I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.The sequence of disasters that 2020 bestowed upon the globe coincided with a rise in mistrust of experts, distrust of politicians and mainstream news and a continuing rise of populist political movements of the left and right. While searching for antidotes to these misfortunes, they should keep in mind the final paragraph of Mandela’s ( Citation1994, p. But they must also ensure successful delivery. It is from the practitioners and professional experts that policy-makers seek solutions. Although each has separate causes, they remain linked together in a ‘seamless web of circumstance’ (Plowden, Citation1967) that delivers some of the greatest collective challenges to national public administrations for over a generation.

Oozing alongside this litany of convulsions is a list of noxious problems: a rise in relative poverty and unemployment, increasing inequality and forced migration, among them. These include the shockwave Covid-19 delivered to the social, economic and political systems of the world the outburst of social justice protests the continuing angst regarding climate change and deepening political and social polarization. As we begin 2021, the international family of public policy and administration scholars and practitioners seeks to comprehend the turbulent events of the preceding year.

Seamless web