy actors and process, and the latter—with political perspectives. Sabatier emphasized that the policy process, including its actor-patterns, should be viewed as a thick, multi-layered and long-term process, which could be studied at different levels or dimensions. Hence, the actors are initially related via various imaginaries or beliefs and at the level of facts via arenas, forums, and debates. At the level of concrete policy-making the majority defines which core beliefs and means of their articulation the actual policy is promoting. This majority alters as a political coalition and shifts the majority’s preferences to another dominant basic strategy. There could be more than two such basic strategies; thus, the actual policy could be a mix of them. Members of a coalition form a policy community, from top politicians and officials to rank and file journalists and active citizens. This conception draws from the basic arguments of rational choice theory about stable preferences of core values. However, it also presumes that policy learning can cause shifts in these preferences at the level of their particular realization. Methodologically, this has been a different approach than framing-based understandings that revolve around the possibility of manipulating individual preferences (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). However, by the time it emerged, theories of policy process already operated with the concept of collective actors (Scharpf, 1997), which reduced the role of individual cognitive representations in the exploration of the overall logic of the policy process.

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7.2.3   “Thick” Institutionalism in Rational Choice Theory The third image comes from rational choice theory in the framework of new-institutional economics and studies by Elinor Ostrom (1986, 2015[1990]; 1998, 2005). This was a development away from the “thin” institutionalism of public choice theory (Shepsle, 2006) and toward the “thick” institutionalism of multi-level rules and value patterns. Relying on huge empirical studies of the use of common pool resources, Ostrom (and her Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis) developed the theory of self-organizing institutional space at the level of communities that use limited natural resources. This has proven to be a fruitful modeling of the bottom-up institutionalization of any public space. We think that the significance of her studies from policy science perspective is not yet adequately appreciated (although she got the “Nobel Prize” in economics in 2009). On the one hand she did not study the policy process as authorized decision-making but was able to describe the self-organizing process of developing binding rules, which is exactly one of the main purposes of policy from the processual perspective. On the other hand, she studied the possibility to develop collective action based on rational choice presumptions and was able to suggest solutions to public problems that top-down policies could not solve, at least those drawing on individual choices in a competitive context (see Hardin, 1968). In other words, this is a perfect example of an inter-actional approach to policy-making and an indication of how formal authority and institutions are linked with the functioning of heterarchy.1 Hence, from Ostrom, we can get a hint on the development of an analytical framework for comparing inter-actional and trans-actional approaches to institution-building as policy processes in a pure form. 7.2.4   The Theory of attention shifts The fourth image of the policy process comes from the introduction of psychological concepts of empirical behavioralism in the policy sciences, which is linked with the second generation of self-organizing systems theory. Frank Baumgartner and Bryan Jones (2002, 2009) explored how in policy communities or subsystems in which the control over the meaning space has been established and a stable policy is promoted (i.e., ensured by equilibrium), spontaneous shifts can happen in the composition of policy arenas in the periphery of policy communities, and consequently in the overall meaning space of the community. They explore changes as

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spontaneous shifts in inter-action patterns caused by attention shifts of policy community members. Accordingly, they are consequent in issue extension in the discourse that changes not only membership patterns of policy arenas or venues but also the core of policy substance (and its content). This theory also contributed substantially to the conception of policy framing, which returned politics into the policy process as a core mechanism of conflict management (see Chaps. 8 and 9).

7.3  The Emergence of the Theories of Policy Networks These new images of the policy process put the policy sciences on empirical grounds. As they were largely inductive generalizations of practices, they did not comprehend the government innovation process completely but rather from the viewpoints of different but important angles of the process in specific areas or with specific configurations of actors. For this reason, they were bound to explain the policy process triggers through exogenous variables. These images of the policy process were first complemented, first, by Geert Teisman (2000), who pictured policy as a multi-layered process passing through multiple different configurations. He thus explored also the interdependence of single policy initiatives of different actors at different levels of governance as a part of large development strategies. Later in cooperation with Arwin van Buuren they added the analytical configuration of policy tracks (Teisman and van Buuren 2012) largely to explore the full complexity of the policy process from the perspective of system’s integration. For their example, they chose the case of the attempt to develop the Schiphol-Rotterdam integrated transport-communications space. This way, they could extend the exploration of coupling processes up to the whole policy cycle and interim policy outputs and provide a new understanding of the policy input-output model from the inter-actional perspective. This approach was contested by the mainstream authors of the instrumental version of policy design theory (Howlett et  al. 2014). They attempted to link the linear model of the policy stages with the process-­ based model of iterative and multi-layered/rounded processes provided by Teisman and van Buuren. This attempt was edifying in two senses. Firstly, it highlights the low ambitions of policy process theorists in

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engaging in deeper methodological reflections of their conceptual basis. Secondly, this case indicated the methodological limitations of instrumental versions of the policy design approach, where the normative stage of the design of ideas (designing policies, prototyping) was still detached from the implementation stage (the design of the end products). As Junginger (2014) demonstrated, it is difficult to develop a processual conception of design that draws on the mechanisms of inter-active policy advancement. In Europe, the policy community concept emerged from political science in the UK (Richardson and Jordan 1979; Jordan 2011) and was linked to studies of neo-corporatism. Jordan later identified exactly the rationale for this shift in the understanding of the policy process: The term policy community appeared in the literature independently in several sources in the 1970s… and this timing reflected the shift in focus in political science away from formal legal and legislature-based study to tracking empirical policy biography. Empirical research found that the effective locus of decision making was not the legislature, cabinets, or politician-led committees but group/bureaucrat arenas. The term recorded the conclusion that much policy evolution was not the result of ideological struggle between conflicting political parties with distinctive ideologies and agendas but of apolitical (or at least nonpartisan) discussion and information exchange. (2011, p. 1902, italics in the original)

Policy communities were identified as a pattern of actors in the sub-­ governments (in the politico-administrative domain) to make sense of this logic. The concept was successfully used in the study of networks in governance of intergovernmental relations (Rhodes 1981; Gage, Mandell 1990, etc.) and, further, in Rhodes’ studies of sub-governments or fragmentation of governing bureaucracy in the UK at the seminal Whitehall project (1988, 1996, 2000). Similarly to Baumgartner and Jones, Rhodes (1988, p.  78) defined sub-governments as a kind of closed community. But Rhodes developed from this the concept of policy networks which intend to embrace all diverse and flexible sets of actors in non-hierarchical patterns (Rhodes 1996)—or heterarchies as Jessop would call them (see Chap. 3). At the same time, Rhodes also promoted the concept of governance (Rhodes 1996), and his summary article “The Governance Narrative” (2000) could be viewed as marking the peak time of the concept of policy networks in political sciences.

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Networks theories that also emerged in sociology have in government sciences various origins and interpretations (Berry et al. 2004). However, in political science, the use of this concept or rather its dialectical version (Marsh 1998, 2000) met severe criticism of the positivist/rational-choice camp (Dowding 1995, 2001) and the policy community perspective (Jordan et al. 1994), and was unsuccessful in establishing itself in Anglo-­ American political studies. Instead, its development proceeded in the framework of democratic network governance studies (Sørensen and Torfing 2007; Torfing et  al. 2012) and interdisciplinary context. For Rhodes, “[t]he study of networks mutated into the study of governance, and positivism gave way to an interpretive stance” (2007, p. 1244; see also Bevir and Rhodes 2006, Chap. 2). This is also one of the ways toward a trans-actional interpretation of governance in the policy process, as exemplified by Bevir and Rhodes’ joint and separate development of the “decentered theory of governance.” The latter revolves around the premise that “[i]f we decenter the governance narrative, we redefine the differentiated polity, the core executive, and to some extent even the concept of a policy network. In each case, we shift attention from somewhat reified institutions to meaningful practices” (Bevir 2010a, p.  86; see also Bevir and Rhodes 2006, Chap. 5). There are many interesting overviews of the emergence of network and governance theories in policy sciences (e.g., Kooiman 1993, 1999; Mayntz 1993, 2003; Jessop 1998; Rhodes 1996; Keast 2013). We summarized here the core of these phenomena. Two levels of conceptual explorations should be delineated. On the one hand, the very concepts of state or bureaucratic hierarchy and market were rather ideal-typical constructions, and for a long time, neither bureaucracy (at least in Europe) nor markets worked in real life as mechanisms of order or competition. The very concept of bureaucracy was, in fact, developed as opposed to elitist patronage (in Europe) or the “spoils system” (USA). The idea of bureaucracy contains contradictory arrangements combining formal, power-based superior-­subordinate patterns and impersonal patterns of conduct according to rules (see Scott and Davis 2006, pp. 55–58). In our terms, these are self-actionally understood command chains and patterns of formal-legal actions. When these ideal types started to approach their completed forms in reality, as markets and companies prevailed over the individual self-­ production or as bureaucracies and the public sector over the producers of public goods, their arrangements based on ideal-type presumptions began to fail.

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7.4  The Emergence of the Notion of Governance as Governing Through Networks The roots of the idea and conception of governance as coordination lie in witnessing the failures of governments as hierarchies and markets as anarchies. More recently, a wider interpretation of governance that is not necessarily “located” within the purview of traditional state-related institutions and actions has also been labeled as “governance via networks” (see Jessop 2004; Bevir 2010a).2 Thus, on the one hand, governance is at least initially a negative extrapolation of controversies of ideal types and an attempt to explore more empirical equivalents of their actual conduct. On the other hand, the narrow concept of governance or governance via networks emerged. It has a clear affinity with studies of failed implementation structures conducted in the Max Plank institute and Rhodes’ Whitehall program studies, i.e., these concepts are also initially based on negative definitions of phenomena. For this reason, governance studies have remained mainly theoretical and have not succeeded as practical governing doctrines. Still, they have obvious success in countries and societal spaces with strong self-governing authorities and pronounced consensual values like the Protestant North of Europe and the Anglo-American world where governance network studies are also most widespread. In this section, we will lay out four theoretical traditions that can be seen as conceptual roots for the notion of governing as governance through networks: (1) New-Institutionalism, (2) New Public Management, (3) Organization studies and policy sciences, and (4) Multi-level governance approaches. 7.4.1   The New-Institutionalist Roots Now we focus on the new-institutional theories that emerged for empirically exploring the new realities of both market and state failure. On the one hand, a direct response to market failures was the new-institutional economics (Williamson 1996) which explored, at least partially, the institutionalization of market exchanges. On the other hand, there are constructivist ideas about building institutions in the context of contingency (Hay 2016; Schmidt 2008, 2011; Lawrence et al. 2009), as well as studies of policy networks as sets of collective decision arenas, which draw on inter-organizational network studies. Moreover, this specific angle opens a new perspective on the policy process as institutionalization (Ostrom

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1998, 2005), which is seen as a phronetic process of praxis in the Aristotelian sense. From this point of view, we should also reconsider the meaning of governance failure. In the traditional perspective, governing or governance failure is the inability of governance or governance networks to ensure effective social order and outputs expected from the activities of states or public organizations. In the case of governing in the context of contingency, the analysis of this governing from process- or becoming-centered perspective, it is presumed that we are faced with policy contexts composed of wicked problems or processes. The focus could not be on the “pacification” of the contingency in order to make it more predictable and simpler to govern. Thus, for instance, when Sørensen and Torfing talk about governance network failure, they “are referring to an inability to provide effective governance through negotiated interaction between a plurality of public and private actors. So everything depends on what we mean by effective governance” (2007, p.  97; Jessop 2004, p.  70). The contingency and unpredictability from the process- or becoming-based perspective is not a problem to be eliminated or suppressed (Turnbull 2008) but a set of opportunities (and, of course, failures in the classical sense) to trigger the unfolding of new configurations of actors and, through that—to promote sustainable innovations or ordering of the social. Therefore, the core issue is how to develop sustainable mechanisms to combine these possibilities of failure and opportunities (or virtual reality) to sustain fundamental ways of new orderings. Thus, we should considerably re-assess the very concept of effective governance and governance failure when we move to truly trans-actional approaches to governance. 7.4.2   Mixing Theories and Practices: The Roots from New Public Management Although the sources of governance narrative in academic and political discourse are a contested issue, the practical realization of governance in actual practices comes to the fore via arrangements of the new public management (NPM). Paradoxically, a careful reading of the discourse of the 1970s labeled public management reforms (Hood 1991) or new public management from the perspective of new-institutional economics (Williamson 1998/1985) and moreover, in the light of Ostrom’s (2005) studies, reveals the development of process-based approaches to government as governance. These were at least attempts to give conceptual and

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practical responses (at this point, rather one-sided) to market and government failure of the Keynesian corporatist economics model. The other more academic source is the open systems theory of organizations which considers the latter’s boundaries as blurred, enabling them to sustain themselves in the complex environment. There is a justified critique of the NPM as neo-conservative political practices. NPM was actually more of a political doctrine that intended to depoliticize the issue of public service provision and had a particular aim of increasing the “market share” of the private sector in service provision. However, NPM and governance have different conceptual sources and faces (McLaughlin et  al. 2002; Osborne 2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011). We would like, in our case, to move to the foreground the new-­ institutional economics’ conception of institutionalization of market exchange (transaction cost economics) and the development of hybrid forms of public-private organizations and networks as partnerships. Reforms in this direction are known under the heading of Joined-up governance (UK), National Performance Review (USA) and Neue Steuerungsmodell (Germany), and successful experience in institutionalization of market exchanges in Northern and Western Europe, especially in Denmark and the Netherlands. The new-institutional economics’ main ideas were similar to Thatcher’s politically motivated attempts to widen the discretion of politicians, which resulted in breaking down the holistic government hierarchy and introducing contracting and quasi-markets (and quasi-government units). We should also pay attention to the reactions of government bureaucracy and its beneficiary groups in their critique of NPM. Such rather political twitching occurred quite frequently in nested hierarchies, in which the core government (classical core state) played the role of the “shadow of hierarchy,” meaning that these nested hierarchies became the governance arrangements that would inevitably fail as indeterminate network arrangements. In other words, these arrangements presumed not only the division of horizontal bureaucracy into fragmented output-oriented entities, which becomes the most contradictory trend in the NPM reform practices (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011), but also a vertical reorganization of holistic public authority that would not act anymore as a self-actional holistic entity vis-à-vis civil society. Such a holistic authority usually proved extremely difficult to hold accountable to the public (Flynn 1993). As Rhodes (1988) demonstrated, this holistic authority was already dispersed into semi-autonomous institutional actors—sub-governments—and the question was how to bind it together

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into an integrated arrangement. Among the strongest responses were various forms of contracting, including “relational contracting” (Williamson 1998/1985) as one of the tools for institutionalizing such de-facto networks. This way, the relations of already autonomous output units in the holistic state bureaucracy were institutionalized as formal and inter-active relations, in which different units bear responsibility for each interim output of the policy process. In the traditional government, the user-­ beneficiary (citizen) was faced directly with a holistic bureaucracy that decided, financed, managed, did oversight etc. In a new nested pattern, the roles of decision-making and financing, management, service contracting, oversight, and service provision were separated and assigned to different semi-autonomous actors, which could balance each other. Especially between contractors, service providers, and users, feedback loops were introduced. This was, at least in research results, the process of policy in which responsibility and hence also units’ autonomy could be traced back to the policy input mechanisms. In countries where new public management did not involve individual responsibility, and disciplinary mechanisms (like in the Anglo-American world), but accountability for outputs remained at the level of public organization’s units (i.e., collective autonomy and accountability), like in the Nordic Countries, these chains of responsibility and feedback supported the combination of methods of disciplinary power with the incentives for collective action and trust in the public sector (Pollitt et  al. 1997). This short and maybe untraditional interpretation of NPM would explain why public management research became in the 2000s the mainstream in the development of policy process theory. 7.4.3   The Roots from Organization Studies and Political Science In political science, it was, in practice, rather difficult to be convincing in explaining perspectives of the real-life of democratic political institutions via neo-corporatist trends and via new co-operative or trust-based network arrangements. In organizational theory in the 1970s similar turn came about in new-institutional economics in search of cooperation patterns for bridging the interdependent organizations in the spatial-territorial fields. This was not merely an exploration of the implementation of policy decisions but an attempt to promote bottom-up public agreements and joint actions between interdependent organizations. The first targeted attempt

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was made by Benson (1975, 1977), who was among the few who advanced studies of selection-neutralizing inputs from task environment in managing the life cycles of organizations (see also Aldrich and Pfeffer 1976; Crozier and Thoenig 1976). Benson developed most consistently the organization networks conception drawing on a constructivist approach to organizations. He started (in parallel with Weick [1969, 1995]) the ethnomethodological and new-institutionalist organizational theory (Mayer and Rowan 1977) to consider organizations from the processual perspective. Benson talks about the “dialectical view” in this regard, which he explicitly sees as fundamentally committed to the concept of process. The social world is in a continuous state of becoming—social arrangements which seem fixed and permanent are temporary, arbitrary patterns and any observed social pattern is regarded as one among many possibilities. Theoretical attention is focused upon the transformation through which one set of arrangements gives way to another. Dialectical analysis involves a search for fundamental principles which account for the emergence and dissolution of specific social orders. (…) An organisation as part of the social world is always in a state of becoming. (1977, pp. 3, 6)

In political and government sciences, the emergence of policy subsystems and networks was explored as a result of some dysfunctions of a system (crumbling of integrated bureaucracy or malfunctions of pluralism or neo-corporatism). The trigger in organization theory—similarly in the new-institutional economics—was the discovery of heterarchic patterns as more flexible mechanisms of organization developments in actu not via exchange but via mechanisms of assurance of inter-organizational cooperation like domain consensus, ideological consensus, positive evaluation, and work coordination (Benson 1975). Benson’s theory had a strong following in the USA in the studies of collaborative networks in public management (Hudson 2004; Keast et al. 2013), although those developments do not have Benson’s initial strong emphasis on policy coordination (Benson 1982). However, Benson’s works remain largely unnoticed by developments in Europe (Hudson 2004), where at the same time and on the same disciplinary basis (organization) studies of promising stream of policy coordination as network strategy were triggered (Scharpf 1978, 1997; Rhodes 1988). This first period of network studies was continued with a more extensive agenda

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(see Sørensen and Torfing 2007), which largely relies on the studies developed at the Erasmus University Rotterdam (Kooiman 1993) and forms the basis for the current conceptual developments regarding interactive policy-making. For this reason, the natural starting point for the next generation is studies of networks governance, with specific emphasis on policy networks (Klijn, 1997, 2000, 2015; Teisman and van Buuren 2012; Teisman et al. 2009; Torfing et al. 2012). 7.4.4   Multi-Level Governance and/as Network Governance We emphasize the importance of this stream in this chapter and the next one in reconsidering the very concept of the policy process. Implementation studies demonstrated a rationale for extending traditional understanding of the policy process via merging it with the focus on implementation. In a similar vein indicating the crucial role of street-level bureaucracy or even including the beneficiaries in the policy process as actors means extending the understanding of policy as a decision-making process and increasing the interactive links to be considered between stages of the linear process. However, the conception of inter-organizational networks transformed into an inter-disciplinary research stream, which within decades enhanced our understanding of how, on the one hand, collective action patterns between autonomous but internally interdependent actors emerge, function, and break (i.e., how the bottom-up institutionalization works) and, on the other hand, it changed our grasp on how the collective action for policy design is formed and how the patterned actions (in arenas, forums, etc.) contribute to the needs and frames of individual actors as well as to collective or public goods, and through that demonstrating not only instrumental effects (policy solutions) but institutional effects of the policy process. For this reason, in our view, this sub-stream contributed most to the network (heterarchic) image of governance processes in general, and the development of the iterative model of policy process in particular, especially in the versions of Koppenjan and Klijn (2004) and Klijn and Koppenjan (2000, 2015), and Teisman and van Buuren (2012). Here, policy networks are presented in two dimensions: first, as collective action arenas for producing integrated policy outputs; second, as arenas of political games, i.e., as pre-­representative mechanisms, and as a set of institutionalized collective actions, which would provide the sustained policy process at different levels and sub-governance areas.

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The trend to present government and its institutional patterns processually, as the eternal becoming and perishing of institutions, practices, or actions still faces a serious problem: it is embedded in the formal institutional context. It is necessary to find a way to fit the consistently processual (temporal) perspective with the spatially fixed formal institutions to contribute to the design and steering of real-time governance patterns. Formal institutions are organized hierarchically and follow the core state (executive) roles, using their monopoly of violence or compulsion/enforcement actions—this is a self-actional logic. Scharpf (1997) characterizes this as the “shadow of hierarchy,” whereas Jessop provides a more sophisticated nexus of these faces of government in his strategic-relational approach (Jessop 2004, 2011). In fact, this analytical need mirrors the developments of statehood in advanced democracies, which Jessop identified in the EU development context as the de-nationalization of territorial statehood, de-statization of the political system, and the internationalization of policy regimes. The least understood and studied is the first dimension. On the one hand, it means “the gradual loss of the de jure sovereignty of national states in certain respects as rule- and/or decision-making powers are transferred upwards to supranational bodies and the resulting rules and decisions are held to bind national states” (Jessop 2004, p.  64). On the other hand, it means the devolution of authority to subordinate levels of territorial organization and the development of transnational but interlocal policy making. The overall result is the proliferation of institutionalized scales of political decision making, the increasing complexity of inter-scalar articulation, and a bewildering variety of transnational relations. (Ibid, italics added.)

This is captured in the trend toward multi-level governance, which in certain interpretations enables us to consider the formal hierarchical multitier system of governing institutions as governance networks. This intent presumes “a re-scaling of the complexities of government and governance” (ibid., p. 63) and multi-level governance “involves the institutionalization of reflexive self-organization among multiple stakeholders across several scales of state territorial organization” (ibid., p. 57). To understand this process there is an analytical need to de-naturalize the internal dynamics of state and state-society relations and view them not as “order of things” but as socially constructed and redesigned via

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discourses or selected practices (Jessop 2004). For our purpose, it means reconsidering the territorial and spatial contours of institutions and organizations not as things but as processes (Tsoukas and Chia 2002; Nayak and Chia 2011). For this reason, in conceptualizing multi-level governance, we should draw on the relational conception of space in policy design (Murdoch 2006) and identify different types of spatial scales (Xiang 2013) like the formal-administrative (taxonomical) and relational-spatial (emergent) scaling of social relations. This makes it possible to explore how the formal and actually acting political institutions intermingle with self-organizing policy networks and how they would compose an integrated and dialectical whole. One of the first steps toward this analytical ensemble would entail reconsidering the institutions as phenomena designed and functioning not in physical-substantivist (topographic) space but as relational-spatial (topological) phenomena. This way, we could see institutional design as an active ordering process proceeding through temporal dimensions, clearly delineating the policy processes’ design from the inter-actional and trans-actional perspective. This makes the policy design a qualitatively different enterprise (Murdoch 2006). The concept of multi-level governance (MLG) is mainly affiliated with the studies of governance in the European Union. However, the origins of this conception are in studies of network-type arrangements of intergovernmental (central-local) relations (Rhodes 1981; Clark 1984). This concept was elaborated by Kjellberg (Kjellberg, Reschova, Sootla 1994), who aimed to reconsider the logic of fixed and self-sufficient tiers in central-­ local relations with interdependent layers or as an integrated pattern of central-local relations (cf. Leemans’s [1970] classical typology). This concept actually insisted on developing the relational architecture in designing intergovernmental relations in post-Keynesian welfare regimes (Amnå and Montin 2000). Besides, this model presumes relational interpretation of local autonomy as the capacity of coalition building (Goldsmith 1995; DeFilippis 1999) to overcome the centralizing vector in vertical power relations in the globalizing world. Even the original study of MLG in the EU takes shape from the peculiar arrangements of intergovernmental relations in the USA and Switzerland (Marks and Hooghe 2004). As defined by Bache and Flinders, in their core work on the EU integration multi-level governance concept … contained both vertical and horizontal dimensions. ‘Multi-level’ referred to the increased interdependence of gov-

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ernments operating at different territorial levels, while ‘governance’ signalled the growing interdependence between governments and nongovernmental actors. (2004, p. 3)

According to Jessop, in multi-level governance, the logic of multiplication of hierarchical tiers would be replaced by the logic of different types of scaling and identifying of spatial identities: it is reflected empirically in the ‘hollowing out’ of the national state apparatus with old and new state capacities being reorganized territorially on subnational, national, supranational, and translocal levels. State powers are moved upwards, downwards, and sideways as state managers on different scales attempt to enhance their respective operational autonomies and strategic capacities. (Jessop 2004, p. 64)

What makes MLG a form of governance rather than just a form of intergovernmentalism is that it adopts the approach of governance “based on reflexive self-organization (networks, negotiation, negative coordination, positive concerted action) rather than imperative coordination” (ibid., p. 57). Governance is mainly concerned with “managing functional interdependencies, whatever their scope (and perhaps with variable geometries), rather than with activities occurring in a defined and delimited territory” (ibid.). So, governance is an inherently relational concept. Unlike the self-actionally understood notion of government or state, it is not referring to certain locations, resources, or territories but to ways of managing (i.e., action or process) certain interdependencies. When taken this way the European Union is a major emerging site of governance that involves a plurality of state and non-state actors on different levels who attempt to coordinate activities around a series of functional problems. Without reference to non-state as well as state actors and to functional as well as territorial issues, the multi-level governance approach would be hard to distinguish from intergovernmentalism. (…) In this respect there are two main approaches: the self-described multi-level governance approach with its primary stress on the vertical dimension of multi-level governance and a parallel body of work that puts more emphasis on its horizontal dimension through the notion of the ‘network polity’ (sometimes referred to, less fortunately, as the ‘network state’). (Ibid., italics in the original)

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The MLG conception has much more profoundly than previous approaches managed to overcome the top-down and bottom-up dilemma in the dimension of administrative-territorial arrangements. It enables us to present the policy process as one in which, first, processes at different policy arenas as components of public discourse, from public forums to parliamentary sessions, have differences in scale, not in kind (Law 1994). Second, the mission of the policy process is seen not only and primarily as making and enforcing decisions but as designing and reinforcing institutional patterns—or as being at the same time the institutionalization process per se. Third, we are talking not so much about actors and their choices anymore but about activities and practices promoting favorable patterns for self-realization of subjectivity. Together with the five previous shifts in policy theories, the MLG approach enables us to present policy processually as proceeding in an indeterminate and largely unpredictable context, which could be interpreted as failure, but also as the context for enactment and innovations—the topics we take up in Chap. 9. However, this presumes reflection on the very issues of policy-relevant knowledge and truth, which we discuss in the next chapter.

Notes 1. A term sometimes used to highlight the specificity of network form of governance that is neither anarchy of markets, nor hierarchy of state—see Chap. 3. 2. To the “wider interpretation” of governance, Foucault’s notion of “governmentality” as “conduct of conduct” (Foucault 1982) has had quite separate, but increasingly influential impact on the Anglo-American governance literature (see Bevir 2010b).

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CHAPTER 8

Speaking Truth to Power? The (Political) Constitution of Knowledge and Rationality in Policy-Making and Governance

Identifying problems, solutions, measures to reach them and, of course, their constitutive interdependence entails knowledge/truth about the socio-political reality. But what is knowledge? What is truth? Can we “speak truth to power”? (cf. Wildavsky, 1979) Or are truth and knowledge themselves constituted politically? In this chapter, we move beyond the subversion of the self-actional image of the normative policy theory grounded in neutral knowledge and partial politics to an understanding of knowledge that states that knowledge about reality is, at the same time, an intentional changing or enactment of reality. Or in other words: knowledge is ontologically political (Mol, 1999; Law & Urry, 2004). As we see, even in positivism, for knowledge to be effective, it must be enacted or at least virtually adapting the reality it faces. This also means that policy-relevant knowledge that aspires to become a basis for such enactment should emerge out of practice, which is an open process of collective ordering of the social and a way of harnessing its contingency. The question is, how can we explicitly realize this need and promote social innovation via the policy process? Suppose we ignore this need and try to insist on our purely mental reflections to make subjectively defined action plans for assuring predictable outputs. In that case, the policy results are either unforeseen or unable to achieve any change, remaining at the level of political rhetoric or building up reified patterns of symbolic powers.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_8

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This presumption is important when the policy process is considered primarily an instrumental activity to produce a kind of product for individual or collective consumption (public good). In this case, it is understood as a joint practice of interactions and transactions of developing social (institutional) premises for self-organization (and reflection) or institution-building as a process. For instance, we could interpret internal security policy as the actions of political elites of establishing and enforcing restraints for ensuring specific forms (or checking deviant forms) of behavior. However, the purpose of this policy would be the development of an institutional context (meaning space, communicative capacity, behavioral opportunities), which would ensure the expected, agreed upon and guaranteed patterns of conduct by the actors in various forms (values, conventions). In the previous chapter, we arrived at an understanding that the role of public policy is not only and—in modern times not primarily—to find instrumental solutions to emerging problems such as dysfunctions or contradictions of social life. Rather, its purpose is mainly to develop through the discourses and diverse capacities of all societal actors and their coordinated actions to form collective agreements and to develop the institutional context for societal innovations at all levels and dimensions. This way, policy complements governance aimed at ensuring social order and stable behavioral patterns, as well as providing instrumental public goods (security, infrastructure) as premises for the realization of the core mission of policy. In this chapter, we intend to demonstrate how mainstream policy theories (discourses) evolved in finding answers to the following questions. What is the role of knowledge in ensuring the realization of this extended or new mission of policies in general? What kind of knowledge (and how) are we capable of developing and using for this purpose? What mechanisms of changes in citizens’ (actually all actors’ including experts’) expectations and understandings exist that enable them to be involved in the policy process without which policy processes could not be promoted and outputs achieved?

8.1   Sources and Roles of Knowledge in the Policy Process: From Knowledge as Representation to Knowledge as Active Ordering While the self-actional normative model of policy presumed that policy design should focus on the anticipation of the consequences of contemplated actions (Rittel, 1979, p.  38), the transformation toward

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inter-­actional understanding of the production of policy-relevant knowledge presumes increasingly considering thinking (knowledge formation) and acting as mutually conditioned poles. Lindblom (1959, 1979) moves toward such understanding by arguing that knowledge, its situatedness in the context, and practice are mutually constitutive. In this section, we first follow how the initial dilemma between scientific analysis as a basis for policy decisions and normative judgments (values, ought-to-be judgments) or, even more narrowly, particularist judgments (political statements) was gradually dissolved as a false problem. In 1979 Aaron Wildavsky published the book Speaking Truth to Power: The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis in the USA. This book was published in the next year (1980) in the UK, where the phrase “Speaking Truth to Power” (which was, in fact, a quaker slogan) was omitted. This omission makes sense in view of certain understandings of knowledge and truth. At this point, it is easier to follow the consequent logic of discourse on policy-relevant knowledge, which departs from the normative model, in which knowledge and politics were considered mutually exclusive sources and ways of intelligence. In the normative policy model, knowledge was considered in the Cartesian traditions as a correct representation of an independent reality, or more precisely, “as the inner depiction of an outer reality” (Taylor, 1995, p.  3). This understanding diverges from the Aristotelian position that Charles Lindblom and Herbert Simon draw from in their debate in the 1950s: “when we come to know something, the mind (nous) becomes one with the object of thought … being informed by the same eidos, the mind participates in the being of the known object, rather than simply depicting it” (ibid.). The aforementioned debate between Simon, who looked at the issue from the organizational and, more precisely, from the psychological perspective, and Lindblom, who explored the process from the standpoint of pluralist political science with an obvious inclination toward pragmatist methodology, was the dominant driver in the theoretical development of policy-relevant knowledge in the 1950s. We will now have a closer look at this debate. 8.1.1   Herbert Simon and the Problem of (Bounded) Rationality Simon strongly believes in the purpose and the possibility of rational actors and knowledge as a normative ideal. But he also believes that human

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behavior and decisions could be rational in different ways and dimensions and that those dimensions are not reducible to each other. Thus, for him, the full rationality is a falsely posed problem. In 1957 he concluded: [An i]ndividual can be rational in terms of organisation’s goals only to extent that he is able to pursue a particular course of action, he has a correct conception of action and he is correctly informed about the conditions surrounding this action. Within the boundaries laid down by these factors his choices are rational—goal oriented. Rationality, then, does not determine behaviour. Within the area of rationality behaviour is perfectly flexible and adaptive to abilities, goals, and knowledge. Instead, behaviour is determined by the irrational and non-­ rational elements that bound area of rationality. The area of rationality is the area of adaptability to these non-rational elements. (…) Hence, administrative theory must be concerned with the limits of rationality, and the manner in which organisation affects this, limits the person making a decision. (Simon, 1964/1957, p. 241)

For this reason, Simon’s conception of rationality is far from being unilaterally interpreted because Simon tries not to unravel the rationality issue in economic sciences. This makes his statements from the Aristotelian point of view a bit confusing. In different sources, he uses different terminology and focuses depending on the disciplines he engages with but also based on the development of his own theoretical concepts. Comparing psychology and economics, Simon points out that the term, ‘rationality,’ has had an essentially different meaning in economics from its meaning in cognitive psychology. Traditionally, economists have been interested mostly in what I [Simon] call “substantive rationality,” while cognitive psychologists have been interested in a quite distinct concept which I [Simon] shall call ‘procedural rationality.’ (1976, p. 65)

In Administrative Behaviour, Simon characterizes the normative expectations of the economic man: [The e]conomic man has a complete and consistent system of preferences that allows him always to choose among the alternatives open to him; he is always completely aware of what these alternatives are; there are no limits on the complexity of the computations he can perform in order to determine which alternatives are best; probability calculations are neither frightening nor mysterious to him. (1997, p. 87)

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This is his famous definition of an economic man “who deals with the ‘real world’ in all its complexity” (1997, p. 119). This is the claim of economic theory to complete scientific rationality. However, Simon asserts programmatically: Behavior is substantively rational when it is appropriate to the achievement of given goals within the limits imposed by given conditions and constraints. Notice that, by this definition, the rationality of behavior depends upon the actor in only a single respect—his goals. Given these goals, the rational behavior is determined entirely by the characteristics of the environment in which it takes place. (…) The first assumption is that the economic actor has a particular goal—e.g., utility maximization or profit maximization. The second assumption is that the economic actor is substantively rational. (1976, p. 66)

In his article on political science “Human Nature in Politics,” he deliberates in the same terms: The term “rational” denotes behavior that is appropriate to specified goals in the context of a given situation. If the characteristics of choosing organism are ignored, and we consider only those constraints that arise from external situation, then we may speak of substantive or objective rationality, that is, behavior that can be judged objectively to be optimally adapted to the situation. (1985, p. 294)

From the Aristotelian point of view, this knowledge is not rational in the scientific sense as conceiving the universal patterns of reality as they truly are, but it is a concealed vision of instrumental practical reason or techne (skills, craft), which has a rather limited but universal normative purpose: to find optimal means to reach the final objective (economic gains) through adapting to the challenges posed by the context of action. Simon identifies (1996, p. 25) economic rationality as “adaptive artifice.” However, “in applying the theory of objective rationality to real-­ world behavior, either uncertainty must be ignored, or auxiliary postulates must be provided to define the expectation-forming process” (1985, p. 296). Thus, “the picture is far too simple to fit reality” (1996, p. 25). The other concept of rational behavior (and decision-making) is based on the presumption of the real sentient actor and draws on the theory of cognitive psychology. Hence, Simon relies on the methodology of empirical behaviorism, and moves to his famous notion of bounded rationality:

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if we take into account the limitations of knowledge and computing power of the choosing organism, then we may find it incapable of making objectively optimal choice. If, however, it uses methods of choice that are as effective as its decision-making and problem-solving means permit, we may speak of procedural or bounded rationality, that is, behavior that is adaptive within the constraints imposed both by the external situation and by the capacities of the decision maker. (1985, p. 294)

In The Sciences of the Artificial, he summarizes this difference succinctly: Economics illustrates well how outer and inner environment interact and, in particular, how an intelligent system’s adjustment to its outer environment (its substantive rationality) is limited by its ability, through knowledge and computation, to discover appropriate adaptive behavior (its procedural rationality). (1996, p. 25)

However, also with this type of rationality, there is some confusion (see de Bruijn et al., 2010, p. 32) which comes from alternating uses of the concept of procedural rationality (as following certain rules and methods) and computational capacity as a mechanism of cognition. This confusion also comes from the origins of that terminology: The terms “procedural” and “substantive” were, of course, borrowed from constitutional law, in analogy with the concepts of procedural and substantive due process, the former judging fairness by the procedure used to reach a result, the latter by the substance of the result itself. In the same way, we can judge a person to be rational who uses a reasonable process for choosing; or, alternatively, we can judge a person to be rational who arrives at a reasonable choice. (Simon, 1985, p. 294)

Thus, procedural rationality (which Simon does not use in Administrative Behavior in the 1997 edition) should be understood in the sense of following correct rules or procedures of thinking. In Administrative Behavior, Simon uses the concept of procedural coordination vs substantive coordination in organizations (1997, pp. 186–191). In our view, one could not come to a proper exegesis of Simon’s conception and contribution unless we do not take into account at least three background factors (cf. Parsons, 1995, p. 273). First, at the roots of Simon’s conception lies his distinction between theories of the firm (F-theory) and those of organizations (O-theory).

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Simon’s (1964/1957) vision starts by delineating the F-theory of the economic logic of the business firm, in which only variables of the environment (but not its uncertainty) were limiting the means-ends practical rationality. This is often called full rationality, and this is a general presumption of rational choice theory. The nature of this presumption is that the firm’s manager has full control over the variables of the internal environment (i.e., over the human resources) and only a need and a certain capacity to adapt to external environment conditions (1964/1957). Hence the metaphor of economic man was extremely impactful and, presumably, a part of the overall political-ideological discourse of the advantages of market economy in the context of democracy (as several decades later in the practices of the NPM), especially in the context of Europe’s recovery from WWII. Simon consistently supported the normative concept of rationality in organizations (see Parsons, 1995 for an overview). At the same time, he was one of the most widely known positivists who accepted that in other contexts, even in administrative organizations, where the organization itself is the condition of rationality, this normative premise could be followed only partially (Jones, 2002). However, already in 1957, Simon questioned the empirical relevance of this assumption: Recent developments in economic, and particularly in the theory of the business firm, have raised great doubts as to whether this schematized model of economic man provides a suitable foundation on which to erect a theory—whether it be a theory of how firms do behave, or of how they “should” rationally behave. (Simon, 1964/1957, p. 241; see also Simon, 1985, 1996)

However, when Simon used the F-theory as a deductive reflection and model of economic man in the normative sense, he simultaneously developed a considerably different conception of rationality in the context of administrative organizations. For this, the O-theory is relevant. It states that organizations “which have been concerned not only with optimal solutions but with the whole set of viable solutions—that is, solutions that permit the survival of the organization,” where “the participants are generally treated in a more symmetrical fashion” meaning that they are “offered an inducement for [their] participation in the organisation. Through [their] participation, [they] make … a contribution to the organisation … [T]he optimal solutions of the O-theory bear an obvious resemblance with the solutions of non-zero sum game” (Simon, 1964/1957,

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pp. 172, 174). So, this was the prototype of an administrative organization, in which actors have absolute discretion of action because they have to consciously identify with and be loyal to the organization and be capable of consciously following its goals. In other words, these were presumed to be organizations with premises of conscious joint agreements (non-zero-sum games) or institutions. We think that from this originated the concepts and different disciplinary approaches to the rationality of economic and administrative actors. The behavior of the latter was an empirical issue of capacity in the sense of organizational decision-making as well as in the sense of the organizations ensuring a rational pattern for the individual behavior. In addition, Simon was very early affiliated with the studies of artificial intelligence (AI), and his reliance on cognitive psychology was not at all a coincidence or a matter of subjective sympathy. Hence, he emphasized computational capacity as a source of rationality. In this, Simon considers the clear advantages of perspectives of rationalization, although his primary presumption was that human capacities are rather limited. On the one hand, he emphasizes that [a]t each step toward realism, the problem gradually changes from choosing the right course of action (substantive rationality) to finding a way of calculating, very approximately, where a good course of action lies (procedural rationality). With this shift, the theory of the firm becomes a theory of estimation under uncertainty and a theory of computation—decidedly non-­ trivial theories as the obscurities and complexities of information and computation increase. (Simon, 1996, p. 27)

Moreover, he realizes that this is an increasingly different route to the very concept of rational behavior with a rather different purpose, which affiliates it with the analysis and practices of the policy process. [B]ecause psychology’s primary concern is with process rather than outcome, psychologists tend to use phrases like “cognitive processes” and “intellective processes” when they write about rationality in behavior. This shift in terminology may have contributed further to the mutual isolation of the concepts of substantive and procedural rationality. (…) Hence, procedural rationality is usually studied in problem situations—situations in which the subject must gather information of various kinds and process it in different ways in order to arrive at a reasonable course of action, a solution to the problem. (…) From a procedural standpoint, our interest would lie not in the problem solution—the prescribed diet itself—but in the method used to discover it. (Simon, 1976, p. 66, italics added)

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In this dimension, Simon’s procedural as well as computational rationality aimed at reaching scientific ideals of knowledge and its application. On the other hand the price for that pursuit of scientific ideals (methods or reasoning) is the recognition that this road could be resultative if one could rely on artificial intelligence: The search for computational efficiency is a search for procedural rationality, and computational mathematics is a normative theory of such rationality. In this normative theory, there is no point in prescribing a particular substantively rational solution if there exists no procedure for finding that solution with an acceptable amount of computing effort. So, for example, although there exist optimal (substantively rational) solutions for combinatorial problems of the travelling-salesman type, and although these solutions can be discovered by a finite enumeration of alternatives, actual computation of the optimum is infeasible for problems of any size and complexity. The combinatorial explosion of such problems simply outraces the capacities of computers, present and prospective. (Ibid., p. 68)

We already saw that Simon (1973), nevertheless, believed that artificial intelligence could supplement the limitations of human cognition in scientific (computational) analysis, including its incapacity for parallel processing of large amounts of information, which is the rationale behind administrative hierarchy (Scott & Davis, 2006). However, Simon’s reliance on empirical behaviorism enabled him to see also opportunities for the reverse: to use the specifics that emerge from the limitations of human cognition to enhance also the limitations of artificial intelligence. The latter comes from its “scientific” rationality, which is based on algorithmic patterns, but the point is to draw not only on those but also on heuristic patterns of modeling. This way, Simon not only complemented the need for scientific–algorithmic analysis (Simon & Newell, 1957) but also turned his illusions about the possibilities of AI into policy, from the principal disadvantage of human cognition into a more advanced understanding of the types and roles of knowledge and ways of its production in the post-­ modern context of contingency. This was the proto-theory of cognitive frames, on which, in the 1970s, two main opposite epistemological traditions started to develop their practical conceptions of framing, which led to the practice-based conceptions of cognitive specific social behavior (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; Goffman, 1974), and the policy process. In addition to all this, Simon’s reliance on cognitive psychology also pays attention to other limitations of cognition: the capacity of attention, information processing (serial versus parallel), short-term and long-term

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memory, and the already mentioned shortcuts in cognition, or specific forms of rationality as human rules of thumb coming largely from experience. These concepts were not developed by Simon in-depth, especially for understanding the policy process. Yet, they became key concepts for the subsequent policy process theories. In summary, we approached the main shift of Simon’s conception of policy-relevant knowledge, which not only draws on an Aristotelian understanding of the persistence of the subject of knowledge but also resulted in substantial relaxing of the representational paradigm of knowledge— the view that knowledge represents reality—and its production. This is Simon’s conception of bounded rationality and its contribution to the understanding of the practical policy process. Here we would emphasize three aspects which influenced this specific epistemology. First, how could Simon reconcile his complete belief in the possibility and normative willingness to ensure rationality while equally strongly believing that human capacities for completely rational behavior and decisions are unrealistic? For decades Simon insisted that in order to make administrative behavior rational, the context in which people are behaving and deciding should be simplified as much as possible to ensure only what is necessary for purposive action focus (Simon, 1997, p. 119; Simon & Newell, 1957, p. xxi)1: Economic man purports to deal with the “real world” in all its complexity. The administrator recognizes that the perceived world is a drastically simplified model of the buzzing, blooming confusion that constitutes the real world. [He is content with this gross simplification because he believes that the real world is mostly empty—that most of the facts of the real world have no great relevance to any particular situation he is facing, and that most significant chains of causes and consequences are short and simple.] The administrator treats situations as only loosely connected with each other—most of the facts of the real world have no great relevance to any single situation and the most significant chains of causes and consequences are short and simple. One can leave out of account those aspects of reality— and that means most aspects—that appear irrelevant at a given time. [He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation.] Administrators (and everyone else, for that matter) take into account just a few of the factors of the situation regarded as most relevant and crucial. In particular, they deal with one or a few problems at a time, because the limits on attention simply don't permit everything to be attended to at once.

