Introduction

The modern public administrator in both the developed and the developing world is facing unprecedented yet similar challenges. They include the globalization of markets, economic and financial crises, the polarization of politics, rapid advances in the technology of communication, a rapid decline of the width of social time (in other words, the time it takes to communicate a message from one person to another), substantial mistrust of the public sector, rising (income) inequalities, a burgeoning nonprofit sector and civil society, new forms of crime and terror, unsustainable rates of resource consumption, global environmental concerns, and rising tensions in multiethnic and multicultural societies. The problems that governments have been expected to address have never been simple, but it appears that many contemporary problems transcend the capacity of government, even when assisted by nonprofit and private actors. They are ‘wicked problems’ (Rittel and Webber, 1973) that, at best, can be “resolved” rather than solved.