Governance is Possible
A choice is being forced on us
With Miroslaw Manicki
Clearly, quality of governance is wanting.
There are reasons for this. Understanding those reasons contributes to an ability to resolve the problem. It is of utmost importance that we reform our current global practices in governance, as they already compromise our quiet enjoyment of life together, if not our continued peaceful, healthful existence.
The governance question
We must come to understand what good governance is and what we have a right to expect with respect to public and private organizations and relationships. This is a challenging prospect. Part of our problem is that many now feel that lifestyle prospects are closing in on them.
Even in contemporary times, it is important to be aware that we have been living in a conceptual bubble. Conceptual issues and questions have come to be expected within certain limits, but they aren’t necessarily bound by true limitations as to society and the economy. Odd as it may seem, the trappings of what we have come to know as modernity encompass many of these limitations. We must come to know that if we are to consider the means of breaking out of our current conundrum, we may need to give up on some presumptions and expectations that have been accepted generally.
It might seem untimely, even foolhardy, to think of possibilities at such a time of risk and political uncertainty as we see. There might be those who would say that we need to take expedient moves, then reasses long-term governance options. Maybe later we could figure out the “governance thing”.
History has been unkind in such assessments. As J.R.R. Tolkien has aptly described in his Lord of the Rings saga, humans are slow to give up power once they have it. We don’t need fictional accounts to remind us of this, as we see examples on a regular basis in most political regimes or nations. ‘Interim steps’ have often coalesced into longstanding, cruel, and oppressive regimes. Given the time and the capacity, we need to resolve the governance problem now if there is a way.
The Wallace approach to revitalization
Where are we to look to find answers? Should we generate new ideas? Should we just lean into existing practices with some idea as to slightly different outcomes? How can we be sure to not shortchange ourselves or to assume unnecessary risks?
What does governance mean? Of all the things that could be done, how do we organize everything so that the important things get done?
Governance refers … to all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, whether over a family, tribe, formal or informal organization, or territory, and whether through laws, norms, power, or language. Governance differs from government in that it focuses less on the state and its institutions and more on social practices and activities. To understand governance requires that we look at abstract theories of hierarchy, market, and network as types of organizations, and then at more concrete debates about the shift from hierarchy to markets and networks in corporations, the public sector, and global politics. (Bevir, 2012, 1)
Wow. No wonder nothing ever gets done.
Perhaps we can simplify things. There are essentially two questions. The first is, “What expectations might we have as to how life on the whole can be lived, which is to say, life for all of us?” The second is, “What elements of governance can be put into place to encourage if not assure such conditions?”
It is possible to get one if not both of the problem-sets right and to fail with respect to the other. Care needs to be taken to match governance means with societal outcomes. Fortunately, this is not a new concern, nor is there a lack of examples that can be used to weigh the implications of these questions. Anthony Wallace (2003) has considered such questions in his assessment of societies working toward what he calls revitalization. Chalmers Johnson (1966/1982) followed in Wallace’s tradition when considering some contemporary examples, in the Balkans, the United States, China, the U.K., and Japan. Johnson in particular tackles the question of how we can allow for reforms that do not become violent as associated with revolutions.
Wallace lists three common choices faced by would-be reformers. First, faced with an imperative to change — which might come from a variety of motivations — such reformers are better off borrowing from salient example cultures than inventing social systems in their entirety. This means to identify aspects of the culture in question that have perhaps fallen into disuse and to revive them. Second is to identify desirable aspects of another culture, perhaps even from another time, and to adopt them into the current situation.
A third option is to make up something. This is the scary one. For one thing, there is little to protect any people in question from many kinds of errors that are inevitable in such plans. There are simply too many questions to be answered in too many dimensions, whether from natural phenomena or social complexity, to lay out reliable systems for all of the people.
Pre-existing systems, particularly indigenous ones that have proven their merit over time, are historical treasures. As Wallace indicates, they serve the people subjectied to them by providing behavioral cues. He refers to those as “mazeways” which act as key elements of culture and civilization. This is as seen below, the red path through the maze in this case. Wallace’s point is that ancestors can leave such clues to their descendants to help them to make decisions based on conditions which they have experienced and they continue to anticipate.
