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PROLOGUE

“The Prime Minister has gone to the fucking toilet!” my enraged editor booms through my earpiece. I adjust the microphone and feel a nervous tic at the corner of my mouth. On air in two minutes in a live, nationwide broadcast.

“Damn it, you have to improvise the first few minutes of the show until the Prime Minister arrives,” my editor says.

As the host of a popular television news program, I have three voices in my ear during broadcast: the editor, who is responsible for the content; the producer, who is responsible for the technical process; and the prompter who displays the text for the host to read while looking into the camera.

“Good luck—you’ll come up with something,” shouts the editor.

“Live in one minute,” says the producer.

“Where do you want the teleprompt to start?” asks the prompter. The theme music starts. Cut to the studio. My eyes dart around. I’m alone with no one to interview. And we’re on air.

“Heeeello and welcome,” I tell the viewers as slowly as I can. I will have to stretch time for this to work. I haltingly explain how the government has presented an ambitious economic reform plan.

Silence. What to do? And then the Danish Prime Minister lurches into the studio as though he had all the time in the world.

“Hi Sigge! Are we ready now or what?”

I’m unable to reply as I’m reading from the teleprompter while looking into the camera, though I happily take note of the fact that the Prime Minister has decided to leave the pot and appear in the studio.

“Good evening and welcome,” I say, sounding way too grateful, given the circumstances.

“How will the citizens notice a difference with your reform?” I ask.

The Prime Minister does a good job; as an experienced politician, he moves in and out of the questions as he pleases. However, we stay at the front door of democracy; we never really hit the back door.

In the TV studio we are right now at democracy’s front door which I define as the heated debate and public conversation about political proposals. By contrast, democracy’s back door refers to the policies approved by the parliament and turned into activities so that the citizens hopefully notice a difference.

When the Prime Minister sells his political reform on TV, he’s at the front door of democracy, and when he implements the reform, he is at the back door.1

More than ever, the front and back doors of democracy need to be connected, especially to ensure that the back door does not slam shut when the front door is opened wide if the policies proposed in the public debate are unrealistic or unfinanced.

I discuss the technicalities of the reform with the Prime Minister, and then I ask some back door questions: Is there actually a need for such a major and fast-moving plan? Has he talked with the organizations in society that will implement the reform?2 Is the government looking at symptoms or root causes? I never really get any answers to those questions.

Throughout the twenty-two minutes of the TV interview, I find myself looking at it all from the outside. The Prime Minister’s proposal contains valuable ideas. Still, what are we getting out of this? Will it translate into real change for citizens and companies? Is anyone truly concerned with what will happen with the reform once the lights in the TV studio are switched off?

I drive home from the studio unable to let go of the thought that democracy has become a theater, with politicians, journalists, and civil servants in the role of entertainers presenting political proposals they know will never get approved. And if the proposals were to gain support of a parliamentary majority, they would never actually work because the proposals are too small, too fast, or too dependent on other countries, and there is too little focus in government to ensure who is really going to follow up on the reform program.

The next morning, the news agenda has been taken over by a different story, proving the point. Ever since my interview with the Prime Minister, I have been unable to shake a simple yet scary question: Is it still possible to drive major political changes in the Western world—change that truly benefits the people and the planet at the back door?

I have continually returned to the image of the slammed back door of the house of democracy when I have traveled in the United States and Europe. As this book reveals, this is a Western disease that has grown increasingly stronger over the last twenty-five years. And it can ruin the foundation of democracy.

Pseudopolitics in DC: “Move fast and break things”

I have come to Washington a while after my showdown with the Danish Prime Minister. I tramp through the government departments while I approach the White House. Pennsylvania Avenue is long and imperious and ends in a democratic roundabout that wants to do more than it can.

I am here to meet with a top official from a federal agency charged with protecting America’s consumers. He is an elderly gentleman wearing a vest and with impressive hair as thick as a Hollywood actor’s. Yet, he will not play the part of a cautious civil servant. He is frustrated, in particular by the dimming prospects of fencing in Big Tech.

“We gave Meta a billion-dollar fine for their use of people’s data. But it seems they don’t care. They are already onto new adventures.”

He clears his throat. “Our policy tools have become dull. We have a hard time reining in the problems of the twenty-first century. We’re trying to demonstrate that we have the power to act. But at the end of the day that fine means nothing.”

