THE ARCHITECTURE OF ACTOR-SYSTEM- DYNAMICS (and DIALECTICS): Theory, Methods, and Applications for Social Science Research and Societal Problems

Transcription

1 PRELIMINARY NOTEBOOK/Revised December, 2016 THE ARCHITECTURE OF ACTOR-SYSTEM- DYNAMICS (and DIALECTICS): Theory, Methods, and Applications for Social Science Research and Societal Problems ISA-FORUM CONFERENCE, VIENNA, AUSTRIA, July 10-15: Research Committee 51, Session: Modern Sociological Systems Theory in Practice Applications to Societal Problems Tom BURNS, Uppsala University, Sweden, Nora MACHADO DES JOHANSSON, ISCTE- IUL ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon, Portugal/ Gothenburg University, Sweden, Dolores CALVO, Gothenburg University, Sweden, Ugo CORTE, University of Uppsala, Sweden, Alexandra WALKER, Australian National University, Australia, Ilan KELMAN, University College London, England and Monica FREITAS, Faculty of Social Science, Nova University of Lisbon, Portugal. In collaboration with Tom Baumgartner, Marcus Carson, Philippe DeVille, Tom Dietz, Helena Flam, Peter Hall, David Meeker, Ewa Roszkowska, and Christian Stohr Abstract: These notes outline a social science systems theory, actor-system dynamics, drawing on the work of Walter Buckley, Margaret Archer, Thomas Baumgartner, Tom R. Burns, Philippe DeVille, Felix Geyer, and others. 1 The work has shown how key social science concepts are readily incorporated and applied in system descriptions and analyses: institutional, cultural, and normative conceptualizations; concepts of human agency and social movements; diverse types of roles and social relationships; social systems in relation to one another and in relation to the natural environment and material systems. A key feature of the theory is its consideration of social systems as open to, and interacting with, their social and physical environments. Through interaction with their environment as well as through internal processes such systems acquire new properties and are 1 Walter Buckley (deceased), Thomas Baumgartner, Philippe DeVille, Tom R. Burns, L. and David Meeker initiated the ASD development in the early 1970s. Many others have been involved in the theoretical and/or empirical work since the first initiatives, in particular, Hayward Alker, Jr. (deceased), Marcus Carson, Ugo Corte, Tom Dietz, Helena Flam, Cary Fowler, Anna Gomolinska, Peter Hall, Nora Machado, Anders Olsson, Dusko Sekulic, Christrian Stohr, Ewa Roszkowska, and Alexandra Walker. Also, significant contributions were made by: Svein Andersen, Dolores Calvo, Erik Engdahl, Tuula Ericksson, Monica Freitas, Bernard Gauci, Anne Kalliokoski, Masoud Kamali, Ilan Kelman, Maja Lilja, Tormod Lunde, Patrick McGinty, Rieneir de Man, Atle Midttun, Johan Nylander, Stephen Schneider, Nina Witoszek, Allison Woodward, and Chang Cheng Zhou 1

2 transformed, resulting in evolutionary developments. The theory incorporates in its framework human agents as creative (destructive) transforming forces. They may choose to deviate, oppose, or act in innovative and even perverse ways relative to the norms, values, and social structures of the particular social system(s) within which they act and interact. The theoretical approach has led to a number of applications, several of which will be briefly illustrated/exemplified in these notes: (1) the conceptualization of human agents as creative (as well as destructive), and drivers of innovation and creative development within particular social system contexts; (2) the conceptualization of collective consciousness in terms of selfrepresentation and self-reflectivity and applied, for instance, in analyses of the gaps and dilemmas of international law regarding gender equality; (3) a theory identifying the universal features of groups and organizations and their dynamics; (4) a theory of paradigm shifts in policy regimes and regulative institutions, considered in, for instance, a number of case studies of major EU policy developments and shifts; (5) societal transition and transformation: selected historical cases as well as the ongoing sustainability revolution; (6) studies of governance, policy-making, and societal problem-solving. Keywords: agency, social rule systems, social structure, collective-consciousness, group & organizational systems, production functions and algorithms, innovation, cognitive paradigms, policy-paradigm-shifts, system transitions and revolutions Addresses: Tom R. BURNS tom.burns@soc.uu.se; Nora MACHADO DES JOHANSSON noramachado@gmail.com; Dolores CALVO dolores.calvo@sociology.gu.se; Ugo CORTE ugo.corte@gmail.com; Alexandra WALKER alexandrawalk@gmail.com; Ilan KELMAN ilan_kelman@hotmail.com; Monica FREITAS monicaflul@hotmail.com 2

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT. PART ONE. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ACTOR SYSTEM DYNAMICS. Note 1. Foundations: An Overview Note 2. Socially And Materially Embedded Human Agency Note 3. Rule System Theory: rules, rule complexes, and rule regimes as the grammar of social life; as the basis of institutional and cultural arrangements and the behavioral patterns and outcomes they generate. Note 4. Social Interaction Note 5. Universal Social System Action and Interaction: Maintenance, Reproduction, and Sustainability Note 6. Power and Meta-power and the Structuring and Transformation of Systems (Institutions, Cultural Formations, Socio-technical systems, Infrastructures and built environments, Complex Social Organization). Note 7. Energy, Resources, Technologies, Natural Resources, And The Environment Note 8. Methodology, Research Design, and Multiple Methods: NOTE 9. ASD s Approach to Social Systems (Groups, Organizations, Communities, Complex institutional Arrangements) and their Behavior PART TWO: APPLICATIONS Note 10. Individual and Collective Consciousness: Context, Agent(s), Rule Systems, Resources Note 11. Paradigm and Collective Cognitive Studies: Contexts, Agents, Rule systems, Resources Note 12. Emotional Regimes and Feeling Rules 3

4 Note 13. Creativity and Innovation, Entrepreneurship: Context, Agents, Rule Systems, Resources Note 14. Group and Organization Analyses: Context, Agents, Rule Systems, Resources & Technologies Note 15. Social Science Theory of Games and Human Interaction Note 16. Socio-economic systems, Capitalism, Markets, And Financial Systems. Note 17. Administrative Systems and Bureaucracy Note 18. Socio-technical systems, Complexity, and Risk Analysis Note 19. Democracy Studies: Post-parliamentary Democracy, The Future of Democracy Note 20. Religious Processes and Movements Note 21. Studies of Governance, Policymaking, and Social Problems Note 22. Studies of policy-making; Welfare, gender, chemicals, food, energy, Baltic fishing, sustainable development: multiple agents using different types of knowledge and resources/technologies, exercising power in differing institutional, cultural, and material contexts of policymaking. Note 23. Comparative Lobbying Studies: Lobbying with Respect to Diverse Policies Note 24. Racism, Xenophobia, And Structural Discrimination Note 25. Societal Evolution and Transformation Note 26. The Theory of Socio-cultural Evolution with Human Agency and Multiple Selection Mechanisms. Note 27. Sustainability Development Note 28. The ASD Perspective on Social System Adaptation to Disaster Risks and Climate Change and its Limitations Note 29. Revolutions Note 30. The Sustainability Revolution 4

5 PART ONE. THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ACTOR SYSTEM DYNAMICS Note 1. FOUNDATIONS: OVERVIEW, VALUE-ADDED, SCOPE 1. Overview The research of actor-system-dynamics (ASD) encompasses, among other things, a conceptualization of a multi-level, dynamic social systems framework with specification of agents, who are embedded in and operating through and upon social structures and their contexts, utilizing materials, tools and technologies in their interaction and production processes. In contrast to the theories of Talcott Parsons (1951) and Niklas Luhmann (1955), it is a non-functionalist theory, although the functionality (and non-functionality) of systems constructed by human agents is an essential consideration. FIGURE HERE: ASD MODEL OF SOCIAL SYSTEMS The ASD work has shown how key social science concepts are readily incorporated and applied in system description and analysis: institutional, cultural, and normative conceptualizations; concepts of human agency and social movements; diverse types of role 5

6 systems and social relationships; social systems in relation to one another and in relation to the natural environment and material systems. A major feature of the theory is its consideration of social systems as open to, and interacting with, their social and physical environments. Through interaction with their environment as well as through internal processes such systems acquire new properties and are transformed, resulting in evolutionary developments. The theory incorporates in its framework human agents as creative (destructive) transforming forces. They may choose to deviate, oppose, or act in innovative and even perverse ways relative to the norms, values, and social structures of the particular social system(s) within which they act and interact. Complex, dynamic social systems are described and analyzed in ASD theory in terms of stabilizing and destabilizing mechanisms with human agents playing a strategic role in many of these processes. Institutions and cultural formations of society are conceptualized as rule systems carried by, transmitted, and reformed through individual and collective actions and interactions. On the one hand, such structures temporally prior and relatively autonomous with respect to social interaction exhibit causal force. They constrain and enable people s social actions and interactions. On the other hand, individual and collective agents through their interactions generate structural maintenance and reproduction, elaboration, and transformation. The approach is not only concerned with social structures but with such social mechanisms as morphostatic feedback processes that entail stabilizing or equilibrating mechanisms as well as morphogenetic processes of structural elaboration and transformation (Archer, 1995; Buckley, 1967, 1994; Burns et al, 1985). The approach entails systematic theorizing of individual as well as collective agents, institutions and cultural formations and their part in processes of socio-cultural reproduction and transformation. Social agents with their distinctive roles and positions, motivations and powers interact and contribute to the maintenance and reproduction as well as transformation of social systems. They establish as well as reform such structures as institutions, cultural formations, sociotechnical systems, and physical and ecological structures, always within given constraints and opportunities, and not always in ways they intend. The evolutionary selective and structuring mechanisms that reproduce, modify, or transform social structures are themselves based on institutional arrangements and distributions of powers among societal agents and social populations such as classes, political and military elites, and ethnic, and religious groups, among others. In contrast to other systems approaches in the social sciences, 2 ASD systems theory is based on the assumption of active, creative, normative (moral), transformative agents (individuals as well as collectives). With the exception of the work of Parsons (whose approach nevertheless remained in large part static), most systems approaches are largely devoid of systematic agential, cultural and institutional conceptualization. 3 Actors in our theorizing are participants in social systems as well as part of the dynamics of transformations of these systems and in the construction of new ones. Social systems consist of institutional, cultural as well as material structures. Hence, our research network has early on had a substantial group of institutionalists, developed rule system conceptions (see 2 In particular, that of Talcott Parsons (1951) and later Niklas Luhmann (1955) as well as many natural science and engineering approaches (Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1968), Jay Forrester (1961, 1968), Klir (1969), and more recently the group Biomatrix approach (Dostal, 2005), among others. One challenge has been to carry an academic conversation with other approaches and comparing the notion of socially and materially embedded agency to other conceptions of agency such as versions of rational choice, habitus, etc. 3 This was to be expected of Bertalanffy, Forrester, and Klir as well as even World Systems Theory (Wallerstein, 2004) and structural Marxism (Althusser and Balibar, 1970). 6

7 below) as a coherent social scientific foundation, and made extensive use of descriptions and analyses of institutions and cultural formations, as it still does. Several key conceptual innovations characterize ASD theory. First, social beings are creative and self-transforming agents. Human consciousness is viewed in terms of selfrepresentation and self-reflectivity at collective and individual levels. Second, cultural and institutional formations are seen as constituting the major environment of human behavior, an environment in part internalized in social agents in the form of shared rules and systems of rules. Third, interaction processes and games are considered embedded in and context dependent on cultural and institutional systems that facilitate, constrain, and, in general, influence the actions and interactions of human agents (Granovetter, 1985). Fourth, social systems are conceptualized in ASD in multi-level terms, for instance, as hierarchies of structures and processes where a higher level interaction process sets the functions and parameters of lower level interactions and related processes; this multi-level property is crucial in generating endogenously the dynamics of the system, although of course external forces also produce dynamics (see below). Fifth, ASD social systems are considered to be open to, and interacting with, their environment. Through interaction with their environment and through internal processes, such systems acquire new properties, and are transformed, resulting in their evolution and development. Sixth, social systems in the ASD perspective entail complex configurations of tensions and dissonances due to the conflicting interests and power struggles among groups. The latter lead to the generation of contradictions in institutional arrangements and cultural formations. And seventh, rule systems (the bases of institutions and cultural formations) evolve as a function of (a) human agency realized through interactions and (b) selective mechanisms in part, constructed by social agents in forming and reforming institutions but also, in part, a function of physical and ecological environments. 4 The ASD conception of social rules and rule systems is a particularly major innovation in this and related work (Burns et al, 1985, Burns and Flam, 1987, Burns and Hall, 2012). Social rule systems and rule processes are universal in human groups and organizations and are the building blocks of institutions and cultural formations; they are produced by and embodied in the practices of groups and collectivities of people: language, customs and codes of conduct, 4 The ASD Conceptualizes social and normative equilibria in interaction and games, social systems, and socio - cultural evolution. This is a major contribution bringing back notions of equilibria into social science analysis of systems. Equilibrium/disequilibrium analysis is applied to interaction and change processes, identifying conditions where equilibrium obtains or fails to obtain. Normative equilibria are expected in interaction structures (or games), e.g. in games among members of a collaborative or solidary group; even when status differentials among actors results in asymmetric interactions and unequal allocation outcomes. In general, there is consideration of the human production of social and normative equilibria and disequilibria under specifiable conditions. For instance, In international relations, multiple pacts or treaties provide a normative basis of equilibrium or partial equilibrium among interacting agents: example of the Swiss Federal State after a civil war in Or Westphalia agreement from This entailed what ultimately became a relatively long-term stable European order where each independent state adhered to the norm of not interfering in another s domestic affairs; and constrained each s ambitions and actions in the internal affairs of other European states. According to Kissinger (World Order, 201X), England played a key role as a balancer of the equilibrium (a form of relational control) until the outbreak of WWI. But the Westphalia order was eventually undermined by the rising major power of Germany, new military technologies, emergence of nationalism, shifts in alliances, setting the stage for the breakdown of the Westphalia order. 4 The Cold War provided conditions for a quasi-equilibrium: mutual destructive deterrence. This equilibrium was not, in general, normatively based. Each side in the bipolar world had a strong incentive not to disturb the equilibrium of mutual deterrence. But at the same, each was seeking innovation that would break the deadlock, providing an advantage to one or the other and hence disequilibrating. 7

8 norms, laws, and the social institutions of family community, state, and economic organizations such as business enterprises and markets. Most human social activity in all of its extraordinary variety is organized and regulated by socially produced rules and systems of rules. Rule processes -- the making, interpretation, and implementation of social rules as well as their reformulation and transformation -- are often accompanied by the mobilization and exercise of power, and by conflict and struggle. Social rules and systems of rules are, therefore, not transcendental abstractions in the ASD perspective. As a consequence, human actors (individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and other collectivities) interpret, adapt, implement, and transform rules, sometimes cautiously, other times radically (Burns and Dietz, 2001). Such behavior explains much cultural and institutional dynamics. Major struggles in human history revolve around the formation and reformation of core economic, administrative, and political institutions of society, the particular rule regimes defining social relationships, roles, rights and authority, and obligations and duties as well as the general rules of the game in these and related domains of social action. 2. Value-added and Scope (a) The actor-systems-dynamics work has shown that social systems modeling and analysis are compatible with and can readily incorporate social science concepts relating to the cognitive, decision-making, and strategic capabilities of social actors as purposeful, selfreflexive, and transformative beings. Such social actors or agents refer not only to individuals but to social groups, organizations, alliances and nations, which have the capability of making collective decisions and carrying out collective action. The processes and social logic of making decisions and acting would obviously be very different for individuals or small groups as compared to large collectivities. (b) Through its conceptual language and robust conceptual and methodological toolbox, ASD facilitates collaborative and integrated research among scholars from diverse fields in the social sciences as well as between the social sciences and natural sciences, as demonstrated in work collected in this notebook and other publications. In the contemporary academy, these fields remain, infortunately, highly fragmented. ASD along with other social system theories (World System Theory (Emmanuel Wallerstein and colleagues); Talcott Parsons, Niklas Luhmann, Neo-Marxist theorizing) contribute to overcoming the fragmentation of knowledge and knowledge production systems. (c) ASD's substantive theory and methodology contributions are many and diverse: rule system theory -- a type of social structural theory; a theory of social interaction and games; socially and materially embedded agency; a theory of groups and organizations; collective and individual consciousness theory; the theory of societal production algorithms and functions; a theory of socio-cultural evolution and revolution; a theory of development and sustainable development; and more. (d) The accumulated research -- launching a meta-theory together with multiple substantive theories and their applications -- is arguably far more comprehensive theoretically, empirically and policy-wise than the framework of Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann. This is indicated by the extensive and innovative notes collected in this notebook. (e) ASD is, of course, incomplete. It has neglected several areas of important social phenomena: 8

9 gender and aging issues and discrimination; on the other hand, class and ethnic "otherism" have been addressed in the ASD research program (see Notes 16 and 24) disorganization, disorder, anarchic conditions and processes in social life (a few cases of collapsing social systems have been investigated and presented (see Burns and Hall, 2012) transition from orderly social organization to disintegration, failed corporations and failed states, among others. modeling and simulating complex social systems (although there have been several projects and presentations at economics and sociological conferences, none of the results has up to now been fully written up and published). Selected Publications Archer, Margaret, 1995 Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Walter Buckley 1998, Society A Complex Adaptive System : Essays in Social Theory, London: Routledge. Walter Buckley 1967 Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Baumgartner,T., T.R.Burns and P. DeVille1979 "Acteurs, jeux et systèms. Essai sur la dialectique de la structuration des systèmes sociaux." In Actes du Congrès de L'AFCET, Petits Groupes et grand systèmes. Paris. Baumgartner,T., T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1977 "The Description and Analysis of System Stability and Transformation: Multi-level Concepts and Methodology." Quality & Quantity, 11: Baumgartner,T., T.R. Burns, P. DeVille, and D. Meeker 1975 "A Systems Model of Conflict and Change in Planning Systems." General Systems Yearbook, 20: Baumgartner, T., T. R. Burns, and P. DeVille 1986 The Shaping of Socio-Economic Systems. London/New York: Gordon and Breach. (appears with a new Foreword, published in 2015 by Routledge) Baumgartner, T., T.R. Burns, T. Dietz, N. Machado) 2003 The Theory of Actor-System Dynamics: Human Agency, Rule Systems, and Cultural Evolution. In: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS). Oxford: UNESCO, EOLSS Publishers, Oxford. Baumgartner,T., T.R.Burns, and P. DeVille 1978 "Actors, Games and Systems: The Dialectics of Social Action and System Structuring." In R.F. Geyer and J. van der Zouwen (eds), Sociocybernetics. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. Burns,T.R., T. Baumgartner, and Philippe DeVille 1985 Man, Decisions, Society. London/New York: Gordon and Breach. Burns, T.R The Sociology of Complex Systems: An Overview of Actor-Systems- Dynamics World Futures: The Journal of General Evolution, Vol. 62: Burns, T.R System Theories In: The Encyclopedia of Sociology, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Mass. 9

10 Burns, T.R. and P. DeVille 2007 Dynamic Systems Theory In: Clifton D. Bryant and D.L.Peck (eds),the Handbook of 21 st Century Sociology, Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, California. Burns, T.R. and P. DeVille1999 On Social Equilibria. Paper presentated at the International Economic Association s XIIth World Congress, Buenos Aires, Argentina, August, T.R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska 2006 Economic and Social Equilibria: The Perspective of GGT. Optimum-Studia Ekonomiczne Nr 3(31). Tom R. Burns and A. Gomolinska 2001 Normative Equilibria: The Perspective of the General Theory of Games. Paper presented at the American Sociological Association, Annual Meeting, Anaheim, California, August T. R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska 2001 Rethinking the Nash Equilibrium: The Perspective of Normative Equilibria in the General Theory of Games. Paper presented at the Rational Choice/Group Processes Conference, August 17, 2001, American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Anaheim, California. Available at: T. R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska 2004 Fuzzy Games and Equilibria: The Perspective of the General Theory of Games. In: S. K. Pal, L. Polkowski, and A. Skowron (eds.) Rough- Neural Computing: Techniques for Computing with Words. Springer Verlag, Berlin/London. Luhmann, Niklas Social Systems. Translated by John Bednarz, with Dirk Baecker. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Parsons, Talcott The Social System. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. 10

11 Note 2. THE CONCEPT OF SOCIALLY AND MATERIALLY EMBEDDED HUMAN AGENCY AND INTERACTION Individual and collective agents are socially and materially embedded at the same time that they impact on and through their environments. More specifically: 1. Human individuals and collective agents act within constraints and facilitating factors 2. Embedded agency entail multiple motives, with or without explicit moral norms. 3. Humans agents are capable of creative/destructive action as they act upon and through their social situations ASD s Embedded Agency Two fundamentally different conceptions of the human being and human action as well as system behavior underlie most modeling of social behavior and social systems. In one, social actors are viewed as essential forces that structure and restructure social systems and the conditions of human activity and development. The individual, the historic personality enjoys an extensive freedom to act within and upon social systems, and in this sense is to some degree independent of them. In the other view, social actors are either not found or are automata following the established rules or given roles and functions in a world which they cannot basically change. Social action and movements as creative-destructive forces are absent. To a large extent systems theories have been based on the second view under the influence of a deterministic natural science paradigm and, in a certain sense akin to system engineering (e.g., Forrester s system dynamics (1961, 1968), Meadows et al, 1974), and many others). This approach tends to ignore or even deny freedom of decision and transformative opportunities available to human agents in much of this system modeling and analysis. System sustainability and evolution tend to be considered natural and taken for granted, rather than being treated as problematic and subject to struggle among agents and transformation, possibly even collapse. ASD s theory of social action rejects the conception of an abstract, super-rational actor underlying rational choice, economics and game theories. Or more precisely, it treats games be-ween rational egoists as only a special, limiting case (see later discussion). ASD assumes, instead, that human agency -- choice, action and interaction -- are socially embedded (Granovetter 1985). The focus is on socially constituted agents, their roles, role relationships, cultural and institutional frames that orient and constrain them in their interactions. The theory identifies the organizing principles, social relationships and rules that actors apply to specified interaction situations and that make for particular action and interaction logics (Karpik 1981; Wittrock 1986) or socially conditioned rationalities (Bums and Flam 1987). In other words, rationality is a function of the rules, rather than rules being a simple expression of rationality (see Mirowski 1981:604). 11

12 The notion of context dependent rationality leads to the categorization and analysis of institutionally and culturally specific rationalities in, for instance, in market, bureaucratic, political, religious, and family and community interaction contexts (Bums et al. 1993). For example, actors with competitive relations in a market setting would behave according to individual decision rules and norms calling for attention to monetary gains and losses for self. In the purest case, social values and norms such as those relating to solidarity and cooperation would not come into play. On the other hand, in interaction settings where solidary relations among equals apply, as in friendship and family networks, participants would be predisposed to utilize joint or collective decision procedures and to concern themselves with identifying and choosing outcomes that are "right," "fair," or "just" according to distributive norms characteristic of friendship or family networks. Consideration of gains and losses only for oneself would be considered improper and a normative breach of the relationship (see later discussion). In sum, ASD s theory of human agency conceptualizes multiple, context-dependent types of agency and rationalities and tries to identify the cultural and institutional foundations of some of the more important of these rationalities (Bums and Flam 1987). The ASD framework outlined in these notes provides a useful point of departure for constructing theoretical models of human social action and interaction. These models stress the culturally defined and regulated nature of human action and interaction, but also its creative and dynamic features, its capability of transforming its own material and sociocultural conditions of action. This perspective is a radical departure from the RCT notion of abstract, rational individuals outside cultural forms, institutional arrangements, social bonds, roles, and normative rules. The concepts of culture, institutions, social relationships, roles and norms are readily incorporated into the social systems description of social action and interaction. The concept of the social embeddedness of action and interaction leads one to look for relational specific and role based preference structures, decision procedures, and normative rules that shape and guide actors behavior vis-à-vis one another (see Figure 1). ASD s theory of social action rejects the conception of an abstract, super-rational actor underlying rational choice, economics and game theories. Or more precisely, it treats games be-ween rational egoists as only a special, limiting case (see later discussion). ASD assumes, instead, that human agency -- choice, action and interaction -- are socially embedded (Granovetter 1985). The focus is on socially constituted agents, their roles, role relationships, cultural and institutional frames that orient and constrain them in their interactions. The theory identifies the organizing principles, social relationships and rules that actors apply to specified interaction situations and that make for particular action and interaction logics (Karpik 1981; Wittrock 1986) or socially conditioned rationalities (Bums and Flam 1987). In other words, rationality is a function of the rules, rather than rules being a simple expression of rationality (see Mirowski 1981:604). The notion of context dependent rationality leads to the categorization and analysis of institutionally specific rationalities in, for instance, market, bureaucratic, political, religious, and family and community interaction settings (Bums et al. 1993). For example, actors with competitive relations in a market setting would behave according to individual decision rules and norms calling for attention to monetary gains and losses for self. In the purest case, social values and norms such as those relating to solidarity and cooperation would not come into play. On the other hand, in interaction settings where solidary relations among equals apply, 12

13 as in friendship and family networks, participants would be predisposed to utilize joint or collective decision procedures and to concern themselves with identifying and choosing outcomes that are "right," "fair," or "just" according to distributive norms characteristic of friendship or family networks. Consideration of gains and losses only for oneself would be considered improper and a normative breach of the relationship (see later discussion) Multiple Context Dependent Agencies. ASD s theory of human agency conceptualizes multiple, context-dependent types of agency and rationalities and identifies the cultural and institutional foundations of some of the more important of these rationalities (Bums and Flam 1987). The ASD framework outlined in these notes provides a useful point of departure for constructing theoretical models of human social action and interaction. These models stress the culturally defined and regulated nature of human action and interaction, but also its creative and dynamic features, its capability of transforming its own material and sociocultural conditions of action. This perspective is a radical departure from the RCT notion of abstract, rational individuals outside cultural forms, institutional arrangements, social bonds, roles, and normative rules. Bur the two theories have substantially different conceptions of human agency and its realization in action and interaction. There are three key dimensions that characterized ASD and differentiates its conception of agency from that RCT: (1) the sociocultural character of human agency; (2) the normative and moral aspects of human agency; and (3) the creative/destructive capability of human agents.6 In addition, SGT accepts - and incorporates - the principle that human actors have bounded factual knowledge and computational capability (Simon 1957, 1977). At the same time, of course, actors have extraordinary cultural knowledgeability: knowledge of cultural forms, institutions in the modem world such as family, market, government, business or work organization, hospitals, schools, a variety of social relationships (in the institutional settings) and a number of different roles which they play in modern life. To examine the dimensions in more detail: A. Embeddedness Dimension. Human agents as socially embedded, relational, interdependent. ASD assumes socially constructed agency. Human actors are cultural beings, having acquired or learned social rules, institutions, relationships, and roles. 5 Such agency is an historical product, and varies across cultures and civilizations. ASD rejects the notion of a single, universal, utilitarian type of agent (as in RCT), and instead conceptualizes a role or relationally based concept of rationality, judgment and action, that is socially embedded. This implies that there is not a single Rationality, for instance, that based on utilitarianism, but many rationalities, that is modes or logics of judging, choosing, and acting. These are linked to actors' different roles, relationships, institutional settings, and cultural frameworks. B. The Moral Dimension. The socially constructed agency of SGT - stressing the place of human norms and values in social action and interaction - has a more or less well-defined normative aspect; moral sentiments enter into actors' judgment and action processes. 6 Actors' 5 RCT assumes an asocial (or trans-social) being oriented to the consequences of action for self (and only for self). Agency is outside of sociocultural context and outside history. Of course, actors are interdependent, their actions have consequences for one another. But they have no defined social relationships, shared meanings, or cultural forms. 6 In RCT norms and ethical considerations are not part of the conception of human agency. The individual actor has subjectively based interests ("self-interest") and concerns himself only with consequences for self. Questions of ethics or of moral sentiments are not of explicit interest. In any case, such sentiments would simply be understood as incorporated into actors' preference structures. In general, matters of morality and ethical behavior have to be raised and analyzed outside the theory.' 13

14 relationships engender notions of fairness and justice, e.g., principles of distributive justice. Their roles function as sources of moral obligation: to obey or to resist; to cooperate or to refuse to cooperate; to help or to expect help (for example, in the latter case, members of a church group or other voluntary organization are expected to help specific categories of persons (the poor, homeless, criminals) but not others (communists, rival religious communities)). In general, actors are motivated by - and their judgments and actions biased by - moral and ethical aspects of their relationships with others. Utilitarian or instrumental aspects are not unimportant in the ASD perspective. Indeed, they are often normatively indicated, as in market, technical, or other instrumental settings. Moreover, such considerations find their place in all culture frames. But these aspects of human action must be seen as a part of a complex, multidimensional rationality of human judgment and action. C. The Creative/destructive structuring dimension. ASD states that human actors have a creative/ destructive capability. They innovate, creating new technologies, new strategies, new rules, institutional arrangements, cultural forms, and, of course, new games and even new types of agents to play the games. They structure and restructure preferences, sets of options, and outcome structures, indeed entire decision and game systems in which they and others participate. Thus, one may speak about the choice about choice, or the game about a game, as instances of the structuring capability of human agents. In making and transforming their conditions of actions and interaction - always within certain constraints - actors manifest the dynamic construction of agency. In the course of their actions and interactions, actors modify and reform not only their material and cultural conditions but agency itself. The human development of knowledge, technologies and new action strategies enables agents to overcome or to transcend some, but not all, material and social constraints. Agents exhibit this bounded freedom when they explore and develop new ways of thinking, organizing, and acting, in many instances in response to crisis, predicaments, or emerging problems. Human actors - individuals as well as organized groups, organizations and nation-states - are active, creative /destructive forces in the making of history. They shape and reshape cultural forms and institutions as well as their material circumstances, as in recent developments in Eastern Europe. Their creative actions are, nevertheless, subject to cultural, social and material constraints. Actors cannot shape their conditions and determine their future as they will. These changes may be brought about intentionally or unintentionally, in the latter case, for example, through mistakes, performance failures and ignorance (for instance, through the aggregate effects of their interactions)." Interaction situations lacking social equilibria usually give rise to uncertainty~ unpredictability, and confusion, and motivate actors to try, individually or collectively, to restructure the situation. In their restructuring activities, actors typically engage in reflective processes and make "choices about choice" and participate in games about games, or meta-games (Bums et al. 1993). This includes the capability to structure and restructure their preferences, outcomes and outcome structures, and, indeed, entire decision and game systems in which they participate. Through structuring activity, human agents also create, maintain and change institutions as well as collective or organized agents: organizations, movements, the state, market and bureaucratic organizations. Socially creative/ destructive - but constrained - human choice and action plays an important role in reshaping the conditions of social action and cultural evolution (Bums and Dietz 1992). 14

15 From the perspective of the SGT framework, institutional arrangements - the social rules and roles of formal organizations, communities, networks, etc. - are continually maintained and reproduced as well as modified through human agency as well as social structural and ecological selectivity. The modifications are substantial in some instances, entailing shifts between, or transformations of, core organizing principles and particular normative rules and systems of rules (e.g., the rational-legal bureaucracy, democratic forms, market arrangements) in modem societies. Various social agents are actively and creatively engaged in such processes determine to a greater or lesser extent which rule regime or social order is to govern a sphere of activity or social setting (Bums and Flam 1987).16 Agents with relevant commitments and vested interests struggle to maintain established systems, or to limit changes in them. Others act openly or covertly to modify, avoid or transform the systems. FIGURE 1. The SGT Social Interaction Model At the core of SGT framework are concepts such as norms, values and judgment processes, enabling one to describe and analyze actors' orientations about right and wrong and good and bad in particular interaction situations. 7 (Example to be added) Most discussions on ethical issues assume some form of moral agency, but one is all too often not told about the different social contexts - cultural frames, social relationships and roles - which are responsible for the formation and conceptualization of this agency. Thus, 7 In contrast, rational choice and game theories provide little or no analytical capability to address such matters, hi large part because they lack conceptual tools to deal with social values, norms, value predicaments and conflicts. The utilitarian foundation is simply too all too constraining. 15

16 roles in market and administrative settings entail differing normative guidelines and directives. In market settings, it is appropriate to make one's own calculations and to pursue one's own interests - within certain limits of course. In an administrative setting, one's role as a subordinate entails the norm to carry out orders, to obey the policies and regulations of an authority. Of course, there are limits to the realization or implementation of roles in such settings. When one follows the logic of the market to an extreme, one becomes a ruthless "exploiter" of others or a "bandit." Or following the logic of a bureaucratic role to an extreme makes one into the "bureaucratic personality," "heartless" and also often ineffective. In both of these cases, the formal or institutionalized morality is constituted in social roles. Of course, in practice, humans as moral agents often take an active part in the interpretation and reformulation of their moral positions and obligations in the context of market, administrative or other social settings. The sociological analysis of ethical processes should and can take into account the particularities of social situations. Much social action - including the judgment acts underlying specific strategic acts - is role and situationally based. In general, social activities are patterned on the basis of the different roles humans play in different social contexts and social systems. Human beings in their various roles are recognized as social agents with particular moral orientations or sentiments. Thus, one is led to examine how different roles function as sources of moral obligation. Selected publications T. R. B urns 1973 "A Structural Theory of Social Exchange." Acta Sociologica, 16: Reprinted in A. Wells (ed), Contemporary Theory in Sociology, T. R. Burns 1990 Models of Social and Market Exchange: Toward a Sociological Theory of Games and Human Interaction In: D. Calhoun, M. W. Meyer, and W. R. Scott (eds), Structures of Power and Constraint: Essays in Honor of Peter M. Blau. New York: Cambridge University Press. T.R. Burns 1994 "Two Conceptions of Agency: Rational Choice Theory and The Social Theory of Action." In: P. Sztompka (ed), Human Agency and The Reorientation of Social Theory. Amsterdam: Gordon & Breach. T.R. Burns and E. Roszkowska (2016) Rational Choice Theory: Toward a Psychological, Social, and Material Contextualization of Human Choice Behavior. Theoretical Economics Letters, 2016, Vol. 6 (April #). T. R. Burns, J.C. Caldas, A.N. Costa) 2007 "Rethinking Economics: the Potential Contribution of the Classics." Cambridge Journal of Economics, 31:25-40 T. R. Burns and A. Gomolinska 1999 A Uniform Framework for Representing Social Actions and their Interactions. Presented at the Session of the Polish Society of Logic and Philosophy of Sciences, 11 th International Congress of Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland, August 20-26,

17 Note 3. RULE SYSTEM THEORY: Rules, Rule Complexes, And Rule Regimes as The Grammars of Social Life And The Basis Of Institutional And Cultural Arrangements And Their Behavioral Patterns And Outcomes. 3.1 Introduction. Most human social activity in all of its extraordinary variety is organized and regulated by socially produced and reproduced rules and systems of rules. Such rules are not transcendental abstractions. They are embodied in groups and collectivities of people in their language, customs and codes of conduct, norms, and laws and in the social institutions of the modern world, including family, community, market, business enterprises and government agencies. The making, interpretation, and implementation of social rules are universal in human societies, as are their reformulation and transformation. Human agents (individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and other collectivities) produce, carry, and reform these systems of social rules, but this frequently takes place in ways they neither intend nor expect and often accompanied by conflict and struggle. The theory conceptualizes and applies in a variety of applications: 1. The concepts of rules, rule complexes, and rule regimes 2. Human agency in the formation, revision, and transformation of rules and rule regimes 3. The interplay between rules and social action and interaction 4. The architecture of rule systems and their social logics in behavioral patterns and practices 5. Ambiguities, fuzziness, and contradictions in rules and rule systems 6. The evolution of rule systems as a function of multiple selection mechanisms Most human social activity in all of its extraordinary variety is organized and regulated by socially produced and reproduced rules and systems of rules (Burns and Flam, 1987; Flam and Carson, 2008; Giddens, 1984; Harré, 1979). 8 Such rules are not transcendental abstractions. They are embodied in groups and collectivities of people in their language, customs and codes of conduct, norms, and laws and in the social institutions of the modern world, including family, community, market, business enterprises and government agencies. The making, interpretation, and implementation of social rules are universal in human societies, as are their reformulation and transformation. Human agents (individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and other collectivities) produce, carry, and reform these systems of social rules, but this frequently takes place in ways they neither intend nor expect. This is so even in complex situations with multiple actors playing different roles and engaging in a variety of interaction patterns. As Harré and Secord (1972:12) pointed out, It is the self-monitoring following of rules and plans that we believe to be the social scientific analogue of the working of generative causal mechanisms in the processes which produce the non-random patterns studied by natural scientists. 8 Social rule system theory (Burns et al, 1985, Burns and Flam, 1987) was formulated and developed in the 1980s making a modest contribution to the new institutionalism (Powell and DiMaggio,1991). 17

18 On the macro-level of culture and institutional arrangements, we speak of rule system complexes such as the language, cultural codes and forms, shared paradigms, norms and rules of the game. 9 On the actor level these translate into roles, particular norms, strategies, action patterns and practices, and social grammars (for example, procedures of order, turn-taking and voting in committees and democratic bodies). 10 Social grammars of action are associated with culturally defined institutional domains and roles, indicating particular ways of thinking, judging, and acting. Social rule systems play then an important role in cognitive processes, in part by enabling actors to organize and to frame perceptions in a given institutional setting or domain. On the basis of a more or less common rule system, key, interaction-enabling questions can be intersubjectively and collectively answered: what is going on in this situation; what kind of activity is this; who is who in the situation, what specific roles are they playing; what is being done; why is this being done? The participating actors as well as knowledgeable observers can understand the situation, even simulate and predict what will happen in the interactions on the basis of the applied rules. In this sense, rule-based paradigms supply interpretative schemes but also the concrete basis for actors to plan and judge their actions and interactions. The cultural complex of rule systems contributes to making social life more rather than less orderly and predictable it solves problems of existential uncertainty within the group or community bearing and adhering to the culture (Burns and Dietz 1992; Burns and Flam 1987; Giddens, 1984), although the tension between the regulated and unregulated, order and disorder remains. Finally, social rules are also important in normative and moral communications about social action and interaction. Participants refer to the rules in giving accounts, in justifying or criticizing what is being done (or not done), in arguing for what should or should not be done, and also in their social attribution of who should or should not be blamed for performance failures, or credited with success. Actors also exploit rules when they give accounts in order to try to justify certain actions or failures to act, as part of a strategy to gain legitimacy, or to convince others that particular actions are "right and proper" in the context. 3.1 Universal Interaction Grammars. 11 Rule system theory has identified and applied universal rule grammars in a comparative perspective to human interaction and games as well as diverse institutions and institutional arrangements: bureaucracies, judicial systems, markets, democratic associations, etc. 12 The conceptualization of universal interaction grammars enables us to systematically investigate and analyze group and organizational structures, interaction situations and performances, which rule regimes socially defined and regulated and to do this comparatively -- as one would compare the grammars of different languages. This is done in 9 Lotman (1975) and Posner (1989) offer valuable semiotic perspectives with important (not yet analyzed on our part) parallels. 10 There are not only role grammars but semantics and pragmatics, hence processes of meaning, interpretation, and adaptation associated with rule application and implementation. 11 The focus here is on relational and organizational grammars. There are other types of social grammars such as those of language and money (Burns and DeVille). 12 Although the focus of the research is on modern social organizations, the theory is applicable to fa milies, clans, communities, etc. The theoretical and empirical research clearly demonstrated that there was no scale problem. 18

19 Burns and Flam (1987) in terms of defining social relationships and interaction patterns of diverse institutions. 13 Humanly constructed rules, rule complexes, and rule regimes serve three (at least) basic functions/uses in all social life: (1) coordination/direction of social action and interaction; (2) understanding/simulation of what is going on or will go on in the future, and (3) referents in giving and asking for accounts, generating normative discourses, for instance of praise and of critique. The rules making up rules regimes consists of three qualitatively different kinds: descriptive or declarative rules describing or defining reality, action or directive/regulative rules, and evaluative rules defining what is worth-while, good, valuable (or their opposites, bads ). Rule system theory provides a model which identifies key specific rule categories which underlie or, when enacted, generate particular group or organizational properties: the rules concern a group s particular participants and their relations and social structure, its times and places, its values and goals, its activities and procedures and productions, its materials and technologies used in group activities and productions (see Figure 1). They concern the finite and universal rule base of group social action and interaction, its material, social structural, and agential conditions. In the model of group and organizational rule regimes, ten (10) categories of rules are identified (see Tables 1) concerning group agency conditions, social structure, interaction, material conditions, and time and space: A. Four categories concern agency relating to: Identity Rules (I), Group membership Rules (II), Shared values, ideals, and goals (III), and Shared knowledge and beliefs (IV); B. Group social relations and structure (category V); C. Group interaction and production orders/patterning (categories VI, VII, VIII); D. Material and resource conditions of group action and interaction (IX); and E (category X). Rules relating to group times and space conditions for the group to meet and interact. 14 Table 1: Key Types of Rule Categories Specifying Group Conditions, Structures, and Processes Type I. Identity rules Who are we? What symbolizes or defines us? Type II. Membership, Involvement, and Recruitment Rules Who belongs, who doesn t? What characterizes members? How are they recruited? Type III. Rules concerning shared value orientations and ideals What does the group consider good and bad? Type IV. Rules concerning shared beliefs and models What do we know and believe about ourselves, our group behavior, and our environment. 13 In the sociological game theory work of Burns and Gomolinska (2000), Burns, Gomolinksa, and Meeker (2001), and Burns and Roszkowska (2005, 2007, 2008), games and established interaction settings are characterized and distinguished in terms of their particular grammars grammars which allow one to predict the interaction patterns and equilibria of interaction settings and games. 14 Rules and rule regimes need not be explicit buy may be tacit, or partially tacit. At the same time, group members and outsiders may have misconceptions about the rules and their application. Thus, group members may deceive themselves and others about what rules they are applying and what they mean in practice, deception may be institutionalized in the form of ready-made discourses defining or explain a regime as just or efficient or optimal for example, a market regime when it is not. Members as well as outsiders may see what they have been led to see and understand. 19

