Making sense of complexity in policy and politics

Abstract

Academic scholarship puts increasing analytical emphasis on complexity in policymaking (see especially Boulton 2010; Cairney 2019). Complexity has become the default understanding not just in mainstream policy scholarship but in substantive scholarship oriented to policy influence and commentary across a range of sectors and settings - the economy, the environment, communities, public health, criminal justice, and many disciplinary areas and traditional policy silos besides (see eg. Bammer 2013; Rutter et al. 2017; Swinburn et al. 2019). What is not clear, however, is how this new complexity framing translates to the world of policy debate and decision-making. How do policy actors and citizens make sense of complexity? How does this analytical framing sit alongside their everyday and experiential understandings? Does it help or does it hinder everyday actors in interpreting the world and taking action in it? This panel tackles these questions, focusing on different sorts of actors - from everyday citizens and frontline professionals to civil servants and politicians - engaged in different policy areas in different settings. The collective aim is to explore and understand the ways in which these actors make sense of and make use of complexity.

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