Complexity Theory for Public Administration and Policy

Abstract

Complexity theory offers enormous potential for improving our understanding of both policy development and public administration. central concepts of non-linearity, emergence, self-organization, complex adaptive-systems provide attractive insights about behavior that helps address the limitations of rationally based policy and administrative logics that have guided much of our efforts in these areas of inquiry. Early work on connecting the study of Public Policy and Administration with concepts related to complexity theory can be traced to the work of scholars familiar to readers of this journal, including Douglas Kiel (1989, 1994), E.H. Klijn (1996), Sam Overman (1996a, 1996b), Kickert, Klijn and Koppenjan (1997), Morcol (1997), Morcol and Dennard (2000). Goktug Morcol (2002) contributed to the policy sciences by addressing the assumptions and flawed underpinnings of positivism and outlines the central features and value of postpositivism for the policy sciences. This area of research has received continued interest with the work of a number of authors. There is recent work offers evidence of continued interest in examining the implications of complexity theory for policy analysis (Dennard, Richardson & Morcol, 2005, 2008) as well as how complexity theory can be usefully applied in our governance systems (Trochim & Cabrera 2005; Teisman & Klijn 2008; Teisman, van Buuren & Gerritis 2009). Recognizing limits of linear strategies and related assumptions is no easy task as there is a tradition of accepted administrative practices and experiences framed with rationales and justification. But contributors and readers of this journal are leaders in understanding the task ahead and continue the journey to address a different kind of policy and administrative understanding. This particular symposium continues the work of scholars and practitioners that have contributed to the exploration of complexity theory and public administration in the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) and the Section of Complexity and Network Studies (SCNS). An initial set of papers presented at ASPA was later edited and subsequently published in the Public Administration Quarterly (Weber 2008). In this symposium prepared for Emergence: Complexity and Organization, the papers were presented at the ASPA Annual Conference held in Miami, March 20-24, 2009 and the authors continue their examination as to how the application of complexity theory improves our understanding of public administration theory and practice. practice of policy and administration has long recognized the limitations of policy and administrative interpretations that do not reflect the diversity and complexity of our human condition. It is Charles Lindblom's (1959) work that was seminal in ^identifying the theoretical and practical limitations of decision-making solely based on rational thinking that lacked an appreciation of the nature of the assumptions locked within decision making approaches that espoused rational comprehensive protocols. symposium begins with the original and classic essay from Lindblom not so much as a representation of complexity thinking, but one of providing groundwork for recognizing alterative ways to understand rationalist logics and protocols so as to embrace the realities diversity and limitations of assumptions in applying rationally designed hopes and desires. In the opening essay, The Science of Muddling Through Revisited, Ronald J. Scott adjusts the lens of the Lindblom's contribution due to the advancement of intellectual and computing capacity. Scott issues the argument that policy analysis and administration can be informed by a more rigorous and robust analyses with the use of an emergent complex adaptive political system framework. This approach represents a kind of analytical frame from which to develop and implement policy and administration thus limiting the reliance on muddling through; it offers a way for structuring and bounding policy analysis. …

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