The Role of Time in Post-Normal Knowledge Creation and Decision-Making in Public Administration

Abstract

Scholars developing the concept of post-normal science have focused on high stakes and uncertainty to illustrate scientific inquiry and decision-making under post-normal conditions. While uncertainty and decision stakes are often challenges in any decision-making process, we argue that they are not the key factors that warrant the use of a post-normal approach, in which facts are ambiguous, values are in dispute, and stakes are high. In this paper, we center the role of time in the definition of post-normal science and offer a model of decision-making that incorporates uncertainty and high stakes within an overarching context of urgency. We then present three cases of decision-making with varying time horizons to illustrate the significance of time: The period leading up to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. development of the atomic bomb during the Manhattan Project, and U.S. space exploration in the 1960s, culminating in the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Elaborating on the role of time in post-normal science is crucial to public administration because our field routinely involves decision making amidst ambiguous facts, disputed values, high stakes, and urgency. As the three illustrative cases further show, administrators on the ground during the lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Manhattan Project, and space exploration also included extended peer communities.