20 Type V. Social relational and structural rules. How do we relate to one another, what is our social structure? What are the authority and status differences characterizing the group? How do we interact and reciprocate with one another and with the leadership? Type VI. Procedures and production rules. What are our characteristic activities, practices, production programs, ceremonies and rituals? How do we coordinate activities and make collective decisions? Type VII. Rules for dealing with environmental factors and agents. How do we cope with, make gains in the environment, dominate, or avoid environment threats? Type VIII. Rules for changing core group bases, in particular the rule regime itself. How should we go about changing group structures and processes, our goals, or our practices? Type IX. Technology and resource rules. What are appropriate technologies and materials we should use in our activities (and possibly those that are excluded)? Type X. Time and Place Rules What are our appropriate places and times? Elsewhere we present in more detail these ten universal rule types or categories that make up group and organizational rule regimes. Each regime is a cognitive-normative framework defining among other things group identity, its purposes, structural architecture, role relations including status and authority relations, groups divisions, procedures, characteristic activities, and patterns of interaction and production/outputs. 15 The regime may be understood as consisting of a collective codebook, cultural tools & social organizational principles. There is an architecture of any rule regime, the cognitive-normative basis of the formation and functioning any functioning or operating group or organization. The ten universal rule categories presented here may not be fully specified in all interaction situations. Typically, the process of "institutionalizing" a group or a complex of relationships entails a specification of the rules in the different categories. Long established institutionalized relationships usually have rules specified in all the categories. But this is an empirical question. Also, disruptions may occur as a result of political, economic, technological, or other social adaptations and transformations. Rules in particular categories that were taken for granted earlier may no longer be accepted or applied. Relationships which were hierarchical (with rule specifications appropriate to such relationships) are transformed into egalitarian relationships. Or the values and norms considered appropriate for particular relationships (whether in a family, religious community, work organization, political association) are transformed, shift, or are prioritized in radically different ways. Shifts in the rules of public policy paradigms governing areas of policy and regulation have been investigated and identified in Carson et al (2009); the shifts may concern values and goals, the agents considered responsible, appropriate means, among other key rule changes. Note: A rule regime does not necessarily consist of formal, explicit rules. It may be to a greater or lesser extent an implicit regime, which members of a group do not reflect upon 15 This is not a laundry list, hence our emphasis on the structure or architecture rule regimes (Carson et al, 2009). The specification and analysis of rule complexes making up architectures goes back more than 20 years and was the basis of a reconceptualization of the theory of games and human interaction, a sociological theory of games (Burns and Gomolinska, 2000; Burns, Gomolinksa, and Meeker (2001), and Burns and Roszkowska (2005, 2007, 2008, among other articles). 20

21 (unless or until there is a crisis or performance failings, a failed group experience ). The degree of institutionalization of the regime as well as its completeness are variables Conceptualizing Cultural and Institutional Formations as Rule Systems ASD analysis considers culture and institutions as systems of rules including everyday social rituals, habits, and styles, as well as norms and value-orientations which people use in their actions and interactions in particular contexts. These rule systems are typically organized in relatively independent institutional domains, for example, intimate and private arenas such as family, or more public ones like business, politics, education, and science. Selected Publications: Tom R. Burns and Nora Machado 2014 Social Rule System Theory: Universal Interaction Grammars. CIES E-Working Paper N.º 175/2014 (ISSN ) CIES/ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) 2008 Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. Tom R. Burns and Marcus Carson 2002 Actors, Paradigms, and Institutional Dynamics: The Theory of Social Rule Systems Applied to Radical Reforms. In: R. Hollingsworth, K.H. Muller, E.J. Hollingsworth (eds) Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Andreas Balog 2008 Explaining Action and Explaining Social Phenomena. In: Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds) 2008 Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. Anna Gomolinska 2008 Rough Rule-Following by Social Agents. Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) 2008 Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. Anders Olsson 1991 The Swedish Wage Negotiation System. Aldershot: Dartmouth Tom R. Burns and Peter Hall and others 2012 The Meta-power Paradigm: Impacts and Transformations of Agents, Institutions, and Social Systems: Capitalism, State, and Democracy in a Global Context. Peter Lang: Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. Marcus Carson, T.R. Burns, and Dolores Gomez Calvo 2009 Public Policy Paradgims: Theory and Practice of Paradigm Shifts in the European Union. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. Tom R. Burns and Helena Flam 1987 The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London: Sage Publications. (Paperback, 1990; Portuguese edition, 2000) Nora Machado 1998 Using the Bodies of the Dead: Legal, Ethical, and Organizational Dimensions of Organ Transplantation. Aldershot/Brookfield USA: Ashgate. 16 The socially formalized or institutionalized properties of a rule regime should not be confused with logical coherence (or incoherence) of the regime. 21

22 Note 4. SOCIAL INTERACTION: CONTEXTS, AGENTS, RULE SYSTEMS, RESOURCES (This entire section is extracted from Peter Hall in Burns and Hall (2012:107ff)) 4.1 Introduction Interactionists recently have been exhorted to develop a unified theory of social structure which will bridge the macro-micro gap and seriously tackle issues of class, power, and inequality (Hall, 2012: 107ff). The materials, tools, and infrastructure for such an endeavor are already in place. The task here is to make them explicit, provide an integration, and present an interactionist paradigm for studying social organization. Bringing the strengths of interactionism to focus upon the sociological level of analysis provides a broad, dynamic perspective which can apply to the entire discipline. Interactionism has an extensive tradition in the study of social organization and social process. The general position, its assumptions, strengths, and limitations have been succinctly formulated and summarized by Fisher and Strauss (1978). A number of recent, imaginative, and productive studies, drawing upon the inspiration of that heritage, have advanced and extended the perspective significantly. A thrust of this research has been to show how these interactionists examine collective activity and social relations and lodge them in larger contexts and extended temporality. These studies provide the bases for a paradigm in the form of a set of analytic categories. Taken collectively and systematically, the set constitutes a cohesive, contemporary, general approach to analyzing social organization. The research reviewed recent scholarship on complex forms of concerted action and related social processes on art worlds (Becker, 1982); on Hollywood musicians (Faulkner, 1983, Harvey Farberman (1975) and Norman Denzin (1977)) on criminogenic market structures, the negotiated order literature (Strauss et al. 1964; Strauss 1978; Hall and Spencer-Hall 1982; Busch 1982); the arena dynamics of social problems (Wiener 1981), and Carl Couch on civilizations (1984). Then, it selects and extrapolates an initial definition and a set of categories from these studies. Howard Becker s view of social organization as recurrent networks of collective activity is the starting point. The set of major categories include collective activity, network, conventions-practices, resources, temporality-processuality, and grounding. The research concludes by stressing the necessary connections between three contexts action, structural, and historical and some suggested implications and directions. The action context contains the situatedness of collective activity, network, conventions-practices, and resources. It is the staging arena for behavior and is presented in conditional, contingent, and processual terms. The action context, however, is facilitated and constrained dialectically by its embeddedness and relationship to other, and perhaps larger, contexts (i.e., structural context) and its pasts (i.e., historical context). Our approach builds upon the basic strengths of interactionism at the micro level. It starts with concrete social action and examines how it is accomplished, using the concepts of collective activity, conventions-practices, and resources. Taking concerted action as the basic unit, rather than the individual, provides a sociological and social organizational base. It does not presume entities such as group, organization, or institution, but seeks out actual linkages and forms through the concept network. It overcomes the lack of attention to power and conflict by 22

23 examining the problematics of resource distribution and use. The emphasis upon processuality frames the analysis in dynamic, not static, terms, in keeping with human experience. The Meadian perspective on temporality, unique to the discipline, makes a processual analysis necessary but one which consciously interrelates present, past, and future. Conceptions about time stress the use of contingent intentionality that pasts simultaneously are constraining and facilitating. At the same time, concerns with network, resources, temporality, and grounding begin to encompass macro-level concerns. These provide the basis for contextualizing concrete and practical activity by linking and understanding the forces which shape it. This general approach linking history, structure, and action represents one way of coming to terms with the micromacro split. Our studies as well as those of others show a wide range in scale and scope of social organization. They range from school systems and hospitals to national markets and industries to ancient civilizations. In addition to demonstrating the breadth of the interactionist perspective, they show the ways in which social interactions can be linked to each other and to larger contexts. They also provide the elements of, and evidence for, the general approach presented here. Howard Becker (1982), drawing upon Blumer s (1969) concept of joint action, gives us the basic view of four key elements collective activity, network, convention, and resource. Faulkner (1983) empirically demonstrates recurrence in networks and shows the processes and uses of resources that produce asymmetry. Farberman (1975) and Denzin (1977) show how attention to history and linked contexts necessitates the grounding of analysis. The negotiated-order literature, focusing upon a key social process, demonstrates the importance of power, constraints, and conditions. The arena approach to national social problems and policies reveals the influence of structural contexts, the interplay of multiple social worlds, and the processes that shape the object of activity. Couch s (1984) study of civilizations demonstrates why temporality is a mandatory category. 4.2 Collective Activity Collective activity and the events it produces are a basic unit of sociological investigation (Becker 1982, p. 370). Collective activity is composed of social acts in which two or more actors merge their lines of action with reference to each other. The intermingling of gestureresponse sequences which include and complete each other. The focus is upon what people do together, not separately, and how their actions build upon and contribute to each other and something larger. Collective activity is the sequencing of series of social acts by two or more persons in relation to social objects. Attention is also on the concrete and the real. The admonition to start with the empirical, what people actually are doing, avoids overly structured views of joint action as between occupants of positions with rights and duties. The aim is to note the tasks, bundles of tasks, and their arrangement which are needed to produce some enterprise, accomplish some object, or have some event. The division of labor is conceptualized in terms of actions, not only actors (Strauss, 1985). It is necessary to determine essential activities and how they are structured, allocated, and merged. While studies that illustrate this approach often are of worlds of work, the mode of analysis is equally applicable and should be developed for the worlds of family, friends, leisure, and politics. Application to having a party, raising a child, deregulating an 23

24 industry, or settling the arms race can be envisioned just as much as revising a graduate program or building a skyscraper. Activity and task vary in nature, complexity, coordination, and timing. Strauss et al. (1985) begin to deal with these issues in their study of medical work. Managing a patient s illness involves multiple kinds of work or activity that must be enacted, sequenced, and coordinated. These include machine, safety, comfort, sentimental, error, dirty, informational, body, negotiative, and articulation work. Not all work is at the same level. Articulation work the responsibility for timing and sequencing activity is qualitatively different and a higher level of work. The totality of tasks (of all these kinds of work), when arranged simultaneously and sequentially along the course of a project, is an arc of work. Because there are numerous places for slippage or failure along this trajectory, the tenor of the analysis is contingent. The language is that of sharping, rather than managing, the illness. This research represents one way to examine the multiple components of activity and to depict how they fit together to produce the whole. A substratum and, at the same time, perhaps a task in collective activity is communication. Some forms of collective activity are essentially communicative in nature conversing, educating, or democratic debate and decision making. Since collective activity may not occur in face-to-face settings, communication is necessary for recording, reporting, coordinating, and directing. When collective activity is stymied, communication frequently is implemented to find means of resolution. Overcoming blocked activity or developing articulation work may necessitate meta-communication, e.g., talk about talk, information about information. Attention to communication is imperative but the format depends upon the focal collective activity. Beginning with collective activity has a number of advantages. Framing collectivity means a social, rather than an individual abstraction. It provides a focus of the actual and practical world of everyday life, rather than imposed orderings of conceptual systems. Finally, the analysis of collective activity and communication suggests that its nature, forms, and variations shape its organization: what needs to be done influences how to do it. 4.3 Network Network is increasingly being used with greater precision and sophistication as a sociological concept (Burt, 1982). It is defined here as the set of linkages, representing transactions and relationships, between the actors of a population. Actors are more than individuals. They also include teams, groups, and organizations, but not societies or collectivities. Hindess (1986, p. 115) defines an actor as... a locus of decision and action where the action is, in some sense, a consequence of the actor s decisions. Teams can decide and act while collectivities cannot. The idea of network comes with few theoretical assumptions. Basically, it represents a way of mapping the social terrain. The intention behind using network is to capture the relational, dynamic, complex, and varied nature of social life. Networks, therefore, are found in multiple forms and vary along a number of dimensions, e.g., size, mutuality, complexity, extensiveness, and indistinct boundaries of that network. The Hollywood labor market is clear and narrow, with wide spatial gulfs between center and periphery. Fine and Kleinman (1983) suggest that a group is a network with high density whose linkages activate simultaneously. This definition also 24

25 suggests variations in terms of weak-strong, loose-tight, and open-closed linkages. Stronger, tighter, closed linkages mean more frequent interaction, mutuality, and responsiveness and less openness to others. In three-dimensional terms, these linkages would be depicted as wider and thicker. The network also would have distinct boundaries. Finally, using multidimensionality, network display also ought to include symmetric-asymmetric and proximate-distal scales. There are a number of benefits of using the network idea. First, it specifies the elemental form of social organization. Second, the basic component, transaction, is the same for collective activity, i.e., social act. Third, it stresses actually existing relations and not an idealized social entity (Fine and Kleinman 1983; Collins 1986). Network captures the nature of this fluid, complex, heterogeneous, and mobile society better than the standard sociological concept of groups. It provides a means to observe variation in involvement, integration, and coordination. Social worlds evince diversity in segmentation and compartmentalization (Maines 1982). While intimate strong ties often receive attention, Granovetter (1973) showed the prevalence and significance of weak ties. Finally, network provides an empirical and conceptual means for bridging social worlds and action contexts. Its ability to both circumscribe and transcend any given social boundary makes it easier to understand the complexity of the alcoholism arena as well as the inner circle of the corporate class (Useem 1984). Network is a sensitizing device which assists in exploring the nature and limits of social influence within and beyond the immediate focus of attention. 4.4 Processuality and Temporality A dynamic stance is a necessary component of an interactionist approach to social organization. This stance sees structure as process or in process. Social life is a continuous stream of activity, broken up into events. Social organization always evolves and is in the process of becoming, rather than being. Collective activity being formed, maintained, eliminated, and altered in a succession of responses to circumstances constitutes society. Throughout, this discussion has conceived social organization as in the gerund form doing, accomplishing. Couch s formulation of constructing civilizations is no accidental semantic. It emerges from the constructionary paradigm of interactionism. Social organization is a metaphor (Becker 1982). As in a photograph, people often freeze and stop a flow of action. It is imperative to remember that the trajectories of coordinated sequences across space and time are complex. Interactionism frequently is associated with emergence, novelty, and change. The approach, however, does not automatically assume or find change. Everett Hughes (1955) was struck by the need to explain the dynamics of remaining the same (Shalin 1986). While social change is not uncommon, social orders do get reproduced. Both are human accomplishments and require activity. In their analysis of the Watergate hearings, Molotch and Boden (1985), for example, show how domination is accomplished in everyday talk. Issues of permanence and change need to be examined in longitudinal and comparative ways. Processual analysis provides a basis for understanding the hows of both. A processual analysis is simultaneously temporal. Significant social activity requires and occurs in temporally extended contexts, e.g., raising a family, organizing a social movement, carrying on the Cold War. Collective activity as the arc of work is accomplished along a time 25

26 line. Strauss et al. (1985) observe that organizations, technologies, teams, and individuals all have biographies which mesh with each other and with larger temporal orders. Not only does activity occur across time, it is organized in terms of time. Following Mead and Couch, collective activity is constructed in terms of the relation between presents to pasts and futures. Temporality is conceptualized in terms of the relations of presents to pasts and futures. The use of plurals is intentional. Maines et al. (1983) derive four kinds of pasts from Mead. Pasts and futures also emerge in the plural because they are characterized according to ever-changing pragmatic interests of ongoing presents. The nature of futures is multiple because alternative scenarios are the subject of much debate and conflict among social actors. Temporality stands in a dialectical relationship to activity. On the one hand, pasts, for instance, represent limits and constraints. Like the concept of commitment with side bets (Becker I960), lines of action have consequences that cannot be ignored. In this sense, the past no longer is an option. Pasts bring sediments in the form of conditions that limit presents and futures. Yet, pasts continually are partially reconstructed and selectively recast to generate new futures. The interrelationship of temporal categories, therefore, simultaneously is facilitating and constraining. Temporality is not only a context for social life or a way of analyzing collective activity. It is a critical mode and matrix of social organization. Sociotemporal orders organize, coordinate, and regulate the lives of social entities (Zerubavel 1981). They provide the basis for social accessibility, for separating the sacred from the profane, and segregating public from private domains. Ordering time is too often taken for granted but modern social life is organized explicitly in terms of it. Zerubavel (1981) demonstrated the existence and consequences of a highly rationalized temporal order in making collective activity precise, punctual, calculable, standard, bureaucratic, rigid, invariant, finely coordinated, and routine. That temporal order is based upon rigid sequential structures, fixed durations, standard temporal locations, and uniform rates of recurrence. The schedule is used in this order to facilitate and integrate a complex, differentiated division of labor. Perrow (1984) illustrates another consequence of temporal organization upon activity. Complex, tightly coupled systems have numerous interactions and interconnections with little slack time to respond to the unexpected. The potential for catastrophe is extreme, as the Chernobyl nuclear failure and the fatal Challenger mission exemplified. In contrast, loosely coupled systems handle surprises and delays relatively easily and with limited consequences. Paying attention to temporality and processuality offers some important rewards. The development of temporal orders elaborates the complexity with which social organization can be analyzed, while illustrating a pivotal element. Temporality also provides the basis for understanding collective activity in a dialectical, conditional, and contingent fashion. The simultaneous awareness of temporality and processuality is strongly in tune with a view of life as movement ( all things flow ). People attend, at the same time, to relationships across extensions of time to explore whether and when they occur, recur, or change. While a great deal of sociological knowledge and study can suggest the whats, whens, and perhaps the whys of social influences, processual analysis is the key to explicating the critical hows. In sum, 26

27 1. Social action and interaction are socially and materially embedded; they take place in the context of networks, institutions, cultural formations, specific game settings, and game networks and hierarchies. 2. Socially (culturally and institutionally) as well as materially embedded judgments, decisions, actions and interactions are in this sense context dependent. 3. ASD identifies and analyzes particular interaction forms shaped and regulated by rule regimes and material conditions in given cultural, institutional, and material contexts. 4. Among the forms are coordination and collaboration, exchange, negotiation, conflict, powering and exercising influence, innovating, constructing 5. There are multiple factors in the motivation, and the shaping of action and interaction, and their outcomes. 6. Decision rules and procedures are not only a function of context, but of actors particular roles and social pressures from other agents in the immediate context. 7. Under some specifiable conditions, agents accomplish social and normative equilibria of choices and/or outcomes 8. Interactions may be closed or open to change initiatives from the actors involved (that is, closed or open games ) 9. While interaction equilibria often obtain, interaction dynamics and transformation occur in the medium to long run. 10. ASD research has been especially interested in the structuring and restructuring of interaction conditions and social relationships, institutional arrangements, and cultural formations. Selected Publications T. R. Burns 1973 "A Structural Theory of Social Exchange." Acta Sociologica, 16: Reprinted in A. Wells (ed), Contemporary Theory in Sociology, T. R. Burns 1990 Models of Social and Market Exchange: Toward a Sociological Theory of Games and Human Interaction In: D. Calhoun, M. W. Meyer, and W. R. Scott (eds), Structures of Power and Constraint: Essays in Honor of Peter M. Blau. New York: Cambridge University Press. Peter Hall 2012 Interactions and the Study of Social Organization. In: T. R. Burns and P. Hall, The Meta-Power Paradigm: Impacts and Transformations of Agents, Institutions, and Social Systems. Frankfurt/New York/Oxford: Peter Lang Publishers. T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and W. Buckley 1975 "Relational Control: The Human Structuring of Cooperation and Conflict." J. of Conflict Resolution, 19: W. Buckley, T. R. Burns and D. Meeker1974 "Structural Resolutions of Collective Action Problems." Behavioral Science, 19: Olsson, Anders 1991 The Swedish Wage Negotiation System. Aldershot: Dartmouth 27

28 Note 5. UNIVERSAL SOCIAL SYSTEM BASES AND ACTIONS: PRODUCTION FUNCTIONS AND ALGORITHMS. 5.1 Introduction Every human group, organization, or community which is functioning and sustainable has three bases or subsystems -- a rule regime, an agential base and a resource base and output or production functions. Groups are distinguishable not only by the character of their bases and their output actions and production processes some of which play a role in sustaining and reproducing the particular collectivity. Also essential in distinguishing groups are, of course, the specific contents of their rule regimes, their orientations and purposes, values, norms, roles, and role relationships. While all group rule regimes consist of a number of universal categories to be specified and analyzed below the contents of each group s rule categories are particularistic, diverging to a greater or lesser extent from one another and distinguishing groups from one another. Major points of the systems model of groups, organizations, and communities: 1. In the systems model, the inputs to a group system (and its subsystems) are the resources (materials and technologies) it obtains, the people it recruits and socializes, the rule system it acquires or develops (defining group purpose and values, role relations (including leadership), production programs or functions); the system outputs are the interactions, group performances, products (material as well as ideational) and impacts on its environment as well as on itself (see Figure 1, page 3) Groups are distinguishable then in terms of their specific group bases, rule regimes which constitute and organize and regulate group life, their outputs and the contexts in which they operate, for instance concerning: key production functions relate not only to group purpose(s) but to group requisites (As we discuss later, sustainable groups have production complexes relating to essential group requisites functions (to produce, maintain, or realize group requisites or conditions). The set of group actors who make or are supposed to make the rules (and change them): a single leader, a group of leaders, or the men of the group, or all adults, who participate in a deliberative and decision-making procedures key norms that regulate group activities concerning innovative initiatives in the group: for instance, regulating how much openness or tolerance of deviance there is in particular areas, etc. 3. Note that rule regimes do not operate on their own but through their incorporation in group members. The very knowledge of the regime on the part of actors influences their behavior, constraining certain actions, facilitating others. 17 This conception of group may seem to some unduly rigid, if not mechanical. Nonetheless, historically but also in much of the sociological profession, the concept of group has been and is used all -too-loosely (see Zelditch (2013:7). Of course, those specializing in, let us say contemporary small group research, are much more precise and systematic (Zelditch, 2013). But it is noteworthy that a concept so central to sociology has so many different interpretations and is used to mean so many different things to most sociologists and their imitators in economics, management studies, political science, and anthropology. 28

29 4. Nor do technologies and material conditions operate on their own but impact through the engagements of human actors in group situations. However, such material resources facilitate, constrain, and operate selectively on group activities. 5. A functioning sustainable group generates at least six output functions. Failure in one or more of these functions results in the risk over time of group failure and demise. Failure in a function may mean immediate demise, for instance in dealing with an external, destructive disaster or threat of such a disaster. Other failures such as inability to deal with growing internal tensions and conflicts which poison the group atmosphere and undermines integration and the capacity to coordinate; or, the inability to recruit new members which entails long-term risks. Hence, functional failures usually vary in their time dimension as well as in their manifestations. 6. Actors initiate actions, productions on the basis of rule directives and programs; they activate and implement production functions, complexes/programs. In the ideal case these provide capabilities/powers for the group to function effectively, internally and externally, and to reproduce itself. 7. Success in performance of group core production functions increases the likelihood that the group will perform effectively and be sustained over time. Some groups operate with complete and coherent bases for their context. 8. Many groups operate with incomplete or incoherent rule regimes, inadequate or inappropriate agential base, or inadequate or inappropriate resource base -- and, without reforms, the group runs the risks of key group failings and demise. Or conversely, constraints on and/or disruptions in performing effectively core production functions increases the risk of group failures, demise and non-sustainability. In general, in the case of incoherent and/or inadequate bases, the group runs the risks of group mal-performance in critical areas and eventual non-sustainability. 9. Many groups operate with multiple regimes, as discussed later. If these are coherent or if they can be effectively integrated, the group may perform effectively and sustain itself. Otherwise, incoherent rule regimes increase the likelihood of group mal-performance and failure. Groups typically try to obtain optimal solutions where the multiple purposes and production functions are dealt with through group processes. One widely recognized instance of groups having multiple regimes includes the front stagebackstage performance arrangements (Goffman, 1959), for instance, a public regime for show and a non-public regime (with especially constructed, possibly illegal rules and algorithms) (see later discussion of Goffman s frontstage and backstage distinction conceptualized in our terms as distinct but related (and contradictory) rule regime configurations. 10. Group actions and productions are typically oriented to the group values and goals. These are typically multiple: (1) a group s common goals or purposes are specified in the shared rule regime, specifically, in their particular group rule configuration (see later discussion) Swedberg (2005:3) points out the differentiation in group conceptions and actions toward objects as a function of their purposes or goals: a recreational club chops down a tree as a form of their recreation like kicking a football around. On the other hand, a logging company order a tree (or typically many) to be chopped 29

30 (2) Some group value orientations and purposes are derivative -- they derive from group systemic requisites, namely conditions/states which the group must realize or maintain if it is to endure or be sustained in its particular social and ecological context. These value orientations are included in the universal rule category for purposes, values, and goals; (3) groups may also provide a context/activity sphere where some of one another s wants or needs are satisfied, by particular group production functions or programs or through bilateral or multilateral exchanges among members. 11. Groups lacking the function or capability to take in and process information about their context(s) are unable to effectively apply and/or adapt their rule complexes, in particular their core production functions, and run a high risk of failing in key performances and in group sustainability -- relating to group systemic requisites A Finite Set of Universal Production Functions Any group which is enduring, sustainable over time must maintain, self-regulate and reproduce its bases (the subsystems of collective agency, rule regimes, and resources). These are group sustainability requisites in our systems model. That is, the requisites are conditions which typically must be produced or realized if the group is to endure or be sustainable over time (see Table below). Groups that are to endure that is, sustainable must contain in their rule regime and implement six production functions that accomplish or satisfy group requisites. One or more of the production functions may be performed by other agents that is group reproduction and sustainability depend on other agents: for instance, a higher level unit which has set up and maintains/sustains the group; or, the group controls external agents requiring them to carry out the essential production functions for the group. In the case of enduring, sustainable groups, group activities must, in general, produce and maintain and reproduce the group and its agential, rule regime and material resource bases as well as carry on those activities essential (that is, requisites) to the internal and external functioning of the group. This entails at least six (6) universal system production functions and outputs: (1) the production function that generates materials, products, goods and services, in particular those relating to group purpose(s); (2) internal governance and regulatory functions; (3) external or environmental governance function; (4) the function of maintenance and reproduction of the core group subsystems or bases; (5) the collective judgment and decision function; (6) an adaptive or innovative function in the face of internal or external challenges. Such production activities are accompanied by communication, including normatively oriented communications, discourses, and narratives; group members refer to established facts, regime norms, roles, production functions, performance standards and expectations in making assessments, giving accounts, and distributing criticism and praise. These communications are particularly associated with the internal governance and regulatory functions. down as a way for making money (the logger doing the work earns wage labor). A military or terrorist group chops down a tree to block the road or movement in the forest as part of their defense strategy. 30

31 Table 1: Group Production Complexes and Functions FUNCTION Group purpose function Reproduction function (for instance, of group bases) Internal governance and regulatory functions External governance and regulatory functions Collective judgment & decision-making functions Adaptation and innovation functions PRODUCTION COMPLEX IN RULE REGIME Group Purpose Production Complex Reproduction action complexes Governance production complex (monitoring, correcting, sanctioning arrangements for governance and social control processes) External governance production complexes (dealing with defense, exchange, cooperation, conflict) Production Complexes for making collective decisions (implementing arrangements for deliberations, decision processes (administration, leadership, voting, etc.)) Adaptation and innovation production complex for group purpose function and group bases Key group functional activities and outputs the level of performance and degree of effectiveness -- vary substantially among groups. Some groups for example, those created to carry out an immediate or short-term task(s) typically do not require all functional productions. Such groups are not expected to endure but to terminate or phase out after the task(s) is(are) completed. These distinctions in group functions or operations are analytic ones. In practice, the activities and performance associated with these functions may be combined in practice; two or more functions may be inter-linked in productions, and several considerations (values, purposes, goals) are taken into account in the activities at the same time. For instance, socialization associated with reproduction is often combined with internal governance and even production function activities, as in the involvement of youth in productive activities. The actions/productions which realize or satisfy group sustainability requisites may be produced by the group itself or by external agents, or by combinations of both. In the case of pure self-sustainment, the group itself performs to a greater or lesser extent the six universal production functions. In the case that external agents are involved in group sustainability through the realization of some group requisites, there are two modalities: In one, the group is dependent on the external agents, and complies with demands that the latter may make for satisfying or helping to satisfy their requisites; in the other, the group dominates the external agents and demand that these agents contribute to realizing their group requisites. 31

32 For instance, in the first case, high level administrative or control agents carry out some subset of the production functions, at the same time requiring the subordinate or dependent agents to perform designated production functions -- as in several of our cases presented later in Table 2: the military unit, the business unit, and the terrorist cell. In these cases the groups are dependent for their sustainability largely on the support of external agents and this arrangement is usually predicated on accommodating the demands of the external agents, mediated by remunerative or coercive forms of power; also, dependent groups may manage to persuade external agents to support them, exercising a type of normative power over them (Burns and Hall, 2012). 19 Or, a group may maintain and sustain itself by dominating relevant agents in its environment, demanding that these agents satisfy or realize the group s purposes and requisites. Its domination and the power of its demands may be based on remuneration, coercion, or normative power. Thus, it can realize some of its purposes and requisites (essential resources, member recruitment and socialization, even adaptation and innovation in production functions and other rule complexes). In sum, for purposes of analysis, we distinguish three group situations relating to maintenance, reproduction and sustainability: Table 2: Group Conditions of Maintenance, Reproduction, and Sustainability Self-maintaining and selfreproducing group (This corresponds at least initially to selforganizing group formation earlier) Six production functions are operated by the group with longterm sustainability (of course, some essential materials and technologies and people may be obtained from outside the group through exchange Group Domination of external agents: inducing subordinate agents to realize or satisfy its purposes and requisites The group remunerates, coerces, or persuades external agent(s) to perform one or more of the production functions enabling group sustainability. Group Dependence on and subordination to external agents. The latter satisfy or realize its requisites conditionally (This corresponds to the category of externally constructed or legislated group formation) One or more essential production functions are controlled by external agent(s), enabling them to determine group longevity and sustainability in exchange for payment, political support or normative homage. 19 A large number of civil society groups and associations are supported by the Swedish State. For instance, most ethnic groups in Sweden are typically able to obtain state subsidies for establishing and maintaining group activities. Application requires that one or more purposes be identified. Eventually, following proper application procedures, a group obtains a subsidy from the state typically requiring formalization. At the same time, the group shifts toward orienting itself to obtain the Swedish state subsidies that maintain, in part, the group. At the same time, a sufficient resource base enables the group to elaborate its purpose(s) and production functions. 32

33 and/or theft) Group productions are discussed in more detail in the following paragraphs utilizing the analytic distinctions in universal group functions and outputs -- in practice they may be combined. (1) Group purpose function. Group production (and interactions essential to this production) is oriented, on the one hand, to realizing group values, ideals, and purposes prescribed in the group rule regime and, on the other hand, to meeting environmental demands and needs through extraction of essential resources from the environment and exchange with others (whether through reciprocal exchange or coerced exchange) to obtain materials, technologies and artifacts essential for key group activities (and possibly group sustainability). (a) That is, such a production function often concerns material resources as well as goods and services for the group itself (and its members) and for others with whom the group exchanges in the environment, that is, for group consumption as well as to meet the expectations or demands of outside groups (customers, tax authorities, communities and NGOs and other stakeholders). (b) Production of identity: group representations (among other things, logos), clothing, hair, rituals and other symbolic actions as well as necessary materials and technologies. (d) Production of spiritual and symbolic goods (representations and means) and performances through dance, music, theatre, and diverse rituals, fun and games. (e) Production for self-consumption and enjoyment but not necessarily related to core group productions or sustainability: these may be jokes, fun activities, games, internal discourses, collective therapy, education, training, special artifacts and technologies. (2) Governance, regulatory, and management function (of group resources, agents, productions, and the rule regime). Agents involved in the group are regulated to be able and ready to activate and implement the rule regime, for instance to enforce rules concerning group interactions and production activities (a) Internal governance is a type of production oriented to regulation and sustaining appropriate involvement in group activities, in particular production and reproduction, for instance, regulating key forms of production and interaction, insuring cooperation among members, resolving conflicts, managing interrelationships in ways consistent with group identity and rule regime imperatives. (b) Group activities mediating involvement and commitment do so through providing diverse forms of sanctioning, including material rewards and punishments as well as group status recognition and reputation assignment. Other sanctioning and control mechanisms relate to association with group identity, and rewards of socialability. 33

34 (c) Key group interactions are regulated through: (a) Leadership processes (and the question of power and authority); (b) competition, conflict and conflict resolution mediated through group procedures and/or leadership intervention; (c) coordination and cooperation processes as well as negotiation procedures. 20 (3) Governance Function of Environmental Interfaces. A group produces activities, goods, and services in order to be able to deal with its material/ecological environment as well as its social environment (the latter in terms of military action, economic and political exchange, and ideological and religious discourses). (a) A group attempts to maintain control not only over the internal environment but over group-environment interactions to assure proper functioning, reproducibility and sustainability. (b) Key activities concern defense, alliance formation, exchange for and mobilization of key resources. Groups mobilize to exercise external power whether coercive, political, legal, expert, or normative, using group resources, whether material, cultural or spiritual. (c) When it comes to control of the external environment, the group may lack sufficient power to protect itself or to manage its dependencies and so must adapt and accept the demands of more powerful external agents (unless it is able and willing to withdraw or hide). (d) Related activities entail the group adapting its responses to the environment, see function (6). (4) Function of reproduction and maintenance of core group bases: The group engages in activities to maintain and reproduce its agential, rule regime, and resource bases the core capabilities of group life and its productions. In other words, (4A) Resource reproduction. This entails not only the group carrying on activities to obtain and/or produce resources essential to group life. But it entails engaging in activities to maintain access to or to have the capacity to produce -- necessary technologies (including built environments and group places for meetings), materials (energy, minerals, building materials). In other words, this function insures the reproduction of the resource base of or the access to necessary resources (for group functioning and reproduction). (4B) Reproduction of agents this concerns the actors who are to continue the production and reproduction of group bases and activities: (a) Reproduction of agents biologically and/or through recruitment outside the group is combined with socialization of recruited members. Socialization concerns, above all, the knowledge of the group rule regime and its application in practice) as well as the level of motivation and commitment (so that new members are prepared to activate and implement 20 Among the multiple processes of internal governance according to the rule regime are: (i) Governance/regulation of production processes; (ii) Governance of socialization and social control processes (normative regulation, adherence, integration; (iii) Governance/regulation of interpretation and application of rule regime; (iv) Governance of the copying or rewriting of a rule regime; (v) Governance/regulation as conflict resolution (vi) Governance/regulation as leadership (vii) Governance as boundary maintenance (determining participation, monitoring and regulating the interface with external agents and material conditions, monitoring and regulating subgroups or systems within the group). 34

35 the rule regime or the specific sub-complexes applying to them). This means performing in their roles according to group directives including normative directives and the commands of those in positions of authority. (b) The group induces in its members to a greater or lesser extent motivation and commitment through socialization, ritualing, bonding strategies, sanctioning, and other group control mechanisms. This dovetails with function (2) that entails the operation of regulatory and governance mechanisms. (4C) Rule regime reproduction entails maintaining copies as well as copying of rule regimes into new documents and instilling them (even if only partially) into new members: Part of this relates, of course, to socialization and education But it relates also to the performance of stories, theatre, dance and other group rituals and ceremonies which contribute to maintaining people s awareness of norms, roles, and institutional arrangements, cultural forms and myths. (5) Collective Judgment, Decision, and Value-prioritization Function. An established group makes key collective (or group) decisions: selecting leaders, setting priorities, shifting goals as the group encounters new problems and issues (this relates closely to the innovation/adaptation function (6)), making reforms and bringing about transformations, e.g. in group bases). The group collective judgment, decisions, and actions include: 21 Collective deliberation, judgment and choice. Collectively reprioritizing goals, legislating new rules, adapting, modifying rule regimes, and institutional arrangements ( politics ). Thus, there are forms of internal group politics and policy production these processes may be treated analytically as different from governance proper, but are typically linked or combined since the forms of collective choice and action entail and depend on governance and regulation. 22 (6) Innovation and Adaptation Function. In general, a group engages to a greater or lesser extent in producing adaptations or innovations in its group bases and, in particular, of its rules and procedures in the face of internal and/or external challenges, failings, or crises. (a) Group are driven to try to adapt their knowledge, strategies, norms, roles, and institutional arrangements in response to internal changes and/or external changes. These attempts typically evoke group tensions, conflicts, and struggles even if they may be necessary for sustainability in the given context. (b) The adaptation usually entails mobilizing members within the group for purposes of innovation, changing norms, procedures, or role arrangements. Groups differ significantly in their willingness or capacity to innovate, as discussed later. 5.4 Variation in Group Requisites and Production Functions 21 Collective judgment and decision-making (that is, there are procedures ( group algorithms ) to follow in any group or organization. There are also other forms of Collective action. Aggregates or crowds or publics may react in similar or parallel ways and in this sense are coordinated by their common judgments and repertoires of strategies (the individuals involved apply a shared or common normative order). Similarly, markets or public opinion may entail forms coordinating judgments and decisions of participants, for example through prices or mimetic behavior but their actions are not collectively organized as in the groups or organizations considered here. 22 There may be multiple processes of group politics or as part of the change of governance or change in the rule regime: (i) Adapt or change value orientations, strategies, membership, production rules, technologies, governance arrangements, etc. (ii) Negotiating changes of agential power or status relations within the group. 35

36 Groups vary in their conceptions of their durability or longevity as a group. Some groups show little or no concern for their long-term sustainability but focus on short-run activities or tasks in which they are engaged. That is, they focus on the immediate purpose and the possession of the necessary bases for that purpose. A group s rule regime may even contain rules indicating the group s expected duration or longevity. Examples of groups with expected brief longevity are, for instance, short-term task groups such as juries, special committees and commissions. Group purpose is the immediate task, and for that purpose there are circumscribed means, resources, and recruitment of participants. The limited time-frame is specified by time rules in the rule regime. Reproduction/sustainability is typically not a major concern for groups with such a momentary character; they focus on the immediate task or designated activity; resources and personnel simply need to be available sufficiently to conduct the expected production schemes for the limited task(s). In the case of a group with long-term sustainability expectations the requisites for group functioning and maintenance become forces driving the group in ways differing from an initial purpose(s) and designs. This development is often treated as a case of goal displacement, even a form of corruption. But it is a necessary part of any group logic and development. Thus, enduring groups develop multi-value complexes, which must be addressed, and typically entail short-term prioritizing, balancing and making compromises. Groups vary in the attention, efforts, and resources they devote to their diverse functions. A group may focus on immediate realization of its purpose(s) or goal(s) to the neglect, for instance of internal cohesion, maintaining commitment of the membership to the group, or attending to threats or attacks from the social and/or ecological environment. But then this may correspond to the members basic ideas about the group: for instance, to focus entirely on the immediate task and then to expect the group to dissolve or morph into something entirely different at a later time. On the other hand, preoccupation with external changes or threat may be accompanied by neglect of the realization of group purpose(s) and goals and/or key internal functions such as governance and socialization. Also, a group may be unable or unlikely (for instance, because of loss of belief or of member commitment) to deal with internal conflict or disruptive status and power games. Or, preoccupation with internal status or power or conflict issues may be at the expense of neglecting group purpose or environment issues. In sum, our framework encompasses a wide range of group profiles and development patterns, for instance: Groups may develop a profile with diffuse, ambiguous purposes yet agree to a great extent on specific activities, and production functions (e.g. the use of violence as the main purpose in order to experience violence against a hate-object, to experience collective effervescence or to gain external recognition) The Sinn Fein (IRA) apparently exhibited such a pattern. The ostensible purpose of Sinn Fein (translated as we ourselves in English) was to achieve sovereign independence in the struggle with the U.K. but the group had no concrete political programme. While it was vague about ends, it had a very well-developed conception of its means (Lane, 2014). Politically a very diverse group, Sinn Fein was held together by opposition to English domination and its campaign of largely violent methods rather than by a shared political philosophy, or a blueprint for an (eventual) new state. Ultimately, after independence (1920) there was an Irish civil war ( ) over two conceptions of the Irish state-to-be: one the idea of an Irish Free State still a part of the British 36

