After COVID-19: What Can We Learn About Wicked Problem Governance?

Abstract

The governance of the coronavirus crisis has shown some promising results as 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 in governing wicked problems and places governance tactics 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 a governance outcome which leads to the ability to modify or abandon policies swiftly. It also stresses the responsibility of the population to support policies and their execution pro-actively.

Keywords: Coronavirus Crisis, Climate Crisis, Wicked Problems, Metagovernance, Governance