Governance Failure

1
Governance Failure

• Bob Jessop
• IAS, Lancaster

2
Outline

• Failing Governance Governing Failure
• Forms of governance
• Forms of governance failure
• First order responses to governance failure
• Meta-governance as second-order response
• and its failure
• What is to be done?

3
The Polyvalence of Governance

• Governance' captures a wide range of
  contemporary concerns and bears massive
  analytical, theoretical, descriptive, policy,
  practical, and normative weight
• Applied to range of issues and every scale of
  natural and social organization from local to
  global and from micro- to meta-social
• Key theme in physical, technical, management,
  and social sciences and rhetoric narratives of
  change
• Multiple meanings linked to many paradigms and
  problematics
• A fuzzy term applying to almost everything and
  thus describes and explains nothing.

4
The Governance of Complexity

• Need, theoretically practically, to reduce
  complexity as a way of going on in the world
• Governance can be understood and studied as one
  way of reducing complexity to make it manageable
• It can be defined generically as any mode of
  coordination of complex reciprocal
  interdependence
• In an allegedly more complex world, governance
  has become a key theoretical and policy paradigm
• Witness interest in good governance, governance
  failure, and avoiding (or denying) governance
  failure

5
So what is Governance?

• Four main modes of coordination of complex
  reciprocal interdependence
• anarchy of exchange,
• hierarchy of command,
• heterarchy of reflexive self-organization,
• solidarity of unconditional loyalty and trust
• Here I focus on problems of governance failure,
  responses to governance failure (and the
  governance of such responses), and the risks that
  these responses might also fail

6
Exchange Command Dialogue Solidarity
Rationality Formal and procedural Substantive and goal-oriented Reflexive and procedural Unreflexive and value-oriented
Ideal type Derivatives Market Sovereign State Open Network Requited Love
Criterion of success Efficient allocation Effective goal attainment Negotiated consent Unconditional commitment
Homo Economicus Hierarchicus Politicus Fidelis
Space-time horizons World market, reversible time Organizational space, planning Re-scaling, path-shaping Anywhere, any time
Main Sign of failure Inefficiency Ineffectiveness ? ?
Other Failings Market inadequacies Bureaucratism, corruption ? ?
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Market Failure State Failure

• Market failure
• State failure
• If markets fail, states fail, and the return to
  the market (neo-liberalism) fails, is there a
  third way?
• Public-private partnerships, governance, or
  heterarchy
• Reinventing the wheel

8
How does heterarchy work?

• Simplifying models and practices that are fit
  for purpose
• Stabilize key stakeholders orientations,
  expectations, and rules of conduct
• Capacity for dynamic interactive learning
• Self-reflexive self-organization

9
It its so smart, why does governance fail?

• General problems of maintaining dialogue
• General costs in terms of time for dialogue
• General turbulence of environment
• Nature of specific objects of governance
  (including failure in complexity reduction)
• Competing projects for same object of governance
• Dilemmas in particular governance arrangements

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Exchange Command Dialogue Solidarity
Rationality Formal and procedural Substantive and goal-oriented Reflexive and procedural Unreflexive and value-oriented
Ideal type Derivatives Market Sovereign State Open Network Requited Love
Criterion of success Efficient allocation Effective goal attainment Negotiated consent Unconditional commitment
Homo Economicus Hierarchicus Politicus Fidelis
Space-time horizons World market, reversible time Organizational space, planning Re-scaling, path-shaping Anywhere, any time
Main Sign of failure Inefficiency Ineffectiveness Talking shop Betrayal
Other Failings Market inadequacies Bureaucratism, corruption Secrecy, distorted communication Co-dependency asymmetry
11
First-Order Response to Governance Failure or
Second-Order Governance
Meta-Exchange Meta-Command Meta-Dialogue Meta-Solidarity
Redesign individual markets. De- and re-regulation Re-order market hierarchies Organizational redesign. Re-order organizational ecologies. Constitutional change Re-order networks. Reorganize conditions of self-organ-ization New forms of dialogue Develop new identities and loyalties. From old to new social movements New forms of solidaristic practice
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Third-Order Response

• Meta-Governance
• Collibration, i.e., re-ordering the relative
  weight of alternative modes of governance
• Third-order governance based on observation of
  how each mode of governance performs
• Reflexive governance of articulation of social
  conditions modes of governance

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Government and Meta-Governance I

• Provide ground rules for governance
• Regulate relations among partners
• Create forums for dialogue and/or organize
  dialogue among partners
• Ensure coherence of regimes across scales and
  over time
• Shape expectations through organized
  intelligence, diagnoses, and prognoses
• Evaluate, audit, benchmark

14
Government and Meta-Governance II

• Court of appeal in governance disputes
• Re-balance power differentials, alter strategic
  bias in governance regimes
• Modify self-understanding on interests,
  identities, etc.
• Subsidize organizations that produce public goods
  and give side-payments for sacrifices that
  maintain regime
• Exercise super-vision, permitting expansion,
  shrinkage, or adjustment of governance activities
• Assume final political responsibility in case of
  governance failure

15
Meta-Governance Failure

• If all modes of governance fails, so will
  meta-governance
• What to do?
• Fatalism?
• Stoicism?
• Cynicism?
• Opportunism?

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Good Meta-Governance

• Requisite Variety
• Maintain repertoire of forms of
  governance
• Requisite Reflexivity
• Monitor progress, check motives,
• be prepared to re-collibrate
• Romantic Public Irony

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Why public, why romantic?

• Expect failure, act as if you intend to succeed
• If you are bound to fail in metagovernance, do at
  least choose your mode of failure
• Choose to fail wisely, i.e., together through
  participation and dialogue
• This will reduce the chances of failure!
• Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will

18
Some Conclusions

• Good governance as a theoretical paradigm
• Theoretical reflection on best practice
• Empirical study of conditions for effective
  governance, responses to governance failure,
  meta-governance, and responses to meta-governance
  failure
• The importance of romantic public irony
• Good governance as a policy paradigm
• Practical response to market and state failure
• Tied to neo-liberalism
• Serves to flank, support neo-liberalism