Clusters of water governance problems and their effects on policy delivery

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Public policy problems are increasingly being characterised as wicked or tame problems, assuming that this classification is also meaningful for attempts to effective problem-solving. But do distinct ‘wicked’ or ‘tame’ problems empirically exist? We investigate 37 water-related problems in Germany, based on interview-based data on problem wickedness and official data on policy delivery. Our analysis clearly reveals four clusters of water governance problems (system complexity, uncertainty, tame and wicked problems), based on variations of three factors of wickedness (goals, uncertainty and system complexity). These clusters of problems vary in their effects on different dimensions of policy delivery (goal formulation, stages and degrees of implementation of measures), with significant effects on goal formulation and the number of measures ‘in construction’. These empirical insights may contribute to a more systematic design of governance strategies for addressing water governance problems in practice.

Original languageEnglish
JournalPolicy and Society
Volume38
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)255-277
Number of pages23
ISSN1449-4035
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 03.04.2019

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© 2019, © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

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