CONCLUSIONNext-Generation Social Labs

A zombie idea is one that keeps coming back, despite being killed.

— John Quiggin

Indeed, one concern would be that the initial neoconservative response to a zombie outbreak would be to invade Iraq again out of force of habit.

— Daniel W. Drezner

In puzzling over the situation in Yemen, I started seeing planning as a zombie idea. The planning paradigm, despite being killed many times over, for example, with the death of the Soviet Union, still walks among us. And it keeps biting the living, turning them into the undead.

Planning is ubiquitous across sectors, operating horizontally in the state and vertically down corporate and civil society supply and service chains. Planning was—and remains—a means of centralized ...

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