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Archive for the ‘Public Policy’ Category

In the middle of the 19th century, one of the most widely publicised scientific struggles was to predict the motion of planetary bodies. Using Newtonian mechanics, it was simple enough to calculate the trajectory of one or two planets. However, when a third was added into the mix, the equations become complex and incomprehensible. Steven Strogatz described [...]

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In the 1970s, systems thinker Russell Ackoff argued that some of the greatest problems happen when messy problems are dealt with as if they were simple puzzles. The true extent of interconnectedness and interdependence of the world we live in is ignored or downplayed until a crisis – i.e. when it is already too late. Time [...]

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Today’s New York Times Review has a nice piece  on ‘making sense of complexity’ which cites the work of Brenda Zimmerman, noted complexity specialist whose work on health systems has featured on two previous Aid on the Edge posts (here and here). Here it is in full: The Great Recession and the wars in Iraq and [...]

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John Lennon famously quipped that life was what happened when you were busy making other plans. A new book Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice from the fantastic STEPS centre at the University of Sussex focuses on how much the same contradiction plays out in the global movements toward development, environmental sustainability and social justice. [...]

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An article in yesterday’s NY Times launches a scathing attack on the use of Powerpoint in the US military, and draws some interesting conclusions about how such tools can inhibit understanding of complexity. Exhibit A, below, is a now-infamous slide that is intended to represent the complexity of American military strategy in Afghanistan. As General Stanley A. McChrystal, [...]

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A recent piece of work has led to the coining of the phrase ‘aid net-oric’ (pron: net-er-ik) – a form of rhetoric which applies to exaggerated and bombastic use of the term ‘network’ in the aid sector. Once you start looking, you can see potential examples of ‘aid net-oric’ everywhere, from political manifestos to organisational [...]

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One of the biggest stories this week is that US President Barack Obama has signed a landmark healthcare bill into law – the largest expansion of the US federal social safety net since the 1960s. But work by leading healthcare analysts around the world would indicate that the safe passage of the bill is only the [...]

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(2nd of 2 posts exploring  self-organisation and emergence in transport / traffic and the relevance for aid strategies – first was last week’s piece on slime moulds) Traffic planners are increasingly moving away from signs and regulations to increase traffic safety and address congestion. Rather than legislating for driver behaviour, they are requiring drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists [...]

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“Copying nature’s ideas allows people to harness the power of evolution to come up with clever products. Now a group of researchers has taken this idea a step further by using an entire living organism—a slime mould—to solve a complex problem. In this case, the challenge was to design an efficient rail network for the [...]

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This 2009 working paper by Diane Hendricks is an exploration of the usefulness of complexity theory in the the field of peace research and conflict intervention (to see other publications relevant to complexity and aid, visit the Aid on the Edge of Chaos Publications page) From the Executive Summary: The paper begins by outlining key features [...]

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