Problem structuring, wrong-problem problems, and metagovernance as the strategic management of intractable positions: the case of the EU GM crop regulatory framework controversy

The increasingly popular concept of ‘wicked problems’ often leads to superficial analysis of practices of problem structuring. The case of deadlocked EU genetically modified crop authorization processes offers a good example. The stalemate is not the result of the inherent ‘wickedness’ of the problem posed by the risk of genetic modification technology applied to agricultural production of food and feed. Rather, the policy lock-in results from the structure and dynamics of the policy network. Rigid interactions between the same institutionalized policy actors sustain instigation and power games interlaced with question-answer or probing games that jointly reproduce a clash between differently structured problems over and over again. This has created a typical wrong-problem problem situation: the EC imposing ‘safety’ and ‘consumer choice’ of GM crops as a structured problem on member states, business interests and anti-GM NGOs that, for different reasons, kept seeing the cultivation of GM crops as an uncertain and normatively conflicted activity. Neither of the issue network’s opposing discourses and advocacy coalitions gained sufficient political power to bring their preferred problem structuring journeys to closure. We critically reflect on studying practices of problem structuring and offer sceptical caveats on advising better, collaborative meta-governance and stakeholder dialogues as presumed solutions to dealing with wickedness. Instead, we analyse the European Commission’s coping strategy as incomplete but intelligent.