New development: Addressing wicked policy problems through cross-government collaboration - Insights from the UK context

Abstract

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The challenges and opportunities of governing wicked problems have received increased attention in the public policy literature, analysing how collaborative arrangements, network governance or whole-of-government approaches can leverage on the existing policy expertise within and beyond governments. However, the current literature has failed to provide comprehensive insights on how policy collaboration is experienced by policy actors. To explore this, the authors propose looking at cross-government policy teams, analysing the consequences for dealing with wicked policy problems in such collaborative policy settings. It is an important conceptual gap to fill because, depending on how cross-departmental collaboration is experienced by policy-makers, this experience can lead into consolidating or preventing the emergence of an organizational culture able to deal with the complexity of the policy issues at hand. Such an organizational culture can encourage policy behaviours informed by complexity, thus helping to navigate policy problems in a more tailored manner.