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To be fair, not only empirical positivism adapts its analytical focus, but also the deductive models are doing the same. Thus, it is not correct to assert, for instance, that rational choice theory expects that actors have rational and permanent preferences since this is only their theoretical presumption. The latter could be relevant to a greater or lesser proportion of real actors, depending on the complexity of the purposes of behavior. Therefore, the correct way to put it is to say that “rational choice as a descriptive model of human behavior” (Jones, 1999, p. 297) fails, although Ostrom’s rational choice institutionalism has refuted this statement as well. This means that Simon’s behavioral theory of knowledge does not simply expect to represent reality but is actively enacting and structuring it. This makes this knowledge limited but relevant for practical needs of actors to achieve their ends by drawing on this knowledge. Besides, this epistemology de facto recognizes that there are different ways of organizing reality (or rationality) and, hence, the knowledge of reality is intentionally focused on its selection (thus, there are many other representations) or otherness for our concrete representation. We are not entirely convinced by claims that this way, Simon’s view presents reality already as a bricolage (Zittoun, 2014, p. 4). However, Simon considerably shifted the simple representational presumption, which makes the role of knowledge in the policy process more practically oriented. It contains the inter-­ actional premises because different actors would conceive the policy issue differently and thus could search for overlapping areas or work out different focuses of the policy issue. Those ideas were fully realized widely by students and followers of Simon. Secondly, several important authors (Morgan, 1986; Bendor, 2010) emphasized, that Simon himself is using the concept of bounded rationality implicitly, that it presumes a negative feedback loop on decision-­making, which is the very essence of the principle of satisficing. Thus, political choices are made based on principles opposite to those that rational choice theory (choosing the better option) and Simon’s normative ideal presume. From this also, the simplification of ex ante analysis proceeds because the first acceptable version of options is chosen, and also because that knowledge should not precede a policy action completely, as the options could be developed sequentially, from more generic to specific patterns. Third, the role of Simon’s psychological concepts has been groundbreaking, especially in understanding the dimension of knowledge and policy. Simon himself, however, did not develop them but formulated the basic issues which these concepts should give for policy analysis.

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We are now coming to the other side of the debate on rationality. Simon focused on the demonstration of cognitive limits of rational decision-­making (and behavior) and on making it ‘more rational.’ Charles Lindblom, on the other hand, focused on the specifics of the policy process (the shortage of resources and time, multiplicity of actors, etc.) and on its political nature, which determines what knowledge is possible and relevant for making policy decisions and how to produce and manage this knowledge. Thus Lindblom remains focused on the decision-making process and the policy substance (or development of adequate policies). Still, he tried to analyze how this process should be organized, including providing or producing knowledge for decision-making. Although Simon’s and Lindblom’s, differences are mostly at the forefront in the literature, we try to follow their complementarities by focusing in more detail on Lindblom’s pluralist perspective in the next subsection. 8.1.2   Lindblom Against Professional Social Inquiry: “Muddling Through” the Plurality of Policy-Relevant Knowledge As a pluralist, Lindblom considered policy-making a political process from the beginning, i.e., he actually developed a processual understanding of policy. Lindblom’s primary concern was that a policy process should have some output, even when the output is simply sustaining the process. He relied on the pluralist assumptions of a fragmented decision process and presumed a high diversity of actors with various interests and capacities. He reflected on how to design the policy process in which politically partial participants could balance the process. Thus, the larger purpose and task of policy-making was primarily balancing and complementing the diversity of society. This would restrain reaching fast outputs but would surely dispel erroneous or unacceptable ones. However, for Lindblom, the politicization of policy and its incrementalism was turned into advantages, and he consciously promoted them, especially when it became evident that the pluralist presumption of checks and balances does not work in real life. So, Lindblom (1977) was soon disappointed in the opportunity of building up such balances in real life and turned openly toward the pragmatist view of problem-solving in the policy process, which should be as open as possible. Related, Lindblom, contested already in his seminal “The Science of ‘Muddling Through’” (1959) the rational-scientific (rational-­ comprehensive or root) method of policy-making because it is not only

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time-consuming but may result in subjectivism and concealed politics (i.e., civil service, experts) during its long and non-transparent process, especially when policies are complex and interdependent. Instead, he proposed a successive limited comparison—the so-called branch method— which presumes the choice among already known policies “that differ in relatively small degree from policies presently in effect. Such a limitation immediately reduces the number of alternatives to be investigated and also drastically simplifies the character of the investigation of each” (ibid., p.  84). This was an actual cause for incremental policy, which attracted strong criticisms of Lindblom from the conservative political camp.2 Policy should be incremental, based on knowledge and experience from previous decisions, and thus not offer radically different ideas to minimize risks of errors and solutions detrimental to somebody’s interests. Besides, ways of producing that knowledge should also be based on simple methods not only because of shortage of time and research capacity but also because of transparency of that information, because it should be easily communicated not to create suspicions of withholding and cheating. The decisions should be broken down into smaller and simpler parts to reduce complications in achieving consensus. As a result, the knowledge relevant to competent decisions is becoming technically rather simple and oriented largely toward experience and learning. Lindblom argues that knowledge from the analysis of facts and proofs is of conclusive and complex character and provided frequently ex ante, whereas knowledge that comes from different kinds of evidence and is achieved via argumentation is open knowledge (1979, pp.  91–93). Lindblom warned that Professional Social Inquiry (PSI) would provide only one kind and usually rather abstract and non-contextual knowledge. In addition, PSI provides (1979, pp.  56–58) the final (“ready-made”) knowledge for its application. In other words, it de-problematizes policy problems. But in Lindblom’s framework, there is a strong presumption that every knowledge is not only contestable but also fallible. Thus the emergence of policy-relevant knowledge should be the process of successive approximation that would also enable it to correct and confirm its accuracy in the course of practical policy implementation (1979, p. 14). The reference to previous practices is one of the possibilities to do that. Besides PSI, there are other forms of knowledge production that are not only simple and open (accessible for the majority) but also make “quick and dirty” analyses for policy advocacy in the decision-making process possible. Those are disjointed incrementalism, successive approximation,

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crisis decision-making, bottleneck breaking, satisfaction, routinization patterns, etc. (1979, pp. 77–78). Lindblom also realizes that sophisticated knowledge from limited sources would concentrate considerable powers in the hands of professional experts and—relying on the rhetoric of competence—diminish the role of other policy input channels. Below we demonstrate how professional analysts and advisers are turning to advocacy positions not only from the scientific point of view (belonging to epistemic communities) but also from the angle of administrative politics in representing certain organizational interests and values. Hence, also the researchers are becoming political actors in the process and should be involved similarly with other actors arenas. Thus Lindblom summarizes: “When PSI is provided only to help participants in an interactive process to play their parts, it is easy to distinguish it from PSI that made frontal attack on problems on the supposition that is to be solved wholly analytically not interactively” (1979, p. 60). Hence Lindblom steps into a new problem field in assessing the relevance of knowledge in the policy process. Single facts and proofs of causal links are abstract knowledge for policy-makers because single issues are linked with many others. For this reason, policy actors should consider different kinds and types of evidence (as Dunn later [1981] demonstrated) and concretize these in the process of inter-active argumentation. Thus, the decision process is ontologically political not because of the diversity of the participants but because of the inter-active style of knowledge production. Lindblom’s main messages were that knowledge for the policy process should have different origins and be skillfully combined. Moreover, knowledge that emerges from the inter-active policy process enables more legitimate and firmer consensus. This orientation allows us to explore how constitutive knowledge develops throughout the policy process. This position is rather close to the trans-actional presumption that policy-relevant knowledge is emerging out of practice (Cook & Wagenaar, 2012). Therefore, Lindblom’s idea about a need for multiple sources of policy-­ relevant knowledge and inter-active ways of their production was one of the core ideas of the argumentative turn to which we now turn. 8.1.3   The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis The argumentative turn (Fischer & Forester, 1993) started to consolidate constructivist approaches to the policy process. Fischer (1990, 2006, 2007) draws on the innovative research of Dunn (1981) and Majone

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(1989), whose approach, in turn, was based on Toulmin’s (1958) theory of argumentation. Fischer, however, considered this process as a multi-­ layered process of producing policy-relevant knowledge, which should combine both empirical analysis and reasoning, and normative inquiry. Fischer and Forester (1993) had doubts about pure methodologies, including methods of normative argumentation developed by the schools of ideal systems design of Churchman and Ackoff. Instead, he proposed a model in which knowledge production is seen as a discursive process combining data and reasoning based on different methodologies and methods. He distinguishes four levels of generation of policy knowledge (evaluation) as discourse. The first level is the technical-analytical discourse or program verification, which focuses on analyzing facts and variables and relies mainly on positivist data analysis of the efficiency and effectiveness of single policy outputs. Second, a contextual discourse or situational validation should identify the relevance of different policy goals and outputs to the problem situation as an integrated and dynamic whole. This analysis presumes the use of very different research methods. A macro-level analysis follows these micro-level knowledge productions. Third, using discourse as societal vindication to identify instrumental or contributive values for society as a whole, e.g., impacts on other policies and sectors, distribution of benefits and burdens, and possible unanticipated/unexpected outcomes. This analysis is considerably overlapping with the arguments on the core values in the advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier, 1999, p. 133). Thus it is possible to reveal the principal tensions or compatibilities of the policies of the day and avoid their controversies. Fourth, the normative discourse, which enables us to identify the fit or compatibility of policy outcomes with the long-term development of a system, and an assessment from that viewpoint on whether there are relevant qualitatively different approaches. However, this policy knowledge production model is also highly relevant to the overall enhancement of the scope of the policy process. First, Elinor Ostrom (1999, pp. 59–60; 2005, pp. 2014–16), based on similar logic, identified the levels of institutionalization of actions in community-­ building. At the lowest level, there are agreements on operational rules, which are established and enforced immediately by actors. But these agreements are made and enforced relying on arenas of establishing collective choice rules. At the third level, constitutional rules are elaborated at arenas as guidelines for working out and amending the collective choice rules. Above these rules are metaconstitutional principles/rules that

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determine the framework for constitutional rules. For Ostrom, these are at a rather theoretical level, actually the public discourses over basic values in society. These levels are in tune with the three orders of governance as distinguished by Kooiman (2003). Jessop summarized them as follows: First-order governing is directly oriented to problem solving and, for Kooiman, comprises the ensemble of governance forms ranging from hierarchy to self-governance; it is evaluated in terms of its effectiveness. Second-­ order governing occurs when attempts are made to modify the institutional conditions of problem-solving when they seem outdated, dysfunctional or harmful to governance and is evaluated in terms of legitimacy. Third order governance, which Kooiman also calls metagovernance, involves efforts to change the broad principles that affect how governance occurs and to give it a clear normative rationality. (2011, p. 110)

Thus the logic of knowledge (and meaning) production, institutionalization, and governance are linked and are exploring different dimensions of the same processes when we speak about innovations in governing. But who should govern, given the changing understanding of policy-relevant knowledge? Can there be policy experts in the first place, if we are talking about governing wicked problems? These questions prompt us to briefly reflect on the changing understanding of policy experts.

8.2   Knowledge, Truth, and Experts In the period when the normative or textbook understanding of the policy process prevailed, policy analysis was considered a distinct and preceding stage in the process of governance and the exercise of authority: It was hoped that central policy review agencies in government, not being committed to existing programmes, would be better placed to review their contribution to the achievement of policy goals, and similar hopes were held of policy units in functional departments. (Colebatch, 2009, p. 137)

It was expected that experts with knowledge of scientific methods could analyze policy options and lay out the optimal choice. It would be “speaking truth” first of all to top officials before they make the final decisions. The preferred policy advisers were generalists who enjoyed very high status in the governing process. However, policy advice became fashionable, and the demand for professional advisers increased rapidly. For this reason,

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their status is dispersed depending on offices and levels of government hierarchy. This resulted in a decreased role of advisers in organizations for top officials, as well as in increasing discretion of officials in concrete domains to take into account (or not) the carefully calculated general advice in making choices. So, the eternal tension between experts’ rigorous but inescapable truth and the flexible and long-term practical calculus of officials emerged. As a result, experts have hardly been influential, even in highly technical areas like defense and finances, or pandemic diseases (as we see in the case of the US governing of COVID-19). Thus, science has been mostly used in a symbolic sense and because of links to the policy expertise at universities. Actually, we can speak here about applied research, techne in the Aristotelean sense, which has—as Simon (1985, p. 296) keeps reminding us—a strong normative component. Moreover, the government is always a set of multiple realms and actors, so decisions involving experts were always more or less a collective choice or a political process. The next step in the transformation of policy expertise was the evolution toward these patterns and roles in which actors tried sincerely to increase their functionality and usefulness, even leaving aside their natural willingness to exert maximal impact in the decision process. The knowledge that the top officials needed was not anymore “a calculation of the optimal outcome as guidance about the best way to manage an ambiguous, contested, and continuing field of activity” (Colebatch, 2011, p. 1985). The officials also started to differentiate “between analysis (seen as detached and scientific) and advising (seen as more engaged, experiential, and judgmental),” and “the conflicting parties simply used the data from the analysis as ammunition in the continuing conflict” (ibid.). Hence, experts—independent policy advisers on substantive issues— emerge in the second stage. They were numerous and affiliated with different specific fields. Experts become more familiar and are gradually socialized in certain domains. Their skills to provide general advice about choice alternatives become less needed. However, a need for general analysis and expertise always remained a high priority; but only at the very center of government. Advisers in a specific domain and at the agencies became independent advisers, who are responsible not only for best policy recommendations to their “masters” but also for the preparation of their performance in the resultative collective decision-making for their home agency or party. So, advisers should provide extensive ex ante consultations about the optimal positions for the home agency, but besides that they should know the positions and intents of other agencies on concrete

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issues. For this reason the intensity of communication of advisers with their colleagues from other agencies started to exceed even the frequency of communication with the immediate masters at the preparatory stages of the decision process. This way, advisors would start to compensate for the lack of their diminishing general competence of methods or their knowledge of overall decision-making techniques by becoming skillful in interpreting different organizational and professional cultures outside their home agency and the behavior of their masters at the decision arenas on concrete issues. Besides, these advisors increased their power potential as long-term experts in a domain (vis-à-vis the high career officials) and also because of their better knowledge of the context of decision-making, whose formation they may even tentatively influence. Because of that, politicians become more dependent on advisors in the immediate decision contexts, and the advisors become more partial and adaptive to concrete contexts of decisions. Unlike the politicians who were frequently supposed to defend the narrow interests of their domain and enter conflict with adjacent top officials as competitors, the independent area experts would develop professional networks in the course of frequent joint preparation of collective decisions with advisers for other affiliated decision agencies. So, when experts’ overall status and visibility would diminish, their bargaining position in the policy process becomes much clearer and dependent on their individual capacity and networks. The third type of role pattern of policy advisers that emerged was the strategic counsellors or providers of policy advocacy (Sabatier & Jenkins-­ Smith, 1993). This shift comes not so much from the changes in the status of experts but the changes in their skills and professional background. Advisers, on the one hand, become focused on policy advocacy in counseling their masters in political debates for achieving gains in political bargaining. Political masters, however, did not prefer comprehensive knowledge and analysis of their field anymore but expected a “quick and dirty” (Radin, 2000, p. 37) review of how to behave and argue in case of concrete issues in particular contexts. Advisers turn from back-bencher listeners at arenas to second-row participants in the decision process. For providing this kind of advice, new skills are needed: first of all, the art of argumentation, persuasion, and making expertise convincing and understandable to external constituents. All these skills presume professional background also in writing and presentational communication, and information management (Dunn, 1993). At the same time, the policy process was prone to potential miscommunication between actors and presumed more attention to the effectiveness of debates, argumentation process, and psychology of

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bargaining. Thus, at this stage, the experts had to pay extensive attention to the process design skills and experience in designing the discussion arenas. These are, first and foremost, the design and planning competencies, which, however, presume a much more diverse set of professional capacities that a single person cannot command and are presumably more dependent on personal styles—as Rittel (1979) noticed. He assessed it negatively as the absence of general competencies in methods and policy options analysis, which became useless in inter-active policy spaces and arenas: The knowledge needed in a planning problem, a wicked problem, is not concentrated in any single head; for “wicked” problems there are no specialists. The expertise which you need in dealing with a “wicked” problem is usually distributed over many people. Those people who are the best experts with the best knowledge, are usually those who are likely to be affected by your solution. Hence, ask those who become affected but not the experts. You do not learn in school how to deal with “wicked” problems. You learn something about inventory systems, about Operations Research, but not the appropriate thing to do in a particular setting of an organization. (I exaggerate deliberately). The expertise and ignorance is distributed over all participants in a “wicked” problem. There is a symmetry of ignorance among those who participate because nobody knows better by virtue of his degrees or his status. (…) There are no experts (which is irritating for experts), and if experts there are, they are only experts in guiding the process of dealing with a “wicked” problem, but not for the subject matter of the problem. (Rittel, 1979, p. 45)

Thus, Rittel noticed the trend toward the diminishing role of general expertise and an increasing need for process management experts. But by that time, the experts’ advise was not yet focused on communications and moderation of discussions, which became central also at the new formation of urban policy planning (Murdoch, 2005). The fourth type of experts is an adviser who is predominantly focused on the policy process design and the steering (Dente, 2014) at the different levels of the policy arenas. This type of adviser-expert comes to the foreground when the policy process is understood as a contingent and loosely coupled set of streams and arenas, and presumes from the expert an exercise in skillful maneuvering in a crowded terrain, involving an understanding of the participants, stances, and structured processes as well as the substance of the policy issue, with policy analysis as a more or less formal exercise that might be mobilized in support. (Colebatch, 2011, p. 1985)

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These experts should not only be skillful in designing arenas and bargaining strategies but be more capable of managing contingency and unpredictability of the policy context in general. They ought to do this through the craft of managing conflicts, bridging diversity, and bounding a variety of actors with different backgrounds and purposes into concerted and flexible patterns. This presumes already the importance of communication skills in the interpretive sense or the craft of developing joint meaning space and incentives for sustained “stop and go” bargains, as Forester (2009) demonstrated. This expertise assumes already the abilities close to those of diplomats and confessors: analysis for policy is not a technical exercise conducted in advance but part of the continuing strategic judgment of the participants, as they frame the world (and react to the framings of others) in a way that makes sense both to themselves and to other participants. This means that they must be sensitive to the different framings that are in use at any point and make the appropriate responses. (Colebatch, 2011, p. 1899)

In these roles, policy advisors become similar to policy entrepreneurs who should ensure the sustained unfolding agendas of policy communities at different levels of policy-making for their political masters. There is one important supplementary development of expertise—policy evaluations. They were initially used in ex ante estimating the feasibility of policies and ex post in assessing the general effects of policy design. As soon as policies became more complex and prone to obvious failures, and as soon as the fate of policy success became less dependent on formal decisions in the official arenas (see our previous chapter), independent evaluation became a tool for increasing political legitimacy of formal decision-makers. Policy proposals prepared at inter-active arenas became subject to external expert evaluation (impact assessment) and are decided in view of performance or output indicators set by the home agency. This way, evaluation becomes a huge business sector, an extra-governmental source of legitimacy, and creates an opportunity for depoliticization and de-problematization of issues which need institutionalization of inter-­ active policy initiatives at a frontline level. This evolution of roles of policy advice and expertise also reflects rather well in the theoretical developments in assessing the role of expertise in the policy process (Thissen & Walker, 2013), as well as the overall understanding of the role of knowledge production in the policy process.

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We approached the expertise and crafts of advisors as presumed in the inter-actional framework of the policy process. They enable policy framing and a search for sustainable consensus packets (Susskind, 2006) or mediation of intractable controversies (Schön & Rein, 1994; Forester, 2009, 2012; Bartels, 2020). This takes us closer to the trans-actional approaches to the mechanisms of the policy process, which will be one of the core dimensions of our analysis in the next chapter.

Notes 1. In the following quotation, the additions in square brackets are from (Simon, 1997) to (Simon & Newell, 1957) 2. Later, in fact, Scharpf (1997) indicated that incremental policy decisions are implemented more effectively than great sweeping reforms.

References Bartels, K. (2020). Transforming the relational dynamics of urban governance: How social innovation research can create a trajectory for learning and change. Urban Studies, 57(14), 2868–2884. Bendor, J. (2010). Bounded rationality and politics. University of California Press. Colebatch, H. (2009). Policy. Open University Press. Colebatch, H. (2011). Policy analysis. In B.  Badie, D.  Berg-Schlosser, & L.  Morlino (Eds.), International encyclopedia of political science (pp. 1893–1902). Sage. Cook, N., & Wagenaar, H. (2012). Navigating the eternally unfolding present: Toward an epistemology of practice. The American Review of Public Administration, 42(1), 3–38. de Bruijn, H., ten Heuvelhof, E. & in ’t Veld, R. (2010) Process Management: Why Project Management Fails in Complex Decision Making Processes. 2nd edition. Springer. Dente, B. (2014). Understanding policy decisions. Springer. Dunn, W. N. (1993 [1981]). Public policy analysis. Prentice-Hall. Dunn, W. N. (1993). Policy reforms as arguments. In F. Fischer (Ed.), An argumentative turn in policy analysis (pp. 254–290). Routledge. Fischer, F. (1990). Technocracy and the politics of expertise. Sage. Fischer, F. (2006). Evaluating public policy. Wadsworth Publication. Fischer, F. (2007). Deliberative policy analysis as practical reason: Integrating empirical and normative arguments. In F. Fischer, G. J. Miller, & M. S. Sidney (Eds.), Handbook of public policy analysis. Theory, politics and methods (pp. 223–226). Routledge.

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Fischer, F., & Forester, J. (Eds.). (1993). The argumentative turn in policy analysis and planning. Duke University Press. Forester, J. (2009). Dealing with differences dramas of mediating public disputes. Oxford University Press. Forester, J. (2012). On the theory and practice of critical pragmatism: Deliberative practice and creative negotiations. Planning Theory, 12(1), 5–22. Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. An essay on the organization of experience. North-eastern University Press. Jessop, B. (2011). Metagovernance. In M.  Bevir (Ed.), The SAGE handbook of governance (pp. 106–123). Sage. Jones, B.  D. (1999). Bounded rationality. Annual Review of Political Science, 2, 297–321. Jones, B. D. (2002). Bounded rationality and public policy: Herbert A. Simon and the decisional foundation of collective choice. Policy Sciences, 35, 269–284. Kooiman, J. (2003). Governing as governance. Sage. Law, J., & Urry, J. (2004). Enacting the social. Economy and Society, 33(3), 390–410. Lindblom, C. (1959). The science of ‘muddling through’. Public Administration Review, 19(2), 79–88. Lindblom, C. (1977). Politics and markets. The world’s political-economic systems. Basic Books. Lindblom, C. (1979). Still muddling, not yet through. Public Administration Review, 39(6), 517–526. Majone, G. (1989). Evidence, argument, and persuasion in the policy process. Yale University Press. Mol, A. (1999). Ontological politics: A word and some questions. The Sociological Review, 47(S1), 74–89. Morgan, G. (1986). Images of organisation. Sage. Murdoch, J. (2005). Post-structuralist geography. A guide to relational space. Sage. Ostrom, E. (1999). Institutional rational choice. In P. A. Sabatier (Ed.), Theories of the policy process (pp. 33–77). Westwood Press. Ostrom, E. (2005). Understanding institutional diversity. Princeton University Press. Parsons, W. (1995). Public policy: An introduction to the theory and practice of policy analysis. Edward Elgar Publishing. Radin, B. (2000). Beyond Machiavelli: Policy Analysis Comes of Age. Georgetown University Press. Rittel, H. (1979 [1972]). Systems analysis of ‘The first and second generations’. In P. Laconte, P. J. Gibson, & A. Rapoport (Eds.), Human and energy factors in urban planning: A system approach (pp. 35–52). Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on ‘Factors Influencing Urban Design’ Louvain-Ia-­ Neuve, Belgium, July 2–13, 1979. Sabatier, P. (Ed.). (1999). Theories of the policy process. Westview Press.

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Sabatier, P., & Jenkins-Smith, H. (1993). Policy change and learning: An advocacy coalition approach. Westview Press. Scharpf, F.  W. (1997). Games real actors play: Actor-centered institutionalism in policy research. Westview Press. Schön, D., & Rein, M. (1994). Frame reflection: Toward the resolution of intractable policy controversies. Basic Books. Scott, R. W., & Davis, G. (2006). Organizations and organizing. Rational, natural, and open system perspectives. Routledge. Simon, H. (1964/1957). Models of man: Social and rational: Mathematical essays in a social setting. Wiley. Simon, H. (1973). The structure of ill structured problems. Artificial Intelligence N, 4, 181–201. Simon, H. (1976). From substantive to procedural rationality. In T. J. Kastelein, S. K. Kuipers, W. A. Nijenhuis, & G. R. Wagenaar (Eds.), 25 years of economic theory (pp. 65–86). Springer. Simon, H. (1985). Human nature in politics: The dialogue of psychology with political science. The American Political Science Review, 79(2), 293–304. Simon, H. (1996). The sciences of the artificial. MIT Press. Simon, H. (1997). Administrative behaviour. Free Press. Simon, H., & Newell, A. (1957). Heuristic problem solving: The next advance in operations research. Operations Research, 6(1), 1–10. Susskind, L. (2006). Arguing, bargaining and setting agreement. In M. Moran, M.  Rein, & R.  Goodin (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of public policy (pp. 269–295). Oxford University Press. Taylor C. (1995). Philosophical arguments. Harvard University Press. Thissen, W., & Walker, W. (Eds.). (2013). Public policy analysis. New developments. Springer. Toulmin, S. (1958). The uses of argument. Cambridge University Press. Tversky A., & Kahneman D. (1981). The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science, 211(4481), 453–458. Wildavsky, A. B. (1979). Speaking truth to power. Transaction Publishers. Wildavsky, A. (1980). The art and craft of policy analysis. Palgrave Macmillan. Zittoun, P. (2014). The political process of policymaking. A pragmatic approach to public policy. Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 9

From De-Problematized Expert Knowledge to Politics of Critical Dialogue: Toward Process-Relational Policy Theories

Most studies which aimed to apply trans-actional approach to policy analysis and design are focused on specific and local cases (Forester, 2009; Wagenaar, 2015; Bartels, 2020; Hajer, 2003). This focus is also supported by the concluding remarks of Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 168) in their seminal article on wicked problems: “a clear-cut win-win strategy, that had the status of a near-truism, has now become a source of contentious differences among subpublics” (p. 168); and in their pessimistic diagnosis: We have neither a theory that can locate societal goodness, nor one that might dispel wickedness, nor one that might resolve the problems of equity that rising pluralism is provoking. We are inclined to think that these theoretic dilemmas may be the most wicked conditions that confront us. (p. 169)

However, trans-actional approach, which is still relatively rare in policy process theory and still has a lot of conceptual gaps, is not necessarily a particular and idealistic strategy for harnessing post-modern and local-­ peripheral policy issues, whose keywords are diversity, unpredictability, incompatibility, etc. In this chapter, based on trans-actional approach to policy-making, a crucial question for us is whether we can progress at all in developing governance strategies in the current interdependent world in which we cannot starkly distinguish between local and global policy issues. This © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_9

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indistinguishability of global/local comes from the premises of flat ontology, which is an inevitable consequence of trans-actionalism or processual sociology, whether with origins from Simmel, Tarde, or Mauss (Vandenberghe, 2018, pp.  43–44) or Deweyan/Bentleyan pragmatism (Dépelteau, 2018, p. 516) we espouse in this book. As Abbott argues in his Processual Sociology, one of the consequences of processual thinking is presuming that the common theory of “levels” of the social process—biology, personality, social structure, culture or whatever other series we may use—is fundamentally mistaken. There are no levels. Social entities and forces are not larger than individuals. They are just a different kind of pattern defined on events, which are the true substrate of the social process. (Abbott, 2016, pp. 1–2)

However, the issue of “levels” is not only a (flat) ontological issue, but also a practical question. Can current mass immigration or climate changes, as well as global pandemics and other global crises (or, in our words, wicked problems), be harnessed comprehensively by top-down interventions through various plans or turns (in other words: “levels”)? We start unfolding a possible answer to this question through, first, contesting one of the remnants of “levels” thinking in policy analysis—the policy/politics dualism. This is, in a way, an almost unavoidable step to be taken after the dismissal of the truth/politics (or knowledge/politics, expertise/politics) dualism which was the main topic of our previous chapter.

9.1   Beyond Policy/Politics Dualism In Chaps. 6 and 7 we explored the contextual as well as conceptual background for the emergence of policy/politics dualism in the normative theory of the policy process. In the latter, politics was viewed as a purely instrumental necessity, and the ideas and practices of the productive role of politics were largely absent. Thus at the early stages of policy theory, policy-making was primarily considered a scientifically grounded development for “improving the rationality of the flow of decisions” (Lasswell, 1951, p.  3), whereas governmental policy was seen as “free of many of undesirable connotations clustered about the word political; which often believed to imply ‘partisanship’ or ‘corruption’” (ibid., p. 5). In this section, we hope to demonstrate how the productive role of politics was re-­ asserted, step by step, in the policy process first of all because of the

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changes in the understanding of the very phenomenon and concept of politics. However, this reconsideration of the political started already earlier (in the 1920s) and was, in fact, neglected in the Lasswellian discourse of “policy orientation” that followed it. In the 1920s, two rather different thinkers in the USA—a journalist Walter Lippmann and a philosopher John Dewey—triggered a debate about the role of the public and its constitution in politics as a premise of democracy. The response of Dewey to the pessimism of Lippmann about ordinary citizens’ capacity for public (collective) action was titled The Public and Its Problems. An Essay in Political Inquiry. In this book, re-­ issued in 1946, i.e., in the period of the “policy orientation,” Dewey tried to renew a debate about the role of the government as a political organization, and as an instrument for the provision of public goods (1946, p. iii). He also talks about how far social life should be politicized or problematized to hold the government responsible to the people (public) for providing those goods. Both authors found that increasingly more complex issues are emerging that the government and the experts cannot manage, and their attempt to do that leads to the problems of democratic accountability. They emphasized that an organized public for doing that via politics—i.e., involvement and political constitution of the public—is necessary for a sustainable democracy. Both authors, who represented opposite ends of the spectrum of democratic politics, from radical liberal to neo-conservativism, insisted on the decisive role of the public in politics (and the need to form a public sphere). Dewey specifically emphasized (1946, p.  12) that publicness is not an opposite but a constituent of private trans-actions which impinge upon the others’ private interests, and thus should be arranged as public agreements and arrangements (ibid., 15–17) to retain justice and to ensure personal freedoms. In other words, the public and the public issues are constructions for the sake of ensuring individual liberties. Besides, as we realized by drawing on Klijn and Koppenjan (2016), politics is also a tool for avoiding technocracy’s dominance at the state power in determining governmental policies. Simultaneously, Friedrich von Hayek published his book The Road of Serfdom (1944), which draws on the “weak” version of individualism (Chia & Holt, 2009), where he argues that it is impossible to develop a government for the public without politics. In assessing the Soviet regime, which was declared to be the popular authority without politics, Hayek (as a neo-conservative thinker) wrote in his later work that

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in a planned system all economic questions become political questions, because it is no longer a question of reconciling as far as possible individual views and desires but one of imposing a single scale of values, the ‘social goal’ of which socialists ever since the time of Saint-Simon have been dreaming. (1948, p. 207)

In the “policy orientation” initiative, we can witness that the purpose of policy is to represent the “vision of the whole” (Lasswell, 1951, p. 3) and with a careful limitation of the political as a source of biased and subjective behavior. The main source of effective policy orientation was identified as neutral expertise and advice. In his article, Lasswell, however, warned against, or more precisely hinted at, the technocratic developmental construct (and garrison state) (ibid., pp. 4, 10), which could arise from the ambitions of intellectual elites to represent this whole. The question is whether this authority is in some way bounded or has accountability to those who are governed. Thus in the normative theory, an issue of political accountability of those actually involved or even dominating decision-­ making arose rather sharply (Churchman, 1972) but was not seen as a serious concern because of the presumption that a neutral-scientific position ensures this naturally. The negative image of politics as a tool in the hands of the “higher middle class” was widespread and pronounced. The most prominent were Schattschneider’s (2004 [1942], 1960) “mobilization of bias” thesis and Bachrach and Baratz’s (1962) non-decision-making theory. The pluralism-­ based conception of incremental policy-making based on political rationality (Lindblom, 1959, 1979) was seen as a conservative stance compared to the then dominant discourse of obviously self-actional normative policy theory and optimism about the possibilities provided by policy planning and large-scale social engineering. This theoretical trend actually reflected the real world of democratic politics of the mid-twentieth century. In practice as well as in empirical theory, politics was considered a mechanism of balancing the political elite of organized groups or institutions. In this world, the public (interests) were predominantly treated as an aggregation of median citizen preferences or compensating for obvious market failures. It was predominantly the focus of public policy to ensure public order and service provision. We can observe two crucial trends in the 1960–70s. On the one hand, instead of the expected emergence of a homogenous middle class, society was fragmented into multiple societal groups with peculiar interests, and

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the voices of minorities came to the forefront. On the other hand, instead of increasing the governing capacity of the welfare state, the governing apparatus also fragmented, and its coordination drawing on traditional tools of bureaucracy became highly problematic. This includes its core functions of public order as enforcing and restraining activities. The social diversity and incompatibility also challenged the traditional forms of (ensuring) the social order and universal forms of ordering. The key questions in this context were whether and how politics (and power relations) could become productive mechanisms that could utilize this actively promoted and expressed diversity; and how the policy process of making public agreements and organizing collective actions should evolve to adapt to these new circumstances. Already in the 1950s, David Easton worked out his famous model of the political system, which reconsidered the phenomenon of politics as a systemic premise of the government and the policy process (Easton, 1953, 1957). Easton considers politics and policy as interlinked dimensions of the political system. Hence, in his work, we could identify the first inter-­ actional model of policy as an emergent structure (or system). In the model, politics is predominantly recognized as a productive mechanism of system’s reproduction. On the one hand, policy was targeted to the public demands as system’s inputs, and major policy issues—as Dewey and Lippmann presumed—are constructed at least partly via public debates. Hence, Easton provides a conception of the construction of policy problems in the political process (Easton, 1957, p. 389). On the other hand, policy outputs are not only public services provided but also a basis for legitimizing governments. Thus the legitimizing feedback mechanism binds two poles, normatively considered opposites, into one process, which was not yet considered part of the policy process. In this framework, politics has acquired not only a productive role but was interpreted as a form of collective or at least aggregative action; and as a productive institutionalization of conflicts in the process of democratic government. What was even more important in this model of politics as a system was that the analytical dualism between facts and values in constructing policy issues, and more widely, in interpretations of public issues, was largely relaxed and explored processually. The very core of Easton’s theory remained, however, weakly integrated with policy theory. For instance, his works were not cited in Allison (1969), Ackoff (1971), Cohen et al. (1972), and Kingdon (1984), etc. We assume it was because Easton views policy as a decision, and he did not

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explicitly explore the space between input and output. Moreover, in the later policy theory, policy in Easton’s model was disdainfully called the “sausage factory” (Hogwood, 1987) or, more neutrally, a “black box” model (Parsons, 1995, p. 23). The second shift after Easton’s political systems theory in reconciling the policy-politics controversy also comes from political science. Theodor Lowi developed his conception of policy types, which started effectively to fill Easton’s black box of policy in the political system based on empirical studies. Lowi establishes productive linkages between policy and politics: a political relationship is determined by the type of policy at stake, so that for every type of policy there is likely to be a distinctive type of political relationship. /…/ these areas of policy or government activity constitute real arenas of power. Each arena tends to develop its own characteristic political structure, political process, elites and group relations. (1964, pp. 688–690)

Hence, Lowi’s famous statement: “policies determine politics” (1972, p. 299, italics in the original). Lowi expected (still in traditional terms) that each policy, especially its implementation, presumes the coercion of policy stakeholders, who should change their behavior to accomplish policy goals. This suspects the use of different tools of coercion or incentives, depending on how particularized/personalized are the tools of coercion/incentives. The other aspect of policy is related to the extent these tools are aimed at influencing the context (or environment) of conduct, thus not immediately influencing stakeholders, or at least not through direct compulsion. The more particularized the policy goals, the less the policy follows the formal patterns of interest representation (Daviter, 2011), and the government should rely on its resources of legitimacy. The more the policy is aimed at using remote tools (redesign of the context), the more elitist are politics and agreements to get consent (Lowi, 1964, 1972). This means that policy should be carefully planned politically in order to get implemented. This way, Lowi abandoned the concept of policy as a universal and primarily a cognitive-analytical activity or decision-making. He intends to explore how different policies should involve diverse patterns of actors (politicians and stakeholders), and hence the inter-action patterns between actors become the focus. Policy ceased to be a purely technical top-down enterprise of provision of common goods and became primarily the mechanism of formation and retaining the governing legitimacy. Vice versa, configurations of societal actors in a policy area started to determine how assertive the government could be in promoting its policy aims. One end

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of this political dynamic is substantial control of selected political actors or target groups over public policy-making (in the framework of patronage politics), thus making the patterns of vote trading policies a normality. On the other end, Lowi identifies mechanisms of institutional (constituent) policies in which the bureaucratic elite dominates policy and the policy community, and formal political actors, not to mention rank and file citizens, may be legitimately diverted to the periphery of the policy process. In a way, Easton’s black box was opened, and we can witness that political input-output mechanisms are working inside and throughout the policy process. This pertains especially to the public’s role, which is no longer seen as merely passively voting to give legitimacy to political elites to govern. We might argue that Lowi already started to coin the processual perspective of governance, although the concept of governance emerged almost two decades later. Lowi explored the governing in a set of different sub-governments, each of which has diverse and unique patterns of actors, involving traditional official political actors as well as non-official ones or groups which earlier were considered targets or subjects of politics and policy. Hence, in the framework of policy studies the “political” started to acquire a clearly productive role, i.e., it comes to be considered more than merely a zero-sum game in the contest for a legitimate place in formal authority structures. In the 1960s, the social-political context sharply changed (Hoppe, 2010). On the one hand, as Rittel and Webber convincingly demonstrated, the expected trend of welfare states with homogenous middle-­ class societies with “a rather homogeneously shared culture in which most persons would share values and beliefs, would hold to common aims, would follow similar life-styles, and thus would behave in similar ways” (1973, p. 167) did not come about. Rather, instead, the high-scale societies of the Western world [were] becoming increasingly heterogeneous. They [were] becoming increasingly differentiated, comprising thousands of minority groups, each joined around common interests, common value systems, and shared stylistic preferences that differ from those of other groups. (Ibid., italics in the original)

On the other hand, also the extensive governing apparatus fragmented and created enormous problems of coordination (Hanf & Scharpf, 1978). There was a need to reconsider the very concept of the political to ensure

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the integration of this fragmentation and diversity of different government agencies, which extends beyond the competition of elite groups for legitimate authority in formal institutions. This revision was triggered by Cobb and Elder (1971, 1972), who developed the basic framework for the theory of politics of agenda-setting, which enabled to redesign Easton’s conception of political input-output mechanisms that had become outdated due to the crisis of welfare state policies. They were transferred to policy studies’ earlier sociological work on the social construction of social problems and elaborated more thoroughly in the realist vision of agenda formation in Schattschneider’s (1960) and Bachrach and Baratz’s (1962). Cobb and Elder elaborated a model of policy agenda-setting that identifies issue characteristics as key factors in conflict expansion. In general, issues are successfully cast in terms of certain qualities—ambiguity and abstraction, social significance, long-term relevance, lack of technical complexity, and familiarity—that have greater potential for visibility and salience (Rochefort & Donnelly, 2013, p. 190). As Jones put it (2016, pp. 25, 26, italics added): it was the first systematic scholarly assessment of the pre-decisional component of the policy process—that is, that part of the process that takes place before open conflict over policy choices. (…) Politics occurred not only in an overt struggle over issues between parties, among groups, and within the formal branches of government; it also happened “primordially”.

