A brief history of systems approaches

Complex problems are not new and efforts to simplify them in order to make them “manageable” have long been on the agenda of policy makers and academics, and especially systems thinkers. While there are several streams of systems thinking (general systems theory, cybernetics, systems dynamics, etc.), there are thousands of different streams of “systems thought” with hundreds of different methods and techniques. Today, many policy studies have moved to apply methodological pluralism (choosing the method(s) based on the problem at hand) (Payne, 2006) when using systems approaches. However, it is important to understand the background of these different approaches before applying or insourcing analyses. No method is perfect and systems thinking and other similar methodologies should be understood as one of many tools available to governments.