Research meeting of the Section of Knowledge, Transformation, and Society (KiTeS), University of Twente, with Rob Hoppe, who will give a presentation followed by questions and discussion. For more information please contact the KiTeS secretariat. You are welcome!
abstract
Ever since Rittel and Webber coined the concept of ‘wicked’ problems in 1973, the world appears to be flooded by them – more recently even by ‘super-wicked problems’ (Lazarus, 2009; Levin et al.2011). Ever since 1973, and following Rittel and Webber’s lead, policy scholars and social scientists generally have been looking for stable properties of ontologized problem structures as ‘tame’ or ‘wicked’. This lecture will show why this search has been and always will be in vain.
The lecture offers two contributions to problems structuring theory: (1) a novel theory of ‘wicked’ (rather: unstructured) problems based in the variability of problematicity and political distance in policy (sub)system dynamics and science-policy interfaces; and (2) a novel non-static, diachronic or historical approach to the empirical study of problem structuring trajectories. ‘Wickedness’ is not in the properties of problems, but in the evolving dynamics of political relations. Meta- or collaborative governance is not always good advice.
Apart from the theoretical argument, the lecture will offer some empirically researched examples.
Em. Prof. dr. Robert Hoppe
