Designing policy mixes for emerging wicked problems. The case of pharmaceutical residues in freshwaters

Wicked problems continuously emerge in the field of environmental governance. Characterized by goal conflicts, complexity, and uncertainty, wicked problems typically call for participatory policy designs. However, the effects of participation are widely unclear, given the indefinite nature of solutions to wicked problems. This research sheds light on this debate by developing and applying a systematic structural approach to assess policy mixes for emerging wicked problems. Based on a review of literature in the field of public policy and environmental governance, we identify eight assessment criteria matching three dimensions of wicked problems: coherence, consistency, congruence to address conflicts; comprehensiveness and diversity to address complexity; and adaptability, reversibility, and robustness to address informational uncertainty. The concept is demonstrated taking as an example two recently proposed policy mixes to address pharmaceutical freshwater pollution in Germany. This concept demonstration suggests that policy mixes resulting from desk research and participatory processes differ in the way they address wicked problems. These results contribute to systematically assess the role of participation in designing policy mixes for emerging wicked policy problems and open up for more advanced discussions on the role of structural approaches in public policy analyses.

环境治理领域持续涌现棘手难题（wicked problems）。此类难题以目标冲突、系统复杂性与不确定性为典型特征，往往需要采用参与式政策设计路径。但由于棘手难题的解决方案并无明确定义，参与举措的实施效果始终未形成广泛共识。本研究通过构建并应用系统化结构分析方法，对针对新兴棘手难题的政策组合展开评估，以期为该领域的学术争论提供清晰视角。基于对公共政策与环境治理领域现有文献的系统梳理，我们提炼出匹配棘手难题三大核心维度的八项评估准则：用于化解目标冲突的连贯性（coherence）、协调性（consistency）与契合性（congruence）；用于应对系统复杂性的全面性与多样性；以及用于应对信息不确定性的适应性、可逆性与鲁棒性（robustness）。本研究以德国近期提出的两项针对制药类淡水污染的政策组合为例，对上述评估框架进行演示验证。演示结果显示，通过案头研究与参与式流程分别生成的政策组合，在应对棘手难题的具体路径上存在显著差异。本研究成果可为系统性评估参与机制在新兴棘手政策问题的政策组合设计中的作用提供支撑，并为进一步探讨结构分析方法在公共政策分析中的应用价值开辟新的学术讨论空间。