Introduction: Rewiring the Foundations of Public Policy

‘We have entered a new era’, ‘we are stuck in business-as-usual and need a paradigm change’. Yes, these mainstream narratives at least ring a bell and at most sound cliché because, in the wake of a new decade in the 21st century, we have been hearing them for years, sometimes even from the same individuals, be it policymakers, international organisations, media, experts, business leaders or average citizens. They both coexist in the realm of shared sentiments about our times. However, they are paradoxical. How can we witness structural and radical transformations at a pace that some say has never been this fast, and yet share this impression of global inertia, a sense that we are still operating under the same frameworks? How can reiterated conscious calls for structural change remain just that, calls? If we had indeed entered a new era, why do we grapple so much with defining it?