Guest editorial: Integrated policy making as a problem of collaboration

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A wicked problem is wicked because different actors see different problems and in turn propose different policy solutions. The research problem we aim to address in this special issue is how shared perspectives emerge, or do not emerge, in a diverse actor constellation. Policy integration is ill-understood (cf. Sahamies and Anttiroiko, 2024). Collaborative governance and policy integration tend to operate as “magic concepts” (Pollitt and Hupe, 2011). We cannot assume that, but instead need to explain how, “different but needed actors” in some way make differences disappear and “gain agreement on what public value is to be co-produced” (Bryson et al., 2017, p. 649).The research question for this special issue is: how, in a world of separate policy formation and implementation, might collaborative governance support integrated policy making?We asked contributors to follow a “decentred” (Bevir and Rhodes, 2016) methodology, directed to the “micro-politics” (Waring et al., 2023) of collaborative governance at the levels of policy definition and implementation, starting from the horizontally and vertically separated perspectives of involved actors, not from the assumed sharedness of the problem approach.In this introductory article we will first discuss our understanding of wicked problems, then discuss characteristics of common approaches to collaborative governance and propose an approach to the governance of wicked problems from a decentred perspective. Such an approach provides new ways forward in theory building about collaborative governance and implementation.In his book The Great Transformation (1947/2001), Polanyi constructed as a central societal problem, the problem of “freedom in a complex society.” Freedom needs to be understood as an individual's capacity to be responsible for the results of the choices he or she makes. The object of one's responsibility is, Polanyi argues, that others affected by your choices are also free. However, when these others are also free, one cannot simply predict what the results of one's choices might be. This, after all, depends on the action of those others: society is “complex” and individuals lack “overview.” Individuals cannot take full responsibility for the results of their actions, because in a “complex society” they cannot know what the results of their actions might be. Therefore, they cannot be free.This conceptualisation strongly resembles concepts of late modernity by authors like Giddens (1990), Beck (1992) and Lash (2003). Individuals develop their own understanding of what their world looks like and become “clever people.” But others become clever people too, developing an alternate understanding of the world around them. We become actors among other actors, pushing forward specific conceptualisations of the world, “reflexively” responding to the conceptualisations of others that we cannot fully grasp or evaluate. “Wicked problems” are related to this complexity.Wicked problems are also related to conflict. Rittel and Webber argued that problem definitions and definitions of the public good are disputed and that, therefore, “it makes no sense to talk about ‘optimal solutions’” (Rittel and Webber, 1973, p. 155). Hoppe (2010, p. 73) builds upon Rittel and Webber's initial conceptualisation and argues that wicked problems are characterised by a lack of certainty on required and available knowledge and a lack of agreement on norms and values at stake. Bannink et al. (2024, p. 303) summarise that “a wicked problem is wicked because actors do not agree on problem definitions and policy preferences.” Wicked problems bring to the table conflicts that cannot be assumed away.COVID-19, the Ukraine war, economic downturns, energy shortages, climate crisis are all exemplary social conditions that strongly suggest that individuals lack the “overview” to determine the results of their actions and conditions that show strong disagreement on the values that are at stake.In this section, we discuss wicked problems first in relation to collaborative governance and then we also include policy implementation.The wide variety of literature on collaborative governance reflects the following core idea: when society is complex, collaborative governance is required and what it does is improve the output of governance processes (supporting collaborative advantages, public value) by improving the input of these same processes (reinvigorated democratic ethos, boundary spanning). In Polanyi's terms: collaborative governance aims at overcoming the “overview problem” in “complex society” by including a broad variety of actors in both policy formation and policy implementation.This core assumption, however, is flawed: in the case of wicked problems, the varying perspectives of a variety of actors are required, but this same variety implies different points of view regarding problem definitions, responses, and success measures (Bannink et al., 2024; Van Duijn, 2022; Waardenburg et al., 2020). The actors needed to tackle the overview problem, lack overview.Bartels and Turnbull made a classification of relational public administration-literature. With respect to collaborative governance, they argued (2020: p. 1335):Bartels and Turnbull mention “boundary spanning,” the creation of “collaborative advantage” and they cite Mandell and Keast (2007, p. 593) who argue that in collaborative governance-networks “the traditional commitment to producing goods and services must give way to a commitment to improved relationships and forming a new whole.” Bartels and Turnbull's analysis enlightens two important characteristics of the collaborative governance-literature:We see these two characteristics indeed in several core publications, including Ansell and Gash (2008), Emerson et al. (2012) or Bryson et al. (2017). Bannink et al. (2024: p. 308) observe that these publications discuss to what extent collaborating actors address “public purposes that could not otherwise be accomplished.” Collaboration operates as a “magic concept” (Pollitt and Hupe, 2011). Collaborative governance is the governance mode required to solve problems for which we lack overview and that we disagree about, in other words: the response to the problem condition (collaboration) is the negation of what is missing in the problem condition (collaboration).Bannink et al. (2024: p. 308) argue that in these approaches “problem” is reified “from collaboration”: the collaboration defines the problem. Extant networks of collaborating actors defined a “problem” that allowed their collaboration: “problem” is the issue a network of actors is oriented towards. Numerous alternative problem definitions did not facilitate collaboration. Ansell et al. (2020: p. 571) take an external approach to problem definition: “collaborative processes may be more successful if inclusion is more strategic and selective.” Using this point of view, the authors apparently treat the problem as a given and discuss which level of inclusion might lead to the most successful response approach. However, when seeing “problem” as a reification of the network, one would argue that different patterns of in- and exclusion lead to different problems being addressed. Furthermore, the problem might not represent public value: an actor might share resources to attain an individual goal that requires co-ordination (Vangen and Huxham, 2003). Actors selectively interact, pursuing different, incongruent perspectives (Klijn and Koppenjan, 2016; Lewis, 2011).We assume different actors who have gained differential access to the definition process push forward a specific set of worldviews, problem definitions and response directions, which differentially represent those included on the basis of the influence they have gained in the process, while differentially disregarding or taking into account the worldviews of other actors.Bartels and Turnbull (2020) classify the policy implementation literature as more strongly individu

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