The role of problem structures in social science nexus research. A scientometric analysis.

Public policy scholars increasingly call for linking policy and governance analyses to problem structures such as complex problems. This particularly applies to the field of environmental public policy and the integrated management of environmental resources within a nexus approach. The idea is that public policy problems are inherently complex and need fresh, holistic approaches to policy and governance. There are, however, little systematic overviews of the links between problem structures and social dimensions in public policy analyses assisting policy analysts in challenging and adjusting their complexity-related research. This paper analyses the role of problem structures in social science-related nexus research. As a prime example of a complex problem, the nexus is understood as an integrated management approach to environmental resources and sectors. Within this field, we ask (i) how social science research related to problem structures has diffused over time, (ii) what types of links have been provided between dimensions of problem structures, social science research, and the nexus, and (iii) in which way these links have resulted in novel approaches to policy and governance. To address these goals, we apply a scientometric approach, considering scientific literature available on SCOPUS in the field of social sciences, based on a title-abstract-author keyword search. The search combines problem structural key words (wicked or complex or conflict or uncertain) with nexus-related keywords (water or soil or waste or energy or food or agriculture) and social science-related keywords (governance or policy). The identified literature is extracted and transferred to a SQL database, and further cleaned and filtered to exclude false-positive results. The subsequent analyses include three steps: In a first step, we identify basic characteristics of the dataset, including the total number of articles, the year of publication, and the regional background of authors, showing general trends of problem structure-related governance and policy analyses in nexus research. First results show that problem structure-related social science research is indeed prominent in nexus research, with a total of 4895 publications and an increasing trend of published articles over the years. In a second step, we have analyzed the number of publications for all keyword combinations over time and regions, showing specific patterns of analyses of the respective debate. First results hint at significant variations between structures, social science, and nexus dimensions, with a particularly striking dominance of complexity and conflict-related policy analyses in the fields of water and energy. In a third step, we tend to have a more detailed analysis of a randomly chosen set of abstracts and full papers, asking about how problem structures, social science dimensions, and nexus dimensions are linked in detail. Overall, this research provides an advanced understanding of how social science research connects problem structures such as complexity to social science concepts in one integrated policy field. This is a starting point for both policy actors to deal with complex problems from a governance perspective and for policy analysts to challenge and adjust complexity-related governance research in the future.