This was an outstanding example of political analysis that was crucially different from the technical policy analysis (Rochefort, 2016, p. 36). They triggered several important developments that considerably extended the scope and depth of understanding the political dimension of the policy process. On the one hand, the scope of the concept of political input was concretized, and it was demonstrated that there were rather different sources and channels of political input to government policy agenda (Hogwood, 1987; Knoepfel et al., 2007, ch. 7). The role of the government becomes the management and combination of actors’ pressures, which increase its power resources in balancing these pressures. Furthermore, the government is presumed to build supplementary channels or restrain other channels from receiving extra legitimacy and support for its policy work. At the same time, a comprehensive understanding of the realm of political competition emerged that was not limited to political competition at formal

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institutions: actors compete for access to policy design at different stages of agenda-building, but they command asymmetrical resources and tools for eliciting an impact on government. As Rochefort comments: “from this standpoint, the picture of government was fascinating indeed: a kaleidoscope of participatory patterns ranging from very restricted to broadly inclusive that shifted not only over time, but also potentially with each new issue that came before officials” (2016, p. 35). For instance, in case of well-organized interest groups, the input politics is patterned usually as “silent corporatist actions,” which aim at and frequently would result in the unbalanced input of a single interest group into the agenda. The example of the channel of interest group politics indicates that it is possible to design substantially different policy formats, either by keeping the government open and interest group pressures transparent or by formalizing interests group access via administrative intervention, for instance, by introducing the registration of lobby organizations as in the EU (Lumi, 2014). But, to take an opposite example of the input channel, when the government intends to initiate a new policy initiative, which needs a stronger legitimation or distribution of responsibility for innovation, it should have various tools for mobilizing consultation with and support of stakeholders and beneficiaries’ groups, and give a relatively open access policy development and promote a demonstratively transparent policy process (Valner, 2018). The elaborated strategy of use and combination of such channels is the constitutive mechanism of the policy process. It presumes from the government way more sophisticated tools for political coordination than the conventional competition of actors at electoral contests for the share in formal institutions. Hence, the new realm of well-institutionalized politics emerged, where competition management turned it into a constitutive mechanism of the policy process, which extends far beyond the relatively limited period of institutional agenda-building (Zahariadis, 2016). On the other hand, Cobb and Elder (1971, 1972) gave impetus to reconsidering the very understanding of the role of policy problems in the policy process. Rittel (1979) intended to demonstrate that instead of the technocratic-scientific process of working out solutions to self-evident policy problems (or those identified by political elites), policy-making is a complex and iterative process of designing joint meaning space and continuous action program for planning policy community. Cobb and Elder remained largely in the traditional framework of problem-solution nexus. They focused on demonstrating that policy issues could be intentionally

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(using cognitive tools) or politically (using issue framing tools) constituted or reshaped as problems for political action by making or manipulating them (with the support of the constituents) into politically legitimate forms that can be included in the decision-making agenda. There are two interrelated dimensions of this intervention. The first was the realization that policy problems are not self-evident and abstract discrepancies between the existing state of affairs and the preferred future image of the state of affairs. They realized that issues should be recognized politically as meaningful foci of actions and defined and intentionally exposed as more or less similarly understood political problems. This ought to happen through different meaning-making techniques to include them into (or exclude them from) the policy agenda. Thus, while we identified the considerable extension of the political realm after the 1970s in policy theory, there is little research on how this evolution would influence the very concepts of governance and political institutions. Earlier, we analyzed the formation of policy outputs in networks which was a much more sophisticated understanding of the realization of the missions of policy compared to the understanding of it in terms of decision-making as providing solutions to problems in the normative policy theory (see Chap. 7). The network approach also considers much more profoundly the relations that emerge between self-interested but highly interdependent actors in networks when they intend to play strategic political games. In other words, politics is institutionalized in policy networks. There are various ways to grasp this conceptually—a topic to which we now turn.

9.2  Institutionalization of Politics in Policy Networks Klijn and Koppenjan (2016) provide a sophisticated framework for conceptualizing political games in networks and networks composed of different arenas, venues, forums, etc. In other words, they offer a kind of institutionalist focus on networks. This approach is definitively not self-­ actionalist because there are multiple and interdependent actors who rely not only on individual strategic actions (which are mediated by frames) and it also draws on much more sophisticated accounts to, at least partly, follow the strategies of sustainable collective actions. Taylor (1995, pp. 171–172) gives an analogy of those relations by pointing to sawing

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and dancing as images of the dialogical dimension of inter-active political actions. So, in networks, inter-actions should be designed in some dimensions as a positive-sum game. Otherwise, the promotion of individual strategies will easily result in the “dialogue of the deaf” and impasses, leading to a negative-sum game for all. Thus political games should include some support for the promotion of individual strategic aims, such as joint activities, which support the coordination of action patterns and compensate for temporary losses which could emerge because of the need to continue the game, and of course, invest some resources to the reconciling of conflicts and avoiding impasses. This brought politics back to all stages of the policy process. Still, the political (and policy) should be read rather differently now: as the creation of the context for positive-sum games and, even more importantly, games that are held not only in uncertain environments but also in loosely coupled patterns and have blurred boundaries. This means that a likely outcome of the game is network failure or governance failure, and governing this failure (failure governance in our terms—see Chap. 4) becomes a central focus of the politics and policy-making in networks. The failure should not necessarily be considered a kind of accident or dissolution of social ordering but should be understood as a pathway to new opportunities. Because the policy process ceased to be considered a one-shot operation and, instead, became iterative, and because the networks are overlapping, it enables drawing on the contingencies as a source of constitutive (not cognitive and reactive) policy learning, which opened up new avenues for innovation. When the phenomena of impasse or stagnation indicate the dead-ends in networks, then failures presume simply a possibility of a new lap in the iterative process and presumably a different route in developing policy outputs. In fact, from the trans-actional point of view, metagovernance (as discussed in Chap. 4) presumes that inputs and outputs are continuous processes constituting authoritative and legitimate decisions. In the case of network organizing, which is simultaneously political organizing, the relations should be continuously reproduced as patterns of agreements (negotiated orders), which last only because of ad-hoc consent or conflict solutions, or the other instruments of metagovernance (Sørensen & Torfing, 2007; Torfing et al., 2012, Chap. 7). Hence, we approach the identification of revised understanding between failure governance in networks and metagovernance on the one hand, and the classical

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representative institutions, on the other. Klijn and Skelcher (2007) offered four versions of argumentation on this important issue. First, the incompatibility thesis expects that governance networks would contest the legitimacy of representative institutions and cannot take over their policy-making (decision-making) roles because members of formal institutions represent the electorate’s diverse interests/views proportionally. Besides, there are different mechanisms of accountability of representative institutions that the network type of relations does not have. Sørensen (2002) indicated that representative government institutions are clearly layered with defined boundaries and that the network type (heterarchical) arrangements blur not only the tiers of government but also its different sectors. This is exactly what happened in the arrangements of multi-level governance and with the emergence of huge forms of hybrid organizations in public and private spheres managed by boards (Rainey, 1997). The second thesis is that policy/governance networks would provide complementary mechanisms of representation of constituents as well as much more diversified and permanent input-output links with society. Public policy in modern society is a multi-layered process, which presumes the use of classical policy instruments (enforcement of laws) or mechanisms of disciplinary power which is backed by hegemonic control. At the same time, public policy is increasingly targeted at public goods and services, which in turn aims to meet individual needs and could be developed at the front-line level. These public policies could be formed and implemented only via network mechanisms where the representative institutions and government could provide a “shadow of hierarchy” in case of policy failures, i.e., incapacity to harness failure governance. Third, this dilemma could be interpreted as a transition period from the self-actionalist state-centric government to inter-actionalist network governance which presumes governance to consist of horizontally as well as vertically (multi-level governance) decentered and loosely coupled patterns. Tensions between those different formations of governance would result in additional and mutually exclusive modes of harnessing policy inputs as well as outputs. These new patterns of interactions between networks and formal institutions supplement the traditional Eastonian input-­ output model of democratic governance. Moreover, the time lag in formal input-output could not follow the high volatility of processes and innovations, so the policy should, at least in certain areas, become much more dynamic and diverse so that problems and solutions, inputs and outputs

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and values of constituents may become articulated “separately, but not as being separate” as the dictum of our process-relational approach reads (see Chap. 3). This insight can also be gained from Klijn and Koppenjan: “because so many values are at stake and have to be reconciled, and because resources and knowledge are dispersed that judgements and the general interest have to be constructed during the policy-making process” (2016, p. 213). Inter-active policy networks may involve more numerous and different actors at all stages of the policy process than any other participatory mechanism (Fung, 2004; Fung & Wright, 2001). The links of those new patterns of policy-politics nexus with democratic institutions are still a contested issue. This, presumably requires reconsidering the very concept and practices of politics as we saw above, metagovernance, as well as “democratic anchorage” (Sørensen & Torfing, 2005). The fourth way of intermingling policy networks and democratic representative institutions would be purely instrumental. This would be a way for political elites to increase their influence and refrain from responsibilities for everyday public services. This would also be a prototype of a new “layered cake” pattern of democratic governance in a complex world, which accommodates the decreasing role of democratic states and the increasing of the self-organizing capacity of civil society. The first of these dilemmas would be convincing if we still insisted that Easton’s model of policy input-output mechanisms is the only and most efficient way of forming public will and accountable governing in the name of legitimate electoral inputs. Klijn and Skelcher (2007) also indicated the issues of (formal) power of legitimate political elites. Their ways of identifying general public interest and the autonomy/neutrality of public services are indeed the cornerstones of traditional political institutions. Those issues (precisely their identifications) are starting to look rather anachronistic from the perspective of inter-actional theory of the policy process. In the twenty-first century, we could even assert the reverse: relying only on formal institutions of democracy would enable establishing and legitimizing a rather unresponsive and suppressive authoritarian (style of) government. The “dictatorship of the law” as well as sovereign rights of a state in its territory, would serve the elitist rule at the expense of citizens’ actions in settling their specific and new born issues. Instead, the latter can be identified through self-organizing at the level of collective actions in networks, which, in fact, may exceed the scope of nation state jurisdictions. In addition, we should presuppose that politics and institutions organized from the trans-actional perspective would acquire rather

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new and formerly invisible forms (Law & Urry, 2004). We cannot insist either on the erosion of democratic politics by governing networks or expect that different network arrangements would replace the classical representative politics and bureaucracy because these would work (and inter-act) in invisible but intersecting topological space. We would expect rather that it is necessary analytically to design loosely coupled forms of inter-active policy mechanisms based on phenomena like “the shadow of hierarchy,” “metagovernance,” “multi-level governance,” and “informal institutionalization” which fit better with the existing formal institutional frameworks and practices. This analytical challenge has already emerged in inter-active governance as a cornerstone of modern patterns of effective public policy and institutions. In our view, re-locating the focus toward process-based or trans-actional understanding of governing also presumes not merely extending the concept of the political or institutionalization (Skelcher et al., 2005; Wagenaar & Wenninger, 2020) but also reconsidering some of the basic premises of government as governance. Our proposition in this book is to distinguish between governance as a process of problematization and de-­ problematization of policy problems (Chaps. 4 and 10). We have already discussed various ways to address this process like, for instance, the conceptions of discursive development of policy problems, which provide already trans-actional foci on problem-identification in the policy process (“What’s the Problem Represented to be?” [Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016]); and, of course, the pragmatist conception of iterative-cyclical problem inquiry (Strübing, 2007; Elkjaer & Simpson, 2011) leads us to that direction too. One additional fruitful way to conceptualize this process of problematization and de-problematization is in terms of issue framing, to which we now turn in more detail.

9.3  The Political Constitution of Policy Through Issue Framing A frame could be considered a specific cognitive formation either as a model of the individual mind (cognitive heuristics), as in empirical behavioralism (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) or as a practical worldview in constructivist theories (Rein & Schön, 1996; van Hulst & Yanow, 2016; see also Klasche & Selg, 2020). However, framing is also understood as a macro-level concept which presumes that reality is always represented via

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limited and specific focus and actors’ attention is a limited and serial process constraining the reception of reality. Herbert Simon (1957, 1985) developed the concept of active formation of representation of reality via its intentional and practical simplification (bounded rationality), which by default presumes the “otherness,” or an infinite number of other ways of focusing, simplification, and discovery. His psychological conception of rationality and cognition assumes that the focus of attention is a major determinant of goals and values that will influence decisions (Daviter, 2011, p. 33). Through the intentional simplification of the selection and exposure of an aspect of reality and the direction of attention of actors to its different dimensions or fragments, policy coordinators or framers could take into account the limitations (bottlenecks) of human capacity of serial processing of information: the existence of these narrow limits on the span of human attention is a principal reason why we must distinguish between the “real” situation and the situation as perceived by the political actors when we try to apply the rationality principle to make predictions of behavior. People are, at best, rational in terms of what they are aware of, and they can be aware of only tiny, disjointed facets of reality. (Simon, 1985, p. 302)

This sets the scene for framing in politics, where “framing refers to the process of selecting and emphasising aspects of complex issues according to an overriding evaluative or analytical criterion” (Daviter, 2011, p. 33). This is a cognitive game of manipulating the images of reality and information available to develop diverse configurations of the visible part of the issues and reconfiguring the support of the matters from various arrangements of actors whose preferences could change depending on the focus of the exposure of an issue. This theory also changes the understanding of the very logic of forming policy decisions. It provides an effective alternative to the predominantly cognitivist understanding of the mechanisms of the formation of policy choices either through reasoning, argumentation, or deliberations thorough discourse, providing instead a completely political exploration and psychological techniques for how collective decisions could be formed in actual policy processes. This model of political choice formation also overcomes the traditional presumption of rational choice that actors make choices based on clear and stable preferences and overall restates the problem of the roles of interests and preferences in the policy process (see also

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Koppenjan & Klijn, 2004). Framing theory and practice presume that there are “multidimensional preferences, how individuals become attentive to one preference rather than another” (Jones, 1994, p. 142). This shift is mediated by the context and direction of attention or issue extension. Jones explains further: The model implies that decision makers value or weight preferences differently depending on the context in which they are evoked. It treats preferences as relatively fixed, changing only gradually, but views attention to underlying preferences as capable of radical shifts in brief periods of time. (…) This model is more commensurate with current empirical studies of political decision making, and it has the added advantage of incorporating the decision-making capabilities of both elites and mass publics into one framework. In politics, as in other areas of life, preferences are activated by individual interpretation of context, and it is this combination of preferences and context that yields choice. (Ibid.)

Policy framing develops the techniques of alternating the identification of problem definitions and providing support to selected policy issues. The theory of punctuated equilibrium offers a model—based on ideas of policy framing and interpretation of the mechanism of redesigning—of institutional patterns of the whole policy community and policy generations (Baumgartner & Jones, 2002; Boushey, 2012) which Daviter (2011, p. 48) identifies as “serial policy shift.” In this case, we could already speak about contributions to the conception of institutionalization of political networks interpreted ontologically, which may be the most important elaboration of inter-actional theories of the policy process. Especially the studies of policy framing in the EU have demonstrated that via differentiating images and focuses, a policy issue is not only manipulated to form legitimate support for possible decision in an issue realm. Its reframing may enrich the policy issue, making it not only multidimensional and overcoming the narrow focus of fixed preferences but opening new dimensions of the issue, often unintentionally. Thus reframing could be identified as productive manipulating (Zahariadis, 2003). More so, by alternating the problem identification, as serial policy shifts indicate, the actors’ composition and patterns of their inter-actions are also substantially changing, and new patterns would completely redefine the scope and nature of the issue. We can consider them in terms of configurations of individual actors and coalitions. Still, we could also view

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these as different configurations and ways of integrating policy communities and policy subsystems. Hence, from another standpoint, the constitution of issues and policies could be seen as the constitution of the public in the policy realm. Thus we are driven back to the debate between Dewey and Lippmann. Harman (2014) re-launched this debate on the political in science and technology studies (via his interpretation of Latour). He considers the constitution of the public around issues as a specific form of politics, which would face emerging controversies and failure of traditional patterns of political institutions. Even Lippmann, who did not believe in the capacity of the public to constitute and make politics, wrote in his Phantom Public: in many fields of controversy the rule is not plain, or its validity is challenged; each party calls the other aggressor, each claims to be acting for the highest ideals of mankind. In disputes between nations, between sectional interests, between classes, between town and country, between churches, the rules of adjustment are lacking and the argument about them is lost in a fog of propaganda. Yet it is controversies of this kind, the hardest controversies to disentangle, that the public is called in to judge. Where the facts are most obscure, where precedents are lacking, where novelty and confusion pervade everything, the public in all its unfitness is compelled to make its most important decisions. The hardest problems are those which institutions cannot handle. They are the public’s problems. (1993 [1927], p. 121)

9.4  Frame Reflection as Practical Bridging of Frames The bounded rationality concept emerged in positivist science of the 1950s. It was intended to indicate that the human mind working out knowledge about the world is not a full representation of reality because the latter is too complex and multifaceted. In order to get practically usable knowledge, sentient actors should intentionally simplify reality, that is, focus on certain fragments or patterns of reality, which would meet the practical need of actors, and also compensate for cognitive and social obstacles (like a shortage of time) of human cognition. In the 1970s, the nature of the knowledge of social actors and its limits and the possibility of manipulating these limits (through framing) becomes the central interest in positivist and constructivist policy science. In positivist psychology the

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study of cognitive heuristics (shortcuts) and biases as universal traits of human individual thinking or mind (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), which initially draws on Simon’s concept of bounded rationality, becomes popular in cognitive sciences primarily in the psychology of advertising. The lesser version of framing theory presumed that these restrictions of representations of reality come from the multidimensionality of reality. Policy entrepreneurs or hegemonic actors can skillfully alternate angles of attention to different dimensions of reality and change the scope of a policy issue, excluding aspects which cause much controversy. This way, it is possible to alternate the composition of coalitions and influence the formation of agreements on complex policy issues (Daviter, 2014). For this reason, it is also possible to politicize (problematize) the knowledge aimed at increasing the versatility of policy decisions (Daviter, 2014). Framing as manipulation of cognitive processes becomes a widespread knowledge management tool in the policy sciences. This strategy was used by both positivists (Riker, 1984; Zahariadis, 2003) as well as by constructivist–perspectivist approaches (Schneider & Ingram, 1993, 1997) in studying how to manage a target group’s political choices and to construct specific images of target groups to increase or decrease their support. This perspective was applied in conceptualizing how social movements mobilize their members and legitimize their ideas (Gamson, 1992; Snow et al., 1986). However, the basic cleavage of framing theories lay in perceiving the frames either from a representational and interventional perspective (Hacking, 1983, 2002; Pickering & Guzik, 2008; Wagenaar, 2015): The former see frames basically as mental entities and aspire to arrive at as accurate as possible a representation of these entities through frame analysis. For the latter, frames are located in interaction, which inevitably takes place in time, and the purpose of frame analysis is to provide as plausible as possible an account of what has been going on. (Braun, 2015, p. 443)

We will later return to this paradigmatic issue of epistemology, which is crucially important to explore action as trans-actions and distinguish them from inter-actions. It is important to briefly settle the different premises of those epistemologies on two issues: first, regarding where knowledge is located, and second, regarding how knowledge is produced and related to purposive action.

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Simply put, positivist science presumes that frames are specific models in actors’ individual minds, or produced by actors’ brains, and are actors’ simplified perceptions of the external world. Knowledge is a property or at least in ownership of an individual, and the representation of reality should precede the actions. However, actors’ knowledge could catch the causes or laws of the external world. This enables relying on the individual knowledge to predict and re-arrange the world because actions correspond to the trends to which the world is ready to move. In the intersubjectivist-culturalist perspective (Reckwitz, 2002), our brain is viewed as a physical-psychological premise of knowledge and mind but seen as a very adaptive engine, which can activate the actors’ previous experience in the world and assist in supporting it within activation periods in the present activities. Actors should have previously created (learned) knowledge models or frames emanating from their practical needs and capacities to become knowledgeable. This also enables us to explore the institutional frames as different in scale but not different in kind. When the brain is activating and the individual becomes conscious, the action environment is “deconstructed.” Although, when this fails (the situation is unknown or indeterminate), an actor gets the feeling of “thrownness” (in Heidegger’s sense) and has an opportunity to constitute a new model of practical behavior, drawing on pre-reflective or background inter-subjective experience. That is, past activities or experience which are presented to us as virtual reality are the basis for the production of “online” knowledge in the present; our brain, as well as many other savings mechanisms (like language or tapes) which the brain can operatively “decode,” enables us not only to reproduce this past experience selectively as virtual reality but to process the available new data to make our behavior adequate to the current context. From this viewpoint, policy framing as manipulation with an attention or issues intensity is also the creation of virtual reality for actors. But as long as it is a top-down initiative and technique, and as long as it also can manipulate the coalition patterns, this framing is either self-actional (and manipulation in the direct sense) or inter-actional and could not cause a shift in initial frames of actors. Hence, from the interventionist and practice perspective, frames are phenomena that are one-sided models and patterns of practical reality, which are based on past experience and which we can activate as soon as we return to roles and realities that are similar to these models (contexts) in the present situation. We have at our disposal the basic and clear-cut frames, which are our “interpretive schemata” of certain typical practices

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(a frame of a teacher, a student, a father, a politician, a hunter, etc.). These are overtly logically consistent and reliable models of reasoning because they have emerged in actual practices (and lessons from that practice), i.e., they are based on the logic of appropriateness. Additionally, these frames are collectively shared with those actors with which we had this collective experience. They may contain models of successful joint-consensual actions, but they could also be frames that indicate models of role conflicts in these situations and ways of our resultant behavior vis-à-vis others in such conflicts. Frames, from this point of view, are virtual models of practice, which our cognitive capacities could evoke, but they are neither representations nor properties of our brain; they are or become practical action maps. Hence, frames (we could also call them biases) are not properties of our mind (thinking) but instead are produced by actors in the course of their trans-actions, either in virtual or actual reality. The concept of frames as patterns of virtual generalization and communication of the meaning of practices by actors comes to sociology from Bateson’s seminal study of meta-communication in the animal community (1977 [1972]). Metacommunication enables animals to differentiate between fighting and gaming between animals without visible differences in behavioral patterns (Hacking, 2002). Although these studies focused on the formation of social classification of people and the behavior that classifies people, Goffman, a disciple of the Chicago school of Georg Herbert Mead and John Dewey, moved further and developed the concept of frames as virtual models of practice. For Goffman, frames emerge not as mere representations of practices in which actors are involved. Frames are selected fragments which summarize their collective or interactive practices, as well as their interpretations of such practices (Goffman, 1974, pp. 10–11). However, as noted by van Hulst and Yanow (2016), Goffman later shifted the emphasis on the interactive and communicative and largely unreflective ways of frame emergence, as compared with his earlier works (Goffman, 1959). On the one hand, this increases his attention to communicative mechanisms of formation of frames’ content and possibilities to intentionally influence or modify these models, as in the theories of reframing, but from a constructivist and bottom-up angle. This moves his research focus closer to social movement theories that aimed to reveal effective mechanisms of identity formation and mobilization, and, thus, to identify

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tools for (political) coalition or alliance formation (van Hulst & Yanow, 2016, pp. 94–95). Goffman turned toward the practice perspective in interpreting frames. This trend was rather similar to Rein and Schön’s focus on reframing. Their work, however, was left unfinished before developing into a full-­fledged trans-actional theory of the policy process. Rein and Schön were able to advance the constructivist theory of frames and to elaborate the conception of design rationality in the 1970s (e.g., 1977; see also 1993). They were in a particularly good position to do so, thanks to the pragmatist background of Schön (his dissertation was on Dewey’s work) and Rein’s practical career and studies in social policy. In his Reflective Practitioner (1983), Schön presented the basis of his theory of design rationality in management and policy (and planning) sciences. This has profound affinities with Mead’s theory of reflective communication and Gadamer’s (2004) theory of fusion of horizons (Wagenaar, 2015). But the logic of intervention elaborated there was extended to different areas where the general concept of design could be applied, starting from building design and city planning to psychotherapy (Boland & Collopy, 2004). Rein and Schön published their important article on frame reflection in 1986. Their conception of policy design rationality and the resolution of intractable policy controversies was summarized in their book Frame Reflection (1994) and the article “Frame-Critical Policy Analysis and Frame-Reflective Policy Practice” (1996). They clearly separated design rationality from problem-solving and search-choice as models of rationality and policy-making, which has been linked with successfully approaching wicked problems (Buchanan, 1992). This was a rather different direction of reasoning emerging from the constructivist framework of policy analysis. The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning (1993) was edited by Frank Fischer, a promoter of practice-based conception of argumentation, and who considerably advanced the argumentation theory of W.  Dunn (1993), G. Majone (1989), and John Forester, who himself advanced the pragmatist version of deliberative theory  (Fischer & Forester, 1993). Rein and Schön contributed in this volume with the article “Reframing Policy Discourse.” Fischer’s own programmatic article (2007) “Deliberative Policy Analysis as Practical Reason: Integrating Empirical and Normative Arguments” refers explicitly to his methodological background influenced by Habermas and Churchman.

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Rein and Schön identified three analytical layers or patterns dependent on their complexity in the policy process, but also as different methodological angles. At the first, or general layer (and principles), the design rationality is explored as if a single actor designed the policy in a complex setting. The second layer or pattern presumes that many actors and focuses (and settings) are involved or that the situation is political and focuses on specific communicative mechanisms of the policy design and conflict settlement largely from an inter-actional perspective. At the third layer, the policy is faced with frame conflict, and the task is to manage and resolve the conflict via a frame-critical policy analysis and practice. Design rationality is, for Schön, completely different from technical rationality or professional approaches, where “professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made rigorous by the application of scientific theory and technique” (1983, p. 21). These were also viewed as general schemata of design, which are characteristic of all the layers. At its first layer, the design situation emerges even in the case of standard situations between already familiar policy actors because this context (in situ) is highly uncertain, ambiguous, and has complex oppositions (Schön & Rein, 1994, p. 166). Actors do not know in situ exactly what they should be looking for and expect. The material (other actors, object, etc.) is, to a large extent, a black box, also because the intentions of actors and properties of the material are not known even for its “owner.” For the intervention to sustain, the constituents (actors, material, context etc.) should start the conversation or intervention (or fusing horizons) in the actual space of practice. As Schön and Rein emphasize: “the designer is in the situation, influenced by his appreciation of it at the same time that he shapes it by his thinking and doing—in Dewey’s words, ‘instituting new environmental conditions that occasion new problems’” (1994, p. 172). The knowledge of an actor and change of “material,” the context of their trans-actions are all emergent or in the process of constitution. For this reason, there should be infinite iterative loops (largely spontaneous) between actors and the design process’ context (or environment) to reach the intermediate configuration. This conversation progress depends on the character of the materials (other actors), resistance to interventions and ways of talking back to them. That is, reflective communication (in Mead’s sense) presumes that the other actors are agile, talk back, and this way specify what kind of interventions are feasible and enabling to exert impact on it. This is one of the cornerstones of “Manifesto for Agile Software Development” adopted in 2001 (http://agilemanifesto.org/) It invokes that design as a

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style, and the rationality of intervention is a kind of practical inquiry, which is open, iterative, and largely unconsciously directed to the future. It is a search for a new equilibrium which usually remains only tentative because of permanent changes at the starts of the innovation cycle (Strübing, 2007). This is rather different from the design approach used by Linder and Peters (1984), as well as from the more developed form by Howlett (2011), as analyzed by Junginger (2014). The former expects that the design is merely a feedback-based, highly adaptive implementation of a normatively developed plan of a solution to a problem; thus, it is a modified conception of policy as a linear sequence of causally linked solution stages, which is a normative and ideal-type theory. Schön and Rein (1994) have developed a considerably different model of policy design, which starts from the point of high uncertainty and unpredictability and where the designer’s moves cannot produce only intended effects. The designer’s continuing inquiry should incorporate the observed effects of her moves as she reformulates both her problem and her solution in order to take fuller account of the observed complexity of the situation and its gradually discovered field of values and interests. These features are precisely the ones that make it appropriate to speak of design, rather than problem solving, search, or choice. (p. 167, italics added)

Hence, at already this level, Schön and Rein specified the general nature of design rationality, which “involves reflection—on materials, seeing/ moving/seeing, unintended effects, emergent intentions, and the form and the character of the evolving object” as well as “detecting back talk, interpreting design flaws, fixing flaws, recognizing emergent intentions” (ibid., pp. 167, 168). The second layer of the design they identified as a communicative and political drama. At this layer the focuses is on the involvement of multiple actors, designers recipients of design products and other stakeholders, as well as on the wider context, media, and focusing events (Birkland, 1998, 2010). The design is presented as a “designing system,” which is a more or less intertwined coalition of individuals and institutions, which leads to the social design process becoming “a drama enacted in arenas” (Schön & Rein, 1994, p. 168). This is not simply the multiplication of actors but also patterns of conversations and iterative design chains, which partially overlap and/or conflict but considerably extend iterative and multidimensional design patterns. This is the less elaborated layer of Rein and Schön’s

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conception of policy design. They did not take a specific reflective stance on the nature of politics in the framework of design and conversation, which is different from instrumental interpretations of political competition, yet rather close to deliberations aimed at overcoming distortions emerging in power games and reifications. They, rather, tried to fit the traditional instrumental understanding of politics into the logic of design practice. For Rein and Schön, politics is a decisive factor in policy design. Still, it is a disturbing and restraining factor whose negative impact should be softened through communication, negotiations, and reaching agreements. How it could be done differently than frame reflections remains an open question. At the same time, as pragmatists, they rely on the convergence of meanings and on mere consent on what to do, and they differentiate the substantive design from the design of coalitions. Hence at this level, more problems than solutions remained, which is a particular target of Forester’s critique that we address in the next subsection. The second most elaborated and known is their frame analysis, which forms the third layer in their methodology of policy design. Rein and Schön developed a highly sophisticated conception of frames (1993), which largely continued Goffman’s early concept of frames as activated models of actors’ practical action-space (van Hulst & Yanow, 2016). Importantly,  Rein and Schön realized that from the cognitive point of view, frames are not merely discursive and reflective phenomena (in the form of text) but are based on extensive tacit or pre-reflective knowledge. They did not explicitly develop their reflective positions toward practice as a methodology, but already the recognition of the third layer—the formation of frames—and their deep-rooted prioritizing of the actionable knowledge formation brought them rather close to presumptions of framing in practice. For instance, they generalized: “We shall propose an ‘empirical epistemology’—not a theory of knowledge in the philosophical sense but an inquiry into the knowing-in-practice by which, in our society, we deal with policy controversies in the absence of an agreed-upon basis for resolving them” (Rein & Schön, 1993, p. 145). However, the absence of this specific reflection on practice was, we presume, the decisive reason that hindered them from fully opening the trans-actional understanding of the reframing mechanism. Forester was more successful in that: although he did not reflect on trans-actionalism either, he was able to look at reframing-in-practice from a more dynamic angle of ontological politics.

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However, in the analysis of the process of reframing, Rein and Schön overcome many limitations of the second-level analysis, which was, in fact, done in inter-actional terms. They suggested making a crucial distinction between two different contexts of policy discourse. The first consists in the espoused theory put forward by frame sponsors or critics in the realm of policy debate; the second consists in the pattern of actions undertaken by policy practitioners, those who design and implement policies in the realm of action. We call frames of the first type “rhetorical frames;” frames of the second type are “action frames”. The crucial difference, it should be noted, does not consist in whether the frame as constructed makes reference to action—both rhetorical and action frames do so but from what evidence the frame is constructed. Rhetorical frames are constructed from the policy-relevant texts that play important roles in policy discourse, where the context is one of debate, persuasion, or justification. (1996, p. 90, italics are in original)

The main message of Rein and Schön is that at the level of conceptual-­ discursive debates and discussion, policy frames only rarely become reconciled (not to speak of their mergers as a result of communication). They argue rather that at the level of rhetoric, the frames become increasingly incompatible, and impasses in political debates are highly probable. Actually, frames tend to strengthen their inwards-looking stance in policy debates at the discursive-conceptual level. For this reason, they involve alternative proofs or concepts (from the viewpoint of the opposite frames) in order to increase the integrity of one’s own frame and clarify the differences from other’s frames. In other words, actors are not trying to communicate reflectively and blend frames; on the contrary, they become eager to develop a more consistent internal logic in justifying one’s own frame’s relevance which moves them closer toward an ideology. This logic of reasoning, to some extent, rebuts the methodology of argumentation, which was also somewhat contested in positivist theory of policy framing in which argumentation was at the second stage in manipulating the attention and focus of issues (Baumgartner & Jones, 2002, 2009; Daviter, 2011). Nevertheless, Rein and Schön (1996, p. 101) proposed focusing more seriously on the frame reflection on the frame blending and frame extension as “a multipurpose cognitive tool,” thus, opening a way for cognitive mechanisms or frame reflections in policy analysis and design. In contrast to rhetorical frames

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action frames are constructed from the evidence provided by observation of patterns of action inherent in the practice of policy practitioners. (…) The evidence for the construction of an action frame is the data of action observed. The action in question consists in policy design inquiry, which includes both the design of policy objects (for example, the formulation of laws, regulation, or programs) and the behavior through which practitioners enact such policies. (Ibid., p. 91)

Here, Schön and Rein describe the accommodation of previous policies promoted at the institutional arenas of higher officials by new configurations of actors as policy practitioners trying to resolve emerging conflicts and impasses at the level of practice and on single critical links or core controversies. Because of their more concrete focus and actionable new knowledge which arises from a new circle of inquiry of an issue, they can “bring into question and open up to the possibility of new ways of seeing and acting on elements of the action frames that underlie their positions” (ibid., p.  94). The shift in framing mechanisms happens because of the change in the formal institutional context of policy design, which should overcome “a gap between institutional action frame and the concrete situation” (ibid.). As a result, because actors could free themselves, in the course of practical action, from the “fetters” of their formal institutional identities, they could shift the interpretation of the concrete issue. Hence, the logic of the understanding of the whole policy field suddenly changes: Here even the appearance that policy is made by central actors is lost. Instead we see a hopelessly fragmented policy arena; an open field of institutional actors who take each other on or decide to defect when it suits their purpose. The micro-rationalities of individual actors frustrate the macro-­ rationality of collective problem solving. (Wagenaar, 2015, p. 224)

However, the issue remains: how to link these levels of governance back after the solution of frame controversy at the bottom level was achieved, and not only in practice (whether they will be heard) but also conceptually (how this shift results in redesigning institutional patterns of policy-making)? Cook and Wagenaar call it a shift in the practical epistemology, which aims to refer both to the study of knowledge and to the systematically related bits of knowledge of a given community and the patterned activities that give

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rise to them and imbue them with the particular sense or meaning that enables us to recognize them as relevant, usable knowledge in a given context. This is why a particular professional community, for example, accepts some things as legitimate knowledge while rejecting others: some things find a foothold within the systematic structure of their epistemology, others do not. (…) What is going on in such instances, we contend is a shift in the epistemology that makes possible a better organization of what is known. (…) Sometimes after things “fall together”, we discover that bits of knowledge we thought were essential suddenly appear useless. Such examples suggest that there are times when what we need is not more knowledge but a better epistemology. (2012, p. 16)

This way, Cook and Wagenaar have not figuratively but literally enacted the context of reality for us. They are very close to a trans-actional exploration of the reframing mechanism. But Rein and Schön interpreted this shift, in the last instance, in terms of cognitive mechanisms of deliberate reflection back to the foundations of frames: Policy practice becomes frame reflective when the actors involved in policy disputes not only act from their action frames but turn their thought back onto the frames themselves and engage in reciprocal inquiry aimed at unblocking design inquiry that has been paralyzed. In these open zones of inquiry—which tend to occur at “policy windows”—assumptions, views of the world, and values that have heretofore remained in the background, giving shape to foreground inquiry but keeping, as it were, to the shadows, become foreground issues, open to discussion and inquiry in their own right. (1996, p. 94)

In this interpretation, the frames become reconciled by the individual’s reflections on the frames’ content by restructuration of their cognitive structures. Most importantly, this is not achieved through re-shifting the configuration of the discourse arena and its action frames. This gap in exploration between the representational (cognitive) and interventionist (actional) dimensions of reframing is obvious and related to the insufficient elaboration of the overall design of its second layer (the political-­ institutional dynamic). Here, we can see clearly “an instruction on how to cross the divide between representing and intervening” (Wagenaar, 2015, p. 224). Schön and Rein did not complete the elaboration of design rationality in the policy process. It was perfectly elaborated at the level of leadership

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of reflective practitioners in learning organizations and the policy adaptation process at the ground level. They aspired to develop the analysis of mechanisms of policy design that would require a trans-actional approach, on the highly inter-active and participative policy context, but not on the traditional institutional configurations and politics. The application of the governance paradigm and metagovernance mechanisms would probably provide more space for a trans-actional interpretation. However, it is not an easy task because it faces difficult issues of interrelatedness with formal representative institutions of democracy. Rein and Schön summarized their interim results as follows: We know very little about the anatomy of situated frame reflection. We know that it occurs because of the outcomes of the actors’ design inquiry. We assume that competent practitioners often know how to do more than they can say. It would be important to capture, analyze, and learn from the rare events in which they practice situated frame reflection. (1996, p. 95)

Based on Rein and Schön’s work, we have many ways to complete the conception of design rationality and trans-actional policy design to its full consistency. They themselves did not have the opportunity to carry it through, because Schön passed away in 1997. The big lesson coming from their work is therefore: in order to design or at least analytically explore a trans-actional design process or trans-actional policy-making, we need a much more extensive reconsideration of the role of traditional frameworks of formal political institutions and substantialist (and instrumental) understanding of political conflicts. One increasingly influential stream of theory and practice moving toward that direction is what we refer to as the politics of critical dialogue, to which we now turn in more detail.

9.5  The Politics of Critical Dialogue John Forester came to the fore from the US East coast planners’ research community as a researcher of policy analysis with a pronounced practical and pragmatic orientation. Although his main theoretical work relied considerably on critical deliberative theory of Habermas, his initial theoretical framework involved an unusual variety of major positions in political and policy sciences and practice-theory-related metaphysics. He gave a rather sharp response to the referee of his book, who superficially accused him of relying on too normative a theoretical basis (Forester, 1995). He summarized his methodological positions perfectly, including the opportunities

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provided by the critical orientation. This allows us to make strong reservations concerning statements of the absence of deep conceptual reflections in his later mainly case-based studies. This response could be seen as a textbook example of exploring the role of theory in the analysis of the policy process. Forester (1995) wrote to his opponents: one theoretical account cannot do more than schematically indicate specific organizing or resistance strategies, tactics, skills. The theory can generate and call our attention to the structural space in which such strategies and skills come into play, but the choice of a given strategy and the appropriate place of any skill can only be determined in specific settings. (…) Combined with the study of real cases, critical theory points us toward repertoires of political practices of several kinds, but taken by itself that theory—or any theory—cannot generate specific strategies, tactics, skills to be used independently of specific contexts (i.e. for all times and places). (p. 395)

Forester effectively analyzes the core difference between his theory of critical pragmatism and Schön’s conventional pragmatism and theory of design rationality (see Forester, 2012). He compares Schön’s concept of the reflective practitioner with his own concept of the deliberative practitioner; or the regular pragmatism of Schön with his critical pragmatism. Forester’s method and methodology have affinities in crucial respects with Peter Checkland’s soft systems methodology, which dates back to the 1980s (Checkland, 1981, 1984) and is still, together with critical system heuristics of Werner Ulrich (1983, 1987, 2007), at the core of the constructivist theories-based methodology of planning as policy design (Reynolds & Holwell, 2010). At the start, Forester suggested distinguishing the concepts of deliberations as an analytical focus from reflections as cognitively loaded individual-­ based activity or representations as cognition based on passive observation and deliberately emphasized his reliance on the practice focus of reality. He also qualified the differences between his critical dialogue from the methods or techniques of argumentation and debate as hard bargaining. They are narrowly focused either along the cognitive or content-­ settlement dimension in the policy-politics strategy development or, in the case of politics, on the political competition with instrumental aims of winning in interactive games. Forester did not rely on the conception of wicked issues (however, there is a recent example of references in Forester, 2021), but his case analysis demonstrated exactly the logic of the constitution of policy as an unfolding process, which Rittel had explored at a rather theoretical level.