37 Groups preoccupied with internal power and status struggles (or ideological struggles) tend to neglect or distort group purpose(s) or key internal governance and regulatory functions, although the power and status conflicts may be coupled to issues about the regime, recruitment, performance patterns and failings. Groups preoccupied with external challenges or threats may be trapped into neglecting internal group functions or primary group purposes ( goal displacement ). Groups engage when conditions permit in a variety of activities that do not relate (or if they relate, then only weakly) to the core group production functions and their outputs. These may be not only non-functional but even dysfunctional, e.g. undermining (unintentionally) agential, resource or rule regime bases (Burns and Dietz, 1992). Through such processes, groups fail, disintegrate and become extinct. Group unable to replace or reproduce essential resources (materials, technologies) results in declining group performance and possible demise. More generally, groups devolve or collapse when their core bases decline substantially or disappear. Such devolution occurs because of a lack of access to or ability to recruit qualified, regime knowledgeable capable people; or lack of appropriate resources or access to them; or because in a changed context of a poorly performing or failed rule regime (the group (or its leadership) lacks the capability or collective willingness to make legal or pragmatic adjustments, or, it may be unable or unwilling to reform or replace the failed rule regime. (see Section V) In short, groups may or may not succeed in dealing effectively with the complexity of multiple purposes and requisites and sustaining themselves in their environment. 5.5 Tensions, Conflict, and Conflict Resolution in Groups A key to effective group functioning and performance is to constrain internal sources of tension and disequilibria and to develop strategies and procedures to deal with conflicts, incoherencies, and coordination problems. These are particularly important for group functioning and sustainability. (1) Tension and conflict are endemic to groups. Members disagree about the interpretation or application of rules in the rule regime, about, for instance, rules concerning membership or recruitment or about expected role performance such as that of the leadership. This is particularly the case under conditions of unstable or changing contexts (see Section V). (2) A major conflict factor in groups has to do with competition and conflict among group members about group status and authority (which are scarce resources). All members may get dragged into these games, even those who are not particularly status or position ambitious but who have ties to those engaged in the conflict or competition. Some are drawn in against their will or better judgment as those directly involved try to mobilize support for their cause. Even underdogs may compete in these terms. (3) A rule regime other than the established group regime is introduced or activated by the group leader, key members, or powerful outsiders, and it interferes with the established implementation/performance of group rules regime (key norms, roles, relationships, procedures including those essential to group maintenance and reproduction). Loss of consensus about the group regime or about the positions or performances of particular Empire, the other a Republic (viewed as total freedom from subjection to a foreign power ). This resulted in the division of Ireland (1922) contributing arguably to the time of troubles in Northern Ireland almost fifty years later (late 1960s to 1998). 37

38 members tends to stimulate competition or conflict in the group, for example among leaders or high status members, as they struggle to mobilize support and advance their own perspective. (4) Groups try to make adjustments in their systems when they discover incoherence in key areas. Such incoherence may arise as a result of changing part of a system without changing other parts: new goals, new rules may have been introduced (possibility because of external requirements) that do not fit established production complexes. (5) Groups whose members perceive technologies, rule regimes, or participant configurations and conflict as generating serious problems are more like to be activated, mobilize resources, and seek to bring about change. For instance, (a) Anomalies and inconsistencies arise between two or more regimes; (b) disagreement emerges as a result of competition or conflict in the group, for example, among leaders or high status members; or (c) major gaps occur between what the group is able to deliver in practice and what is directed in its purpose and requisites (for sustainability). (6) Production of disorder: Group systems require some degree of order and predictability but some or much of the behavior of the group or other groups or the environment may produce group disorder and unpredictability. For instance, the goals and practices of the system or competition and other external pressures drive innovation and change, which in some cases results in incoherencies and destabilization. There is, therefore, a likely incoherence between the processes of innovation and development, on the one hand, and the possibilities of their effective regulation and governance, on the other hand. We refer to this as reflexive disorder (Burns and DeVille, 2007) (see later discussion). (7) A common difficulty in group functioning is that incoherence (or imbalances) emerge between production functions, particular if there is limited or weak coordination ammong them. That is, here is a lack of sufficient regulatory governance to address imbalances between interrelated production functions or resource flows. One form of such incoherence arises when the outputs of one production function are inputs to another. The output resource may be at an insufficient level for the appropriate input level of the other production function. Put another way, the second consumes at a level not match-able (or in balance) with the supplier. (8) Production functions interdependencies require some level of integration/regulation to maintain effective performance. Intregrative disorder results when there is a lack of sufficient social coordination or integration of critical subsystem couplings or their interdependencies, and interaction/production processes and outputs suffer accordingly. 24 Groups typically develop strategies and procedures (production functions) to deal with problems of conflict, incoherence, and integration failures essential to group functioning. A lack or a breakdown of procedures or a failure of the leadership itself to properly resolve tensions, conflicts, and incoherencies lead to performance failings and problems of group sustainability, as suggested in several of the points raised above. Unresolved conflicts not only affects group functioning and performance but in time erodes the engagement and commitment of (some of) the membership, reinforcing malfunctioning and ultimately demise of the group (or a significant part of it). 24 The problem of incoherence between system integration (interdependencies) and social integration (regulatory/governance and normative control) was identified by Lockwood and developed further by Archer, Burns and DeVille, among others. 38

39 Note 6. POWER AND META-POWER THEORY AND THE STRUCTURING AND TRANSFORMATION OF SYSTEMS. 6.1 Introduction. All of social life involves some form of influence, molding, direction or compulsion (Stone, 1983:44). However, Stone (1983:44) adds that reducing all such questions to questions of power renders it almost impossible to make the fine intellectual, moral and material distinctions necessary for any serious assessment of change in history or, one might add, change of the everyday patterns of social life. Power is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences in part because it relates closely to social control, regulation, and governance and, more generally, causality and causal mechanisms. 25 One does not need to emphasize that power notions are highly interdisciplinary: sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, economists, management scientists, historians and others all make use of them. 26 Although social powering is endemic to all societies, the concept of power in the social sciences remains amorphous and ambiguous. It has various definitions and refers to a wide spectrum of phenomena. One encounters expressions such as the power of beliefs, people power, bargaining power, power as control, power as coercion, the powers of property, the power of education, the power of ideas, the powers of government, of the courts, and of the military, the Great Powers, and ultimately the power of god or the gods, etc. Power and control phenomena are ubiquitous as well as being multiple and diverse in social relationships, networks, enterprises, government agencies, politics, international arenas and the global society. Many power mechanisms are characteristically difficult to discover, because they are not transparent (Lukes, 1974); but even those that are relatively visible may be highly complex, involving multiple systems of rules and causal mechanisms not easy ascertainable, for instance the influence mechanisms and law-making in parliamentary bodies, or the complex procedures for making major decisions in large organizations such as business enterprises and government agencies. Inter-personal and inter-agential modalities of power are easily the most recognizable, especially those based on inducements, coercion, and persuasion. But even in such instances there may be complex power arrangements 25 Oppenheim (1981) conceptualized power as the capacity to produce any and all effects and thus synonymous with causality. See also Baldwin (2002); Barnett and Duvall (2005:42); Berenskoetter (2007); Nagel (1975, 1976); Scott (2001), among others. In linking power to causality, Berenskoetter (2007:14) writes: Both concepts give meaning to relationships that are logically linked to effect. Most obviously, if power is the ability to make a difference, that is, if it is because of power that things turn out one way rather than another, then identifying power is analytically indistinguishable with identifying a cause. 26 While we were completing this research, Searle s Making the Social World (2010) was published and, in a certain sense, can be considered, a treatise on power. It suffers, however, many of the same limitations of Lukes (1974) and others, on whom Searle builds to some extent, especially in its neglect of meta-power phenomena (see later). 39

40 that pose challenges to direct and systematic analysis. For instance, A has relative power over B, B has relative power over C, and C has a degree of relative power over A, but the powers differ and the power parameters change with context (as a result of relevant rule systems shifting, and time and space factors also playing a role, etc.). Unfortunately, there is no theoretical framework or established criteria in the social sciences with which to sort out the highly varying phenomena as well as differing usages and meanings of power and related notions. In other words, the social sciences do not have a clear systematic conceptualization of power phenomena with established distinctions and identified underlying processes. It is a scientific challenge to understand and explicate the power(s) of institutions: the state, market, banking and financial systems, and capitalism in general. Military power would seem apparent enough but its external measures as well as the internal power relationships may not precisely follow simple principles. The number of modalities is growing in the modern world because of the expansion of technical and scientific knowledge, among other things: for instance, the development of the power of genetic manipulation, other bio-medical powers, and pharmaceutical controls of the mind and body, among others. The research presented here identifies overt powers as well as hidden powers (some of which are not seen or recognized because they are not in current use, although they are potentially available). In the social science literature (e.g., see Clegg and Haugaard (2009)), one finds a broad spectrum of notions and conceptualizations, a great deal of it confused and contradictory, and varying immensely in rigor. A persistent challenge is to bring some theoretical order to conceptualizing power and to systematically distinguish and analyze different modalities of power and control, a challenge which this work is meant to address (Burns and Hall, 2012). Some of what we consider here has been argued or pointed out previously in one way or another by other social scientists. What our work offers is a more theoretically coherent and well-grounded perspective and the theoretical linking of apparently unrelated phenomena. It aims to overcome several of the major limitations of previous social science work in this broad field, such as that of Dahl, Lukes, Barnett and Duvall, Guzzini, Mann, and Weber, among others. A new social power paradigm is introduced and applied in Burns and Hall (2012). It is based on innovative conceptions of causation, action processes, and social construction. The framework presented enables a fresh perspective on power phenomena identifying and analyzing a number of key power(s) and power modalities in a modern society, based on multiple, diverse causal mechanisms. The research s theoretical and empirical contribution can be summarized in the following points: 40

41 (1) We formulate and apply a causal theory of power based on a specification of concrete causal mechanisms that underlie diverse modalities of powering. 27 The theory encompasses a variety of power modalities based on concrete powering and control mechanisms. It enables us to offer a deeper and more precise understanding of any particular power as well as of a wide spectrum of observable powers. Typically, in any given interaction situation of interest, there are multiple, diverse powers operating (see below on complex power systems). (2) A great variety of powers are observable in social life. The research presented in Burns and Hall (2012) collects in one place a large number of case studies of power from politics, economics, and sociology and provides a conceptual framework grounded in diverse causal mechanisms, which underlie power relationships and control processes. In general, human behavior is influenced and regulated through multiple causal mechanisms. 28 Power thus entails a multifaceted causality; many of the powering mechanisms are human constructions. We focus particularly on those powers and their mechanisms that are institutionalized. These may entail various forms of coercion, inducement, persuasion, manipulation, delegation, socialization, legislation, adjudication, empowerment (and disempowerment), among others. All depend on control activities or operations with respect to some part or parts of the social environment, its diverse agents, socialized populations, 29 institutions, and cultural formations as well as, of course, the physical environment. In any given context, the multiple mechanisms operating are intertwined in particular configurations that can best be understood through the collection of data on, and analysis of, concrete case studies. 30 (3) Our approach emphasizes the place of human power over and through not only the social world but the natural world and also the powers of these worlds visà-vis human populations, agents, institutions, and their developments. Hence, the work is not limited to the strictly social but concerns the interplay between social 27 Burns and Hall (2012, Chapter 1) refer to the theory of causation to which the ASD formulation relates most closely: manipulability causation. One variant of this conceptualization implies that an intervention brings about an effect, but the intervention need not have an essential connection with human action. It may be the result of natural forces (see later). Of course, some human actions and the operation of social structure qualify as interventions but they do so by virtue of their causal characteristics (the mechanisms and more generally the processes they activate), not simply because they are performed by human agents. This conception of causation underlies the notion of multiple, diverse causal mechanisms, which are related to agential powering, social structural and ecological/material powering. 28 See Burns and Dietz (1992), Burns et al. (1985). 29 Lukes (1974) and Searle (2010) recognize the power established through socialization /normalization of subjects who can subsequently be administered (see also Searle (2010:153)). 30 We have conducted, for instance, case study investigations of meta-power phenomena on the input, that is, the intent and production side, as well as on the output or outcome side. In particular, (1) one may start an investigation of meta-power with agent(s) intentions, plans, or initiatives to transform social and material structures and determine whether, and to what extent, the intended or planned transformation is realized through concrete patterns of action. When meta-power is successfully exercised, one investigates questions of who, how, when, where, etc. (2) Or, one may start from a structural transformation, an event, and work backwards to determine what intentions (if any) and specific meta-powering mechanisms brought about the transformation. Included here also are unintended transformative actions of human agents and their institutions as well as operations of material forces. 41

42 and ecological processes. In view of this, it distinguishes three general qualitatively different modalities of power: agential, social structural, and material/ecological. Most importantly, overlooked major forms of power such as meta-power (power over power or transformative power) and relational and structural controls are introduced and, analyzed. Agential and inter-agential powers. There are a number of forms presented and discussed in Burns and Hall (2012, Chapter 1). Many inter-agential relationships of power and control are institutionalized, as in a family, group, or organization. Agential modalities are conceptualized as more or less direct relations between and among agents. Agential powers can be usefully defined and modeled in terms of concrete actions (including action at a distance). Among agents, particular social action processes are the basis for varied powering and influence processes. Agential forms of power are understood here as the capability in particular sphere(s) of one actor or class of actors to carry out concrete controlling or influencing activities vis-a-vis other actors, social relationships, and institutions (Alker (1973) and Alker et al. (1976)). 31 Those subject, directly or indirectly to power and control processes are, in our perspective, not passive elements, but active, creative agents capable themselves of mobilizing power resources, carrying out control initiatives of their own, engaging in innovation, and possibly negotiating the terms under which power and control processes take place. Social structural powers (see Lukes (1974), Guzinni (1993)). 32 The theory presented here encompasses the powers of social structure that produce and regulate opportunity structures, livelihoods and behavior of social agents. For instance, social relationships empower and constrain differentially members of a group, community, or organization. Norms and roles as forms of structural powers direct some members of the normative community to behave in specific ways and to exercise particular powers vis-à-vis others and for these others to accept and comply with the application of such rights under appropriate conditions. Norms and laws encompass, for instance, the state s right/power to tax, confiscate property (although in a democratic state, this is accomplished with considerable qualifications and restrictions); the property rights of owners to determine what may be done with their property (although again with specified restrictions); patent rights giving the holder of the rights the power to require compensation for the use of the patent by another (within a specified time frame); or the rights in a democratic state of citizens to freely assemble, organize, and speak out, which state agents operating under democratic conditions accept even 31 Agential power entails then concrete actions or operations that are intended to bring about change. But, as outlined below, social structural powering also operates on human agents and their behavior through influencing the definition or framing of a situation, their knowledgeability, their commitments and interests, and their opportunity and constraint structures. 32 The structural factors of norms and rights, and rules generally are powering factors their causal mechanisms can be identified and analyzed. 42

43 guarantee to a greater or lesser extent under a range of circumstances ( the scope of the norms). These all empower agents to carry out particular power and control actions. In general, agential forms of power (Dahl, Weber, and many others) cover only a relatively limited part of power phenomena of interest to social scientists. We emphasize also the powers inherent in norms and social structures including transformative modalities of power. In any historically given society, there are institutional and cultural arrangements which shape and regulate social action and interaction: rule regimes, role relationships, control rights and obligations, differential institutionalized access to resources, action opportunity structures, and belief and value systems. These structural power complexes constrain agents but at the same time provides some agents or classes of social agents with differential opportunities to exercise diverse forms of power and control. Hence, the social agents and the structure of access to power resources and control opportunities in a centrally planned society with a one party state obviously differ from one with the rule of law and strong market institutions and a multiparty political system. In general, systems of stratification with their differential power and control possibilities, have differed substantially in capitalist, communist, merchant, and feudal societies as well as societies with other institutional arrangements. Each social system with its particular institutional and cultural framework has built-in powers, control mechanisms, and biases, in the sense of systematic, unequal distributions of power resources, action capabilities, and life chances in the system (Korpi, 1983). In giving advantages and opportunities to some categories of actors vis-à-vis others, a social system shapes relative power in social relationships and institutional arrangements. Of course, how effectively actors use their resources in concrete control and other interaction processes depends on their particular strategies and interests as well as their levels of knowledge and skill. A social structural framework and relative powers among actors is maintained and changed, in part, as a result of concrete social transactions and control processes in which actors participate: technological innovations, social struggles, coalition formation and dissolution, group formation and other social developments. 33 Material/ecological powers. A major feature of our approach is an emphasis on materiality and the powers of nature material/ecological conditions and mechanisms that affect human populations, their systems and development. Some operate as physical and biological hazards to human life, health, and property: earthquakes, volcanoes, meteorological forces, species dangerous 33 Our theory combines two distinct but interrelated approaches to social structure. Social structure operates as a source of powering and meta-powering, and social structure is one of the major outputs/outcomes of metapowering (Fararo (2001) emphasizes this duality in the sociological analysis of social structure). 43

44 to humans (carnivores (the few remaining such as some sharks) numerous bacteria, viruses, and fungi as well as the insects, rodents, birds, pigs and other animals that are carriers or potential carriers of many dangerous bacteria and viruses). Nature s powers are coercive in many cases, but in addition to nature as a threat, she is nurturing, empowering, servicing needs and necessities of living and development. Of course, in part this is made possible or more reliable and effective through human knowledgeable and intentional action and the development and application of many diverse technologies. But the bottom line is that material and ecological forces and conditions often contribute to human production, survival, and welfare consideration of this is well worth keeping in mind; globally, many people are struggling to stop or to reduce the poisoning and destruction of significant parts of nature (see Burns and Hall, 2012, Chapter 17). The possible dangers and benefits of nature have not been evenly distributed and, therefore have affected human populations and development differentially (Baumgartner et al., 1976; Burns and Dietz, 1992; Diamond, 2012). For instance, the availability of highly domesticabable and productive plants in the form of ancestors of wild barley, wheats, and rices were limited to particular regions of the planet (the Fertile Crescent was one main area in which local agriculture emerged and could be effectively developed (Diamond, 2012)). The conditions in tropical areas, as compared to temperate areas, made for the unequal challenge of soil conditions, climate, and pests. Disease vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks are much more diverse in tropical than in temperate zones, and parasitic diseases, in particular, constrained historically tropical areas (Diamond, 2012). Material/ecological conditions and mechanisms played an influential role not only in the emergence of productive agriculture, and dense populations and cities, but in the emergence of powerful states and empires in particular settings (rich fertile regions, not in tropical forests, nor in Alps or polar regions) ((Baumgartner et al., 1976; Diamond, 2012). Moreover, material/ecological processes continue to operate selectively on human societies even under modern conditions (Burns and Dietz, 1992), hence the current concerns about ecological tipping points, rising sea levels, and more frequent extreme storms driven by climate change, which will affect some regions and places much more than others, for instance the expected impact on low lying islands and vulnerable coastlines. In general biological, geological, climatological, and geographic factors advantaged some areas for human development more than others. Tropical areas, as Diamond (2012) stresses, were disadvantaged by relatively low agricultural productivity, prevalence of dangerous diseases and disease vectors. Of course, with the continual development of technologies, humans have overcome many disadvantages and harmful forces. But they have never completely escaped them. They will not conquer disease; they will not 44

45 escape the vulnerabilities of their planet (and therefore their own vulnerabilities) to dangerous meteors, climate change, and tipping points which substantially alter ecological balances as well as many other yet-to-be recognized hazards and potential catastrophes. And, of course, material/ecological power factors operate, in contrast to agential and social structural powers, without human intention (unless one is considering human constructions of material systems, socio-technical systems, built environments, infrastructures, with designs, plans, and goals built into them) Meta-Power 35 In the social sciences, power and control are typically conceptualized in terms of the capacity or right of one agent ( individual or collective) to get another agent to act in some specified way or even to act against her own will (Max Weber). In various ways, the most prominent contemporary analyses [for instance, Peter Blau and Robert Dahl, among others] view power as principally one actor's control of the behavior of another actor. This approach to power captures only a limited part of the phenomena. In reaction, Talcott Parsons (1963), redefined power as mobilization of resources to achieve collective goals, and broadened the concept to include cooperative efforts and larger institutional venues. While an improvement, this too missed key aspects involving groups, organizations, and states. A larger, and historically more important part of power conceptualization concerns attempts to structure or re-structure the social and cultural matrix -- within which interpersonal power activities and collective enterprises -- are played out. This process we call meta-power, the capacity to construct the conditions, rules, and institutional formations under which individual and collective actors mobilize and apply resources to accomplish their intentions. Such structuring may involve the manipulation of norms and values as well as institutional arrangements. A given socio-cultural structure may be viewed then as, in part, the macroscopic resultant of the application of meta-power to determine permissible or acceptable activities and relationships of individuals and groups to one another and to resources or forms of property and authority. Thus, the meta-power conceptualization breaks with the past by extending understanding of power and control over social structures across time and space. Two prominent sociological conceptualizations and consistent forms of theorizing have set the stage for contemporary usage and development of the meta-power concept. The first is that of the proponents of the actor-system-dynamics (ASD) approach in the social sciences (Baumgartner, Buckley and Burns 1975; Baumgartner, Buckley, Burns, and Schuster 1976; Burns, Baumgartner, and DeVille 1985 (see encyclopedia entry on "system theories"). In general, the ASD approach to studying social phenomenon has supported a number of key theoretical developments, most notably: an appreciation of interaction processes as 34 Intentionality/non-intentionality as well as agential/systemic are shown to be critical dimensions in distinguishing these qualitatively diverse modalities of power. 35 Appears in G. Ritzer (ed.), the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, Oxford/New York,

46 embedded within rule, cultural, and institutional systems; of the structuring and constructionist capacity of human agency; and of the relationships between systems and their environments. Researchers working with ASD highlighted the concept of meta-power to explain stability and change of institutional arrangements as well as structural transformations of a social system across time and space. A second set of contemporary theoretical concerns about meta-power conceptualization comes from symbolic interactionist meso-level analyses of social organization Hall & McGinty 2002). This group began using the concept to explain agentic control of structural phenomenon across time and space. In demonstrating the convoluted and messy nature of an educational policy process, Hall & McGinty (1997) show how some agents shape particular structural conditions and institutional arrangements for other actors, set agendas for organizations, change institutional arrangements and institutional forms, and alter the form and quality of social relationships and future possibilities for types of interaction. Thus, legislators and bureaucrats try to induce behavior of teachers dispersed among thousands of classrooms across the state but are dependent on others to produce the effect. More explicitly Hall (1997) conceives organizations to be structurations of meta-power and specifies five processes that sustain the organization. They are a) acquiring jurisdiction to discipline other agents; b) constructing rules ; c) structuring contexts of interpersonal relationships; d) culturing the organization ; and e) enrolling subordinates as delegates for relational control. Along similar lines, Carson et al (2009) see agents exercising meta-power in relation to maintaining or changing major public policy paradigms such as those in the European Union relating to climate change, energy, food, or gender. This may manifest itself in several different ways: (1) elite actors in positions of meta-power may undergo a cognitive shift, which results in their adoption and institutionalization of a new public policy paradigm, ; (2) one elite replaces another through democratic election, negotiation, or coercion, bringing with it a new public policy paradigm ; (3) elite groups negotiate a new paradigm and its institutionalization. In all cases, an institutional or possibly a more encompassing societal crisis may set off one or the other of the three mechanisms. Of course, the changes may be driven by purely competitive or power considerations. Both research programs have been generally associated with qualitative structural analyses of multi-level, multi-site phenomena. This has involved the effective use of case studies, sociologically informed historical or ethnographic methods that produced not only a chronological timeline of events, but could place them in a relevant institutional and cultural context and demonstrate their relationship to multiple phases of development or varying discursive, situational or institutional contexts. 36 For the purpose of investigating of structural control in human groups -- pertaining to the regulation, maintenance, and transformation of social relationships and institutional arrangements there exist at least three dimensions of structural control with respect to social systems: control over action opportunities, control over differential payoffs or outcomes of interaction, and control over cultural orientations and ideology. These three system properties are mutually 36 Another major conceptual stream drawing on the early sociological formulation has been developed by political scientists, particularly those in international relations (Caporaso, 1978; Krasner, 1981, among others). Ulrich Beck (2001) also adopts the concept of meta-power in the sense of the transformatioin of rules of national and international powers. For instance, in his view the new global economy stands in relation to the state as a kind of meta-power; it can change the national and international rules of power. 46

47 interrelated and can usually be separated only analytically. Such structural power, as suggested earlier, shapes and sets the conditions for lower order forms of power. In investigations of the exercise of meta-power, there is also interest in differences among actors in resource control, skills, and strategies; the main focus is on capacities to mobilize power resources with which to manipulate the matrix of rules, conditions of interaction, and distribution of resources as well as normative or ideological orientations. Clearly, although an actor may have social power within an interaction situation or "game", she may or may not have power to structure or restructure social relationships, to alter the "type of game" the actors play, or, in general, the rules and institutions governing exchanges among the actors involved. The capacity to establish, maintain, or transform social relationships and institutional relationships is precisely what is meant by meta-power. 6.3 Agential and Systemic Types of Meta-Power Much of the attention in applying the concept of meta-power has concerned agents exercising meta-power and relational controls, that is, the agential form. But institutional arrangements, socio-technical systems, and cultural formations also operate as types of structural controls, that is, exhibit a form of meta-power. Agential meta-power Agential meta-power is observable whenever an elite or powerful group of agents shape particular structural conditions and institutional arrangements for other actors: to establish a constitution; to carry out substantial institutional reforms, to restructure an industry, to manipulate or transform interaction opportunities in key social areas. For instance, the state launches major infrastructure projects, regulates and protects workers vis-à-vis their employers (or the opposite), and, in general, regulates social interactions in, for instance, the economy or the polity. The processes in which meta-power researchers are most interested, concern powerful agents, for instance capitalist leaders, using their positions of structural power to mobilize resources in order to develop new systems of production, new products, new institutional arrangements, for instance, in the formation of economic globalization. The initiatives may come also from state agents, for example, to establish an infrastructure (airport, highway system, water system, electricity networks) or a regulatory agency; or, the initiative may come from a dominant political leader or party with a mandate to reform or transform social conditions. Such projects may define new relations, opportunities, or cognitive and normative frames This meta-power agenda has also encompassed Simmelian themes of "third parties" regulating relationships so as to foster cooperation, competition, and conflict was well as particular power and control relations; this form of regulation has been conceptualized in meta-power terms as relational control (Baumgartner et al, 1975). Meta-power was seen to be employed, on the one hand, to encourage cooperative interactions, or, on the other hand, to produce competition or conflict among actors (for instance through promoting or managing resources so as to shape a perception of scarcity of resources). The exercise of meta-power as an attempt to structure social relationships the idea of relational control may be used by social agents to ensure the effective functioning of an institutional arrangement, socio-technical system, or other social system as well as to promote or stabilize their advantages or dominance over social systems and their populations. 47

48 This duality of meta-power utilization the exercise of power in the interests of the group or community and/or in the interests of the power-wielders themselves points up one of the dilemmas in reforming meta-power relations and mechanisms in contemporary society. Structural or Systemic Meta-power Structural forms of meta-power shape and constrain social agents' relationships, their opportunity and incentive structures. That is, the operation of institutions and institutional arrangements such as those of capitalism and the state apparatus entail organizational biases, that shape and reshape interaction opportunities, careers, income, status, limited power over others as well as constrain certain activities and developments in predictable ways. Rules, procedures, and programs generate and regulate patterns of social activities, their effects and developments. Institutional selectivity may operate, for instance, to change the frequency of certain activity patterns or to alter the distribution of resources (concentration and centralization, e.g. through ratchet effects), to determine the parameters of power, the forms and types of games actors play. A system like capitalism entails generative processes of meta-power (based on accumulative processes which provide the resource base (material, knowledge, social, political) combined with knowledge development to set in motion innovative economic, socio-technical, and governance developments. For instance, major new socio-technical systems, once established, operate as quasi-legislative bodies shaping and reshaping human conditions. The social structural concept of meta-power demonstrates how institutional arrangements based on rules and formats of control which organize attention, provide definition, encourage and/or limit sensitivity to rules or practices that either in real or perceived ways change the form of the institution and its relationship to its environment. Altheide (1995, ) provides a prime structural analysis of meta-power in the media. Beginning with an analysis of the media as a form and format of social control, Altheide develops the ongoing idea that relational control of institutional forms has the capacity to generate or limit resistance and dissent, subdue criticism, legitimate existing unequal power and exchange relationships, and change the manner in which human social life might be acted out and lived. Thus, metapower analysis demonstrates that once developed and legitimated, systems of control have the capacity to shape and regulate human awareness, interactions including inter-relational power, and, in general, the conditions of human social life. In a similar vein, Hall and McGinty (2002) note how an existing policy context structures the policy process through a policy regime, the inclusion/exclusion of actors and the distribution of resources among them, a policy paradigm, the set of ideas and values legitimized for policy consideration, and a policy style, the accepted way to develop policy from and content. Thus policies are not created in a vacuum but rather in a context that conditions policy processes. While initially formulated as agentic meta-power the meso-level analysis has a built-in dialectic between conditions-action-consequences. Since there is an ongoing temporal and spatial orientation, analysts can begin at any point but must always be cognizant of the triumvirate. Those subordinated to meta-power in both its agential and social structural forms are not without some ability to deviate, negotiate, and/or resist. In this sense, control is never total because superordinates and institutions depend upon the readiness of weaker agents to accept 48

49 structural conditions and to implement established norms and social relationships. There are always varying degrees of discretion and opportunity structures for deviation and resistance. 6.4 The Powering of Institutional Arrangements over Actors, Social Interaction, Resource Distribution, and Societal Development The social systems model displayed in Foundations (see Figure 1) represents the interplay among agential, social structural, material and contextual powerings. There are at least five key systemic principles concerning powering and meta-powering: I. Agential powering and meta-powering are ubiquitous in social life. II. Social structures such as institutions and cultural formations impact on, shape and regulate social agents, their positions of power and subordination, their welfare, health, and much more. III. Social structures operate to bring about transformations: that is, operate in meta-powering and relational control terms on social relationships, institutional arrangements, community structures and cultural formations as well as ecological/material systems. IV. Communities and societies are structured and, in part, held together by particular agential and social structural powers as well as ecological/material powers. V. At the same time, these powering complexes generate, distribute and transform agential, social structural, and ecological/material powers. Societies consist of complexes of interdependent institutions, which exchange, conflict, and impact on one another (Burns et al., 1985; Burns and Flam, 1987). Of course, in the context of ASD research, attention is focused on power and metapower relations and mechanisms of these institutional arrangements. As stressed later in this note, institutional arrangements as systems of power entail organizational and allocative biases, and generate social differentiation and uneven development (Andersen and Burns, 1992; Baumgartner et al., 1986). Institutions and institutional arrangements are designed and developed to a great extent as control systems and therefore with designed causal power mechanisms for particular purposes such as to mobilize and regulate populations, groups, organizations, resources, and production processes. Diverse powers including technical, material, and social powers are mobilized and applied to accomplish institutional purposes: among other things, to facilitate exchange and economic growth, to make collective decisions and perform collective actions, and to control or countervail internal and external forces and developments that are viewed by some (many, or most) as undesirable or risky. Our approach to the analysis of power and meta-power operating in and through complex social systems such as capitalism and the modern state draws on a particular part of our systems approach, namely institutional analysis. An institution is a complex of relationships, roles, and norms which constitute and regulate recurring interaction processes among a defined population of participants in specified settings or domains (Burns and Flam, 1987; Burns and Stohr, 2011). Any 49

50 institution organizing people in such relationships may be conceptualized as an authoritative complex of rules or a rule regime with a particular architecture operating on human conditions, interactions, and developments, and organizing as well as regulating participants. Institutions are exemplified by, for instance, family, a business organization or government agency, markets, democratic associations, and religious communities. These different systems have in common their power to structure and regulate who may or should participate, who is excluded, that is, to define who are relevant or appropriate agents in such arrangements; who may or should do what, when, where, and how and in relation to whom and what; that is, among other things, institutions organize or coordinate specified actor positions or roles vis-a-vis one another and define their rights and obligations including rules of command and obedience and their access to and control over human and material resources; they indicate what are appropriate goals and norms, procedures, appropriate technologies and discourses in a system. There is a certain social action and interaction logic and normative rationality to any given institution. Each institution as a rule regime provides a systematic, meaningful basis for actors to orient to one another and to organize and regulate their interactions, to frame, interpret, and to analyze their performances, and to produce commentaries and discourses, criticisms as well as justifications. Such a regime entails a cluster of social relationships, roles, norms, and rules of the game. More precisely: (1) An institution defines and constitutes a particular social order, namely positions and relationships, in part defining the actors (individuals and collectives) that are the legitimate or appropriate participants (who must, may, or might participate) in the domain, their rights and obligations vis-à-vis one another, and their access to and control over resources. In this sense, it entails a system of authority and power; (2) It organizes, coordinates, and regulates social interaction in a particular domain or domains, defining contexts specific settings and times for constituting the institutional domain(s); (3) It provides a normative basis for appropriate behavior including the roles of the participants in that setting their interactions and institutionalized games organized in the institutional domain; (4) The rule regime provides a cognitive basis for knowledgeable participants to interpret, understand and make sense of what goes on in the institutional domain; (5) It also provides core values, norms and beliefs that are referred to in normative discourses, the giving and asking of accounts, the criticism and exoneration of actions and outcomes in the institutional domain. Finally, (6) an institution defines a complex of potential normative equilibria which function as focal points or coordinators (Schelling, 1963; Burns and Gomolinska, 2000). Most modern institutions such as business enterprises, government agencies, democratic associations, religious congregations, scientific communities, or markets are organized and regulated in relatively separate autonomous domains or spheres, each distinguishable from others on the basis of distinctive rule complexes and each of which contributes to making up a specific moral order operating in terms of its own 50

51 rationality or social logic. The actors engaged in an institutional domain are oriented to the rule regime(s) that has (have) legitimacy in the context and utilize it (them) in organizing/coordinating, regulating, and discoursing about their social transactions. In sum, institutions as rule regimes define relevant social situations, time and places, roles relationships (rights/opportunities, obligations, authority) as well as particular norms and organizing principles governing the appropriate agents involved. The arrangements define not only their powers and access to resources and to different categories of people but their responsibilities and obligations. In this sense such systems are not only constraining but facilitating and empowering. Many modern social organizations consists of multi-institutional complexes. These combine, for instance, different types of institutionalized relationships such as market, administration, collegial body, and democratic association as well as various types of informal networks. When different institutional types are linked or integrated into multi-institutional complexes, the resultant structure necessarily entails gaps and zones of incongruence and tension at the interfaces of the different organizing modes (Machado and Burns, 1998). For instance, a modern university consists of scientific and scholarly communities, an administration, democratic bodies with elected leaders, and internal as well as external market relationships. Such diverse organizing modes are common in most complex organizations or inter-institutional complexes. Rule system theory identifies and analyzes several of the institutional strategies and arrangements including rituals, non-task-oriented discourses, and mediating or buffer roles that are developed and institutionalized in dealing with contradiction and potential conflicts in complex, heterogeneous institutional arrangements (Machado and Burns, 1998). Moreover, the theory suggests that social order the shaping of patterned interaction and congruent, meaningful experiences in complex organizations, as in most social life, builds not only on rational considerations but on non-rational foundations such as sentiments, rituals and non-instrumental discourses. These contribute to maintaining social order and providing a stable context, which is essential for any rational decisionmaking and action. The concept of structural powering was introduced earlier. The administrative form of this powering is in common use in capitalist enterprises, state agencies, and most modern organizations. These particular systems of power and control operate on basic components of human action and interaction: situational conditions, and social relationships and structures (roles and their inter-relations) as well as cognitive-normative (ideological and framing) components. In more detail: (A) Situational/contexts are shaped and regulated Constraints or facilitations are imposed Material access to resources is enabled or blocked There is differential access to or blockage of communication, ideas, or people (B) Roles and relationships, social structures are defined and regulated 51

52 Relationships such as authority (the rights and obligations of agents involved vis-à-vis one another; their empowerment, disempowerment, authorization (top-down, bottom-up), delegation of authority or power The conditions and rules of social relationships designed to foster cooperation, competition, or conflict. Groups, organizations, networks are established and maintained Norms and procedures are introduced in a given domain Roles and identities of agents are shaped and regulated (C) Cognitive-normative structures or social paradigms are established and maintained. Situations, categories of persons, actions, objects, and technologies, etc. are defined Interpretation and sense-making are established Actors can simulate or prognoticize interaction scenarios and developments Actors can make judgments about appropriate vs inappropriate, right vs wrong actions and developments. Institutions and institutional arrangements not only entail powering properties but transformative capacities, their meta-power in shaping and restructuring social, agential, and ecological structures. The establishment of new systems or reformed systems entails the exercise of meta-power in order to realize a particular structural design and its practical impact on the interaction conditions of the social agents involved. At the same time, institutions in their functioning provide possibilities/opportunities to agents in particular positions to engage in metapowering: to create or reform structures, institutional arrangements; to legislate, to create or reform laws and strategic policies; to create and enforce symbol systems such as money or new language such as a technical one. Institutions performances and outputs have consequences, intended and unintended, some of them possibly generating structural transformations. In other words, while many of the outputs/consequences are the result of purely regulatory control processes within well-established structures, some entail metapowering, changing structural conditions, directly or indirectly: Direct transformation involves establishing or restructuring social relationships and other social structural arrangements. In indirect transformation, the powering may change material/ecological, social structural, and agential conditions that underpin social relations and institutional arrangements as well as cultural formations, thereby restructuring the relations and structural arrangements, thereby restructuring the formations and arrangements. Culture is understood to be a complex of learned symbols, rules, behavioral algorithms, and strategies, typically passed down from cohort (generation) to cohort (generations). Language is a leading example, but so are rituals, 52

53 techniques, and established procedures; and organizational and institutional paradigms, blueprints, templates which can be activated and enacted by members of a culture a culture sharing group, community, organization, or society. There are different ways of exploring the concept of culture and elaborating its elements. Chris Jenks sees it as all socially located forms and process of human meaning-making. Stephen Pfohl states In referring to culture, we have in mind social practices which are both symbolic and deeply material the rituals of everyday life; the economic production and consumption of language, images, and discourse; the temporal and spatial mediation of subjective experience; the psychic and bodily impact of communicative technologies; and the historically situated enactment of what we are attracted to and repulsed by (Pfohl 2004). John Hall, Mary Jo Neitz, and Marshall Battani (Hall et. al. 2003) address culture as follows, we propose as a very general working definition that culture encompasses (1) ideas, knowledge and recipes for doing things, (2) humanly fabricated tools and, (3) the products of social action that may be drawn upon in the further conduct of social life It is worth remembering that culture comes from the Latin word for cultivating or tilling the soil. Culture, in this sense, amounts to the ways of taking care of things. Common to these, is a view on culture not as fixed but dynamic. In the process of learning (teaching), what is taught and what is learned is not fixed or fully standardized. Agents adapt, reinterpret, introduce innovations in cultural elements. Variation is universal and makes not only for continual changes, for losses and innovations but also for the distributional character of cultural elements (Hannerz, 1992). Our research also focuses several cultural dimensions as powering factors. 37 Cultural meta-power derives from the ability to command, control, create/produce, possess cultural forms and any of their various elements. These abilities become resources to be employed in structuring and culturing conditions that shape human sensibilities and actions. 37 The cultural analyses here take into account three key overlapping, interrelated dimensions; symbols, practices, and material objects. Symbols generically are ideational and constitute ways of defining and treating the object. Practices reflect how things are done around here including rituals, rules, and informal tricks of the trade. Material objects are given significance, meaning, and definition specified with their use and action toward them. To reiterate culture(s) are open, dynamic, pluralistic, and complex. How they become implicated in social life is both contextually-determined and contingent. Combined they constitute ways of living sustained through experiential learning, socialization, schooling, and (in) formal training. The consequences of culture can be seen in the shaping of sensing/perceiving, feeling/emotion, cognition/thinking, and acting/behaving. Ann Swidler (1986) coined the term cultural tool kits as repertoires of habits, skills, and styles that actors use to construct strategies of action in varying contexts. Actors learn them; find them available; and then assemble them for use as they see their utility. This idea is congruent with notions of culture(s) as indeterminate, fragmented, and subject to definition. Culture(s) are always in process; both maintained and changed, produced and reproduced; created, disseminated, and consumed/used. 53