The job as regulator has been severely challenged since then. President Donald Trump is back in town—in the beginning alongside tech entrepreneur Elon Musk. They have been cutting the core functions of back door democracy, challenging the independence of regulators and advancing an expansionist view of Trump’s executive power to show decisiveness. Right now, Trump seems to be a symptom rather than a

cause of the incapacities of the back door. More than any other leader in the Western world, Trump has understood that many people today crave a show at the back door of democracy—whether he wants to build a wall to Mexico or to buy Greenland.

Big Tech plays a role in all of this. So, I have a meeting with a couple of Congressional staffers in the Senate building the following day and must pass through a couple of retro-looking metal detectors that evoke the 1980s. The detectors don’t detect the iPhone in my pocket, quite tellingly.

“Democracy was established here over two hundred years ago,” says one of the policy wonks I meet with in the Senate who deals with Big Tech. “Today, it rather feels like we are over two hundred years after Facebook, Google and Apple when trying to catch up with the policy implications of tech.” I google the year of Facebook’s invention on my invisible Apple iPhone. It tells me the year was 2004. The Facebook approach “move fast and break things” has since then infected our politics. The cocktail of social media and populism has enabled political actors to amplify problems that are not rooted in reality in ways we have never seen before. This creates noise that leads to a lack of focus on tackling real problems.

What has long set Western democracies apart is their ability to self-correct. But against the backdrop of social media populism and a cacophony of issues demanding attention, it becomes almost impossible to deliver at democracy’s back door.

But am I exaggerating the difficulties of today’s problem solving compared to the years following World War II? I contact Steny Hoyer, former House Majority Leader for the Democrats and the US representative for Maryland’s 5th Congressional district. Born in 1939, he has the experience to cut through the noise.

“A lot more disruption, confrontation, and polarization are occurring now at the front door of democracy, as you call it. So we never really talk about implementation at the back door of democracy. That’s true all over the world. Look at Italy or the United Kingdom. So policymaking has become more difficult because everybody has an opinion all the time.”

Historically speaking, the role of the politician was also about making sure policies could actually be implemented. I test Hoyer: Why is it not happening today?

“It was easier in earlier days—and especially when I was first elected—to follow through on reform programs,” says Hoyer. “Today, I think the role of the politician has changed. The speed and complexity are very high. We do not have time or capacity to make sure that what we vote for is actually happening in Oakland or Oklahoma.”

As I return home, it seems to me that we are trying to solve the problems of the twenty-first century (Big Tech) with the policy tools of the twentieth century (fines), and the institutions from the nineteenth century (government authorities). It is not a recipe for success.

Londongrad: “But will it work?”

A short while later, I arrive in London to visit the BBC. I want to understand how journalists cover politics at an institution that many consider the standard-bearer for objective journalism in the Western world.

On my way toward the headquarters of the BBC, I pass through Kensington, a tony area known as Londongrad because of the influx of Russian oligarchs. I stroll further and suddenly I arrive at the BBC’s big Art Deco building, which is unified by a glass façade that seems to illustrate the transparency that journalists are demanding of the rest of the society. I am to meet with a group of editors and the well-known TV presenter Kirsty Wark, who is planning that evening’s program. Today’s big story is about a Russian who has been poisoned. The talk around the editorial desk is rolling.

“Fucking Londongrad—the voters want to get the Russians out of the city,” says a journalist.

“The government is already working on sanctions against the Russians,” says an editor in a fake Paul Smith shirt who has spoken with a few civil servants off the record. “The politicians say action must be taken. That’s what my sources are telling me.”

I ask in a tone that I fear may sound naïve: Would sanctions work?

The entire editorial team looks at me as if I live in a different journalistic galaxy.

I ask again:

But will it work?

“Not at all. It’s been tried before. But that’s not the point,” says an experienced editor, seemingly in the process of constructing the news story in his head already.

“It’s about remaining in the event now and demanding political action,” the fake Paul Smith says, and picks up his phone. The others also leave the room, and the journalists continue to work on their main angle: “Sanctions against Russia on the way.”

In the end, the UK government didn’t really implement sanctions on Russia following the assassination. It took too long to put together, and soon other news pushed the killing off the front page.

If we pull together the threads from Copenhagen, Washington, and London and add in the 100+ conversations I’ve had with ministers, journalists, and top civil servants in recent years for this book, a picture emerges.