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Forester’s method of harnessing or mediating critical dialogue is summarized briefly in the introductions and conclusions (2009, 2017) and the appendix (2009) of his main books on case studies. He has articles on his methodical frameworks (2006a) for organizing studies in other regions and contexts of the world. His theory could be tentatively defined as a method of designing and managing policy arenas in a highly conflictual setting. This is presented through stories about the experiences and discoveries of the key facilitators or mediators of harnessing the framing process in policy arenas (he does not use the term “frame,” though). He develops each case into a unique micro-model of the policy process, a genuine collective-action process of re-constitution of knowledge and enacting new contexts. These are stories as narrations, which would be an appropriate format for catching the contingent process of unfolding the policy process: this is targeted to the design, harnessing and sustaining of the process, whereas outputs are viewed as interim points in the long journey. Forester’s method consists of four logically interdependent and unfolding stages of deliberations, which are harnessed by the mediator. These are the stages of assessing the landscape of the issue (bilateral dialogue with actors in their practical environment); convening actors for dialogue; the debate as an enabled learning exercise; and negotiating as getting agreements for joint actions. Forester explored the policy process as a boldly political process. However, the sustainable policy arenas and discussions are not initially targeted at winning the games, and their moderation is intentionally targeted to the blockage of any attempt at domination. At the same time, the strategy is not only retaining the diversity of the actors’ frames but also facilitating the mutual exploration of this diversity. Forester’s mediators encourage the open expression of emotions and even hostility, which enables the actors to come to the very core of the issues and controversies, and the role of the mediator is to direct this energy in a productive direction, although often, it is not successfully achieved. This is considered a precondition for developing a sense of interdependency and trust in the course of the dialogue. Hence, failure is considered normality, and the process is considered iterative. Forester is not viewing actors’ models of the practical world as frames. However, his understanding of reframing indicates that he considers knowledge formation and change in profoundly trans-actional terms. Knowledge formation starts by amending the actor’s identity in the dialogue with the actor’s own practice, i.e., by acquiring the capacity for

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self-reflection. Although Forester is not optimistic about reflective-­ cognitive tools of reframing, his tactics are, at times, a forceful pressure for amending frames by extending and streamlining them to increase the actors’ awareness of the blind spots of their own practices or the practical worlds the actors initially have. This is the method of critical frame analysis. This focus on conflict harnessing was the weak link in the methodology of Schön and Rein. At the assessment stage, the mediator has bilateral interviews with all potential actors to establish the frames of stakeholder groups’ representatives. The mediator has the role of a critical listener (Forester, 2006b), an assistant or a confessor in designing the full image of the actors’ practical frame. The mediator rarely intervenes because this is also a meeting to establish confidential relations with a group and its representatives; they intervene only in order to help to avoid the contradictions in the narrative and its details and with the aim to explore issues which tend to be important components of the overall picture in a domain. At the dialogue stage, the purpose is to introduce and explore the frames of all actors and complement them with the information that makes frames comparable and clear for understanding. This is also the stage of learning the rules of dialogue, especially critical listening skills and the opportunity of asking questions that better identify the content of frames. This maps the discrepancies and fits, but without any debate. In this second stage, there are opportunities to learn for actors to look at one’s practical frame from the outside—through the eyes of “the other” who could have a very different understanding of a policy issue. At this stage, the mediators still emphasize their role as facilitators, but as the most informed and trusted mediators, they carefully indicate their authority as a generous reconciler. The next stage is debate. The purpose is to discuss the frames’ strengths, commonalities, weaknesses, and controversies. Forester warns that each actor should not individually replace the exploration of one’s own frames by neglecting the frames of others. He also favors any attempt to find new compatibilities among opposite aspects of the actors’ frames, and to emphasize the interdependency of actors in promoting the issue further. Thus, Forester warns not to turn the debate into a journey toward finding joint opportunities for further bargaining because the long-term purpose is to sustain the process. At this stage, the mediator assumes the moderator role and is above the conflicts. They might make some points to reinforce conflicts to make them understandable, indicate unnoticed compatibilities

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of frames, and even severely shame those actors using communication opportunities to personal and selfish attacks. At the same time, Forester emphasizes the following: because a critical pragmatism appreciates multiple and contingent or evolving forms of knowledge, local and scientific, initial opinion and considered judgment, it might help us to listen in a more critical and less credulous way, helping us to learn from and through ambiguity, to learn about interests and values, and to learn sensitively and perceptively as emotions like fear and anger bring new issues into view. (…) Pragmatism teaches us to treat knowledge claims as fallible; critical pragmatism anticipates that—and hopes to explore how—knowledge claims often reflect systematic or structural framing involving contin[g]ent relations of power… (2012, p. 6)

Experienced mediators reach their goal “not by dismissing or avoiding emotions of anger and frustration but by recognizing them… to learn, to understand that ‘there must be reasons for the animosities,’” and also that “angry parties” “need to be heard and respected,” and we “need to understand their roles” (Forester, 2012, p. 15). At the last stage of negotiations, the policy arena is entering—if they have not yet failed—into the stage of finding enough convincing reasons to continue to search for, sustain, and form an understanding that, in any case, the fate of the policy issue and field is highly interdependent. It means becoming aware that actors are “in the same boat” which may still reach indeterminate goals but can also sink without any winner. At this stage, the policy arena is searching for different ways to unfold any kind of joint action, not to appeal to convictions about possible outcomes but to presume that in case of sustaining the process, something may happen and that this is the only way to continue the search for opportunities. Consequently, it is a realization that [t]he end products of the analytical and transformative processes we developed were often understandings rather than agreements. Parties came together, parties who were deeply divided, they joined in an analytical process, and they went away not having agreed about anything but having come to understand their own and the other’s situation better. They acted unilaterally in the future in ways that were less conflictual, more constructive for each, and in fact often they might find that while they could not get within a shred of agreement on issue X, that they in fact had dozens of issues A, B, C,

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to J on which they could cooperate; many of which were in fact negotiable. (Forester, 2012, pp. 11–12, italics in the original)

At this point, it is relevant to recall Winship’s (2006) statement: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might actually get there (p. 121).” This characterizes the policy process as an “eternally unfolding present” (Cook & Wagenaar, 2012) or as wrestling the continuous uncertainty and ambiguity, which could be turned through a skillful mediation strategy into a process of constituting unforeseen opportunities and configurations. There are some extremely important points in Forester’s method which indicate well that his approach is primarily trans-actional. Forester’s main critique of Schön and Rein’s pragmatist conception of policy design is targeted toward their conception of learning. They view it as an activity based on reflection rather than on collective discourse and collective action of high intensity, which should expect not only positive outcomes but also failures as sources of learning. We would add that official authorities cannot fail. Failure is only possible if the policy’s stakeholders should be responsible for forming policies and for owning their failures. As Forester explores Schön developed a powerful account of how we can learn in action, learn from the consequences of our practical moves, and learn from our engaged attempts to change the world. Notice that learning here happens not through debate, not through argument, Schön has suggested, but through moving in the world, pragmatic intervention, and from the talk-back of the world that leads us then to “reflect in action,” to reconsider the frames and frameworks that led us to these unexpected consequences, be they welcome or unwelcome, benefits or costs. (2012, pp. 8–9, italics in the original)

The reason for this weakness is the inability of policy design theory to consider politics and power relations as constitutive mechanisms of policy innovations. As he argues: We might wonder about the status of social or political structures in Schön’s account, about the status of politics and ethics. We might wonder, too, how we can extend and refine, even transform, Schön’s Reflective Practitioner to help us to think about power and conflict, to think about dealing with differences, to think about political engagement and learning, in more or less democratic ways. (2012, p. 9)

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However, in his own book Deliberative Practitioner (Forester, 1999), Forester “suggested that in political settings, in which multiple parties or stakeholders argued about or contested or struggled over desired outcomes, the learning that occurred could hardly be captured by Schön’s social-psychological model alone” (Forester, 2012, p. 9). Forester expects that diversity and the deepening of said diversity via dialogue as drama is the only source of innovation and capacity building for all constituents. He describes this in his book Dealing with Differences: Dramas of Mediating Public Disputes (2009). He sees in conflicts, emotions, and failures opportunities for coming to the very core of the policy issue as well as triggers for practical reframing and re-constituting the current configurations. Laws and Forester (2007)  demonstrated that  this strategy also presumes creating new virtual practice spaces not for predicting but anticipating future opportunities, as Dewey would say. At the same time, he suggests not considering politics in an instrumental sense as hard bargaining for individual advantages or wins. Hence Forester’s practical methods are approaching the concept of ontological politics of Law and Urry (2004). Forester views this politicized dialogue as “drama of mediation” (the second part of the title of his 2009 book) because he expects that the dialogue will turn into sophisticated power games in which the goal, however, is not achieving immediate outputs or gains, but increasing the power capacity of the overall field and relying on interdependency and complementarity as its source. This is achievable in the case of skillful mediation as the cornerstone of the practice. On the one hand, the mediator is expected to become the core conductor of the large game skillfully and their powers largely determine whether the dialogue will be sustained after inevitable failures. On the other hand, at all stages, the style of interactions and communication is intentionally constituted between actors in such a manner that it would turn the conflictual relations and initial miscommunication of messages into mutually constitutive processes. The basis for such an understanding is the sense of interdependence and that the evaluation of joint actions is necessary to sustain the process or fail collectively. Forester summarizes this position with his famous sentence: “mediators don’t make agreements any more than midwives make babies” (Forester, 2009, p. 175). This is, in a way, the reformulation of another famous allegory of government and power—the Foucaldian phrase “conduct of conduct” (1982). Government (as action or process or governance in the Anglo-American vocabulary) in this sense of Foucault is the form of power

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that is, first of all, a skillful empowerment which enables political games at all levels to be sustainable. “The argumentative turn” and the politics of critical dialogue have taken us to a truly trans-actional terrain of theorizing about the policy process and governance. In the next part we start with taking stock of the major lessons learned in Chaps. 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9, by offering a relational model of governance as a dialectical process of problematization and de-­ problematization and their mutual constitution (Chap. 10). This model informs also our empirical case studies governance failure and failure governance (Chaps. 11, 12, and 13).

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PART III

Theory and Practice of Failure Governance and Governance Failure

CHAPTER 10

A Theory of Governance as Problematization and De-problematization

Before moving on it might be useful to take stock of what we have done so far in this book. In Part II we created a genealogical account of theories of the policy process. We used the Deweyan/Bentleyan distinctions between self-actional, inter-actional, and trans-actional understandings of social reality (outlined in Chaps. 3 and 4) and traced the non-linear and often parallel developments in policy process theories (immersed in the changing policy practices). As a result, a genealogical “history of the present” (in Foucault’s sense) of the conceptual transitions from self-actional to inter-actional to trans-actional approaches to policy process emerged. The first transition—from self-actionalism to inter-actionalism—was summarized in Chap. 6 (see Table 6.2 and Sect. 6.4). Below we summarize the second transition by juxtaposing inter-actionalism and trans-actionalism (see Table 10.1). This comparison also starts the discussion of our theory and methodology of governance as the mutual constitution of politics of problematization and de-problematization.

10.1   Inter-actional and Trans-actional Orientations in the Analysis of the Policy Process According to the inter-actional vision, policy should appease the contingency and diversity through networks to reach incremental consensus and outputs and feature the longer-term orientation of actors in the policy © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_10

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Table 10.1  Comparing inter-actional and trans-actional orientations in the analysis of the policy process Dimension

Inter-actional orientation

Trans-actional orientation

Practice focus

Strategy of practice, knowledge as instrument for actions

Reframing

As intentional management of attention and/or with coalitions at the discourse of the issue Instrumental politics: sublimating conflicts, to reach consensus via bargains; developing networks as mediated consensus via dialogue. A view from the outside, understood as a sequence of infinitely small units (events) Adaptive and iterative realization of normative ideals or visions

Strategy in practice, knowledge, actions and context are different facets in the practice and evolving simultaneously As fitting past frames with new virtual practice frames created at the discourse-via-action arenas Ontological politics: To promoting diversity and conflicts to develop compatible webs of actors via critical dialogue A view from the inside, process as an indivisible and cumulative flow of trans-actions The unfolding of action-based and agile dialogue between constituents

Politics and conflicts

Process orientation Design rationality Source: Authors

process. Policies are not just one-shot achievements. But this pacifying vision is, in essence, politics of de-problematization in our terms (Chap. 3). The idea of wicked problems, however, presumes problematization of the focus on diversity as a value in itself which could be harnessed to turn diversity and conflict into a productive process of unfolding of the policy field or domain. This kind of policy should be reflected and also developed relying on trans-actional approaches and the relevant methods of its harnessing-­in-practice. Wicked problems are issues which can be unfolded and sustained but never solved, as Rittel already demonstrated at the beginning of the 1970s (1979 [1972]). These policy issues are eternally emergent and surprising for actors. Thus, their harnessing is becoming an end in itself as a source of social innovation. We have to recognize that the inter-actional and trans-actional approaches to the policy process have become non-reductively comparable because they are focussed on policy-making at the level of practices from different viewpoints. Their relevance depends on the depth and scope of the policy issue and the instruments for harnessing it. Nevertheless, at the analytical level, we would like to demonstrate their five principal differences (see Table 10.1 for a summary).

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First, both approaches focus on the practices as micro-sites of policy, which are largely proceeding in different policy arenas. Neither of them did expect that the policy process could be primarily purposeful, in which case knowledge (plans) should precede actions (Rittel, 1979). They rather state that policy-making is based on purposive actions, where goals and knowledge emerge from actions (Chia & Holt, 2009; Cook & Wagenaar, 2012). In inter-actional policy analysis, the purposive rationality orientation enabled us to understand the institutionalization of collective actions (Ostrom, 1998; Klijn & Koppenjan, 2015). This presumes the further differentiation of inter-actional and trans-actional interpretation of purposive rationality in order to identify the phenomenon of phronesis, especially if we expect the understanding of phronesis not only as a habitual behaviour but also as action-based social ordering and innovation. For this reason, Chia and Holt (2009) distinguished between strategy-of-practice, and strategy-in-practice. The former is closer to techne than to phronesis (in Aristotelian terms). The difference here is about understanding the role of knowledge in the practice process. In case of strategy-of-practice, knowledge is produced within the practical accomplishment of strategic behaviour in order to ensure effective and coordinated action. In this case, the knowledge and actions are considered still in an instrumental sense. When it comes to strategy-in-practice, we could speak of simultaneous sense-­ making at the individual level and about collective sense-making as an action-based process aimed at identifying the relevance of action and enacting the context of actions. Here the action, knowledge and context are viewed as flip sides of the same coin (Cook & Wagenaar, 2012). Second, both these analytical perspectives conceive the frames (of sense-­ making) as not merely property of individual thinking but intersubjective patterns of meaning which enable exploring and justifying individual and collective behaviour. However, in the inter-actional perspective, the reframing is presumed to be more or less intentional manipulation with attention and issue identification through changing the viewpoints on a policy issue or changing the patterns of the coalition of actors involved in the framing game. Hence the purpose of framing is to achieve the optimal outcome, frequently an outcome which is preferred by actors who dominate in the discourse and who would impose their own frames on it. From the trans-actional perspective, individual frames of actors usually have strong roots in habitual past practices of actors in present during their involvement in policy arenas. Framing and frame bridging is possible via creating new virtual spaces of practices in the present as an anticipation of

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future actions. This enables not only to model them as new action frames but to (re-)combine them with the customary frames of the past in ways that enable purposive collective action. However, the trans-actional understanding of (re-)framing should be developed further. We accept that this conception of framing also presumes another format of the policy process in which the decision-process is clearly distributed within all stages of policy-­making and not only focuses on the extended stage of decision-­ making. At the same time, the inter-actional perspective presumes the linear sequence of decide-and-then-act, which is the basic premise of representational understanding of the relations between knowledge and action in practice. Third, there is a crucial difference between inter-actional and trans-­ actional views on the nature and role of politics. The inter-actional view does not link politics strongly with formal institutions but draws on an instrumental understanding of politics as competition between actors for increasing their preferential positions in the policy process. At the same time, the trans-actional view considers politics and diversity (and pluralism) as ontological premises of productive collective action. The primary sense of the policy process is in its capacity to unfold (to re-constitute and open) through critical dialogue new dimensions of diversities and configurations of actors in the cross-referential web of the policy process. The instrumental (inter-actional) view considers policy as a tool for solving problems and as a process which enables the calculation of different ways to do that through discrete series of small outputs. On the other hand, the trans-actional view considers the process primarily as a way to unfold the issue space to reveal new opportunities, which would constitute new capacities of actors and their webs and enact new contexts. Therefore, the primary purpose of the policy process is to sustain the process. The inter-­ actional view considers politics as a way to sublimate conflicts in order to come to a common denominator. In contrast, the trans-actional perspective expects that diversity and its promotion are a source of innovation and new ways of institutionalization or negotiated orders. Hence comes the crucial difference in decision style or criteria of success. The inter-actional vision of the policy process presumes that reaching an interim consensus as a common space of actor’s positions via bargains and dialogue in network patterns of autonomous actors, where power configurations would remain more or less intact. The trans-actional vision prescribes not to suppress but to re-constitute diversities through different forms of critical dialogue (in Forester’s sense—see Chap. 9) and to come to mutually compatible webs

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of actors capable of collective actions. Thus, the policy process is simultaneously a re-constitution and multiplication of power webs and would enrich actors’ power dispositions. In the inter-actional perspective, the policy field is more or less one-dimensional and sequential, which may form subsystems (working groups); but in the transactional perspective actors’ webs are unfolding simultaneously in different dimensions. Fourth, the inter-actional approach refrained from considering reality based on regularity and order, and considers it a changing and contingent process. However, it views processes in spatial-substantialist terms as a sequence of infinitely small discrete units (events), which we can fix and consider in terms of before and after and based on clock time (Chia, 1999). From this point of view, the purpose of the policy process is to manage contingency through balancing and counterbalancing of positions of actors, and to increase the manageable predictability in the context of uncertainty and unpredictability. At the same time, much research based on inter-actional approach is exploring the policy process as highly iterative and non-linear. To increase the manageability, the incremental interim policy decisions are combined with the following long-term strategies in explicating the solution to a multiplicity of policy issues in the future. This way, the unpredictability of the future is reduced by the projection and imposition of present knowledge on the futures. This is prone to extrapolation from present to future (Dunn, 2018) rather than anticipation of the future consequence of present actions as proposed in the pragmatist theory of inquiry. The trans-actional approach to process is quite different (Seibt, 2023; Reinecke et al., 2020; Sootla et al., 2021). The process is the cumulative flow of trans-actions (principle of immanence) in a time, or the process of becoming as defined by Whitehead (1978, p. 22). However, this definition is incomplete without the Bergsonian conception of time as an indivisible flow (duration), in which virtual past and future(s) are flowing through the actual present practice site. The opportunity to trace the virtual past to the actual present is not only a way making sense of the present. Even more importantly, such a timeline reveals the consequences of present actions in the future and, in this way, anticipate future opportunities for innovative and sustainable actions. This is actually the process of abduction presented as the strategy-in-practice perspective (see also below in this chapter), and it makes a difference in the interpretation and design of the policy process. The trans-actional approach also presumes certain incrementalism, but it is different from that proposed by inter-actionalism.

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In trans-actionalism the increment is not a small outcome of the process as in inter-actionalism, but is emerging out of the unfolding of reality through conscious actions and is constitutive of actors, knowledge (meanings) and contexts. This process is not merely iterative but is presumed to be fallible and prone to failure. Thus, this view refrains from all possible big narratives or long-­term plans as the basis for future prediction or forecast but presumes a maximum of foresight as a way of theorizing present opportunities. This is because it presupposes that a source of sustainability lies not in producing knowledge but in sustaining the action and knowledge-producing capacity (Shotter & Tsoukas, 2011). Hence the trans-actional view considers contingency and policy and governance failure as normality, but only with the presumption of sustaining the capacity to ensure the unfolding of the policy process. We demonstrated in the fifth dimension the principal analytical difference between the inter-actionalist theory of policy design as an adaptive realization of normative ideals or visions on the one hand, and the trans-­ actionalist understanding of design rationality as the unfolding action-­ based dialogue between diverse actors and other constituents of the process, on the other hand. The key to this difference lies in inter-­ actionalism’s representational strategy for identifying and communicating meaning as something external to be reflected internally (Pickering & Guzik, 2009). As a result, design is considered an instrumental patterning of the mess in the policy arenas or in larger fields aimed at controlling the mess and thus eliminating problems. Trans-actionalism, the inverventionist-­ dialogical strategy of the creation of meaning through mutual interventions and conversation of constituents, represents the agile unfolding of the policy field. Design is understood as constituting meanings and discovering opportunities through collective action or agile trans-active process and relying on failures (or resistances) as a source of practical learning. Table 10.1 summarizes the main differences and overlaps between inter-actionalism and trans-actionalism in policy theories. Now we are in a position to outline a theory of governance as politics of problematization and de-problematization and reflect on the methodological consequences of this theory for the empirical research we are conducting in this part (Chaps. 11–13). The following is strongly based on the political semiotics as a version of relational political analysis that was put forth recently by Selg and Ventsel in a comprehensive monograph (2020) and on various other works of one of us on topics of governing wicked problems (e.g. Selg, 2021; Selg et al., 2022; Selg & Ventsel, 2022). However, integrating

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the stock of our discussion of policy theories in Part II in the proposed theory and methodology is entirely novel and, in our view, takes the approaches of these publications just mentioned much furhther. The same holds for reflections on the role of the case study from the trans-actional point of view.

10.2  A Political Semiotic Theory of Governance as Problematization and De-problematization Already the “argumentative turn” in policy analysis and planning (Fischer & Forester, 1993) that we discussed in Chap. 9 decisively opens the way for explaining the constitution of the political reality of governance in rhetorical terms. The same holds for the various discursive/semiotic approaches to politicization and depoliticization (e.g., Wood, 2015; Flinders & Buller, 2006; Fawcett & Wood, 2017) that informed our development of the notions of problematization and de-problematization in Chap. 3. Now we take these potentials further by bringing in an explicitly semiotic understanding of the rhetorical constitution of political reality that one of us has elaborated on recently (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020, chaps. 5–6). From the beginning, it is important to stress that we are talking here about the constitution of reality—not about the “expression” of reality in text, talk, literature, etc.—when we propose to analyze governance in rhetorical terms. Rhetoric is not seen here as related to “oratory” or “eloquence” of speech but as an ontological mechanism through which political reality is constituted. This is a crucial tenet of political semiotics (Selg & Ventsel, 2020). Underlying the latter is “a ‘thick’ theory of discourse, which goes beyond ‘talk and text’” (Griggs et al., 2017, p. 203) of post-structuralist political theory, according to which “discourse is constitutive of all social relations, in which all objects and phenomena are discursively constructed” (ibid.). We already discussed this in Chap. 3 regarding our understanding of problematization/de-problematization. We want to generalize it now by bringing more explicitly in the Essex school of discourse theory (most notably Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe) we just referred to through Griggs, Howarth1 and MacKillop (Griggs et  al., 2017). An important addition to the Essex school is the Tartu-Moscow school of cultural semiotics (most notably Juri Lotman), whose understanding of the “semiosphere” has paved the way for introducing political analysis in rhetorical terms, which would not just be analysis of “text and

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talk,” but an explanation of the constitution of political reality. Very briefly now, we turn to these background steps leading to our political semiotic theory of governance as problematization and de-problematization in rhetorical terms. 10.2.1   A Theory of Political Semiotics The Essex school has aptly captured the political/hegemonic logic of the formation of discourse as the general terrain of the constitution of social relations and objects. Crucial here is their notion of articulation as the logic of signification, which they conceptualize in the context of the formation of hegemonic discourses (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001; Howarth et al., 2000). According to Laclau, any articulation process is characterized by the interaction of the logic of difference and equivalence, which can also be described as a tension between the metaphorical and metonymical articulation (2001). Political/hegemonic relation is a certain articulation of meanings where a particular difference (signifier) loses its particularity and becomes a universal representative—empty signifier—of the signifying system as a whole. Through such an articulation process, the discourse as a system of meaning is being created in the first place. This means that a boundary/closure for that system is provided, and a temporarily fixed dominant or hegemonic meaning is established. Thus, meaning systems work through exclusions that are inextricably linked to the construction of hegemonic centers for those systems. That is why they are always systems of power relations or relations. However, the analysis of meaning creation described at such an abstract level remains limited. Crucial for taking it to a more concrete level is the congeniality of Lotman’s (2000) distinction between discrete and continuous coding (or communication) and Laclau’s notion of the logic of difference and equivalence. Lotman uses the notion of “semiosphere” congenially to the ways Laclau uses the notion of “disourse”: both designate “systems of meaning” within which all social/cultural relations and objects are constituted. At the most fundamental level, every semiosphere works through the mutual translation and untranslatability between discrete and continuous coding (or languages). In discrete coding systems, the text is secondary to the sign. In other words, the text is clearly divided into signs: it is not difficult to distinguish between a sign as a certain elementary unit and another such unit. That is why sequences, causal, chronological, and logical relationships characterize this type of text. In continuous coding

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systems, there is a primacy of text that does not break down into signs, but the text itself is a sign (Lotman, 2000, p. 36). It is important to emphasize that this distinction between the continuous (primacy of text) and the discrete (primacy of sign) is relational and depends on the context: poetry is more continuous than prose, but it is also more discrete than, say painting.—These three languages/codes, are (to a certain extent) mutually translatable. At the same time, they can also be modelling “the same” extra-semiotic reality. Moreover, we can imagine that in certain cultures, one of these three languages is the dominant way to model reality since there are cultures that are more discretely or more continuously oriented (again, compared to other cultures). Due to the fundamentally different construction of the continuous and discrete coding systems, there is no precise translation in meaning creation, but an approximate relation of equivalence derived from the common cultural-psychological and semiotic context of the two systems (Lotman, 2005, p.  406) through tropes, metaphors, figures, etc. This means that the most basic creation of meaning is by nature a translation process between these two coding systems, which cannot be imagined as an end result, since it always entails untranslatability. This untranslatability rules out the possibility that translation from one language to another is determined by any given structural features of either of those languages. Nevertheless, certain operations of non-exact or rhetorical translations are more likely than others, given the character of how hierarchical internal relations (including those of the center and the periphery) are organized. Studying this organization, and its dynamic changes is the main task of semiotics. To conclude, the ways through which discrete elements are translated into a more or less continuous whole (system) of meaning forms the research object of semiotic explanation as we understand it (Selg & Ventsel, 2020). It is important that the mechanism of the constitution of meaning is a rhetorical translation that works at the foundation of every meaning system. That, in turn, entails that studying the rhetorical figures or tropes that are present in our surrounding world is not just a matter of studying how the world is “expressed” through meanings (in speeches, literature, art and the like)—but how the world is constituted (Selg, 2021). What particular semiotic tools are available for explaining the constitution of the world as the constitution of the semiosphere (with its center, periphery and other hierarchical relations of constituent elements)?

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Since the dawn of rhetorical studies, there has been a distinction between metaphor and metonymy as two opposing strategies of semiotic organization: the first is presenting constituent elements of meaning as belonging together based on their similarity; the second is doing the same based on their contiguity. The more metaphoric a system of meaning is, the more it is prevailed by the logic of equivalence (Laclau, 1996, pp. 38–39) or continuous coding (Lotman, 2000, p. 36). The more metonymic a system of meaning is, the more it is prevailed by the logic of difference (Laclau, 1996, pp.  38–39) or discrete coding (Lotman, 2000, p. 36). Some questions emerge here: Can we even provide some categories for identifying different configurations of meaning between metaphoric and metonymic rhetorical translations? Furthermore, how are these related to the political, that is, power, governance and democracy? Based on our earlier work (Selg, 2010, 2011, 2013; Selg & Ventsel, 2020, 2022), one fruitful way to create this linkage comes from Roman Jakobson’s famous distinction of aspects of language or semiosis more generally (see Selg & Ventsel, 2020; Chaps. 6 and 7 for a more elaborate presentation). Roman Jakobson brings (Jakobson, 1981) out six functions of communication through which meaning systems—discourses, semiospheres— are constituted. (1) The emotive function focuses on the addresser, expressing the speaker’s attitude toward the message. The goal is to create an emotional background for the message. (2) The conative function is oriented to the addressee, with the purpose of the message being to make the receiver act in a desired direction. It finds the purest expression in the imperative modes of speech (commands, directives). (3) In the case of the phatic function, the focus of the message is to establish or extend contact with the addressee, as well as to check whether the communication channel is working or not. The phatic function can be manifested, e.g., in the exchange of ritualized formulas or even in dialogues whose main purpose is simply to maintain communication. (4) When we have a metalingual function prevailing in our communicative acts, then the orientation is to the code of the message. It is also relevant when we clarify ambiguities of our language game and various rules of our actions. (5) The referential function expresses the context of the message. For it to work, the message needs a referential context that the recipient understands and is either verbal or verbalizable. Here descriptive and factual arguments are the most common form of messages where this aspect prevails. (6) The poetic function occurs when the message’s main focus is the message itself. In

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rhetoric, this is characterized by the proliferation of figures of speech, tropes, metaphors, and so on. The structure of the message depends primarily on the dominant function. Studying meaning systems in their multiple dimensions can be seen as studying the hierarchical relations that constitute them—and this would be a form of explanation, not just description. But our concern is studying political meaning systems, therefore, our focus is not on general, but political meaning-making related to power, governance, and democracy as different dimensions or moments of the political. In their work, Selg and Ventsel have articulated all these three dimensions (see 2020, chaps. 6 and 7; Selg, 2010). Here we restrict ourselves only to “governance”. By connecting the insights of theories of policy process and governance, and Jakobson’s six-fold model of communication, we provide a model of explaining governance that distinguishes different forms of political communication based on which language function prevails in the system of meaning. This would entail a semiotic redefinition of governance. In each of the categories outlined below, the general label (like “governance as threat” or “metagovernance”) refers to an ideal type in which a certain logic of communication or articulation is overwhelmingly prevalent. All the markers in the following exposition (“threat,” “stoicism,” “cynicism,” “hierarchy,” “network,” “meta-”) point to the form of political articulation, not their (ideological) content (like, liberal, socialist, etc.). Thus, one can be “networked/dialogical” about “fascist” content as well as “cynical” about “liberal” content. A political semiotic explanation explains how certain political forms are constituted within hierarchical relations to other forms and how they constitute political contents. That is why we call this explanation “political form analysis” (Selg & Ventsel, 2020, chap. 8). The theoretical model we are proposing is based on Selg and Ventsel (see Fig. 10.1) There the dimensions of democracy, power and governance are conceptualized in terms of Jakobson’s model of communication. For the current analysis, we adapt it to a narrower scope (see Fig. 10.2) by offering the following categories: Before unpacking the categories in this figure, a comment on the axes of problematization and de-problematization. They capture the distinction between metonymic (discrete) and metaphoric (continuous) communication, highlighted in Fig. 10.1. Governance, as we argue, can take various forms: it can lean toward problematizing and de-problematizing. The

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Fig. 10.1.  Semiotic categories for constitutive explanation of the political. (Source: Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 242)

Fig. 10.2  Semiotic categories for explaining governance as a process of problematization and de-problematization. (Adapted from Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 242)

circular shape of Figs. 10.2 and 10.1 represents that problematization and de-problematization are in a mutually constitutive relation, as are the center and periphery of the meaning system: by problematizing (or bringing to the center) something one always de-problematizes (relegates to periphery) something else. Therefore they can be analytically viewed separately but should not be treated as being separate in actual political practices. Our interest is in the semiotic mechanism of problematization and de-problematization, and here we use the Jakobsonian categories to explain the constitution of different semiospheres with their hierarchical relations of different forms of governance.

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 overnance as Threat (Emotive Public Communication) G Concerning governance, the overwhelming prevalence of emotive public communication is a form of de-problematizing policy problems that appeal to general and often abstract threats to the public. Such communication works by depicting an identifiable but not containable enemy who hinders through its vicious activities the very foundation of the public (be it embodied in a nation, state or group). The roots of such understanding of governance are pretty traditional. It was among the central concerns of Machiavelli’s Prince in its discussions on the role of fear and love as instruments of domination, especially in the phase of nascent rule. All the models of governance that conceptualize the latter in terms of propaganda as, for instance, manipulating emotions or the need to “constantly short-­ circuit all thought and decision” (Ellul, 1973, p. 27) could be included in this form of governance. It is most common in modern totalitarian populist regimes (both historically and contemporarily), since “[p]ropaganda … is one, and possibly the most important, instrument of totalitarianism for dealing with the nontotalitarian world” (Arendt, 1962, p. 344). Drawing on Lefort we could characterize the totalitarian “governance as threat” as a mode of communication whereby “social division, in all its modes, is denied, and at the same time all signs of differences of opinion, belief or mores are condemned” (Lefort, 1988, p. 13). The paradox of governance as threat is thus the following: “division is denied … and, at the same time as this denial, a division is being affirmed, on the level of phantasy, between the People-as-One and the Other” (ibid., p. 298).  overnance as Stoicism (Phatic Public Communication) G In terms of governance, the prevalence of phatic public communication would include various strategies of de-problematizing policy issues through “naturalizing” them as no problems at all. The founding arguments for this form of governance can be found already in Weber’s notion of traditional rule (Herrschaft) (2019, pp. 354–355) and Marx’s notion of fetishism (1982, pp. 163–177) developed into a more general framework by Lukacs’ notion of “reification” (1971, pp.  83–110). Contemporary members of this phatic family include the theorists who relate governance and power with the reproduction of tacit social knowledge. For instance, power operations related to Bourdieu’s habitus (1998, pp.  7–8; 1989, pp.  18–19), Giddens’ “practical consciousness knowledge” (1984, pp.  41–45), Bachrach and Baratz’s “mobilization of bias” (1962, pp. 949–952) or Clegg’s (1997, p. 207) and Haugaard’s reification (2006,

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p.  60) in the form of “appeal to nature” (ibid.) could be seen as de-­ problematization of policy problems through phatic communication in Jakobson’s sense. Here, they are interpreted as articulating a certain family of mechanisms of governance that could be applied to studying phatic public communication through mere “purport of prolonging communication” (1960, p. 355) without any attempt to share information or problematize public issues. In its ideal-typical fashion, this phatic governance could be presumed operative in ritualistic public communication. Schöpflin (2010) argues for an important role of ritual in the maintenance of stoic status quo: “Ritual, … establishes solidarity without consensus and does this by relying on an unchanged and unchangeable set of words, even when the non-verbal dimension of ritual functions as a recognizable text in its own right” (p.  43, italics added). Ritual is an important instrument of governance as de-problematization: “the monology of ritual cannot be challenged or if it is, then that challenge is seen as meaningless” (Schöpflin, 2010, p. 43). Besides rituals, various appeals to “common places,” “stereotypes” and “prejudices” are common forms of such de-­problematization. In fact, in the governance literature, this phatic form of communication is not discussed very much as a form of governance in its own right. We can, however, point to certain forms of reactions to governance failure that Jessop discusses as “stoicism” that “rests on passive resignation in the pursuit of familiar routines” (Selg, 2011, p. 118). This is basically an appeal to commonplaces that would take the problematic issues off the agenda.  overnance as Cynicism (Poetic Public Communication) G The prevalence of poetic public communication is another form of governance as de-problematization of policy problems. According to Jessop, again: Cynicism is the realm of symbolic politics, accelerated policy churning (to give the impression of doing something about intractable problems), and the “spin doctor”—the realm of “words that work and policies that fail”. This is particularly evident in the highly mediatized world of contemporary politics. (2011, p. 118)

This is basically governance that displaces policy issues without addressing them by constructing them as problems for which a readymade solution is at hand. It is de-problematization through “changing the subject” through “petty demagogy,” which is the form of populism characteristic of “highly

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institutionalized society” (Laclau, 2005, p. 191). The general strategy of this form of de-problematization “is to prompt temporary memorizations through disrupting stable and routine communication with easily recordable tropes” (Selg, 2010, p. 10).  overnance as Hierarchy (Conative Public Communication). G Governance that manifests itself mainly through vocative and imperative— that is, through conative public communication—is referred to as hierarchy in governance literature. The main mechanism of hierarchy is command in the broadest sense, including bureaucratic directives, performance measurements, and direct orders in rank-based branches of executive power. Command, in general, “involves ex ante imperative coordination in pursuit of substantive collective goals set from above (hierarchical command in the firm, organization, or state)” (Jessop, 2016, p. 167). In the context of our book, however, we can point out that the entire family of self-active governance, as discussed in Chap. 3, and the form of policy-making envisioned by the “normative” or “text-book” model (Chaps. 5–6) are relevant here ranging from the POSDCORB2 model to the “policy orientation” of Lasswell (1951) (see Table 6.2 for summary). When it comes to wicked problems, it is a form of governance as de-problematization, since it revolves around the understanding of “problem solution” (see Sect. 6.2.1), which is handed down for implementation as an “elegant solution” (Grint, 2010b) by policy experts who “speak truth” to power (see Sect. 8.2).  overnance as Network (Referential Public Communication) G This form of governance is embraced most vociferously by multiple streams of the deliberative democracy movement (Selg, 2010), that sees the aim of governance in “the formation of common will in a communication directed to reaching agreement” (Habermas, 1996, p. 76). The crucial mechanism for network-based governance is presumed to be dialogue. The deliberative form of governance is usually associated with networks or the so-called heterarchy—a form of governance that brokers between the anarchy of the market and the hierarchy of the state. The form of communication in network governance is dialogue which “depends on continuing commitment to generate and share information (thereby reducing, without ever eliminating, the problem of bounded rationality)” (Jessop, 2016, p.  169). All the discussions of inter-active governance (Chap. 3) and inter-actional approaches to policy process see the latter as dialogue aiming at reaching consensus through sublimating conflicts (see Table 10.1

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and Sect. 9.3.1) are relevant here. We can conceptualize it as the constitution of the public through referential communication that manifests itself most clearly in sharing information. This way, it is a form of governance as problematization through communicating facts, arguments and estimations regarding policy issues.  etagovernance (Metalingual Public Communication). M Metagovernance or “governance of governance,” as it is sometimes described, is often associated with questioning and specifying not even the underlying rules or norms of governance but the very “code” of governance or values from which those norms are derived (Kooiman & Jentoft, 2009; Jessop, 2011). All the discussions in Chap. 4 under the rubric of “failure governance” (esp. Sect. 4.1) that take the contingency of governance seriously and avoid “process-reduction” as much as possible when it comes to wicked problems belong to this family. This includes Jessop’s understanding of metagovernance in terms of self-reflexive irony, requisite variety, and reflective orientation (Jessop, 2011, 2022); the “clumsy solutions” approach to decision-making (e.g. Grint, 2010a, 2010b; Ney & Verweij, 2015); the “agonistic governance,” which is defined as an approach to decision-making that is premised on the acceptance that complexity generates paradoxes and contradictions and organizational actors must have the agency to positively embrace these, rather than try to eliminate them. (Fraher & Grint, 2018, p. 224)

The metalingual family of governance could be associated with Giddens’ (1984, pp.  41–45) differentiation between practical and discursive consciousness knowledge. Metalingual governance is derived from the agents’ capacity to transform the former into the latter. This is the notion of governance that radical democrats (especially Laclau and Mouffe and their school) associate with political governance par excellence. As Glynos and Howarth put it, “a demand is political to the extent that it publicly contests the norms of particular practice or systems of practices in the name of a principle or ideal” (2007, p. 115). And, of course, a “radical political demand would be one that publicly contests a fundamental norm of a practice or regime” (ibid.). As one of us has argued: “a real possibility to ‘legitimately challenge’ existing consensus is characteristic for democracy in Mouffe’s view” (Selg, 2012, p. 98). This understanding of democracy is, of course,

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informed by the same ethos that Jessop relates to his reflective orientation of a metagovernor inquiring in the first instance into the material, social, and discursive construction of possible objects of governance and reflecting on why this rather than another object of governance (or the policy problems with which it is associated) has (have) become hegemonic, dominant, or simply taken-for-­ granted. (Selg, 2011, p. 118)

Overall, the trans-actionalist understanding of policy design and governance, seen as the creation of meaning through mutual interventions and conversation of constituents that represent the agile unfolding of the policy field (see Table 10.1), is part of this understanding of governance. In Jakobson’s terms, this would be a metalingual challenge of the political code in the widest sense. Now that we have presented briefly the categories and their relations (as depicted in Fig. 10.2) of the semiotic theory of governance as problematization and de-problematization, we can add some methodological consequences of this theory. 10.2.2   Methodological Consequences of the Political Semiotic Theory of Governance First, it is vital to point out that the discussion in the previous subsection has been at the level of ideal types: we basically performed a thought experiment and presumed more or less total prevalence of certain forms of governance conceptualized in terms of the prevalence of a single language function. In the constitution of actual governance practices, we usually encounter the internal heterogeneity of the practice where forms of communication are interdependent in numerous ways. The major task of semiotic explanation is to account for the functioning of these practices, their internal heterogeneity, as well as, their relations with other practices. We could illustrate the point by the following: not every act of, say, emotive public communication entails that we have a totalitarian act of governance as threat. Usually, the underlying hierarchy of even emotive discourse results in some hybrid discourse which is considerably different than that we might encounter in (often historical) totalitarian regimes. Take for instance, governance as securitization, an increasingly discussed form of governance in International Relations. The emotive function of “threat”

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is at the center of this discourse. Constructing a threat is a discursive act that constitutes at least one referent object, envisioned as being under threat and thus in need of urgent protection (Hansen & Nissenbaum, 2009, p. 1156; Barnard-Wills & Ashenden, 2012, p. 114). Although the dominant form of communication in the securitizing discourse is emotive, we can say that it is an intricate set of relations among referential (e.g. scenario building) and conative communication (e.g. appeals to the necessity of technical expert knowledge) that constitute a considerably more heterogenous emotive discourse than that of, say, the public communication of Stalinist Soviet Union or the Third Reich during the second half of World War II. The second comment relates to the form of explanation we propose. We are not talking about causal explanation but constitutive explanation, which we (based on Selg, 2021, and Selg & Ventsel, 2020, chap. 7) consider to be a proper form of explanation for semiotic analysis and relational explanation more generally. The categories in the model are not representing variables under which one can subsume empirical reality in a deductive manner and decide that the presence of certain variables caused the presence of certain other variables. Constitutive explanation asks a different question: what makes a certain phenomenon what it is? In other words: what constitutes Y’s identity? It asks not the causal question of why Y happened, but rather, what makes it work the way it does. Constitutive explanation is a deeply relational form of explanation. When we explain a Y through an X (or Z or…), we cannot presume that the X and Y are separate entities that exist in isolation or independently from one another. They are mutually constitutive, not forming a linear sequence of causal chains. A semiosphere or discourse is not a (separate) cause of its parts or the parts the cause of the semiosphere/discourse. Rather it is a constant dialogical process of translation between the whole and the parts through which the identity of both is constituted and reconstituted. Therefore, it makes more sense to talk about the identity of Y (or X) as a process, not as an end-state or result. This latter aspect also points, thirdly, to the fact that the semiotic or relational form of explanation (unlike variable-centered causal explanation) is always essentially abductive. Constitutive explanations cannot take the form of deductive reasoning or have inductive generalization at their bases but always remain inherently abductive. Unlike the former two logics, abduction entails a processual movement from empirical observations and theoretical premises that are not presumed to be given separately.

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What we mean by that can be explained with the appeal to Peirce’s general formula for abduction: . The surprising fact C is observed. 1 2. But if A were true, C would be a matter of course. 3. Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. (CP, 5.189)3 What is important here is that constitutive/abductive mode of explanation is a constant unfolding (in the transitive sense of the word) of the changing identity of C and A. What is usually glossed over in discussions of abduction is that the meaning of C as “surprising” is not a property of C, but it makes sense only given our background knowledge K, which in turn is related to A (through its making C “unsurprising” or a “matter of course”) and vice a versa. So constitutive/abductive explanation is relational throughout. This also means that the explanatory categories (like “metagovernance”) we use do “not come off without a remainder” (Glynos & Howarth, 2007, p. 47) but their “application” itself “ought to be understood as part of a general practice of articulation, in which the sense and meaning of explanatory categories grow organically and contingently in the very process of their application” (ibid.). In practice, abductive analysis is “context-sensitive code-selection” (Wirth, 2005, p.  203) entailing a processual movement from puzzling empirical phenomena to theoretical premises making them intelligible and then back to the phenomena through which both the identity of the phenomena as well as the corresponding theoretical premises can change, and the process is never final, since the “final” result itself is a part of the process. (Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 233)

Hence, the meaning or identity of the Cs, the As, and the Ks can change as the explanatory spiral unfolds: what might be background knowledge K at some phase of this unfolding, can itself turn into a surprising fact C; an A that makes some Cs “a matter of course” might become a background knowledge, and at some later phase be even contested as itself a surprising fact, and so on. Abduction, thus, is part of the application of the “Principle of Dereification” that Dépelteau (2008, pp.  62–63) sees as one of the “General Principles of Relationism in Sociology” (ibid., p. 59). It starts with making “facts” into “unowned processes” by jumping to their premises, making them surprising or bringing out their contingency. Therefore

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abductive inference entails a dialogical understanding of theory and observations regarding research and especially case studies.