What we find through history is that the needs of people are best met by directly supporting them. The societies that did this well thrived and persisted. Many of them grew large, even expansive, by assuring that such needs were being met — partly through common efforts, partly via private initiative and work.
There is a perception that extreme finance as extrapolated from the work of Adam Smith and others is the sine qua non of prosperity and well-being. While finance is inarguably important, along with the ability to identify and account for value, it is commerce itself that makes the difference in terms of variety and innovation. As to the principal needs of people, they shouldn’t be subject to deals and schemes. If people want to deal and scheme, that is up to them.
There was room for this even in ancient Sumer. On top of this, though, there were public responsibilities, largely tied with assuring the availability of food, shelter, and the like. According to contemporary studies, human needs in our times include shelter, food, education, health & care, transport, information, and legal services (Moore, et al., 2022).
Cooperative work in this regard can bring great rewards. As an example, in the United States, there is a long history of effective agricultural cooperative efforts. As seen below, many famous brands reflect the cooperative efforts of farmers in many markets. The cumulative effect of this represents approximately twenty percent of all agricultural output in the country.
Such programs can be established and maintained based on private and public initiatives. They can achieve economies of scale; they can distribute and compete with the best of them.
Utopia is in the air
It is important to note that modernity itself was introduced as a giant utopian experiment. What was in fact European history was skewed in the telling to represent world history. The common terminology associated with this version of history included an understanding of enlightenment, a medieval time, the dark ages, and a restitution of order as exhibited by the Roman Empire, and that of Greece before that.
Enlightenment ideas, largely extrapolated from the Greeks, were mixed in from the 15th century onward, often forcefully taking away traditional means of support (Polanyi, 1944/1957/2001). Led by Britain, the object was to achieve ascendance in the world to gain spoils abroad rather than heal the breach at home. In their many efforts, the Greeks were trying to evoke elements of a prior civilization (Bottéro, et al., 2000). They knew that they did not have all of the answers — as evidenced by the debacle between Athens and Sparta. As to Rome, it started out as a Greek outpost and never rose to a philosophical level sufficient to concern themselves with governance, fairness, and civility. Hence, it has been considered only as a part of the Greek, or Hellenist tradition (Toynbee et al., 1972, 52).
The two philosophers below are representative of an investigative era, the third and least desirable Wallace option. Modernists had demonstrated creativity in terms of technology and accounting. Still, conquest was a lynchpin of unstable politics generally, particularly in England and its subsidiary states. Adam Smith introduced a faith-centered idea of economic balance that exacerbated the problems faced by the common people. This is not to say a religious faith, but a concept that market equilibriums occur automatically as if they were some form of gravity.
On the one hand the perfect knowledge assumption [of the Austrian theory of market process] makes it pointless to ask how the market process can induce co-ordination among decisions; such co-ordination is already implied in the perfect knowledge assumption. On the other hand the assumption of invincible ignorance places the possibility of a systematic market process of systematic co-ordination entirely beyond reach.
For Austrians, however, mutual knowledge is indeed full of gaps at any given time, yet the market process is understood to provide a systematic set of forces, set in motion by entrepreneurial alertness, which tend to reduce the extent of mutual ignorance. Knowledge is not perfect; but neither is ignorance necessarily invincible. Equilibrium is indeed never attained, yet the market does exhibit powerful tendencies towards it. Market co-ordination is not to be smuggled into economics by assumption; but neither is it to be peremptorily ruled out simply by referring to the uncertainty of the future (Kirzner, 1992, 4–5.).
Uh, this is very iffy. They are basically saying the automatic market equilibrium could only function under specific, if not rare experiences. Such shortcomings are particularly problematic with regard to peoples’ needs.
Karl Marx documented such shortcomings, especially with regard to what had been euphemistically called “labor markets”. He came up with his own ideas of how the creations of Adam Smith and his ilk could be transformed to new novel ways that extended finance-based governance to politically-charged means.
Adam Smith had earlier written a book “The Theory of Moral Sentiments”, which was at odds with his laissez faire ideas of automatic market adjustments. Marxian ideas were bent and adjusted and ultimately served an empirical model that was juxtaposed with British/American powers. When followers of his work found themselves in position to act, they very aggressively subordinated traditional norms and institutions.
