Chapter 5 Steering Societal Resilience: An Empirical Exploration of Trends and Challenges in Government–Citizen Collaboration

In these times of financial austerity and the emergence of wicked problems, traditional Public Administration and New Public Management as government's conventional mechanisms to steer society often fail to produce desired societal outcomes. This has made the governments of many Western nations call for civic engagement hoping this will lead to the emergence of a resilient society that can resist and react to even the most major shocks and disasters by being flexible and adaptive (Longstaff, 2005; Meijs, 2004; Wildavsky, 1988). A recent example of this broader trend are the discussions in the United Kingdom on how government can help create a Big Society, in which local people and communities feel empowered to deal with social problems on their own, without the interference of politics or governmental busybodies.