Today, it is more difficult than ever to connect the front door and the back door of our democracies. Or, to put it another way: Our ability to implement political priorities has weakened considerably and many citizens in Western democracies recognize that something is wrong. That is evident from international surveys conducted for this book, based on representative samples from several Western countries (see Appendix C).

The surveys reveal a general lack of trust in democracy’s ability to address society’s most pressing problems. A majority of citizens in Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Denmark believe that political decisions are often made without considering whether they will actually solve societal issues, (see “About this book” for why I have seleted these five nation cases). A similar pattern can be found when Western respondents are asked about the future. In all five

countries, most citizens do not believe that society will be better in ten years. They seemingly do not believe that political reforms matter. The most prevalent pessimism about the future is found in Germany, where 82.5% of respondents do not believe society will be better in ten years. The numbers are 82% in Denmark, 80% UK, 79.5% in Italy, and the US number is slightly lower at 67.7%, although this still indicates widespread skepticism about the future. These are quite remarkable numbers.

This lack of confidence in democracy’s back door might be related to a change in the Western political culture. These days, if you are a journalist, a politician, or a civil servant, you will be rewarded for fast, attention-grabbing moments online or in the TV studio—rather than actually delivering a policy that could work in the future. And when attention-getting becomes the goal in itself, far too often the voters’ priorities disappear. As a result, we get democracies that engage in pseudopolitics that often do more harm than good. In this new reality, the anti-establishment movements suddenly look like changemakers because democracies have moved to the front door of democracy where they excel.

However, in the not-so-distant past, things were done quite differently in many Western democracies when major reforms were rolled out in societies. This was often done via (i) well-prepared decision proposals presented to and considered by commissions and committees, (ii) involvement of relevant organizations in the development of the political solution, and (iii) patient phasing in of the approved policies before undertaking any new reforms. To be sure, things were far from perfect. Yet change was possible through this mode of back-and-forth.3

Today in the West, we are faced with what I call the paradox of modern democracy: On the one hand, we are trying to solve the most wicked problems facing our societies, and on the other, we are doing it with fast pseudopolitics which are bound to fail.

Previously, the Western world was able to solve many of its tame problems, which were technical or clearly delineated, such as providing housing and clean drinking water, creating sewage systems, developing

vaccines, and building roads and schools. We built state structures able to solve these kinds of problems.

Yet today we face wicked problems so challenging they take our breath away. Among them are problems related to climate change, gender inequality, productivity, international security, Big Tech, anxiety among young adults, social mobility, education, and migration.4

Wicked problems require thoughtful and thorough politics. A quick economic reform that addresses everything and nothing (Copenhagen), a symbolic fine (Washington DC), or a sanction that is not even implemented (London) is not solutions. Despite politicians, civil servants, and journalists are running faster than ever before, they rarely deliver real results for citizens.

Western democracies churn out hastily conceived policies with little real involvement of experts, citizens, or relevant organizations and carry out one reform after another, each canceling out the next. It is not hard to put together a list of examples of this kind of pseudopolitics failing to address overlapping wicked problems. The outlook is bleak no matter whether you look from the left or right side of the political spectrum or stand in the United States or Europe (see box on the next page).

Back to the future: The 1970s have called

Fifteen years ago, I lived in New York City. One day while writing my PhD dissertation in political science at Columbia University, I stumbled on a report from 1975 that had created debate when it was first published. The Crisis of Democracy: On the Governability of Democracies made a great impression on me as I read it in the reading room at the library on Columbia’s campus. The report had its origins in an analogous situation in the 1970s, when the back door of democracy had gotten stuck. Rapidly growing national debt and a Kafkaesque public sector were among the major problems. The political solutions were guided by what had been done since World War II: big plans on top of other big plans directed from the national government buildings. Yet this did not solve the crisis at the back door.

