Wicked Problems and Policy Coherence in Global Britain: Lessons Learned From the UK Context on Achieving the SDGs

Abstract

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Understanding the challenges and opportunities of policy coherence when dealing with wicked problems is a particularly relevant approach to policy analysis. Coherence and complexity condition each other in the context of the different policy domains, jointly offering an enabling debate angle to account for and unbox policy success and failure. A complexity perspective invites an analysis of the interdependencies between the different elements of a system (Argyris & Schön, 1996). This is very similar to the ambition of policy coherence of promoting synergies between policy domains in order to encourage policy success (Nilsson et al., 2012). The current chapter looks at the nexus between policy coherence and complexity, analyzing lessons learned from the UK context while aiming to fulfill policy commitments related to the policy goals of the Sustainable Development Framework. Looking at the United Kingdom's policy journey includes analyzing the ambitions of the United Kingdom as a European country with global presence, aiming for policy coherence and integrating, for example, its security, defense, development, and foreign policy strategies, through the Integrated Review, therefore creating the institutional arrangements for materializing ambitions across different policy domains.

The analysis developed here uses an outward perspective to understand how a complexity reading of the United Kingdom's efforts for achieving the SDGs can unveil an understanding of how and if its nature as a global governance actor within the Sustainable Development Framework has changed in significant ways and which are the potential related challenges.