Managing Wicked Policy Problems With Lessons From COVID

The COVID global pandemic has had devastating impacts on public health, economic performance, poverty, and social stability. Many effects linked to COVID are in fact man-made. They are consequences of decisions by policy makers attempting to manage an unfolding crisis. Framed in this way, the COVID pandemic is not only a public health problem, but a broader public policy problem; requiring decisions on what should be done, when, by whom, to what ends, with what acceptable impacts. It is an example of a wicked (policy) problem. The application of the social learning framework, anchored in coordinated local experimentation, is presented here as a potentially useful approach to the management of such policy problems.