EXAMPLES OF PSEUDOPOLITICS ADDRESSING WICKED PROBLEMS

(1) School reform: Despite wide-ranging efforts to improve learning outcomes through various reforms, there has been no improvement for students in OECD countries, even though education expenditure rose by more than 15% over the past decade alone, according to a recent OECD report.5 The author of the OECD report seems quite disillusioned. “It might be tempting to drop this [report], and any further thought about improving education, right about now. Impossible to change anything as big, complex, and entrenched in vested interests as education.”6

(2) Mega-projects: The number of mega-projects costing more than one billion dollars has increased in the West over the last several years. Projects such as IT or infrastructure include many actors who often have conflicting interests. Despite the sizable investments, most of these big-ticket projects fail, usually coming in late and over budget. In Survival of the Unfittest7, the Oxford University professor Bent Flyvbjerg documents the political appetite for such legacy projects. Flyvbjerg points out the optimism bias and the use of terms such as “biggest,” “largest,” and “highest” to attract public funding. By looking at more than three thousand such projects, he found that only “0.2% were completed on budget, on time, and with the expected benefits.”8

(3) Climate change: In a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) known as the “climate bible,” seven hundred scientists concluded that human activity is “unequivocally” warming the planet.9 Despite the knowledge of the risk that increasing temperatures represent, there have been few real attempts from Western political systems to solve the problem. As Michael E. Mann, the lead author of a previous IPCC report10, put it: “Bottom line is that we have zero years left to avoid dangerous climate change, because it is here.”

(4) Productivity: “Productivity isn’t everything, but, in the long run, it is almost everything.” So wrote the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman once.11 Historically, productivity has been the primary driver of increased prosperity, and in recent decades, productivity growth has slowed down in many Western countries,12 though America is doing better than Europe.13 Improving productivity is no simple task. What works for one country or organization may not work for another. It may require new technology, collaboration with civil society, foreign labor, better management, or changes in work culture—each with potential unintended consequences. Different government working groups looking at productivity have been launched over the years without coming up with significant results. Even measuring productivity poses a significant challenge. The Draghi report from the EU in 2024 is the latest example.14

(5) Gender inequality: So much talk about inequality, so few results. In fact, “gender gaps persist in all areas of social and economic life across countries, and the size of these gaps has often changed little in recent years. While women living in OECD countries leave school today with better qualifications, they still don’t get to the top of the labor market, the OECD concludes15. A 2021 report from the European Commission, which includes the COVID pandemic, takes an even tougher tone. “Most indicators on gender equality have levelled out for several years and where progress is made, it has been quite slow. Gender gaps in employment, in unpaid care work and in remuneration stubbornly persist. In addition, progress on gender equality in decision-making has stalled.”16

Known as the Trilateral Commission, three researchers from three countries—the United States, Japan, and France—worked together to uncover where things had gone wrong, writing in their report, The Crisis of Democracy, that the “demands on democratic government grow, while the capacity of democratic government stagnates.” And

they continued: “This, it would appear, is the central dilemma of the governability of democracy which has manifested itself in Europe, North America, and Japan in the 1970s.”17

The three researchers observed that on the one hand, there had been a democratization of politics such that people were better educated, the power of authorities had been reduced, and popular movements bloomed, presenting demands for everything from environmental protection to equal rights for women and tax reductions. On the other hand, the overburdened state was unable to meet all the new expectations, as the state now had to respond to far more wishes. The Welfare State tried to take care of everybody. But forgot its own health. The back door got stuck.

Reading the report today, it is clear that the good old days were not always better. Still, in the late 1970s, there was at least a broadly shared recognition of the problem of how to make the back door work again18, a recognition that is harder to come by today, since the difficulties of implementation is rarely debated.

After the report from the Trilateral Commission, the Western countries acted. They introduced a Competition State that brought business ideas, such as New Public Management19, into the political sphere. Everything was to be weighed and measured, and top civil servants were to be given responsibility. It worked—for a while. But in the long run, the forms, measurements, and constant changes of the Competition State simply created a new kind of bureaucracy to replace the bureaucracy of the 1970s.

Just as the Welfare State got bogged down in big plans and programs in the decades after World War II, the Competition State has been unable to solve the wicked problems with its simple toolkit of taxes and incentives, based on “the carrot and the stick.” Precisely because today’s challenges are more stubborn and overlapping20, we should try a new direction.

In this book, I argue we need a Puzzle State to tackle the wicked problems by reconnecting the front door and back door of democracy. At the end of the book, I describe in detail what the Puzzle State looks like and how we can already see flourishing examples of this model in

some parts of the Western world. Before you flip to the end, though, here’s an overview of what’s ahead.

I begin with the introduction by summarizing the book’s argument— and if you are in too much of a hurry for the longer treatment in the subsequent chapters, then this is what you should go for.

I have chosen to divide the book into three parts. In part A, I analyze the rise and fall of the state by looking at the past, the present, and the promised political change that too often has disappeared into thin air.

