Subsystems and ill‐fitting problems: Clarifying a concept.

Policy process scholars are increasingly attentive to issues that engage multiple subsystems, though they disagree on what the unit of analysis should be. Researchers have used the term "boundary spanning," which already refers to a different class of institutions and actors, as well as variants of...

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Publicado en:Policy Studies Journal Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 90 - 111
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Wiley-Blackwell Feb2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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        atl: Subsystems and ill‐fitting problems: Clarifying a concept.
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      su:
        United States. Congress
        Policy sciences
        Political systems
        Internet security
        Congressional hearings (U.S.)
        Boundary spanning activity
      sug:
        subj:
          Policy sciences
          Political systems
          United States. Congress
          Wired Telecommunications Carriers
          Internet Publishing and Broadcasting and Web Search Portals
          Legislative Bodies
          Internet security
          Congressional hearings (U.S.)
          Boundary spanning activity
      keyword:
        cybersecurity
        institutions
        subsystems
        ciberseguridad
        instituciones
        subsistemas
        制度
        子系统
        网络安全
        cybersecurity
        institutions
        subsystems
        ciberseguridad
        instituciones
        subsistemas
        制度
        子系统
        网络安全
      ab: Policy process scholars are increasingly attentive to issues that engage multiple subsystems, though they disagree on what the unit of analysis should be. Researchers have used the term "boundary spanning," which already refers to a different class of institutions and actors, as well as variants of the terms wicked and messy problems without incorporating their full definitions. In this article, I argue that trans‐subsystem issues are better understood as "ill‐fitting problems" because they do not neatly fit into existing institutional jurisdictions. Jurisdictions are arbitrary rather than fixed, so our understanding of which problems stretch across subsystems depends on the political system or institution under study. I illustrate the match or mismatch between issues and institutional organization using data on attention to cybersecurity issues in U.S. congressional hearings from 1966 to 2014. Cybersecurity's widely varied attributes mean that multiple committees and the subsystems they represent compete for policymaking authority, while cybersecurity also competes for attention within each component subsystem. While the opposite phenomenon, "well‐fitting problems" are possible, endogenous and exogenous problem definition dynamics will worsen the fit between most issues and their governing arrangements. The clarified concept of ill‐fitting problems can support research into policy regimes, wicked problems, and complex systems.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
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