Tackling Wicked Policy Problems

Equality, Diversity and Sustainability

By Gilles Paquet, Gilles Paquet, and Gilles Paquet
Categories: Political Science, Public & Social Policy, Government & Elections
Publisher: Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
Paperback : 9780776638645, 208 pages, August 2022
Ebook (PDF) : 9780776638652, 208 pages, August 2022
Ebook (EPUB) : 9780776638669, 208 pages, August 2022

Table of contents

Introduction
Part I – State of Play
Chapter 1 – Slouching Toward a Relatively Stateless State
Introduction
Two reference points
The rise and evolution of the notion of governance
Experiments at the Centre on Governance
Conclusion
Chapter 2 – Governance as Mythbuster
Introduction
The governance approach
Four key notions transformed in the small ‘g’ world
Persiflage about the governance approach
Some conjectures about the future of governance studies
Conclusion
Chapter 3 – Wicked Problems and Social Learning
Introduction
The social learning response to the wicked problems challenge
The engine of social learning and wayfinding
Scoping design thinking
Design attitude: why, what and how
Shifting attitude
Conclusion
Part II – Wicked Trans-scientific Policy Challenges
Chapter 4 – Equality
Introduction
The Tocqueville mechanism
The dynamics of the entitlement revolution
Impacts of the entitlement revolution
The toxicity of the entitlement epidemic
The governance of equability
Modest general propositions
Conclusion
Chapter 5 – Diversity
Introduction
The issue domain: a few stylized facts
The manufactured Canadian consensus
A fragile social fabric and its dilemmas
A primer on the governance of diversity
The journey to transculturalism
Conclusion
Annex
Chapter 6 – Sustainability
Introduction
Sustainability as a weaselword
Governance
Blending, complex adaptative systems and bricolage
A plea for polycentric governance
Conclusion
Conclusion
Issues
Polyphonic organizations and hybrid forms of governance
Issue domains and wayfinding: mechanisms and representations
Two murky frontiers
In conclusion
References

Description

This short book contributes to accelerating the process of recognition of governance studies as a heuristically powerful field of study in two distinct ways. In Part I, it shows first how the governance approach has emerged in response to the limitations of the two main cosmologies that have dominated the 20th century scene type-I liberalism rooted in the market and decentralization; and type-II liberalism rooted in statism and centralization. It proposes a better way to respond effectively to the challenges of effective coordination when power, resources and information are widely distributed into many hands and heads. This new approach has been criticized by the defenders of the ruling cosmologies, but it has evolved effective prototypes of inquiring systems capable of guiding the search for effective wayfinding and for the design of organizational arrangements ensuring effectiveness, resilience and innovation. In Part II, it explores how the governance approach may help in tackling wicked policy problems where ends are neither well known nor agreed upon, and means-ends relationships are either poorly understood or unstable. Three somewhat different cases are discussed: equality where a dominant ideology of egalitarianism in democratic societies is challenged with great difficulty by a cosmology of equability; diversity where, in Canada, maximum diversity would appear to be regarded as optimal diversity, and multiculturalism is propagandized as the nec plus ultra response even though it may be shown to be toxic; and sustainability, where the problem definition and the general direction in which a viable organizational learning regime will emerge are unclear. On both fronts, the book tries to bring a bit of subtlety, a taste for complexity, and some innovative ideas to debates that have wallowed, both at the conceptual and at the practical levels, in ideologically muddy waters.