In the first chapter, I look at how politicians succeeded in getting results in the past. This is a journey through history in which we follow the rise of the state—and consider why it later went into decline. We see how the state has incorporated (i) merit bureaucracy, (ii) rule of law, (iii) democracy, (iv) welfare, and (v) competition like archaeological layers on top of each other. Historically, the state has withstood the ravages of time by continually strengthening itself for “a new normal.” Is it time, then, for a new archaeological layer if we are to tackle the wicked problems of today such as climate change, productivity, migration, or social mobility? I would say so. And this is where the Puzzle State comes into the picture as the next layer in the series.

In the second chapter, I investigate why parts of the foundation under the strong state are crumbling at the moment—simply why the back door of democracy is creaking. I zoom in on four tendencies that together I call the democratic P-I-T-I: (1) Post-truth, (2) Inertia, (3) Time optimism, (4) and Internationalization. The democratic P-I-T-I weakens the toolbox of democracy. It is clear that if the wicked problems are to be solved, the front door and the back door must be better connected. A job the Puzzle State is designed to do.

In part B of the book, I meet with journalists, civil servants, and politicians across Europe and the U.S. to hear their diagnoses and possible cures for the state’s inability to come up with solutions. Simply

put: These chapters investigate whether Western elites are ready to change from their current course of pseudopolitics.

In the five following chapters, I consider five countries—the UK, Germany, Italy, the US, and Denmark—looking at the reforms that have been undertaken in each particular country in the last twenty-five years (Regarding country selection, see “About the book”). My new material and data will be presented—country by country—in the course of my interviews with powerful actors in the respective capitals.

In the third chapter, I am in London. The UK has undergone a long period of discontent, and the elites have become somewhat apathetic. What happened to the proud Westminster model with a strong central government and two parties fighting it out? I visit the BBC to follow the television host Kirsty Wark to understand the dramatic changes in interactions among politicians, civil servants, and, of course, journalists. Then I drive to the countryside in the rolling hills of southern England where I am invited to a party full of top Tories and speak with Sir David Lidington, a former “Deputy Prime Minister” who reflects on the consequences of “the conservative TV show” in Britain. Then I go back to London to visit Whitehall, the bubble of the civil servants, to talk to a guy from the Treasury who is scared of the politicians and even more concerned about how difficult it is to implement policies today. Then I meet with Peter Mandelson, a former minister and chief advisor to Tony Blair, to ask what he would change to fix the state. And finally, I talk to a professor of public policy to understand why the Westminster model has such a hard time delivering results today.

In the fourth chapter, I go to Germany. The elites in Berlin have realized that the country is now “the sick man of Europe.” That is clear after I meet with Michael Roth, a former minister. He is sickened by the sick system with a mental overload brought on by political struggles in Berlin. Roth says federalism and the country’s brutal history have made the German state obsessed with stability. However, that will not advance the country, says a former civil servant from the Chancellor’s office, Thomas Matussek. “Not doing anything unless it’s necessary” is how German politicians operate. But that doesn’t work anymore, he argues. I then walk down Friedrichstraße to speak with a professor

who says “laws are still the predominant way to cope with complex problems… Ohhh there is a problem. Let’s make a new law is the first reaction of both government and civil service … But that doesn’t work today where you have crosscutting issues” such as climate change, digitization, or productivity that are wickeder. “This is where the German government is strikingly bad.” I round up with an interview with former Germany’s Vice Chancellor, Robert Habeck, who has decided to be an optimist and says with pride, “During the past year, around one hundred laws were passed in Germany. And around a quarter of them stemmed from my ministry.”

In the fifth chapter, I am in Rome, a place not exactly known for rail-straight work on political reform. I have lunch with “Patrizia,” a top civil servant, who explains why the civil service in many parts of Italy is struggling and says that women are treated so poorly that diversity is almost excluded from the policy process. Afterwards, I meet with a politician in the Italian parliament and drink a strong espresso. He shows why it is so hard to do anything in Italian politics but also praises Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for creating stability in Italy. Then I talk to Professor Enrico Giovannini who sorts out the strands of Italian reforms over the last twenty-five years, as I have lost my overview. He says a lot of laws are passed; however, you rarely see the ministries implementing them. It is apparently too complicated, and then a new situation arises, a new government is formed, a new catastrophe strikes. Finally, I go to the “Man in Milan,” Vittorio Colao, a former CEO of Vodafone and technology minister who has actually done some interesting implementation at the back door of Italian democracy with new digital methods.

