Governing in Complexity

In this project, Anthea Roberts and Associate Professor Miranda Forsyth explore methods for better understanding, navigating and governing complex systems.

Today’s social, political, environmental and technological challenges are increasingly interconnected. Domains that previously operated relatively separately, such as economics, security and the environment, are colliding in current policy-making. Established power structures are being contested and re-shaped. Problems in one country or community are spilling over into others through networks of connectivity – from bank failures to supply chain shocks.

While our challenges have become more interconnected, our scholarship and policy responses find it hard to break free from disciplinary divides and subject-area silos. Drawing on insights from complexity theory, this project provides a series of tools, techniques and frameworks for developing more systemic and integrative approaches to governing in complexity. In particular, it focuses on the following questions:

• Systemic thinking: why do we need to develop ways of understanding and intervening in complex adaptive systems that are more systemic and integrative, and less reductionist? How can we better achieve this goal in academia and policy-making?

• Integrative complexity (dragonfly thinking): how can we use bifocal, trifocal and multifocal approaches to differentiate competing perspectives and integrate them into more holistic frameworks for better understanding complex, multifaceted realities?

• Innovation and change: how do identities and networks affect possibilities for innovation and change in complex systems? What role is played by border crossers (insider-outsiders)? How is incremental and transformative change achieved in complex systems?

• Design and management: how can actors design better structures and governance approaches for managing complex, contested and evolving fields? What role might flexibility, adaptability and experimentation play in dealing with increasing uncertainty? What sort of meta-structures are required to deal with diversity of views and divided (and sometimes asymmetric) power?