54 6.5 Major Social Systems of Power In our systems perspective, society consists of interconnected sub-systems, each with its particular institutional arrangements, agents, technologies, and powering and production operations. Here we focus on three key interrelated subsystems of many modern societies: Capitalism The State Democratic arrangements These interacting sub-systems of power and meta-power feed into and affect one another. They may reinforce or limit one another s performance and development. For instance, the economy produces resources which, among other things, through taxes and collaborative relations enable the state to operate; and at the same time, the state provides legal, educational, and research support for the capitalist economy (Baumgartner et al., 1979). Of course, the state may be unwilling or unable to do so, at least at a sufficient level, possibly because of major ideological and material interest conflicts. Hence, we may speak of a global system of distributed power consisting of multiple interrelated sub-systems. However, it is not only a matter of these selected sub-systems but also their elites and networks and their mutual interest in sustaining subsystem legitimacy as well as overall legitimacy deriving from their reciprocal relations. Some powering and meta-powering operate across the entire society for instance, enacted by those whose status and institutional power provide them with resources that can be translated into powers in multiple domains (partly through reciprocity and other exchange networks). Groups lacking positions in these interlocking power networks such as women (much more so earlier), immigrants, and other marginalized groups are relatively powerless in the global scheme but may have substantial power in a local (or even highly marginal) subsystem. 6.6 Conclusion What makes meta-power analytically useful is not simply the unique perspective that it provides on power relationships and the manner in which they are defined; other social theorists most notably the post-structuralist thinkers and feminist scholars have made similar arguments about the nature of social power: using "power" to accomplish desirable institutional change and the structural impacts of established power structures rather than stressing one actor's power over another (see encyclopedia entries on Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu for examples of this type of thinking). Where the conceptualization of metapower differs is in its assumptions about the formation and reformation of social structure and social agents' dialectical relationship to these structural conditions. The earliest formulations of the meta-power concept were related to social system stability (morphostasis) and system transformation (morphogenesis) (Baumgartner et al, 1976). This highlighted the significance of meta-power as a capacity to manage long-term historical forces and to exercise control over large-scale social institutional conditions which constrain cultural and ideological productions and the emergence of new institutional forms. 54

55 In sum, the meta-power conceptualization encompasses an appreciation not only of elite control of institutional arrangements as well as social norms and values but institutional arrangements operating as meta-power mechanisms: control over the organizing of social relationships as well as the situational conditions of interaction; the establishment and destruction of many opportunity structures; and the definitions, motivations, and even beliefs and values that social actors embed in their interaction situations (Baumgartner et al, 1975; Hall,1997). The concept is applicable to a wide variety of phenomena of interest to sociologists and other social scientists. Much of our present work stresses the centrality of structuring and transformative forms of power in human affairs (this is what we refer to as metapower ). The importance of this concept is in overcoming the limitations of approaches that focus exclusively on agential and inter-actionist forms of power, and that consequently neglect multi-level and transformative powers extended over space and time, that is, influences that operate on and through social structures. In earlier work (see Burns and Hall, 2012, Chapters 2-4), we concentrated on dealing with a relatively specific aspect of the power problematique: namely, power over power and transformative power, or meta-power, which in our view had been consistently overlooked by many social scientists interested in power phenomena. Meta-power is the power to establish, reform, and transform social systems (institutions, status and power hierarchies, infrastructures, socio-technical systems, cultural orders); it is a key to understanding and analyzing societal dynamics and developments. Among other things, transformative power is used in creating and empowering agents, but also creating the structural (and structuring) powers of institutions and cultural forms as well as material systems (socio-technical systems, built environments). At the same time, as pointed out above, not all powering forces are intended, in part because some derive from material/ecological forces and developments and operate as purposeless mechanisms of transformation (including destruction). Our work as well as that of others (see Burns and Hall, 2012) has conceptualized and applied the concept of meta-power, the power over power, structuring and transformative modalities of power (see below). This type of power is essential to understanding and analyzing the establishment and reform of institutions and cultural formations. Agents who occupy powerful societal positions (e.g., political or cultural leaderships, corporate heads, top administrators of key government agencies) and who are able to mobilize relevant resources are typically those exercising meta-power. But social structures through shaping agents goals, judgment criteria, patterns of activity and development may themselves have transformative effects and, therefore, can be viewed as meta-powering mechanisms. Agential meta-powering is usually oriented to intentionally establishing or transforming a structure, e.g. an institutional arrangement or a socio-technical system or built environment. Besides the mobilization of multiple powers, the agent(s) requires of course interest/motivation and knowledge a key type of knowledge is the design or blueprint of the new system, which guides the agents of transformation in their constructions. 55

56 (5) Our approach alerts us to the ways that multiple powers are composed, integrated into systems of power characteristic of most institutional arrangements, infrastructures, and socio-technical systems. And this is particularly so of such powerful formations as capitalist and state systems. Typically, any concrete social situation is characterized by a nexus of powering mechanisms. Particular mechanisms are clustered together in relation to any domain of behavior and processes that is shaped and regulated, e.g. traffic regulation, regulation of building safety, or an entire sector such as the auto sector (with its petroleum requirements, subsidies for petroleum exploration and production; production of automobiles; insurance of autos and their drivers; security in the handling of fuel, etc.). In general, qualitatively different powers material, social structural, agential are intertwined in structuring and regulating any given domain or segment of society: whether regulation of, for example, air or rail transport, chemicals, traffic, banking and financial systems, and associational life. At the same time, there are unknown and potentially problematic interdependencies that may escape regulation and make for potential hazards this also indicates the limitations of human knowledge and powers. These multi-faceted power systems are typically designed to operate coherently powers are put together to complement and reinforce one another. These may be structures with their controls operating stably and effectively, in some cases over considerable periods of time. However, ultimately, instabilities and disorders in power structures arise as a result of external and/or internal forces and changes. For instance, the fossil fuel automotive transport system is vulnerable to the decline of oil availability; or the GHG emission levels reach as they are anticipated to do highly destabilizing ecological tipping points and many (if not most) human communities will be forced to adapt as best they can to the resulting hazards and catastrophes; of course, policy makers might anticipate such developments and take appropriate action; or, a powerful social movement challenges the governing elites, their prevailing spectrum of policies which allow the dangerous evolution of green house gases emissions. Ultimately, crises and necessity may force a transformation of the automotive transport sector (thus far, however, only marginal initiatives have been taken as the planet races on in a global experiment exploring (or testing), for instance, to what extent there are catastrophic tipping points). Capitalism is an example of a dynamic, powerful complex system that does not just produce goods and services but monetary wealth, inequality, social and ecological degradation; part of its wealth is used to enable the operation of governments, the development of education and research, and the production of propaganda and ideology as well as technological development. Capitalist dynamics often results in multiple benefits but also disrupts many economic and social conditions (employment, power and status relationships, community life, government financing and regulation, education and research systems, occupations and professions) as well as ecological conditions (see Chapter 9). We work at a fundamental level specifying the particular causal mechanisms on which powering and meta-powering are based. For us to claim that A has or 56

57 exercises power over B(s), we insist on the need to specify the concrete causal process or mechanism whereby such an exercise of power or influence occurs: whether this concerns the use of particular arguments, means of persuasion or tools of coercion and how these operate on or through B(s) (their motivations, beliefs, judgments, and actions), or through the manipulation of their context, the situational or institutional conditions in which B(s) act(s). Thus, a powerful agent may be in a position to intentionally shape particular social structures: institutional arrangements, a legal complex, an infrastructure that influences or regulates the behavior of those engaged in these structures. Agents intentions as well as designs are central to our power analyses of agents and social structures. But we also address non-intentional powering ( fate control, etc) (discussed by Strange (1988), among others). For example, some forms of structural discrimination against immigrants and minorities in modern societies are not intentional; but instead are inherent in social procedures, particular rules and regulations (Burns et al., 2007). 38 And, of course, material/ecological powering operates unintentionally (unless manipulated by agents and social structural mechanisms to produce particular results or developments (Burns et al., 2010)). In sum, our work aims to not only systematically conceptualize power phenomena but to identify new and diverse forms of power, complex systems of power, the dynamics of power, especially relating to structural powering and metapowering. The work develops a general language and conceptualization in order to distinguish and analyze a wide range of power phenomena in social life, especially power phenomena associated with social change and transformation. We see this as more than a scientific challenge. The research has practical implications, especially in a democratic context. Our approach not only emphasizes the multiplicity and complexity of power arrangements. But previously unrecognized or poorly analyzed forms of power are identified and analyzed. Many new forms of power are coming on stream and will be used for control purposes; they are based on innovations in technologies, knowledge and strategies for controlling human behavior (for instance, bio-medical and social as well as psychological engineering). On a general theoretical and philosophical level, our approach is grounded (1) in the new institutionalism, utilizing concepts such as rules, rule regimes, rule formation and reformation as well as cultural formations and their evolution (Burns and Flam, 1987); (2) in conceptions of social action and social construction which link an institutional approach to a symbolic interaction approach; and (3) in foundational principles concerning the nature of causality in social life and the multiple causalities/mechanisms qualitatively differing whereby human behavior and interactions situations are structured, regulated, and transformed in diverse ways. ASD emphasizes the interactional features of agential power and control processes, the concrete actions, resources, techniques, and technologies used in 38 In this research, we showed also that there is active, intentional discrimination in a number of areas: in particular in schools, labor markets, and housing areas in Sweden. 57

58 such processes. Our models also stress the importance of context, the institutional and cultural rules and the established role relationships among the agents. The powering resources a power wielder has access to or can mobilize depends on this context, for instance, the rights and resources which A possess or has access to by virtue of his organizational position or ownership of property, similarly for B. The interactionist perspective directs us to the concrete differences in control activities, resources, technologies and techniques associated with coercive, remunerative, persuasive modalities of powering. The general model enables us to systematically compare the different modalities and also sub-modalities, that is, the multiple forms that coercion or remuneration can take each with its particular knowledgeable agents, activities, technologies, techniques, models of the situation, and modes of judgment. 39 Our power framework does not presume that A, in effectively exercising power over B, necessarily imposes her will on B, that is controls B over B s opposition. This is an empirical question. In many instances, A may exercise power in relation to Bs at the latter s request or with her goodwill. B may believe that there is a convergence in A s and B s goals and value orientations. Thus, when A functions as a natural or elected leader, for instance, when A assumes a normative or charismatic role vis-a-vis B, she is in a position to define B s goals, model of the situation, and action programs. Of course, A s exercise of power in such cases is based on a form of legitimacy, and increases the likelihood of B s acceptance of A s power and control actions. In general, in investigating and analyzing interactive powering, one must examine the normative context of the AB control relationship, including the relationship between A s goals or value structure and those of B concerning the activities and outcomes in the domain X of A s powering. The different modalities of power typically make up complexes of regulatory processes. Intentionality/non-intentionality and agential/systemic are critical dimensions. Six key points have been made as a result of the research on powering: (1) Social powering based on multiple interdependent causal mechanisms pervade all social life. (2) Social power systems (for instance, institutional arrangements, infrastructures, socio-technical systems, cultural formations) are complexes of causal mechanisms and potentialities. (3) Many, if not most social power relations and systems are intentional human constructions. Nevertheless, as we stress, the natural world s mechanisms and forces operate as powers in relation to human agents, their material and social constructions, and the dynamics and evolution of their social systems. 39 Elsewere (Burns and Roszkowska, 2012), we analyze the conditions for equilibrium and disequilibrium in control processes. Of particular interest, are conditions of regulation where a dialectic of regulation with the regulator introducing new rules to be obeyed and the regulatee finds loopholes or ways to circumvent the regulation; or the two actors mobilize resources vis-à-vis one another and there is a mutual escalation of powers. Another non-equilibrium case concerns total breakdown of the social control process. 58

59 (4) Major systems of power and meta-power are found not only in the arrangements of capitalism and the modern state but in built environments and socio-technical systems. (5) The mechanisms (and therefore modalities) of power multiply as new types of causal and control technologies and new socio-technical systems are constructed. (6) Power is one of the most important concepts in the social sciences because it relates closely to social control, regulation, and governance and, more generally causality and causal mechanisms. Our social power theory stresses the centrality of structuring and transformative forms of power in human affairs (this is what is referred to as meta-power in our work) (Burns and Hall, 2012). The importance of this concept is in overcoming the limitations of power approaches that focus exclusively on agential and inter-actionist forms of power, and that consequently neglect multi-level transformative powers extended over space and time operating on social structures, processes, and agents. References T. R. Burns and Peter Hall 2012 in collaboration with others) The Meta-power Paradigm: Impacts and Transformations of Agents, Institutions, and Social Systems: Capitalism, State, and Democracy in a Global Context. Peter Lang: Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. Tom R. Burns and W. Buckley (eds.)1976 Power and Control: Social Structures and Their Transformation. London and Beverly Hills, California: Sage. Altheide, David An Ecology of Communication: Cultural Formats of Control. New York: Aldine. T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns, and W. Buckley 1975 "Meta-power and Relational Control in Social Life." Social Science Information, 14: T. Baumgartner, T.R.Burns and P. DeVille) 1975 The Structuring of International Economic Relations." International Studies Quarterly, 19: T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and P. DeVille 1975 "Middle East Scenarios and International Restructuring: Conflict and Challenge." Bulletin of Peace Proposals, 6: T. R. Burns, M. Cooper and B. Wild 1973 "The Melanesian Big Man and the Accumulation of Power." Oceania, Vol. 63: Baumgartner, Tom, Buckley, Walter, and Tom R. Burns "Relational Control: The Human Structuring of Cooperation and Conflict." Journal of Conflict Resolution 19: Baumgartner, Tom, Buckley, Walter, Burns, Tom R. and Peter Schuster Meta-Power and the Structuring of Social Hierarchies. Pp in T. Burns and W. Buckley, eds., Power and Control: Social Structures and Their Transformation. Beverly Hills, California: Sage. Beck, Ulrich "Redefining Power in the Global Age: Eight Theses." Dissent 48 (4):

60 Burns, T. R., Baumgartner, T. and P. Deville 1985 Man, Decisions, Society London/New York: Gordon and Breach. Caporaso, J.A Introduction" International Organization. Special Issue of International Organization on Dependence and Dependency in the Global System, Vol. 32 (#1) pp Carson, M., T. R. Burns, D. Calvo (eds.) 2009 Public Policy Paradigms:Theory and Practice of Paradigms Shifts in the EU. Frankfurt/Berlin/Oxford: Peter Lang Hall, Peter M Meta-Power, Social Organization, and the Shaping of Social Action. Symbolic Interaction 20: Hall, Peter M. and Patrick J.W. McGinty Social Organization Across Space and Time: The Policy Process, Mesodomain Analysis, and Breadth of Perspective. Pp in Sing C. Chew and J. David Knottnerus, eds., Structure, Culture, and History: Recent Issues in Social Theory. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Hall, Peter M. & McGinty, Patrick J. W. (1997) "Policy As The Transformation Of Intentions". The Sociological Quarterly 38: Krasner, S.D Transforming International Regimes, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 25, no.1: Parsons, T.1963 On the concept of Political Power. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 107(3):

61 Note 7. ENERGY, RESOURCES, TECHNOLOGIES AND THE ENVIRONMENT 40 Getting things done depends upon having resources; they are the means to the end. A resource is any attribute, possession, or circumstance that claimants may use to achieve ends. Resources often are not plentiful or divided evenly. Resources are connected intimately with power. One view of power is the capacity to mobilize resources to get things done and to achieve goals (Kanter, 1977). Power also implies that there is differential knowledge, access, command, and mobilization of resources and of the rewards and benefits those resources enable. It is possible to think of networks as distribution systems for making resources and their consequences available. Resources have also been defined as constraints, inducements, and persuasion (Gamson, 1968). Power, in this view, is a tool in gaining compliance, overcoming resistance, or limiting the options of others. Differential command of these forms of resources leads to domination or assymmetry where some are capable of imposing their will disproportionately on others and setting conditions, making decisions, taking actions, and exercising control that determines the relationship (Hall, 1985). Superordinates can create culture, organize the relationship, develop forms of deference and demeanor, control use of time and space, differentially extract benefits, and disperse costs and risks. Subordinates are not powerless; they often develop techniques or means to keep distance from those above them. Resources and power should be seen in dynamic, processual, and contingent terms (Hall, 1985). Resources are not available automatically or totally. Situations may differ significantly to the participants. Miscalculations can be made. Mobilization may be too little or too late. Resources can also be lost, squandered, or misused. Staying in control requires commitment. Change, on the other hand as Becker discussed involves finding, developing, controlling, or mobilizing more or new resources. Any analysis of the structure of resource mobilization must be relational and interactional, dependent as it is upon the responses of others. Resources come in many forms. Some are quite general and can be used across a broad array of situations. On the other hand, actors are implicated in multiple settings in their ongoing lives. The ability (or inability) to move resources across situations is a significant factor. Some actors maintain their position by invoking authority and additional resources from those above them, to put down local resentment, dissent, or revolt. Gerson s (1976) concept of sovereignty is helpful here the net balance of resources and constraints available to a person, organization, or other demarcatable group across the full range of settings in which they participate (p. 798). Sovereignty as a variable can provide detail about persons, organizations, or groups and also of situations and networks. It also explicitly links situations to each other and to larger arrangements. Clearly, some networks are more resourceful than others. Several strengths derive from examining power as resource distribution and mobilization. This approach helps specify the dynamics of the action context. Its processual and contingent orientation facilitates understanding how domination or equality occur, recur, or change, since they are not assumed to be automatic. This formulation also lodges and connects the action 40 The following passage is extracted from Hall (pp. 121ff in Burns and Hall, 2012). 61

62 context in dynamic ways to other, and perhaps larger, contexts so relations between them can be explored. Domain linkage and integration become a point of inquiry. Resources (materials, technologies, built environments, infrastructures, and socio-technical systems generally) are essential to the construction, maintenance and development of social systems. An agent, individual or collective, group has control over or access to and are used in her activities, interactions and outputs, dealing with the group environment including agents in that environment, and conducting rituals and ceremonials. Resources are distinguishable in terms of their particular properties and their use in group activities and productions. An agent s resource base consists of tools, materials, and other resources essential for the performance of key activities including control and sanctioning activities and reproduction. For instance, in the case of a group or organization, access to location(s)/appropriate situations for key activities; technologies for group assembly and performance (materials, tools, and symbols, and built environments (buildings, waterways, stadiums, arenas) for the group to do what it is committed to doing, realizing its identity, its key meanings, and possibly meeting demands from the environment). Resources are defined/conceptualized and their exploitation and use entail rules integrated in the rule regime knowledge. The resource base may be either self-mobilized or provided by an encompassing organization, e.g. a corporation or political party in relation to its purposes, its activities and particular procedures. Group members control resources some of which they regularly pool (for instance, in time of a crisis). Some resources are controlled by the collective (in practice by its leadership or collective decision): 41 The group s members are human resources and the group itself is a resource: sources of expertise, skills, individual and collective knowledge, action capabilities or powers of the group itself and its members. Material or economic resources which the group possesses or has access to; sociotechnical systems, built environments, technologies and material resources Environmental resources (land, water, etc.) including appropriate settings or locations. Capabilities to assure a level of integration, resolve conflicts (cohesiveness, solidarity, mutual support, tolerance) Selected references Cary Fowler 1994 Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution. London/New York: Gordon and Breach Andersen, S. and T. R. Burns 1992 Societal Decision-making: Democratic Challenges to State Technocracy. Aldershot, Hampshire: Dartmouth Publications. 41 Corte (2013), drawing on resource mobilization theory (McCarthy and Zald 1977; Edwards and McCarthy 2004), refers to (1) human resources (labor experience, expertise, skills); (2) material resources (money, equipment); (3) moral resources (solidarity, support, tolerance); (4) locational resources (climate, local economy, cultural history and symbolic significance of the place). However, human resources are part and parcel of the agential base. Material resources are part of a group s resource base along with appropriate technologies, built environments, and socio-technical systems. Moral resources are part of the rule regime with the group values, norms, and rituals as well as incentive and motivational structures for gaining the commitment/involvement and solidarity of the members. But normative and moral factors such as norms of tolerance and fair play, values of creativity, readiness to recognize another s good performance are part and parcel of the rule regime. Locational resources such as action and interaction space(s) are part of the group resource base obtained through choice of place(s) (or, instead, the choice is made for the group). 62

63 T. R. Burns and K. Jakobsson 1994 "Environmental Issues and Developments: Swedish Sociological Perspectives." In: M. Rolen and B. Heurling (eds), Environmental Change: A Challenge for the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Stockholm: Swedish Council for the Planning and Coordination of Research (FRN) T. R. Burns and A. Midttun1986 "Conflict and complexity: The case of hydropower construction in Norway. Human Systems Management, 6, 21:33, 1986 T. R. Burns 1986 The Social Logic of Energy Conservation in Industrial Society: Five Theses on Limitations and Possibilities. In: E. Monnier et al (eds) Consumer Behavior and Energy Policy: An International Perspective. London/New York: Praeger. T. R. Burns1985 Technology Development: Theoretical Reflections on Hydro-power, Nuclear, and Alternative Energy Technologies. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum IIUG dp T. R. Burns1985 The Development of Alternative Energy Technologies: Entrepreneurs, New Technologies and Social Change Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum IIUG dp 85-6 T. R. Burns and A. Midttun1985 Industrial Growth, Environmentalism, and Social Conflict: A Case Study of Hydropower Planning in Norway. Berlin: Wissenschaftszentrum IIUG dp (German version in J. fûr Sozialforschung, Heft 1, 1986). M. Arnestad and T. R. Burns) 1982 Facing the Energy Challenge: The Limitations and Possibilities of Administrative Decision-making. In: R. A. Fazzolare and C. B. Smith (eds.), Beyond he Energy Crisis: Opportunity and Challenge. Pergamon, New York and Oxford. 63

64 Note 8. METHODOLOGY, RESEARCH DESIGN, AND METHODS 8.1 Introduction ASD researchers make use of a variety of methods in their investigations, for example in gathering information about the diverse and relevant formal and informal rule systems, the key actors in the systems, their interaction and production patterns, relevant inputs, materials, technologies, and resources, flows and output processes and historical changes and transformations. Also investigations gathered data about the diverse contexts of the systems studied (see Figure 1 in the beginning). 1. Interviews, observations, documents, statistics 2. Case study constructions and methods including comparative methods 3. System model constructions: flow/process models and structural/network models, simulation 4. Historical methodology 5. Scenario analysis -- among others 8.2 Case Study Approach in Single and Comparative Investigations A social science case study is a descriptive/analytic account of a process, structure, or interaction situation involving multiple actors, their roles and role relationships and the institutional and cultural arrangements more generally as well as the material and technological conditions. Case studies are particularly important in social science investigations devoted to identifying and modelling complex mechanisms and processes; this is especially so in social situations where there is a large number of relevant interrelated factors at play associated with the process and structure of interest. A case study may relate to a process, structure, or interaction situation in the past; or a current situation, structure or process; or, even, a future or anticipated problem situation or process. It tells us what has happened, is happening, or will or might happen. In the case of a study of the past, the researcher investigates, for instance, what participating actors did, what they intended and how the situation may or may not have changed, possibly as a consequence. In a current case, the study might describe what is happening, what the participating actors are intending and doing, and how the situation is or might be changing. For studies of future activities and developments, questions focus on the specifics of the context and situations, the agents involved, plans and intentions of key agents, their capabilities, resources and materials available to them, and what are likely scenarios or developments. In many of our case studies, we launch an investigation with a set of questions, more specifically: (1) What institutional arrangement(s) and cultural formations apply to the situation of interest? 64

65 (2) Who are the actors in an interaction study? What are their roles and their relationships? (3) How is a process, structure, or activity situation defined or understood by the group or main actor(s) involved, for instance as a problem situation, or a situation of opportunity, or just a setting of habitual activity or ritual. (4) What are actors goals or purposes in the situation? What difference does the process, structure, or activity context (including space and time aspects) make on the forms of activity? What are the types of problems considered and solutions adopted? What is the relationship of motivation for, and shaping of, the activities to the context, institutional and cultural conditions, and the kinds of specified activity and its consequences? (5) To what extent and in what ways do institutional and social organizational structures hinder or alternatively facilitate agents interactions and outputs. To what extent is activity in one area compatible with activity in another. (6) What role, if any, do key external agents play in relation to the activities in a process, structure, or interaction situation. (5) How do the participating actors as well as any relevant external agents define and deal with, if they manage, the process, structure, or interaction situation? What methods, technologies, and materials do they mobilize and apply to the situation. Are there particular established production functions they activate and implement? Who does what? What is the locus and timing of these activities? (6) In general, what are the place and temporal aspects of the process, structure, or interaction situation? How does, for instance, the local situation, affect rule regime applications and resource and technology use? Selection of a case or cases on which to focus the investigations. One selects a case or cases of a process or development that is of particular theoretical, empirical, or policy interest (possibly, all three). For example, several of us have investigated municipal innovation in energy conservation and planning for energy production in several countries (see Baumgartner and Burns,1984; Woodward et al, 1994); the purpose of the studies was to investigate the nature of public entrepreneurship and innovation processes under diverse sociopolitical and structural conditions. (1) We selected cases that experts in each country believed had made substantial innovations and changes in energy conservation and planning for energy production (the experts were public and private authorities in the energy field in each country, research institutes and researchers, journalists covering energy questions. (2) In our choice of municipalities in each country, the following parameters were important: (a) Of particular importanct was the locus of the entrepreneurs or change agents. Five different categories of actors were of interest: politicians or political parties, bureaucrats and administrators in municipal government, the public utility (or utilities), grassroots and citizens movements and external consultants. Each type of actor initiated innovation in at least one of the chosen communities. An effort was made to include cases where innovations 65

66 had been launched by different actors, for instance, politicians and administrators (in the energy area). (3) A special attempt was made to choose communities that had gone beyond merely talking and had actually initiated their innovation(s) and preferably had documentable results. (4) Communities were chosen that exemplified innovation initiatives on more than one front for instance, energy supply, new technologies, new alternative sources of energy conservation efforts. (5) Communities with and without their own established utilities were selected. In the latter case the communities selected were dependent on external utilities. The municipalities selected ranged from small towns to large industrial cities, that is, wideranging socio-political and institutional contexts. 8.3 The Importance of Recognizing and Taking into Account Contexts and Context Dependency To broaden and deepen the understanding of social forces and processes, it is necessary to ground, link, and lodge in different and larger contexts, the substance of these studies. While this is an assertion of a theoretical assumption, the nature, extent, and effects of grounding clearly are empirical questions. Two particular forms of grounding involve historical and structural contexts. Historical exploration provides a basis for understanding how a past shaped a constituted present. It allows a separation of the invariant or stable from the changed or changing. If something remains stable, one can learn how, why, and with what consequences. Change can be examined, compared, and accounted for in the same fashion. The study of history also helps to dereify the status quo. Things taken for granted now may not always have existed or even be what they seem. When current circumstances are said to be similar to previous ones, historical analyses can demonstrate the prevalence of different conditions, e.g., comparing minority economic status and opportunities to that of European immigrants in the late nineteenth century (Leiberson 1980). Structural context refers to the conditions (circumstances, properties, and factors) that bound and shape networks of collective activity. Hindess (1986, p. 120) defines social conditions as the complex intersection of a variety of specific practices, policies, and actors that have consequences for social sites. Context and site coexist in dialectical relationship. The activity in question is conditional and limited it is simultaneously constrained and facilitated by surrounding conditions. The context and site also are contingent upon the activity. If the activity is enacted differently, it alters and reshapes the site, context, and relations between them. The term structural context is a gloss. It is better envisioned in the plural with a number of multiple horizontal and vertical linkages. The amount and extent of coupling and the directions of influence need to be determined. Maines (1977) suggests that negotiation contexts nest in a series of larger, more encompassing contexts that represent the structural context. 66

67 Hindess (1986) sees structure as including the relationships between sites. Some sites, he asserts, have greater or more general scope than others and, therefore, greater consequences. There is an obvious unequal distribution of resources and risks, opportunities, and obstacles in today s society. That distribution not only exists but persists because it is socially organized. To understand that persistence and its contemporary consequences for shaping the future requires both historical and structural contextual analysis. The manner in which networks and collective activity are facilitated or hindered requires mapping the interplay between on-site behavior and site-to-site embeddedness. Reproduction, evolution, or revolution, plus ca change, plus ca reste la mime chose is the outcome of conditions, activity, and intercontextual shaping. Several examples of scholarship help to show how sites are linked to other sites lodged in larger contexts. This kind of work is exceedingly useful in visualizing solutions to the micromacro problem. Persell (1977), in a secondary analysis, shows how the stratification system in the United States and its supporting conventions differentially influence educational structures (school districts and school buildings) and their operational assumptions, which further shape differential relationships, interactions, and practices in the classroom so schooling outcomes and occupational outcomes tend to reproduce the systems of inequality in the society. Cookson and Persell (1985), in a brilliant study of prestigious private schools, empirically tighten the linkage by vividly depicting the interactions and practices used by prep school staff to obtain admission at Ivy League colleges for their students. Hochschild s (1983) excellent analysis of emotional labor is not formulated as explicitly as Persell s (1977). Nevertheless, it provides strong substantive and substantial grounding of the relationship between flight attendants and passengers. The commodification of feeling or emotional labor is linked and lodged asymmetrically within the organization and through management-employee relationships and practices. A slowdown by workers in response to a management speedup as a way of coping with changing economic conditions, provides a sense of process and conflict. Hochschild uses the fact that this company is nonunion and Southernbased to inform her analysis. The organization itself is located more broadly within the airline industry, a burgeoning service economy, and a capitalist society. Actions by the government to deregulate the industry manifest another major linkage and context. Finally, Hochschild surrounds and infuses her perspective by examining the family institution, social class hierarchies, and gender inequality and its consequences for creating differential emotional practices and emotional workers. Grounding or contextual analysis has important consequences for directing and improving analysis. It limits reification and overgeneralization by dissecting and partialling macro-level phenomena (Goffman 1983). Longshore and Prager (1985) offer a potent contextual analysis of macro-micro factors affecting success or failure of school desegregation. Persell s (1977) comparative analysis of schooling in private, inner-city, and suburban schools shows major differential consequences. These kinds of studies also make it explicit that research must entail comparative contexts. Contextual analysis clearly extends the breadth of analysis in three directions past, horizontal, and vertical. This strongly increases the explanatory power of the approach. Grounding, whether historical or structural, demonstrates how activity is both conditional and constructive. 67

68 The consequences of meta-power between community and classroom, industry and shop, and legislature and courtroom can be observed. The ways that differential sovereignty across linkages affects the specific action contexts can be analyzed. A final consequence and caveat of grounding is that it requires finding and following the connections and boundaries. It does not assume some a priori form. Selected publications Svein Andersen and T. R. Burns 1992 Societal Decision-making: Democratic Challenges to State Technocracy. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publications. Tom R. Burns, T. Baumgartner, and Philippe DeVille 1985 Man, Decisions, Society. London/New York: Gordon and Breach. Tom Baumgartner, T. R. Burns, and P. DeVille 1986 The Shaping of Socio-Economic Systems. London/New York: Gordon and Breach. T. Baumgartner and T. R. Burns 1984 Transitions to Alternative Energy Systems: Entrepreneurs, Strategies, and Social Change. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. T. Baumgartner, T.R. Burns and D. Meeker 1977 "The Description and Analysis of System Stability and Transformation: Multi-level Concepts and Methodology." Quality & Quantity, 11: T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns, D. Meeker, and B. Wild 1976 "Open Systems and Multi-level Processes: Implications for Social Research." Int. J. of General Systems, 3: T. Baumgartner 1978 An Actor-oriented Systems Model for the Analysis of Industrial Democracy Measures. In R.F. Geyer and J. van der Zouwen (eds), Sociocybernetics. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff. T. R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska 2009 "A Social Procedurial Approach To The Pareto Optimization Problematique: Part I: Pareto Optimization and Its Limitations versus the GGT Conception of the Solution of Multi- value Conflict Problems Through Societal Procedures." Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology. Vol. Quality and Quantity 43(5) September 2009 T. R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska "A Social Procedurial Approach To The Pareto Optimization Problematique: Part II. Institutionalized Procedures and Their Limitations." Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology. Volume 43, Number 5: Tom R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska) 2011 Legitimacy versus effectiveness: Procedural governance integrating expertise and social acceptance of collective decisions. International Journal of Regulation and Governance, Vol. 11, No. 1: Cary Fowler 1994 Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution. London/New York: Gordon and Breach Nora Machado 1998 Using the Bodies of the Dead: Legal, Ethical, and Organizational Dimensions of Organ Transplantation. Aldershot/Brookfield USA: Ashgate. W.E. Woodward, J. Ellig, and T.R. Burns 1994 Municipal Entrepreneurship and Energy Policy: A Five Nation Study of Politics, Innovation, and Social Change. New York: Gordon and Breach. 68

69 NOTE 9. Actor Systems Dynamics' Approach to Social Systems (Groups, Organizations, Communities, Complex institutional Arrangements and their Behavior 9.1 Introduction. ASD provides a conceptualization and basis for the analysis of social systems and their dynamics. 42 An ongoing functioning system (with interconnected, coordinated members, resources, and activities) is viewed a complex, dynamic system made up of three basic subsystems, embedded in a social and ecological/material context which affects the system and its behavior and which is also to a greater or lesser extent impacted by the system and its actions. The three fundamental subsystems of every social system consist of: (1) a rule regime which defines system purposes and values, norms, membership conditions, procedures for coordinating decisions and actions, production programs, social relations and roles (including leadership) among other sociologically relevant factors; (2) the agential subsystem or base (membership and recruits that are socialized into rule and performance knowledge, with capabilities to participate in group functioning but also to adapt and innovate); and (3) the group resource subsystem or base (technologies and materials used in group functioning but also its adaptations and innovations). Functioning or operating social systems produce not only their interactions but a variety of outputs -- directed and regulated by their established rule regime as well as by the exercise of human agency among the participants. As indicated in Figure 1, the production activities and products and outcomes concern essential functionalities such as internal governance including the regulation of tensions and conflict resolution; and external governance including dealing with environmental forces and agents; social, material, and biological reproduction (includeing maintaining/reproducing, adapting, and transforming group bases); collective judgment and decision-making; and adaptation and innovation activities. While some of a social system's productive activities and outputs are essential to system sustainability, many unessential activities and outputs may be produced as well (impacting on the group environment and, possibly, reflexively on the group itself). Among the qualitatively different, essential functional activities and outputs of groups which we have specified and researched include production of material goods and services, collective group symbolic displays and rituals including possibly spiritual events; internal governance; external g some are temporary groups, quasi-groups, weakly formed groups. Simply meeting together as in networks or in bars does not make such a social gathering (or collection) a functioning group any more than a crowd is a group (Gastil, 2010). In the early stages of group formation, the degree of completeness and the degree of institutionalization are typically limited. Group bases may be initially weak and may fail to be maintained/reproduced over time, resulting in group failures and possible demise. 42 The systems theory perspective views, in general, a system as a complex of components directly or indirectly related in causal networks, where some of the components are related to some others in a more or less stable (though potentially flexible) way at any one time and thus constitute some kind of organized dynamic whole. The interrelationships may be mutual or unidirectional, linear, nonlinear, or intermittent and varying in degrees of causal efficacy or priority; the particular kind of more or less stable interrelationships of components that become established at any time constitute the particular structure of the system at that time, thus exhibiting a whole with some degree of continuity and boundary (Buckley, 1998:85) 69

70 A systems model identifies and represents the empirical system and its interrelated subsystems and their core parts or bases. 43 Each social system has its own feedback inputs as well as inputs from external agents and environmental forces of information, recruitments, resources (materials and technologies used in production), rules (including laws, norms, values, and beliefs) and rule change demands all of which affect system functioning, stability, and sustainability (as discussed later)). The system outputs are interaction patterns, control attempts and demands for information, products (material and ideational, technologies, possibly trained people) and impacts on its environment(s). Functioning or operating social systems generate a variety of outputs -- directed and regulated by their established rule regime as well as by the exercise of human agency among the participants. Some of a social system's productive activities and outputs are essential to group sustainability but many unessential activities and outputs may be produced as well (impacting on the group environment and, possibly, reflexively on the group itself). Among the qualitatively different, essential functional activities and outputs of social systems which we have specified and researched include production of material goods and services, collective group symbolic displays and rituals including possibly spiritual events; internal governance; external governance. Some social systems are, for instance, only temporary groups, quasi-groups, weakly formed groups. Simply meeting together as in networks or in bars does not make such a social gathering (or aggregate) a functioning group or social system any more than a crowd is a bona fide group (Gastil, 2010). In the early stages of group formation, the degree of completeness and the degree of institutionalization are typically limited. Group bases may be initially weak and may fail to be maintained/reproduced over time, resulting in group failures and possible demise. 9.2 Applications and Contributions The ASD work makes two general contributions: (1) It provides a basis for formulating models of complex, dynamic systems -- input-output systems with interrelated and dynamic subsystems; (2) it distinguishes systems in terms of their distinctive social architectures based on their rule regimes and agential and resource bases, distinguishing, for instance, memberships bases, rule regimes, technological and resource bases, production functions, and input-output configurations. 43 In contrast to a mechanical or electronic system, a social system such as a group has members/participants who may refuse to follow the prevailing rule regime, or interpret them in new ways, or, in general, innovate on their own in diverse ways. That is, they may change the rule regime, intentionally or not, its rule complexes and algorithms. Social scientists speak of human agency and the creativity of human beings. Human rules and laws are, of course, of a different character than natural laws. Humans are also moral beings, motivated and constrained by moral principles and norms but again ready to deviate under some conditions. 70

71 Figure 1. General Systems Model SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL CONTEXTS SOCIAL SYSTEM ORGANIZATION RULE REGIME BASE MATERIAL RESOURCE BASE Materials, Technologies, Built environments, infrastructures RULE COMPLEXES, NORMS, VALUES, BELIEF SYSTEMS, ROLES AND ROLE RELATIONS PRODUCTION COMPLEXES OR PROGRAMS, DISCOURSE FORMS AGENTIAL BASE Participants Knowledgeability, Capabilities Numbers INTERACTIONS, PRODUCTIONS OUTPUTS/ OUTCOMES I. Group Purpose Productions II. Internal Governance Production III. External Governance Production IV. Reproduction V. Collective Judgment & Decision Processes VI. Adaptation & Innovation Functions FEEDBACK: Reproduction, Adaptation Transformatio n 71

72 The framework enables us to articulate social system models with which to describe and comparatively analyze functioning groups in all of their great diversity. Social systems are characterizable and distinguishable (from one another) in terms of differences in their operating contexts, their three capability subsystems (rule regime, resources (technologies, materials)), and the agency of membership, and their outputs; the latter impact in intended and unintended ways on the social systems themselves reflexively (self-organizing and selfreproducing/transformation) as well as on their social and ecological environments. Although these universal features characterize all social systems, any given social system has particular identifiable rule configurations, particular contexts, and particular output functions distinguishable from other similar as well as differing, social systems. Social system rule configurations are not arbitrary they are subject to principles of constraint which entail a coherence or logic. Elsewhere we provide illustrations of military, social, business, sports, and terrorist groups: their membership and agential bases (recruitment, capabilities), their resource bases (the particular materials and technologies they use in their activities and production), their rule regime bases (specifying group purposes, membership criteria, role complexes, production programs, times and places for conducting group activities). In sum, in our research we develop and apply to the description and analysis of social systems the conception of universal bases including rule regimes and their interaction/production functions. Social systems are characterized in the ASD framework by their three requisite bases or subsystems as well as by the patterns and properties of their outputs including production, reproduction and evolutionary patterns. Also, social systems are describable and distinguishable by their particular values, their social structures including role relationships, their resource base, and their particular outputs and patterns of development. There is a logic to any operating social system based on its value(s) and goals relating to system interaction/production and the division of labor (social structure) and the technologies and materials used in interaction/production. Certain productions require agents with particular knowledge (blueprints together with interaction or collaboration knowledge) and skills, a motivational basis for members accepting and applying the rule regime, and a resource base providing access to or control over particular technologies and materials used in group activities. The development of Actor-System-Dynamics (ASD) has resulted in a number of key innovations (as illustrated in this Notebook): (1) the conceptualization of human agents as creative (also destructive), self-reflective, and self-transforming beings; (2) cultural and institutional formations constituting the major environment of human behavior, an environment in part internalized in social groups and organizations in the form of shared rules and systems of rules; (3) interaction processes and games as embedded in cultural and institutional systems that constrain, facilitate, and, in general, influence action and interaction of human agents; (4) a conceptualization of human consciousness in terms of self-representation and self-reflectivity at collective and individual levels; (5) social systems as open to, and interacting with, their environment; through interaction with their environment and through internal processes, such systems acquire new properties, and are transformed, resulting in their evolution and development; (6) social systems as configurations of tensions and dissonance because of contradictions in institutional arrangements and cultural formations, which relate to conflicts and struggles among groups; and (7) the evolution of rule systems as a function of (a) human agency realized through interactions and games and (b) selective mechanisms that are, in part, constructed by social agents in forming and reforming institutions and also, in part, a function of physical and ecological environments. 72