10.3  A Dialogical Understanding of Theory in Case Study Research A dialogical approach to theory, proposed by various thinkers with an explicitly abductive understanding of research logic (Selg & Ventsel, 2020; Timmermans & Tavory, 2012; Glynos & Howarth, 2007; Thomas, 2010), presumes that “theory” itself is what Rule and John call “nominalization of a process” (2015, p. 2). Theorizing about something occurs in a specific context and, therefore, theory is not just a set of ideas or propositions but emerges from the dialogue between a theorist and antecedent theories, contexts, problems, co-theorists, and so on, and a theory develops through processes of testing and experimentation (dialogue with research) and of practical application as theorists apply and reflect on the theory (dialogue with practice) and as they elicit and respond to critique (dialogue within a community of scholarship). (Ibid.)

The specific relationships between theory, practice and research are shaped by the context in which they are placed. This may include factors such as the actual situation, the purpose of the action, the people involved and the resources available. Depending on the purpose of the research, one can start with one of them and then move on to the others (ibid.). Robert Yin (2003, p. 32) sees a case studies’ aim as providing “analytical generalizations” rather than probabilistic-statistical ones. For Rule and John, Yin leans toward “theory-first” approach to a case study, since for him, case study research “benefits from the prior development of theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis” (Yin, 2009, p. 18, quoted in Rule & John, 2015, p. 3). Yin suggests that case study researchers construct “a preliminary theory” first on the topic of the study. This distinguishes case study from grounded theory (at least from the inductivist version of it) and ethnographic approaches. It is an essential part of the design phase of a case study, “whether the ensuing case study’s purpose is to develop or to test theory” (Yin, 2009, p. 35, quoted in Rule & John, 2015, p. 3). We could say that the notion of theory here is close to what has been proposed by the Aristotelian notion of phronesis. Also, our

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presumption is that applying a theory (theory building or testing) can only be an abductive process. Similarly, Rule and John argue that [a] limitation of this theory-first [deductivism] approach is that, while it might generate a strong research design, a clear focus for data collection, and a program for data analysis, it might also obscure unanticipated findings and suppress the potential sources of surprise and challenge within the case (Rule & John, 2015, p. 4)

Thus, instead of championing a deductive or inductive approach to theory and research relations, we should be openly abductive, enabling the dialogical approach that Rule and John argue for. How does theory relate to research in case studies? First, Rule and John talk about “theory of the case which informs how the case is constructed and selected” (ibid., italics added). This is, in a way, theory as methodology (not to be confused with methods—see Hay, 2006). Second, “theory for the case,” where “cases might test or apply theory. The researcher might begin with the theory and see how the case does or does not fit” (ibid., italics added). Third, “theory from the case: one might begin with the case and generate new theory from it” which is basically an inductivist approach to grounded theory “that seeks to generate theory from concrete data through processes of careful bottom-up analysis” (ibid., italics added). Fourth, “the relation between theory and case as [a] dialogical [relation]: One might draw on theory to define, select, and problematize the case but also use the case to develop new theoretical perspectives” (ibid., italics added). The first and second perspectives inform the deductivist version: here, theory composition is considered separate from its encounters with empirical reality. The third understanding is an inductivist version of grounded theory. Here the data is presumed to be working under their own powers, and data can be considered separately from the theoretical framework. The fourth option is a conscious realization of the fact that there is no data (even observations) per se, as there is no theory per se to be applied (tested, built)—the relation between them is abductive. Needless to say that it is the fourth option we choose for the empirical case studies that follow. To conclude this chapter, some more specific remarks on empirical case studies of failure governance and governance failure forming the bulk of Part III of this book. That the COVID-19 crisis ought to be considered a wicked problem is increasingly acknowledged in social scientific research:

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What we refer to as the COVID-19 Crisis is, in reality, not just a health crisis caused by a pandemic, but it consists of a multitude of crises in constitutive relations with each other. Next to the health crisis based on the virus itself and the potential collapse of the public health sector; we are facing an economic crisis created by the lockdown societies went in and the poverty it entails; an epistemic authority crisis as experts and scientists are challenged by increasingly prevalent conspiracy theories; a mental health crisis due to the social isolation and increased stress levels of the new reality; an educational crisis based on the difficulties of moving classes to e-learning environments; a geopolitical crisis based on, among other things, “vaccine nationalism” instead of global cooperation; etc. All of these are also contributing to the growing inequality of our societies, in which certain privileged groups and countries are protected from many outcomes of these crises and others are particularly vulnerable to it. (Selg et al., 2022, p. 16)4

The sources from which we draw data through political semiotic analysis are publicly available: governmental documents, research articles, and printed and audiovisual media coverages. We have used the sources to reconstruct facts about the governance of the COVID-19 crisis in Taiwan, the United States, and Germany. However, the data we generate from these documents is based on a political semiotic analysis, which we then use to explain this governance. In other words, we ask what is a particular fact a fact of? Is it a fact, for instance, of metagovernance? Is it a surprising fact? Etc. This way, we engage in the “context-sensitive code-selection” that enables us to reconstruct the Cs, Ks, and the As we discussed in the previous section and put forth a political semiotic explanation of these governance responses. Since our book is mostly theoretical-methodological and thus the point of the “empirical” case studies is to show how our theory-methodology helps better to explain the well-known facts about Taiwan, Germany, and the United States. Thus, we are jumping to the premises of those well-­ known facts, not “discovering” new facts. This is also why the previous studies on these countries form an important part of our data or sources.

Notes 1. David Howarth is a direct student of Laclau and also professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He has extensively widened the methodological reach of post-structuralist political theory (most influentially with Jason Glynos—e.g., Glynos & Howarth, 2007).

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2. The abbreviation POSDCORB stands for Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Directing, Co-ordinating, Reporting, Budgeting. It comes from the memo “Notes on the Theory of Organization” (Gulick, 1937), which was first presented in 1935 and where these principles of well-oiled administration were defined. 3. I follow here the most frequently used reference source to the eight-volume Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Peirce 1931–1966). It is usually referred to by giving the number of the volume and the number of the fragment cited (CP 5.189, e.g., is fragment number 189 in volume 5). 4. See also ibid., 21, note 1 for various references on COVID-19 crisis as a wicked problem.

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CHAPTER 11

The Whole-of-Nation-Failure-Governance: Taiwan’s Politics of Problematization of COVID-19

11.1   C11: Taiwan as an Epitome of Success The fact is that C1 with which we start our analysis is almost uncontested in the sources: Taiwan was enormously successful in containing coronavirus during the first waves of the crisis (roughly December 2019–April 2021) (see Lee, 2021, p. 29; Wong et al., 2022, p. 3; Li, 2021, p. 50). We briefly highlight the dimensions of C1. “As of February 10, 2021, only 935 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed since the first confirmed case on January 21, 2020,” in a country of 24 million people; “[a]mong the confirmed cases, nine deaths have occurred, all of whom were adults older than 40 years” (Li, 2021, p.  50). Even more impressively, by December 21, 2020, Taiwan had been without local transmission for 253 days (Li, 2021, p. 51). To put it in perspective, “[t]he American state of Florida with a comparable population of 21.5 million (slightly less) suffered 17,600 deaths and 897,000 infections as of late November 2020” (Khondker, 2021, p. 705). To put it in an even more robust perspective: in March 2021, Taiwan had only ten COVID-related deaths since the beginning of the pandemic. Taiwan is a nation of roughly 24 million people. If Estonia (a country of 1.3 million people and just lightly larger in terms of territory) would have been Taiwan, then at the time, it would have had one person almost dead of COVID. Yet, in reality, Estonia had about 900 deaths by the end of this month.2 At the same time, Taiwan’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_11

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economy grew in 2020, albeit somewhat less than forecast in the previous year, but still well above the global average. Also, Taiwan never went on internal lockdown during the period under question (Li, 2021, p.  50). This is C1 in a nutshell, which we can call Taiwan’s success story. Is it a surprising fact? Definitely, but what is our background knowledge of K1 for claiming it? Briefly put: Taiwan belongs among the “Asian Tigers” who “are densely populated and geographically close to China, which could have made it very difficult for them to cope with the crisis” (Lee, 2021, p. 30). In early 2020 “Taiwan was predicted to be one of the most affected countries because of its economic activities and transportation exchanges with China” (Li, 2021, p. 49; see also Kuo, 2020, p. 103). Li also cites a study from Johns Hopkins University (Gardner 2020), which, again estimated Taiwan to be “the second highest risk in terms of the estimated number of imported COVID-19 cases due to its proximity to China and the number of flights linking it to China” (Li, 2021, pp. 49–50). Overall, Taiwan is a consolidating democracy that is geographically proximate to China, the initial epicenter of COVID-19; there are hundreds of thousands of Taiwanese citizens working in China while Taiwan attracts millions of Chinese tourists every year. The self-ruled island was thus regarded as a high-risk region for COVID-19 infection. … When the first confirmed case was reported on 21 January 2020, many expected the island to face an uphill battle in containing this infectious disease. (Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 301)

In addition, Taiwan’s economy was very vulnerable as most of it is constituted by global flows (such as export or tourism) that suffered serious setbacks due to the global lockdown (especially in 2020). And even more than the global flows the facts that “China and Hong Kong account for nearly 40 percent of Taiwan’s exports and over one-fifth of Taiwan’s imports” and that “China is also Taiwan’s main overseas manufacturing production site” (Kuo, 2020, p. 103) all cement our claim for K1 that C1 is surprising to say the least. In addition, we can pretty much get through to the garbage can: the seemingly handy explanations appeal to the observation that Taiwan is an (isolated) island. Well, Taiwan might be an island geographically speaking, yet it is no island when it comes to global flows and its inextricable links to its largest neighbor: “more than 1 million Taiwanese live or work in China and travelers between Taiwan and China numbered about 10 million annually during the 2016–18 period” (Kuo,

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2020, p. 102). But what are possible alternative explanations to C1 that are serious candidates for making it “a matter of course” (see Chap. 10)?

11.2   Taking Stock of Alternative Explanations It has been brought out that when it came to governing COVID-19, Taiwan’s “policy making is largely orchestrated by expert-led government agencies (the Centers for Disease Control or the equivalent thereof) rather than politicians with little expertise in epidemiology and immunology” (Lee, 2021, p. 29). This leaves “very little room for politicians and bureaucrats to manipulate the situation to their advantage” (ibid., pp. 35–36). This means, in turn, that “a high priority has been placed on public health, rather than political considerations and economic impacts” (ibid., p. 36). It is quite unusual, globally speaking, especially in view of the governance failure of the USA during the Trump administration (see Chap. 12). More concretely, the National Health Command Center established the Central Epidemic Command Center in 2005: “This center has been activated twice: just after the outbreak of the 2009 swine flu pandemic and the Covid-19 pandemic” (ibid.). It is noteworthy that “the Vice President Chen Chien-Jen (2016–2020), took charge of managing the SARS crisis in 2003” (ibid., p. 36). Chen Chien-Jen is one of the leading epidemiologists in the world, with a citation rate of more than 110,000.3 There are also communicative explanations pointing to the conclusion “that the framing of the pandemic as a conflict between China and Taiwan on the Taiwanese social media has contributed to the success” (Huang, 2021, p.  55) and that “COVID-19 was framed as an involuntary risk, universal risk, environmental risk, and knowingly created risk due to the special political background between Taiwan and China” (ibid., p.  56). For instance: the metaphor that COVID-19 is called Wuhan pneumonia suggested by Taiwan government was employed to imply that the virus originated from Wuhan, China. It was also employed as a framing technique to increase the negative emotions toward China. (…) Taiwan was depicted to suffer an involuntary, universal, environmental, and knowingly created risk from China. (Ibid., p. 59)

This points, among other things, to the possible role of identity-­ building through exclusion, which is one of the constitutive mechanisms

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of meaning-making as such, as we also argued in Chap. 10, where we put forth the political semiotic theory of governance utilized in this chapter. Exclusion creates unity in the system—whether in terms of identity, culture, group, or nation. Exclusion has been, in many ways, the fate of Taiwan. We point here to another aspect of it: the (perceived) lack of support from the World Health Organization (WHO), which somewhat paradoxically could be seen as cementing Taiwan’s success story during the containment phase of the COVID-19 crisis. After the 2003 SARS outbreak, from which Taiwan learned quite hard lessons: “Taiwan requested representation at the WHO to help the government protect citizens’ right to healthcare. However, China has continuously claimed the self-ruled island is a breakaway province and blocked its entry into intergovernmental organizations, such as the WHO” (Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 305). Thus with “limited resources and information sharing from the WHO, Taiwan has had to be self-reliant” (Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 305). But the result is arguably a larger cohesiveness of society (or a sense of interdependence): In response to continual diplomatic isolation, the politically savvy Tsai Ing-­ wen4 administration capitalized on every opportunity to transform the lack of support from the WHO into political support from citizens. Public opinion was thus mobilized to stir up hostility towards the WHO … and form a sense of interdependence within the self-ruled island. Undoubtedly, the Tsai Ing-wen administration took an immense risk by irritating the WHO, but the mobilization of social cohesiveness provided fertile ground for effective collaborative governance. Members of society were thus willing to fortify public safety at the sacrifice of personal interests. (Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 306)

The referred studies (Huang, 2021; Hsieh et  al., 2021) indicate an important aspect underlying Taiwan’s success: the cohesiveness of their approach at every societal level. Articulating this direction of explanation, Taiwan’s approach has been called “the-whole-of-nation” governance (Hsieh et al., 2021). Hsieh et al. ascribe “Taiwan’s anti-COVID-19 performance to a collective synergy between the central government, local governments, private enterprises and citizens, referred to as the National Epidemic Prevention Team (NEPT)” (2021, p.  301). Their “analysis of Taiwan’s NEPT is guided by a model of collaborative governance using the method of process tracing” (ibid., p. 302) which for them “refers to a series of causal-­ process observations through careful and static descriptions and close

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attention to sequences of independent, dependent and intervening variables” (ibid., p. 304). Referring to Ansell and Gash’s (2008) notion of “collaborative governance,” they argue that the latter “occurs when one or more government agencies must engage non-state stakeholders to solve complex or distressing issues for which consensus on the definition of the problem or clear solutions to the problem have not been reached” (ibid., 303). This is the “who” aspect of this form of governance, responding to the question of who should be involved (namely, “non-state stakeholders”). The aspect that relates it more directly to our proposed failure governance (Chap. 10) is related to the “how”-question: how should this governance be conducted? Their response is that “collaborative governing process ought to be consensus-oriented and deliberative” (ibid., p. 303). In our terms, this is supposed to be referential communication (see Chap. 10), a form of politics of problematization. The conclusion of Hsieh and colleagues is captured under their figure of the “whole-of-nation-­ governance.” More specifically, they refer to NEPT or “National Epidemic Prevention Team” approach. In our terms, it is essentially metagovernance or deliberative governance: Taiwan’s NEPT is operated on the basis of a well-planned emergency response mechanism, a culture of civic engagement and public trust, and a sense of interdependence among members. Each of these elements is integral to collaborative efforts in combating COVID-19. Other countries and regions may possess some of these qualities but few have all of them, which explains why Taiwan stands out among others in curbing the spread of COVID-19. (Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 306; see also Fig. 11.1)

They stress further that it is important that Taiwan’s NEPT should not be simply understood as a whole-of-government or whole-of-society approach, but rather as the combination of the two—we call it a ‘whole-of-nation’ approach. It is not solely whole-of-government or whole-of-society because the NEPT is headed by a central command unit and operated by an integrated system of interdepartmental, central–local, intersectoral and citizen–state collaboration. Whereas the whole-of-­ government approach emphasizes the significance of interdepartmental coordination in addressing societal challenges, central–local, public–private and citizen–state partnerships are all considered efforts of the whole-of-­ society approach. Learning from Taiwan’s experience, we argue that all

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Interdepartmental Collaboration

Central-Local Collaboration

Central Command Unit

Intersectoral Collaboration

Citizen-State Collaboration

Fig. 11.1  Conditions of an effective whole-of-nation approach. (Source: Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 311) these various forms of collaboration are integral parts of an effective wholeof-­nation response to a public health crisis (Ibid., p. 310)

One aspect of the whole-of-nation-governance is that instead of “idiocracy” there is a working democracy. With this figure, we are appealing here to the original meaning of the word “idiōte ̄s” going back to the Ancient Greeks and meaning “a private person, individual.” In view of this, we could say that compared to Taiwan, many developed Western countries were “idiocracies” in which the stakeholders did not cooperate, leading to the suffering of all. When, for instance, Sweden took the laissez-faire approach to govern COVID-19, the result was quite devastating; the same holds for the Trump-administration-led USA. There were extensive protests against governmental policies for containing the virus in Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and others. In contrast Taiwan is markedly different: policy debates over outbreak control strategies were, and are, vigorous, but the ethos of scientific rationality is generally

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upheld; advice from medical and health professionals is widely respected; and policies on border control, quarantine, social distancing and personal hygiene have all been successfully implemented with no antagonism between the central government and community stakeholders. Overall, Taiwan presents a sharp contrast to other democracies, where strong outcries from civil libertarians often undermined the effectiveness of anti-pandemic responses. (Hsieh et al., 2021, p. 311)

Taiwan’s response was characterized by trust and a sense of interdependence that has “driven the Taiwanese people to work together to protect the public from COVID-19” (ibid.). An important take-away from here is that “[a]lthough Taiwan’s situation could be unique, a sense of interdependence is arguably indispensable in every collaborative effort against a grave threat to human existence such as COVID-19 (ibid.). Taking stock of these alternative explanations, we move on to argue that a crucial aspect of Taiwan’s success in the containment phase of COVID-19 crisis is what we have called “failure governance” which consists of deeply ingrained politics of problematization. Also, we want to reiterate our earlier point that problematization and de-problematization are always mutually constitutive: by problematizing something, one always de-problematizes something else. This, of course, comes directly from our political semiotic theory of governance (outlined in Chap. 10) that highlights the essential tension in the constitution of every meaning system (discourse, semiosphere) that revolves around the metaphoric (continuous) and metonymic (discrete) axes of communication (see Fig. 10.2 in the previous chapter). In practical terms, it helps to explain the relatively unsuccessful performance of Taiwan when the crisis moved from the containment phase to the vaccination phase (in the spring of 2021). But first, some additional aspects of Taiwan’s success story.

11.3  A1: The Whole-of-Nation-FailureGovernance of More Than 100 Measures Now, the A1 that would make C1 “a matter of course” consists of a cluster of governance actions that we can conceptualize in terms of the politics of problematization of the COVID-19 crisis. In more specifically political semiotic terms: the center of Taiwan’s response to COVID-19 during the first two waves was overwhelmingly characterized by discrete coding of the crisis, while the continuous coding was relegated to the periphery of

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this semiosphere. Applying our political semiotic categories, we can say that Taiwan’s success is explained by the fact that in their handling of the crisis, there was a prevalence of “metagovernance” and “network governance” (metalingual and referential communication), while the threat-­ based, stoicist, and cynical forms of governance (emotive, phatic, and poetic communication) played only a marginal role. This itself is quite unusual, globally speaking. To put it in an almost non-technical vocabulary: Taiwan actually addressed the crisis with all of its unpredictable and constantly changing circumstances, rather than engaging in political rivalry, blame game, conspiracy theories, denial, etc., which was the mainstream strategy in countries like, for instance, the USA at the time. These countries engaged, we could say, in de-problematizing COVID-19 and problematizing other issues, such as re-election (especially in the case of the Trump-led USA). As we mentioned, problematizing and de-­ problematizing are in a mutually constitutive relation (see Chap. 10). This is also important for making sense of later developments in Taiwan’s response to the crisis. However, what were the more concrete problematizing governance actions we can point to regarding the country’s December-2019-April-2021 response to COVID-19? We highlight the following. When it comes to the tactics of flattening the curve, there is a huge metalingual requisite variety of more than 100 measures being cited (Li, 2021, p.  52), referring to the multiplicity of ways that the government thought that their current “code” of governance might need to be metalingually reoriented or problematized. The general strategy was implemented “through a combination of widespread testing, aggressive contact tracing and effective treatment” (Lee, 2021, p. 31). Lee goes on: Outside China, Taiwan was the first country to perceive the danger of the pandemic in late December 2019. After finding out that a cluster of patients with pneumonia of an unknown cause suddenly increased in Wuhan, the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control started monitoring all travelers from Wuhan on January 5, 2020. Two weeks later, the Central Epidemic Command Center was activated and immediately coordinated policy responses across government agencies. (Ibid., p. 32)

There were conative (hierarchical) “stick” measures of governance, such as heavy fines (up to 2 million NT$ or ca 70,000$) (Johnson & Johnson, 2020) for breaking the quarantine rules, deliberate spreading of

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misinformation regarding the pandemic, or refusing to wear face masks in public transportation. For instance, when it comes “stick” measures of quarantine: All passengers must report any symptoms to health authorities during that 14-day period, while the location data on their cell phones is monitored to ensure that they comply with the quarantine requirements. Leaving their residences or shutting off their phones triggers an alert. Local authority officers will make phone calls twice a day to ensure that those quarantining are not circumventing the cell phone tracking by leaving their phones at home. Failure to report symptoms or to abide by the quarantine rules can lead to heavy fines. (Kuo, 2020, p. 105)

As for facemasks, then, first, they “were requisitioned and distributed by the government to guarantee the availability of supplies” (ibid., p. 106). It entailed restrictions for the manufacturers: “To ensure the steady supply of masks, the government quickly banned manufacturers from exporting them, implemented a rationing system, and set the maximum price at just 16 cents each” (ibid.).5 Under the “stick” measures, of course, the intense border control can also be referred to: During the first phase of border control between December 31, 2019, and February 11, 2020, the CECC [Central Epidemic Command Center] provided many travel notices for affected areas of China according to the severity of respective COVID-19 infections. A complete entry ban was implemented on residents of China including Hong Kong and Macao on February 11, 2020. (Li, 2021, p. 52)

Taiwan adopted its border control depending on the risk levels of each country. However, “[a]ll foreign countries had been categorized by Taiwan at the highest risk tier of Level 3 on 19 March 2020” (Kuo, 2020, p. 106). Consequently, the total number of people entering Taiwan in April and May was only 1% of the corresponding numbers for the same month during the previous 5 years (2016–2019). Among these, the numbers for mainlanders and foreigners were less than 1%, respectively, of the corresponding numbers for the same month during the previous 5 years. (Li, 2021, p. 53)

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At the same time these stick measures were balanced by “carrot” measures: Social distancing, border control, and home quarantine have markedly reduced in economic productivity and placed a heavy burden on society. To reduce social isolation, self-blame, or even discrimination that might affect quarantined individuals, Taiwan’s CECC has actively acknowledged the contribution of these people, rather than depicting them as a threat to public health, and local governments coordinated with the CECC through community-level networks to provide food and other necessities as well as emotional support (Lin and Cheng 2020). (Li, 2021, p. 58)

Many acts of metagovernance of the “anarchy” of the market through reorganizing its spontaneous flows can be pointed to. Most important here was the government’s intervention in the economy and society through subsidizing low-income families, the unemployed who had lost their jobs because of the pandemic (like in the tourism sector), delivering food, etc.: On 14 August [2020], the government further released a new relief package for the severely hit tourism industry, with wage subsidies to hotel employees of up to 40 percent of their regular wages (up to NT$ 20,000) and a monthly handout of NT$ 10,000 to self-employed tourist guides for three months. (Kuo, 2020, p. 113)

In general, “Taiwan’s COVID-19 relief measures are composed of three types: financial aid, employment assistance, and tax breaks” (ibid.). For instance, [t]he Ministry of Economic Affairs allocated NT$ 97.5 billion (US$ 3.25 billion) for financial bailouts, aiming to revitalize local consumption and to support businesses, especially small enterprises and service-sector family businesses such as nightmarket vendors or hairdressers. They are eligible to receive subsidies of up to 30 percent of their power and water bills and up to 40 percent of their salary costs. (Ibid.)

In addition, direct subsidies to citizens under quarantine were also used. In an interview (Johnson & Johnson, 2020), Vice President Chen pointed out that one of the measures for boosting the economy was that

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2000NT$ (about 70 USD) was given to the citizens daily during their 14-day lockdown, which they had to spend, not save. Besides the “stick” and “carrot” measures of flattening the curve, it is important to focus on the public communication of the Taiwanese government, which revolved around one of the most metalingual orientations one can think of: transparency of information and agile response to misinformation regarding COVID-19. Just a few facts related to that: Starting on January 23, 2020, a daily press briefing, an open and transparent epidemic information platform, was held to keep the public informed on the current developments of COVID-19 in Taiwan. The Minister of Health and Welfare, Chen Shih-Chung, has been the commander in charge to host news briefings almost every day to provide COVID-19 information in a language that has been easily understandable. (Li, 2021, p. 54)

Furthermore, [t]he government asked television and radio stations to broadcast hourly public service announcements on how the virus is spread, the importance of washing hands properly, and when to wear a face mask. The government constantly encouraged citizens to develop good personal hygiene habits and maintain social distancing. (Kuo, 2020, p. 108)

In addition, Taiwan’s CECC [Central Epidemic Command Center] used multiple information channels to communicate crisis information, including: various social media platforms (such as LINE, Facebook, and Twitter), electronic media channels (such as YouTube), print media (such as mass transit posters), and broadcast media (such as television and radio) to regularly disseminate COVID-19 prevention information. Such efforts were also to avert public panic and educate public correct guidance on prevention and control of COVID-19 to improve personal hygiene and public awareness. (Li, 2021, p. 55)

Persistence also was and still is an important aspect of transparency: [s]ince 21 January [2020], the CECC holds a daily press conference for communication with the media and the public. In this press conference, the CECC announced the number of COVID-19 cases every day until 7 June,

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when there were no local confirmed cases reported for 56 consecutive days (four possible virus incubation periods) [and] [t]he daily press conference was later changed to a weekly press conference or done on an ad hoc basis whenever new cases occur. (Kuo, 2020, pp. 107–108)

An important result of transparency is, of course that the Taiwanese government has won the people’s trust. The Taiwanese government introduced the “whole-government system” and took on a leading role in managing the pandemic. Transparent information was provided about the disposable surgical mask supply, and there was responsive dialogue regarding COVID-19 policy for people to better understand the functions of government. (Wong et al., 2022, p. 9)

As has already been said, the flipside of transparency involves prompt responses to the spread of misinformation about the disease. Here Taiwan has shown remarkably effective performance as well: Since the setup of the CECC, daily press briefings have been held to announce the latest policies and information on COVID-19 and to promptly clarify misinformation circulating on social media. The Taiwanese government has posted memes on social media as “humor over rumor” to counter disinformation. Moreover, the Taiwan CDC has been actively employing chatbots on LINE, a platform similar to WhatsApp and widely used in Taiwan, to announce key policies and statistics on a daily basis. (Li, 2021, p. 55)

In addition to “stick” and “carrot” measures of flattening the curve, transparent communication (with prompt reactions to misinformation), and various effective exercises of disciplinary power in Foucault’s sense (1977) are important to mention. A key here is that Taiwan is one of the most digitally advanced countries in the world. It is digital technology that “provides a new type of social innovation to help making public to easy access transparent information or prevent the transmission of misinformation and disinformation to combat COVID-19 effectively in Taiwanese society” (Li, 2021, p. 49). At the same time Taiwan applied its artificial intelligence and big data technology not only to detect and track cases, but also to enforce and monitor the home quarantine process. Health care workers can use the NHI Cloud system to check a

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patient’s travel history and determine whether a patient is potentially infected with COVID-19 based on the patient’s symptoms, so that necessary patient diversion measures can be taken immediately. Medical institutions could also use the electronic referral platform to upload medical information of people under home quarantine to monitor infection conditions. This use of technology helped Taiwan to diagnose and track possible COVID-19 infections, as part of its so-called “precision prevention” strategy. (Kuo, 2020, p.108)

In an interview with TED, Audrey Tang, the Minister of Digital Affairs (until August 2022), introduced her team’s highly metalingual digital strategy of responding to COVID-19 as a FFF or “Fast, Fair and Fun” approach (Tang, 2020). She points out that democracy improves when more people participate and that digital technology remains one of the best ways to improve participation, “as long as the focus is on finding common ground, that is to say, prosocial media instead of antisocial media” (ibid.). The first F—Fastness—means roughly that, in many cases, responding to certain messages makes sense only within a very limited time frame and that a “rapid response-system builds trust between the government and the civil society” (ibid.). Under the second F—Fairness— she points to more than 100 tools that the civil engineers have built, which “enable people to get the same exclusive access to information.” When it comes to Fun—the third F—Tang points out that Taiwan’s counter-­ disinformation strategy is very simple. It is called “humor over rumor.” So when there was a panic buying of tissue papers, for example, there was a rumor [in early 2020] that said: “Oh, we are ramping up mass production, it’s the same materials as tissue papers, and so we’ll run out of tissue papers soon” (ibid.). She continues, by describing how their Premier “showed a very memetic picture” with the caption “Each of us only has one pair of buttocks,” pointing out also that the tissue material actually comes from southern America and that there is no danger of running out of this material. Overall, Tang’s team’s goal has been “mak[ing]sure that the factual humor spreads faster than rumor. And they serve as a vaccine, as inoculation, so that when people see the conspiracy theories the R0 value of that will be below one, meaning that those ideas will not spread” (ibid.). This is a highly metalingual strategy—breaking the code of rumor before it can constitute itself. An important aspect here that Tang emphasizes is that the Premier’s joke was a joke at himself—the only way to make fun of someone/something without the danger of hurting somebody. As a result,

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people started sharing this joke via social media: “And that went absolutely viral. And the panic went down in a day or two. And finally we found out who was the spreader of the rumor. It was a tissue paper reseller” (ibid.). Our treatment of Taiwan’s metalingual politics of problematization— failure governance in an almost ideal-typical sense—would not be complete (if it ever could be that, of course) without taking into account the important policy learning lessons the country drew from their earlier experience with the SARS epidemic in 2003. This has resulted in many constitutive changes in Taiwan’s health governance, institutions, and policies. The first aspect of this that is usually highlighted is that after the 2003 epidemic Taiwan “centralised the epidemic prevention and command system” and “built isolation facilities with proper ventilation in hospitals to prepare for the challenges of infectious diseases in the future, such as COVID-19” (Wong et al., 2022, p. 6). The hard lessons from the 2003 (and the 2015 MERS epidemic) created an important institutional and collective memory, which “helped citizens to tolerate some constraints on private privacy and individual liberty” (Lee 2021, p. 29). Several institutional changes were introduced in light of the aftermath of the previous epidemics: In 2004, the National Health Command Center was established. This comprehensive platform and unified central command system quickly recognized the crisis and activated emergency management structures to address the emerging outbreak as seen from the early recognition of the COVID-19 epidemic in Taiwan. (Li, 2021, p. 54)

More specifically, learning from the SARS experience, hospitals in Taiwan “have designated specific pathways to control patient flow” (ibid.). These include checking all the patients for fever and confirming their travel histories; an introduction of a “comprehensive patient diversion strategy” which includes “space partition, patient diversions, and staff subdivisions at the hospital emergency department” (ibid.). For instance, as of April 3, 2020, “[h]ealthcare providers are organized into discrete blocks within their working areas and into modular teams to avoid hospital-wide infection” (ibid.). Let us now recap what it is that we have analyzed under A1 that made the observation C1—Taiwan’s success story—“a matter of course”:

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• The whole-of-nation approach to governing the crisis; • the well-preparedness of the government and the institutional and legal structure due to policy learning of the 2003 SARS crisis; • the government’s effective tactics of flattening the curve resulting in one of the lowest COVID death rates in the world; • establishment of the Central Epidemic Command Center already on January 20, 2020 that started to coordinate more than 100 governance measures; • the effective involvement of citizens and the private sector in governance; • effective economic measures for relieving economic backlash resulting from the pandemic; • transparent governmental communication (including the use of ICT) that resulted in high legitimacy, trust, and democratic engagement with governance (despite the overall top-down structure of Taiwanese government); • the successful harnessing of the lack of foreign support (especially from the World Health Organization) into creating a sense of interdependence among the public. All these aspects of A1 can be interpreted as dimensions of politics of problematization (metagovernance, network governance). In political semiotic terms, these governance actions created a center for the semiosphere of Taiwan’s response to COVID-19  in December 2019–April 2021, whose political form is overwhelmingly metalingual and referential. Now, what about the periphery of this semiosphere? For this, we have to return to our theoretical premise that problematization and de-­ problematization are mutually constitutive.

11.4   C2: Taiwan’s Poor Performance at the Beginning of the Vaccination Phase of the Crisis Thus, what was de-problematized through this constant problematization of COVID-19 containment (A1)? In abductive logical terms (Chap. 10): can this “matter of course” (A1) be seen as a new background knowledge (K2), which makes an observation about Taiwan’s response to COVID-19 (C2) surprising? In fact, it can—A1 turns into K2 in view of the following.

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Taiwan’s December-2019–April-2021 response to COVID-19 was a success, but as the pandemic entered the second year, things changed quite drastically. Taiwan turned out to be an utter laggard when the crisis came to the vaccination phase. This is, in a nutshell, the fact C2. However, given how diligent Taiwan was (A1), C2 is a surprising fact, transforming A1 into K2 (our background knowledge for C2). Unfolding in more detail C2—Taiwan’s laggard performance in vaccination—let as point out that “the first study aimed at evaluating the acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines in Taiwan [published in Tsai et al., 2021]” was conducted in October 2020—before the vaccines were available. According to that study, “[n]early half of the participants were unwilling to receive a COVID-19 vaccine (willing vs unwilling: 52.7% vs. 47.3%)” (Tsai et  al., 2021, 8). Thus, “Taiwan’s acceptance rate of COVID-19 vaccines [was] lower than those of most countries around the world and lower than those of France and Sweden in particular, which already [had] low acceptance rates” (ibid.). In addition to distrust of the vaccines, there was a huge shortage of vaccine supply in Taiwan almost until autumn 2021. The vaccination rate of Taiwanese people was as low as 1% in May 2021. A country with only ten COVID-19 deaths in March of the same year moved to more than 850 by the summer (see Fig. 11.2). What about A2 that would make C2 “a matter of course”? First, could it be that the enormous success in handling the virus during the first 1.5 years of the pandemic backfired when the phase of the crisis moved from prevention to elimination of the disease (at least, the latter is what vaccination is ideally supposed to accomplish)? Semiotically speaking: could it be that the metalingual/referential problematization of prevention and containment strategies brought about phatic (stoic) de-­ problematization of the future elimination strategies? Various studies have already hinted at this possibility (see Khondker, 2021 for an overview). The key to thinking about this is that Taiwan was immensely successful when the COVID-19 crisis was a matter of domestic politics of prevention. Yet when the global demand for vaccines became apparent, the crisis became a geopolitical crisis. Arguably, the latter was in the periphery of Taiwan throughout its success story. Here we can only very fleetingly touch upon what is at stake in A2.

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Fig. 11.2  The drastic upsurge of COVID-19 deaths in Taiwan in spring and summer of 2021 (Source: Johns Hopkins University CSSE COVID-19 Data— retrieved October 4, 2022)

11.5  A3: From Domestic Politics to Geopolitical Crisis Khondker captures the change in the situation: “After the second wave, as coronavirus pandemic crisis entered the second year, the picture changed. Tiger economies [Taiwan, Singapore, Hong-Kong, South Korea] that once looked unassailable were faced with challenges of new waves of infections and deaths” (Khondker 2021, p. 698). Thus the “Lack of Institutional Memory and Vaccine Crisis” as one of the titles in Khondker reads (ibid., p. 701), played an important role in the poor performance of Taiwan since roughly spring 2021: While institutional memories stood in good stead in fighting and containing the pandemic, but when it came to vaccination, such institutional memories were not of much help for two important reasons. First, SARS-1 of 2003 ended before an effective vaccine was discovered and second, the scale of the

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problem during the Covid-19 pandemic was very high prompting a huge gap between supply and demand for vaccines globally. (Ibid., pp. 701–702)

Overall “the inadequacy of vaccine in countries like Taiwan and to some extent Singapore were baffling” (ibid., p.  702). One of the most important aspects here is the impact of mainland China—the latter seeing Taiwan not as a state but as part of its territory, constantly threatening to reunite with it. In view of this geopolitical difficulty, Taiwan’s negotiations with the German company BioNTech (one of the largest COVID-19 vaccines producers in the world) had already begun in August 2020, “but discussions ended in January 2021 over the wording of a news release” (Khondker, 2021, p. 710). According to Taiwan’s Health Minister’s disclosure on May 27, 2021: “BioNTech SE asked Taiwan to remove the words ‘my country’ from a draft version of a news release that would have announced a vaccine deal” (Hsieh et al., 2021). Just a day before, at “a ruling party meeting… Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said: ‘We were close to completing the contract [in January 2021] with the original German plant [BioNTech], but because of China’s intervention, up to now there’s been no way to complete it’” (DW News, 2021a). China, of course, has traditionally denied any intervention in Taiwan’s politics, but given the absolutely phatic ritual response BioNTech gave to queries after the claims of the Health Minister and President of Taiwan, it is more than likely that concerns about China’s reaction were decisive here: “We do not provide information on any potential or possible distribution of our vaccine. Our goal at BioNTech is to make the vaccine available to as many people worldwide as possible” (DW News, 2021b). Such an Orwellian duckspeak—“[a]n ideal type of the phatic public communication” (Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 184)—from BioNTech attests for some that “for Taiwan the political entanglements and wrangling with mainland China had a limiting impact on state capacity” (Khondker, 2021, p.  711). Here I can point out that instead of the state, it was “Taiwan’s tech giants TSMC and Foxcon” who, in July 2021, “reached an agreement to purchase 10 million Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine doses” with the plan to “donate them to the government for distribution” (CNA, 2021). Thus, it was the private sector that decisively contributed to bringing the country out of the geopolitical impasse.

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11.6   Conclusion Khondker proposes that in comparing the relative success in the response to the COVID-19 crisis and stalemate in vaccination we underscore that the theoretical focus on the state as an autonomous agent and its efficacy maybe misplaced unless it is contextualized in the global dynamics that influence the role of the state. (2021, p. 711)

Taiwan’s state capacity was seriously hindered by “political entanglements and wrangling with mainland China” (ibid.). As we write these lines at the beginning of October 2022, it is apparent that Taiwan has moved back to the status of a success story in COVID-19 response, having a vaccination rate of over 86% (way over the global average of around 63%). The semiosphere has changed again. This is a surprising fact C3. The K3 involved in its surprising character is A2, which explains the poor performance of Taiwan (C2). One of the most plausible candidates for A3 that would make C3 “a matter of course” is related to the factors we discussed already under A1, especially the dimensions of transparency of governmental communication accompanied by prompt responses to various streams of misinformation. The result of that is that unlike in the USA, the initial skepticism toward vaccines did not result in an “epistemic authority” crisis. It is better to explicate this conclusion by considering the case of the USA in more detail. I argue that there is an epistemic authority crisis involved in the disastrous performance of the USA, as manifested in every step of the Trump administration’s governing of the COVID-19 crisis.

Notes 1. See Chap. 10 for the meaning of C1, K1, etc. 2. See: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-­deaths (retrieved October 17, 2022) 3. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=OVVvEA0AAAAJ&hl=en& oi=sra [retrieved October 17, 2022] 4. Tsai Ing-wen is the current president of Taiwan (since 2016). 5. The ban on the exports of masks was eventually removed on June 30, 2020.

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References Ansell, C., & Gash, A. (2008). Collaborative governance in theory and practice. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 18(4), 543–571. CNA. (2021, July 12). COVID-19: Taiwan’s tech giants to buy 10 million vaccine doses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0u7KqIPEEE DW News. (2021a, May 26). Did China block a BioNTech deal? https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=Qfy_qoCz3Jo DW News. (2021b, May 29). COVID comes to Taiwan: Two words kill BioNTech deal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX0BImdWwBs&t=197s Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison. Pantheon Books. Gardner, L. (2020). Update January 31: Modeling the spreading risk of 2019-­ nCoV. https://systems.jhu.edu/research/public-­health/ncov-­model-­2/ Hsieh, C. W., Wang, M., Wong, N. W., & Ho, L. K. K. (2021). A whole-of-nation approach to COVID-19: Taiwan’s National Epidemic Prevention Team. International Political Science Review, 42(3), 300–315. Huang, L.  Y. (2021). Framing the pandemic as a conflict between China and Taiwan: Analysis of COVID-19 discourse on Taiwanese social media. In COVID-19 in International Media (pp. 55–64). Routledge. Johnson & Johnson (2020). How lessons learned in Taiwan could help us overcome COVID-19. [Retrieved October 17, from https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=QbbQOyl9lxg] Khondker, H.  H. (2021). State and COVID-19 response in the Asian Tiger Economies: Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. Comparative Sociology, 20(6), 695–717. Kuo, C. C. (2020). COVID-19 in Taiwan: Economic impacts and lessons learned. Asian Economic Papers, 20(2), 98–117. Lee, W. H. (2021). South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Covid-19. In Covid-19 and governance: Crisis reveals (pp. 29–40). Routledge. Li, M. H. (2021). Proactive strategies, social innovation, and community engagement in relation to COVID-19 in Taiwan. In Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreaks, environment and human behaviour (pp. 49–62). Springer. Selg, P., & Ventsel, A. (2020). Introducing relational political analysis: Political semiotics as a theory and method. Palgrave Macmillan. Tang, A. (2020). How digital innovation can fight pandemics and strengthen democracy. (An Interview to TED July 7, 2020) [Retrieved October 20, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ2N3tF4W_k] Tsai, F. J., Yang, H. W., Lin, C. P., & Liu, J. Z. (2021). Acceptability of COVID-19 vaccines and protective behavior among adults in Taiwan: Associations between

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risk perception and willingness to vaccinate against COVID-19. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 18(11), 55–79. Wong, N. W. M., Ho, K. K. L., Wang, M. & Hsieh, C.-W. (2022). Strong government responses? Reflections on the management of COVID-19 in Hong Kong and Taiwan. International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. ahead-of-­ print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-­06-­ 2021-­0158.

