IMPACT The article identifies the policy behaviours that are related to either taming complexity or coping with complexity. Analysing these policy behaviours at different levels within central and local governments can help policy-makers to navigate the constantly changing landscape of global policy challenges, understanding how each one of them can enable a shift towards either encouraging them to explore the complexity of policy issues by coping with complexity or moving towards taming such complexity in order to, for example, encourage policy coherence. In turn, this leads to highlighting the importance of further developing the policy capabilities needed to deal with the complexity of wicked problems. The empirical data collected in this study will allow for a deeper exploration of such policy implications.