Designing policy mixes for emerging wicked problems. The case of pharmaceutical residues in freshwaters

Abstract

Wicked problems continuously emerge in the field of environmental governance. Characterized by goal conflicts, complexity, and uncertainty, wicked problems typically call for participatory policy designs. However, the effects of participation are widely unclear, given the indefinite nature of solutions to wicked problems. This research sheds light on this debate by developing and applying a systematic structural approach to assess policy mixes for emerging wicked problems. Based on a review of literature in the field of public policy and environmental governance, we identify eight assessment criteria matching three dimensions of wicked problems: coherence, consistency, and congruence to address conflicts; comprehensiveness and diversity to address complexity; and adaptability, reversibility, and robustness to address informational uncertainty. The concept, which is demonstrated taking as an example two recently proposed policy mixes to address pharmaceutical freshwater pollution in Germany, suggests that policy mixes resulting from desk research and participatory processes differ in the way they address wicked problems. These results contribute to systematically assess the role of participation in designing policy mixes for emerging wicked policy problems and open up for more advanced discussions on the role of structural approaches in public policy analyses.