It no longer takes an economist to recognize that the magic markets philosophy is supportive of initiative but makes a very poor adjudicate of peoples’ needs. As a result, markets heave and ho, with the result that the prospects of the people similarly ebb and flow. It isn’t that the casino world isn’t conducive of commercial success; it is a very poor vehicle for assuring that the people get what they irrevocably need.
There is more to history than was generally understood
The rest of the world did not experience such things as occurred in Western Europe after the fall of Rome, certainly not in the same ways. They did not have a similar bifurcation between the past and the present — certainly not for a thousand years or so. They enjoyed peace and prosperity in good times and suffered from bad times, particularly when nature made life hard and raiders attacked, from which there was seldom protection.
Social systems outside of Europe were not necessarily humane as per contemporary standards. This isn’t to say that they were not humane. For one thing, the scriptural basis for the religions of the Europeans that support ideas of humanity and civilization originated in the cultures of those prior times.
It has been determined via developments in the understanding of world history and the evaluation of newly available ancient documentation that there was far more human activity, more nuanced governance, and more population growth in earlier times than had been understood.
Not knowing this, European leaders in the formative centuries of modernist development made up systems of their own. They invented norms and relationships based on conquest and domination that have come full circle now and we now know that they embodied limitations that must be corrected to avoid the major cycles of social and economic conditions that come from ill-conceived assumptions.
The ancients survived by means of cooperation. We know this largely because we understand more completely how challenged they were in meeting the needs of their people, particularly the needs that were introduced by urbanization. We now know that urbanization levied a significant burden on the people, but it allowed population to grow by allowing for larger families, and higher caloric levels. Stature decreased significantly, though, and infectious and chronic diseases entered society that hadn’t existed before.
Urbanization brought on more complex forms of governance. Society and civilization grew from these, as well as stability. Some of the early cities of Sumer in what is now southern Iraq maintained vitality and viability for thousands of years.
This is not to say that all aspects of such ancient cultures are amenable to modern societies, but key aspects of organization and governance have been learned. Understanding of them, of salient features and commitments, bodes well for reform and revitalization efforts.
Following the Wallace way
A most common motivation for reform in our times is that prevailing systems are not judged to be satisfying; perhaps they are not deemed to be safe. In some cases, they might be thought of as having already failed.
Should we follow the Wallace formula? Let’s discuss the implications of this for out day.
Can we identify elements of good government in existing states and nations? Perhaps so. Some of these might be embedded in the old cultures, whether they be collaborative communities, monarchies, or whatever.
There is a salient example of governance, long-standing, in all existing cultures and societies. It is the music model, which is a nature-based organizational model in support of highly complex and satisfying performance models. It supports all music types and all organization forms from duets and small ensembles to very large performing groups of varied and diverse musicians.
Using this model, virtually any organization can similarly function. People need to know what to do and when. With basic qualifications, people responsible for service and support similarly need to be guided as to what to do. Listen to the music. Talk to the musicians. There is nothing more natural and satisfying than this.
There is another contemporary example of a working governance model that has proven its worth. This is the phenomenon of agricultural cooperatives as mentioned earlier. The brands are famous, representing fruit, nuts, dairy, and other products (https://tinyurl.com/yckd99cf). They pool their resources to accomplish such things, a longstanding example of benefits of cooperation.
This is like what can be seen in one of the old cultures, unambiguous and rational. This is not presented as to be definitive or comprehensive, but simply as one example.
There are ancient instances of governance that demonstrate cooperation, and that had unexpected governance features that warrant consideration in our time. One story in question is called in the culture of Sumer the story of “Enki and Inanna”. This story has been available in translated form since the mid-20th century (long after Enlightenment philosophers like Smith and Marx could have had access to it).
Here are the basics of the story: Inanna, a woman, was in charge of the relatively new city of Uruk. She knew that Enki, who was an older relative, had some devices that conveyed knowledge. He had made use of them in the development of his older city, Eridu.
The items were called the me (pronounced ‘may’). Each would provide the capacity to do a different thing related to governance, science, music, society. There were about a hundred of them. She got them. She built up Uruk. Uruk was the leading city-state of the region for many centuries.
