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Ambrose, Jillian, “Hinkley Point nuclear plant building costs rise by up to £2.9 bn”, The Guardian, 25 September 2019.
Arpe, Jan, “Globalisation and its Complexity: Challenges to Economic Policy, Bertelsmann Stiftung, “Shaping Sustainable Economies” program, <https://jan-arpe.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Globalization_Complexity.pdf> [30 April 2020].
Brighton Systems and Complex Systems Knowledge Exchange, hosted by the School of Applied Social Science and the Community University Partnership Project (CUPP), <https://www.brighton.ac.uk/_pdf/research/ssparc/toolkitframework.pdf> [30 April 2020].
Byrne, David & Callaghan, Gill, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: the State of the Art (London, Routledge, 2014).
Cairney, Paul and Geyer, Robert, “Introduction” in Paul Cairney and Robert Geyer (eds), Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy (Edward Elgar, 2015) pp 1-15.
Christensen Tom & Lægreid, Per, “Complexity and Hybrid Public Administration—Theoretical and Empirical Challenges”, Public Organization Review, (2011) 11, pp. 407–423, DOI 10.1007/s11115-010-0141-4.
Cilliers, Paul, “Boundaries, Hierarchies and Networks in Complex Systems”, International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol 5, No 2 (June 2001), pp. 135-147.
Colander, David and Kupers, Roland, Complexity and the art of public policy: solving society’s problems from the bottom up (Princeton University press) 2014.
Darking, Mary, Haynes, Philip and Stroud, Julia, “Developing public service knowledge and learning about complex systems: using a community of practice to integrate theory and practice”, Complexity, Governance & Networks – Vol. 4, No 1 (2018) Special Issue: Teaching Complexity, University of Bamberg Press, pp. 46-58 <https://ubp.uni-bamberg.de/ojs/index.php/cgn/article/view/45> [30 April 2020].
El-Ghalayini, Yousif, “Complexity Theory: A New Way to Look at New Public Management”, Network and Complex Systems, Vol 7, No 1, 2017.
Eppel, Elizabeth Anne & Rhodes, Mary Lee, “Complexity theory and public management: a ‘becoming’ field”, Editorial, Public Management Review, 2018, Vol 20, No. 7, pp. 949-959.
Hayek, Friedrick v., “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, The American Economic Review, Vol 35, No 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.
Haynes, Philip, Managing Complexity in the Public Services (London, Routledge, 2015).
Ho, Peter, “The future-of-government approach is important, but not easy to execute”, extract of an IPS-Nathan Lecture, reported in Today, 5 April 2017, <https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/future-government-approach-important-not-easy-execute> [30 April 2020].
Ho, Peter, Coping with Complexity, McKinsey & Company, 2012, <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/coping-with-complexity#> [30 April 2020].
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Kvilvang, Nils, Bjurström, Erik and Almqvist, Roland, “Making sense of complexity in governance: the case of local public management in the City of Stockholm”, Policy Studies, 2019, DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2019.1577372
Matei, Ani and Antonie, Cătălina, “The New Public Management within the Complexity Model”, Procedia – Social and Behavioural Sciences 109 (2014), pp. 1125-1129;
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Morin, Edgar, “Restricted Complexity, General Complexity”, Worldviews, Science and Us, pp 5-29 (2007), doi.org/10.1142/9789812707420_0002 [20 April 2020].
Ness, Lawrence, R., “Exploring Information Technology Flexibility and Increased Complexity: Is Management Prepared?”, International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, Vol 6, Num 3, 2008.
OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, Working with Change: Systems approaches to public sector challenges, GOV/PGC(2017)2, p. 14.
Osborne David and Gaebler, Ted, Reinventing Government : How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1992.
Ostrom, Elinor, “Beyond Markets and States Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems”, Noble Prize Lecture, December 8, 2009, <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/lecture/> [1 May 2020].
Panchamia, Nehal and Thomas, Peter, “Public Service Agreements and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit”, Institute for Government, 2014, <https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/case%20study%20psas.pdf> [27 April 2020].
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Rodrik, Dani, Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2015.
Stoker, Gerry, “New Localism, Progressive Politics and Democracy, in Andrew Gamble and Tony Wright (eds), Restating the State?, a special edition of The Political Quarterly, 2004, pp. 117-129.