In the sixth chapter, I travel to Washington DC, a place adjusting to a new period with President Donald Trump’s return. I speak with a top civil servant who has stopped believing in the nation’s back door of democracy and I talk with a former director from the Trump White House who explains how the Republicans implement their policy proposals. Then I interview former House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a man with more than fifty years of experience in American politics. Hoyer explains why he and his colleagues do not focus on implementation

anymore. And why that is something that has to change. I then reach out to The Atlantic and ask the magazine’s deputy chief editor, Yoni Appelbaum, what responsibility the media has. Finally, I ask a professor of public policy whether he can name a single reform in the last twenty years that has actually tackled a wicked problem in the United States.

In the seventh chapter, I am in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, that in many scientific studies is praised for having a well-functioning public sector. But there is something wrong here, too, when it comes to wicked problems. I speak with the former Minister for Taxation and the current Minister of Justice regarding their views of the many failed reforms. They are both from a younger generation but nonetheless take a view of the world surprisingly similar to that of many older civil servants. “We pass too many laws, push them down the systems and hope it will work,” as the former permanent secretary at the Treasury points out to me. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark right now, a couple of professors say when I talk to them. Finally, I interview former Deputy Prime Minister of Denmark Margrethe Vestager, who states that “the chain has broken”—today, not enough people are members of political parties, so we need people to engage in other organizations to implement policies at the back door of democracy.

In part C, I develop the idea of a Puzzle State that thinks big and addresses the wicked problems that the West have a hard time getting a grip on.

In the eighth chapter, I unpack the DNA of the Puzzle State. Here I outline how three I’s—Imagination, Insight, and Involvement—are building blocks of the Puzzle State. I then present a Model for Wicked Problems that recognizes that policymakers are often detached from the realities on the ground among, for instance, nurses, schoolteachers, police officers, company owners, or job seekers. By bridging the gap between decision-makers at the front door and practitioners at the back door, the model brings continuing, practice-based knowledge to the policymaking process. With the help of AI, this type of information is seldom present in Western capitals today, even though it is essential if politicians are to address wicked problems, as they have underscored in the interviews from Berlin, London, Rome, Washington, and Copenhagen.

Furthermore, I explain that it is important to understand that the Puzzle State cannot prevail in all areas of politics—it is particularly suited to a certain type of political pool.

I here define a pool as “the current political situation in which a reform plays out.” And looking through history, we can identify at least three political pools.21

Typically, politics unfolds in a bureaucratic setting with negotiations between fixed interests and law-making processes. I term these areas of politics the blue pools; these are areas in which, for instance, the EU achieves results.

Another type of pool challenges the blue pool. It happens when there are highly salient issues that determine elections or where actors employ hot conflicts and fear tactics at the front door of democracy to gain influence. I term these areas of politics the red pools; these are arenas in which, for instance, Donald Trump excels.

However, there is also a third pool where the Puzzle State flourishes. History tells us that other policy fields not resting in the red or blue pool are more mature; here we see (a) the political spotlight of the media is not as strong, which means that nuance often wins over conflict, and (b) actors in the field have realized that after many years of fighting, they cannot solve the wicked problems without searching for new methods and mindsets. I call these areas the green pools. 22 And at the end of this book, I will reveal how to search for these green pools to benefit from the Puzzle State.

In the ninth chapter, I present nine ways of developing a Puzzle State. They are based on the findings throughout the book and divided among the three I’s—Imagination, Insight, and Involvement. For each of the I’s, the book offers two concrete recommendations, covering everything from acting like Finnish plumbers that do policy experiments and being like Wales by installing a “Future Generations Commissioner.” The propositions are not intended as an adequate blueprint for the Puzzle State. Rather, they serve as a starting point for a vital conversation about adapting our democratic institutions to a new normal. At the end of the chapter, I outline how to fast-track the Puzzle State, showing how we can start the movement now.

The Puzzle State

THE PUZZLE STATE

How to Govern Wicked Problems in Western Democracies

The Puzzle State

HOW TO GOVERN WICKED PROBLEMS IN WESTERN DEMOCRACIES

Sigge Winther Nielsen

Gad PUBLISHERs

THE PUZZLE STATE

PROLOGUE

Back to the future: The 1970s have called

EXAMPLES OF PSEUDOPOLITICS ADDRESSING WICKED PROBLEMS