73 In the ASD perspective, social rule systems and rule processes are universal in human groups and organizations and are the building blocks of institutions and cultural formations (Burns and Carson, 2002; Burns et al., 1985; Burns et al., 2003; Burns and Flam, 1987). Most human social activity in all of its extraordinary variety is organized and regulated by socially produced and reproduced rules and systems of rules. Rule processes the making, interpretation, and implementation of social rules as well as their reformulation and transformation play a fundamental role in conceptualizing human action and interaction. Such processes are often accompanied by the mobilization and exercise of power, and by conflict and struggle. Social rules and systems of rules are, therefore, not transcendental abstractions but are embodied in the practices of groups and collectivities of people: language, customs and codes of conduct, norms, laws, and the social institutions of family, community, state and its various agencies, and economic organization such as business enterprises and markets. Human agents (individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and other collectivities) are the producers, carriers, and reformers of systems of social rules. They interpret, adapt, implement, and transform rules, sometimes cautiously, other times radically (Burns and Dietz, 2001). Such behavior explains much cultural and institutional dynamics. Major struggles in human history revolve around the formation and reformation of core economic, administrative, and political institutions of society, the particular rule regimes defining social relationships, roles, rights and authority, and obligations and duties as well as the general rules of the game in these and related domains. Social actors make and utilize rules and rule systems in order to coordinate and organize their activities, to understand and to predict what goes on in a given social context, and to justify, explain, or criticize an action and/or its consequences in terms of situationally appropriate rules. With experience (and practice), they accumulate situational knowledge and skills useful in implementing as well as adapting or reforming rules in concrete interaction settings. In opposing or deviating from established rules and rule systems, they are likely to encounter resistance from others identifying with and committed to the rules. This sets the stage for social struggle, the exercise of power to enforce or resist rules, and negotiation about changing the rules. Thus, there is a situational politics to rule processes. Questions of power are central in ASD studies. This concerns not only particular power relationships and the powers engendered in institutional arrangements but also the powers to maintain or change social rule systems and institutional arrangements. This is particularly important in the case of rule systems defining power relationships in major economic and political institutions. A particular type of rule system central to any society are authoritative rule complexes or rule regimes (Burns et al., 1985; Burns and Flam, 1987). A rule regime organizes people in a complex of relationships, roles, and normative orders that constitute and regulate recurring interaction processes among participants. Such a regime is an organizing institution or an institutional arrangement (i.e., a complex of institutions). It consists of a cluster of social relationships, roles, norms, rules of the game, and so on, specifying to a greater or lesser extent who may or should participate, who is excluded, who may or should 73

74 do what, when, where, and how, and in relation to whom. In other words, it organizes specified actor categories or roles vis-`a-vis one another and defines their rights and obligations including rules of command and obedience and their access to and control over available human and material resources.4 More precisely. (1) An institution defines and constitutes a particular social order with positions and relationships, defining in part the actors (individuals and collectives) that are the legitimate or appropriate participants (who must, may, or might participate) in the domain, their rights and obligations vis-`a-vis one another, and their access to and control over resources. In this sense, it consists of a system of authority and power relations. (2) It organizes, coordinates, and regulates social interaction in a particular domain or domains, defining contexts specific settings and times for constituting the institutional activities. (3) It provides a normative basis for appropriate behavior including the roles of the participants in that setting their institutionalized games and interactions that take place in the institutional domain. (4) An institutional rule complex provides, among other things, a cognitive scheme for knowledgeable participants to interpret, understand, and make sense of what goes on in the institutional domain. In guiding and regulating interaction, rule regimes give behavior recognizable, characteristic patterns, making the patterns understandable and meaningful for those sharing in the rule knowledge. (5) A regime also specifies core values, norms, and beliefs that are referred to in normative discourses, the giving and asking of accounts, the criticism and exoneration of actions and outcomes in the institutional domain. Finally, (6) an institution defines a complex of potential normative equilibria that function as focal points or coordinators in a given institutional domain (Schelling, 1963; Burns et al., 2001). A distinctive feature of ASD is its socio-cultural evolutioinary theory. It stresses, on the one hand, material constraints and selective processes and, on the other hand, the capability of human agents to construct to a greater or lesser extent their selective environments, in particular institutions and institutional arrangements, sociotechnical systems, and cultural forms. Such bounded constructionism refers not only to the agential powers of actors but also the constraints on agency and the limited capacities of actors in any given context to adapt, reform, or transform social rule systems and, thereby, to affect the evolution of sociocultural systems. Depending on the pattern and balance of selection, migration, innovation, recombination, and transmission, the prevalence of various rules in the cultural system remain stable or change. Reproduction usually occurs when the implementation of a rule system generates sufficient returns (quality, quantity, and diversity) to sustain and reproduce the system. The reproductive success of any particular rule or rule system is measured in terms of fitness based on its ability in a given social and physical environment to compete successfully with alternative rule systems. Reproducible rules satisfy multiple criteria of fitness including the requirement that they are understandable and implementable. In other words, the rules work or appear to work effectively in interaction processes and in the social and material developments they generate. In this sense, fitness is largely a relative term. Rule systems that satisfy a set of selection criteria internal to a group or collectivity may fail, however, in the face of stringent external or environmental selection. For instance, established and valued practices of a group, nation, or the entire global community can result over the long run in ecological collapse or sociopolitical or economic disintegration. Innovations that are regressive or non-adaptive within the collective context may entail some improvements that, however, are inadequate in the face of other 74

75 selection criteria characteristic of, for instance, a highly demanding or competitive environment. Many social innovations are experiments in this sense and may be regressive in terms of the criteria of reproductive success (in other words, numerous innovations are tried, few succeed over the long-run). Human agency plays a key role in each of the major mechanisms of sociocultural evolution, in particular. Agency in the generation of variety. Evolutionary processes are based on variability in the rule systems of a culture. There are several possible sources of variation in any given rule system. One is error, the miscopying of a rule from actor to actor, community to community. Another is migratory movement, where a community acquires new rules introduced by agents from outside the community. But while both of these mechanisms are certainly important, they do not capture the full range of human creativity and the rapid, complex paths of sociocultural change. Agency, in the form of human innovation and problem-solving processes, provides a mechanism for generating change in rule systems that is often far more powerful than error or migration, one that encompasses the dynamic, inventive, and often playful, character of human activity. This is made particularly apparent in many sociopolitical revolutionary developments; this is also apparent in directed problem-solving activities such as the development of new theories, new technologies, and institutional reforms human activities that are largely neglected by most contemporary evolutionary theories. Such directed problem-solving and transformative processes obviously differentiate a sociocultural theory of evolution from biological evolutionary theory. Agency play a role in selection processes by structuring the selective environment. They May introduce new institutional arrangements, technological systems, infrastructures, and regulatory regimes, among other major formations, thus defining the conditions for the operation of agency in the future. Such selective environments constrain action possibilities, setting limits on agency. But the environments are not simply constraining. They also provide opportunities and facilitate certain types of activity. The selective environments allocate resources to actors, which they may use (decide to use) in innovative ways, for instance, by restructuring particular social systems or establishing new systems. Human agents thus play a direct role in societal selection processes, for example, through recruitment processes, through directly exercising power and control, and through dealing with problems and challenges in contingent and ad hoc ways (rather than allowing institutionalized values, policies, and practices to deal with the problems). Actors play a role in the replication and diffusion of rules. Replication is socially organized through the institutionalization and reproduction of rule complexes, and depends on establishing and sustaining not only the commitment of key actors to, but also their level of knowledge of, the rules and the situations in which the rules are to be implemented, maintained, and replicated. In other cases, a large proportion of those involved must be committed and knowledgeable if successful reproduction of social order(s) such as institutional arrangement(s) is to take place. Reproduction also depends on the power and resource base that enable those involved to effectively execute as well as enforce the rules. The social and physical environments in which institutionalized activities are carried out operate selectively so that, in a given time and place, the institutional arrangements tend to either persist, or decline and possibly disappear. 75

76 The processes of establishing and maintaining a rule system may be organized by a ruling elite that allocates resources and directs and enforces the activities of maintenance and reproduction. Many formal institutions are maintained, at least in part, through relatively well-defined and organized prescriptions and enforcement, as well as through systematic socialization and recruitment practices. Institutional reproduction may also be organized with a broad spectrum of participants engaged in processes of knowledge transmission, socialization, and sanctioning as well as the fostering of institutional loyalties. Typically, institutional reproduction takes place through both elite direction as well as the engagement of non-elite members. Whenever elites and other participants (including peripheral groups) stand in opposition to one another, this generates not only tensions but also uncertainty about the effective maintenance or reproduction of institutional orders, and raises the possibility of radical structural transformation or revolution (Burns and Dietz, 2001). In general, power resources, knowledge, and commitment are key factors in the consolidation and maintenance of rule systems or institutional arrangements. A new order is institutionalized that is successfully established, maintained, and replicated to the degree that the power-holders (and their policies and rules) together with their supporters and allies (cf. Stinchcombe, 1968): effectively control the emergence and selection of leaders, successors to themselves; control socialization for elite positions as well as for key groups on which the social order depends (the military, judiciary, and possibly religious and educational groups as well as economic elites); effectively control the conditions of incumbency and career patterns of participants in key governance structures; inspire awe, respect, and a sense of legitimacy for the order and its elites. 76

77 PART TWO: APPLICATIONS This part of the notebook reports on diverse applications of ASD to: Individual and Collective Consciousness (Note 10) Collective Cognitive and Paradigm Studies (Notes 11) Feeling Rules and Emotional Reggimes (Note 12) Creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship (Note 13) Groups and organizations (Note 14) Social science theory of games and interaction (Note 15) Institutional and comparative analysis (markets, bureaucracy and administration, democracy (Notes 16-20) Studies of governance, policymaking, and societal problems (Notes 21-24) Societal evolution, transformation, and revolution (Notes 25-30) Note 10. INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS: CONTEXT, AGENT(S), RULE SYSTEMS, RESOURCES In the 1990s, a theoretical framework, drawing on earlier sociological and social psychological research, was formulated to define and analyse consciousness, emphasizing the importance of language and communication, collective representations, conceptions of self, and self-reflectivity in understanding human consciousness. It argued that the shape and feel of consciousness is heavily social, and this is no less true of our experience of collective consciousness than it is of our experience of individual consciousness (in opposition to those natural scientists and philosophers who search for biological and brain function explanations. The research concluded that the problem of consciousness conceived as self-reflection as opposed to awareness or alertness -- can be approached fruitfully by beginning with human group and collective phenomena: community, language, language-based communication, institutional and cultural arrangements, collective representations, self-conceptions, and selfreferentiality. A collective is understood as a group or population of individuals (or collective agents as members) that possesses or develops collective representations of itself: its values and goals, its structure and modes of operating, its strategies, developments, strengths and weaknesses, etc. Collective reflectivity emerges as a function of a group or organization producing and making use of collective representations of the self ( we, our group, community, organization, nation ) in its discussions, critical reflections, and planning. A collective monitors its activities, achievements and failures, and reflects on itself as a defined and on-going collective being. In this perspective, human consciousness is understood as a type of reflective activity: observing, monitoring, judging and re-orienting and re-organizing self; considering what characterizes the self, what self perceives, judges, could do, should do (or should not do). The reflectivity is encoded in language and developed in narratives or discourses about collective (as well as individual) selves. The framework was applied to analyzing the individual experience of consciousness, selfrepresentation, self-reference, self-reflectivity and self-development. In other words, individual consciousness arises in the context of a person experiencing herself as an object of 77

78 collective representation and collective reflection and discourse. Individual consciousness is the outcome of processes of collective naming, classifying, monitoring, judging, reflecting on, and conducting discussions and discourses about, the individual herself. A participant learns in the collective context (in accordance with George Herbert Mead s earlier formulations) a naming and classification of herself (self-description and identity), of her judgments, actions, and predispositions. In acquiring a language and a conceptual framework for this mode of activity, along with experience and skills in reflective discussion. She develops a capability of innerreflection and inner-dialogue about self, which are characteristic features of individual consciousness. The analysis distinguishes multiple modes of individual awareness and consciousness, distinguishing awareness from consciousness proper, and also identifying pre- and sub-conscious levels. This points up the complexity of the human mind, in part its elaboration through processes of social interaction and construction. In her research (Walker, 2013; Walker and Burns, 2016) describes and explains gaps and dilemmas in international law dealing with gender justice. This is done by focusing on collective consciousness features and dynamics of international law dealing with gender equality. It identifies gaps and dilemmas in the collective consciousness of international law based on a shared (but problematic) rule regime and related institutions and practices. Walker (2013) in her treatment of international law and their narratives identifies particular instances of selectivity and bias, exposed in persistent violations and paradoxes of gender justice in the context of duly established norms of equal gender rights (for instance, in UN declarations, EU legislation). The conscientious and persistent efforts to establish gender equality and justice globally is compromised by the perpetuation of counter norms, often not articulated openly but tacitly, often appearing in jokes, innuendo, and body language; also common are archetypes as female victim/prostitute, dominating males (and downplaying the emotional and intuitive needs of men), glorifying the public sphere and diminishing the significance of the private sphere (Walker, 2013). Walker emphasizes the powers in international law of a collective unconscious or tacit pressures to generate distortions, deviance, failures in the law s interpretations, applications, and implementation. Collective unconscious helps to explain many persistent violations and distortions. Also important in explaining the continual and widespread violations, which she has documented are contradictory institutional arrangements, institutionalized procedures and rituals which play a role in the problematique of the distortions and failings of the international legal system (or any normative system for that matter). Drawing on George Herbert Mead, Walter Buckley, Tom R. Burns and Erik Engdahl, Alexandra Walker, Norbert Wiley, among others, we conceptualize collective consciousness of a particular international law group or community, which is grounded in a shared legal regime, specialized language,mutual communication, and reflectivity concerning international law dealing with gender equality. The community of agents share and experience consciousness of particular rights, agreements, concepts, discourses, institutions, procedures, trials, and other particular practices Agents in the international law community encompass international organizations, courts, INGOs, international law programs in universities, associations of international lawyers, and individual lawyers who bear and utilize the collective consciousness of international law. Collective consciousness is more than shared knowledge and practices it entails, in addition, mutual awareness and normative (emotional) charge of the knowledge, people, 78

79 institutions. It provides a basis to reflect on and discuss, criticize, and initiate reforms. We in international law are the kind of people who do these kinds of things, for instance argue about gender rights, initiate administrative or court cases, formulate appropriate arguments and other discourses. The difference between shared knowledge and collectcive consciousness is that the latter entails shared awareness and reflectivity of our community, that is, those involved in international law, addressing issues of gender equality, awareness of the particularities of who we are, what we do (or do not do), what our rules and procedures are. Consciousness is more than description; it encompasses shared awareness, reflectivity, and emotional predispositions Of particular interest in the research has been the omissions, exclusions, cover-ups, biases, and other distortions in international law concerning gender equality. This is because strong normative and ideological forces as well as powerful agents distort and repress particular international legal principles, images and facts relating to gender equality. Three major gaps and distortions analyzed in the research are: A. Person Exclusion. Persons and subgroups in a collective may be excluded from the communication exchanges, shared collective experiences, and significant parts of collective consciousness; for example, in many societies, particular groups of women, men, ethnic groups, minorities, those considered mad, and children may be excluded from collective ( public) meetings, discussioins, ceremonies, group evaluations and judgments of facts. B. Knowledge/factual exclusion. Particular ideas, facts, knowledge, problems and issues may be selectively excluded from collective communication, awareness and attention in gender equality international law ( the elephant in the room ): particular gender Issues or observations are ignored, for instance, discrimination and mistreatment of certain group members or subgroups, such as immigrants or Muslims. C. Exclusion of particular emotions or emotional orientations from group life and expression. Particular feelings, emotions are excluded from collective processes, experiences and consciousness in most groups. Resentments, dislikes toward the group or its leaders, or even animosities among members tend to be veiled, buffered, and excluded from public expression and communication (although they may be recognized and talked about or shared in small friendship or solidarity circles within the collective). In general, the theory of collective consciousness presented here can be applied to socially constructed collective selves (Burns and Engdahl (1998a, 1998b); Walker, 2013:344): partnerships, families, communities, corportations, national and international organizations, nation-states and the United Nations network as well as the global community. It is universal because all functioning groups and organizations with shared rule regimes and communications exhibit collective consciousness (and unconsciousness). The key to analyses such as ours is to determine the consciousness narratives and communicative practices of each collective, and the unconscious elements (assumptions, tacit knowledge, oppositions, the distorted and suppressed lying beneath or outside of conscious narratives and discourses). The conscious narratives refer to the nature of collective representations and self- 79

80 reflectivity, while unconscious material will consist of tacit recurring patterns, dualities and archetypes such as the relationships between masculine and feminine beings and their particular consciousnesses. In her research (Walker, 2013; Walker and Burns, 2016) describes and explains gaps and dilemmas in international law dealing with gender justice. This is done by focusing on collective consciousness features and dynamics of international law dealing with gender equality. It identifies gaps and dilemmas in the collective consciousness of international law based on a shared (but problematic) rule regime and related institutions and practices. Walker (2013) in her treatment of international law and their narratives identifies particular instances of selectivity and bias, exposed in persistent violations and paradoxes of gender justice in the context of duly established norms of equal gender rights (for instance, in UN declarations, EU legislation). The conscientious and persistent efforts to establish gender equality and justice globally is compromised by the perpetuation of counter norms, often not articulated openly but tacitly, often appearing in jokes, innuendo, and body language; also common are archetypes as female victim/prostitute, dominating males (and downplaying the emotional and intuitive needs of men), glorifying the public sphere and diminishing the significance of the private sphere (Walker, 2013). Walker emphasizes the powers in international law of a collective unconscious or tacit pressures to generate distortions, deviance, failures in the law s interpretations, applications, and implementation. Collective unconscious helps to explain many persistent violations and distortions. Also important in explaining the continual and widespread violations, which she has documented are contradictory institutional arrangements, institutionalized procedures and rituals which play a role in the problematique of the distortions and failings of the international legal system (or any normative system for that matter). Drawing on George Herbert Mead, Walter Buckley, Tom R. Burns and Erik Engdahl, Alexandra Walker, Norbert Wiley, among others, we conceptualize collective consciousness of a particular international law group or community, which is grounded in a shared legal regime, specialized language,mutual communication, and reflectivity concerning international law dealing with gender equality. The community of agents share and experience consciousness of particular rights, agreements, concepts, discourses, institutions, procedures, trials, and other particular practices. Agents in the international law community encompass international organizations, courts, INGOs, international law programs in universities, associations of international lawyers, and individual lawyers who bear and utilize the collective consciousness of international law. Collective consciousness is more than shared knowledge and practices it entails, in addition, mutual awareness and normative (emotional) charge of the knowledge, people, institutions. It provides a basis to reflect on and discuss, criticize, and initiate reforms. We in international law are the kind of people who do these kinds of things, for instance argue about gender rights, initiate administrative or court cases, formulate appropriate arguments and other discourses. The difference between shared knowledge and collective consciousness is that the latter entails shared awareness and reflectivity of our community, that is, those involved in international law, addressing issues of gender equality, awareness of the particularities of who we are, what we do (or do not do), what our rules and procedures are. Consciousness is more than description; it encompasses shared awareness, reflectivity, and emotional predispositions 80

81 Of particular interest in the research has been the omissions, exclusions, cover-ups, biases, and other distortions in international law concerning gender equality. This is because strong normative and ideological forces as well as powerful agents distort and repress particular international legal principles, images and facts relating to gender equality. Three major gaps and distortions analyzed in the work are: A. Person Exclusion. Persons and subgroups in a collective may be excluded from the communication exchanges, shared collective experiences, and significant parts of collective consciousness; for example, in many societies, particular groups of women, men, ethnic groups, minorities, those considered mad, and children may be excluded from collective ( public) meetings, discussioins, ceremonies, group evaluations and judgments of facts. B. Knowledge/factual exclusion. Particular ideas, facts, knowledge, problems and issues may be selectively excluded from collective communication, awareness and attention in gender equality international law ( the elephant in the room ): particular gender Issues or observations are ignored, for instance, discrimination and mistreatment of certain group members or subgroups, such as immigrants or Muslims. C. Exclusion of particular emotions or emotional orientations from group life and expression. Particular feelings, emotions are excluded from collective processes, experiences and consciousness in most groups. Resentments, dislikes toward the group or its leaders, or even animosities among members tend to be veiled, buffered, and excluded from public expression and communication (although they may be recognized and talked about or shared in small friendship or solidarity circles within the collective). In general, the theory of collective consciousness presented here can be applied to socially constructed collective selves (Burns and Engdahl (1998a, 1998b); Walker, 2013:344): partnerships, families, communities, corportations, national and international organizations, nation-states and the United Nations network as well as the global community. It is universal because all functioning groups and organizations with shared rule regimes and communications exhibit collective consciousness (and unconsciousness). The key to analyses such as ours is to determine the consciousness narratives and communicative practices of each collective, and the unconscious elements (assumptions, tacit knowledge, oppositions, the distorted and suppressed lying beneath or outside of conscious narratives and discourses). The conscious narratives refer to the nature of collective representations and selfreflectivity, while unconscious material will consist of tacit recurring patterns, dualities and archetypes such as the relationships between masculine and feminine beings and their particular consciousnesses. In sum, 1. ASD conceptualized collective and individual consciousness as well as other types of human consciousness. The key factors to explain human consciousness are a common language, communication among agents, development of collective representations and reflection on collective and individual levels of the collective, its agents, conditions, processes, and behavior. 81

82 2. The theory was applied to expose gaps and dilemmas in international gender law and justice (Walker, 2013) and, on a theoretical level, differentiated conscious, subconscious, and unconscious states and mechanisms. 3. Front stage and back stage forms of consciousness are differentiated and their interlinkage and mediating dimensions are identified. 4. More generally, in any complex community or society there are multiple, differentiated consciousnesses. Selected publications Alexandra Walker, 2013, Beyond Duality: A New Vision of Gender Justice: Collective Consciousness in International Law. Ph.D. Dissertation, Australian National University (a revision will be published by Palgrave Macmillan). A. Walker and T. R. Burns 2016 Gaps And Dilemmas In International Law Dealing With Gender Justice: Implications Of The Theory Of Collective Consciousness. Paper presented at the International Sociological Association Forum, Vienna, Austria, July 10-15, Tom R. Burns and E. Engdahl 1998 The Social Construction of Consciousness: Collective Consciousness and its Socio-Cultural Foundations. J. of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp Tom R. Burns and E. Engdahl 1998 The Social Construction of Consciousness: Indivudaal Selves, Self-Awareness, and Reflectivity. J. of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp Walter Buckley 1967 Sociology and Modern Systems Theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. 82

83 Note 11. PARADIGMS AND COLLECTIVE COGNITIVE STUDIES: CONTEXTS, AGENTS, RULE SYSTEMS, RESOURCES Introduction. Understanding continuity and change in society constitutes one of the fundamental challenges to social scientists, policymakers, and everyday citizens. Such an understanding is particularly important in the realm of democratic policymaking, where agents driven by divergent principles and alternative goals struggle to preserve or reform policy, law, and institutions. (see later about studies of public policymaking offering an approach to systematic and deeper understanding of stability and change in public policy. One of the key elements the research on paradigms and collective cognitive studies is that its investigations and theoretical analyses contribute to the understanding of how ideas matter in policy and institutional change. Policy action is driven, shaped and regulated by the ways in which cognitive perspectives frame problem situations and analyses and also call for and legitimize the involvement of particular authorities, experts, problem definitions and solutions Paradigms Shifts in the EU -- Social and Related Public Policies Public policy paradigm theory relates to a complex of concepts, principles, and models which have emerged over the past 15 years and which attempt to capture the interactions between ideas, institutions, and organized actors engaged in political and administrative processes. The research introduces and applies the theory of public policy paradigm to EU case studies, specifying and analyzing processes of paradigm formation and development including the socio-politics of paradigms (competition, alliance formation, proselytizing, etc.). Public policy paradigm theory combines socio-cognitive models, institutional analysis, and ways in which organized actors seek both to realize their ideals and pursue their interests in public policies. These are illustrated through our case studies of EU policymaking in areas ranging from gender, food, chemicals, energy, climate change. The research also identifies a number of the methodological principles and rules of method that characterize public policy paradigm research. Three key findings about paradigms are presented in our publications: (I) the functions/uses of public policy paradigms, for instance in interpreting social reality, identifying problems and solutions, and guiding judgment and policymaking and its implementation; (II) the sociopolitical process of constructing or shifting and establishing a paradigm (related to the social construction of problems to be solved, designs, strategies, decisions). The work identifies five basic social mechanisms of public policy paradigm shifts. (III) The structure of policy paradigms. A public policy paradigm defines problems or types of problems and their sources which are to be publicly addressed and identifies the appropriate available strategies and resources to deal with these problems (or categories of problems). It defines also appropriate actors (and their roles in what take place), for instance, those who should have public authority in relation to the application and development of public policy. Furthermore, a policty paradigm usually identifies agents with expertise (knowledgeable, authoritative experts) to define and solve the problems 83

84 The research concludes with arguments pointing out the usefulness and potentialities of public policy paradigm research program(s). Core tenets: ideas matter, institutions and social structures matter; multiple agents, alliances, networks matter. ASD points out the uses and function of public policy paradigms in relation to sociopolitical processes: 1. Paradigm is conceptualized in the ASD framework as a cognitive-evaluative-judgment system to map self, other(s), and the environment. It also plays a role in action, shaping, regulating, and intervening in or on agents, social processes, and social structures. 2. ASD teams have conducted case studies of public policy paradigm shifts (case studies in the EU of food, energy, CO2 emissions, pharmaceuticals, gender equality, among others (see Carson et al, 2009)). 3. Also of interest in the research are cognitive balancing and equilibria as well as cognitive shifts, according to the theory of social cognitive dissonance (Machado, 2008). Selected publications Marcus Carson, Swedish Welfare Case. Marcus Carson, T.R. Burns, and Dolores Gomez Calvo 2009 Public Policy Paradgims: Theory and Practice of Paradigm Shifts in the European Union. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. T. R. Burns and A. Gomolinska 2001 Socio-cognitive Mechanisms of Belief Change: Applications of Generalized Game Theory to Belief Revision, Social Fabrication, and Self-Fulfilling Prophesy. Cognitive Systems Research, Vol 2 (2): Nora Machado 2008 The Stabilization of Social Order: Socio-Cognitive Dissonance Theory Applied to Hospitals and Clinics. In: Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) 2008 Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. Nora Machado 1998 Using the Bodies of the Dead:Legal, Ethical, and Organizational Dimensions of Organ Transplantation. Aldershot/Brookfield USA: Ashgate. Marcus Carson 2008 Of Mind and Matter: Policy Paradigms and Institutional Design. In: Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) 2008 Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. Svein S. Andersen 2008 The Institutionalization of a Meta-Order: Negotiating the Energy Charter Treaty. In Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. 84

85 Note 12. FEELING RULES AND EMOTIONAL REGIMES 44 Helena Flam In this work, I have briefly sketched out what one can see as the emerging transnational movement for Truth, Justice and Reconciliation (TJ&R) a part of a larger movement for human rights. I then posed the question of what feeling rules or emotional rule regime have accompanied its emergence. I have adopted a special perspective in this research -- that of the sociology of emotions -- in order to identify some of the important reasons why the TJ&R institutions disappoint their critics. From the point of view of the sociology of emotions, it is of interest what norms for emotions emerge in an unchartered territory of human life. Hochschild (1979, 2012), one of the pioneers of the sociology of emotions, proposed that society in general, and work organizations and gender relations in particular, are regulated by norms pertaining to emotions. She called these feeling rules. They specify which emotions are to be felt and expressed in which situations, with what intensity and which duration. Four historians, similarly, have worked on (i) emotionologies or norms pertaining to emotions and their expression in specific societies or their subgroups (Stearns and Stearns 1985, Plamper 2010); (ii) emotional communities setting value on different emotions, their expressions and their instrumental uses, (Rosenwein 2010); and (iii) emotional regimes that are imposed by political regimes and prescribe specific emotional styles, consisting of norms, ideals, rituals and vocabularies. Overt adherence might lead to inner emotional suffering, yet non-compliance is costly since it implies the risk of punishment (Reddy 2001, Reddy 2008[1997]). The insight that prevailing emotional regimes with their distinct feeling rules are expressions of power but also in reverse indicate who holds power in a given community was formulated already by Kemper (1978). He pointed out, leaning on Elias, that power holders define cultural rules, including these pertaining to emotional expression. These rules sustain and protect their power, attaching risk of punishment to defiance. Hochschild in her turn stressed that those who possess material positional power, be it enterprise managers in contrast to workers or men in contrast to women, assert ideologies institutionalizing their power through defining the (exploitative) division of labor as well as the asymmetric role expectations and rules for emotional exchanges. These concepts were meant for single societies in which a group of power holders monopolizes control over physical force and a variety of material and ideal resources, and thus can deploy different means, ranging from persuasion to force, to reinforce their power. In a joint Weberian Bourdieuian sense, a political power regime is successful when the asymmetries in economic, expert, legal bureaucratic and military power seem widely accepted, being reinforced by a parallel skewed 44 Extracted from The transnational movement for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation as an emotional (rule) regime? Journal of Political Power, Vol. 6, No.3, pp ,

86 distribution and uneven capacity to generate cultural, symbolic, moral and social capital. Discourses, networks and institutions attaching cultural, symbolic and moral capital to specific races, nations, gender and age groups help to naturalize and thus solidify these power asymmetries even further. History teaches us that defiance emerges in a political regime when its self-representations do not match its practices, when it modifies either intensifying or lightening up physical or cognitive emotional suffering of those subject to it. The latter respond with a search for sites of cognitive emotional refuge, possibly developing their own anger-fed hidden transcripts or even their own full-blown culture and forms of consciousness, paving the way to open rebellion (Thompson 1963, Scott 1990, Reddy 2001, Reddy 2008[1997]). Alternatively, when the aspiring power holders manage to define alternative material or ideal resources as superior to those of the power holders, the defiant are willing to take the risk of openly rallying to their support. In my research (presented in Flam (2013), the focus is not on a single national case, but instead on the transnational multi-actor system and its relationships. Also in this system, power to maintain or to modify the status quo is based on a variety of resources ranging from economic, technical, legal bureaucratic and military through to social and moral. The main reasons for defiance remain the same as in the national settings. Setting up the ICC in the Hague To make a short story shorter, my historical account tells how a coalition of aspiring power holders, comprised of the internationally respected (Trans-)Non-governmental Organization ((T)NGOs), a few International organizations (IOs) and several mediumsized states (dubbed like-minded states, LMS), succeeded in institutionalizing the foundations of an unprecedented transnational legal moral regime for the persecution of transgressors against violations of laws and customs of war, genocide and crimes against humanity (REF). Their successful coalition-building amounted to a sudden acquisition of social capital. This capital helped concentrate and employ as a powerful weapon cultural, moral and symbolic capital which had been dispersed before. Heterogeneous as they were, the coalition partners acted on a variety of motives, ranging from idealism to the quest for more power in the international affairs. The (T) NGOs delivered moral outrage, expertise and the principles around which the coalition could rally. The representatives of the IOs and LMS supplied the authority of office, willingness to lobby for these principles, and their (legal-bureaucratic) entitlement to partake in international negotiations and make international agreements. The coalition s `crowning` accomplishment the setting up of the ICC in The Hague in 2002 stood for the victory of a new legal moral regime called into life to wage a war against the elite perpetrators and for Truth, Justice, and Conciliation (TJ&R). It was also a battle (but not the war) won against the dominance of the great powers within the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the realm of international affairs. The discourse on emotions required for Truth Commissions (TCs), International Crime Tribunals (ICTs) and the International Crime Commission (ICC). 86

87 A paradoxical situation has been created by the movement for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation (TJ&R) by its discourses but also by the legal institutional constraints within which it unfolds itself. On the one hand, legal mandates for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), legal discourses and legal rules for the International Criminal Court (ICC), the UN Resolution Nr of 2008 (Glasius 2006, pp , Gericke and Mülhäuser 2011, pp ), and a total of 30 ICTs and TCs indicate an increased formal willingness to show compassion for victims in general. Moreover, formal legal indignation has become more encompassing. The categories of crimes and the categories of victims have been expanded. This means that victims of genocide, sexual assault or mass rape are now formally recognized as such. The Responsibility to Protect Truth Commissions (R2P) echoes in the TCs, ICTs and the ICC in a sense that regular citizens and their suffering can be voiced and should receive compassionate hearing. I have examined transnational discourses on the TCs, ICTs and the ICC. The purpose has been to tease out what these discourses have to say about how the victims and perpetrators are to behave and, in particular, which feeling rules they are supposed to follow. At least formally, victimized citizens have become more important than in the past relative to the political and military elites and the states responsible for atrocities. But at the same time, as I have shown, the proponents of TJ&R as well as the TJ&R institutions demand more in terms of courage, endurance and emotions management from the victims than from the perpetrators (Flam, 2013). The obligations and feeling rules formulated for the perpetrators make a short list. They are to tell the truth, and to admit guilt rather than forget (Minow 1998, pp , Henry 2004, 2009, Gericke and Mülhäuser 2011, Schäfer 2011, p. 160). In an effort to convince them to reveal the truth about their deeds, it is argued that even if it is painful for them to remember or they fear the consequences of admitting their guilt, they should testify for the sake of TJ&R, and also because telling their story will have a healing, therapeutic effect. Two emotions are attributed to them: guilt and fear of admitting guilt. They are admonished not to take forgiveness for granted. The participants in the transnational discourse on the victims assume that they know them well. The victims are seen as living in anguish, pain, despair, humiliation and powerlessness as well as in anger, rage and outrage. They are embittered, resentful, hateful and trapped in unrelenting hatred. In Rwanda, one could actually see how violent and bloodthirsty they were, sense their frenzy for revenge (Minow 1998, pp. 1, 14 24, ). They are cast as potential perpetrators which the post-atrocity society needs to restrain. Sometimes in one and the same breath, they are portrayed as heroic, anguished yet hopeful. The victims are said to wish, above all, for a life without fear and regained sense of control (Minow 1998, pp. 9 24, 132, 137, Dembour and Haslam 2004, Henry 2004, 2009, Gericke and Mühlhäuser 2011, Schäfer 2011, 157). They are said to wish to tell their story, to hope for the validation of their own experience 87

88 through being heard, to restore their own sense of dignity and to avoid being painfully imprisoned in the past if such is the case. Less frequently, they are portrayed as inspired by, and hopeful about, the promises of truth and justice, wishing for the constitution, the vote, education and jobs. Seeing the slow working of the law, they are also said to lose their confidence in the rule of law and TJ institutions. They are said to turn cynical or disillusioned and frustrated by the fact that, for example, the tribunals resources are very limited, and there are more lawyers for the persecutors than for the victims. When they ask for or accept even mostly pitiful material reparations, they are accused of venality by their foes and seen in need of defense by their friends (Minow 1998, pp , Torpey 2006, Schäfer 2011, pp ). In their defense, statistics are cited showing their extreme poverty, and it is said that they usually want the money for the education of their grandchildren. Even in this respect, they are on trial. The list of obligations and feeling rules for the victims is much longer than for the perpetrators. Not the heroic, but the victimized yet ready to turn into a perpetrator s image of the victims prevails (Minow 1998, pp , , 129). They are told that they should forego bitterness and hatred, and give up revenge since revenge does not restore order, but only leads to escalation, excesses and mutual destruction. It destroys one s own life and upsets the society. The victims should not express rage. Instead, they should recognize the legitimate limits of feeling over the wrongdoing they experienced. Like the perpetrators even if it is painful for them and they fear the consequences (here their powerlessness and the threat of silencing retaliation should be kept in mind) they should testify for the sake of TJ&R. Even if they would rather forget their pain, they are told they should remember, tell and heal. The promise of healing through telling is offered to them just as to the perpetrators, although there is no evidence (or very split evidence) that testifying actually helps victims in any way (Henry 2004, 2009, Mendeloff 2009). There is also no evidence that crime tribunals instill fear of punishment in the perpetrators. Evidence that victims are offered a sense of justice, relief from trauma, and made less vengeful and less likely to engage in or support violent retribution is capricious (Mendeloff 2009). Finally, the victims are told not to degrade or deny the dignity of the wrongdoer and to leave the retribution to the more objective and more neutral third parties, such as the members of TC or the lawyers and jurors (Minow 1998, pp. 9 12). They should forgive because forgiveness is a key to finding one s peace and truly forgetting the past with all its atrocities. The burden of reconciliation is thus placed on the victims who, although they have the right to rage and many profound reasons not to forgive, are told that they can only achieve empowerment when they voice their forgiveness (Grunebaum 2002, pp , Schäfer 2011, pp ). 88

89 Arguably, then, the well-meaning participants in the discourses about the TJ&R-institutions have imposed many more feeling rules and possibly more demanding rules -- on the victims than on the perpetrators. The discourses about why these institutions are good for victims can be read as manuals in the emotions management meant for victims. These tell the victims how to think/reframe their situation. Allegedly in their enlightened selfinterest, they should remember and tell, and heal and forget; even if for many reasons they want to remain silent (Schäfer 2011, p. 159). They should engage in emotion management, getting rid of such destructive emotions as hate, bitterness or rage, for the sake of themselves and the society, Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation, transition to democracy, peace and prosperity. Such, numerous or demeaning demands are not placed on the perpetrators. Some authors make clear that TJ&R is their chief concern, leaving the discussion of how these aims affect victims out or for the final analysis (Minow 1998, Rotberg and Thompson 2000, Wald 2002, Hayner 2010[2001], Buckley-Zistel and Kater 2011). Calls for limiting compassion for the victims and, simultaneously, for extending compassion to the perpetrators and the by-standers have multiplied. This is not just a result of power asymmetries which even in post-atrocity contexts often favor former power holders, and, as I have tried to show in my research, the discourses promoted by some of the strongest supporters of the movement for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation. Archbishop Tutu, the UN and the EU, spreading the discourse of reconciliation at the expense of truth and justice, also play an important role in tilting the balance towards less compassion for the victims and more for the perpetrators. Theirs is a call for reintegrating the perpetrators, giving them a chance. As far as the various ICTs and the ICC are concerned, it took until the end of the last century before the law acknowledged types of human suffering such as racism and sexism, even though definitions are still today far from perfect (Glasius 2006, pp , Gericke and Mühlhäuser 2011). Even worse, at the preparatory stage, women were told to hold back their emotions and also how to rephrase their stories. In the courtrooms, they were actually silenced by insensitive questions, interruptions and prompts fragmenting and detouring the story, rushed to tell relevant facts, not given time to express grief about the deceased, outrage or stunned incomprehension over mass atrocities they saw and/or were subjected to, put under hostile crossexaminations calling for simple yes or no answers. They were re-victimized by the (i) insensitive, ignorant or sexualized comments and questions and (ii) defense lawyers questioning their sanity and their ability to remember (Wald 2002, pp , , Dembour and Haslam 2004, Henry 2004, 2009, Gericke and Mühlhäuser 2011, pp , Ristic 2013; see Whittier 2009 for similar developments in the US from the late 1980s on as well as De Haan and Loade 2002 for general trends). Although the law for the ICTY is meant to hinder questions about consent or past sexual conduct incriminating victims of sexual abuse, these were asked nevertheless (Wald 2002, p. 222, see Henry 2009, p. 127). In sum, part of the broader human rights movement that I dubbed the movement for TJ&R can be understood as not just a legal moral regime but also a 89

