Wicked Problems and Policy Coherence in Global Britain

• In Event: Renovating Democracy through Addressing Environmental Justice

Abstract

Understanding the challenges and opportunities of policy coherence when dealing with wicked problems is a particularly relevant approach to policy analysis. Coherence and complexity condition each other in the context of the different policy domains, jointly offering an enabling debate angle to account for and unbox policy success and failure. A complexity perspective invites an analysis of the interdependencies between the different elements of a system (Argyris & Schön, 1996). This is very similar to the ambition of policy coherence of promoting synergies between policy domains in order to encourage policy success (Nilsson et al., 2012).

The current paper looks at the nexus between policy coherence and complexity, analyzing lessons learnt from the UK context while aiming to fulfil policy commitments related to the policy goals of the Sustainable Development Framework. Reflecting on the UK’s policy journey includes analyzing the ambitions of the UK as a European country with global presence, aiming for policy coherence and integrating, for example, its security, defense, development and foreign policy strategies, through the Integrated Review, therefore creating the institutional arrangements for materializing ambitions across different policy domains.

The analysis developed here uses an outward perspective to understand how a complexity reading of the UK’s efforts for achieving the sustainable development goals can unveil an understanding of how and if its nature as a global governance actor within the Sustainable Development Framework has changed in significant ways and which are the potential related challenges.

Author

• Ileana Daniela Serban, Universidad Pontificia Comillas