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"Wicked Problems," Public Policy, and Administrative Theory

Lessons From the GM Food Regulatory Arena

American University

Jerome S. Legge, Jr.

University of Georgia

As societies worldwide struggle to address what policy analysts call "wicked problems" such as world hunger, malnutrition, and ecological sustainability, analysts from a variety of perspectives have questioned the administrative state’s abilities to deal with them. Ascendant since the early 1990s as a prescription for remedying these shortcomings is a market, technocratic, and non-deliberative theory of administration that some have called "neo-managerialism" and others the "managerialist ideology." This study uses European attitudes toward promoting the use of genetically modified (GM) foods as a "policy window" for exploring how well or ill-suited the neo-managerialist philosophy informing the U.S. government’s promotional campaign was with the factors driving European opposition to GM foods. Causal modeling of the "calculus of dissent" that led to a the European Union (EU) moratorium on GM foods suggests that deliberative (rather than neo-managerialist) theories of administration are better suited for the "collective puzzlement of society" that wicked problems require.

Key Words: genetically modified foods • regulatory policy and administration • public opinion • public trust • administrative theory

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