Complexity and Emergence in Public Management

This article reports on a three-year study of six urban regeneration projects in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in which a ‘complexity perspective’ was applied to the analysis and interpretation of decision making in the public domain. The goal of the research was to gain insight into the features that affect public sector outcomes and agent behaviour, particularly those that emerge over time and contribute to the unpredictability of complex projects. A Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) analytic framework is applied to the cases, which draws on the concept of a ‘performance landscape’ and a policy ‘arena’ to identify patterns of emergent properties, including new super-agents, new rules and new schema. These properties impact on the decisions, factors and performance outcomes of the projects, the implications of which for public administration theory and practice are discussed in the conclusion.