The wicked, wicked problems

The concept of “wicked problems” is widely used to describe the major societal challenges of our time. In an article, philosophers Gustaf Arrhenius and Joe Roussos take a critical look at the concept itself and examine whether its enormous popularity hinders, rather than helps, our ability to think about the future.

What is a “wicked problem”?

The term “wicked problem” describes political problems that cannot be solved in a simple way. The term is used very broadly, and problems as diverse as corporate strategy, software design, urban poverty, and climate change have been described as wicked problems. As a contrast, Rittel and Webber use “tame” to describe things that are harmless and non-threatening. They describe the concept of a wicked problem in terms of ten factors. This list of characteristics remains influential and is regularly used when arguing that a problem is wicked.

There are two general problems with the concept as defined by Rittel and Webber that undermine its value in the analysis of societal problems. First, their characterization of wicked problems is based on a superficial and misleading picture of science (cf. Turnbull and Hoppe 2019). Second, several of the criteria in the definition are vague and ambiguous, resulting in a concept that can easily be given many different interpretations, ranging from a broad interpretation in which all societal problems are wicked problems to a narrow interpretation in which almost none are. This makes it difficult to understand what a particular description of a problem as “wicked” means and how the concept can be used fruitfully.

Criticism 1: An outdated view of engineering and science

We begin with the first problem. Rittel and Webber presented their target as an abstract, computation-based form of problem-solving in which problems are well defined and divided into clear categories, and in which possible solutions are clearly identifiable and enumerable. The problems can first be analyzed, and then a solution can be developed. Solution algorithms have “stopping rules” and solve the problem completely.

This shows that the relevant contrast for Rittel and Webber was a simplified model of problem-solving in engineering, which, according to them, spread into social planning in the United States in the 1960s. This is a somewhat peculiar starting point, and although it may have been apt for the debate in which they were participating in the 1960s, it is entirely mistaken for a discussion of science, policy, and societal problems in the 2020s. Whatever trends prevailed in American planning in the mid-twentieth century, we no longer live—if we ever did—under the illusion that political problems can be treated in this way.

Rittel and Webber seem to equate this simplified engineering/system-analytic view of problem-solving with “science.” First of all, this is wrong because problems in, for example, the natural sciences are more complex than Rittel and Webber’s stereotype of the tame problem. Scientific and technical problem-solving often involves social and political aspects and is frequently interconnected with other problems. The natural sciences also contain problems that are difficult to define, lack clear solution criteria, and lack clear ways of testing solutions.

Many scientific questions about the climate illustrate this, since they are impossible to separate from their broader social and political context, even though in one sense they are technical and scientific. One example is how researchers model equilibrium climate sensitivity, which will lead to downstream results of significant moral and political relevance. The seemingly technical disagreements among climate modelers thus take on some of the very complexity that characterizes social wicked problems. Although such a connection does not, of course, apply to all problems in the natural sciences, it is also true that many results from the natural sciences affect people and society, and this is probably true of all engineering projects. These connections make Rittel and Webber’s distinction between, on the one hand, the natural sciences and engineering, and, on the other, the social sciences and policy, highly questionable.

The development of the social sciences after the 1960s

Rittel and Webber also seem to completely disregard the role of the social sciences as systematic, evidence-based investigations of how the world works—for example, when they write that “the search for scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy is bound to fail because of the nature of these problems.” This was hardly true even when it was written, and we now have several decades of social science investigating both the causes of societal problems and the causal effects of different policy measures using new data and new methods.

One example is the economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee, who in 2019 were awarded the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their use of field experiments to study how poverty can be alleviated. If policy analysis ever looked the way Rittel and Webber imagined it, it certainly no longer does. This matters because Rittel and Webber’s criteria for defining wicked problems are still frequently applied in the scholarly literature. These criteria are motivated by their outdated view of the available alternatives and of whether there are “scientific bases for confronting problems of social policy.” If part of the reason for thinking that a problem is wicked is this mistaken view of what the social sciences can achieve, then far fewer problems may be wicked than is often claimed.

Criticism 2: A vague and fragmented definition

As for the second problem, the list of the ten characteristics that define a wicked problem is a hodgepodge of different things: some truisms, some aspects of decision-making in general, and several more or less confused points that are no longer applicable, since they overlook the development of the social sciences and the tools available to researchers.

The sprawling and ambiguous nature of the list has motivated revisions that attempt to shorten the definition to a smaller set of criteria. Many attempts to clarify or redefine the concept have several hundred citations, making the terminological and conceptual landscape highly fragmented. This means that for any claim that a problem is wicked, it is usually extremely unclear what the claim means, and determining this requires further detective work—which, unfortunately, may also prove fruitless if the basis for the claim is, as is often the case, Rittel and Webber’s list.

We argue that “wicked” is nothing more than a dramatic label without clear conditions for how it should be used and without clear consequences for either research or policy action. The concept’s foundation in an outdated pessimism about the social sciences is especially regrettable given its popularity among natural scientists who wish to draw attention to problems such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

Solutions to these complex problems require creative collaboration among researchers from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Although Rittel and Webber were right that complex problems cannot easily be solved using templates and simple rules, their legacy has obscured rather than illuminated the path toward solving our greatest challenges.

Sources:

Rittel, H. W. J. & M. M. Webber (1973). “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Policy Sciences, 4(2), pp. 155–169.

Turnbull, N. & R. Hoppe (2019). “Problematizing ‘Wickedness’: A Critique of the Wicked Problems Concept, from Philosophy to Practice,” Policy and Society, 38(2), pp. 315–337.