In “The Square and the Tower”, Niall Ferguson admits that, as an
historian, his focus had been written archives and that official documents rarely
mention the informal processes. The “operating system” in which he operated was
the world of power and of hierarchy. It was his work on biographies of people
like Warburg the banker and diplomat Henry Kissinger which alerted him to the
significance of networks. The book is therefore an act of contrition – to make
amends for his failure to pay proper tribute in his earlier books to the
importance of networks.
Comparison of the 4 models
Charles Handy and Roger Harrison had a 4 part typology – but as it focused only on different types of managerial system (or cultures) it will not detain us here.
It’s an easy read – with none of its 60 chapters being longer than 5-6
pages.
It reminded me of my reaction, in the early 1990s, when a new word
entered our vocabulary – “governance”.
I remember very vividly the scorn I poured on the word at the time. Why, I
muttered, did we need a new word when “government” had served us well for at
least a couple of centuries. And, if there was something new around, it was
clear that most people didn’t appreciate the difference and were using the
words interchangeably.
But that didn’t prevent me from using the phrase “good governance” in
1999 in the subtitle of my little book about public administration reform In
Transit – notes on good governance
So let me take you on a tour of
an intellectual idea whose origin, I would argue, can be traced back to the
1960s. an earlier post referred to the community action of that period first in
America and then the UK – which led to the new fashion in the 1970s for “participatory
democracy”. This may have been a manipulative tool for government but it
led to the notion that citizens were not just bundles of trouble and expense
but also sources of ideas - from whom organisations could learn, if they cared
to.
Indeed the thesis of the part-time MSc I did in the early 1980s was on
“organisational
learning” – anticipating (in a sense!) the work of Peter Senge.
That, of course, was the decade of Thatcherite managerialism and
privatisation when the private sector’s energies, skills and insights were also
sought inside government for wicked issues such as urban regeneration and
training
Whatever
happened to public administration? Governance, governance everywhere was a
famous article by H George Frederickson which appeared in 2004 and traced the first use of the word to Harlan
Cleveland who argued as far back as 1972 that -
The organisations that get things done will
no longer be hierarchical pyramids with most of the real control at the top.
They will be systems – interlaced webs of tension in which control is loose,
power diffused and centres of decision-making plural
“Governance” in other words is “networked government” – best
exemplified in Rod Rhodes’ 1996 article “The
new governance – governing without government.
Rhodes is the British political scientist who first noticed that
western government were being “hollowed out” – although privatisation in some
ways has replaced what were previously state functions with new regulatory ones.
But for the “policy networks” of this new political science literature, we might read also “lobbying” and
commercial penetration of the state..
That was also when another article appeared which isn’t referenced in
Ferguson’s copious notes but which helps place the idea of networks in a far
more insightful context than Ferguson’s book – namely Tribes,
institutions, markets, networks – a framework for societal evolution by
David Ronfeldt (RAND Corporation 1996). It's an important article which argues that each form is necessary – one does
not replace the other….With a great table of which I have selected some excerpts -
Tribe/clan
|
institution
|
market
|
Network
|
|
Key realm
|
Family/culture
|
State/government
|
economy
|
Civil society
|
Essential feature
|
Give sense of identity
|
Exercise authority
|
Allow free transactions
|
Share knowledge
|
Key Value
|
Belonging
|
order
|
freedom
|
equality?
|
Key risk
|
Nepotism
|
corruption
|
exploitation
|
Group think
|
identity
|
Solidarity
|
sovereignty
|
competition
|
Cooperation
|
Motivation
|
Survival
|
rules
|
Self-interest
|
Group empowerment
|
structure
|
Acephalous
|
hierarchical
|
atomised
|
Flat
|
All this reminds me of some other typologies -
In the early 20th Century, Max Weber had considered that the
fundamental question of our time was why people were prepared to obey those
with power and suggested that we granted legitimacy to those endowed with “traditional”,
“charismatic” or “rational-legal” authority.
Etzioni (1975) also identifies three types of organizational power: coercive, utilitarian, and normative, and relates these to three types of involvement: alienative, calculative, and moral
Etzioni (1975) also identifies three types of organizational power: coercive, utilitarian, and normative, and relates these to three types of involvement: alienative, calculative, and moral
Charles Handy and Roger Harrison had a 4 part typology – but as it focused only on different types of managerial system (or cultures) it will not detain us here.
Anthropologist Mary Douglas developed
what she called the “grid-group” typology, consisting of four very different
“world views” – what she calls hierarchist, egalitarian, individualist and
fatalist. This came to be known as “Cultural Theory”
I came across Mary Douglas’ theory only in 2000, thanks to public admin
theorist Chris
Hood’s “The Art of the State”
which uses her typology brilliantly to help us understand the strengths,
weaknesses and risks of the various world views. I was delighted just now to
find his book now fully accessible on the internet – just click the title and then
click the appropriate button again.
I am aware of only one book-length study which compares and contrasts
these various models “Way of life theory– the underlying structure of world views, social relations and lifestyles”
– a rather disjointed dissertation by one, Michael Edward Pepperday (2009)
which I was able to download a year or so ago but whose introduction
is here.
I can't quite explain the fascination this sort of analysis has for me....It clearly has something to do with needing to tie things up in neat packages.....
Those wanting to know more can read this post
which might encourage them to have a look at this short article “A
Cultural Theory of Politics” which shows how the approach has affected a range of disciplines.
Grid, group and grade – challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is a longer and, be warned, very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive
Grid, group and grade – challenges in operationalising cultural theory for cross-national research (2014) is a longer and, be warned, very academic article although its comparative diagrams are instructive
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