After COVID-19: What can we learn about wicked problem governance?

Abstract

The governance of the Coronavirus Crisis has shown promising results in some situations, where the spread of the disease to a critical level was avoided. Due to its complex nature, the Crisis must be considered a wicked problem, and its successful governance could, therefore, serve as a resource for governing other wicked problems such as the Climate Crisis. This short article suggests that the principles of metagovernance are useful for the governance of wicked problems and places governance strategies of the Coronavirus Crisis and the Climate Crisis in analytical categories derived from it. By doing so, possible lessons for the governance of the Climate Crisis were extracted. Based on these, the key for governing wicked problems lies in the acceptance end embracing of failure as the most likely governance outcome which leads to the ability to modify or abandon policies swiftly. It shows that states can play an essential role in governing the Climate Crisis and that they should not be automatically excluded from it, as long as they can adapt and change policies quickly.

Keywords

• Coronavirus Crisis
• Climate Crisis
• Wicked problems
• Metagovernance
• Governance