Teisman, Geert and Gerrits, Lasse, “The Emergence of Complexity in the Art and Science of Governance”, Complexity, Governance and Networks, (2017), pp. 17-28.
Tharoor, Shashi, Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India, London, Hurst & Company.
Tom Christensen & Per Lægreid, “Complexity and Hybrid Public Administration—Theoretical and Empirical Challenges”, Public Organization Revue (2011) 11, pp. 407–423, DOI 10.1007/s11115-010-0141-4
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Notes
The cost of the Hinkley Point power plant, for example could be more than £22 billion; Jillian Ambrose, “Hinkley Point nuclear plant building costs rise by up to £2.9 bn”, The Guardian, 25 September 2019.
BBC News, “US oil prices turn negative as demand dries up”, business section, 21 April 2020, <https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52350082> [4 September 2020].
The partition of India accompanying British withdrawal in 1947 led to more than one million people dying and some 17 million people being displaced: Shashi Tharoor, Inglorious Empire: What the British did to India, London, Hurst & Company, pp. 142-8.
David Colander and Roland Kuper note that, “in the course of the 20th century two things made the world more complex: our wealth increased and there were more of us. Increased wealth also meant more sophisticated products and services, with greater interdependence”, Complexity and the art of public policy: solving society’s problems from the bottom up: Princeton University press, 2014, p. 47.
A widely-used paraphrase attributed to Douglas Jay, who in The Socialist Case (1937) wrote “in the case of nutrition and health, just as in the case of education, the gentleman in Whitehall really does know better what is good for people than the people know themselves”; see <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Jay> [28 April 2020]. This view actually gained currency during World War II, but was later much criticised by the “New Right” around Thatcher in response to the crisis of the 1970s.
Philip Haynes argues that “IT systems have increased the complexity of public service organisations rather than simplifying procedures and practices”, Managing Complexity in the Public Services, London, Routledge, 2015, p. 98. Other studies have shown that: greater technological complexity and IT flexibility go hand-in-hand, but that such IT flexibility itself produces more complexity (for example, Lawrence R. Ness, “Exploring Information Technology Flexibility and Increased Complexity: Is Management Prepared?”, International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, Vol 6, No 3, 2008); and that IT projects are less likely to succeed when they are complicated (large in scale) or complex (as objectives many not be clear, requirements may change, operating environments subject to outside influences, etc. (e.g. David J. Williamson, “Assessing the relationships among information technology project complexity, complication, and success”. Paper presented at PMI® Research and Education Conference, Limerick, Munster, Ireland. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, 2012).
David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector, Reading, Mass., Addison-Wesley, 1992.
Dani Rodrik, Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science, New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2015, p. 31.
Paul Cilliers, “Boundaries, Hierarchies and Networks in Complex Systems”, International Journal of Innovation Management, Vol 5, No 2 (June 2001), pp. 135-147.
Elizabeth Anne Eppel & Mary Lee Rhodes, “Complexity theory and public management: a ‘becoming’ field”, Editorial, Public Management Review, 2018, Vol 20, N°. 7, pp. 949-959.
David Colander and Roland Kupers, ibid, p. 13.
Ibid, p. 115.
Cilliers, ibid.
Edgar Morin, “Restricted Complexity, General Complexity”, Worldviews, Science and Us, pp 5-29 (2007), doi.org/10.1142/9789812707420_0002. See also David Byrne & Gill Callaghan, Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences: the State of the Art, London, Routledge, 2014, Chapter 2 “Restricted complexity and general complexity: an outline of the arguments”, pp. 39-56.
David Colander and Roland Kupers, ibid, pp.132-3.
Edgar Morin gives the example of delinquent or criminal behaviour as excessive liberties inhibited by law.
Ibid.
Göktuğ Morçöl, “Complexity of public policy and administration: introduction to the special issue”, Public Administration Quarterly, Vol 32, No 3 (Fall 2008), pp. 305-313.
Geert Teisman and Lasse Gerrits, “The Emergence of Complexity in the Art and Science of Governance”, Complexity, Governance and Networks, (2017), pp. 17-28.
Friedrick v. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, The American Economic Review, Vol 35, No 4. (Sep., 1945), pp. 519-530.
David Byrne and Gill Callaghan, ibid, p236.
Philip Haynes, ibid, p1.
Tom Christensen & Per Lægreid, “Complexity and Hybrid Public Administration—Theoretical and Empirical Challenges”, Public Organization Review, (2011) 11, pp. 407–423, DOI 10.1007/s11115-010-0141-4.
