Strategies for disentangling wicked problems
By Matthias Rhein
Research Director, Seventythree Foundation
This is part two of a series about solving tough development challenges. The previous article explained how to encounter and understand wicked problems.
Social science suggests that the resolution of a wicked problem begins with the creation of non-hierarchical platforms for the communication and negotiation between all stakeholder groups, where different values, views and interests can be played out among stakeholders of different ethics, ethnicities and status. The evidence from our work is that assembling such discussions and holding disparate views together in the service of a higher goal are an essential feature of healthy communities and organisations. What academia tells us is that this finding also applies at larger scales.
Another experience that many of us share is that building and facilitating these platforms, while cultivating the habits that actually make them work, can be a real challenge given the scale and complexity of the undertaking. Yet, judging by the evidence available to me, this is an unavoidable step on the path towards a pragmatic merger of bottom-up and top-down policy development and planning, more effective governance and management systems, better policy and project outcomes, and, eventually, sustainable seascapes and landscapes guarded by resilient and well-to do communities.
I have long lost count of the many times that politicians, officials, planners, managers, and others have told me that their policies, plans and projects were near perfect, and that the reason why they had failed were “the people”. This explanation, whilst self-serving, does at least implicitly acknowledge that grand designs are subordinate to people and processes. When fixated on a view where people are the problem, rather than an integral part of a somewhat messy resolution of a wicked problem, then this view shapes one’s perception and response, and influences one’s behaviour when confronted with complex situations. This reaction can be manifested in leaders and policymakers when they double down on failed approaches, shut out critical information and retreat into echo-chambers, even becoming increasingly authoritarian.
The history of national development demonstrates that the actual outcomes from policies, laws and interventions, such as the allocation of rights to local communities, emerge from the process through which claims by different stakeholders are established, contested and institutionalised over time. As a species, we have developed a far better ability for conceptualising structures in space than processes in time, let alone processes that are stretched-out, non-linear and stacked with feedback loops. So it is perhaps not surprising that our societies tend to respond to wicked problems by setting up structures, while neglecting the processes that determine what these structures could possibly deliver, and eventually do deliver. And when unforeseen “side-effects” manifest, more structures are set up to deal with them, while the wicked problem persists.
Learning from the historical process and our shared experience, we have come to understand that even well-designed platforms can only deliver lasting resolutions if every stakeholder group speaks its own interest in its own genuine voice. Yet we know this is rarely the case. Local communities continue to be the silent majority of all the people trapped in the dilemma discussed in the previous article. If they remain desolate, dysfunctional and disorganised, as well as overly dependent on outside assistance and borrowed cash to meet their basic needs, then they will not be able to find and argue their position, make claims, or contest opposing interests on any platform. This describes the state of most of our partner communities, and many others that live in remote coastal and rural areas.
This condition challenges the conventional notion of what participation actually is and means, and how participatory approaches might be applied in this context. What we find, in both the track records and our shared experience, is that local people are much more likely to ‘be participated’ in some form to some end, than proactively voicing their own interests and views. When looking at this through the lens of system dynamics, we can discover some of the underlying causes and dynamics.
For instance, when organisations from governmental, civil society or business engage in participatory processes with local communities, their standard mode of operation is to impose their own agendas, structures, procedures and ‘solutions’ onto the process. This typically includes a list of things that local communities must learn to do in order to assist these organisations in the realisation of their agendas. That is, of course, after they have adopted some of the structures and procedures of those organisations. Often, talented people from local communities and civil society organisations are selected for scholarships, executive leadership programmes, and so forth, or recruited by these organisations.
These kinds of interventions trigger a process that social science has labelled institutional isomorphism, basically, an elaboration of Max Weber’s theory of the iron cage. This affects all organisations, including those from local communities and civil society in ways that are rarely fully recognised or understood.
Simply put, this explains how local organisations are drawn towards alignment with the larger outside organisations, and become more responsive and accountable to them than to their local partners. Instead of expressing who they are, and who they would need to be to make a difference to local reality, they increasingly imitate the values and assumptions of the their external counterparts. This process is reflected in our observations in Indonesia of the alignment of local governments with the political structures and events at the centre, a trend reinforced by the village fund initiative. Far from nurturing proactive and genuine participation by local people, this process of alignment with structures at the centre subverts and even spells the end of many genuine and promising grassroots movements.
These developments are often the unintended results of good intentions that are enacted on the basis of entirely rational decisions, as seen from the perspective of the actor. Good intentions are a great motivator, but they offer poor guidance when confronted with complex situations. How often have we witnessed scenes like a local community destroying a piece of forest that they just planted under some well-intended environmental programme in the hope that they will get paid again to replant it, or to use the area for a different purpose closer to their own needs? Seen from their perspective, these too are rational decisions.
When excluding or subjugating the voice of local stakeholder groups, one also excludes or distorts a large part of the very information that is needed to make policies, plans and programmes work. The current policy debate at the centre appears to prioritise the need for local communities to account for the stocks and flows of coastal carbon so as to assist in opening up a new revenue stream (aka. blue carbon), as well as the need to maintain proper accounts of their catch so as to assist the Government with the implementation of its fishing quota system. Irrespective of the validity of these objectives, they do not seem well-aligned with the realities of local households that are caught in debt traps and of communities that exist on the edge of survival. It seems fair to assume that things would turn out better for both the centre and the periphery if there was a real dialogue between them.
These blind spots have given birth to a wide range of proxy and pseudo solutions for wicked problems, along with an entire industry that thrives on creating, lobbying and implementing them, which contributes to their persistence. Against this backdrop, it is important to point out that locally-led development is not a product of this industry. It lacks the glamour and appeal of grand designs and sodoesn’t attract much attention or funding from sponsors, and it is situated well outside the industry’s comfort zone. Locally-led development is, first and foremost, a systemic response to a range of deeply systemic problems. The recent global pandemic has provided clear and strong evidence of the critical systemic role of organised, functional and resilient communities. They kept society running while large organisations at the central and global level struggled to keep up with events, often being overly focused on controlling people rather than solving the problem.
So enabling local communities to organise themselves, act collectively, and find their own voice is not localism but a systemic response to systemic problems and a necessary step for the resolution of wicked problems, like the debt-trap situation described in the previous blog. Based on the evidence from around the world, achieving higher levels of self-sufficiency and diversifying the local economy have shown themselves to be successful approaches for improving the lives and resilience of communities that are caught up in wicked problems; especially so when these initiatives are driven by local agency, resourcefulness and ingenuity. Any vision of sustainable and climate-resilient landscapes and seascapes that does not include a vision of resilient and well-to-do communities populating them is at best incomplete.
Local communal and civil society organisations play an important role in this development, but they face obstacles that are similar to those that confront local communities. Without aggregating their voices and coordinating their efforts, they are likely to be subjugated to the agendas and structures of the central gatekeepers from government and urban civil society who control access to funding and the policy process, and dominate the narrative. This will require a general willingness by local organisations to look beyond their own horizons, and to collaborate and learn from each other. As research from social sciences demonstrates, social media, workshops and conferences can be helpful for increasing awareness, connectivity, and information sharing. They are, however, insufficient for creating effective cadres of change agents. This requires that people learn to think and act collectively in the real world, by doing things together the hard and slow way.