Institutionalising social learning: Towards systemic and adaptive governance

Mechanisms for Inclusive Governance

“…The evidence is that in environmental issues, it is easy to regulate but diffi cult and expensive to monitor and gain compliance. This historical model also means that upfront investment is generally low but that for effective compliance, costs increase over time, or new policies and regulations have to be sought, thus creating a treadmill of policy failure in the face of "wicked-like" issues (Ison et al 2015a ). Moves towards inclusive governance shift investment to the front end of purposeful action.…”

“…As Schneider and Ingram ( n.d. ) argue, the role of policy analysts has not evolved to fi t a new model of collaborative governance, instead remaining narrowly focused on "production of models, forecasts, causal analysis and experimental and quasi-experimental evaluation studies". Schneider and Ingram (ibid) along with Ison et al ( 2015a ) also point to the constraints to refl exivity, and thus governance reform, posed by the sustained adherence to a "utilitarian rationality", or what is sometimes described as "the high ground of technical rationality", rather than descending into the "swamp of real-life issues" (Schön 1995 ).…”

“…Institutionalisation failure : Over 40 years ago, Rittel and Webber ( 1973 ) invented the terms "wicked" and "tame" to frame situations of concern to them as planners and designers, and despite growing recognition of consistent public policy failure in the face of situations they called "wicked" (APSC 2007 ;Ison et al 2015a ), institutional arrangements have rarely been put in place to engage effectively with these types of situations. This is an example of persistent institutional failure and is part of the motivation for authors like Huntjens et al ( 2012 ) and Ison et al ( 2015a ) to propose institutional design propositions for operating in a climate change world. As depicted in Fig.…”

“…We have outlined our framing preference for the situations that have to be governed -structurally coupled social-biophysical systems. However, how these might be governed requires another framing choice -here our preference is to see governance situations as akin to "wicked problems" or situations characterised by complexity, uncertainty, interdependencies, and multiple perspectives where what is at issue has to be constructed by concerned stakeholders (Ison et al 2007(Ison et al , 2015a. Thus, what is, or is not, inclusive is related to the locked-in historical features of a situation that can create pathway dependencies and to initial starting conditions associated with a new issue or an emergent concern or crisis.…”

Philip James Wallis 5th March 1982 – 2nd February 2018

“…This article focusses on Phil's professional life and achievements. Specifically, his significant contribution to environmental management and interdisciplinary research for sustainable futures in the areas of water governance and planning , climate change adaptation Wallis et al 2017Wallis et al , 2014, social learning (Ison, Collins, and Wallis 2015;Wallis, Ison, and Samson 2013), systems thinking (Ison, Russell, and Wallis 2009) and developmental agriculture (Ison et al 2014).…”