Nehal Panchamia and Peter Thomas, "Public Service Agreements and the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit", Institute for Government, 2014, <https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/case%20study%20psas.pdf> [27 April 2020].
Roderick Rhodes, et al, Decentralizing the Civil Service: From unitary state to differential polity in the United Kingdom, Open University Press, 2003.
Philip Haynes, ibid, p. 19.
David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, ibid, pp. 1-24.
Nehal Panchamia and Peter Thomas, ibid.
The list here is taken from Philip Haynes, ibid, pp 24-50. In terms of attractors, David Colander and Roland Kupers speak of “basins of attractions” that replace the concept of equilibrium, and which can be quite sticky, ibid, p. 54. These characteristics are mentioned almost ubiquitously in texts on complexity and public policy, including in, for example: Ani Matei and Cătălina Antonie, “The New Public Management within the Complexity Model”, Procedia – Social and Behavioural Sciences 109 (2014), pp. 1125-1129; Paul Cairney and Robert Geyer, “Introduction” in Paul Cairney and Robert Geyer (eds), Handbook on Complexity and Public Policy, Edward Elgar, 2015, pp. 1-15; Yousif El-Ghalayini, “Complexity Theory: A New Way to Look at New Public Management”, Network and Complex Systems, Vol 7, No 1, 2017.
Philip Haynes, ibid, pp. 95-97.
OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, Working with Change: Systems approaches to public sector challenges, GOV/PGC(2017)2, p. 14.
The framework was developed by members of the Brighton Systems and Complex Systems Knowledge Exchange, hosted by the School of Applied Social Science and the Community University Partnership Project (CUPP), <https://www.brighton.ac.uk/_pdf/research/ssparc/toolkitframework.pdf> [30 April 2020].
The Brighton team draw here on a well-known management process developed by Donella Meadows.
Philip Haynes, ibid, p. 70.
Mary Darking, Philip Haynes and Julia Stroud, “Developing public service knowledge and learning about complex systems: using a community of practice to integrate theory and practice”, Complexity, Governance & Networks – Vol. 4, No 1 (2018) Special Issue: Teaching Complexity, University of Bamberg Press, pp. 46-58 <https://ubp.uni-bamberg.de/ojs/index.php/cgn/article/view/45> [30 April 2020].
Erik-Hans Klijn, “Managing complexity: Achieving the impossible?”, in Critical Policy Studies, 2007, Vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 252-277.
Jan Arpe, “Globalisation and its Complexity: Challenges to Economic Policy, Bertelsmann Stiftung, “Shaping Sustainable Economies” program, <https://jan-arpe.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/Globalization_Complexity.pdf> [30 April 2020].
Peter Ho, Coping with Complexity, McKinsey & Company, 2012, <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/coping-with-complexity#> [30 April 2020].
Peter Ho, “The future-of-government approach is important, but not easy to execute”, extract of an IPS-Nathan Lecture, reported in Today, 5 April 2017, <https://www.todayonline.com/singapore/future-government-approach-important-not-easy-execute> [30 April 2020].
Elinor Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems”, Noble Prize Lecture, December 8, 2009, <https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2009/ostrom/lecture/> [1 May 2020].
Cilliers, ibid.
This point was made and explained to me by Daniel Charrier, a quantum physicist by training, and colleague at the Lycée Pierre-Gilles de Gennes-ENCPB, Paris.
Michael Veseth, “What is International Political Economy?”, <http://www2.ups.edu/ipe/whatis.pdf> [1 May 2020].
Nils Kvilvang, Erik Bjurström and Roland Almqvist, “Making sense of complexity in governance: the case of local public management in the City of Stockholm”, Policy Studies, 2019, DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2019.1577372
Tom Christensen & Per Lægreid, ibid.
David Colander and Roland Kupers, ibid, pp. 41-3.
Ibid p. 9.
Philip Haynes, ibid, p. 57.
Paul Cairney and Robert Geyer, ibid.
The expression was coined by H.L. Mencken, an American journalist and essayist. I first read it and specifically recall it from a text by Gerry Stoker, a specialist in British local government, “New Localism, Progressive Politics and Democracy, in Andrew Gamble and Tony Wright (eds), Restating the State?, a special edition of The Political Quarterly, 2004, pp. 117-129. Stoker uses the expression when talking about complexity.
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