The Technopolitics of Wicked Problems: Reconstructing Democracy in an Age of Complexity

"Complexity" is ubiquitous in contemporary political commentary, where it is invoked to justify innovative governance programs. However, the term lacks analytic clarity. One way to make sense of it is to construct a genealogy of the notion of "wicked problems," a concept that hig...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Critical review (New York, N.Y.) N.Y.), 2022-04, Vol.34 (2), p.202-243
Main Author: Gruendel, Anke
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Appreciation
Complexity
Decision making
Democracy
democratic participation
Epistemology
expertise
Genealogy
Governance
Habermas, Jurgen
Horst Rittel
Ignorance
Jürgen Habermas
Optimism
political epistemology
pragmatist reconstruction
Problem solving
problematization
symmetry of ignorance
technical democracy
Technocracy
Urban planning
wicked problems
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Summary:"Complexity" is ubiquitous in contemporary political commentary, where it is invoked to justify innovative governance programs. However, the term lacks analytic clarity. One way to make sense of it is to construct a genealogy of the notion of "wicked problems," a concept that highlights the intractability of complex problems and problematizes the technocratic management of complexity. The term wicked problems originated in science planning in postwar Germany and urban planning in the United States. In both cases, planners rejected a naïve optimism about the potential of technical expertise in favor of recognizing that many problems transcend the knowledge possessed by experts. This appreciation of complexity led to attempts, still ongoing, to accommodate both participatory and expert-based decision making in the face of wicked problems, producing a form of technical democracy in which problem solving requires the orchestration of conflict.
ISSN:0891-3811
1933-8007
DOI:10.1080/08913811.2022.2052597