CHAPTER 12

Making America Do Their “Own Research” Again? Trump’s Politics of De-problematization of COVID-19

12.1   C11: The US as an Epitome of Failure On May 20, 2020, when the death toll related to COVID-19 in the US was already measured as almost 100,000, three researchers from Columbia University, published their first and not-yet-peer-reviewed version of their article “Differential Effects of Intervention Timing on COVID-19 Spread in the United States” in medRxiv: the preprint server for health sciences (Pei et al., 2020a). This boring piece of reading of 10 pages (plus appendices), mostly filled with Greek letter formulas, graphs, tables, and figures, caused somewhat of a storm. Namely, one of the results of this paper was the following: “The counterfactual simulations indicate that had observed control measures been adopted one week earlier, the US would have avoided 703,975 (95% CI: 624,923–773,388) [61.6% (54.6%–67.7%)] confirmed cases and 35,927 (30,088–40,638) [55.0% (46.1%–62.2%)] deaths nationwide as of May 3, 2020” (Pei et al., 2020a, p. 3, italics added). In fact the paper was published in December of the same year in a respected peer reviewed journal Science Advances ((impact factor about 142), where the respective numbers were slightly different: “The counterfactual simulations indicate that had observed control measures been adopted 1 week earlier, then the United States would have avoided 601,667 [95% credible interval (CI): 464,381 to 722,880] [52.6% (40.6 to 63.1%)] confirmed cases and 32,335 (23,600 to 40,573) [49.4% (36.1 to 62.0%)] deaths © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_12

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nationwide as of 3 May 2020” (Pei et  al., 2020b, p.  4, italics added). Nevertheless, in both versions of the article, the paragraph ended with the same sentence: “These dramatic reductions of morbidity and mortality due to more timely deployment of control measures highlights the critical need for aggressive, early response to the COVID-19 pandemic” (Pai et al., 2020a, p. 3, 2020b, p. 4). The political form in our political semiotic terms of this message is metagovernance: it is a metalingual message since it is questioning the prevalent code of COVID-19 crisis governance at the time, which was, as is massively documented, very ineffective and late in its adoption of control measures. When President Donald Trump was asked about this research (the first version) in an interview in “Full measure with Sharyl Atkisson” on May 26, 2020,3 he could have actually used a metalingual retort to this metalingual challenge to his policies thus far—namely, he could have pointed out that those results are not yet peer reviewed and should not be the basis of health policy practices. However, Trump responded in an utterly phatic manner—appealing to stereotypes, keeping contact with his loyal voters, appealing to a conspiracy against him, etc.—by targeting the home-­ institution of the authors of the study under question: “Columbia is a liberal, disgraceful institution to write that because all the people that they cater to were months after me. […] And I saw that report. It’s a disgrace that Columbia University would do it, playing right to their little group of people that tell them what to do.” This response epitomizes the “epistemic authority” crisis at stake in Trump-led governance failure: referential or metalingual problematizations of scientists are pushed to the periphery by the phatic de-­ problematizing center of the semiosphere that we could refer to as “COVID-19 governance of Trump administration.” This holds true not only about the “disgraceful liberal institutions,” but, in fact, also about the administration’s internal rivalry between the administration leaders (Trump, Pence, etc.) and the world’s leading epidemiologists (e.g., Anthony Fauci, Deborah Brix) recruited into the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The general logic leading to the “epistemic authority” crisis can be summarized as de-problematization through politicization of COVID-19 as a health crisis: Politicians in the US, President Trump in particular, politicized and meddled with the pandemic control and prevention efforts, prohibiting experts

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and scientists in the CDC from implementing effective pandemic control policies based on scientific information and knowledge (Im, 2021, p. 183). However, when the nationwide Covid-19 outbreak took place, CDC experts and scientists were sidelined, and their prevention guidelines were never adopted. The Trump administration took control of clearing CDC communications about the coronavirus and rejected CDC doctors’ recommendations for surveillance, social distancing, and safe reopening of schools. (Im, 2021, p. 183)

When it comes to the governance failure of the US in handling the COVID-19 crisis, the fact C1 needs hardly any introduction: more than 96 million confirmed cases and more than a million deaths since the beginning of the pandemic (see: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus; retrieved October 5, 2022). This is the deadliest disaster in the entire history of the country, surpassing the Hispanic flu epidemic of 1918, already more than a year ago (McKeever, 2021). Looking back at the twilight of the first year—the containment or prevention phase—of COVID-19 crisis in the US, Pieterse can recognize the legacy of Trump administration’s governance failure as follows: In December 2020 the US is still at square one: no agreement on basics, no plan, no organization. No hammer, no dance. Cases and deaths are rising fast. Eight months after Covid-19 was acknowledged, the US still doesn’t come near the threshold of planning, testing, and tracing that most countries passed eight or nine months ago. The federal government is in disarray and state and local governments are improvising amid contradictory pressures. An iconic power center, the White House doesn’t practice social distancing, holds indoor gatherings without use of masks, and hosts super spreader events. White House staff, secret service personnel, chief of staff Mark Meadows, and members of the Trump family have tested positive. The public conversation is mired in mixed messages. (Pieterse, 2021, p. 192)

K1, the surprising status of the fact C1 might need some clarification: “the Global Health Care Index in 2019 evaluated that ‘the US is number one in Health Security, with a score of 83.5’ and concluded that the US would be ‘the most well prepared country to combat a pandemic disease.’” (Im, 2021, p. 182). Nevertheless, already in May 2020, “With 4 percent of the world population the US has 25 percent of cases and 22 percent of the world’s Covid-19 deaths” (Pieterse, 2021, p. 192). There

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seem to be no dissenting voices among scholars that the US has been an utter failure in governing COVID-19. There are, of course, disputes— quite heated—when it comes to A1, which would make C1 in question “a matter of course.” The usual suspects here are the marketization and privatization of the healthcare system (Im, 2021; Rothstein et al., 2022; Pieterse, 2021); lack of coordination between federal, state and local level governance due to New Federalism (Im, 2021); a tension between securitization and desecuritization of the disease and measures for responding to it (Kirk, 2022); socio-economic and racial segregation in the country (Khanijahani & Tomassoni, 2022); and others. Let us look at some of them in more detail.

12.2   Taking Stock of Alternative Explanations When it comes to the neoliberalization of healthcare system, the usual story tends to be along the following lines: As public health services have become privatized and commodified, the provision of health services by profit-seeking private health industries has overwhelmed public healthcare. When Covid-19 expanded throughout the cities and countryside of America, the US government was not prepared to control the pandemic. The US had neither facilities and personnel for Covid-19 testing and treatment, nor an effective pandemic prevention and control system capable of protecting citizens from Covid-19. The neoliberal response rendered the American people unprotected from Covid-19, as evidenced by the fact that the number of deaths in the US by Covid-19 exceeded the combined number of US deaths in the Vietnam War, Korean War, and wars in the Middle East. (Im, 2021, p. 180)

That being said, the US spends more money on healthcare than any other country in the world, but (at least in 2014) only 48% of this sum is financed by public money (Ortiz-Ospina & Roser, n.d.), which suggests the existence of a highly unjust two-class system. It is curious that the US spends that much more on healthcare than any other nation in the world, yet cannot provide universal health care to its citizens. Additionally, in comparison with its peers, it has the lowest average life expectancy, a high chronic disease burden and unusual high number of preventable hospitalizations and avoidable deaths (e.g., Tikkanen & Abrams, 2020). One of the symptoms of neoliberalization is:

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Seventy percent of US nursing homes are for profit. Nursing homes have been a major site of Covid-19 deaths, also among nurses and staff …. Hospitals and medicines for profit, both at exorbitant rates, are part of the picture. Hospitals can put indigent patients on the street. In the name of efficiency, hospitals don’t have surge capacity and are unable to cope with a public health crisis. (Pieterse, 2021, p. 197)

Put in more practical terms: Efforts to expand hospital capacity and secure critical supplies, like ventilators, PPE and testing reagents, were hampered by a notoriously dysfunctional White House and competition between states and among private providers. “It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator,” complained New  York Governor Andrew Cuomo…. The Trump administration refused to coordinate procurement or invoke powers under the 1950 Defense Production Act to ramp up supplies, despite crippling PPE shortages that compromised efforts to protect vulnerable care homes, to which more than 40% of all Covid fatalities in the US were linked. (Rothstein et al., 2022, p. 129)

These quotes—containing facts and estimates—indicate all to the stoic governance of de-problematizing COVID-19 as a health crisis. In line with our presumption that de-problematization and problematization are always mutually constitutive (Chap. 10) we should ask, what did the US government problematize at the time. One answer that could be derived from the neoliberalization storyline is “business sector crisis”: Whereas the executive branch of the federal government was largely a bystander as the nation locked down, a bitterly divided Congress responded with uncharacteristic haste, agreeing an unprecedented fiscal package to deal with the wider economic fallout. Passed unanimously by both houses of Congress, the “Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security”, or CARES, Act authorised $2.2tr, or roughly 10% of US GDP, in direct government expenditure. (ibid., p. 130)

However, neoliberalization story has a tacit dimension. The ramifications of de-problematizing health crisis through problematizing economic crisis lead through social crisis back to the acceleration of health crisis again … and from there to political crisis—the wicked spiral seems to be

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endlessly self-reinforcing. In light of this, the following developments seem to be making quite a lot of sense: With nation-wide job losses literally off the charts and the worst of the initial outbreak confined largely to the northeast, governors in other parts of the country faced increasing pressure to relax local restrictions. During April and early May conservative activists organised public protests against the lockdown orders in nearly two dozen states. Brandishing assault rifles and “Make America Great Again” hats while refusing to wear masks or practice social distancing, their demands to “give me liberty or give me Covid” were amplified on Fox News and by the Twitter feed of a President whose economic prospectus for re-election was in tatters. (ibid., p. 131)

The other usual suspect in explaining US failure is related to the country’s “competitive federalism” or “New Federalism.” First of all, the “decentralized disease control system in the US resulted in ineffective, non-comprehensive and inconsistent efforts to control the pandemic crisis” (Im, 2021, p. 183). More generally: Federalism in the US is a decentralized system of distributing rights and powers between federal and state governments, which sometimes inhibits the federal government from implementing coherent and comprehensive policies for the whole country. In addition, with the rise of “New Federalism”, which was proposed by President Ronald Reagan and combines neoliberalism and federalism, the federal government has returned the responsibility for domestic policies to state governments, giving states more discretionary power in implementing “block grants.” (Im, 2021, p. 185)

The result of that is de-problematizing federal responsibility and introducing “market competition” between states for—yes—resources for saving human lives: “President Trump, succeeding Reagan’s New Federalism, has abandoned federal leadership and responsibility for pandemic control and left states to fend off Covid-19 for themselves” (ibid.), leading “states to vie over precious resources, to the point of virtually dissolving the union into 50 component parts” (ibid., p. 186). However, is it Trump’s fault that the US system is what it is: neoliberalized and decentralized? Probably not. One cannot but agree with dismissing this Trump as an agent explanation of the disastrous performance of the US in governing coronavirus:

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Many blame Donald Trump. Trump is responsible for inept policies and disinformation on a mass scale. But Trump is not to blame for American healthcare being geared to profitable private care, not public health. Trump is not to blame for the limitations of federal government, a weakness by design that goes back decades. This is a society that JK Galbraith described decades ago as a society of “private opulence and public squalor” (1958). American society and economy tilting towards private, not public services has deep roots. (Pieterse, 2021, p. 192, italics added)

We would like, however, to highlight the aspect we italicized in the last quotation: Trumps policies and the issue of disinformation or, rather, miscommunication. This needs to be highlighted from a different angle than usual. Even authors who concede that “failed US response to Covid-19 has been caused partly by Trump’s leadership failure” (Im, 2021, p. 189), seem to by succumbing to structuralist/federalist explanations of the US governance failure of COVID-19. Yes, it is true that “Trump does not show ‘listening leadership,’” “has preferred personal over institutional leadership,” and that his “nationalist, isolationist, and ‘America First’ leadership prevented the US from cooperating internationally to contain the Covid-19 pandemic” (ibid.). But nevertheless, The disastrous response of the US is essentially an institutional failure. The US is a typical LME [liberal market economy] that, compared to CME [coordinated market economy]s, puts “economy over society” and “profit over people”, minimizes the role and responsibility of the state in dealing with epidemic disease, has an underdeveloped and privatized healthcare and welfare system, and overexploits the environment for the sake of profits (Im, 2021, p. 180)

We will add a missing layer here to those explanations: the “epistemic authority crisis” which we conceptualize in terms of the mutual constitution of the problematizing governance of the experts and the de-­ problematizing governance of politicians within the Trump administration. More metaphorically we could call it the Fauci/Trump dialectics of governance, since the first name represents most vividly the attempts of scientists to call scientific estimates into the governance of the crisis from the viewpoint of saving lives; and the second name embodies the dismissal of such knowledge by politicians.

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12.3   The Fauci/Trump Dialectics and the Constitution “Doing Your Own Research” It has been documented (see Bump, 2020; Rieder, 2020) that through various media—from speeches/briefings to Twitter—Trump communicated the phatic message that the coronavirus will go away and that it is entirely under control of the government a total of 40 times between January 22 and April 28 of 2020—a period when the death toll turned from 0 to 62,067.4 There are various layers of Trump’s phatic governance. Most notable of them is the “It’ll go away” narrative. 12.3.1   “It’ll Go Away” We let Trump’s stoic governance of “we have it under control” flow in its raw and unedited form to the reader to get some initial flavor of it. We add dates (all referring to 2020) to the quotations that have been collected by various authors. Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. We have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”—Trump in a CNBC interview. (Rieder, 2020) Jan. 30: “We think we have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment—five—and those people are all recuperating successfully. But we’re working very closely with China and other countries, and we think it’s going to have a very good ending for us … that I can assure you.”—Trump in a speech in Michigan. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 10: “Now, the virus that we’re talking about having to do—you know, a lot of people think that goes away in April with the heat—as the heat comes in. Typically, that will go away in April. We’re in great shape though. We have 12 cases—11 cases, and many of them are in good shape now.”—Trump at the White House. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 14: “There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm—historically, that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not sure yet. But that’s around the corner.”—Trump in speaking to National Border Patrol Council members. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 23: “We have it very much under control in this country.”— Trump in speaking to reporters. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World

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Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”—Trump in a tweet. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 25: “[China is] getting it more and more under control. So I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away.” Said during a roundtable in New Delhi. (Bump, 2020) Feb. 26: “So we’re at the low level. As they get better, we take them off the list, so that we’re going to be pretty soon at only five people. And we could be at just one or two people over the next short period of time. So we’ve had very good luck.”—Trump at a White House briefing. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 26: “And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”—Trump at a press conference. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 26: “I think every aspect of our society should be prepared. I don’t think it’s going to come to that, especially with the fact that we’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”— Trump at a press conference, when asked if “U.S. schools should be preparing for a coronavirus spreading.” (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day—it’s like a miracle—it will disappear.”—Trump at a White House meeting with African American leaders. (Rieder, 2020) Feb. 29: “And I’ve gotten to know these professionals. They’re incredible. And everything is under control. I mean, they’re very, very cool. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it well. Everything is really under control.”—Trump in a speech at the CPAC conference outside Washington, D.C. (Rieder, 2020) March 4: “[W]e have a very small number of people in this country [infected]. We have a big country. The biggest impact we had was when we took the 40-plus people [from a cruise ship]. … We brought them back. We immediately quarantined them. But you add that to the numbers. But if you don’t add that to the numbers, we’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.”—Trump at a White House meeting with airline CEOs. (Rieder, 2020) March 4: “Well, I think the 3.4% is really a false number.”—Trump in an interview on Fox News, referring to the percentage of diagnosed COVID-19 patients worldwide who had died, as reported by the World Health Organization. (Rieder, 2020) March 6: “It’ll go away.” Said during a bill signing (Bump, 2020)

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March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all. No, we’ve done a great job with it.”—Trump, when asked by reporters if he was concerned about the arrival of the coronavirus in the Washington, D.C., area. (Rieder, 2020) March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on. At this moment there are 546 confirmed cases of CoronaVirus, with 22 deaths. Think about that!”—Trump in a tweet. (Rieder, 2020) March 10: “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”—Trump after meeting with Republican senators. (Rieder, 2020) March 12: “You know, we need a little a separation until such time as this goes away. It’s going to go away. It’s going to go way. I was watching [former FDA administrator] Scott [Gottlieb]—I was watching Scott this morning, and he was saying within two months. … It’s going away. We want it to go away with very, very few deaths.” Said during a bilateral meeting. (Bump, 2020) March 30: “It will go away. You know it—you know it is going away, and it will go away. And we’re going to have a great victory. … I want to have our country be calm and strong, and fight and win, and it will go away.” Said during a coronavirus news briefing. (Bump, 2020) March 31: “It’s going to go away, hopefully at the end of the month. And, if not, hopefully it will be soon after that.” Said during a coronavirus news briefing. (Bump, 2020) April 3: “It is going to go away. It is going away. … I said it’s going away, and it is going away.” Said during a coronavirus news briefing. (Bump, 2020) April 7: “It did go—it will go away. … The cases really didn’t build up for a while. But you have to understand, I’m a cheerleader for this country. I don’t want to create havoc and shock and everything else.” Said during a coronavirus news briefing. (Bump, 2020) April 28: “I think what happens is it’s going to go away. This is going to go away.” (Bump, 2020) This phatic “It’ll go away” frame of Trump’s governance takes the form of “it is totally harmell” in later communication.

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12.3.2   From “It’ll Go Away” to “New Hoax” of the Democrats to “It’s Totally Harmless” In a rally in North Charleston, Trump accused the Democrats of “politicizing the coronavirus,” calling it “their new hoax,” adding: “We are doing everything in our power to keep the infection and those carrying the infection from entering the country. We have no choice”; and referring to a phatic commonplace regarding the Democrats: “Whether it’s the virus that we’re talking about, or the many other public health threats, the Democrat policy of open borders is a direct threat to the health and wellbeing of all Americans” (Strauss & Laughland, 2020). On Independence day (4th of July), 2020, Trump announces: “Now we have tested over 40 million people. But by so doing, we show cases, 99 percent of which are totally harmless” (White House, 2020). On July 19, 2020, Chris Wallace interviewed Trump on Fox News Sunday, and pointed out that the US had the seventh-highest mortality rate in the world from COVID-19 (based on Johns Hopkins University numbers). Trump’s response was the denial of these numbers: “we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world”; he also presented Wallace a White House-produced chart (claimed to be sourced from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) in support of this statement, and claimed that “many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day […] they have the sniffles and we put it down as a test” (Johnson, 2020). In a tweet on October 6, Trump claimed that COVID-19 is “in most populations far less lethal” than the flu, posting the same message to both Twitter and Facebook. It is notable that both social media platforms treated this as misinformation: Twitter placed a warning message over the tweet, and Facebook deleted the equivalent post on its platform. (O’Sullivan, 2020). 12.3.3   “A Cheerleader for the Country” Meets Fauci On April 1, 2020, he was reported as explaining this phatic stoicism as an attempt to “give people hope” and serve as a “cheerleader for the country” even though, he claimed, he “knew everything” (Phillips, 2020). CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Trump: “Is there any fairness to the criticism that you may have lulled Americans into a false sense of security? When you were saying things like it’s going to go away and that sort of thing?”

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Responding to that, Trump explained: “I want to give people a feeling of hope. I could be very negative. I could say ‘wait a minute, those numbers are terrible. This is going to be horrible,’” he said, continuing: “Well, this is really easy to be negative about, but I want to give people hope, too. You know, I’m a cheerleader for the country.” Acosta’s follow up question was: “So you knew it was going to be this severe when you were saying this was under control?” Trump’s response: “I thought it could be. I knew everything. I knew it could be horrible, and I knew it could be maybe good. Don’t forget, at that time, people didn’t know that much about it, even the experts. We were talking about it. We didn’t know where it was going. We saw China but that was it. Maybe it would have stopped at China.” What about responses to such phatic governance? Here, a good starting point is Trump’s own comment on October 19, 2020, where in a rally he expresses a true frustration with those annoying responses he had received to his cheerleading of the country throughout the crisis: “People are saying whatever. Just leave us alone. They’re tired of it. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots. […] Fauci is a nice guy. He’s been here for 500 years.” Who is this Fauci, then? Anthony Fauci is one of the most cited medical scientists in the world.5 Having been a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force since its establishment on January 29, 2020, he has frequently countered president Trump’s phatic optimism or politics of de-problematization of the health risks related to COVID-19. The politics of Fauci is that of problematization of COVID-19 as a health crisis: “as I have said many times, we look at it from a pure health standpoint. We make a recommendation. Often, the recommendation is taken. Sometimes it’s not. But we—it is what it is. We are where we are right now,” he said in an interview to CNN on April 12, 2020.6 It is instructive to view how he and his fellow members of the scientific community working at the White House have attempted to push the metalingual messages to the public regarding the virus. Usually these attempts are reactions to the phatic communication of the politicians. On January 27, 2020, Fauci warned that “things are going to get worse before they get better” (JN Learning, 2020). On January 30, 2020 he said the outbreak “could turn into a global pandemic” (PBS, News Hour, 2020) On February 4, 2020 his prediction was: “Almost certainly, we’ll have more infections in the United States” (Yahoo!Finance, 2020). Note that these utterances were made before the first registered COVID-19

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death occurred on February 6, 2020. On February 16, 2020, Fauci expressed his explicit skepticism about Trump’s claim that the virus would “disappear with the warm weather” (CBS, 2020). On February 25, he concluded that based on the spread in other countries, “It’s inevitable that this will come to the United States” (MSNBC, 2020). These early confrontations with the phatic optimism of Trump are just a glimpse of what is at stake in the epistemic authority crisis under question. Emblematic is Fauci’s metalingual fatigue when in October 15, 2020 (COVID-19 death toll in the US 216,7887) he responded to the administration’s proposal that until the coming of vaccines the country should only protect the vulnerable groups (e.g., the elderly) and otherwise keep society open and hope for herd immunity to be achieved: “This idea that we have the power to protect the vulnerable is total nonsense, because history has shown that that’s not the case” (ABC News, 2020). This was said in the morning program “Good Morning, America!” He continued: “And if you talk to anybody who has any experience in epidemiology and infectious diseases, they will tell you that that is risky and you’ll wind up with many more infections of vulnerable people, which will lead to hospitalizations and deaths. So I think that we just got to look that square in the eye and say it’s nonsense” (ibid.). We end our demonstration of the epistemic authority crisis of the US by analyzing the example of “Hospital Experiences Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results of a National Pulse Survey March 23–27, 2020” presented by the Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Grimm, 2020) on April 3, 2020). Under the heading “Key Takeaway” of this report, one can read the following: Hospitals reported that their most significant challenges centered on testing and caring for patients with known or suspected COVID-19 and keeping staff safe. Hospitals also reported substantial challenges maintaining or expanding their facilities’ capacity to treat patients with COVID-19. Hospitals described specific challenges, mitigation strategies, and needs for assistance related to personal protective equipment (PPE), testing, staffing, supplies and durable equipment; maintaining or expanding facility capacity; and financial concerns. (Grimm, 2020, p. 1)

Responding to this report on Twitter, Trump makes this metalingual message into a phatic whataboutism on April 7, 2020: “Why didn’t the I.G. [Inspector General], who spent 8 years with the Obama Administration8

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(Did she Report on the failed H1N1 Swine Flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the Admirals, Generals, V.P. & others in charge, before doing her report. Another Fake Dossier!”9 According to factcheck.org, “in the April 6 briefing, a reporter told Trump that the inspector general’s name was Christi Grimm, and “it wasn’t so much her opinion, but they interviewed 323 different hospitals.” Trump replied, “It still could be her opinion” (Robertson, 2020). What is the legacy of Trump’s phatic governance that explicitly counters science? Let us consider a surprising fact C2: when it came to the vaccine phase of COVID-19 (roughly since the beginning of 2021), the US was effective (at least compared to Taiwan) in administrating vaccine, up to a certain point (the autumn of 2021). The usual suspects for A2 (most notably the substitution of Trump administration with Biden administration) need not concern us at the moment. What is more interesting is the surprising fact C3 that the US has flattened the curve of vaccination since around January 2022,10 so that “[r]oughly one-quarter of eligible Americans (i.e. ages 5+ years) remain unvaccinated” (Do & Frank, 2022, p. 1). What could be the A3 here? According to KFF COVID-19 vaccine monitor age, race/ethnicity, education, geographic residence, income, insurance status, and party identification are predictors of differences in remaining unvaccinated.11 Also, the Prior COVID-19 infection has been proposed as a possible variable here (Do & Frank, 2022). Our proposal is to put forth epistemic authority crisis as the legacy of Trumpism for A3 here.

12.4   Conclusion: Making America Do Their “Own Research Again”? On the Epistemic Authority Crisis of the US “Do your own research!”—this is the slogan of various anti-science movements these days. And these movements have intensified enormously during the COVID-19 crisis. The US during Trump administration has been the only so-called developed country whose head of the state has openly, publicly and constantly resonated conspiracy theories and untiscience sentiments. This has led to what we refer to as epistemic authority crisis. The latter manifests itself in the general distrust of elites and experts, which in its most extreme form cumulates in the belief in emotive-phatic conspiracy theories that paint governments but also small groups of elites

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and individuals as puppet masters of political events, which are ultimately self-serving for these groups. This extremely simplified analysis of world events is very appealing to large groups of the population that feel detached and uncoupled from society. This worldview and feeling is very effectively instrumentalized by populist parties which have an inherent “disdain for expertise” (Head, 2019, p. 192). Granted, a vaccine is a much more intrusive intervention in an individual’s life than, e.g., the request to wear masks in public spaces or socially distance themselves from each other. There is also another level of societal restraints due to anti-vaccination movements already around since the nineteenth century. They have gained a particularly larger following since the late 1990s with the publication of Andrew Wakefield’s later retracted study that vaccinations lead to autism in children (Germani & Biller-­Andorno, 2021). Therefore, the anti-vaccination movement has a very different set of resources and societal following, which enabled its organizers to mobilize more protesters to anti-Corona regulations demonstrations and is beyond that much more capable of affecting public opinion. We know that many inquiries on the internet about vaccination land users on anti-vaccination websites (e.g., Puri et  al., 2020). This effect is exacerbated by social media and the frequent forming of echo chambers in which like-minded people affirm their beliefs (e.g., Chiou & Tucker, 2018; Germani & Biller-Andorno, 2021). In all of this, we can sense that the reluctance to get vaccinated is connected with doubting the epistemic authority (science, government, medical professionals) (e.g., Bar-Tal & Barnoy, 2016). This leads back to the epistemic authority crisis, which points its blaming finger to the governments’ lack of credibility. Trust by both policy-makers and the wider public in the experts’ ability to offer knowledge and effective policy solutions is vital for the effective governance of the crisis (e.g., Cairney & Wellstead, 2020). However, experts’ more prominent public role has also caused a backlash among some groups, with the spread of conspiracy theories challenging the good intent and claims to knowledge of policy-makers, experts, and scientists. Already in the spring of 2020, warnings were being raised that the spread of such conspiracy theories risks seriously undermining efforts to contain the spread of the virus through measures such as social distancing, mask-­ wearing, and vaccinations (Romer & Jamieson, 2020). Of course, such “conspiracy”-based challenges to the epistemic authority of experts are not a new phenomenon (see Harambam & Aupers, 2015), but the

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widespread fear and uncertainty in the wake of the pandemic have created fertile ground for such theories to proliferate. Much of the initial academic focus has been on predicting how conspiratorial thinking might influence public behavior, with links being found between different types of conspiracy thinking and reduced containment-­related or increased self-centered behavior (see Imhoff & Lamberty, 2020). Even as initial studies indicated increased overall public trust in government institutions (at least in the short term) as a result of strict lockdown measures (Sibley et  al., 2020), plausible concerns exist that restrictive and long-lasting policy measures could increase the spread or salience of conspiratorial thinking in certain populations. Such a tendency not only risks reducing the effectiveness of any applied policy measures but also expands the scope of the COVID-19 crisis to new domains such as social cohesion and law enforcement. It is easy to view the existence of COVID-19 conspiracy theorists as simply an obstacle to the effective rational planning undertaken by real experts. However, in a recent reflection on the epistemic authority crisis Selg et al. put forth a proposition that epistemic authority should be seen “as not a property of certain individuals or institutions but a social relation that persists only as a process. The relationship between ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘experts’ thus becomes a constitutive antagonism … or constitutive exclusion” (2022, p. 18). This antagonism was epitomized by what we have here called the Fauci/Trump dialectics. Much further research needs to be done to make the case for C3 more solid. We will leave my proposal as an invitation to discussion.

Notes 1. See Chap. 10 for the meaning of C1, K1, etc. 2. See https://academic-­accelerator.com/Impact-­of-­Journal/Science-­ Advances (Retrieved October 5, 2022). 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyYdNN_klWs (Retrieved, October 4, 2022). 4. See https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-­daily-­covid-­deaths? country=~USA (Retrieved October 5, 2022). 5. More than 230,000 citations according to Google Scholar (see https:// scholar.google.com/citations?user=0dDO3SAAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra (Retrieved October 7, 2022).

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6. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/12/politics/anthony-­f auci-­ pushback-­coronavirus-­measures-­cnntv/index.html (Retrieved October 7, 2022). 7. h t t p s : / / o u r w o r l d i n d a t a . o r g / g r a p h e r / t o t a l -­d a i l y -­c o v i d -­ deaths?country=~USA (Retrieved, October 5, 2022). 8. Actually, Christi Grimm had been in the office already since 1999. 9. See Trump Twitter Archive (https://www.thetrumparchive.com), which contains all Trump’s tweets from 2016 onward. 10. See: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-­vaccinations?country=USA (Retrieved October 7, 2022). 11. h t t p s : / / w w w. k f f . o r g / c o r o n a v i r u s -­c o v i d -­1 9 / p o l l -­f i n d i n g / kff-­covid-­19-­vaccine-­monitor-­profile-­of-­the-­unvaccinated/

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PBS, News Hour. (2020). Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.pbs. org/newshour/show/why-­sustained-­transmission-­of-­novel-­coronavirus-­is-­ what-­would-­concern-­u-­s-­officials Pei, S., Kandula, S., & Shaman, J. (2020a). Differential Effects of Intervention Timing on COVID-19 Spread in the United States. medRxiv, 2020-05. Pei, S., Kandula, S., & Shaman, J. (2020b). Differential effects of intervention timing on COVID-19 spread in the United States. Science advances, 6(49), eabd6370. Phillips, A. (2020). Trump now says he knew the virus could be horrible when he was saying things like it’s going to disappear. The Washington Post. Archived from the original on April 1, 2020. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https:// archive.ph/20200401212701/https:/www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/01/trump-­now-­says-­he-­knew-­virus-­could-­be-­horrible-­when-­ he-­was-­saying-­things-­like-­its-­going-­disappear/ Puri, N., Coomes, E. A., Haghbayan, H., & Gunaratne, K. (2020). Social media and vaccine hesitancy: New updates for the era of COVID-19 and globalized infectious diseases. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, 16(11), 2586–2593. Pieterse, J. N. (2021). The United States and COVID-19: Hairpin turns. In: J. N. Pieterse, H. Lim, & H. Khndker (Eds.), COVID-19 and governance (pp. 192–225). Routledge. Rieder, R. (2020, March 19). Trump’s Statements About the Coronavirus. FactCheck.org. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://www.factcheck. org/2020/03/trumps-­statements-­about-­the-­coronavirus/ Robertson, L. (2020). The HHS inspector general report. FactCheck.org. Posted on April 7, 2020. Rothstein, H., Demeritt, D., Paul, R., & Wang, L. (2022). True to type? How governance traditions shaped responses to Covid-19 in China, Germany, UK, and USA. In P. R. Brown & J. O. Zinn (Eds.), Covid-19 and the sociology of risk and uncertainty. Critical studies in risk and uncertainty. (pp. 115–143). Palgrave Macmillan. Romer, D., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020). Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19  in the U.S. Social Science & Medicine, 263, 113356. Selg, P., Klasche, B., & Nõgisto, J. (2022). Wicked problems and sociology: Building a missing bridge through processual relationalism. International Review of Sociology, 1–26. Sibley, C. G., Greaves, L. M., Satherley, N., Wilson, M. S., Overall, N. C., Lee, C.  H. J., & Barlow, F.  K. (2020). Effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and nationwide lockdown on trust, attitudes toward government, and well-being. American Psychologist, 75(5), 618–630.

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Strauss, D., & Laughland, O. (2020, February 29). Trump calls coronavirus criticism Democrats’ ‘new hoax’ and links it to immigration. The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https:// www.theguardian.com/us-­n ews/2020/feb/28/trump-­c alls-­c oronavirusoutbreak-­a-­hoax-­and-­links-­it-­to-­immigration-­at-­rally Tikkanen, R., & Abrams, M. K. (2020, January, 30). US health care from a global perspective, 2019: Higher spending, worse outcomes? The commonwealth fund. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issuebriefs/2020/jan/ us-health-care-global-perspective-2019. White House. (2020, July 4). Remarks by President Trump at the 2020 Salute to America. whitehouse.gov. Archived from the original on January 20, 2021—via National Archives. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-­s tatements/remarkspresident-­trump-­2020-­salute-­america/ Yahoo!Finance. (2020, February 4). NIAID Director: We are at least a year away from a coronavirus vaccine. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://money. yahoo.com/niaid-­director-­were-­least-­away-­204941628.html?guccounter=1

CHAPTER 13

Germany’s Road from Failure Governance to Governance Failure

13.1   Introduction The surprising fact C1 about Germany’s COVID-19 governance is that in the European context, the country is usually considered a praiseworthy example in the fight against COVID-19 (see, e.g., Lu et  al., 2021; Shokoohi et al., 2020; Villani et al., 2020). What is the K1 involved here that makes C1 surprising? Germany’s relatively low COVID-19 death toll during the first one-and-a-half years of the coronavirus crisis (March 2020–December 2021) makes it particularly noteworthy, given its location at the center of Europe and that it has the largest population. Compared with other Western European countries like France and Italy, it faced similar situations in terms of total infections but with a less bad outcome for human life. There are various candidates for A1 that would make C1 a matter of course. Initial explanations for the favorable development of cases in Germany have been placed on the broad testing strategy, the young average age of the affected population in the transmission hotspots, and the well-functioning healthcare system (Lu et  al., 2021, p.  5). However, this does not seem to tell the full story. We believe that constant problematization is necessary for managing a wicked problem like the coronavirus crisis (see previous chapters of this book). In the German case, it is observable that amid the first waves of the pandemic, the likelihood of failure was considered the primary outcome of any policy scenarios, 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_13

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leading to the adaptation of a mindset that allows for dynamic decision-­ making processes. The prospect of failure led to the admission of a lack of knowledge, which made the German policy-makers especially attuned to the scientific community’s input. Moreover, it seems that the German health sector was and still is particularly well equipped in dealing with the additional stress created by the pandemic. In that context, we argue that failure governance can also be conducted outside of acute times of Crisis via institutional problematizing, which, in Germany’s case, did not hollow out the health care institutions (like, e.g., the UK). Additionally, Germany’s particular federal structure allowed for need-based regional responses. The last notable observation is related to the direct inclusion of all societal actors—policy-makers of all levels, businesses and individuals—to play a major role in the fight against the pandemic. Many of these activities align with the notion of failure governance put forth in this monograph (see also Klasche, 2021a, 2021b; Selg & Ventsel, 2020). Failure governance is a type of trans-active governance that sets itself apart from self-active, or inter-active governance approaches that many other countries deployed amidst the pandemic (and for other wicked problems) and which have been shown to be ineffective in tackling these issues. Therefore, the German leadership and policy-­ making structure need to be examined to answer the constitutive research question2 of what makes the German approach to the governance of the coronavirus crisis an example of failure governance. More precisely, we could ask what attempts at governance as problematization have been put forward in dealing with the crisis. Naturally, a constitutive analysis would consider that many other aspects play a role in the governance of the pandemic. Thus, our selection here depicts only partially the failure governance ethos. Interestingly enough, none of these features helped Germany prevent the failure in the COVID-19 vaccination strategy that sees its vaccination rate now (autumn 2021) stagnating at around 70%, behind other Western countries.3 This is the surprising fact C2, whose surprisingness K2 is in fact the multidimensional explanation under A1, which argues that Germany adopted failure governance strategy during the containment phase of the Coronavirus crisis—roughly since January 2020–January 2021. How does C2 manifest itself? Most notably, policy-makers are incapable of changing course and adjusting to present failure when it came to the vaccination phase of the crisis, something they were particularly attuned to in the early (containment) stages of the pandemic. This points to the fact that what we

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call failure governance is not well-established as a governance ethos in Germany but has been only applied to an extraordinary policy item before defaulting to traditional government tools. And this has led the country from failure governance back to governance failure. In this context, particularly the struggle over the epistemic authority crisis, in which politicians and experts are challenged by increasingly prevalent fake news and conspiracy theories, requires our attention. This leads us to the second research question, well in line with the first one, which is what makes Germany’s response to the crisis in the second half of 2021 a substantialist type of governance? In other words, also here, what attempts at governance in the form of de-problematization have been put forth? Germany as a case has been selected since it fits Thomas’ (2011, p. 514) classification of a key case: it is a Western nation that problematized the pandemic at first but later de-problematized it. Furthermore, each research question requires its own case. This is why we default to a within case study that considers (1) the time from Spring 2020 to Summer 2021, and till (2) Winter 2021 is an illustrative, single retrospective study that relies on recollection of the author, news snippets, official documents, speeches by key figures (Chancellor Merkel, and experts Prof. Drosten and Prof. Wieler), statistical data of global institutions, and secondary sources (Thomas, 2011, p. 519). Consequently, our goal is to explain the success and failure of the German coronavirus governance results and whether one or the other can be attributed to the failure governance ethos. Here, the specificities of the German case need, of course, also be considered. Germany has a strong economy and well-run labor market, a somewhat well-functioning welfare state and a stable government in office for several years, which might explain parts of the successful outcome. Nevertheless, we will consider two sectors of the German case where we expect trans-active governance (problematization) has led to the initial successful management of the coronavirus crisis. By doing so, we will look at the role that the political leadership and Germany’s institutional and federal setup played. To give a systematic overview of these areas, we will use the principles most pertinently representing the failure governance ethos: (1) requisite variety; (2) reflexive orientation; (3) self-reflexive irony to assess the success of the different areas. The second part of this chapter will then turn to the failures in Germany’s vaccination strategy and illustrate how the principles of failure governance have been neglected in this case and de-­problematization as a governance strategy has been put forth.

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13.2  Operationalizing the Ethos of Failure Governance In our political semiotic terms (Chap. 10), we could say that the constitution of Germany’s governance during the containment phase was overwhelmingly metalingual public communication or politics of problematization. One way to operationalize it is distinguishing between different dimensions of this metalingual problematization. This is where our notion of failure governance comes handy with its interpretation through Jessop’s notion of metagovernance in terms of requisite variety, reflexive orientation and self-reflective irony (see Chap. 4; see also Klasche, 2021b, p. 50; and Selg & Ventsel, 2020, Chap. 3). What do these principles mean in practice? Overall, the ethos of failure governance acknowledges that “failure is not an aberration or happenstance but constitutive of the social/political world [, which is in fact] implied by the very idea of trans-actionalism” (Selg & Ventsel, 2020, p. 70). Therefore, our notion of failure governance can be summarized as the need to never de-problematize an issue and instead focus on its continuous problematization. The principles of metagovernance are designed for attempting exactly this and are, therefore, the guiding principles for this chapter. However, they are still somewhat abstract and require translation to the policy realm to identify whether German policies were successful because they were in line with failure governance. An initial interpretation can be summarized in the following three bullet-points (see also Klasche, 2021b, p. 50): 1. Requisite variety (“deliberate cultivation of a flexible repertoire of responses” [Jessop, 2011, p. 117]) urges the policy-maker to think up various policy responses with an awareness that some or even all of them might fail and might need fundamental reconsideration. It stresses that policies require quick adaptation or cancellation in the light of failure. It argues for the involvement of non-policy experts that suggest a variety of new avenues (in this case, virologists and epidemiologists, but also social scientists who understand the socioeconomic aspects of the spread of the virus). In a similar manner, it requires responses to be situated and carried out by many societal actors. It asks for politicians, private actors and individuals to shoulder responsibility. And perhaps less intuitively, it asks for capacity building/institutional problematization of public sectors (e.g.,

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expanding funding of the p ­ ublic health sector, digitalizing public administration that allows faster responses) to increase resistance against a multitude of impacts. 2. Reflexive orientation (awareness that one “cannot fully understand what she is observing and must, therefore, make contingency plans for unexpected events” [Jessop, 2011, p. 117]) overlaps partly with the recommendations derived from requisite variety. It stresses the inclusion of experts who better understand the problem and engagement with different knowledge traditions that offer different angles (e.g., Germany’s orientation to South Korea’s Corona policies). The most notable addition is the need for the policy-maker to always be aware that they are dealing with wicked problems and what this requires in their response. This realization is also reflected in . Self-reflexive irony (which considers “incompleteness and failure as 3 essential features of social life but [still] act[ing] as if completeness and success were possible” [Jessop, 2011, p. 119]), which requires the policy-­maker to acknowledge the impossibility of solving the problem but needs them to act as if it were possible. This aspect of metagovernance might be the most important when facing wicked problems. Policy-makers need to continuously affirm that policies are required and measured to be able to keep the trust of the population. Important here is also a high level of metalingual communication between decision-­makers and the people to create the highest level of transparency. Even though this stance might be frustrating and could be misinterpreted as indecisiveness, it cannot lead to fatalism, cynicism, opportunism, or stoicism which are the main strategies of governance as deproblematization (see Chaps. 4 and 10). With these strategies in mind, we are now turning to the analysis of Germany’s Covid-19 response. We claim hereby, that the initial management of the Crisis matches with many of the principles formulated in the failure governance ethos. Unfortunately, many of these have been neglected in the second half of 2021, drastically worsening the public health situation. In the next two sections, we will return to these principles repeatedly to show the use and the neglect of failure governance. To create more clarity in the analysis, we will insert the principles in parentheses in the running text when a policy matches with it.