Once he accepted the transfer of the me to Inanna and to Uruk, Enki made the following statement:
In the name of my power! In the name of my holy shrine!
Let the me you have taken with you remain in the holy shrine of your city.
Let the high priest spend his days at the holy shrine in song.
Let the citizens of your city prosper.
Let the children of Uruk rejoice.
The people of Uruk are allies of the people of Eridu.
Let the people of Uruk be restored to its great place (Wolkstein and Kramer, 1983, 27).
We can see some relationship between knowledge and authority in this ancient record, also a tradition of cooperation. This could be metaphorical. If so, at least the subject came up. It is a refreshing concept in our day. The concepts are seldom brought together.
One problem with modernistic approaches to governance is a perception that non-authoritative requirements can reliably be left to markets. That is the essence of Adam Smith’s message. The work of Karl Marx among other developments refute this. Our point is that both approaches fall short, the theme as well as its variations.
These questions are addressed in Australia under to rubric ‘wicked problems’.
Here is an example of governance that spans these gaps.
This brings together differences between knowledge networks and organizational hierarchies.
Organization theorists generally agree that networks are more cooperative and egalitarian than markets and hierarchies. Networks replace the competitive relationships of markets with trust and collaboration; the actors cooperate voluntrily in pursuit of mutual benefits. Networks replace the chain of command that characterizes hierarchies with a flatter structure…
Some organization theorists suggest that bcause networks facilitate the flow of information, they are particularly useful for obilizing actors and promoting change. In this view networks make it easy for members to reach out and connect with other actors, forging loose ties that further extend the network. These connections can then lead all the actors to adapt to one another and learn from one another in what thus becomes a general transformation. Also, networks can give their members an independence from any central control and thus a freedom to experiment and innovate. The successful experiments and innovations then spread across the network as part of the general transformation…
Even if networks have advantages, they are not without problems. One criticism is that they lack stability. Some scholars argue here that trust does not ensure that actors will not behave opportunistically and even undermine the network (Bevir, 2012, 28–29).
Accountability within networks can be readily achieved, including in the use of social network analysis. These are sophisticated and easily-interpreted means of evaluating relationships and performance levels among network participants. Measures of centrality and betweenness are helpful; function and value to the network can be evaluated down to the contributions of each member, groups, and subject matter contributors.
Gatekeepers can be distinguished from value creators. Normative processes can be set up, extending research beyond journal articles. Specialists, generalists, and journeymen can all be recognized, empowered, encouraged, and rewarded. Network participation can reinforce the effects of markets and the requirements of institutions to achieve what has been called organizational wisdom.
The question is in stability, as is also mentioned. This is where the authoritative network comes in. At some level, the networks need to be supported and protected. This is a critical aspect of the legitimacy of organizations and relationships among organizations. Knowledge-based networks with regard to the characteriscs of natural phenomena are best-supported on international and global levels, as such phenomena know no political or physical borders. Costs of supporting and encouraging good research and development can be very high, and it is a matter of the highest common good for such information and capability to be shared.
Strongman governance
How about the Mad Max guy? What do we know about that prospect?
What we see there is kind of a scattershot at the future from a governance standpoint. It starts with the singular authority issue. This begs the question as to how that singular authority is selected. In Greece, it was by vote of the hoplites, the soldiers who acted in tandem to gain control of the land in question. In the Greek example, their main point was that they didn’t trust any single person selected from among them, but they would establish laws as a group, then someone would be selected as a first among equals to carry out those laws for a limited time frame (Bottéro, 2000).
Contemporary populists offer up their strongmen because they say they can break the rules and shake things up. Indeed, they start to do so, to the delight of their followers. Then, the extent and nature of their power begins to sink in and they almost inevitably embrace the glory of it all.
As an aside, it is well-documented in American history that George Washington did not succumb to such a temptation, when he of all people could have done so.
Is this Utopia — giving loyalty to a singular ruler? Many people seem to think so. Sitting in their armchairs, watching on TV, they think so. Riding around in grotesquely oversized pickup trucks energized with scandalously inefficient, polluting fuels, they think so. Dependent on wild, gyrating markets and global logistical requirements for even the most basic of necessities, they think so.
