Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change

Levin, Kelly; Cashore, Benjamin; Bernstein, Steven; Auld, Graeme

doi:10.1007/s11077-012-9151-0

Cited by 1,291 publications

(732 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, the term 'super-wicked' problem has also been developed (c.f. Varone et al 2013;Levin et al 2012;Lazarus 2008), to potentially regain some analytical utility through a narrower focus on additional concerns. The term has particularly been applied to environmental policy or climate change specifically, with Levin et al (2012) explaining how these issues have additional 'wicked' features such as temporal urgency, or solutions required from those causing the problems.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

Parkhurst

2016

Policy Sci

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Wicked policy problems are often said to be characterized by their 'intractability', whereby appeals to evidence are unable to provide policy resolution. Advocates for 'Evidence Based Policy' (EBP) often lament these situations as representing the misuse of evidence for strategic ends, while critical policy studies authors counter that policy decisions are fundamentally about competing values, with the (blind) embrace of technical evidence depoliticizing political decisions. This paper aims to help resolve these conflicts and, in doing so, consider how to address this particular feature of problem wickedness. Specifically the paper delineates two forms of evidentiary bias that drive intractability, each of which is reflected by contrasting positions in the EBP debates: 'technical bias'-referring to invalid uses of evidence; and 'issue bias'-referring to how pieces of evidence direct policy agendas to particular concerns. Drawing on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology, the paper explores the ways in which competing interests and values manifest in these forms of bias, and shape evidence utilization through different mechanisms. The paper presents a conceptual framework reflecting on how the nature of policy problems in terms of their complexity, contestation, and polarization can help identify the potential origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias leading to intractability in some wicked policy debates. The discussion reflects on how a better understanding about such mechanisms could inform future work to mitigate or overcome such intractability.

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confidence: 99%

Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

Parkhurst

2016

Policy Sci

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“…Indeed, this may hinder subsequent policy innovation. The difficulty in securing and sustaining political support for stringent climate policies (Lockwood 2013) implies the need for policy designs that allow either for increasingly tight targets or for policies that may be diffused to new target groups after they have been adopted (Levin et al 2012). Given this conditionality, it is not surprising that we find original CPI to be rare: there are usually strong, regime-level interests in preserving the status quo.…”

Section: Discussion: Cpi and Socio-technical System Linkagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate policy innovation: a sociotechnical transitions perspective

Upham

Kivimaa

Mickwitz

et al. 2014

Environmental Politics

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Seeking to develop a novel understanding of how climate policy innovations emerge and spread, we conceptualize three types of CPIs genuinely original, diffusion based and reframing based and relate these to the socio-technical transitions literature, particularly the multi-level perspective that explains change through interaction between . Selected climate-related transport policies in Finland, Sweden and the United Kingdom are used to illustrate five hypotheses that connect these concepts from the multi-level perspective to particular types of climate policy innovation.O policy innovation may be uncommon in contexts with major sunk investments such as transport, principally because socio-technical regimes tend to be resistant to political pressures for change originating at the same level. Nonetheless, the Multi-level Perspective posits that regimes are subject to influence by pressures originating at both niche and landscape levels. Given that policy reframing is relatively common, it may offer a key entry point for climate policy innovation in the short to medium term.

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“…However, intractable problems, or problems that seem not to go away despite concerted deployment of resources, have compelled universities to seek new and innovative solutions. These unmanageable problems include, but are not limited to, crime, climate change, desertification, environmental degradation, poverty, diseases and so forth (Rittel and Webber 1973;Levin et al 2012). These intractable problems challenge the modernity-era 'ivory tower' research that treats research participants from active communities as passive subjects.…”

Section: Procedural Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…We then zoom into climate change as the unmanageable problem of the 21 st century (IPCC 2007;UN 2007;Levin et al 2012) to argue the procedural principle of UCE in environmental change research. Climate change research, or impact assessment studies to be particular, acknowledges that solutions to this wicked problem will not only come from the scientists but also from community members.…”

Section: Procedural Principlementioning

confidence: 99%

Development and application of conceptual and analytic frameworks for community engagement at a South African higher education institution

Nkoana

Dichaba²

2017

SAJHE

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University-community engagement is gaining momentum as the latest core business of South African universities in addition to teaching and learning. However, the lack of conceptual and analytic frameworks to assess the progress towards realising university-community engagement will eventually invite criticism that might harm genuine university-community relations. This article uses a systematic literature review approach to develop conceptual and analytic frameworks that are later applied to critically assess the university-community engagement of a leading South African university. Results show that the poor conceptualisation of university-community engagement affects its operationalisation leading to dominant 'weak' as opposed to 'strong' university-community engagement initiatives. Last, the environmental management field offers great opportunities for genuine UCE with community members.

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Overcoming the tragedy of super wicked problems: constraining our future selves to ameliorate global climate change

Cited by 1,291 publications

References 54 publications

Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems: the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

Climate policy innovation: a sociotechnical transitions perspective

Development and application of conceptual and analytic frameworks for community engagement at a South African higher education institution

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