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13.3  The Beginning of the Crisis: Embracing the Ethos of Failure Governance The German government knew about COVID-19 in late December 2019 and saw the first confirmed case in Germany on January 27, 2020. Before the Coronavirus pandemic, German and many Western policy-makers had not considered the dangers of pandemics (at least not seriously), unlike Arab, African and Asian countries, which created the need for lots of spontaneous learning (Dostal, 2020, p. 545). Nevertheless, the German leadership is to be commended for the awareness of this fact and for problematizing the issue adequately. Moreover, the subsequent focus on learning from success stories from Asia in dealing with the Crisis (reflexive orientation) needs to be noted positively. China and South Korea were particularly successful in the early days of the pandemic, and especially South Korea, with its less authoritarian response, was considered a blueprint for German policies (Dostal, 2020). South Korea has shown great results by relying on its autonomous access to information and communication technology (e.g., smartphone tracking). However, the German policy-makers have underestimated the South Korean reliance on ICT technology in their everyday life which translated to a big willingness to fight the spread of the virus using the same means.4 In contrast, they underestimated the Germans’ reluctance to engaging with this technology and their readiness to become accustomed to it quickly. Further, due to experience with pandemics, the Korean population accepted giving up their data privacy for the time of the Crisis (Dostal, 2020, p. 546). Both pre-conditions were completely absent in Germany. However, in a positive failure governance fashion, the idea to rely on digital support apps has been quickly discarded as not a part of the solution, and politicians moved on looking for other options. The initial policy response of the German government did not look very different from those in many other countries and came in the form of introducing contact tracing measures, mandated isolation for the infected, and campaigns for increased hygiene measures (Naumann et  al., 2020, p. 193). By the end of February 2020, the situation was slightly changing when strict lockdowns were observed in, e.g., Italy; however, no political decisions with large magnitude were taken. The late response can be somewhat excused because of little experience with pandemics and the trust in a high performing medical system (Capano et al. 2020, cited in Naumann et al., 2020, p. 195). This changed on March 18, 2020, when

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Chancellor Angela Merkel addressed the nation in a televised speech and announced the closing of the German borders and the country’s general lockdown, which was to go into effect on March 21 (Naumann et  al., 2020, p.  194). The lockdown measures included the closure of non-­ essential businesses, educational facilities including childcare facilities, prohibition of public gatherings, travel warnings, recommendations to engage in social distancing, cancellation of planned medical procedures, and sealing facilities for the elderly from the public (Dostal, 2020, p. 547). Overall, it was a “soft” lockdown relying on “nudging” rather than enforcement (ibid.) and stressing the responsibility of all members of society to comply (requisite variety). This lesson was also drawn from the complexity of the issue that had quickly put into question the effectiveness of conative hierarchical government options and favored decentralized network like governance of problematization that place a role on the population (e.g., Hattke & Martin, 2020, p.  615). It is notable how quickly measures have been revisited (all in seven or fourteen days) and were adjusted when possible in this early period (requisite variety). The lockdown was extended twice till the end of May but always when it was possible to lighten the measures. The government was quite creative in finding a balance of opening society but following safety guidelines; e.g., on April 20, shops with more than 800 square meters of retail space were allowed to open again (MDR, 2020). Additionally, the federal government set aside a budget of 150 billion euros to help the economy and announced short-time work (“Kurzarbeit”), which allows companies to reduce working hours (Naumann et al., 2020, p. 194). By April 27, 2020, face masks were made obligatory in public places in all German states (Länder). In this phase, the federal structure also became a great advantage when different restrictions were lifted or intensified based on the local impact of the pandemic. Still, these policies cannot be considered fundamentally different from those of other regional actors (Dostal, 2020, p. 548), which means that other factors played a decisive role in combating the virus rather successfully. To better understand what these factors could be, we will, in the following, pay particular attention to the role the country’s leadership and its institutional setup played. 13.3.1   The German Leadership Our analysis starts with German leadership and its role in handling the pandemic. Why talk about leadership? Here we can point to an important

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intervention by Grint, who has argued throughout his work that, unlike command or management that are suitable for critical or tame problems, it is leadership that is needed for addressing wicked problems (see Grint, 2005, 2010, 2020). Grint (2020) states that good leadership when confronted with a wicked problem, is required “to tell us [the people] the truth, even if it is unbearable, and to tell us our responsibilities, even if we would prefer to shirk them” (p. 316) (reflexive irony). The German leadership must be considered a plus in the governance of the coronavirus crisis as Watson (2020) points out: The German government demonstrated a “higher than normal level of preparation and their leadership articulated a sound understanding of the severity of the virus and the potential societal damage that could materialize with its spread” (p. 1). Especially the last part of the quote, the correct assessment of the nature of the problem, speaks for the German leadership and gives us the first hint that failure governance has been deployed (reflexive orientation). We could argue that the German leaders have identified the coronavirus crisis as what it is: a wicked problem. When facing the coronavirus crisis, the German leadership starting with Angela Merkel, has quite swiftly accepted the threat emanating from it. The government further has at no point denied its potential significance, unlike, e.g., in the case of the UK under Boris Johnson or the US under Donald Trump (see also Chap. 12 of this book). This was an assessment that the German population agreed with, particularly during the first wave in Spring 2020, but saw much more differently in autumn and winter 2020/2021, which, in turn, hurt the popularity of the German government. However, Democratic leadership is, according to Grint (2020), “not necessarily about popularity. It is about doing what is right, even if that means sacrificing your popularity and career” (p. 315). It might have been to the advantage of Angela Merkel. She publicly announced the end of her political career after the ongoing term and that she was never looking for re-election and, therefore, for decision making aiming for popularity. She placed realism over optimism in all her public addresses and was believably concerned with Germany’s citizens’ safety instead of her brand or her followers’ support. Merkel, in particular, has not mistaken the problem with a tame problem that would require “a commander to steadfastly steer us through” (Grint, 2020, p.  317). She instead took, a metalingual orientation and always stressed the uncertainty (“The situation is serious, and the outcome uncertain” [Merkel, 2020]) about the length of the measures and the possibility that they might change (reflexive irony). This also characterizes the measures as a “pattern

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of stop and go, a strategy of ruptures and reveals, full stop and restart” (Kuhlmann et al., 2021, p. 561) (requisite variety). The executive around Merkel streamlined the relationship between politics, law and science and placed itself in the dominant position via the “infection protection law” (Infektionsschutzgesetz), which overruled various other legislative procedures, including basic constitutional rights (Dostal, 2020) (reflexive orientation). However, in this situation, only a handful of politicians, the Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor Scholz and ministers heading health, labor, economics and social and family affairs kept their voice (Dostal, 2020, p.  549). Further, the federalist system was reduced to ad hoc meetings where the Chancellor negotiated new virus-­ related policies with the state ministers. This setup placed a lot of attention on Chancellor Merkel. Even though most of the responsibility to act on the Crisis is situated with the local authorities, it was important for the population to see Merkel communicate the next steps and be the focus of the population’s attention (reflexive irony). This was particularly helpful as Merkel, not ironically, is described as unemotional, analytical and cautious—characteristics that the people came to appreciate in dealing with this unknown threat and consequently led to trust. Furthermore, as a trained scientist (PhD in Physics) herself, she was very attuned to listening to scientific advice and was always more amenable to base her policies on scientific knowledge (requisite variety). Perhaps even more important is her knowledge about science and the scientific method with its shortcomings, such as the fact that results might change over time when more evidence becomes available. In her first address to the nation, after deciding on the first set of measures by the federal government, she stresses the role the scientific community has played in the actions and will play in solving the Crisis (reflexive orientation). The German government has used expert opinions not only to gather advice but also to create legitimacy for its policies (Kuhlmann et al., 2021, p. 566). This worked to a degree but also led to backlash from certain societal groups that viewed the role of the experts as too powerful (ibid., p.  567). Potentially this plays into later (the beginning of 2022) relatively low willingness to receive the vaccine where the epistemic authority crisis plays a large role. But more about this in the last section of this chapter. As pointed out above, it is important to acknowledge the true nature of the Crisis at hand and communicate it as such (reflexive irony). The magnitude has been appropriately understood and shared by Merkel when she

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said in the same speech from March 18, 2020 that it was the most serious problem Germans faced since the 2nd World War. Merkel notes as metalingually as it gets, dismissing the presumption that the nation is facing a usual crisis (there were “only” 12 confirmed COVID-19 deaths at the time5): “[T]his is serious. Please also take this seriously. Since German reunification, no, since the Second World War, there has not been a challenge for our country in which action in a spirit of solidarity on our part was so important” (Merkel, 2020). She also makes it explicit that scientific studies and expertise drive all decisions as they are taken under “ongoing consultations with the experts from the Robert Koch Institute6 and other scientists and virologists” (Merkel, 2020) (reflexive orientation/requisite variety). It is noteworthy that Merkel strategically limited the number of expert voices to two—Christian Drosten and Lothar Wieler—to avoid contradictory expert advice and additionally simplified her leadership role (Dostal, 2020, p.  548). This is further advanced by the fact that she acknowledges what in our terms is a prime example or reflexive orientation: [t]he government will constantly reassess what measures can be adjusted and also what further measures may still be necessary. This is a developing situation, and we will ensure that we continue to learn from it so that we can adjust our thinking and deploy new instruments at any time. If we do so, then we will explain our reasons once again. (Merkel, 2020)

This statement clearly recognizes the upcoming “failure” that the measures will encounter and the required corrections that will follow. That is specifically the type of governance ethos we propose in this book. Besides stressing the role of the scientific community, Merkel touches on the issue that everybody has a responsibility in fighting the virus. Merkel states: “I firmly believe that we will pass this test if all citizens genuinely see this as THEIR task” (Merkel, 2020, capitalization in original to mark emphasis) (requisite variety). This capitalization is a huge difference compared to Trumps phatic “It’ll go away” governance we analyzed in Chap. 12. Next to the people, this responsibility is also stretched to the private sector. For example, the German government agreed with Porsche to facilitate a deal with China to deliver surgical masks (Watson, 2020, p. 1). At the time Merkel’s presentation has largely convinced the German people of the required measures to combat COVID-19 and follow the guidelines. Based on a study on the public perspective by

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Meier and her colleagues, 90% of the sample (N = 604) felt they were sufficiently informed about the measures, and 76% thought that the complete social lockdown was an adequate measure taken (2020, pp. 7–8). Naumann et al. (2020) have also measured a similar initial response. For example, most of the population supported closing public facilities, prohibiting large public gatherings, and generally agreed with the lockdown measures (Naumann et al., 2020, p. 197). This is an especially daunting contrast to similar studies done in the US that found that most residents viewed the risk of COVID-19 very low (Meier et al., 2020, p. 11). However, also the support of the policies in Germany was dwindling once the case numbers dropped and awareness of the economic cost rose (Naumann et al., 2020, p. 197). The population was especially critical toward policies that affected their daily life but continued to support measures to lower international travel and prohibit large scale events. However, even in May, June, and July 2020, the German government was willing to assess and adjust Corona regulations swiftly and as soon as possible, opened borders and lifted other restrictions (see MDR, 2020). It appears that rather the population got tired of the regulations and started to apply pressure to the leadership to adjust their strategy. The Anti-Corona demonstrations that started already in May reached a new high on August 29, 2020 when 39,000 people demonstrated in Berlin (MDR, 2020). We would argue that due to this pressure, the German government stopped acting swiftly and waited till November 2, 2020 to install a partial lockdown, even though the infection numbers have been much higher than in the spring for months. Here, first signs of the failure governance ethos abandonment can be found. Apart from that, the German population has shown a high degree of solidarity (Bertogg & Koos, 2021). This is based on the observation that one in four helping arrangements have only started during the first wave of the pandemic, which is considerable in view of the confinements of the lockdown (ibid., p.  9). The level of solidarity was mostly found within families but also among neighbors and friends (ibid.). However, this is still a local type of solidarity, which greatly shows the limitation of this form of governance (e.g., Jessop, 2016, p. 169). We are returning to the leadership. The metalingual core of Merkel’s leadership style is also displayed in her following quote: “These are not just abstract numbers in statistics, but this is about a father or grandfather, a mother or grandmother, a partner—this is about people. And we are a community in which each life and each person counts” (Merkel, 2020). In

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several places, Merkel stresses the all-encompassing responsibility that this event requires: “All measures taken by the state would come to nothing if we were to fail to use the most effective means for preventing the virus from spreading too rapidly—and that is we ourselves” (Merkel, 2020); and once more toward the end of the speech: “We are a democracy. We thrive not because we are forced to do something, but because we share knowledge and encourage active participation. This is a historic task, and it can only be mastered if we face it together” (Merkel, 2020) (requisite variety). It is very important to note that she does not take the responsibility away from the political sphere but simply stresses that it is placed in all spheres simultaneously. Therefore, this is not to be mistaken with a de-­ problematization of the problem that moves the problem from the political to the private sphere, but it simply promotes the inclusion of non-political actors to address the situation in the light of unavoidable governance failure. Particularly at the pandemic’s beginning, this responsibility has been shouldered by the whole population. Finally, the level of unity is not based on the lack of partisan or divisive politics that could have been used to secure power in the future (Watson, 2020, p. 4). We showed here that trust in political and scientific actors could be considered a mechanism that reduces complexity by providing the necessary knowledge that should result in the acceptance of public policies and recommendations (Dohle et al., 2020, pp. 2–3). Therefore, it is fair to conclude that the leadership played without a doubt an active role in the successful management of the early pandemic by problematizing the problem adequately. However, the first signs of their failure became apparent at the end of 2020, which was exacerbated in the management of the Crisis in the next year. Now it is time to turn to the second difference maker: the institutional starting conditions of Germany. 13.3.2   Germany’s Institutional Starting Conditions and Administrative Culture Social institutions exist in all human societies, and they are necessary to structure and regulate human behaviour in all areas of life (Bittmann, 2021, p. 2). They can come in the form of more abstract constructs like norms and rules or more tangible like governments, legal systems, marriage, education, or the public health system. Evidence suggests that countries with higher institutionalized trust had lower fatalities at the beginning of the pandemic (Oksanen et al., 2020, cited in Dohle et al.,

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2020, p. 3). Our claim in this chapter is that Germany’s institutional pre-­ conditions expressed in its federal administrative setup and its healthcare system were fundamentally better prepared for the crisis than, e.g., those of the UK or the US. Thus, it suffered fewer deaths per 100,000 people resulting from Covid-19 infections than similar European countries. There is additional evidence for the importance of institutions when we consider dealing with a new challenge like the COVID-19 pandemic. In this situation, we must assume that “institutional path dependencies” (Kuhlmann et al., 2021, p. 558) or, in other words, “institutional starting conditions and administrative cultures” (ibid., p. 559), indicate the initial possibilities for creating policies for responding to the Crisis. When we speak about Germany’s institutional setup, many factors play a role in creating the starting conditions to address the pandemic. In this analysis, we want to zoom in on two characteristics: the very specific intergovernmental setting of the German “unitary federalism” (Kuhlmann & Jochen, 2021, p. 1) and the German healthcare system. When diving into these two aspects, it becomes apparent that the healthcare system’s strength cannot be separated from the unique federal setup that allowed for sufficient crisis response. It is also evident that federalism itself is not the only key and is even theorized to be less effective in handling a crisis (Hattke & Martin, 2020, p.  614), which can also be seen in the example of the US. However, no federal system is like the other, and it is worth looking into the particular setup of Germany’s administrative setup. For starters, it is highly decentralized, with the Länder (states) having legislatures, executives and judiciaries of their own, accompanied by a strong emphasis on the importance of local governments (Kuhlmann et al., 2021, p. 560). This means that the federal government is limited to policy-making and leaves its execution to the lower-level administrative bodies (ibid.). This aspect equipped the Länder but also cities and counties to pass executive orders to close and open schools or impose mask obligations before the federal government could discuss these matters (ibid., p.  563). This allowed for dynamic policy-making, which can be swiftly adjusted in light of failure or changing reality (reflexive orientation). Coming to the healthcare system. Mellish et al. (2020) argue convincingly that the COVID-19 pandemic must not be considered a “Black Swan” (Taleb, 2008) event because the past suggested a possibility an event like this is quite likely to happen. This further means that global (influenza-like) pandemics should have been part of all national healthcare

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or even security strategies. Following the ethos of failure governance, this topic requires an ongoing problematization in the form of preparing a healthcare system for an external hit. So far, we spoke of the process of problematization/de-problematization in the context of actions taken in the direct light of a problem. However, it is also possible to track these concepts over a longer time frame where they impact and alter institutions. While looking at the example of the healthcare system, this suggests that the absence of preparations for pandemics is an act of de-­ problematization and vice versa. We are not claiming that the German healthcare system was particularly well prepared against a flu-like pandemic but was, in general, better prepared for an exogenous shock. The reasons can be found in several areas. Compared with other industrialized nations, Germany does not necessarily set itself apart by having a blanket healthcare system or being a federalist country, but with the combination of those and with ongoing significant levels of government investment and funding in the healthcare system. Kuhlmann and Jochen (2021) add that the German health system is exceptionally resilient due to its decentralized setup that “involves a multitude of subnational and local institutional actors, self-governing bodies and sub-state authorities” (p.  4) (reflexive orientation). The resilience is also expressed in quantitative terms, according to which Germany spends 6 731 $ per capita on health expenditures which is approximately 50% above the EU average (Kuhlmann & Jochen, 2021). Additionally, in 2021, around 84.4% of the German health expenditure are financed by the government (ibid.). Compared to many industrial nations, the German spending in the healthcare sector allows us to come to the quick conclusion that increased spending leads to more successful pandemic management. However, after a closer analysis, it is particularly telling what the money is used for in Germany (see Table 13.1). We assume here that some of the most important aspects of the decrease in the death rate of COVID-19 patients are expressed in the availability of intensive care beds and the numbers of doctors and nurses that can take care of the patients in care. Based on data from the OECD and the World Bank, we have performed a descriptive analysis of these variables comparing Germany, the US, the UK, France, and Italy. Germany is leading these categories clearly in comparison with the other countries. When it comes to ICU beds/100,000 inhabitants, Germany has nearly 34 available, with the US being in second place with 26 and the large European countries falling drastically behind (France = 16.3, UK = 10.5, Italy = 8.6). The US is only slightly behind here, but when comparing doctors/1000

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Table 13.1  Healthcare spending 2020 Country

Germany US UK Italy France

Healthcare Total Public Intensive Doctors/1000 Nurses/1000 spending spending expenditure care inhabitants inhabitants GDP in % healthcare on beds/100,000 (2020) (2020) (2018) $/capita healthcare (2017 or (2020) as % of nearest year) total (2014) 11.43 16.89 10.00 8.67 11.26

6731 10,948 5268 3819 5564

76.99 48.30 83.14 75.61 78.21

33.9 25.8 10.5* 8.6 16.3

4.5 2.6 3.0 4.0 3.4

13.9 11.8 8.4 6.7 11.1

Data from: OECD (n.d.), Ortiz-Ospina and Roser (n.d.), World Bank (n.d.) *data is for England only

inhabitants, Germany is clearly in the lead with 4.5, trailed by Italy (4), France (3.4), the UK (3) and the US (2.6). The theme also carries over to nurses/1000 inhabitants, where again Germany leads with 13.9, the US follows with 11.8 in front of France (11.1), UK (8.4), Italy (6.7). We can observe that it is not simply about the funds but also their use that impact how resilient and well-prepared a healthcare system is in a pandemic. Furthermore, in Germany, the federal government has nearly no authority over public health administration which is completely in the hands of local health authorities. Instead, it is concerned with the regulation of insurance companies, epidemiological surveillance, the coordination of scientific research, and fulfils support and advisory functions via the Robert Koch Institute (RKI)—the national public health institute (Hattke & Martin, 2020, p.  619). This “fragmented authority” (ibid., p.  626) enabled and promoted local initiatives that proved helpful, especially in comparison with highly centralized administrations like the one in France and the UK.  This allowed, in general, for more bottom-up approaches that spread the responsibility and created trust because of the proximity of the acting institutions (reflexive variety). This also indicates that a high level of trust in institutions leads to a high level of acceptance of regulations. Furthermore, in contrast with other states, it did not rely on central testing laboratories but spread them throughout the country (Shokoohi et  al., 2020, p.  437). The well-developed infrastructure of local health boards also played an undeniable role in fighting the pandemic (see, e.g.,

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Kuhlmann & Jochen, 2021). In the German case, it is particularly noteworthy that Germany switched between centralized and decentralized solution attempts, depending on the situation and the experience (Hattke & Martin, 2020, p. 627), an attempt well in line with the requisite variety of failure governance. Next to its leadership, Germany’s swift and effective crisis response in the first three waves is owed to the properly funded health system that has been invested in the long term. It was ready to deploy an aggressive track-­ and-­trace strategy and provided the required amount of intensive care units to help prevent many COVID deaths (Mellish et al., 2020, p. 25). In fact, it is this well-prepared healthcare system that, to this day, keeps the number of deaths low. Closely connected are the advantages created by the federalist setup. The federal government distributes power to the states (Länder), which then delegates it to membership-based, self-­ regulated organizations with autonomy in decision-making in the health and social sector (Mellish et al., 2020, p. 25). These circumstances and actions led Germany relatively well through the first three waves of the pandemic. However, something has changed in the second half of 2021, which saw an explosion in infection numbers. Additionally, one would have expected that the engaged leadership, the healthcare system as well as the federal setup that was so successful in coordinating the necessary steps to manage the pandemic up until this point would also excel in immunizing the population with the newly available vaccines. In what follows, we point out that many of the successful strategies that match the failure governance ethos have been put aside, and we can therefore observe a form of governance contradictory to many aspects of the failure governance ethos, which led to governance failure.

13.4  From Failure Governance to Governance Failure The “fourth wave” hit Germany as hard as feared by the country’s main virologist Christian Drosten (2021), who warned emphatically that the low vaccination numbers would lead to considerable problems come autumn. However, his warning has been ignored due to the population’s and decision-makers’ general tiredness toward expert voices (requisite variety).7 As of the beginning of December 2021, Germany registers around 70,000 daily COVID-19 cases (in some municipalities, the incidence is over 2000)

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and has recorded its 100,000th Corona-­related death since the pandemic’s start. Related to these numbers are the stagnating vaccination numbers. By December 3, only 72% of all Germans received at least one vaccine shot against the virus, and only 68% were fully vaccinated (Zeit Online, n.d.). This number has been growing very slowly since the summer. Compared with the numbers from August 1—62% received the first shot, 52.5% were fully vaccinated—the slower than expected growth rate becomes apparent (Zeit Online, n.d.). This is even more telling in contrast with the number of vaccinations administered in the first half of 2021. This would suggest that the last third of the population has, for some reason, strong reservations about receiving the vaccine. Arguably, this was Germany’s lowest point in the pandemic. This is the surprising fact C2: Germany’s transition from failure governance to governance failure. Its surprisingness K2 comes from A1—the failure governance we witnessed behind Germany’s success story during the containment phase of the pandemic. Germany made it quite well through the first three waves compared to its neighbors. One would think that this aspect would lead decision-makers to hold on to the successful strategies of the past as well as increase the trust of the population in the people who made these decisions before. This has apparently not been the case so what could be the A1, making C2 “a matter of course”? One of the usual suspects is the Federal elections on September 26. The coronavirus crisis and the most important topic of vaccination campaigns did not play a big role in the election campaigns.8 Furthermore, the incumbent government did not want to create any ill feelings toward them by enforcing strict measures just before the election that could have altered the impact of the pandemic. They opted to displace the responsibility to the next election cycle—a perfect example of cynical de-problematization (see Chap. 10). Similarly, after the election and during the interim period, there was a potential for parts of the government (particularly of ministers that were not expected to take part in the next coalition) to want to leave with a positive feeling of success and downplayed the danger of a fourth wave. Still, this cannot be the decisive reason for the negative development. Furthermore, the institutional context (healthcare system and federal setup) did not change. In this context, Kuhlmann et al. (2021) conclude that institutional context does not sufficiently explain whether a response to the pandemic is successful (p.  570). Germany felt this already in the second part of 2020. Here a change in the acceptance and, therefore, the effectiveness of Corona policies could be observed during the “second

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wave” starting in autumn of 2020. At this time, larger parts of the population were at least unsure whether the measures introduced by the government would be effective, and rallies against the prevention measures saw an increase in participants (Lu et al., 2021, p. 6). This is also reflected in the relative ineffectiveness of the second lockdown with increasing death rates and overburdening of the intensive care units (ICUs) (ibid.). The loss of faith in the executive continued once vaccines were available. The Covid-19 pandemic is an extremely complex phenomenon (e.g., Selg et al., 2021) that can overwhelm individuals and leave them incapable of responding. Moreover, it seems that the trust in politics and sciences has quickly regressed the longer the pandemic continued (Dohle et al., 2020, p. 17) and must be considered an additional reason for the stagnating vaccination numbers. The coronavirus crisis also revealed that Western societies are struggling through an “infodemic” (an information epidemic) expressed in an overabundance of valid and invalid information. In this particular case, it negatively impacts health literacy, which describes the ability to access, understand, appraise and apply health information (Okan et al., 2020). A high level of health literacy helps protect one’s health; however, in Germany, more than half of the adult population have a problematic or inadequate level of health literacy (Schaeffer et al., 2017). The “infodemic”—which in its current form is unprecedented in its size and velocity (Baines & Elliott, 2020, cited in Okan et al., 2020, p. 2)—leads to circumstances where individuals are unable to classify information as valid and reliable and open the door for disinformation, misinformation and malinformation (Okan et al., 2020, p. 2). It is further wise to differentiate between “negative information bias (causing ‘catastrophic thinking’) and positive information bias (causing ‘unrealistic optimism’)” (ibid.), which affects the situation. Another phenomenon connected with this is the general distrust of elites and experts, which in its most extreme form cumulates in the belief in emotive-phatic conspiracy theories that paint governments but also small groups of elites and individuals as puppet masters of political events, which are ultimately self-serving for these groups. This extremely simplified analysis of world events is very appealing to large groups of the population that feel detached and uncoupled from society. This world view and feeling is very effectively instrumentalized by populist parties which have an inherent “disdain of expertise” (Head, 2019, p. 193) as well as of elites. Germany has not been spared the influence of populist political groups, most visible in the form of the fairly young radical-right party Alternative für

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Deutschland (AfD). Partly due to their influence, the German government also struggles with convincing a large part of its population to follow scientific advice and get vaccinated. However, it needs to be mentioned that there is decreasing motivation in the government to find different solutions that reach parts of the population skeptical about receiving the vaccination (requisite variety). Somehow, the situation had worsened by the prominent role that experts played in the decision-making process, especially when their recommendations changed over time due to the changing nature of the situation and, in fact, the changing nature of scientific knowledge. This fact has been widely discussed in the context of mainstream media but it is particularly impactful in social media as well (e.g., Cinelli et al., 2020). Especially in the context of the population’s lack of knowledge of the scientific method that hardly ever pronounces ultimate facts, the experts’ input has been strongly devalued. This made space for alternative interpretations of regulations and questioned whether they were actually necessary or even effective; this is where beliefs in conspiracy theories became particularly “useful.” This trend has been already observed in the spring of 2020 (Romer & Jamieson, 2020) and intensified the epistemic authority crisis (see also, Selg et al., 2021; see also Chap. 12 of this book), which is to a large part responsible for the low vaccination rate as it increases self-centered behavior (Imhoff & Lamberty, 2020). The vaccination question also interrogates which actor needs to shoulder the responsibility. Politicians would like to transfer the responsibility to the individuals to end the pandemic by getting vaccinated. On the other hand, individuals ask the state to take on more responsibility by managing the situation more. Either way, there seems to be no desire for different actors to carry the equal weight of responsibility—a picture quite different from that at the beginning of the pandemic (requisite variety). The anti-vaccination movement has a very different set of resources and societal following, which enabled its organizers to mobilize more protesters to anti-Corona regulations demonstrations and is beyond that much more capable of affecting public opinion. We know that many inquiries on the internet about vaccination lead users on anti-vaccination websites (e.g., Puri et al., 2020). This effect is exacerbated by social media and the frequent forming of echo chambers in which like-minded people affirm their beliefs (e.g., Chiou & Tucker, 2018; Germani & Biller-­Andorno, 2021). In all of this, we can sense that the reluctance to get vaccinated is connected with doubting the epistemic authority (science, government, medical professionals) (e.g., Bar-tal & Barnoy, 2016). This leads back to

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the epistemic authority crisis, which points its blaming finger to the governments’ lack of credibility (reflexive orientation). Also, the government did not show much innovativeness in working out responses to combat this Crisis and defaulted to de-problematization strategies of stoicism and cynicism, as we see next. The phtatic governance as stoicism continued once the vaccine became available for the masses. The German government showed a deficient approach to preparing the population for the need for immunization. It became apparent quickly that the German leadership had forfeited the failure governance ethos and fallen back into a statist paralysis based on phatic “hoping for the best” (self-reflexive irony). Notably, the government did not alter services or vaccine infrastructures when confronted with failure (reflexive variety)—another indicator of phatic stoicism (in the sense of Chap. 10 of this book). Initially, vaccines were offered in vaccination centers and later at family doctor practices. However, in the light of stagnating vaccination rates, no changes to the distribution were made. To continue the course in light of apparent failure is the exact opposite of what the failure governance ethos put forth. The leadership should have focused on trotting out new approaches to reach the unvaccinated population. Alternative ideas such as multilingual TV campaigns or televised speeches of the Chancellor, letters to all people with health insurance (or other personalized approaches), offering vaccination and consultation in front of supermarkets or visitations by social workers were ignored (Endt, 2021). Similarly, the government stopped being attuned with its advisory experts, most notably Prof. Christian Drosten, which has played a pivotal role in supporting the German government in addressing the first waves, and head of the Robert Koch Institute, Prof. Lothar Wieler, the director of the government’s health institute (requisite variety/reflexive orientation). Both Drosten and Wieler have voiced their disappointment and frustration created by the government’s disregard of their accurate predictions of the effect of the fourth wave. Especially Wieler’s outburst was surprising. In his role as the head of a German government agency, he was often asked to address the press together with the political leadership of Germany. He has been notably calm and reserved in these press conferences—as could expected by a scientist/bureaucrat in such position. The more surprising was, therefore, his quite emotional outburst on November 18, 2021, titled by some German media (e.g., Harmsen, 2021) as “Wutrede” (rage speech) or “Brandrede” (inflammatory speech), where he

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forecasts a “devastating Christmas if nothing changes.” Furthermore, Wieler adds, “[w]e have reached a point where we can no longer prevent a lot of suffering. We have to turn things around now, we mustn’t lose any time” (Tagesschau, 2021), showing clearly his frustration about the fact that the situation escalated in such a manner and his advice was ignored. He closes his speech metalingually by telling the politicians to finally act and stresses that he “cannot bear it anymore that after 21 months that what my colleagues and I say is being misunderstood or ignored” because “all necessary concepts and recipes [to solve the crisis] are available” (Tagesschau, 2021). While turning away from their experts’ input and the ducking of responsibility, the German government has worsened the course of the pandemic. It has also lost its dynamic and insightful policy approach of the first waves and defaulted to a governance as stoicim or cynicism: “passive resignation in the pursuit of familiar routines” and “the stage management of appearances to claim success in the face of failure” to recall Jessop’s expressions (2011, p. 118). It might be understandable that there is certain fatigue after a two-year crisis which makes it a great test case for failure governance and the very crucial notion of self-reflexive irony. This notion tells us that policy-makers need to always act as if they consider a successful solution to the problem as a possibility, even if they are confronted with adamant failures. The pandemic has shown that the ethos has left the German government. The leadership could not keep at it and returned to a phatic governance of “business as usual” that de-problematizes the coronavirus crisis. The latter has not been handled as a crisis anymore. It has become a regular item on the agenda of policy-makers which led to less emphasis and less understanding of the population that regulations need to be continuously carried out. This is the fate of many wicked problems, like the climate crisis, as we see in the concluding chapter of this book. We also argue that the fact that the federal elections were conducted in the midst of a national/global crisis points toward the lack of urgency in the political sphere but also created this feeling in the population. Moreover, a stable government mandate that would have carried throughout the autumn and winter might have equipped the government with enough political capital to introduce different regulations and focus on the vaccination campaign instead of the electoral campaign and the future of their parties.

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13.5  Conclusion We looked closely at Germany’s approach to governing the coronavirus crisis during the two year period of 2020–2021. We noticed upfront that Germany was particularly successful at the beginning of the Crisis that prevented many deaths but was left with a frustrating situation in which vaccination numbers stagnated at low rates. In this case study, we asked what attempts at governance as problematization, as well as de-­ problematization have been put forth to understand the contrasting outcomes. In the summer of 2020, the German government had all reasons to celebrate its successful management of the coronavirus crisis. The government approached the pandemic like a global crisis in the twenty-first century that is extremely complex and hard to understand. It deployed a dynamic policy-making based on scientific expertise and successful blueprints from other places in the world. It spread responsibility evenly amongst all societal actors and stressed the need for communicative transparency. It problematized the Crisis with these adequate responses and allowed for successful governance. Admittedly, the government benefited from the institutional and federal starting positions. Still, this (and previous governments) should also receive credit for the problematization of these issues by withstanding the total privatization of the healthcare system and the hollowing out of the health agency. The institutional problematization and the leadership’s understanding of the challenge and embracing it appropriately align with the failure governance ethos that is particularly well-suited for the governance of wicked problems (like global crises). However, when considering the success of this type of decision-­making, it is more surprising that many of these tenets were left behind in the second half of 2021 and especially in the context of vaccine governance. It appears that policy-makers and the population have grown tired of failing to govern this wicked problem that will never be solved. The tiredness has turned into a form of, stoicism and cynicism on the government’s side and into distrust, suspicion or helplessness on the people’s side. The government seemingly decided to simply wait for the end of the pandemic or the legislative term, stopped listening to the experts and displaced their responsibility to the people—they approached the problem attempting to de-problematize it.

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Unfortunately, this is also expressed in their reliance on the population’s willingness to get vaccinated. This was at least in part also sabotaged by the government’s incapability to adjust failed policies and reach the people otherwise and not problematize these aspects. This created additional hurdles. The knowledge of politicians and experts has been challenged, and a fertile breeding ground for conspiracy theories, undermining most measures, emerged. All of this led to more distrust in institutions and less solidarity for vulnerable parts of the population, leading to the situation in autumn/winter 2021, in which Germany registered a record number of infections and stagnating vaccination figures. It shows quite clearly that the failure governance ethos is effective in dealing with wicked problems and at the same time that its absence can exacerbate a problem. It further points to the difficulty of continuously engaging with it and embracing failure as the likely outcome and suggests once more that self-reflexive irony might be the most important principle to adopt this ethos.

Notes 1. See Chap. 10 for the meaning of C1, K1, etc. 2. Besides Chap. 8 of this book, see also Selg, 2020 and Selg et al., 2021 for the distinction of causal and constitutive research questions. 3. Based on data from Our World in Data (n.d.). 4. There is an argument to be made that the lack of digitalization in Germany can be seen as de-problematizing the need to modernize society and, with that, the administrative capacities of the German state. The reasons for this are potentially found in the somewhat favorable position Germany has held, in the global economy and political influence sphere, over the past 40 years. At the same time, societies that are highly digitalized problematized the requirements that modern society presents for the public sector but also other aspects of society like the educational sector and the economy (see Chap. 11 of this book on the example of Taiwan). The lack of this type of societal problematization also negatively affected Germany’s capacity to address certain dimensions of the Coronavirus pandemic. 5. See: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-­data-­explorer?fac et=none&Metric=Confirmed+deaths&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+ Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&countr y=~DEU (Retreived October 13, 2022). 6. German Federal government agency and research institute responsible for disease control and prevention.

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7. In this section, we will cross out the principle of Failure Governance that has been ignored. 8. We side here with the assumption of nearly all virologists and epidemiologists, who state that vaccination of the population is the safest and quickest path out of this pandemic and are not interested in discussing the viability of this pathway.

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MDR. (2020, December 30). Die Chronik der Coronakrise. MDR. https://www. mdr.de/nachrichten/jahresrueckblick/corona-­c hronik-­c hronologie-­ coronavirus-­102.html#sprung2 Meier, K., Glatz, T., Guijt, M. C., Piccininni, M., van der Meulen, M., Atmar, K., et al. (2020). Public perspectives on protective measures during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, Germany and Italy: A survey study. PLoS One, 15(8), e0236917. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236917 Mellish, T. I., Luzmore, N. J., & Shahbaz, A. A. (2020). Why were the UK and USA unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic? The systemic weaknesses of neoliberalism: A comparison between the UK, USA, Germany, and South Korea. Journal of Global Faultlines, 7(1), 9–45. Merkel, A. (2020, March 18). An address to the nation by Federal Chancellor Merkel. Die Bundesregierung. https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-­de/ themen/coronavirus/statement-­chancellor-­1732296 Naumann, E., Möhring, K., Reifenscheid, M., et al. (2020). COVID-19 policies in Germany and their social, political, and psychological consequences. European Policy Analysis, 6(2), 191–202. OECD. (n.d.). Health spending. OECD. https://data.oecd.org/healthres/ health-­spending.htm Okan, O., Bollweg, T. M., Berens, E.-M., Hurrelmann, K., Bauer, U., & Schaeffer, D. (2020). Coronovaris-related health literacy: A cross-sectional study in adults during the COVID-19 infodemic in Germany. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(5503), 2–20. Oksanen, A., Kaakinen, M., Latikka, R., Savolainen, I., Savela, N., & Koivula, A. (2020). Regulation and trust: 3-month follow-up study on COVID-19 mortality in 25 European countries. JMIR Public Health and Surveillance, 6(2), e19218. Ortiz-Ospina, E., & Roser, M. (n.d.). Financing health care. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/financing-­healthcare Our World in Data. (n.d.) Statistics and research. Coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccinations. Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-­ vaccinations Puri, N., Coomes, E. A., Haghbayan, H., & Gunaratne, K. (2020). Social media and vaccine hesitancy: New updates for the era of COVID-19 and globalized infectious diseases. Human Vaccines & Immunotherapeutics, 16(11), 2586–2593. Romer, D., & Jamieson, K. H. (2020). Conspiracy theories as barriers to controlling the spread of COVID-19 in the US. Social Science & Medicine, 263, 113356. Schaeffer, D., Berens, E.-M., & Vogt, D. (2017). Health literacy in the German population. Deutsche Ärzteblätter International, 114, 53–60.

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Selg, P. (2020). Causation is not everything: On constitution and trans-actional view of social science methodology. In C. Morgner (Ed.), John Dewey and the notion of trans-action (pp. 31–53). Palgrave Macmillan. Selg, P., Klasche, B., & Nõgisto, J. (2021). Wicked problems and sociology: Building a missing bridge through processual relationalism. International Review of Sociology. Selg, P., & Ventsel, A. (2020). Introducing relational political analysis: Political semiotics as a theory and method. Palgrave Macmillan. Shokoohi, M., Osooli, M., & Stranges, S. (2020). COVID-19 pandemic: What can the West learn from the East? International Journal of Health Policy Managing, 9(10), 436–438. Tagesschau. (2021, November 18). Wielers Wutrede und neue Höchststände. Tagesschau. https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/wieler-­rki-­coronavirus-­ lage-­103.html Taleb, N. (2008). The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Penguin Books Ltd. The World Bank. (n.d.). Current health expenditure (% of GDP). The World Bank. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.CHEX.GD.ZS Thomas, G. (2011). A typology for the case study in social science following a review of definition, discourse, and structure. Qualitative Inquiry, 17(6), 511–521. Villani, L., McKee, M., Cascini, F., Ricciardi, W., & Boccia, S. (2020). Comparison of death rates for COVID-19 across Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, 620416. Watson, V. B. (2020). Five coronavirus success stories: Different, but the same. Security Nexus, 21(1), 1–20. Zeit Online. (n.d.). Coronavirus in Deutschland und bei Ihnen—alle Zahlen im Überblick. Zeit Online. https://www.zeit.de/wissen/aktuelle-­corona-­zahlen-­ karte-­deutschland-­landkreise

PART IV

Concluding Remarks

CHAPTER 14

In Place of Conclusions: Failing Better or Waiting for Godot in a Clumsy World of Wicked Problems?