90 set of feeling rules specifying how the West should respond to past/distant human suffering (Flam, 2013). I focused on the rules proposed by disparate professionals, such as lawyers, historians or educators, and their critics, all participating in a transnational debate about the emotions required from the perpetrators and victims who appear before the TCs, ICTs and the ICC. This discourse just like those of the armchair intellectuals such as Susan Sontag or Luc Botanska or activists heading the IC of the Red Cross, Doctors without Borders, or Amnesty International -- the compassion for the victims nor the indignation for the perpetrators should be impulsive or hot. Instead, they advocate cooled emotions and fact-finding so that the direction of these emotions can be gotten right. Only upon reflection and fact-finding investigation, should these emotions be expressed with great intensity. This means long waiting times for the actual victims. It also amounts to the domination of the legal principle of innocent until proven guilty. This principle is reinforced by the current `therapeutic` view that even perpetrators and onlookers, because they feel ashamed or guilty about their past in fact suffer, and therefore should be listened to and given a chance of rehabilitation and reintegration. The `therapeutic` view in turn dovetails with the multiple UN, EU and domestic elite pressures to pursue reconciliation to secure peace, stability and democracy. Victims seem to stand last in line. The predominance of the principle `innocent until proven guilty should not overshadow the bi-modal emotional regime proposed for different TJ&R institutions. Before TCs, witnesses who most often are also victims are expected to display their anguish and trauma. Before tribunals and courts, they are urged to do just the opposite, that is, control their emotions and display cool rationality. This is to say that strong pressures exist to produce either a traumatized-emotional victim or an abstract-rational one. Only a small minority of dissenting voices have opposed the dominant discourse proposing this bi-modal emotional (rule) regime. As I have shown elsewhere, critics focus on the disrespect with which victims, their suffering and their legitimate emotions are treated. Some take the perspective of the victims to argue for letting victims express their moral outrage and grief before the ICTs and the ICC, for more sensitive practices, and for letting them maintain their composure if they feel like it before the TCs. Others pinpoint that these institutions are simply inappropriate for the expression of grief, sorrow, remorse, anger, rage or moral outrage. They therefore argue for either creating separate times and spaces for the expressions of grief, rage, hatred and non-forgiveness (Grunebaum 2002, p. 309) or relying on the media, to produce memoirs, documentaries, paintings, history books etc. in which victims can freely express their fully legitimate emotions (Schäfer 2011, p. 163). 90

91 From my point of view, such separate times and spaces should be provided, organized or seized, but at the same time the transnational movement for TJ&R should become more self-critical about the burdens it places on victims. It should move to demand laws, procedures and practices capable of accommodating the enormous post-atrocity human suffering just as it is. A great obstacle to such reflections and demands is constituted by the very representatives of professions populating the IOs and TNGOs, who have staked out and remain loyal to the bourgeoning TJ&R transnational political regime. For wrong outcomes, such as, for example, inefficient court procedures, too few sentences or too few sentences of key figures, they blame the major powers, specific Western states or the asymmetries of power between the (former, at times still current) perpetrators, who often are in power in the post-atrocity phase. Their blind spot is their own role in the emerging transnational TJ&R regime. They do not see that they themselves as participants in a transnational effort to combat elite impunity, pursue truth and justice, and secure peaceful transitions to durable democracies shape the TJ&R institutionalizations in ways that are disadvantageous to victims not only in legal terms but also in terms of actual practices and emotional rule regimes. Particularly numerous among the loyal supporters of the TJ&R are lawyers, historians, therapy/trauma specialists, forensic specialists and social scientists. These professions not only push for but also derive their employment opportunities, income and prestige from the very institutionalizations of the TJ&R that they have so decisively shaped and that they are very keen to keep legitimate in relation to their professions and powers (Leys 2000, Hirschl 2007, Mendeloff 2009). Their preference is for funds to be invested in historical archives and forensic evidence documents and bones rather than witnesses testifying about the facts. Emerging is a new Bourdieuian social field. The ICC alone employs about 600 persons. It is assisted by 2500 NGOs gathered under one umbrella organization and (SPECIFY) representing 160 countries. Their efforts are paralleled by an unknown number of other NGOs. The ICTY has 787 staff members, representing 77 nationalities. The Rwandan Tribunal fares not much worse: For biennium , the General Assembly of the United Nations approved initial appropriations for ICTR of $245,295,800 gross ($227,246,500 net) and authorized 693 posts for 2010 and 628 posts for nationalities are represented at the Tribunal (Arusha, Kigali, The Hague and New York). The ICC, the ICTY and their respective (T)NGOs live in a symbiotic relationship. This, arguably, explains the (T)NGO blind spot(s) and their failure to loudly criticize an emotional regime buttressing blatant asymmetries of power and emotional distortions. Most (T)NGOs keep silent for fear of jeopardizing not only their own existence, but also the hardly won (legitimacy of) institutions intended for the exercise of global justice. They have made themselves captive of lawyers and other professions who shifted from victim-advocates to perpetrator-advocates in their bid for power and recognition. The global justice regime, just like its emotion counterpart, is still in the making. 91

92 In a larger perspective, the research shows how one can go about analyzing emotional regimes in transnational relations, and that it pertains "only" to discourses, institutions and practices concerned with the suffering caused by crimes against humanity, human rights and war crimes. And one can do similar analyses for any other aspect of transnational relations: financial or commodity flows, migration, internet, etc. References and Consulted Sources Acorn, A.E., Compulsory compassion: a critique of restorative justice. Vancouver: UBC Press. Alexander, J.C., On the social construction of moral universals. In: J.C. Alexander, et al., eds. Cultural trauma and collective identity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, (original publication in 2002, re-printed many times in various volumes since). Axworthy, L., Canada and antipersonnel landmines: human security as a foreign policy priority. In: S. Smith, A. Hartfield and T. Dunne, eds. Foreign policy: theories. Actors. Cases. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Boltanski, L., 1999[1993]. Distant suffering: morality, media and politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brink, C., Secular icons: looking at photographs from Nazi concentration camps. History & Memory, 12 (1), Buckley-Zistel, S. and Oettler, A., Was bedeutet: transitional justice? In: S. BuckleyZistel and T. Kater, eds. Nach Krieg, Gewalt und Repression: Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Vergangenheit. Nomos: Baden-Baden, Buckley-Zistel, S. and Kater, T., eds., Nach Krieg, Gewalt & Repression: Vom schwierigen Umgang mit Vergangenheit [After war, violence & repression: on the difficult negotiation with the past]. Nomos: Baden-Baden. Burns, T.R. and Hall, P.M., eds., The meta-power paradigm. Berlin: Peter Lang. Cohen, S., States of denial: knowing about atrocities and suffering. Cambridge: Polity Press/Blackwell. De Haan, W. and Loade, I., On the emotions of crime, punishment and social control. Special issue on emotions and justice. Theoretical Criminology, 2002 (6), Dembour, M.-B. and Haslam, E., Silencing hearings? Victim-witnesses at war crimes trials. European Journal of International Law, 15 (1), Flam, H. and D. King (eds.) 2007 Emotions and Social Movements. Oxford: Routledge Garland, D., The culture of control: crime and social order in contemporary society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gericke, C. and Mülhäuser, R., Vergebung und Aussöhnung nach sexuellen Gewaltverbrechen in bewaffneten Konflikten [Forgiveness, conciliation after violent sexual crimes in armed conflicts]. In: S. Buckley-Zistel and T. Kater, eds. Nach Krieg, Gewalt & Repression: Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Vergangenheit. Nomos: BadenBaden, Glasius, M., The international criminal court: a global civil society achievement. London: Routledge. Gordy, E., 2013.What happened to the tribunal, New York Times, 2 June. Available from: html?pagewanted=all&_r=0. Grunebaum, H., Talking to ourselves, among the innocent dead : on reconciliation, forgiveness, and mourning. Modern Language Association, 117 (2), Hayner, P.B., 2010[2001]. Unspeakable truths: transitional justice and the challenge of the truth commissions. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge (Foreword by Kofi Annan). Henry, N., Witness to rape: the limits and potential of international war crimes trials for victims of wartime sexual violence. The International Journal of Transitional Justice, 3, Henry, N., The impossibility of bearing witness: wartime rape and the promise of justice. Violence Against Women, 16, Hirschl, R., Towards juristocracy. The origins and consequences of new constitutionalism. 92

93 Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hochschild, A., Emotion work, feeling rules and social structure. American Journal of Sociology, 85 (3), Hochschild, A., The outsourced self. New York: Metropolitan Books. Höijer, B., The discourse of global compassion: the audience and media reporting of human suffering. Media Culture Society, 26, Jacobs, J. Liebman, Women, genocide and memory: the ethics of feminist ethnography in holocaust research. Gender and Society, 18 (2), Kemper, T., Toward a sociology of emotions: some problems and some solutions. The American Sociologist, 13, Leebaw, B., The politics of impartial activism: humanitarianism and human rights. Perspectives on Politics, 5 (2), Leys, R., Trauma. A genealogy. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Mazlish, B., The idea of humanity in a global era. Palgrave Macmillan Series in Transnational History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Mendeloff, D., Trauma and vengeance: assessing the psychological and emotional effects of post-conflict justice. Human Rights Quarterly, 31, Meranze, M., Sentimental educations a review of Luc Boltanski s distant suffering Cambridge University Press, 1999 and Julie Ellison s Cato s tears and the making of Anglo-American emotion, University of Chicago Press, History Workshop Journal, 53, Minow, M., Between vengeance and forgiveness. Facing history after genocide and mass violence. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Olick, J.K., The politics of regret. In: The politics of regret. London: Routledge, Plamper, J., The history of emotions: an interview with William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and Peter Stearns. History and Theory, 49 (2), Reddy, W., The navigation of feeling: a framework for the history of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reddy, W., 2008[1997]. Against constructionism. In: Monica Greco and Henry Stenner Paul, eds. Emotions: a social science reader. London: Routledge, Ristic, K., War crime trials and memory of war in former Yugoslavia. Unpublished PhD thesis. Faculty of History, Arts and Oriental Studies, University of Leipzig. Rodrigues, S., Somewhere between civil war and regime transition: the responsibility to protect response to Libya and Syria. Small Wars Journal. Availablle from: [Accessed 12 June]. Rosenwein, B.H., Problems and methods in the history of emotions, passions in context. Journal of the History and Philosophy of the Emotions, 1, Available from: Rotberg, R.I., Truth commissions and the provision of truth, justice and reconciliation. In: R.I. Rotberg and D. Thompson, eds. Truth v. Justice. The morality of truth commissions. Princeton: Princeton University Press, R.I. Rotbergand D.Thompson, eds., Truth v. justice. The morality of truth commissions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Scalia, L.J., Distant suffering: morality, media and politics by Luc Boltanski Review by: Laura J. Scalia. Political Psychology, 22 (1), Schaap, A., Guilty subjects and political responsibility: Arendt, Jaspers and the resonance of the German Question in politics of reconciliation. Political Studies, 49, Schäfer, R., Gender in der südafrikanischen Wahrheits- und Versöhnungskommission [Gender in the South African truth and reconciliation commission]. In: S. Buckley-Zistel and T. Kater, eds. Nach Krieg, Gewalt & Repression: Vom schwierigen Umgang mit der Vergangenheit. Nomos: Baden-Baden, Schiff, B.N., Building the international criminal court. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scott, J., Domination and the art of resistance. Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CN: Yale University Press. Smith, J., Social movements for global democracy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Smith, K.E., Genocide and the Europeans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 93

94 Sontag, S., 2004[2003]. Regarding the pain of others. London: Penguin Books. Struett, M.J., The politics of constructing the international criminal court: NGOs, discourse, and agency. New York, NY: Palgrave MacMillan. Stearns, P.N. and Stearns, C.Z., Emotionology: Clarifying the history of emotions and emotional standards. American Historical Review, 90 (4), Thompson, E.P., The making of the British working class. London: Vintage Books. Torpey, J., Making whole what has been smashed: on reparations politics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Van Dijk, T.A., Discourse and the denial of racism. Discourse and Society, 3, Wald, P.M., Note from the field: dealing with witnesses in war crime trials: lessons from the Yugoslav tribunal. Yale Human Rights & Development, 5, Whittier, N., The politics of child sexual abuse. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Note 13. CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION, ENTREPRENEURSHIP: CONTEXTS, AGENTS, RULE SYSTEMS, RESOURCES Introduction. Creativity is a universal activity, essential in an evolutionary perspective, to adaptation and sustainability. This research on the sociology of creativity has had three purposes: (1) to develop the argument that key factors in creative activity are socially based and developed; hence, sociology can contribute significantly to understanding and explaining human creativity; (2) to present a sociological systems approach which enables us to link in a systematic and coherent way the disparate social factors and mechanisms that are involved in creative activity and to describe and explain creativity; and (3) to illustrate a sociological systems theory s conceptualization of multiple interrelated institutional, cultural, and interaction factors and their role in creativity and innovative development in diverse empirical instances. The research has formulated and applied a model stressing the social embeddedness of innovative agents and entrepreneurs, either as individuals or groups, as they manipulate in their innovative activities symbols, rules, technologies, and materials that are socially derived and developed. Their motivation for doing what they do derives in part from their social roles and positions, in part in response to problem situations as well as incentives and opportunities many socially constructed shaping their interaction situations and domains. Their capabilities including their social powers derive from the culturally and institutional frameworks in which they are embedded. In carrying out their innovative actions, agents mobilize resources including technologies through the institutions and networks in which they participate. Our research emphasizes the range and variation of creativity, in all areas of human activity, extending from science and mathematics, practical as well as recreational technologies, administrative and other organizational apparatuses, diverse forms of entertainment, artistic perspective and practices the creation over centuries and across continents of multitudes of figures and monsters, etc. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to overemphasize the locus of creativity in the arts as well as in technology and science. However, in our perspective, creativity is the hallmark of human adaptation, survival, and development. Many 94

95 opportunities for creativity emerge in the context of diverse and ever-expanding needs or problems to be solved and the solutions that are generated, as suggested in this work. The ASD research distinguished analytically the context of innovation and discovery and the context of receptivity and institutionalization. The investigation of the context of innovation and discovery considered applications and illustrations ranging from, for instance: (i) the independent innovator or entrepreneur who exercises creativity based familiarity with and possible involvement in a field of knowledge, concepts, challenges, problems, solution strategies, creativity production functions or programs; he or she is typically in contact with libraries, relevant journals and may be directly or indirectly in contact with a network of others participating in the field; (ii) groups or organizations in their particular fields driving problem-solving and creative activities; this includes self-organizing groups as well as groups established by external powers (whether a private company, a government, or a non-government organization or movement); (iii) entire societies undergoing transformations and radical development as in the industrial and later revolutions. ASD research investigated, in addition, the context of receptivity and institutionalization where innovations and creative developments are socially accepted, legitimized, and institutionalized or rejected and suppressed. A number of cases and illustrations have been considered. Power considerations are part and parcel of these analyses, for instance the role of the state as well as powerful private interests and social movements in facilitating and/or constraining innovations and creative developments in particular sectors or in society as a whole. In sum, creativity is a universal activity, essential in an evolutionary perspective, to adaptation and sustainability. Our research identifies and conceptualizes the multiple interrelated institutional, cultural, and interaction factors that play a role in creativity and innovative development in diverse empirical instances. We have utilized a social systems approach to link in a systematic and coherent way the disparate, multiple factors and mechanisms that are involved in creative activity and innovative developments.. Investigation and analysis of creativity and innovation within the ASD framework has entailed the formulation of models of creativity and innovation with agential, social structural, and material factors in particular contexts. The research has developed and applied descriptive and explanatory models stressing the social embeddedness of innovative agents and entrepreneurs, either as individuals or groups or entire societies, as they manipulate symbols, rules, technologies, and materials that are socially derived and developed. Their capabilities including their social powers derive from the culturally and institutional frameworks in which they are embedded. In carrying out their actions, agents mobilize resources including technologies through the institutions and networks in which they participate. Case studies of creativity and innovation have been conducted in diverse material, social organizational, and agential contexts. In the perspective presented here, generally speaking, creativity can be consistently and systematically considered to a great extent to be social, cultural, institutional and material as much as psychological or biological. Selected publications 95

96 W.E. Woodward, J. Ellig, and T. R. Burns 1994 Municipal Entrepreneurship and Energy Policy: A Five Nation Study of Politics, Innovation, and Social T. Baumgartner and T.R.Burns 1984 Transitions to Alternative Energy Systems: Entrepreneurs, Strategies, and Social Change. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. Tom R. Burns, Nora Machado and Ugo Corte (2015). The Sociology of Creativity: Part I: Theory: The Social Mechanisms of Innovation and Creative Developments in Selectivity Environments. Human Systems Management. 34(3): Tom R. Burns, Ugo. Corte and Nora Machado (2015). The Sociology of Creativity: Part II: Applications: the socio-cultural conditions of the production of novelty. Human Systems Management. Vol.34(4): Tom R. Burns, Ugo Corte, and Nora Machado des Johansson (2016). The sociology of creativity: PART III: Applications The socio-cultural contexts of the acceptance/rejection of innovations. Human System Management. Vol. 35 (#1):

97 Note 14. GROUP AND ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSES: CONTEXTS, AGENTS, RULE SYSTEMS, RESOURCES & TECHNOLOGIES 14.1 Introduction. Drawing on a multi-level, dynamic systems approach actor-system-dynamics (ASD) -- which has been developed and applied in institutional, organizational, and societal analyses, we have formulated a general model for the comparative description and analysis of social groups and organizations. This social systems approach has not been previously applied in the group area. We claim that the approach can be systematically and fruitfully applied to small as well as large groups and organizations as a methodology to understand and analyze their structure, functioning and dynamics. A group is considered a system with three universal subsystems on which any human social organization, including small groups, depends and which motivate, shape and regulate group activities and productions. The subsystems are bases or group requisites necessary for group functioning and performance in more or less orderly or coherent ways; on this basis a group may be able to realize its purposes or goals(as well as possibly some members personal goals) and maintain and reproduce itself. The group bases consist of: first, a rule regime (collective culture)defining group identity and purpose, shaping and regulating roles and role relationships, normative patterns and behavioral outputs; second, an agential base of group members who are socialized or partially socialized carriers of and adherents to the group s identity and rule regime; of relevance here are involvement/participation factors motivating member to adhere to, accept, and implement key components of the rule regime; third, there is a resource base, technologies and materials, self-produced and/or obtained from the environment, which are essential to group functioning and key group performances. Section I briefly presents the framework and outlines the group systems model, characterized by its three universal bases or subsystems and its finite universal production/interaction functions and their outputs as well as the particular context(s) in which groups function. For illustrative purposes, the section identifies three major ideal-type modalities of group formation: informal self-organization by participating agents themselves, group construction by external agents, and group formation through more or less formal multi-agent negotiation. The general systems model presented in Section II characterizes a social group not only by its three universal bases but by its finite universal production functions (elaborated in Section IV) and its outputs as well as by its shared places (situations for interaction) and times for gathering and interacting. Group productions impact on the group itself (reflexivity) and on its environment. These outputs, among other things, maintain/adapt/develop the group bases (or possibly unintentionally undermine/destroy them) Thus, groups can be understood as action and interaction systems producing goods, services, incidents and events, experiences, developments, etc. for themselves and for the larger environment on which they depend for resources, recruits, goods and services, and legitimation. The model provides a single perspective for the systematic description and comparative analysis of a wide diversity of groups ranging from military, terror, research, and business groups to recreational groups (Sections III and IV). Our social system model of groups provides a general language and conceptual tools for describing and analyzing: (1) the multiple reasons why humans form and maintain groups among others, to realize a collective purpose or to perform or produce something; to defend 97

98 against external threats; to play or engage in a particular activity with others; or to associate with other, not necessarily for any particular purpose. (2) what holds a group together, makes group togetherness possible, even if participants might each belong elsewhere and have their own identity; there are two key factors: on the one hand, cognitive identity/collective consciousness, and, on the other hand, internal and external governance (including boundary maintenance between the group and the outside. (3) what social structure characterized a group in terms of relations among members and relations to external agents and situations. Key factors are the size of the groups, the group context, the group membership, purpose and particular technologies. The research emphasizes not only the systemic character of all functioning groups universally their three bases and their output functions together with feedback dynamics -- but also the differentiating character of any given group s distinct rule configuration (Section IV). For illustrative purposes Section IV presents a selection of rule configurations characterizing several ideal types of groups, a military unit, a terrorist group, a recreational or social group, a research group, a corporate entity. Section V considers the dynamics of groups in terms of modification and transformation of group bases and their production functions. The group system model enables us to systematically identify and explicate the internal and external factors that drive group change and transformation, exposing the complex interdependencies and dynamic potentialities of group systems. Section VI sums up the work and points out its scope and limitations. The group systems model offers a number of promising contributions: (1) a universal systems model identifies the key subsystems and their interrelationships as well as their role in group production functions/outputs and performances; (2) the work conceptualizes and applies rules and rule complexes and their derivatives with respect to roles, role relationships, norms, group procedures and production functions; (3) it identifies the universal categories of rules making up a rule regime, a major subsystem of any functioning group; (4) the model conceptualizes particular group rule configurations rule regimes with specified rules in the universal rule categories for any given group; groups are identifiable and differentiable by their rule configurations (as well as by their resource and agency bases); (5) it conceptualizes the notion of the degree of coherence (alternatively, degree of incoherence) of rule configurations characteristic of any given group and offers an explanation of why group concerns are is focused on the coherence of rules in certain group areas; (6) the systems model suggests an interpretation of Erving Goffman s frontstage backstage distinction in terms of alternative, differentiated rule regimes which are to a greater or lesser extent incoherent with respect to one another; moreover, the participants who are privy to the differentiation navigate use a shared rule complex to translate coherently and consistently from one regime to the other, using appropriate discourses; (7) incoherence, contradiction, conflict and struggle relating to rule regimes are considered part and parcel of group functioning and development; (8) group stability and change are explicated in terms of internal mechanisms (e.g., governance, innovation, and conflict) as well as external mechanisms (resource availability, legal and other institutional developments, population conditions), pointing up the complex systemic interdependencies and dynamic potentialities of group systems; (9) given the multi-level dynamic systems framework (i.e., ASD) that has been applied in a range of special areas (economic, political, technological, environmental, bio-medical, among others) its applicataion in the field of groups is a promising step toward achieving greater synthesis in sociology and social science. Substantively, we developed the following features in recent formulations: (1) more attention has been given to tension, conflict, and conflict resolution in groups; (2) we also stressed group requisites for sustainability and group production functions; (3) a section on group 98

99 formation with illustrations has been added; (4) we have expanded our attention to group rule configurations which differentiate groups from one another but also enable systematic comparisons; (5) we have much expanded consideration of the dynamics of group change and transformation Summing Up The ASD theory of groups and organizations provides a single comprehensive framework with which to describe and comparatively analyze functioning groups in all of their great diversity. Groups are characterizable and distinguishable (from one another) in terms of differences in the three capability bases (rule regime, resources, the agency of the membership) and their six group functions and outputs with feedback dynamics. Although these universal features characterize all groups, any given group s particular rule configuration and output functions can be identified and analyzed and distinguishable from other similar and, of course differing, groups. 1. The theory applies and elaborates social rule system theory in describing and analyzing groups and organizations 2. It specifies the finite rule categories applying to all functioning groups and organizations; 3. It enables the comparative analysis of similarities and differences of rules and rule regimes of diverse groups and organizations 4. And at the same time, any given functioning group or organization has its own rule configuration (with its own grammar and logic), that is the particular practical rules applied in group actions and interactions (even if the categories of rules are universal for all groups) Selected publications T. R. Burns and H. Flam 1987 The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London, Sage Publications. Tom R. Burns and Nora Machado 2014 Social Rule System Theory: Universal Interaction Grammars. CIES E-Working Paper N.º 175/2014 (ISSN ) CIES/ISCTE, Lisboa, Portugal Tom R. Burns, U. Corte, and N. Machado 2014 Toward a Universal Theory of the Human Group: Sociological Systems Framework applied to the Comparative Analysis of Groups and Organizations. CIES/ISCTE: Lisbon. CIES e-working Paper N.º 191/2014 Burns, T. R., Corte, U. and Machado, N. (2015) Toward a Universal Theory of the Human Group: Sociological Systems Framework applied to the Comparative Analysis of Groups and Organizations. In B. Kaminski et al The 15 th International Conference on Group Decision-making and Negotiation. Warsaw: Warsaw School of Economics Press. 99

100 Note 15. SOCIAL SCIENCE GAME THEORY The ASD theory of social interaction is the basis for the formulation of a social science game theory (publications of Buckley, Burns, Gomolinska, Meeker, and Roszkowska, among others). Games are defined as rule systems (in many instances with roles and role relationships as well as with particular norms) performed in particular material and social contexts Introduction: Sociological Approaches To Game Theory; Goffman s Interaction Theory and Social Science GameTheory -- Models, Comparisons, and Implications Game theory in its several variants can be viewed as a major contribution to multi-agent modeling, with widespread applications in economics and the other social sciences as well as the bio-medical sciences. There have been at least two distinct approaches to extending sociologizing -- classical game theory: One, a social systems approach, social science game theory (SGT), and the other, Erving Goffman s interactionist approach (I-game theory). These approaches are presented and compared, and also contrasted with the classical theory. SGT is presented in section I, followed by a presentation of Goffman s IGT in section II. Both presentations outline the foundations, key applications and selected illustrations of the respective theories. In a nutshell: Social science game theory (SGT), entails the extension and generalization of classical game theory through the formulation of the mathematical theory of rules and rule systems and a systematic grounding in contemporary social sciences (the classical theory is a special case of the more general SGT). Sociological concepts such as norm, value, belief, role, social relationship, and institution as well as classical game theory concepts can be defined in a uniform way in SGT in terms of rules, rule complexes, and rule systems, which are also defined as mathematically objects. These tools enables one to model social interaction taking into account economic, socio psychlogical, and cultural aspects as well as considering games with incomplete, imprecise or even false information. The work presents the foundations and selected applications of SGT, among others: (1) the theory is developed and applied to multi-agent interaction situations where there are interdependencies among two or more of the agents (as in classical game theory). (2) SGT provides a cultural/institutional basis for the conceptualization and analysis of games in their social contexts, showing precisely the ways in which social norms and rules in general, values, institutions, and social relationships come into play in shaping and regulating game structures and processes. Games are re-conceptualized, in a certain sense, as social forms. (3) SGT formulates the concept of judgment on the basis of which actors either construct their actions or make choices among alternative actions through making comparisons and judging similarity (or dissimilarity) between the option or options considered in the game and their norms and values in the situation. (4) Apropos (3), SGT distinguishes between open and closed games. The rule regime or structure of a closed game is fixed; in open games, actors have the capacity to structure, restructure, and transform game components such as the role components or the general rules of the game. External agents ("third parties") as well may have the power ("meta-power") to structure and transform games ("the prisoners' dilemma game as a three-person game"); (5) SGT re-conceptualizes the notion of game solution" as well as "equilibrium." Some solutions envisioned or proposed by actors with differing 100

101 frameworks and interests are likely to be contradictory or incompatible. Under some conditions, however, participants in a game may arrive at common solutions, or have these imposed by external agents; in both cases, solutions may be the basis of the patterning of interaction and game equilibria. (6) SGT distinguishes different types of game equilibria, such as instrumental, social, and normative; among these is the sociologically important type of equilibrium, namely normative equilibrium, which is the basis of much social practices and order. (7) While the theory readily and systematically incorporates the principle that human actors have bounded factual knowledge and computational capability, it emphasizes their extraordinary social relational and institutional knowledge, their capabilities and competences: in particular, their knowledge of diverse institutions and social forms such as in the context of family, market, government, business or work organization, hospitals, and educational systems, among others, which they bring to bear in framing and engaging in the appropriate relationships and game interactions in diverse settings. Interaction Game Theory (IGT). Goffman's interactionist approach to extending classical game theory derives, in part, from his knowledge of symbolic interaction (Encounters (1961); Strategic Interaction (1969)). (1) Goffman focuses, as does SGT, on multi-agent interaction situations where there are interdependencies among two or more of the agents; (2) he also makes use of sociological concepts such as rules, norms, roles, and social relationships in his analyses; (3) he puts a great deal of stress on communication among actors, their presentations and representations, management of impressions vis-à-vis other actors, patterns of concealment, fabrication, and seduction; (4) also emphasized by Goffman are regulation and strategies of self-expression (as would be expected from the author of "presentation of self in everyday life"); (5) Goffman elaborated social psychological aspects of "players" in games: their technical knowledge and competences, their capabilities of assessing situations, other agents, and themselves, their gamemanship; (6) IGT recognizes the role of nature and/or third parties in structuring games and the enforcement of particular patterns; (7) in his work, Goffman (mainly 1961,1969) considers a wide range of games, especially everyday life games: expression games, games of opposition, coordination, negotiation, and contingency games, observer-subject games, and interrogation games, among others. Section III compares the two theories and relates them to classical theory. Similarities between the two social theories take up such issues as communication, negotiation, cooperation based on solidarity, but also deception and fabrication, and much else of sociological significance that has been neglected or ignored by classical game theory (although some of these issues have been addressed in later work (such as that of Thomas Schelling), they never fitted naturally into the language and conceptualization of the classical theory. Both SGT and IGT reject assumptions of super-rationality and one-dimensional utility and recognize the extraordinary knowledgeability of human agents about institutions and norms and other rules as well as their mixed-motive and multi-value orientations. The comparison of SGT and IGT points up, on the one hand, the rich variety of situational interactions considered by Goffman: games of secrecy and deception, fabrication and lying, which have not been addressed in SGT to the same extent; on the other hand, although sociologically informed, Goffman s approach to strategic interaction fails to systematically distinguish a number of social relational and institutional forms which are also neglected by classical game theory such as relations of close friendship and intimacy, solidarity, enmity, hierarchy, market, and state-citizen relations; moral and normative considerations are, as in classical game theory, only superficially considered in IGT. These subjects are given substantial attention in SGT -- and have resulted in notions of normative equilibria, moral dilemmas, normative-instrumental dilemmas as well as models of interaction in markets, in 101

102 administrative bodies, and policy systems. In concluding the comparative considerations, the work provides a scheme comparing and contrasting on a number of central theoretical dimensions of SGT and IGT, on the one hand, and classical game theory, on the other hand. Social Science Game Theory (SGT), as an extension and generalization of classical game theory, accomplishes this through the formulation of the mathematical theory of rules and rule complexes [Gomolińska, 1999, 2004; Burns and Gomolińska, 1998; Burns and Roszkowska, 2004, 2005a]. 45 Social theory concepts such as norm, value, belief, role, social relationship, and institution as well as game can be defined in a uniform way in terms of rules and rule complexes. According to this approach, games are sets of rules (or rule complexes) where the rules may be imprecise, possibly inconsistent, and open to modifications. These tools enables us to model social interaction taking into account economic, socio psychological, and cultural aspects as well as incomplete or imprecise or even false information. This has led to a number of applications: among others, formalization of social relationships, roles, and judgment and action modalities [Burns and Gomolińska, 2000a, 2000b; Burns, Gomolińska, and Meeker, 2001]; reconceptualization of prisoners dilemma game and other classical games as socially embedded games [Burns, Gomolińska, and Meeker, 2001; Burns and Roszkowska, 2004]; models of societal conflict resolution and regulation [Baumgartner et al, 1977; Burns, Caldas, and Roszkowska, 2005; Burns and Roszkowska, 2005c]; rethinking the Nash equilibrium [Burns and Roszkowska, 2004]; fuzzy games and equilibria [Burns and Roszkowska, 2004; Roszkowska and Burns, 2002]; socio-cognitive analysis [Burns and Gomolińska, 2001; Roszkowska and Burns, 2002]; simulation studies in which SGT is applied, for instance, in the formulation of multi-agent simulation models of regulatory processes [Burns, Caldas, and Roszkowska, 2005]. This research is discussed more in detail below Foundations Of SGT 46 In their classic work, Von Neumann and Morgenstern defined a game as simply the totality of the rules which describe it. They did not, however, elaborate a theory of rules. Such considerations lead to conceptualizing rules and rule configurations as mathematical objects, specifying the principles for combining rules, developing the theory of revising, replacing, and, in general transforming rules and rule complexes. The mathematics is based on contemporary developments at the interface of mathematics, logic, and computer science. This research, drawing on the mathematical theory of rules and rule complexes, extends and generalizes game theory (SGT). The theory of rule complexes is used to conceptualize and analyze diverse social relationships, roles, and games as particular types of rule complexes. 45 Informally speaking, a rule complex is a set consisting of rules and/or other rule complexes.the notion of rule complex was introduced as a generalization of a set of rules. The motivation behind the development of this concept has been to consider repertoires of rules in all their complexity with complex interdependencies among the rules and, hence, to not merely consider them as sets of rules. The organization of rules in rule complexes provides us with a powerful tool to investigate and describe various sorts of rules with respect to their functions such as values, norms, judgment rules, prescriptive rules, and meta-rules as well as more complex objects consisting of rules such as roles, routines, algorithms, models of reality as well as social relationships and institutions. 46 Extracted from Burns and Gomolinska (2000), "The Theory of Socially Embedded Games: The Mathematics of Social Relationships, Rule Complexes, and Action Modalities 102

103 One or more social roles, for instance, are the major basis of an individual s action in most games. A role consists of at least four major components which are mathematical objects in the determination of action: value complex, model of reality (including beliefs and knowledge bases), a repertoire of acts, routines, algorithms, and strategies, and modalities, as rolespecific algorithms for determining or generating action in particular game situations. The researc focuses on three types of action modality: routine or habitual, normative, and instrumental modalities. The theory: (1) provides a cultural/institutional basis for a theory of games where games, social relationships, and roles are formalized in terms of rule complexes; (2) explains human action as a form of rule application or rule-following action, which underlies all the modalities of action; (3) formulates the theory that actors construct an action or make choices among alternative actions by making comparisons and judging similarity (or dissimilarity) between an option (or options) considered and their norms and values, and, in general, she or he determines whether or not, and to what degree, a value, norm, or goal will be realized or satisfied; (4) reconceptualizes game as a social form and makes a distinction between open and closed games, where participants can or can not change the rules and other constraints of the game. In sum, several publications (with Burns, Gomolinska, and Roszkowska and more recently with Nora Machado and Ugo Corte) present a number of the key assumptions, principles, and applications of SGT, among others: (1) SGT provides a cultural/institutional basis for the conceptualization and analysis of games in their social context. Game is reconceptualized as a social form, showing precisely the ways in which the rule complexes of social relationships come into play in shaping and regulating game processes. (2) SGT formulates a general theory of judgment on the basis of which actors either construct their actions or selects among among alternative actions through making comparisons and judging similarity (or dissimilarity) between the option or options considered in the game and their salient norms and values in the situation. (3) SGT distinguishes between open and closed games. The structure of a closed game is fixed. Open games are those in which the agents have the capacity to transform game components, either the individual role components of one or more players, or the general rules of the game. Rule formation and re-formation is a function, therefore, of interaction processes. (4) SGT reconceptualizes the notion of game solution, stressing above all that any solution is from a particular standpoint or perspective, for instance, the perspectives of one or more of the particular participations. Therefore, some solutions envisioned or proposed by players with different frameworks and interests are likely to be contradictory or incompatible. Under some conditions, however, players may arrive at common solutions which become the basis of game equilibria. (5) SGT reconceptualizes game equilibria, distinguishing different types of game equilibria. Among these is a sociologically important type of equilibrium, namely normative equilibrium, which is the basis of much social order. (6) While the theory readily and systematically incorporates the principle that human actors have bounded factual knowledge and computational capability (Simon, 1969), it emphasizes their extraordinary social knowledge capabilities and competence: in particular, their knowledge of diverse cultural forms and institutions such as family, market, government, business or work organization, schools, and hospitals, among others, which they bring to bear in their social relationships and embedded game interactions. In sum, drawing on the mathematical theory of rules and rule complexes, SGT 103

104 extends and generalizes game theory. The theory has been used to conceptualize and analyze diverse social relationships, roles, and games as particular types of rule complexes. Among other things, the research applies and extends SGT in analyses of market bargaining games (a type of open game) and of the classical game of prisoners dilemma (a type of closed game). The applications show the concrete influences of social embeddedness on game structuring, game interaction patterns and outcomes, and social equilibria Special Theory Applications Social science Game Theory s Contribution to Multi-agent Modelling Addressing Problems of Social Regulation, Social Order, and Effective Security SGT has been applied in formalizing key social science concepts such as institutions, social relationships, roles, judgment, and games. Institutions operate as a type of social algorithm, organizing and regulating agents playing different roles as they engage in deliberation and judgment activities and make and implement collective decisions. On this basis, simple multiagent simulation models and selected results of the simulation have been developed. An agenda for societal research to explain and manage problems of insecurity and social disorder in multi-agent systems has also been outlined on the basis of SGT. In SGT analyses, the problem of security is formulated in terms of regulating a system and its agents, and dealing with social disorder and crisis. Fuzzy Games and Equilibria: The Perspective of SGT on Nash and Normative Equilibria Extending the general theory of games (SGT), this research fuzzifies judgment, decision making, and game equilibria. It models the ways in which players use approximate reasoning and deal with imprecise information in making decisions, interacting, and generating equilibria. The conceptualization of fuzzy judgment entails a two process model: (1) the judgment of similarity and dissimilarity (where threshold functions) are provided; (2) the judgment of fit or degree of membership formulated as a fuzzy set M taking on values between 0 and 1. The research goes on to provide a theory of equilibria. In particular, a generalized Nash equilibrium is formulated in fuzzy set terminology. Moreover, normative and nonnormative Nash equilibria are distinguished. Normative equilibria satisfy or realize an appropriate norm or value r in the game (not all games have normative equilibria; not all normative equilibria are Nash equilibria, and vice versa). This fuzzified SGT can be applied to classical closed games as well as to open games. The prisoners dilemma game has been considered in the closed game analysis, and it is shown how social relationships between actors ( the social embeddedness of games) impact their judgments, choices, and interaction patterns as well as equilibria. Application to open games is illustrated by considering bilateral bargaining games in market exchange Decision-Making Applications The Social Theory Of Choice: From Simon And Kahneman-Tversky To SGT Modelling of Socially Contextualized Decision Situations Appears in OPTIMUM. Studia Ekonomiczne (OPTIMUM. Economic Studies) year: 2008, vol. number: 3(39), pages:

105 In this work, several of the links between the social theory of judgment and choice, which is an integral part of social science game theory (SGT), and the seminal work of Herbert Simon (1955, 1956, 1967) and Daniel Tversky and Amos Kahneman (1974, 1981) have been outlined and analyzed. Although Simon and Tversky and Kahneman made occasional references to "norms" and the social situation, neither of the approaches particularly recognized or stressed the social conditions of judgment and choice. Social institutional and role concepts as well as "sacrality" and human passions are basically alien ideas (although Simon (1967) wrote an important paper on emotions and choice). Such social science concepts are part and parcel of social choice theory (a core part of SGT). The research summary here does not fully elaborate on all of these matters. We limit ourselves to concentrating on a few "social facts" that play a critical role in human judgment and choice. It entails applications elaborating on the Simon and Tversky and Kahneman conceptualizations, but also identifyies important differences. This serves to define in part the generality and scope of SGT. The emphasis in this work is on different choice models arising under different contextual conditions. The human world is characterized by a pluralism of models (but a pluralism which is definitely finite). The research led to the formulation of several distinct context-dependent choice models in this sense, it is a generative theory -- distinguishable in terms of, among other things, the properties of actors cognitive models, value complexes, action repertoires, and judgment modalities. Some models represent classical determinate decision theory with full quantification and commensurability of evaluative judgments; and the principle of the maximization of expected value (or utility) applied to choice and decisions. Other models involve judgments which are non-quantified but commensurable and integratable and where actors apply special algorithms of multi-criteria decision-making. Still other models involve non-quantification and non-commensurability but partial ordering of value judgments on diverse dimensions with actors using particular algorithms to make judgments and reach choices. In general, SGT is applied in the spirit of Simon and Tversky and Kahneman to multi-value (multi-criteria) choice as a part of complex decision-making processes. The research provides illustrations of several new types of choice models. Multi-Value Decision-Making And Games: Social and Psychological Complexity, Contradiction, and Equilibrium SGT research on decision-making and games stresses that (1) SGT provides a cultural/institutional basis for the conceptualization and analysis of choice and interaction games in their social context, showing precisely the ways in which the social norms, values, institutions, and social relationships come into play in shaping and regulating game processes. (2) SGT formulates the concept of judgment as the basis of action determination. (3) SGT distinguishes between open and closed games. The structure of a closed game is fixed; in open games, actors have the capacity to transform game components such as the role components or the general rules of the game, as a function of interaction processes. (4) SGT reconceptualizes the notion of game solution as well as equilibrium. Some solutions envisioned or proposed by actors with different frameworks and interests are likely to be contradictory or incompatible. Under some conditions, nevertheless, players may arrive at common solutions which are the basis of game equilibria. (5) SGT distinguishes different types of game equilibria, such as instrumental, normative, social and so forth. (6) While the theory readily and systematically incorporates the principle that human actors have bounded factual knowledge and computational capability, it emphasizes their extraordinary social knowledge capabilities and competence: in particular, their knowledge of diverse cultural forms and institutions such as those of family, market, government, business or work 105

