ABSTRACT
This chapter lays out the problem – the need for urgent radical action to confront a range of global challenges such as inequality and environmental damage, while at the same time we inhabit a complex world where people actions may not have the outcomes that they anticipate. To understand why complexity thinking could have something to contribute to policy making, one need to provide an explanation of why 'orderly thinking' can lead to problems. An important aspect of complexity thinking is that it addresses what are described as 'wicked problems'. Uncertainty about the probabilities of outcomes is pervasive, multiplicative, and often non-linear in complex systems. Lehmann draws a distinction between policy making in normal times and in times of crisis. The study of social movements contains some parallels to the discussion of international regime complexes, in that both can be seen as examples of self-organisation.