The first part of the title of this chapter—“In place of conclusions”—is “borrowed” (“stolen,” if you like) from the book Culture and Explosion by Juri Lotman, the last book published in his lifetime (Lotman, 2009 [1992], ch. 20). The second part of the title refers to a couple of famous works by Samuel Beckett: “Worstward Ho” (1983) and “Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in 2 Acts” (2011 [1949]). As for the rest of this title, the reader who has stayed with us thus far knows that the clumsy world of wicked problems is exactly what we have presumed all along: the target of failure governance we propose in this book (see especially Chaps. 1–4). The political world for us is “clumsy”: it is something between “messed up order” and “ordered mess.” It is not an “elegant” world, a world that is either “order” or “mess.” But why is such a reference salad in the title of the chapter that is supposed to summarize our main argument—the so-­ called conclusion part with which academic books ought to end? Let us start with Lotman’s Culture and Explosion. Lotman’s vision of culture in this book is definitely that of a “clumsy world”: Culture, whilst it is a complex whole, is created from elements which develop at different rates, so that any one of its synchronic sections reveals the simultaneous presence of these different stages. Explosions in some layers may be combined with gradual development in others. (2009, p. 12)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8_14

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There is no choice between “chaos” or “mess” of explosion and “order” of gradual development in this clumsy world. Yet, this is a place for optimism as Lotman continues immediately: “This, however, does not preclude the interdependence of these layers” (ibid.). This book’s constant theme is how to harness the almost inevitable failure, and this is the form of optimism we propose. So, can we fail better? Here we want to clear a widely spread misunderstanding about Beckett’s “Worstward Ho” whose famous lines have become sort of a mantra of optimism in the face of failure: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better” (Beckett, 1983, p. 7). What usually gets ignored about this “pep talk” is what directly follows it: First the body. No. First the place. No. First both. Now either. Now the other. Sick of the either try the other. Sick of it back sick of the either. So on. Somehow on. Till sick of both. Throw up and go. Where neither. Till sick of there. Throw up and back. The body again. Where none. The place again. Where none. Try again. Fail again. Better again. Or better worse. Fail worse again. Still worse again. Till sick for good. Throw up for good. Go for good. Where neither for good. Good and all. (Ibid., pp. 7–8, italics added)

In many ways, Beckett’s world is the opposite of clumsy: it is an “elegant” world of total chaos. His is not even a fatalistic world; it is a world of “throwing up for good.” There is no sense of harnessing failure in this world. And this is, of course, exemplified by the famous ending of “Waiting for Godot”: “VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go? / ESTRAGON: Yes, let’s go. They do not move. Curtain” (Beckett, 2011, p. 85).1 “They do not move”—this is the Beckettian world of waiting for Godot, who will never come. There is no irony there. It does not get more pessimistic than that. We, however, are out for a certain optimism in this book, which can be, again, captured by Bob Jessop’s self-reflective irony: “If one is likely to fail, one can at least choose one’s preferred form of failure” (2011, p. 118). How can we get there? And what has our journey been thus far? This book makes a case for seeing failure as an action—trans-action, to be more specific. Instead of just summarizing the results of the book in our conclusion, we want to reflect on what our drawn lessons could mean in the context of the most pressing wicked issue that we are facing today and in the future: the Climate Crisis. The Crisis has been well established

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as a wicked problem (e.g., Crowley & Head, 2017; Klasche, 2021a, 2021b; Levin et al., 2012; McBeth & Shanahan, 2004; Selman, 1999), a problem that is in urgent need of solutions, a problem whose definition remains highly debated, and a problem in which the piece-meal treatment will exacerbate its effects on society. When we look at the situation that we title Climate Crisis, we see a lot of governance failure but very little Failure Governance. The fact that this problem has been well-understood since the early 1970s and still remains effectively unaddressed clearly points to the need to recalibrate our governance approach. It is even possible to argue that it is the prime example of a politics of de-problematization. It is branded by the fatalism of generations of political decision-makers that have displaced their responsibility to other actors—private citizens and their consumption behavior, companies that ought to become sustainable, other governments that should act first, the planet to use its alleged self-correction mechanism, or even to future generations that somehow could deal with this problem more comfortably by using new technological innovations. It has also been de-­problematized by denying its true nature and classifying it as non-threatening or no problem at all. Some of these approaches toward the Crisis are based on the inability to frame it as a problem that fits the dominant ideological setting or hegemonic discourse, e.g., rapid economic growth is more important (see Fischer, 2003). Still, the behavior could also be due to fear of failure and its political consequences. This is once more where Failure Governance could establish itself with great promise. It suggests embracing failure and the swift modification of policies in light of it, which has been absent in the Climate Crisis governance, where absolutes dictate the discourse. The approach further stresses accepting a lack of knowledge and an orientation toward failure rather than success. In the examples of the Coronavirus Crisis governance, we were additionally able to observe the need for state and non-state actors of any kind to attain the same sense of responsibility for contributing to the successful governance of the problem. This is where different forms of governance of the crises truly diverge. We will engage with the Climate Crisis in three steps. First, we explain why the most frequently deployed climate governance mechanisms, for example, multilateral treaties that manage and set the threshold for emission (e.g., the Kyoto protocol), have no chance of addressing the problem. These strategies resemble what we have called “self-active” forms of de-­ problematization of wicked problems (Chap. 3) and imply their inevitable inability to affect the outcome positively. The scholarly community that

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works on political climate solutions has well-understood these approaches’ shortcomings. However, many ideas that have been proposed instead are still in line with substantialist (self-active and inter-active) approaches that struggle to address the problem. Therefore, secondly, we are mapping the recent scholarly developments in climate governance and assessing whether any of these are in line with Failure Governance. In a third step, we take these advancements and add lessons from the example of the Coronavirus Governance to understand how a trans-active form of climate governance could and should be.2 Before we start, it is wise to assess whether the strategical choices applied to one wicked problem can be translated to another if one of the fundamental claims about wicked problems is that they are “essentially unique” (Rittel & Webber, 1973, pp.  164–165). That being said, the Coronavirus Crisis seems to lend itself particularly well to comparisons with the Climate Crisis due to, for example, the fact that both crises radiate threats asymmetrically to more vulnerable parties (see, e.g., Sultana, 2021). It further appears that the straightforward solution to these problems, reducing CO2-emission and social contacts, will have unforeseeable ripple effects on other parts of social life. They can also be categorized as “super wicked” problems as they both can be described with the four following features: “time is running out, no central authority, those causing the problem also want to solve it, and policies irrationally discount the future” (Auld et al., 2021, p. 709, see also Levin et al., 2012). Therefore, it seems not impossible to transfer lessons from the management of one to the other. Additionally, relational approaches have been tentatively identified as particularly promising for the study of sustainability sciences, where the community of scholars face “widespread uncertainty about the origins, promises and challenges of working with relational thinking” (West et al., 2020, p. 306), which is something we shall address here as well. However, before we do that, we should look at the current failing approaches to show the use of Failure Governance strategies. It is admittedly fair to say, or even worthy of celebrating as a success that the Climate Crisis has been understood as a problem that requires international or, ideally, even global intervention (see, e.g., Maamoun, 2019). This led to using multilateral agreements as the main tool to address the issue. It also seems that the decrease in CO2 emission has been rightfully identified as the biggest creator of the problem (that being said, there are many other problems related to this, such as pollution of ecospheres, the plastic waste crisis, biodiversity crisis etc.—many of these

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aspects are also interrelated) and agreements and treaties are specifically aimed at this issue. The results are many bilateral and multilateral environmental treaties that attempt to manage these issues. The most famous example is the Kyoto protocol, adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005 which saw its first commitment period from 2008 to 2012. The protocol’s goal was to reduce greenhouse gas concentration to “a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (UNFCCC, 1997, art. 2). Unfortunately, the world saw an increase in greenhouse gas emissions instead of a decline during the time of activity of the protocol. This is partly based on constructing a protocol that allows poorer countries not to restrict their emissions to foster economic development. What started as a consideration for the unjust distribution of wealth and capability ended in becoming a free ticket for large economies such as China and India to increase their emissions without regard for the protocol, which culminated in the late 2000s with China taking the position as the biggest emitter in the world (Falkner, 2019, p. 273). It is, however, no surprise that international treaties are bound to be ineffective in managing the Climate Crisis since they are an expression of the hierarchical power setup in global politics. The Kyoto protocol also must be understood as a self-active type of governance relying on standard bureaucratic tools to address this problem. This, however, is the “wrong type of instrument (a universal intergovernmental treaty) relying heavily on the wrong agents exercising the wrong sort of power to create, from the top down, a carbon market” (Rayner & Prins, 2007, p. v) to address these types of problems. The failure of international treaties (at least certainly in environmental matters) is inherent to the inability of international law to govern the level of complexity that these problems provide. This is exacerbated in the Anthropocene, our current human-made geological epoch characterized by instability, unpredictability, and complexity (Kotzé & Kim, 2019, p. 5). On the other hand, international law still treats the Earth and its societies as stable. It further shows features of self-active governance, such as state-centrism, anthropocentrism, and reductionism, that are problematic in dealing with environmental problems in the Anthropocene (Kotzé & Kim, 2019, pp. 4–6). There is, therefore, a need to develop a new type of global legal system that discards these assumptions and re-orientates itself toward the acknowledgment that more actors than just states are involved in governing the Earth systems, that we should look beyond the traditional sources of international law, and that

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self-active top-down governance is just one (failing mode) of governance (Kotzé & Kim, 2020, p. 460)—more what this could look like below. The expected failure of substantialist approaches is due to their focus on discrete units (e.g., states) and ignoring the impact of complexity and contingency. Therefore, one of the main tenets of Failure Governance is the swift response and alteration in the face of failure. Similar to the Kyoto protocol, many international agreements are static, planned to run over a long timeframe, and are, therefore, incapable of being quickly adjusted. The example of the Kyoto protocol is again telling. After the first commencement period from 2008 to 2012, it was clear that the mechanism introduced in the treaty did barely affect greenhouse gas emissions. The burden-sharing arrangement that should have provided a form of justice actually intensified the problem and is one of the major reasons why the USA opposed it. However, the failure was not a full re-imagination of the approach but an attempt to only slightly adjust while relying mostly on the same principles. The Kyoto protocol itself was prolonged till the end of 2020. This behavior is fatalistic (passive resignation) and cynical (making it look like that success could still occur) and very clearly everything that Failure Governance should not be (see also, Jessop, 2011, p.  118). Additionally, we saw the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015, which corrected some of the issues of the Kyoto protocol and championed a more pluralist and de-centralized approach (Falkner, 2019, p.  272). It correctly identified the failure of state-centric instruments, which led to the rise of non-state actors in climate governance outside the UNFCCC climate regime. It includes various non-state actors such as cities, private actors, and civil society organizations that voluntarily tackle emission reduction (Falkner, 2019, p.  274). This bottom-up approach is a stark contrast to the top-down hierarchical approach of the Kyoto protocol. Where the Kyoto protocol also relied on hard obligations, the Paris Agreement added “soft and non-obligations” (Rajamani, 2016, p. 337) to the mix. It blurred the boundaries between law and non-law and relied on mutual reassurances and storytelling to generate its outcome (ibid., p.  338). Further, the actual hard obligations of the agreement are only concerned with mitigation and transparency, and even here, a very careful language is chosen (ibid., pp. 353–5). Due to the diverging views on mitigation, many softer obligations also deal with it. These provisions do not create new obligations, are recommendatory in nature, and set (only) strong normative expectations (ibid., p. 355). The non-obligations concern adaptation measures, which are mostly there to create a feeling of

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solidarity and mutual reassurance (ibid., p. 356). There is certainly more resemblance to inter-active approaches here that rely on dialogue and network, and we could, at this point, argue that we moved from a self-active tool (Kyoto protocol) to an inter-active one. This shift is also present in the academic literature theorizing governance approaches to the Climate Crisis. It is quite noticeable that states and the role of international institutions and agreements are mostly missing from newer work that focuses instead on the role of “cities, NGOs and other sub- and non-state actors” (Gordon & Johnson, 2017, p.  694). Similar to the development of the Paris Agreement, this is a reaction to the failure of top-down approaches and an embracement of bottom-up approaches. The literature is naturally vast and impossible to highlight here in its totality. But some of the re-occurring themes are the call for actions outside of the UN’s traditional power structures with the hope to develop new forms of governance (Aykut, 2016, p. 318; Kern & Bulkeley, 2009, p. 319) that go “beyond the state” (Bulkeley et al., 2012, p. 592), and focus on indirect modes of governance based on voluntary participation and the absence of coercive authority (Kern & Bulkeley, 2009, as cited in Gordon & Johnson, 2017, p.  695). These aspects could find expression in the involvement of local and private actors to act (e.g., Sabel & Victor, 2017) connected with a tendency to splice the big problem into smaller units (ibid.),3 or the attempt to work “non-hierarchical, horizontal and polycentric” via placing the focus on “transnational municipal networks” (Kern & Bulkeley, 2009, p. 310). However, even with these developments in mind and even in the light that we might call the Paris Agreement an example of the “brave new world of international law” (Koh, 1995, p. ix, quoted in Rajamani, 2016, p. 358), it is falling short in addressing the problem. One part of the problem is that the Paris Agreement still deploys a hierarchical approach to governance that emphasizes states and markets, for example, in carbon trading mechanisms (Morgan & Patomäki, 2021, p. 4) and, with all things considered, need to be still classified as a tool of self-active type of governance. This renders these governance attempts not just ineffective but creates false hope for populations and allows policy-makers to continuously de-problematize the issue. In 2019 we were still looking at a record emission year that saw over 53.5 Gigatons of CO2 emitted into the air, and projections state that it is very likely that even in 2030, we are looking at a barely unchanged number of 53 Gigatons of CO2 (ibid., p. 1). We have also reached a point where the economic viability of our economies that are systematically

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destroying Earth is being challenged (ibid., p. 4). We could argue that the world slowly realizes the emergency character of the Crisis by seeing the USA re-enter the Paris Agreement and even China signaling that it commits to being climate neutral in 2060. Nonetheless, we seem to be stuck in a phatic “business as usual” mode of governance as stoicism, in which the failure is not automatically attributed to an unwillingness of the actors to create necessary change, but it continues to be due to the wrong selection of tools that ought to bring the change along. To us, this is not really a surprise when all proposed tools and strategies resemble a substantialist type of governance. Self-active governance approaches do also create moral cop-outs. If we can point toward the state or the market to manage the problem, there will be no need for individuals or other actors to take on any responsibility. The example of carbon trade markets is very telling here, where emitters can simply pay their way out of the moral obligation (ibid., p. 6). It further normalizes the idea of pollution as something possible within the system (ibid.). Even though the Paris Agreement is not a perfect and perhaps not even a sufficient representation of a global governance approach that goes “beyond the state” and happens outside of the “UN-system,” it is currently the closest thing we can evaluate with these characteristics in mind. The largest shortcoming is still the conventionality of the Paris Agreement created by governments going through their regular (old) toolbox. This again points to the need to completely re-imagine international law and the governance of wicked problems. But what does Failure Governance mean for the Climate Crisis? We learned above that the current approaches governing the Climate Crisis are momentously failing. In the defense of the policy-makers, the Crisis is extremely complex, consisting of many aspects while also being interlinked with many other crises (e.g., an economic crisis followed by the needed transformation, a crisis of democracy or ideology, a crisis of global injustice). Additionally, the regulatory playing field is also extremely complex. Kotzé and Kim (2020), for example, talk about a “double complexity” stemming from the fact that the Earth system (that hosts our climate) is extremely complex, and so is the regulatory system (in their case, international law), that needs to manage an actor field, consisting of nearly 200 heterogeneous states and diverse non-state actors (p. 466). Consequently, they suggest a complete renewal of the international law system. A new type of global legal system is required to manage these problems, which, in reverse, prioritizes not simply the knowledge of Western societies,

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considers the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable, goes beyond short-term solutions, and seeks justice for all humans and non-humans (Kotzé & Kim 2020, p. 465). This new legal system ought to leave the assumption of Holocene stability (i.e., that the Earth and its climate act in a foreseeable manner) and instead embrace complexity, instability, and unpredictability (Kotzé & Kim, 2019 p. 5). These are takeaways we also subscribe to in Failure Governance. Furthermore, inside of this lies the criticism that all governance approaches and social science, in general, are still too fixated on substantialist assumptions that make it very hard to understand the complexity of the Earth system and the relationship between humans and nature. In direct opposition to that are relational approaches such as Failure Governance (as covered in the preceding chapters), which have been labeled as real chances for sustainability sciences (West et al., 2020). Failure governance, as a reminder, stresses, among other things, (a) the acknowledgment of the situation at hand: the Climate Crisis is a wicked problem (a problem defined by the intense and complex interconnectedness of its parts); (b) that any attempt to solve it will fail which requires the right mindset, and involvement of experts, but practically identifies the need to monitor swiftly adopt policies; (c) that all actors (states, institutions, individuals, etc.) need to shoulder responsibility; and (d) perhaps most importantly it requires a high degree of transparency. If these maxims are followed, de-problematization can be mostly avoided, leading to the required continuous problematization we need to solve the problem. Let us have a closer look at these assumptions and what they could mean for the Climate Crisis governance by drawing from the Coronavirus governance examples. (a) The academic community has classified the Climate Crisis as a wicked problem in the classical sense (even though Grint [2022] recently put forth some reservations about some of the classical assumptions by Rittel and Webber). It is of utmost importance that the problem is identified and approached as such. The biggest fallacy lies in ignoring its very nature and de-problematizing it this way. This happens particularly when problems like the Climate Crisis are framed based on political or ideological leanings. This can lead to a situation, which is observable in most places around the world, where it becomes an issue only for a part of the political spectrum, e.g., radical neoliberalist demand to end restrictions in the Coronavirus pandemic or in the matter of climate governance where many policy-makers make it into an issue of left or right. This not only slows

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down progress but, even worse, catapults us into a world with different truths (fake news, etc.) and steers us into an epistemic authority crisis (see, Chap. 12 above; Selg et  al., 2022). These misperceptions and unsupported beliefs that certainly exist in the case of the Climate Crisis (see, e.g., Nyhan, 2020) keep us from adequately addressing the problem. Therefore a strong emphasis needs to be placed on the reversal of this process and the establishment of trustworthy and transparent reporting on the problem. Only then will it be possible to reach the heights of a collective response necessary (see point c). (b) Acknowledging the nature of the problem is required not only for collective responses but simply for engaging with the situation at all. Once the Climate Crisis is understood as a wicked problem, policy-makers must adjust their approach. Instead of falling back to the old tools in their toolbox, such as self-active and inter-active governance approaches that are certainly effective in other circumstances, they need to understand that this problem is festered with complexity, uncertainties, and contingency and embrace the Failure Governance ethos. Potentially the most important change that is required is a change of mindset. Policy-makers need to acknowledge that problems of that kind cannot be solved in the “elegant” sense (see Grint [2022]) and require embracing presicely this unknowingness, and understand that this is precisely what responses need to address. Therefore, the problem is the standard starting point and that incompleteness in addressing the problem is the only possible outcome (see Jessop’s (e.g. 2011) concept of reflexive irony). Of course, in the case of the Climate Crisis, the solution appears very simple: stop emitting CO2. However, this is a good reminder that this problem is not just one embedded in the planet’s properties to manage the climate but also in our societies and their reliance on fossil fuels to fulfill their functions. Therefore, the solution is not as simple as it might look from certain viewpoints or ideologies—for example, for a radical environmental activist, the solution is indeed as simple as that. Some practical advice can be drawn from Germany’s initial approach to the Coronavirus Crisis. It has been clearly identified as a wicked problem with many unknowns and an ingrained need to deal with this crisis immediately. German policy-makers instantly deployed experts, looked for solution attempts in other countries and tried a multitude of responses, some of which were quickly discarded and adjusted (see Chap. 13). The Climate Crisis is not yet understood as a crisis, and governance approaches are firmly in the realm of self-active or, at best, inter-active approaches (see above). Policy-makers must realize that these tools do not work, and a

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re-­imagination of responses is necessary. They are also defined by their static nature, which often sees agreements to be concluded for decades without re-visiting and checking their success and adjusting them if necessary (the Kyoto protocol being the worst example). Other times they are very limited in scope and only address small aspects of the Crisis. However, based on its constitutive nature, this will not lead to successful management. (c) True wicked problems require a collective response, which means that it requires actions from all societal actors. However, one of the takeaways of Failure Governance is that we do not have to do away with the states, and in a way, we also cannot do it. The modern state has shown to be not very effective in the governance of the environment. However, the experience with the Coronavirus Crisis has proven that it has the ability to implement effective governance strategies. Unfortunately, political leaders have often demonstrated a lack of consistency which needs to be avoided (Grint, 2022, pp. 11–12). Still, the state played only a partial role in this, and a more holistic approach that enlists all actors seems to be of the most value. We would also state that it is impossible to leave the state out of the Climate Crisis governance as it is the main organizing principle in this imagination of humanity. At this point, it is also valuable to be reminded of institutional de-­ problematization. Looking again at Germany during the Coronavirus pandemic, it becomes quickly apparent that the institutional problematization of the healthcare sector has helped to fend off the worst impacts of the pandemic (see Chap. 13). It is valuable to note once more that this type of problematization runs over a long timeframe and might not show immediate rewards. In the case of the Climate Crisis, we could imagine institutional problematization by creating, for example, a climate ministry that strategically invests in mitigation and adaptation measures. This goes hand in hand with educational measures and, for example, bringing up a new generation of people who have been socialized in this context and understand the need to protect the climate and the planet. Lastly, institutional problematization could be a big factor in transforming our economic and energy systems, which are currently based on the resource exploitation of the Earth. This type of green economy (or even the vision necessary for it) can only be created via longtime investments in, for example, new technologies, subsidies for climate-friendly alternatives, and programs that support the transformation. It is also valuable to invoke a question of morals and ethics here. Self-­ active and inter-active approaches outsource moral responsibility to the

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hierarchical and network governance processes. However, relational approaches such as trans-active governance require us all to shoulder moral responsibility as we are constantly connected (see, e.g., Kurki, 2020, p. 147). Avoiding de-problematization is also an ethical question as it will exacerbate suffering for generations to come and populations far away. This also extends to the next point, which addresses the need for transparency. (d) One of the main takeaways of Taiwan’s successful Covid-strategy was the focus on transparency. In the industrialized nations of the twenty-­ first century, we are missing this aspect in climate governance approaches. Politicians shield the necessity to act now from the public by referring, for example, to future, yet unknown, technologies that will take care of the problem (Morgan & Patomäki, 2021, p. 3). However, in contrast, they should not displace the problem to the future by relying on technologies that might never be feasible but focus on the now and create the political will as well as the community acceptance that wide-ranging societal change is necessary right here and right now in case a technology appears that is scalable, feasible, and effective (ibid.). Transparency could be concretely created via more focus on carbon taxes which are much simpler, more flexible, and therefore more transparent than, for example, the more commonplace carbon trade markets (ibid., p. 6). All aspects, if relied upon, fit nicely with the Failure Governance ethos. It is also worth noting that the point of such a system should not be revenue generation but should encourage activity that is climate-friendly (ibid.). Naturally, these are just some starting thoughts on applying Failure Governance to the Climate Crisis. To truly tackle the problem, much more thinking and research are required. However, we clearly see that the Coronavirus pandemic has created a playing field very similar to the Climate Crisis, which allowed us the usually unavailable opportunity to assess different strategies and their effectiveness in governing a crisis of that kind. It would be a truly wasted opportunity not to attempt to transfer lessons to the biggest crisis humankind has yet to face. However, it is not surprising that the societies of our planet struggle to address this problem in the first place. Our whole approach to social sciences (and other aspects) is based on finding solutions to problems instead of making the understanding and exploration of the problem the main focus. This shift would take away some of the struggles we face in managing, for example, the Climate Crisis today, as solutions are held back by misperceiving the

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problem. A revolution of the educational system is necessary to reach this point, and we will turn to this next. To recap our argument in this book in a nutshell: moving from a substantialist to a relational approach to governance entails accepting the inevitability of governance failure and orienting oneself to failure governance. In a different vocabulary: it entails true acceptance of the contingency of the social and political world as we know it. Analytically it requires moving from the presumption of the “elegant” world of bounded entities, grasped by independent and dependent variables, to constantly changing and constitutive relations. Accepting these features of the world, in turn, brings in the need to also move from various toolboxes to a self-reflective ethos toward the world. It is similar to moving from various ethical imperatives—be they categorical or hypothetical—to the underlying ethical mechanisms themselves. To bring an even more robust parallel with which we started (Chap. 1), it would be moving from a list of jokes to a sense of humor. To say “I know a lot of jokes” makes sense, but to say “I have a sense of humor” makes way less sense, since sense of humor is something that emerges out of a complex network of relations and practices (of which telling jokes could be an important part) through which one “acquires” one’s sense of humor. Also, sense of humor is never fully given, but manifests in practice. One cannot say that now they finally “have” sense of humor for good, or that they soon have sense of humor. Bottom line: like power and governance, sense of humor is an example of phenomena that should be approached in relational terms. But it is a huge leap—if it ever were possible to take it at all—to propose some normative guidelines for having a great sense of humor. Similarly, we proposed a relational approach to the governance of wicked problems. Analytically this has been way easier a task than normatively. It is easier to imagine a world in which nothing is fixed or given than to envision some “positive program” of governance for such a world, let alone policy advice, a notion so heavily contaminated by “tools talk,” which presumes “variables talk” at the analytical level. But is there still hope for a positive program? Can we still hope to teach or give guidelines for failure governance? It is as tricky as asking how to gain a sense of humor, when all we have is a list of jokes. This is also a challenge for social science education. Brewer (2013, chapter 5) has argued for the need for “new public social science” which would address the “‘wicked problems’ of culture, the market and the state in the twenty-first century” (p. 169). He puts forth an ambitious definition of the new public social science:

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The new public social science studies the social nature of society—the way in which society is produced and reproduced in culture, the market and the state, generating information about society, the market and the state—which informs society about itself and the big issues that shape the future of humankind. This form of study simultaneously promotes moral sentiments and sympathetic imagination by garnering a body of citizens educated to social awareness and appreciative of the distant, marginalized and strange other. This means that social science teaching and learning has civilizing, humanizing and cultural effects in addition to whether use and price value the new public social science might have. (Ibid., pp. 168–169, italics in the original)

A huge transformation is needed to gain public value for the social sciences in the world ever-increasingly haunted by wicked problems: “Public social science research is capable of showing how these ‘wicked problems’ interlock, and how the operations of culture, the market and the state, locally, nationally and globally, are impacting on them, for good or bad” (ibid., p. 177). It is a science that retains its identity as a form of critique by continuing its transgressiveness. There are at least three borders it transgresses—disciplinary, national and political—and it transcends at least one divide—that between teaching and research. It is post-disciplinary and global. Disciplines offer perspectives better in combination than separately, in which the nature of the problem should determine the disciplinary perspectives not the other way round. Nothing less can be done in the face of ‘wicked problems’ stored up for us in the twenty-first century. (Ibid., p. 194)

Brewer’s optimism about the possibility of such “new public social science” is somewhat reserved, but he is not alone in his critical stance toward traditional social science when he states that “[m]uch of social science as currently practiced is disciplinary, conducted from bunkers where practitioners are trained to believe in ‘ourselves alone’ … and preoccupied with orthodox issues” (ibid., p. 163). Already two decades ago, one of the most influential promoters of phronetic social sciences, Bent Flyvbjerg, published his now classic book Making Social Sciences Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again (2001). This book caused a storm in many ways among social scientists ranging from hate-speech level dismissals in flagship journal reviews (e.g., Fuchs, 2002) to edited volumes length responses by leading social and political theorists (see Schram & Caterino, 2006). We

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have pointed out earlier that Flyvbjerg’s phronetic program is well in tune with trans-actional approach promoted in the current book (see also Selg, 2016, 2018). Here, Flyvbjerg’s concerns are similar regarding traditional social science—although he never mentions wicked problems. Following the works of Campbell (1986), Lindblom and Cohen (1979), Lindblom (1990), and Bailey (1992), he dubs the problem with traditional social sciences the problem of “‘so what?’ results”: “the development of social research is inhibited by the fact that researchers tend to work with problems in which the answer to the question ‘If you are wrong about this, who will notice?’ is ‘Nobody.’” The situation is actually quite familiar. Already a long time ago, Charles Wright Mills introduced the idea of “sociological imagination” in a book with the same title (2000 [1959]). Although it is hard to see it as a rigorously defined concept, one can definitely perceive it as indicating a certain attitude toward the world or an ethos of research rather than a set of clear-­ cut methodological principles and tools. Sociological imagination takes neither micro- nor macro-observations at face value but tries to uncover their relations. This imagination was meant to reinvigorate the research ethos of classical social analyses (Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and others) in the face of the new positivist tendencies of Mills’ time that he referred to as “abstracted empiricism” with its “bureaucratic techniques” (Chap. 5), and the pretentious play with concepts “drunk on syntax, blind to semantics” (p.  34), which he saw as the tendency in “grand theory” (a la Parsons). Sociological imagination, for him, is the capacity to shift from one perspective to another—from the political to the psychological; from examination of a single family to comparative assessment of the national budgets of the world; from the theological school to the military establishment; from considerations of an oil industry to studies of contemporary poetry. It is the capacity to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self—and to see the relations between the two. (Mills, 2000, p.  7, italics added)

Taking our lead from the sociological imagination that Mills proposes, we would like to call for a “political imagination” for the clumsy world of wicked problems. And that has to be a processual-relational imagination. One of the major representatives of this approach, Francois Dépelteau— without whom the current book would not have been possible—has

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characterized this imagination as “hard to accept” in one of his last published works during his lifetime: “Everything is changing all the time, including ourselves. This is hard to accept since we are looking for some sort of stability often to reassure ourselves” (2018, 503). In terms of teaching social sciences, moving away from such stability or temptation to reassure ourselves is a challenge to move—again—from solution-oriented teaching to problem-oriented teaching. But it is a huge leap since, in our education system, we are mostly assessed by how well and quickly we solve problems with solutions. One can think of various tests, like IQ, SAT, etc., that segregate the haves and have-nots among US citizens by their late teens. These tests measure a person’s ability to recognize regularities underlying problems. In our vocabulary: these tests measure people’s ability to solve simple and complex problems. More importantly, these tests measure people’s capacity for self- or inter-active governance oriented toward governance success and accumulating knowledge about best practices. This book proposes to reorient this logic in governance: failure governance is the best practice we can have in a situation where there cannot be “best practices” in the first place. This is exactly what is at stake in governing wicked problems since, as Rittel and Webber highlighted already in 1973, not only are wicked problems impossible to define and impossible to solve—they are also “essentially unique” (pp. 164–165).

Notes 1. In fact both acts of the play end with exactly the same dialogue (see Beckett, 2011, p. 35). 2. Partly we are following the structure of Klasche’s (2021a, 2021b) work here. 3. This is however, a crucial mistake when it comes to the management of wicked problem (see, e.g., Selg et al., 2022).

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Index1

A Agreement, 10, 36–38, 40–42, 71, 87, 114, 147–149, 153, 156, 158, 159, 185, 206, 213, 225, 227, 228, 233, 240, 246, 252, 254, 256, 281, 310, 317, 368–371, 375 B Bureaucracy, 113, 114, 119, 152, 173, 180, 181, 184–187, 227, 236 C Climate crisis, 7, 14, 40, 91, 355, 366–369, 371–376 Clumsy solution, 87–89, 282 Communication, 13, 57, 67, 86, 131, 155, 156, 172, 216–218, 242–244, 246, 247, 254, 256, 274, 276, 277, 279–284, 297,

299, 300, 303, 304, 307, 310, 311, 317, 324, 326, 338–340 Complex problems, 10, 22, 32, 33, 35–41, 43, 44, 49, 55, 71, 81–83, 90, 91, 135, 143, 380 Conceptualizing, 8, 54, 80, 159, 171, 189, 232, 240 Constitution, 9, 12, 13, 38, 67, 68, 81, 91, 158, 159, 172–176, 225, 236–239, 244, 251, 257, 267, 273–275, 278, 282, 283, 299, 321–328, 338 Contingency, v, 11, 12, 32–33, 38, 60, 61, 63, 68, 78–87, 94, 97, 98, 134, 141–144, 149–153, 157–159, 167–191, 207, 218, 233, 267, 271, 272, 282, 285, 339, 370, 374, 377 Coronavirus, 293, 309, 317, 320, 322–325, 335–337, 340, 342, 351, 352, 355, 356, 357n4, 367, 368, 373–376

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 P. Selg et al., A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems, Palgrave Studies in Relational Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-24034-8

385

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INDEX

COVID-19, 7, 13, 14, 67, 68, 91, 215, 287, 288, 293–311, 315–330, 335, 336, 339, 340, 344, 345, 347, 348, 350, 352 Crisis, 8–10, 13, 14, 26, 35, 67, 90–92, 94, 106, 108, 117, 119, 138, 157, 171, 212, 224, 230, 287, 288, 293–296, 298–300, 303, 306–308, 311, 316, 317, 319–321, 326–330, 335–337, 339–356, 367, 368, 372, 374–376 D Decision-making, 12, 35, 38, 60, 64, 65, 87, 89, 92, 113–116, 126, 136, 141, 150, 151, 160n4, 168, 169, 173, 176, 178, 180, 185, 187, 188, 203, 204, 206, 209–212, 215, 216, 226, 228, 232, 238, 270, 282, 336, 342, 350, 353, 356 Democracy, 79, 106, 108, 111, 114, 119, 119n3, 188, 205, 225, 235, 250, 276, 277, 281, 282, 294, 298, 299, 305, 346, 372 Depoliticization, 11, 36, 38, 59–68, 96, 218, 273 De-problematization, 7, 11, 13, 14, 31, 36, 38, 41, 59–73, 79, 82, 85–87, 89, 91–98, 106, 108, 218, 236, 267–288, 299, 307, 308, 315–330, 337, 346, 348, 351, 354, 356, 373, 375 Dewey, John, 6, 10, 31, 50–53, 55, 57, 58, 78, 80, 81, 112–114, 126, 172, 225, 227, 239, 242–244, 256 Dialogue, 5, 6, 13, 71, 117, 223–257, 270, 272, 276, 281, 286, 304, 371, 380n1

Disagreement, 36–38, 41, 42, 71, 91, 116, 147, 150 Discourse, 21, 22, 27, 40, 43, 66, 96, 106–111, 114, 117, 118, 127, 138, 141, 142, 146, 152, 156, 172, 179, 183, 189, 191, 201, 205, 213, 214, 225, 226, 237, 247, 249, 255, 269, 273, 274, 276, 283, 284, 299, 367 E Epistemology, 97, 106, 135, 137, 158, 169, 208, 209, 240, 248, 249 Experience, 25, 31, 78, 97, 109, 112, 134, 135, 137, 144, 168, 184, 208, 211, 217, 241, 242, 252, 297, 306, 327, 340, 350, 375 Experts, 13, 26, 72, 92, 110, 111, 115, 116, 119n3, 145, 157, 158, 211, 212, 214–219, 223–257, 281, 284, 288, 316, 317, 321, 326, 328–330, 337, 339, 343, 344, 350, 352–357, 373, 374 F Failure, v, vi, 7, 11, 40, 70, 77–98, 106, 125, 130, 169, 171, 226, 233, 272, 293–311, 315–318, 335–357, 365, 366 Feedback loop, 185, 209 Frames, 40, 82, 98, 130, 142, 156, 170, 171, 187, 218, 232, 236, 239–250, 252–255, 269, 270, 305, 324, 348, 367 Framing, 13, 35, 42, 93, 142, 143, 160n5, 179, 207, 218, 219, 232, 236–241, 246–248, 252, 254, 269, 270, 295

 INDEX 

G Germany, 14, 184, 288, 335–357, 374, 375 Governance, v, vi, 8, 11, 12, 22, 31, 49, 69–73, 77–98, 105–119, 124, 128, 169, 170, 182–191, 223, 229, 267–288, 293–311, 316, 335–357, 365, 367 Grint, Keith, 8, 21, 34–35, 87, 89, 94, 95, 281, 282, 342, 373–375 H Hay, Colin, 29, 30, 36, 38, 60–63, 68, 97, 157, 182, 287 Head, Brian, 8, 21–25, 32–33, 35–38, 40–42, 70, 71, 78, 91–95, 148, 329, 352, 367 Hierarchy, 13, 44, 69, 71, 73, 171, 181, 182, 184, 188, 191n1, 207, 214, 215, 234, 236, 277, 281, 283 I Individualism, 51, 69–71, 225 Institutionalism, 12, 151, 178, 209 Inter-actional, 11, 54, 96, 97, 105, 106, 108, 110, 119, 119n3, 139, 141–143, 146, 149, 151, 153–157, 171, 178, 179, 189, 201, 209, 219, 235, 238, 241, 244, 247, 267–273, 281 Inter-active, 11, 59, 69–73, 78, 80, 81, 83, 90, 96, 128, 137–139, 141, 142, 180, 185, 212, 217, 218, 233, 235, 236, 250, 281, 336, 368, 371, 374, 375, 380 Interpretivism, 80

387

J Jessop, Bob, 11, 69–71, 77, 80–85, 90, 171, 172, 175, 180–183, 188–190, 214, 280–283, 338, 339, 345, 355, 366, 370, 374 K Knowledge, 7, 12, 13, 27, 31, 54, 57, 81, 86, 105, 106, 110–112, 130, 131, 168, 223–257, 269, 294, 308, 317, 321, 339, 343, 367, 372 M Market, 52, 69–73, 77, 81, 90, 93, 106, 149, 181, 182, 184, 191n1, 205, 226, 281, 302, 321, 337, 369, 371, 372, 376–378 Metagovernance, 11, 13, 65, 77, 80–85, 93, 169, 171, 214, 233, 235, 236, 250, 277, 282–283, 285, 288, 297, 300, 302, 307, 316, 338, 339 Methodology, 29–31, 55, 97, 98, 118, 128, 137–139, 144–146, 148, 157, 174, 201, 203, 213, 246, 247, 251, 253, 267, 273, 287 Multi-level governance, 12, 171, 182, 187–191, 234, 236 N Network, v, 4, 10, 12, 13, 71–73, 79, 105, 108, 152, 153, 155, 156, 175, 179–191, 216, 232–236, 238, 267, 270, 277, 281–282, 302, 307, 341, 371, 376, 377

388 

INDEX

Normative, vi, 9, 12, 59, 69, 73n2, 79–82, 96, 97, 105–119, 119n3, 128, 141, 144, 146, 150, 154, 155, 157–159, 167–169, 174, 180, 200–203, 205, 207–209, 213–215, 224, 226, 232, 245, 250, 272, 281, 370, 377 O Ontology, 28–31, 53, 77, 82, 135, 137, 138, 141, 152, 158, 169, 224 Organization, 51, 70, 89, 105, 107, 133, 137, 138, 149–151, 168, 175, 183–186, 188, 189, 202, 204–206, 215, 217, 225, 231, 234, 250, 275, 276, 281, 296, 317, 350, 370 Organization studies, 12, 107, 151, 176, 182, 185–187 P Pandemic, 8, 13, 68, 85, 91, 215, 224, 288, 293, 295, 300–302, 304, 307–310, 316–318, 320, 321, 326, 327, 330, 335–337, 340, 341, 345–353, 355, 356, 357n4, 358n8, 373, 375, 376 Planning, 7, 24, 26, 27, 32, 37, 93, 109, 132, 133, 137–140, 143, 151, 167, 168, 217, 226, 231, 243, 251, 273, 317, 330 Policy, vi, 8, 9, 11–13, 22–26, 28, 31–35, 37, 39, 40, 49–73, 83–85, 92–94, 96–98, 105–119, 124–128, 130, 131, 135–138, 140–159, 167–191, 200–219, 223–257, 267–273, 277, 279–283, 298–300, 304, 306, 307, 316, 317, 320, 321, 325, 329, 330, 335, 337–341, 343,

345–347, 351, 355, 357, 367, 368, 373, 377 Policy design, 93, 139–142, 145, 159, 170, 179, 180, 187, 189, 200, 218, 231, 243–246, 248, 250, 251, 255, 272, 283 Policy implementation, 12, 140, 172–176, 211 Policy-making, 11, 12, 39, 67, 79, 96, 97, 108, 110, 111, 115, 119, 130–132, 137, 158, 159, 167, 169, 171–174, 177, 178, 187, 188, 223, 224, 226, 229, 231, 234, 243, 248, 250, 269, 270, 295, 336, 347, 356 Policy sciences, 27, 105–111, 117–119, 124–159, 168, 171, 178, 179, 181, 182, 239, 240, 250 Politicization, 60–63, 66, 67, 79, 96, 110, 111, 210, 273, 316 Politics, 10, 11, 13, 14, 26, 38, 60, 65–67, 69–73, 77–92, 97, 105, 110–112, 114, 127, 130, 136, 151, 157, 169, 172, 175, 179, 201, 211, 212, 223–257, 267, 268, 270, 272, 280, 293–311, 315–330, 338, 343, 346, 352, 367, 369 Pragmatism, 224, 251, 254 Problematization, 11, 13, 31, 41, 63, 67, 68, 77–91, 93, 96–98, 111, 127, 128, 142, 236, 257, 267–288, 293–311, 316, 319, 326, 335–338, 341, 348, 356, 357n4, 373, 375 Problem-oriented, 90, 380 Problems, 6–12, 21–41, 49–73, 78, 81–83, 85, 87, 89–95, 109, 111–116, 118, 124–159, 167–169, 172–176, 178, 183, 188, 190, 201–214, 217, 223, 225, 227, 229–232, 234,

 INDEX 

236–239, 244–246, 248, 270, 272, 279–281, 283, 286, 297, 310, 322, 323, 339, 342, 344, 346, 348, 350, 355–357, 367–374, 376, 377, 379, 380 Process, 1, 27, 49–59, 77, 105, 107–116, 125, 153–157, 167–191, 200–214, 223–257, 267–273, 296, 297, 304, 330, 348, 374 Processual relationalism, 2, 43, 44, 50, 57 Public, 8, 24, 61, 79, 105, 123, 168, 214, 225, 279, 295, 317, 338, 376 Public good, 119, 153, 181, 187, 225, 234 Public policy, 24, 105, 106, 109, 112, 116–119, 124, 125, 127, 128, 141, 168, 170, 226, 234, 236, 346 R Rational choice, 12, 109, 118, 128, 151, 174, 177, 178, 181, 205, 209, 237 Rationality, 12, 69, 97, 98, 107, 110, 118, 130, 134, 138, 142, 143, 147, 151, 168, 224, 226, 237, 239, 240, 243–245, 249–251, 269, 272, 281, 298 Reflexive orientation, 11, 14, 82, 83, 85–87, 91, 95, 337–340, 342–344, 347, 348 Relationalism, 41, 43, 44, 51, 55 Relations, v, 1–7, 9–11, 28, 43, 44, 45n1, 51–59, 65, 66, 68, 69, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86, 117, 172, 175, 180, 185, 188, 189, 227, 232–234, 253–256, 270, 273–275, 277, 278, 283, 284, 287, 288, 300, 330, 377, 379

389

Representation, 31, 114, 127–129, 131, 132, 134, 168, 177, 200–214, 228, 234, 237, 239–242, 251, 296, 372 Requisite variety, 11, 14, 82, 85–87, 91, 95, 175, 282, 300, 337–339, 341, 343, 344, 346, 350 Rittel, Horst, 7–9, 21–27, 29, 39, 40, 73, 90, 114, 118, 119, 128, 129, 132–134, 138, 139, 146–148, 150, 159, 175, 200, 217, 223, 229, 231, 251, 268, 269, 368, 373, 380 S Self-actional, 11, 51, 53, 54, 97, 105, 106, 108, 110, 115, 119, 154, 159, 167, 168, 171, 184, 188, 200, 226, 241, 267 Self-active, 11, 59, 69–73, 77, 78, 80, 81, 83, 87, 90, 96, 105–119, 128, 281, 336, 367–372, 374, 375 Self-reflexive irony, 82–84, 91, 95, 282, 337, 339, 355, 357 Semiotics, 11, 13, 63–67, 149, 272–286, 288, 296, 299, 300, 307, 316, 338 Simple problems, 6, 10, 35–41, 49, 55, 81–83, 90, 91, 380 Social science education, 89, 90, 377 Solution, 6, 9, 10, 12, 21, 23, 24, 28, 32–34, 36–40, 59, 68, 70–72, 79, 82, 84, 85, 87–95, 97, 109, 111–116, 127–137, 140, 144–148, 150, 152, 155–158, 169, 170, 176, 178, 187, 205–207, 211, 217, 231–234, 245, 246, 248, 271, 280, 297, 329, 340, 350, 353, 355, 367, 368, 373, 374, 376, 380

390 

INDEX

Stakeholders, 25, 32, 33, 36–38, 42, 58, 59, 91, 92, 94, 108, 136, 146, 152, 188, 228, 231, 245, 253, 255, 256, 297–299 Structuralism, 44, 51, 69–71 Substantialism, 50, 51, 53, 96 T Taiwan, 13, 67, 68, 288, 293–311, 328, 357n4, 376 Tame problems, 23, 24, 26, 29, 32–35, 39, 40, 73, 94, 95, 342 Trans-actional, 11, 54, 55, 57, 59, 66, 81, 82, 89, 92, 96, 97, 105, 106, 119, 126, 131, 133, 139, 142, 151, 155, 160n5, 171, 178, 181, 183, 189, 212, 219, 223, 233, 235, 236, 243, 246, 249, 250, 252, 255, 257, 267–273, 379 Trans-active, 11, 69, 73, 77–91, 96, 272, 336, 337, 368, 376

U Unites States (USA), 14, 68, 90, 107, 109, 113, 114, 117, 118, 175, 181, 184, 186, 189, 201, 215, 225, 288, 295, 298, 300, 302, 305, 311, 315–330, 342, 345, 347–349, 370, 372, 380 W Webber, Melvin, 7–9, 21–27, 29, 39, 40, 73, 90, 118, 119, 147, 148, 223, 229, 373, 380 Wicked problems, v, vi, 1–14, 21–41, 49–73, 77–98, 118, 124, 128, 142, 147–149, 153, 175, 183, 214, 217, 223, 224, 243, 268, 272, 281, 282, 287, 335, 336, 339, 342, 355–357, 365–380