Where is the example of stability from this? Wallace’s guidance is definitive. The challenges faced by mankind disallow experimentation based on wild ideas, as have plagued the world now for centuries.
How the singular person would be replaced is an issue. If there was enough public power and sentiment to call for it, a subsequent person might be elected in similar fashion to the first. There might be a junta of powerful leaders that would take such a function unto themselves. This would be power in the hands of a gang, or perhaps more civily-described, an oligarchy. That implies that the group has some preferential call on resources, in part due to their power as a group.
If the leader has a family, the beginnings of a monarchy may be in store. Whether that is a good thing has much to do with the family, its traditions and motivations. Even the good ones from a governance standpoint tend to vary substantially over the generations. How then do knowledge and authority merge together in support of the needs of the people? Only maybe in the very rare case when the king decides to bless such an act. It is possible, though, but subject to the moods, preferences, and incentives of the monarch in question. Thus, it is not an aspect of governance, but happenstance.
On the other side
We call attention to organized music as a salient example of what could be by electing to follow a cooperative path. Many people with different technical and performance requirements can reliably bring together a satisfying experience in the world of music. And why not, since they have so many things going for them: They make use of a common language; they have instruments that are designed to interact together; they have been taught to listen to one another and interact together based on long-establish norms.
Isn’t it interesting that contemporary musicians can take music that was written hundreds of years ago and recreate it with full fidelity, with as much brilliance and nuance as was achieved originally? There is constant discussion as to how and why the structure of music might change, how there might be more dense harmonic relationships, how there might be more advanced ways of organizing pitch, rhythm, tone, and other musical elements. It doesn’t happen, and why not?
As it stands, the structure of the music performance model is perfect. Over time, with the human ear and human sound sensitivity as the only available tools, music innovators were able to sort out the basic harmonic relationships resulting from very low levels of vibration, some of the lowest frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum. They were able to create and refine performance instruments based on many sound-producing techniques. They were able to match these up, including voices in the process, and devise norms for melody, themes, combinations of note patterns, and crossover sounds from nature and social situations.
This sets up a high bar. It erases considerations that governance cannot be done effectively. The music model allows for direct transfer of the brilliance and majesty of the music of the Masters, which can be learned and replicated by artists around the world despite having been written hundreds of years before. There are competent musicians in every major city and community in the world that can make this happen. This extends beyond culture and it penetrates all elements of culture and wealth.
Most interestingly, highbrow music as described above can be readily integrated with all aspects and genres of music globally. Tunes are shared. Many pops, country, folk, and crossover concerts are regularly given. The instruments in question can be mixed and matched. Even those that have intrinsic culture value can be brought into the mix.
As can be seen, the music model isn’t a governance metaphor; it is an example. By bringing similar models and technologies together, its salient features can be replicated. This importance of this are layed out by Mark Bevir.
Governance can refer abstractly to all processes of governing. It supplements a focus on the formal institutions of government with recognition of more diverse activities that blur the boundary of state and society. It draws attention to the complex processes and interactions involved in governing. Governance can also refer, more concretely, to the rise of new processes of governing that are hybrid and multi-jurisdictional with plural stakeholders working together in networks. It describes recent changes in the world (Bavir, 2012, 5).
Ta da!
References
Bevir, M. 2012. Governance: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Bottéro, J., Herrenschmidt, C., Vernant, J. P., Zabbal, F., Fagan, T. L. 2000. Writing, reasoning, and religion in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Greece. Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press.
Johnson, C. 1966/1982. Revolutionary change. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Kirzner, I. M. 1992. The meaning of market process: Essays in the development of modern Austrian economics. London: Routledge.
Moore, H. L., Percy, A., Lorgat, R., and Moseley, K. 2022, July. Universal protections. Berlin: G7/Think7 Projects.
Polanyi, K. 1944/1959/2001. The great transformation. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Toynbee, A., and Caplan, A. 1972. A study of history: A one volume edition, illustrated. London: Thames and Hudson.
Wallace, A. F. C., and Grumet, R. S. (Ed). 2003. Revitalizations & mazeways. Essays of culture change, Vol. 1. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.
Woldstein, D., and Kramer, S. N. 1983. Inanna: Queen of heaven and earth, her stories and hymns from Sumer. New York: Harper & Rowe, Publishers.