106 organization, and hospitals, among others, which they bring to bear in their social relationships and game interactions. Decision-Making Under Conditions of Multiple Values and Variation in Conditions of Risk and Uncertainty Empirical research shows that humans face many kinds of risks and uncertainties, responding in different ways to the variations in their situational knowledge and degree of uncertainty. The standard approach to risk, based largely on rational choice conceptualization, fails to sufficiently take into account the diverse social and psychological contexts of uncertainty and risk. Our research, drawing on SGT in describing and analyzing risk and uncertainty, relates to the theory s conceptualization of judgment and choice as a particular procedure of multi-criteria decision-making under uncertainty, namely the TOPSIS approach. The work addresses complex risk decision-making, considering the universal features of an actor s or decision-maker s perspective: a model or belief structure, value complex, action repertoire, and judgment complex (consisting of algorithms for making judgments and choices in differing interaction contexts). Although these features are universal, they are particularized in any given institutional or sociocultural context. SGT considers in this research decisionmaking under conditions of risk and uncertainty, taking into account social, psychological, and material contextual factors. The established method, TOPSIS with Belief Structure (BS), is used for dealing with multicriteria decision-making under conditions of uncertainty. One aim of this exercise is to identify correspondences between the SGT universal architecture and the operative components of the TOPSIS method. We expose, for instance, the different value components or diverse judgment algorithms in the TOPSIS procedure. One of the benefits of such an exercise is to suggest ways to link different decision methods and procedures in a comparative light. It deepens our empirical base and understanding of risk games Applications: Socio-Economics A significant part of the SGT research has involved applications to issues in socio-economics, for instance, social and economic (including market) exchange as well as the performance and evolutionary dynamics of complex social systems. Models of Social Exchange And Principles Of Reciprocation Peter Blau's treatment of exchange (1964) remains a major contribution to conceptualizing social action and exchange. In spite of limitations and inconsistencies which several critics 1 of one of his major works, Exchange and Power in Social Life, have identified. One of the seminal ideas in the work is the distinction between 'social exchange' and 'economic exchange', where both are, of course, social processes. Blau points us to a very basic feature of exchange activity in social life: they take different forms (Simmel,1971) and have different action logics or rationalities (Burns and Flam, 1987). This SGT research develops this central idea, identifying and analyzing different forms of social as well as economic exchange. The forms are conceptualized as complexes of organizing principles and rules which pattern and regulate social interaction in particular ways. Conceptualizing interaction forms in this manner leads to the construction of new types of exchange and game theory models. The models of different forms of market exchange are a 106

107 powerful corrective to conventional economic analysis -- in part by generating alternative predictions and research questions as well as new ways of organizing empirical data. In this research, we define and analyze particular types of exchange. One aim in these exercises is to demonstrate that a normative, interactionist perspective enables us to analyze both market exchange characterized by obvious instrumental calculation as well as social exchange which entails highly symbolic action and emphasis on establishing and maintaining social relationships. However, as shown in this research, even social exchange in many instances is not devoid of calculation. But the logic is different than the logic of purely market action or instrumentality. Also, market exchanges in many instances take on properties of social exchange, particularly in cases where an exchange is viewed as only one event in a sequence of transactions extending into the distant future. In the analyses of market exchange, we formulate specific models for price formation and price variance on markets characterized by monopoly, brokered systems and markets with multiple buyers and sellers. The theoretical models rest on the assumption that actors' evaluation, decision-making, and interaction processes cannot be understood apart from the social structural context in which they occur. Explicit consideration is given to factors such as normative rules, distribution of resources, the exchange content and forms of interactions. Such factors are difficult to conceptualize and distinguish within rational choice type models, for instance that pairs of individuals engage in the exchange of more or less well-defined "rewards" with a view to specific, calculable "gains". In the formulations presented in this research, highly institutionalized, even ritualistic, forms of exchange are differentiated from, for example, interpersonal reciprocity. In institutionalized forms of exchange the actors are socially constrained in their roles to orient to one another and to transact in particular ways. Thus, although an "exchange" may appear to be instigated entirely at the discretion of the actors themselves -- or voluntarily -- it derives from the realization of social norms and interlocking role obligations. Such institutionalized exchange activities are analytically distinguishable from exchange activities based on interpersonal reciprocity. In the case of pure interpersonal reciprocity the engaged actors establish and maintain the exchange themselves in mutually contingent reciprocation. They have essentially personal or other interests in maintaining one another's good- will or expressing their feelings or concerns in the relationships. They interact, however, according to prevailing forms and rules in the socio-cultural context in which the exchange takes place. In a word, there are certain social forms - - and particular grammars -- for such reciprocal exchange. In such cases, although the participating actors initiate and develop the interactions themselves, the social context of the interaction, cultural understandings, and norms and values regarding reciprocity play a key role in shaping exchange practices and outcomes. For instance, social norms prohibiting fraud and exploitation and sustaining trust provide advantageous conditions for actors to initiate such exchange activities, including evem market type exchanges. In interpersonal exchange relationships actors have the freedom to withdraw or, to use Hirschman's term, exit. Of course, even interpersonal relationships may take on very enduring qualities which make it especially difficult or painful to terminate them. One is not withdrawing from a single game or interaction activity but from a social relationship. The cases where participation is voluntary -- and where the organizing principles and cultural forms allow social agents to decide whether or not they will continue the relationship -- can be distinguished analytically from cases where participation is not voluntary in any strict sense. In relationships where one "belongs" and has identity, one often cannot simply terminate the relationship, whenever and however. Departure is dramatic (Coleman, 1986) and marked by social re-definitions, e.g. as in the case when one resigns from a position of authority or responsibility 107

108 prior to the end of a mandate, or when one divorces, or when one gives up citizenship or membership in a nation or community. The SGT approach identifies the norms and social forms which play a role in structuring and regulating specific types of exchange. There is a specific institutional character -- social forms with specific organizing principles and rules -- for each interaction setting and exchange process. In general, SGT predicts a strong correspondence between social relationships and types of decision procedures, strategies, and interaction patterns which the participants utilize -- and consequently the actions and interactions they produce in different types of game setting. In general, the theory suggests multiple types of exchange relationships. The great variety of forms of social exchange are distinguishable -- and understandable -- in terms of various organizing principles, rule systems and logics of social interaction. There are many classes of exchange activity with diverse norms and rule systems, Market Games And Price Formation: SGT Applied to Diverse Types of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Markets Price bargaining games between market participants can be conceptualized as a population of participants (buyers and sellers) who are conscious of being involved at time t in an interaction situation or game with others. Players have defined roles and role relationships (although not all roles and role relationships need be well defined). They operate more or less according to a common rule complex, that is, they share common knowledge of the game including their respective roles and specific rules of the game. This type of game is conceptualized in this SGT research is based on conceptions of rules and rule complexes underlying all social interaction. The work examines the judgment bases of producers/sellers as well as consumers in diverse types of markets: staples or basic goods markets, quality goods markets where consumers are concerned more (at least up to a limit) with quality rather than with price, and status goods markets where consumers are oriented to the status gains provided by the goods or services they purchase. The analysis also considers the market power dimension in terms of competitive or monopoly conditions. The interaction analysis results in specification of market elasticities and price determination patterns in the different markets including markets with large populations of buyers and sellers. The social organization of such markets, with given populations of buyers and sellers having particular value, cognitive, action repertoire, and judgment characteristics, is shown to affect in specifiable ways price levels, price dispersion, and volume of trade. The research demonstrates that a brokered market has a predictable price dispersion in contrast to the single equilibrium price of the Walrasian market. Moreover, the Walrasian "equilibrium price" tends to be lower than the average price on a brokered market, other things being equal. And, under certain specifiable conditions, the Walrasian auctioneer market has only 1/2 of the transaction volume of a market organized by a perfect broker. The research demonstrates the usefulness of SGT in modelling market behavior based on (1) SGT conceptualization of micro-processes, in particular value and judgment processes; and (2) SGT institutional analysis of "market coordination" in the case of multi-agent systems. Fuzzy Bargaining Games: Conditions of Agreement, Satisfaction, and Equilibrium As mentioned above, Game theory in its several variants is widely recognized as a contribution to social and economic modeling. SGT entails its extension and generalization through the formulation of the mathematical theory of rules and rule complexes as well as the application of fuzzy set theory. Among such applications, one major initiative has been the conceptualization of fuzzy games and fuzzy equilibria. Among other formulations, a SGT model of 2-person fuzzy bargaining games has been developed. Two key concepts are 108

109 applied: (1) players value (or utility ) structures consisting ofideal points or expectation levels, on the one hand, and limits of acceptance, on the other; (2) fuzzy judgment functions in which players deal with imprecise information and use approximate reasoning in making decisions and negotiating agreements. Such fuzzy judgment functions can take into account economic, socio-psychological, and cultural and institutional aspects of the interaction context, which affect the bargaining process and outcomes in specifiable ways. Several significant results are obtained from the application of this model: the opportunities (or not) for agreement, the participants satisfaction levels with an agreement reached, and the question whether or not the agreed price is an equilibrium price Applications To Conflict Resolution, Equilibrium Analysis And Pareto Optimization Structural resolutions of collective action problems This work concerned the general problem of achieving cooperation in human groups and higher levels of social systems. Several social situations are considered where cooperation is problematic because self-interest contradicts group or collective interest: (a) the prisoners' dilemma game; (b) the commons' problem (Hardin, 1972); (c) the collective action problem, i.e., the failure of memberships of many large interest groups, e.g., consumers and the general public, to cooperate to achieve common goals (Olson, 1968); and ) (d) the problem of competitive panics, e.g., a crowd in a burning theater. We introduce a structural framework and methodology, using social system level concepts, to characterize and analyze such problems. It is shown that the various cases have a common underlying structure. In the analysis, we focus on the social context of the problematic situations and, in particular, on social processes that structure human interaction and collective behavior. A basic idea guiding the analysis is that actors purposively structure and transform interaction situations or games into situations of greater or less cooperation or conflict, depending upon the social context. We examine specific social control processes that may be found operating in social systems to resolve problems of achieving cooperative action, that is, to deal with contradictions between individual interests and autonomy on the one hand and group interest and need for cooperative action on the other. We focus on the social structuring and restructuring in groups of perceptions and evaluations, action opportunities, and judgment and decision procedures and, therefore, likely interaction patterns of those involved. Pareto Problematique and Optimization Using SGT, we have developed a critique of, and formulated alternatives to, the Pareto optimization problematique. Our approach entails solving multi-value conflict problems through societal conflict resolution procedures. The Pareto multi-value problematique concenrs situations where members of a group, community or society are faced with alternative allocations, institutional arrangements, or states of the world and may collectively choose an allocation, institutional arrangement or state of the world if they can agree on it. This type of multiple value decision situation is increasingly prevalent not only on the level of societal and political issues but on the level of many enterprises and other organizations particularly those advocating sustainability goals and corporate social responsibility. Because participants hold and apply values from different perspectives, there are likely contradictory value judgments and incompatible equilibria. In a world of 109

110 contradiction, incommensurability, and disequilibrium, our research question is, to what extent can conflicts be resolved and social equilibrium accomplished? Force works but it is inherently unstable. Drawing on SGT, this work addresses the multi-value problematique in terms of collective resolution procedures. These regulative procedures or social algorithms are applied to problems of conflict and sub-optimality in a multiple value world such as Pareto envisioned. The Pareto multi-value problematique is defined, and several of the critical weaknesses -- theoretical as well as empirical -- of the Pareto approach are identified. SGT is then applied in defining and analyzing selected resolution procedures to realize improvements in a multi-value world characterized by conflict and sub-optimality. The research has gone on to conceptualize a complex of societal games making up a social system with 2-phase multi-level game processes; it applies the conceptualization to the different societal procedures for multi-value choice under conditions of conflict. Procedures such as adjudication and administrative decision-making, multi-lateral negotiation, and democratic voting are capable of producing outcomes that in many cases are widely accepted as legitimate and capable of becoming social equilibria (at least within some range of conditions). These procedures and the conditions for their activation and implementation are modelled and explicated through the SGT approach. The research has formulated detailed models of the adjudication, negotiation, and democratic procedures introduced and has investigated their legitimacy bases. The limits of such societal procedures, and the likelihood of accomplishing societal improvements of efficiencies through the procedures are also examined. Legitimacy Versus Effectiveness: Procedural Governance Integrating Expertise And Social Acceptance Of Collective Decisions As outlined above, SGT analyzed the Pareto multi-agent problematique concerning collective choice situations where members of a group, community or society typically with diverse values, beliefs, and other predispositions -- are faced with choices among alternative allocations, institutional arrangements, or states of the world and may collectively choose a particular allocation, institutional arrangement or state of the world if they can agree on the choice. This type of multiple value governance situation is increasingly prevalent in the contemporary world as a result of increasing societal differentiation and complexity. This concerns not only economic but social and environmental goals. SGT research has identified institutionalized governance mechanisms that resolve conflicts, inefficient or non-optimal states, and disequilibria. In other words, Pareto optimization problems in the face of general non-unanimity or conflict about the outcomes among involved actors is resolvable through institutionalized procedures (without requiring unanimity as in the Pareto approach). This reconceptualization of the "Pareto problematique" is based on the general Principle of "legitimation of collective choices"; where such collective choices have a high likelihood of being accepted by a substantial part of society or by key relevant agents (such as government agencies, businesses, NGOs, etc.) in the population. However, legitimacy does not necessarily guarantee effectiveness. On the one hand, it contributes to making social order and society sustainable. On the other hand, a process legitimized by one or more of the societal legitimizing procedures may nonetheless lead to highly ineffective (or "inefficient") outcomes, even catastrophes. There is no guarantee that legitimate collective choices are invariably best or right (This critique also applies to Pareto's approach, as we have pointed out elsewhere. In general, effective choices whether legitimate or not require the application of relevant or appropriate knowledge (indeed, multiple types of knowledge are often required). Overcoming this dilemma between gaining social acceptance and achieving knowledge-based technical effectiveness requires dual (or multiple) governance mechanisms 110

111 or systems. This research identifies and analyzes governance structures and procedures which bring systematic knowledge to bear on collective choice problems. Many contemporary forms of collective decision-making typically entail mobilizing and applying expertise such as technical and scientific, economic, organizational, legal, and cultural knowledge and combining these with legitimizing procedures to gain acceptance of collective decisions and, thereby, accomplish social equilibria. A few models of such integrative governance systems have been identified and discussed in the SGT research. SGT research suggest a new interpretation of equilibrium on the basis of a conceptualization of multi-value judgment and choice. This leads to the the conceptualization of a new type of social equilibrium, namely normative equilibrium, which plays a major role in much social and economic life Applications to Collective Action, Social Exchange, And Conflict Socio-Cognitive Mechanisms Of Belief Change: Applications of Social science Game Theory to Belief Revision, Social Fabrication, and Self-Fulfilling Prophesy SGT has been used to conceptualize and explain key socio-cognitive processes in multi-agent interaction, in particular belief revision. Rule concepts are used not only to formalize game, social relationships, and role but also to specify major components of actors roles, namely model or belief structure, value complex, action repertoire, and the judgment complex. The model or belief structure is an agent s situational view, providing a perspective on and a basis for understanding and analyzing interaction situations with others. SGT conceptualizes the way that actors, when confronted with new information or candidates for belief, integrate them into their models, or reject them. This occurs through rules of composition. Several social factors can be identified as key variables incorporated or expressed in composition rules and judgments which regulate belief revision and learning processes: (1) degree of trust in a source of belief or message; (2) the social status (professional expertise, ethnicity, gender, age, etc.) of the source relative to the recipient; (3) the strength of commitment with respect to a belief structure; and (4) the strength of collective sanctioning, supporting or negating influence processes. The theory is applied to multi-agent games, where the social relationships among actors, status and authority differences, the level of trust and expected honesty affect belief change in large part by affecting the composition rules which are applied to candidates for belief. The research shows that in some cases of belief revision falsehood is produced indeed, deception and fabrication are part and parcel of many multi-agent interaction systems. However, in social life, even false beliefs produced through acceptance of expert or authoritative judgements and beliefs -- may become true through self-fulfilling processes. Conflict Resolution And Conflict Development: A Theory Of Game Transformation With An Application To The Lip Factory Conflict (France) This research outlined and illustrated SGT s approach to describing and analyzing the dynamic patterns of conflict in social life. Of particular interest are the transformation processes which produce a sequence of interaction situations or "game phases." In our view, it is essential to make the starting point for modeling and analyzing social conflict, (1) the transformation potentialities and tendencies of social action and interaction; (2) the interdependence between, on the one hand, the social interaction processes and events and, on 111

112 the other, the material, social structural, and cultural contexts in which they take place. Three central features of the research have been: the notion of the transformation of social interaction situations or games; a multi-level conceptualization with which to describe and analyze game transformation processes -- in particular, patterns of conflict resolution and conflict development -- and consideration of the role of key social agents as well as social structural conditions affecting the course of a conflict, especially in bringing about conflict resolution or conflict development in concrete interaction or game settings. Interaction conditions and rules in general, the institutional order may be viewed as the macroscopic resultant of multiple, often contradictory "structuring" processes, including social action and interaction. Structuring processes and conditions determine the long-term incentives, opportunities, and constraints within which action and interaction take place. That is, they provide context for and structure "process-level" conditions and activities including, among other things, the definition of relevant issues and problems, membership or participation in institutional activities, permissible or acceptable activities, relationships of actors or categories of actors to one another and to forms of property or resources, and the distribution of benefits and costs for different actors or categories of actors involved in process-level activities. The emphasis in the research has been on actors' interactions on the structural level the meta-level exchanges, conflicts, and negotiations operating to settle process-level conflicts or to bring about conflict development. Conflict resolution and conflict development processes are identified as higher or meta-level operations altering or transforming one or more components of interaction or game conditions and its structure. In one piece of work, a case study, the Lip factory conflict in Besancon, France during the period , illustrates the SGT approach to the description and analysis of complex, social conflict dynamics. Distributive Justice: From Steinhaus, Knaster, and Banach to Elster and Rawls This research draws on a few key concepts of SGT describe and analyze a spectrum of distributive justice cases concerning principles of equality, differentiation among recipients on the basis of performance or contribution, status or authority, or even need. Two general types of social organization of distributive judgment are distinguished and judgment procedures or algorithms are modeled in each type of social organization, for instance, horizontal or vertical. The larger moral landscapes of human judgment are also considered how distributive norms or values may typically be combined with other values. The research suggests that John Rawls, Jon Elster, and Nora Machado have pointed in this direction. Finally, it is suggested that the SGT framework presented provides a useful point of departure to systematically link it and compare Steinhaus, Knaster, and Banach of the Warsaw School of Logic and Mathematics who conceptualized and analyzed procedures to achieve fair division, for example of a cake that is to be distributed among two or more actors. Selected References. Baumgartner, T., T. R. Burns, P. DeVille 1977 "Conflict Resolution and Conflict Development: The Structuring and Restructuring of Games." In Louis Kriesberg (ed), Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press Blau, P Power and Exchange in Social Life. New York: Wiley. Burns, T. R Models of Social and Market Exchange: Toward a Sociological Theory of Games and Human Interaction In: D. Calhoun, M. W. Meyer, and W. R. Scott (eds), Structures of Power and Constraint: Essays in Honor of Peter M. Blau. New York: Cambridge University Press. 112

113 T.R. Burns, A. Gomolinska and L.D. Meeker 2001 The Theory of Socially Embedded Games: Applications and Extensions to Open and Closed Games. Quality and Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Vol. 35:1-32. T. R. Burns and A. Gomolinska 2000 The Theory of Socially Embedded Games: The Mathematics of Social Relationships, Rule Complexes, and Action Modalities. Quality and Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Vol. 34: T. R. Burns and A. Gomolinska) 1998 Modelling Social Game Systems by Rule Complexes. In: L. Polkowski and A. Skowron (eds), Rough Sets and Current Trends in Computing. Berling/Heidelberg: Springer-V. T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1974 "Structural Properties and Resolutions of the Prisoners' Dilemma Game." In: A. Rapaport (ed), Game Theory as a Theory of Conflict Resolution. Holland: Reidel. T.R.Burns and Ewa Roszkowska 2008"The Social Theory of Choice: From Simon and Kahneman-Tversky to GGT Modelling Of Socially Contextualized Decision Situations." Optimum-Studia Ekonomiczne, No. 3 (39). T.R. Burns Ewa Roszkowska 2005 Social Judgment In Multi-Agent Systems: The Perspective Of Generalized Game Theory. In Ron Sun (ed), Cognition and Multi-agent Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1977 "Conflict and Structure in Multi-Level, Multiple Objective Decision- making Systems." In C.A. Hooker (ed), Foundations and Applications of Decision Theory. Dordrecht, Holland: Reidel. T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1976 "A Systems Theory of Multi-level, Multiple Objective Evaluation and Decision-making." International J. of General Systems 3: T. Baumgartner, W. Buckley, T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1975"A Multi-level, Mathematical Model of Social Action." In Transactions: International Seminar on Collective Phenomena, Moscow, New York: Pergamon Press. T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1975 "A Multi-level, Structural Model of Social Behavior." Quality & Quantity, 9: T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1973 "A Mathematical Model of Multi- Dimensional Evaluation, Decision- making, and Social Interaction." In: J. Cochrane and M. Zeleny (eds), Multiple Criteria Decision-Making. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. Tom R. Burns and Philippe DeVille 1977 "Conflict Resolution and Conflict Development: The Structuring and Restructuring of Games." In Louis Kriesberg (ed), Research in Social Movements, Conflict, and Change. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press. W. Buckley and T.R.Burns 1974 "The Prisoners' Dilemma Game as a Systems of Social Domination." Journal of Peace Research, 11: Ewa Roszkowska 2008 Negotiation in the Context of Generalized Game Theory. In: Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. Tom R. Burns, Ewa Roszkowska, Nora Machado 2014 Distributive Justice: From Steinhaus, Knaster, and Banach to Elster and Rawls The Perspective of Sociological Game Theory Studies in Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric 01/

114 Tom R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska) 2013 Decision-Making Under Conditions Of Multiple Values And Variation In Conditions Of Risk And Uncertainty. In W. Pedrycz and P. Guo (eds.), Human-Centric Decision-making Models for Social Sciences, Springer Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg/New York/Tokyo, T. R. Burns, Jose Castro Caldas and Ewa Roszkowska (2005) Generalized Game Theory s Contribution to Multi-agent Modelling: Addressing Problems of Social Regulatiion, Social Order, and Effective Security. In: Barbara Dunin-Keplicz, Andrzej Jankowski, Andrzej Skowron, and Marcin Szczuka (eds.), Monitoring, Security and Rescue Techniques in Multiagent Systems. Springer Verlag, Berlin/London. Tom R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska) 2010 Fuzzy Bargaining Games: Conditions of Agreement, Satisfaction, and Equilibrium. Group Decision and Negotiation Volume 19(5), 2010, Tom R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska) 2007 "Multi-Value Decision-Making And Games: The Perspective of Generalized Game Theory on Social and Psychological Complexity, Contradiction, and Equilibrium. In: Festskrift for Milan Zeleny. Amsterdam: IOS Press Tom R. Burns 2005 and Ewa Roszkowska 2005 Generalized Game Theory: Assumptions, Principles, and Elaborations Grounded in Social Theory. Studies in Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric, Vol. 8 (No. 21) Tom R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska 2002 Fuzzy Judgment in Bargaining Games: Diverse Patterns of Price Determination and Transaction in Buyer-Seller Exchange. Paper presented at the 13 th World Congress of Economics, Lisbon, Portugal, September Also, appears as Working-Paper No. 338, Institute of Mathematical Economics, University of Bielefeld, 2002 ( 114

115 Note 16. SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEMS, CAPITALISM; MARKETS AND FINANCIAL SYSTEMS 1. Introduction to The Approach Of ASD in A Forty Year Perspective on Socioeconomics This work develop and applied the ASD framework to the field of socio-economics. Among the problems investigated were: (1) The discontents and conflicts of capitalism (2) Economic inequality, uneven socio-economic development, conflict and instability (3) The limits of orthodox economic theories and policies in the face of recurrent economic crises and instabilities Two fundamentally different conceptions of the human being and human action as well as system behavior underlie most modeling of social behavior and social systems. In one, social actors are viewed as essential forces that structure and restructure social systems and the conditions of human activity and development. The individual, the historic personality enjoys an extensive freedom to act within and upon social systems, and in this sense is to some degree independent of them. In the other view, social actors are either not found or are automata following the established rules or given roles and functions in a world which they cannot basically change. Social action and movements as creative-destructive forces are absent. To a large extent, systems theories have been based on the second view under the influence of the deterministic natural science paradigm; in a certain sense, it is akin to system engineering (e.g., Forrester s system dynamics (1961, 1968), Klir (1969), Meadows et al (1974), among others). This approach tends to ignore or even deny freedom of decision and transformative opportunities available to human agents in much of this system modeling and analysis. System sustainability and evolution tend to be considered natural and taken for granted, rather than being treated as problematic and subject to social struggle and transformation, possibly even collapse. Our research since the 1970s has shown that social systems modeling and analysis are compatible with and can readily incorporate concepts relating to the cognitive, decision, and strategic capabilities of social actors as purposeful, self-reflexive, and transformative agents. Such social actors refer not only to individuals but to social groups, organizations, alliances and nations, which have the capability of reflection and judgment and making collective decisions to carry out collective action. The processes and social logic of making decisions and acting could obviously be very different for individuals or small groups as compared to large collectivities. The more than forty years since our early work has been marked by intense debates, new questions and challenges relating to conceptual and empirical research within the framework of Actor-System-Dynamics (ASD) theory. This overview considers three key issues: (i) the theoretical-methodological underpinnings of ASD and its integration of economics and 115

116 sociology (section 2 below); (ii) the continued relevance of the ASD theoretical and empirical work to several key issues in, and the development of, socio-economics (section 3); and (iii) conclusions: what s next -- new challenges and issues (section 4). 2. The theoretical-methodological-ontological underpinnings. The ASD research made two major contributions: (A) It expanded and applied a dynamic, actor-oriented systems theory and (B) it developed coherent ways of overcoming the separation between economics and sociology in a new transdisciplinary synthesis, socioeconomics (Baumgartner et al, 1975, 1986; Baumgartner et al, 1976; Baumgartner, 1979; Burns, 1990; Burns and DeVille, 2003, 2006; Burns and Flam, 1987; Burns and Roszkowska, 2016) Development and application of a dynamic, actor-oriented systems theory The ASD approach addresses, in general, questions about complexity and the organization of complexity in social systems. More specifically, it deals with questions of how socioeconomic and other systems function and evolve, how systems interact with one another, how they impact on one another and their environments, and how unexpected outcomes and developments emerge from system processes and interaction. Social systems consist of institutional, cultural as well as material structures. Hence, our research network has early on had a substantial community of institutionalists, developed rule system conceptions (see below) as a coherent social scientific foundation, and made extensive use of descriptions and analyses of institutions and cultural formations. In contrast to other systems approaches in the social sciences, 48 ASD theory is based upon the assumption of active, creative, normative (moral), transformative agents (individuals as well as collectives). With the exception of the work of Talcott Parsons (1951) (whose approach nevertheless remained in large part static), most systems approaches (as well as mainstream economics) are largely devoid of systematic agential, cultural and institutional conceptualizations. 49 Actors are conceptualized in ASD theorizing as creative participants in social systems as well as agents of much of the dynamics of the structuring and transformations of these systems. Key conceptual innovations have been and still are the trademark of ASD theory. First, social beings are creative and self-transforming agents. Human consciousness is viewed in terms of self- representation and self-reflectivity on collective and individual levels. Second, cultural and institutional formations are seen as constituting the major environment of human behavior, an environment in part internalized in social agents in the form of shared rules and systems of rules. Third, interaction processes and games are considered to be embedded in, and context dependent on, cultural and institutional systems that facilitate, constrain, and, in general, influence the actions and interactions of human agents (Granovetter, 1985). Fourth, social systems are conceptualized in ASD in multi-level terms, for instance, as hierarchies of processes where a higher level interaction process sets the functions and parameters of lower 48 In particular, that of Talcott Parsons (1951) and later Niklas Luhmann (1995) as well as many natural science and engineering approaches (Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 1968; Jay Forrester, 1961, 1968; Klir, 1969), and more recently the group Biomatrix approach (Dostal, 2005), among others. 49 This was to be expected of Bertalanffy, Forrester, and Klir as well as even World System Theory (Wallerstein, 2004) and structural Marxism (Althusser and Balibar, 1970). 116

117 level interactions and related processes; this multi-level property is crucial in generating endogenously the dynamics of the system, although of course external forces also produce dynamics (see below). Fifth, ASD social systems are considered to be open to, and interacting with, their environment. Through interaction with their environment and also through internal processes, such systems acquire new properties, and subject to restructuring and transformation, resulting in their evolution and development. Sixth, social systems in the ASD perspective entail complex configurations of tensions and conflicts due to divergent interests and power struggles among groups as well as the contradictions between subsystems and processes. And seventh, rule systems (the bases of institutions and cultural formations) evolve as a function of (a) human agency realized through interactions and games and (b) selective mechanisms in part, constructed by social agents in forming and reforming institutions but also, in part, a function of physical and ecological environments. The ASD conception of social rules and rule systems is a major innovation in this and related work (Burns et al, 1985; Burns and Flam, 1987; Burns and Hall, 2012). Social rule systems and rule processes are universal in human groups and organizations and are the building blocks of institutions and cultural formations; they are produced by and embodied in the practices of groups and collectivities of people: language, customs and codes of conduct, norms, laws, and the social institutions of family, community, state, and economic organization such as business enterprises and markets. Most human social activity in all of its extraordinary variety is organized and regulated by socially produced rules and systems of rules. Rule processes -- the making, interpretation, and implementation of social rules as well as their reformulation and transformation -- are often accompanied by conflict and struggle among agents, and the mobilization and exercise of power. Social rules and rule regimes and the formation and reformation of rule systems -- are, therefore, not transcendental abstractions in the ASD perspective. In this perspective, human agents (individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and other collectivities) are seen to interpret, adapt, implement, and transform rules, sometimes cautiously, other times radically (Burns and Dietz, 2001). Such behavior explains much cultural and institutional dynamics. Major struggles in human history revolve around the formation and reformation of core economic, administrative, educational, and political institutions of society, the particular rule regimes defining social relationships, roles, rights and authority, and obligations and duties as well as the general rules of the game in these and related domains of social action. Of particular interest in the context of our approach is the concept of meta-power, based on the capability to shape and reshape institutional arrangements, the rules of the game, the access of actors to key resources and corridors of power. Exercise of such power is observable in the struggles to maintain or change socio-economic and other societal systems (Burns et al, 1985; Burns and Flam, 1987; Burns and Hall, 2012)) The synthesis and integration of economics and sociology (as well as history and political economy) The ASD conceptualization laid out the foundations for theoretical as well as empirically oriented research. The theoretical framework was used to analyze a variety of scientific and policy problems from a multi-disciplinary and dynamic perspective: the complex interplay between economic and socio-political institutions, conflicts and struggles over economic 117

118 resources and economic institutions, problems of development and underdevelopment, and inflation and unemployment. The research resulted in a number of publications (from the 1970s (Baumgartner et al, 1975; Baumgartner et al, 1976; Baumgartner 1977; Baumgartner, 1979; Burns et al, 1979; DeVille and Burns, 1976)); in the 1980s (Baumgartner et al, 1986; Burns et al, 1985; Burns and Flam, 1987), and more recently (Burns, 1990; Burns and Deville, 2003, 2006; Burns et al, 2013; Burns and Roszkowska, 2016; Carson et al, 2003). Much of the research dealt, in some sense, either with social power, conflict, and struggle regarding economic resources and institutions or the structural and other factors which underlie powering, conflict, and struggle in relation to economic agents, processes, and institutional arrangements (Burns and Hall, 2012). Conflict over institutions and policies and over the distribution of resources, particularly economic and political resources The structural bases of economic inequality and conflict and their instability The shaping and reshaping of socio-economic institutions and the contradictions and conflicts and instabilities which such developments evoke The failure of orthodox economic theories, including to some extent Keynesianism, in the face of recurrent economic crises and instabilities The various topics of ASD research relating to socio-economic issues differentiate our work markedly from that of mainstream economics (Baumgartner et al, 1976; Baumgartner et al, 1986; Burns et al, 1985; Burns et al, 2013). The ASD approach to human behavior does not rely on the axiomatic of rational choice theory. Our basic assumptions are in large part incompatible with the usual narrow homo oeconomicus behavioral assumptions that is, in brief, perfect foresight, perfect knowledge and perfect information about the available choice sets and their elements, and the capacity to optimize on the part of individuals and collectives (Baumgartner et al, 1986; Burns and Roszkowska, 2016). On one side, mainstream economic assumptions are more encompassing, on the other, they are more restrictive. As indicated above, social actors (individuals as well as collectives) are in ASD theory active, self reflective, creative, normative (morally conscious), and transformative agents. But they exhibit also imperfect information, limited knowledge, unequal powers, myopic foresight, and irrational behavior. In addition, they may be faced with radical uncertainty (Frank Knight, John Maynard Keynes) and limited capacity to compute. All of these assumptions are close to the bounded rationality assumption argued by Herbert Simon (1969). Such a conception lends support to our treatment of economic processes in behavioral, conflictive and powering terms. It enables ASD investigations to address issues such as the mobilization and exercise of power in shaping and constraining institutional development, blocked or distorted development, and socio-economic crises and their dynamics (Baumgartner et al, 1977, 1986; Burns and DeVille, 2006; Burns et al, 2013). At the same time, it has been somewhat unusual for sociologists and other social scientists to consider topics such as inflation, the structuring and restructuring of markets, the shaping and reshaping of entire economic systems; in addition, the development and functioning of alternative socio-economic systems such as the former Yugoslavia, the facilitators of and constraints on technology transfer, the wealth and poverty of nations, among other socioeconomic topics and issues. From the start our team (economists and sociologists) conducted jointly early trans-disciplinary research on these and related topics and issues, which as we 118

119 suggest below continue to be relevant and challenging 40 years later (Burns and DeVille, 2003, 2006; Burns and Flam, 1987; Burns and Hall, 2012; Burns et al, 1979). In sum, ASD conceptualizations and analyses are contributions not only to the development of social systems theory and methodology but to socio-economic theorizing and analysis. The latter has failed often in the past to conceptualize power and conflict processes, institutional arrangements and their dynamics and transformations, the evolution of socio-economic systems, and a great deal of dynamic non-equilibria phenomena. 3. The Continued Relevance of the ASD approach. In reviewing this work, we find ourselves surprised at what appears to us and to many of our scientific colleagues, a substantial evidence of the relevance of many of the topics and issues that were analyzed from 40 years ago to the present time. Capitalism and its discontents continue more than ever (Baumgartner et al, 1986; Burns and DeVille, 2006; Burns and Hall, 2012; Burns et al, 2013; DeVille and Burns, 1976)). Conflicts and struggles are endemic on all levels and in all sectors, not only on labor markets but commodity and money and financial markets. Power, conflict, and institutional analyses continue to be relevant to specific socio-economic systems, as we tried to show in earlier studies in the cases of Belgium, Mexico, the former Yugoslavia, and Latin America (Baumgartner et al, 1986). Socio-economic development continues to be highly uneven (with well supported development in some cases and blocked or distorted development in others (Baumgartner et al, 1976; Baumgartner et al, 1986). There is not only a wealth but a poverty of nations, regions, and sectors. This is the consequence of capitalist logic and related institutions as we have come to know, producing inequality and uneven development along with its massive outputs and flows of goods and services (often at the expense of degrading societal conditions as well as the natural environment). Much of our research was devoted to the analysis of inflation and its causes, an issue of great scientific and policy concern during the 1970s. Eventually, advanced economies found ways to regulate inflation, shifting from accommodation to wage, price, and taxation demands, on the one hand, to a monetarist regime which focused on regulating credit to households, enterprises and government, on the other hand. At the same time, developing countries such as China, Korea, Taiwan were and still are exporting relatively cheaper although increasingly sophisticated commodities to advanced economies, helping the latter to constrain their inflationary pressures. As we have argued since the early 1980s, conflicts and struggles over income distribution issues generate inflationary pressures in such countries as Belgium, Iceland, Italy or Sweden, but particularly in developing countries with limited economic and political means to deal with and mitigate those tensions and conflicts. Our central argument has been that monetarism could not counter inflationary pressures because it could not address the underlying distributional conflicts (see, for instance, Baumgartner et al (1986, p. 89)). During a long period of money and credit creation, inflation could in most instances be kept at relatively low levels because it contributed to mediating societal tensions and conflicts. Only after the highly destabilizing crisis of 2007 and afterwards, do we see the imposition once again of powerful constraints, especially in Europe, leading to the introduction of austerity 119

120 policies, thereby intensifying competition and conflict potentials, as experienced by Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, among others. Modern democratic governments are only able to a limited degree to address directly the conflicts over income distribution among societal groups as well as economic sectors and government agencies. Their best strategies have been accommodation to demands (from private companies, government agencies, and households) by expanding government budgets, subsidies, and debts contributing to inflation as it took place from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and by allowing from the 1970s on for the massive expansion of credit for households and businesses. That policy mix reached its limits by 2010 when the sovereign debt became a central issue in Europe. Nowadays, international banks and the IMF impose austerity measures on several European countries, often in the context of weakened political leadership, shrinking resource base, and continually rising expectations and demands. Recent events in several of these countries are signs of increasing tensions and conflicts, as it is the case in, for example, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. After the appearance of ASD 1986 book ( Baumgartner et al, 1986), the former Yugoslavia dissolved (early 1990s). Already, it had identified the underlying crisis, related conflicts and their socio-economic impacts (see Baumgartner et al (1986, Chapter 7)). The inability of the Yugoslav political elite to deal with these and related crises had been blatant. This was the context that led to the dissolution of this nations and the wars, destruction, and mass murder that followed. In Latin America, while the powerful pressures producing inflation continued (and continue), dramatic changes have taken place. Many Latin American countries have made considerable progress toward more democratic orders: Argentina (1983), Bolivia ( ), Brazil (1985), Chile (1989), Paraguay (1991-2), Uruguay (1984), among others. As emphasized in our work over several decades, the internationalization of the complex capitalist system over the world has not contributed in a significant way to the convergence among countries of socio-economic conditions or of the majority of their populations. The production and reproduction of inequality, unequal exchange, and uneven development are still present. While sustaining substantial inequality in the wealth and poverty among nations, it does allow also for the advancement of some, such as the BRIC countries (see below). The following are relevant historical developments. The New International Economic Order (NIEO) was historically a major concept pushed by developing countries (for instance, the Group 77 (1964) and the United Nations General Assembly (1974). However, this normative idea had insufficient real power mobilization behind it at the time. Interestingly, in the meantime, the emerging BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) have not only ideas about a new international economic order but begin to mobilize global power to push effectively for it. Under their influence, there are emerging strategies and pressures in that direction. The ASD approach has also been applied to an analysis of financial systems as complex, dynamic and unstable systems (Burns and DeVille; 2003; Burns et al, 2013). The crisis has been analyzed as a systemic crisis; it is argued that a major re-design will be required if genuine stabilization is to be achieved (Burns et al, 2013). But such a re-design is unlikely to happen in the present context, given the opposition of major world banks and financial interests and their supporting countries. Nevertheless, the need remains and will be with us for some time. We will probably 120

121 have to wait for the occurrence of the next major crisis (within the coming 5-10 years for the global system of banking and finance to be seriously confronted and potentially subject to substantial reform. With respect to the issue of ecological sustainability, DeVille and Burns (1976) had already suggested in the mid-1970s that the major factor undermining capitalism would not be class and related societal struggles but ecological and natural constraints (class and other struggles appeared intense in the 1960s and 1970s and made up the historical context of much of what was written in ASD reports and publications). This prediction, based on ASD systemic analyses seems to be more pertinent than ever. A recent application of ASD concerned the global economic/financial crisis in which case we identified the socioeconomic logic and inherent creative-destructive financial systems. There have been numerous books, essays and articles on the causes, dynamics and impacts of the global economic/financial crisis and the related economic depression. Widespread agreement exists on the sequence of events leading to the crisis (European Parliament, 2009; US Government Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 2011): from the housing bubble and the subprime crisis in the US market to the risk of default and the federal rescue with large amounts of public money of the two giants of US housing credit firms Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and one of the largest US insurance companies AIG; from the crisis of the five largest American investment banks that were at the core of global finance (the default of Lehman Brothers and the acquisition or transformation of the others) to the financial panic caused by the vast proliferation of the toxic products of the shadow finance system that fostered a generalized crisis of confidence in banks, firms and families, thus contributing ultimately to the recession of the real economy. One cannot find a similar agreement with regard to the interpretations of the nature of the crisis, its causes and dynamics, the relative responsibilities of private and public actors, the economic, social and political impacts, the responses and the exit strategies (Cooper 2008; Morris 2008; Soros 2008; Read 2009; Woods 2009; Paulson 2010; Roncaglia 2010). We consider the global financial/economic crisis to be a systemic one that highlights key aspects of a forty-year phase of world capitalism (insufficient constraints on credit creation, the excessive growth of business, government, and household indebtedness, the unregulated growth of numerous innovations including financial derivatives, non-transparent structural interdependencies, inequalities and disequilibria at the world level). And, in order to be understood, it must be framed into a broader context and in a longer time perspective, which this research aims to do. The crisis exploded in the core of global capitalism, in contrast to previous regional crises such as the Asian, Mexican and Russian crises in the 1990s. Money, banking, and finance are special social constructions socio-technical systems characterized by many types of vulnerabilities to crisis hyperinflation, exchange rate crisis, domestic and sovereign default crisis, bank failures, equity and real estate/housing crises, among others and require substantial regulation as does any humanly constructed system, particularly complex, dynamic systems (Burns and DeVille, 2003, 2007).50 All countries 50 Structural crises are endemic in capitalism and one of the ways in which capitalism continuously transforms itself (Burns and DeVille, 2007). The classics of social sciences, from Adam Smith to Karl Marx, from Max Weber to Karl Polanyi, from Joseph Schumpeter to John Maynard Keynes and Michal Kalecki, have all argued, 121

