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Governance Failure

Governance Failure. Bob Jessop IAS, Lancaster. 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?.

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Governance Failure

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  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. 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

  7. 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

  8. It it’s 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

  9. First-Order Response to Governance Failure or Second-Order Governance

  10. 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

  11. 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

  12. 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

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

  14. 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

  15. Whypublic, 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! • “Pessimismof the intellect, optimism of the will”

  16. 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

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