Muddling through complex contexts: making sense out of a myth

Abstract

This paper explores how a complex environmental policy problem maintained unresolved along 46 years – the Multi-purpose Alqueva Project (Portugal) – muddled through increasingly complex social and political contexts and became a myth so inextricably impossible to contest. We focus on the different narratives, explicit and inexplicit, that took place along time about Alqueva, representing different values and assumptions, and framing the problemin different ways. We argue this can happen in most complex environmental policy problems maintained unresolved along time, such as the case of Alqueva, when no space is allowed for interactive, face-to-face discussion and learning together about the underlying values and assumptions framing different, and sometimes contentious, narratives along time. Moreover, we argue that these values and assumptions are so deeply rooted in people’s way of thinking and acting that knowledge and information will always run faster through the system than change in values and assumptions can occur, creating a lag between knowledge and action. Analysis of semi-structured interviews to key informants and a review of newspaper’s articles support most of the research.