122 with credit-creating banking systems, whether developing countries or advanced economies, have had and continue to have banking crises. The work identifies and analyses, from a socioeconomic systems perspective, key aspects of economic-financial crises, which have been neglected or insufficiently analysed in most scientific and media accounts and with which our framework can complement the usual macroeconomic analyses. We focus to a great extent on the situation in the United States, since the crisis started in the core country of contemporary market capitalism and spread rapidly elsewhere. More generally, we suggest that the explanation of banking and financial crises lies in the key freedoms and power processes to create credit (that is, a form of money creation) which, together with innovation capabilities, tend to result in overexpansion and the generation of systems that are prone to high levels of risk and therefore vulnerable. The key mechanisms of overexpansive credit-creation (for example, through diverse and innovative forms of leveraging) but also of credit contraction (for example, deleveraging) typically entail crowdtype behaviour imitation processes and diffusion of self-fulfilling beliefs); they generate uncoordinated and destabilizing market behaviour, in bubble formation as well as in bubble collapse with respect to particular markets and sectors: whether equities, real estate, financial instruments such as derivatives, and hedge funds, or tulips, South Sea pie-in-the-sky, and so on. Increasingly (with historical perspective and increased reflection) there is a growing awareness of the systemic properties of banking and other financial arrangements. It is appropriate and necessary to apply systems concepts and analytical methods in describing and analyzing the recurrent, complex phenomena of financial boom and bust cycles. This is an alternative paradigm to the paradigm of the self-correcting market tending to equilibrium. 51 We emphasize the social construction of these complex, dynamic systems, their vulnerability to instability and crisis, and the necessity of effective regulation institutional design and regulation mechanism differing from and more effective than what has been attempted earlier (Burns and DeVille, 2003, 2007). We recognize that the predictive capability of our models, in the usual sense, is very limited. However, aside from some very short-run predictions, traditional economic models have not scored very well either, especially when economies have been faced with brutal shocks, structural failures and institutional incoherence and degeneration. We felt, however, that our framework might prove itself fruitful in many ways, allowing for the identification of capabilities and major systemic mechanisms and for predicting system potentialities and limitations in a range of situations. It also enables us to identify key social agents involved, their capabilities and potentialities, their social judgments and likely choices, their strategic behavior leading to inflationary, contracting or other economic pressures, and to constraints on such processes. Socio-economic developments are not, in the ASD perspective the result of blind, mechanistic forces but the result to a substantial degree of human individual and/or collective actions based on good as well as bad judgments -- even in cases that concern institution building and reform 4. Conclusions: What next -- Challenges and issues? although in quite different ways, that capitalism is inherently contradictory and unstable and is transformed periodically through processes of creative destruction (Martinelli, 2007). 51 Ingham s work (2004, 2011) also develops a non-equilibrium view of economic systems. 122

123 Major challenges remain. We and others must keep expanding and elaborating social system theory, ASD in particular, in the face of the terrible fragmentation of knowledge and the frustrating and costly inability to address with systematic knowledge and analysis many current problems in socio-economics and areas of social science and policy. The currently increasing violence both among and within countries testifies to the urgent need to have a better integrated, encompassing but coherent social science to identify and make proposals to deal with the many dangers which are threatening the future of humanity. ASD theory remains a promising basis for such a development. Social systemic analyses pinpointing the drivers and dynamics of links and processes are on the one hand needed, and at the same time should be expanded beyond socio-economics and political economy. A significant part of ASD research, which has been addressed to social scientists concerned with socio-economic issues, institutions, and development, is based on what was a new social system theory at that time (from the 1970s). For the future, the need for further linking up with other social sciences such as anthropology, cultural geography, and history as well as the humanities (philosophy, linguistics, literary analysis, etc.) is clear. Moreover, closer linkages must be accomplished between the social sciences and humanities, on the one hand, and the natural, bio-medical and engineering sciences, on the other hand. The tower of Babel metaphor ([8]) applies today as much as then (the 1980s), if not more so. The task at hand for upcoming research is on the further elaboration of the theory of actor-system dynamics beyond its socioeconomics comfort zone. It should develop its potentiality as a powerful tool of systematic analysis of complex, dynamic social systems and their interaction with technological as well as ecological systems, thus linking social, natural and engineering sciences (Burns et al, 1985; Carson et al, 2009). Today we are faced with something described elsewhere as the perfect storm of social systems. Unstable financial systems, ineffectual global institutions, declining welfare and increased inequality, failed states, warring regions, widespread terrorist activity, and increasing environmental degradation are destabilizing the existing international order. The world is faced with serious and immediate ecological disturbances and, in some cases, irreversible destruction, all this feeding into vicious circles of social violence and further social and ecological degradation (this is an adaptation of a remark by Paul Ehrlich). Technological advances, especially in communication technologies, are deeply transforming interpersonal relations and the production of information. The traditional representative democratic institutions are put in question as an efficient mechanism for expressing the various claims and proposals emerging from large segments of the population. This has been fed by increasing perverse nationalism supported by new powerful right wing populist movements. The results have been more racial discrimination, social exclusion and attempts to restrict civil liberties. Cleavages and struggles at the international as well as other levels are much deeper and the basis or potentialities for shaping global consensus less feasible than earlier in the case of many advanced nation-states or emerging and developing nations. Moreover, as it was already true 40 years ago, there are powerful vested interests and antagonistic nation-state regimes opposing appropriate initiatives and transitions. This calls for at least two key lines of research. First, it is imperative to understand the inner structure of these complex systems and the roots of their dynamic, destabilizing behavior, their cycles, and local-global strategic linkages. It is essential to further develop the necessary scientific and policy capacities to respond to and operate on them on a medium to long-term basis. In the face of diverse, complex social 123

124 systems --government, finance systems, socio-technical systems, regional systems, and the global system --in disarray and unstable, we are convinced that the conceptual and methodological toolbox which ASD offers, is more than ever potentially useful. Second, at the same time, the scope of ASD requires several extensions. As we wrote in the 1980s (see Baumgartner et al (1986, p.91)), the major challenge for promoting and implementing appropriate societal transformation, in particular the creation of coherent world level governance institutions, is to overcome the lack of available institutional designs and means. Institutional design, selection, and implementation are consequently key research processes to cope with these issues. In light of our arguments, we came to pessimistic conclusions in 1986 (which we continue to express): the necessary transformation of international conditions and regimes will probably have to await a much more profound crisis (1986; repeated, November, 2016). But, we also know the dangers and the appalling human costs of another catastrophic crisis that is most likely to take place at the world level. As social scientists, it is our responsibility to develop tools and analyses to avoid or mitigate as much as possible such a catastrophe. In sum, ASD has served, among other things, as an innovative, multidisciplinary methodology for investigating and analyzing social struggles over economic resources and the related interplay between economic and socio-political institutions and processes. We have offered a systemic perspective on contemporary socio-economic issues such as economic crisis, unemployment, inflation, economic democracy and development; in the analyses, we have identified several of the key factors that drive people to interact, to initiate change and transformation as well as to resist such change. Major underlying themes in the work have been: Conflict over the distribution of economic resources and economic policies and institutions; the structural bases of economic inequality and conflict; the shaping and reshaping of socio-economic institutions, and the contradictions, conflicts and instabilities evoked by such developments; the failure of orthodox economic theories, including Keynesianism, in the face of recurrent economic crises and instabilities; the development and application of an open, dynamic actor-oriented systems theory grounded in the social sciences addressing complex socio-economic phenomena in ways diverging substantially from conventional economics. All in all, the work deals, on the one hand, with social power, conflict, and struggle concerning economic resources and institutions and, on the other hand, the structural and other factors which drive powering initiatives, conflict, and social innovation and transformation. Selected Publications 2013 T. R. Burns, Alberto Martinelli and Philippe DeVille A Socio-economic Systems Model of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007+: Power, Innovation, Ideology, and Design Failure. In: J. Pixley and G. Harcourt (eds.) Financial Crises and the Nature of Capitalist Money, London, Palgrave/Macmillan T. R. Burns and Philippe DeVille) Dynamic Systems Theory: Application to Capitalist Development In: Clifton D. Bryant and D.L.Peck (eds),the Handbook of 21st Century Sociology, Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, California T. R. Burns, Ewa Roszkowska, L. David Meeker) Market Games And Price Formation: A Generalized Game Theory Perspective (Ggt) On Diverse Types Of Homogeneous And Heterogeneous Markets.. Optimum-Studia Ekonomiczne. No.3 (35) 2003 T.R. Burns and Philippe DeVille) The Three Faces of the Coin: A Socio-economic 124

125 Approach to the Institution of Money. European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, Vol. 16, No. 2: T. R. Burns, Tom Baumgartner and Philippe DeVille Actor-System Dynamics Theory and its Application to the Analysis of Modern Capitalism. Canadian Journal of Sociology, Vol. 27, No. 2: T.R. Burns and Ewa Roszkowska) Producer-Consumer Game: Changing Prices The Perspective of The Theory of Socially Embedded Games. Presented at the lst World Congress of Game Theory, Bilbao, Spain, July Available at: T. R. Burns and M. Carson) Actors, Paradigms, and Institutional Dynamics. In: R. Hollingsworth, K.H. Muller, E.J. Hollingsworth (eds) Advancing Socio-Economics: An Institutionalist Perspective Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield T. R. Burns Structuration: Economic and Social Change (in Chinese). Beijing, China: Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China Social Science Publishing House The Three Faces of the Coin: Money as Symbol, Institution, and Technology. In: Carlo Mongardini (ed), Money in Money Culture, Rome, Bulzone editore Yeraswork Admassie and T. R. Burns "Property Rights Regimes, Their Structure, and Evolution." Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Socio-economics, Geneve, Switzerland, July, T. R. Burns "Market and Human Agency: Toward a Socio-economics of Market Organization, Performance, and Dynamics." In: C. Mongardini (ed), Market and Individual: 1994 European Amalfi Prize Proceedings. Rome: Bulzoni editore T. R. Burns and H. Flam (see Part II, Markets and Collective Bargaining Systems )The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London, Sage Publications T. R. Burns, P. DeVille and H. Flam Inflation and Distributional Struggles in Capitalist Economies: A Theoretical Framework with Applications. International J. of Social Science, No. 113, pp T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and P. DeVille The Shaping of Socio-Economic Systems. London/New York: Gordon and Breach T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and P. DeVille Inflation, Politics, and Social Change: Institutional and Theoretical Crisis in Contemporary Economy-and-Society. International J. of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 25: Tom Baumgartner, T.R.Burns and P. DeVille "Autogestion and Planning: Dilemmas and Possibilities." Economic Analysis, 15: T. Baumgartner and T.R.Burns Wealth and Poverty among Nations In: R. F. Geyer and J. van der Zouwen (eds), Uneven Development in the World System. London: Pergamon Tom Baumgartner and T. R. Burns "Inflation: The Outcome of Institutionalized Struggle over Income Distribution." Acta Sociologica, 23: Tom Baumgartner, T.R.Burns, P. DeVille, B. Gauci, and L. D. Meeker) "Inflation: Beyond Economics." In G.E. Lasker (ed), The Quality of Life and How to Improve It. New York: Pergamon. 125

126 1979 T. Baumgartner, T.R. Burns and P. DeVille) Work, Politics, and Social Structuring under Capitalism: Impact and Limitations of Industrial Democracy Reforms Under Capitalist Relations of Production and Reproduction. In: T. R. Burns, L.E. Karlsson, and V. Rus (eds), Work and Power. London: Sage Tom Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and D. Sekulic) "Self-management, Market and Political Institutions in Conflict: Yugoslav Development Patterns and Dialectics." In T.R. Burns, L.E. Karlsson, and V. Rus (eds), Work and Power. London: Sage T.R. Burns and P. DeVille) "Institutional Responses to Crisis in Capitalist Development." Social Praxis, 4: Additional References Althusser, L. and E. Balibar, (1970), Reading Capital. London: New Left Review Von Bertalanffy, L.,(1968), General System theory: Foundations, Development, Applications, New York: George Braziller. Baumgartner T., T.R.Burns and P. DeVille, (1979), Work, Politics, and Social Structuring under Capitalism: Impact and Limitations of Industrial Democracy Reforms Under Capitalist Relations of Production and Reproduction. In: T. R. Burns, L.E. Karlsson, and V. Rus (eds), Work and Power. London: Sage. Baumgartner T., T. R. Burns and P. DeVille, (1977), The Oil Crisis and the Emerging World Order: The Structuring of Institutions and Rule-Making in the International System. Alternatives: A Journal of World Policy, 3, Baumgartner T., T.R.Burns and P. DeVille, (1975), The Structuring of International Economic Relations. International Studies Quarterly, 19: Baumgartner T., T.R.Burns, and D. Meeker, (1976), Toward a Systems Theory of Unequal Exchange, Uneven Development, and Dependency Relationships. Kybernetes, 5: Baumgartner, T., T. R. Burns, P. DeVille, (1986), The Shaping of Socio-economic Systems: The application of the theory of actor-system dynamics to conflict, social power, and institutional innovation in economic life. London/New York: Gordon and Breach Burns, T.R., (1990) Models of Social and Market Exchange: Toward a Sociological Theory of Games and Human Interaction.Bur In: D. Calhoun, M. W. Meyer, and W. R. Scott (eds), Structures of Power and Constraint: Essays in Honor of Peter M. Blau. New York: Cambridge University Press. Burns, T. R., T. Baumgartner, and P. DeVille, (1985),. Man, Decisions, and Society. New York/London: Gordon and Breach. Burns, T. R., and P. DeVille, (2003), The three faces of the coin: A socio-economic approach to the institution of money. European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, 16(2): Burns, T. R. and P. DeVille, (2006), Dynamic Approaches in Social System Theorizing. In: Handbook of 21st Century Sociology. Eds. C. D. Bryant and D. L. Peck. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Burns, T. R. and T. Dietz, (2001), Revolution: An evolutionary perspective. International Sociology, 16(4): Burns, T. R. and H. Flam, (1987), The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory with Applications. London: Sage. Burns, T.R. and P. Hall, (2012), The Meta-power Paradigm: Impacts and Transformations of Agents, Institutions, and Social Systems Capitalism, State, and Democracy in a Global Context. Frankfurt/NewYork/Oxford: Peter Lang Burns, T. R., L. Karlsson, and V. Rus (eds.), (1979), Work and Power. London: Sage. Burns, T. R., A. Martinelli, and P. DeVille, (2013), A Socio-economic Systems Model of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007+: Power, Innovation, Ideology, and Design Failure. In: J. Pixley and G. Harcourt (eds.) Financial Crises and the Nature of Capitalist Money, London, Palgrave/Macmillan Burns, T. R. and E. Roszkowska, (2016), Rational Choice Theory: Toward a Psychological, Social, and Material Contextualization of Human Choice Behavior. Theoretical Economics Letters, 2016, Vol. 6 (April #). 126

127 Carson, M., T. R. Burns, D. Calvo (eds), (2009), Paradigms in Public Policy: Theory and Practice of Paradigms Shifts in the EU. Frankfurt/Oxford/New York: Peter Lang. DeVille, P. and T. R. Burns, (1976), Institutional Responses to Crisis in Capitalist Development. Social Praxis, 4: Dostal, E. (in collaboration with A. Cloete and G.Jaros), (2005), Biomatrix: A Systems Approach to Organizational and Societal Change. 3 rd ed. Capetown: Imaging Data Solutions Forrester, J,.(1961), Industrial Dynamics. Cambridge: MIT Press. Forrester, J., (1968), Principles of Systems. Cambridge: MIT Press Granovetter, M., (1985), Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 50: Klir, G,.(1969), An Approach to General Systems Theory. New York, Van Nostrand Reinhold. Luhmann, N., (1995), Social Systems. Translated by John Bednarz with Dirk Baecker. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Meadows, D.H., D.L. Meadows, J. Randers, W. Behren II, (1974), Limits to Growth. 2 nd ed.. New York: Universe Books Parsons, Talcott, (1951), The Social System. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Simon, H. A., (1969), Sciences of the Artificial. Cambridge: MIT Press. Wallerstein, I., (2004), World-systems analysis. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Note 16A. MINIMIZING THE RISK OF BOOM-AND-BUST CYCLES IN FINANCIAL MARKETS: A Socio-economic Systems Perspective 52 (Tom R. Burns in collaboration with Philippe DeVille and Alberto Martinelli) ABSTRACT This paper draws on earlier research (our own as well as that of others) to formulate propositions in section 1 about the systemic faults in established money and financial systems. It identified the mechanisms which make for boom-and-bust cycles and the factors which limit the Central Bank's capabilities to consistently and effectively regulate these cycles. Section 2 identifies new designs and institutional arrangements which would minimize boom-and-bust predispositions in money and financial systems. Section 3 focuses on the political and ideological constraints on reforming these systems. A concluding note, "What next", identifies scientific as well as policy and ideological tasks which should be undertaken at once. Keywords: coordination problems, contradictory functions of money, political and ideological constraints, new designs and institutional arrangements 1. Systemic Flaws and the Boom-and-Bust Cycles of "Modern" Money and Financial Systems. In earlier work we argued that contemporary money and financial systems are systemically flawed -- even with some of the reforms since 2007 such as the Dodd-Frank Act (2010); they are potentially highly unstable, prone, in particular, to repeated occurrences of boom-and-bust cycles (Benes and Kumhof, 2012; Burns et al, 2011, 2013; Burns and DeVille, 2003; DeVille and Burns, 1977; Kindleberger and Aliber, 2005; Minsky, 1977, 1982). The problem has a systemic source it is the institutional condition that enables private, decentralized banks to create and destroy money -- through credit creation and contraction. This takes place without effective coordination of the multiple banking agents in their aggregate acts of creating and destroying credit/money. Our research implied the following: 52 A version of this note will appear in Joc Pixley and Helena Flam (eds.), Critical Junctures In Mobile Capital, Cambridge University Press. We are grateful to Helena Flam and Joc Pixley for their comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article. 127

128 Principle I: Contemporary money and financial systems are systemically unstable as a result of a lack of coordination in the private, decentralized money creation and money destruction system. Each banking agent decides on the basis of its immediate demand and level of risk-readiness, indications of asset value increases, and the expectation that credit created will be repaid. The systemic problem is that private, decentralized banks can create and destroy money -- through making loans, on the one hand, and through retracting or reducing loans, on the other hand -- without effective coordination in the aggregate creation and destruction of money. 53 The process tends to be self-amplifying in that the creation and allocation of money/credit to a sectoral development (housing, or technology development) results in increasing valuation of assets, reinforcing the mobilization of further credit and other financial resources. The self-amplification process is fed by excessive credit demand of debtors or potential debtors at the same time that bank credit supply continues to be made available during the boom phase. The lack of coordinated money creation and money destruction in the expansion and contraction cycle phases, respectively, results in self-amplifying processes (vicious circles of positive feedback): in the expansive phase, a vicious circle of excessive money creation and value growth; and in the contraction phase, a vicious circle of excessive money contraction and asset value destruction. A second principle refers to the contradictory purposes/functions of money which are not sufficiently taken into account in regulatory cognitive models and institutionalized policies and strategies of correction (Burns and DeVille, 2003; DeVille and Burns, 1976). Principle II. Contradictory functions of money make it difficult to regulate effectively, for instance to maintain stable monetary value and to stimulate or enable money creation. Monetary value stability may be achieved at the expense of investment and growth; or, investment and growth may be achieved at the expense of unstable money values such as inflation. Principle III. Constraints on the Central Bank's Regulation. It cannot reliably and effectively regulate the credit/money creation process (in the expansion phase) and the credit/money destruction process (in the contraction phase), because it is not cognitively and behaviorally designed to deal with "collective action problems". It can, of course, regulate the interest rate, but this may or may not be responded to appropriately by those debtors or potential debtors and/or by the banks themselves. It is a very indirect influence on market behavior; there is simply no direct control over these unstable socio-economic processes.. And while the banks theoretically might self-regulate (as claimed by neoliberal ideology), the population of banks lack a cognitive framework or model to determine the appropriate level of money for each agent to create -- nor do they have an institutional arrangement to coordinate their responses in the aggregate whatever their cognitive bases -- indeed, such an arrangement would be illegal. Still, what happens systemically depends on the aggregate actions of the banks. Of course, the banks observe what one another are doing -- and obtain some degree of certainty in an uncertain, disorderly world, by mimicking one another. In addition to its lack of capability to deal with destabilizing coordination problems, the central bank is typically ambivalent and inconsistent in its regulatory actions because of the contradictory functions of money (Principle II) (DeVille and Burns, 1976). 2. What Then? New Designs and Institutional Arrangements On the basis of our research and that of others, we concluded that there are at least two fundamental problems to solve in developing a new design and institutional arrangement: (1) Solve the coordination problem by having centralized money creation, thus eliminating uncoordinated money creation and destruction such as that taking place in the current banking system. (2) Differentiate and regulate the contradictory functions or purposes of money, for instance, money as a medium of exchange; money as a store of value; money as capital, an instrument of investment and economic development; money utilized for speculative purposes, among other "functions." 53 About the time our research on systemic instability of money and financial systems was being presented, there appeared articles by several key persons at the IMF and the Bank of England (Haldane and associates at the "Financial Stability Unit") with parallel conceptualizations of the boom-and-bust credit cycle, arguing that the financial system is inherently and systemically unstable -- and that the 2010 reforms (e.g., the Dodd-Frank Law) are an improvement but not sufficient(aikman et al, 2010; Alessander and Haldane, 2009; Turner, 2015). 128

129 2.1 Solving Coordination Problems (CAPs) in Money and Financial Systems The lack of coordination in credit/money creation and credit/money destruction is a type of collective action problem (CAP). The behavioral phenomenon is well-known in the social sciences (CAPs entail collective responses to the possibilities of a bonanza", on the one hand, and collective responses to "fire-in-the theatre", on the other; CAPs share characteristics with n-person prisoners' dilemma game (Buckley et al, 1974; Burns and DeVille, 2003)). The population of autonomous agents generate uncoordinated and destabilizing market behavior, bubble formation as well as bubble collapse with respect to particular markets and sectors: whether real estate, equities, financial instruments such as derivatives, and hedge funds, or tulips, South Sea "pie-in-the sky", and so on (Kindleberger and Aliber, 2005). Following the 1929 Crash, proposals for new institutional design(s) of money and banking emerged. Among these, the Chicago Plan (1935) -- much discussed and debated at the time but with limited influence on the reforms of the 1930s (Fisher, 1935; Phillips, 1994). The Chicago Plan -- and related proposals -- were taken up again after the Crash (Benes and Kumhof, 2012; Turner, 2015) The Plan eliminated private money creation (credit creation). Only the state central bank could create money (and this according to a money creation principle or rule complex/algorithm for money creation). 54 Commercial banks could only lend what was available in their savings accounts for investment purposes (what is referred to as full reserve banking; there would be no fractional banking). The money deposited in a bank in current or transaction accounts as well as pure savings accounts could not be used for making loans. Benes and Kumhof (2012) investigated and found through their simulation studies support for Irving Fisher s (1935) claims that the Chicago Plan had the following advantages (also see van Egmond and de Vries (2015)): (1) Much better control of a major source of business cycle fluctuations, sudden increases and contractions of bank credit and of the supply of bank-created money. (2) Complete elimination of bank runs. (3) Dramatic reduction of the (net) public debt. (4) Dramatic reduction of private debt, as money creation no longer requires simultaneous debt creation. Furthermore, output gains were found to approach 10 percent, and steady state inflation could drop to zero without posing problems for the conduct of monetary policy. 2.2 Solving Regulatory Problems Arising from the Multiple, Contradictory Functions/Purposes of Money Here we focus on the multiple contradictory functions or purposes of money and suggest possible institutional arrangements for differentially and effectively regulating money functions. Let us distinguish a few different money purposes or functions: Money I as a Medium of exchange, Money II as a store of value, Money III for the purpose of loans and financing project initiatives and development, Money IV for purposes of speculation. The diverse functionalities of money should be distinguished cognitively/categorically as well as institutionally. This corresponds to what Viviana Zelizer (1997) refers to as "earmarking" on the family and organizational level. The types/categories of money would be differentiated by special banks, accounts, and regulatory regimes, as already suggested in the categorization of money types, their specific purposes, and regulatory logics: money Type I is for economic agents to use in market exchange and everyday transactions; Type II is savings money to be kept in accounts for future use. Type III is designated for capital formation and investment; it is provided by individuals, businesses, public agencies, and the central bank for purposes of investment and development. Finally, Type IV money for speculative purposes would be banned or heavily constrained. In brief, Money I as a medium of exchange. There will need to be institutional arrangements to assure sufficient money in circulation and to keep this type of money distinct from money in savings or money-as-capital. Certain "Banks" would maintain current accounts -- for households, businesses, etc. 54 A second more decentralized way would be for the central bank to allocate credit/money creation rights for certain amounts to each and every bank under its perusal. This allocation would be done on the basis of the bank's size and previous performance. 129

130 -- payments are drawn on accounts and payments are made into them. Mechanisms for expanding currency in circulation and/or its velocity would be required. Money II as a store of value. The purpose of Money II is savings: either to keep for future use and/or earn interest. Savings can be placed in special "banks", an institutional arrangement where depositors receive interest for their deposits, a rate decided by the central bank. Through setting the interest rate, the Central Bank can encourage savings or dis-savings. But a pure savings banks would not loan money The stability of money value is important both for money as a medium of exchange and as a store of value. Money as a unit of accounting -- conveys information through a system of prices. Money expressed in prices enables comparisons of commodities in a complex system. Money III for the purpose of loans and financing project initiatives, expanded production, and development -- the money coming from individuals, households, companies, municipalities wishing to earn more than they can earn through "savings associations" (Money II); these actors and the banks would be risk-takers; these investments would be secured to varying degrees by private and/or public insurance schemes. It would make sense to have specialized investment banks as earlier ("home loan", "agriculture," "international trade," "venture capital investors", etc.), whose levels of risk would likely vary considerably. Financial capital circulates in a "genuine market" for investment (stocks, shares, bonds, projects, etc. ) is a productive power or force for development. The Central Bank could supplement the capital of Money III banks with money creation for risk purposes in the form of subsidies and/or loans. They would be in a position to precisely steer these developments, for instance, by creating money for Money III banks operating in priority areas, such as renewable energy, sustainable technology developments, medical research and development, etc. Money IV for purposes of speculation -- for instance, with respect to stocks, bonds, other assets, and money exchange markets themselves -- should be banned, if possible, or at least heavily penalized or taxed. In a world of electronic banking, systematic and effective constraints on "casino economy" practices should be feasible. 3. Powerful Political/Socio-cultural Constraints on Any Major Reform Repeated attempts to constrain and regulate the uses and abuses of bank powers of credit creation and allocation have only succeeded partially, in spite of a long history of trying; there was partial success in the 1930s in the establishment of a complex of bank and financial regulatory arrangements (Ghilarducci et al., 2009: 148). 55 The New Deal arrangements for bank regulation were reversed through a sustained counter-attack of neo-liberalism to dismantle the New Deal regulatory framework, resulting ultimately in the neo-liberal regime the New Financial Arrangements (NFA) set up in the 1970s and 1980s. These developments reflected the ideological and institutional struggles that established neoliberalism and the notion of the supremacy of the market and its agents, in particular their capacity to fully self-regulate and self-equilibrate (Crotty, 2009). 56 Part of the problem is that banks are not only serving important societal functions, which policymakers and multiple stakeholders support, but that many of them are also economically and politically powerful with their own private interests and substantial capacities to influence and manipulate policies and the architecture of regulation (Martinelli, 2007). Moreover, banks in a capitalist system are capable of major innovations in their strategies, products and procedures often in ways to circumvent the regulations to which they are subject. 55 In the USA, among others, the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, the 1956 Douglas Amendment, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisory Act of 1940, the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, the Security and Exchange Act of 1934 (with the 1963 Amendments) (Burns et al., 2012). 56 Neo-liberalism -- the godfather of the high risk banking and financial system that led up to the 2007 Crash -- was no emergent (or invisible hand ) phenomenon. There were powerful, purposive agents who initiated and established it. During the early period of the Cold War, a movement led by business interests and associated intellectuals worked to create a better climate for business and the wealthy in the USA (indeed, the cold war provided a context for stressing the importance of capitalism and the business community) (Martinelli 2007, 2017). 130

131 In sum, interest-based power relations, hegemonic cognitive framework of neo-liberalism (along with substantial theoretical and practical expertise), 57 pressure-group politics (with lobbyists, associations, think-tank pundits), and the functional power of financial systems and agents--control over a strategic/key area in the contemporary world -- makes for a high capacity to influence strategic decisions and policies as well as institutional designs (with little countervailing power and expertise from the State as well as Civil Society and NGOs buying into neo-liberalism). What Next? Given the continued powerful counterforces and constraints on redesigning and establishing new systems of money and finance -- limited success in the 1930s and little success in the aftermath of the 2007 crisis at the same time the potentially highly unstable system is still operating -- it is useful to discuss "what next", "what is possible"? We see an immediate challenge, a need to systematically with theoretical, empirical, and policy research -- counter the ideology that markets are basically selfregulating and equilibrating. It is widely recognized in the social sciences that most markets of any complexity and/or with complex products are regulated: legal arrangements, effective judiciary processes, safety-of-product regulations, occupational safety and labor force regulations, capital markets and banking regulation, regulation against deception and fraud, etc. Capitalist markets need state regulation in order to minimize market failures, market conflicts and movements disrupting markets and the economy as a whole (Burns and DeVille, 2007). On the other hand, national government policies may become an obstacle to the development of global markets, they increase transaction costs, and they threaten the free circulation of people, capital flows, good and services. In the consideration of what next?, a task force (or a network of taskforces) should consider some elaborated form of embedded and regulated capitalism, similar but not equal to the regime prevailing in post-second World War decades, prior to many of the Neo-liberal reforms including the New Financial Arrangements (NFA). Moreover, such taskforce(s) should proactively prepare for the next serious crisis when reform packages, which has been thought out and formulated earlier can be introduced and discussed. The tasks force(s) would be encouraged to prepare a knowledge base and models, mobilizing expertise and publishing plans or reports at this time there is already considerable knowledge production of alternatives such as the Chicago Plan. It is essential to involve not only multi-disciplinary researchers but policymakers and practitioners in these preparatory deliberations and analyses. 58 Another approach (but not incompatible) would be to introduce major reform in connection with technological change. Electronic banking offers multiple opportunities for innovation in credit/money creation arrangements as well as in distinguishing and regulatory monies (and their different functions). REFERENCES Benes, J. and M. Kumhof 2012 The Chicago Plan Revisited. IMF Working Paper 12/202. Washington, D.C.: IMF. Downloaded February 7, Aikman, D., A. Haldane, and B. Nelson 2010 Curbing the Credit Cycle. Presented at the 57 The framework of neo-liberal economic theory of the self-correcting, self-regulating markets according to which markets are capable of restoring equilibrium whenever internal or external forces disturb them (Martnelli, 2017) 58 This was done preparation for eventual EU food crises and the necessity of establishing new new governance and regulatpory arrangements in the EU (Carson et al, 2009). Already, some in the EU Commission had anticipated problems of hazard and security prior to the food scandals in the 1990s, but could not gain support for introducing a new regulatory framework which had been prepared. Once the mad cow disease (particularly with British beef), and Belgium chickens with dioxin and threats of boycotts and blockage of the single market the regulatory framework in waiting could be introduced and put into place. 131

132 Conference Micro-foundations for Modern Macroeconomics. New York, November, Alessandri, P. and A. G. Haldane 2009 Banking on the State. Presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago twelfth annual International Banking Conference Baumgartner, T.R.Burns and P. DeVille 1986 The Shaping of Socio-Economic Systems. London/New York: Gordon and Breach.1987 Buckley, W., T. R. Burns, and D. Meeker 1974 "Structural Resolutions of Collective Action Problems." Behavioral Science, 19: Burns, T.R System Theories. Encyclopedia of Sociology. Oxford: Blackwell Burns, T. R. and P. DeVille 2007 Dynamic Systems Theory In: Clifton D. Bryant and D.L.Peck(eds),The Handbook of 21 st Century Sociology, Sage Publications Thousand Oaks, California. Burns, T. R. and P. DeVille 2003 (with The Three Faces of the Coin: A Socio-economic Approach to the Institution of Money. European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, Vol. 16, No. 2: Burns, T. R. and A. Gomolinska 2001 Socio-cognitive mechanisms of belief change Applications of generalized game theory to belief revision, social fabrication, and selffulfilling prophesy. Cognitive Systems Research Vol. 2, #1:39-54 Burns, T. R. and H. Flam 1987 The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London: Sage Publications Burns, T. R., A. Martinelli, and P. DeVille 2013 A Socioeconomic Systems Model of the Global Financial Crisis of 2007+:Power, Innovation, Ideology, and Regulatory Failures. In: J. Pixley and G. Harcourt (eds.) Financial Crises and the Nature of Capitalist Money, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Burns, T. R., A. Martinelli, and P. DeVille 2011 The Global Financial Crisis of 2007+: Ideology, Metapower, Systemic Risks, and Regulatory Failures A Socio-economic Systems Model. Presented at the European Sociological Association Congress, Geneva, September, Earlier versions of this work were presented at the European Sociological Association Congress, Lisbon, September 2009 and at the CERES 21 Workshop, Dubrovnik, September, Carson, M., T.R.Burns, and D. Calvo 2009 Public Policy Paradigms: Theory and Practice of Paradigm Shifts in the European Union. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. Crotty, J Structural Causes of the Global Financial Crisis: A Critical Assessment of the New Financial Architecture. Cambridge Journal Of Economics, vol. 33: DeVille, P. and T. R. Burns 1976 Institutional Response to Crisis in Capitalist Development. Social Praxis, Vol. 4: Dudlev, W Asset Bubbles and the Implications for Central Bank Policy. Federal Reserve Bank of N.Y. (downloaded 10/17/2012). events/speeches. van Egmond, N.D. and B.J.M de Vries 2015 Dynamics of a Sustainable Financial-economic System. Working Paper of the Sustainable Finance Lab. Utrecht University, the Netherlands Ferguson, T. and Johnson, R Too big to bail: the Paulson Put, presidential politics and the global financial meltdown, Part 1: From shadow financial system to shadow bailout International Journal of Political Economy, vol. 38 (1): Fisher, I. (1935) 100% Money: Designed to keep checking banks 100% liquid; to prevent inflation and deflation; largely to cure or prevent depressions; and to wipe out much of the National Debt. New York: The Adelphi Company Ghilarducci, T., E. Nell, S. Mittnik, E. Platen, W. Semler, R. Chappe 2009 Meorandum on a new financial architecture and new regulations. Investigaccion economica. Vol. XVIII, 267: Commented [NB1]: Two dates here. OK? Commented [NB2]: Page numbers available? 132

133 Ingham, G Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity. Kindleberger, C. and R. Aliber 2005 Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises. London: Palgrave Macmillan Martinelli, A The Eu neoliberal policy regime and main political alternatives. In: H.Magara and B.Amable eds. Growth, Crisis, Democracy: The Political my of Social Coalitions and Policy Regime Change. London: Routledge. Martinelli A Transatlantic Divide. Comparing American and European Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Minsky, H A Theory of Systemic Fragility. In E.D. Altman and A.W. Sametz (eds), Financial Crises: Institutions and Markets in a Fragile Environment. Chapter 6, pp New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons Minsky H. 1982, Can It Happen Again? Essays on Instability and Finance. New York: ME Sharpe. Phillips, R. (1994), The Chicago Plan & New Deal Banking Reform, M.E. Sharpe. Stiglitz, J Principles for a New Financial Architecture. New York: The Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. Turner, A Between Debt and the Devil: Money, Credit, and Fixing Global Finance. Prnceton: Princeton University Press. Wade, R. From Global Imbalances to Global Reorganizations. Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 33: Wicksell, K Interest and Prices. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig von Mises Institute. Woods T.E Meltdown: a Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked and Governments Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. New York: Regnery Publishing. Wray, L.R The Rise and Fall of Money Manager Capitalism: A Minskian Approach Cambridge Journal Of Economics, Vol 33: Zelizer, V.A The Social Meaning of Money. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 133

134 Note 17. ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEMS AND BUREAUCRACY A formal organization is a rule regime with legal or official status. It typically has a continually operating staff and has been deliberately established by particular authoritative aents or groups in order to organize collective action for certain purposes (Max Weber, 1968). The rule regime specifies and distinguishes what superiors and subordinates are to do vis-à-vis one another (and also what they may not do). The specialization founds in these organizations entails rules and regulations specifying task areas and spheres of jurisdiction, lest members overstep their proper jurisdiction and domains of activity and threaten the stable functioning of the organization. Many of the organizing principles and rules making up such administrative or bureaucratic systems are familiar to students of organization (see T. R. Burns and H. Flam, 1987). In the purest case of bureaucratic organization, most members are separated from the means of administration as well as production. These are concentrated in the hands of those who dominate the organization. Thus, stable and systematic rational-legal domination is achieved not only through the legal (and legitimate) sanctioning of the organizational relationships, but also through systematic arrangement of resource distribution which structures the dependence of members on the organization and through principles of recruitment, training, and occupational involvement that increase the likelihood of compliance. Burns and Flam (1987: Part III) specifies and organizes the structuring principles and rules of administrative type organizations. Such a social organization is readily distinguishable from those of democratic organization, markets, and judicial systems as well as patrimonial and patron-client relations. Organ Transplantation: A Case of an Administrative and Network System Transplantation is the therapeutic replacement of diseased organs and tissues by means of healthy ones. Specifically, it is the transfer of organ tissue, or fluid from one human body or animal to another human body or the transfer from a living body back to itself. Organ transplantation entails a social and technical process - a network of co-operating and exchanging units, including administrative ones - in which numerous actors in different roles are involved. A variety of technologies and techniques are utilized in the process. The actors involved are coordinated and regulated through administrative and exchange relations to a great extent shaped and governed by particular regulations, professional norms, and institutional arrangements. A part of the Organ Transplantation Systems (OTS) co-ordination is organized administratively, e.g. within a major hospital, the transplantation centre or unit where organ transplantation surgery is carried out. The actors in the organization are organized and coordinated through particular institutional arrangements. The transplantation system is imbedded in larger systems, such as the health care system and, in a wider frame, legal, cultural, and historic frameworks. Among the basic requirements for the functioning of a transplantation system are (1) access to a pool of organs (potential donors ready for donation), (2) skilled medical professionals; (3) access to support technology such as typing laboratories, dialysis, immunosuppressants, etc.; (4) communication networks; (5) transportation networks. The OTS organization enables the mobilization and special expertise (medical and other personnel, resources, technologies (drugs, laboratories, transport), and diverse production structures (potential donors pool and selected patients defined as potential organ receivers). 134

135 In short, the OTS consists of various structures linking, regulating, and monitoring a complex advanced socio-technical system of governance. The levels of the OTS: The first level is the transplantation centre located at the hospital where the unit that carries out the transplantations is situated. This level comprises the transplantation unit, and all other units in the hospitals that are engaged in the organ transplantation process. This includes the intensive care units (ICU), in particular the neurological intensive care unit (NICU), the operating rooms, anesthesiology, laboratories, surgical and medical wards as well as non-medical units such as hospital transport etc. The second level of the Swedish OTS is the regional level. Sweden has four regions and 5 transplantation centres: Huddinge Hospital in Stockholm; Malmo General Hospital and Lund Hospital; 16 Uppsala University Hospital; and Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg. Each transplantation centre has a geographical region assigned to it where less specialised hospitals responsible for regional and primary care are located. The third level of the OTS is the Swedish-Nordic cooperation level includes the four Swedish transplantation centres, one in Norway, four in Denmark and one in Finland. These centres co-operate forming an organ sharing network, Scandiatransplant. The main purpose of this network organisation is the exchange of organs and information to allow better organ-receiver matching but also to enable professional cooperation between centres in the form of transplantation surgeons performing operations at other hospitals in the organisation. The fourth level is the West European level. In Western Europe there are several organsharing networks. The research provides a descriptive model of the organ transplantation process enabling us to specify, and to disclose the complex linkages between actors, various settings, phases and types of activity in the overall process, and some of the key rules and regulations structuring the activities. In the model (or more precisely, family of models), one can identify those phases in the transplantation process. In several phases, one finds a high potential of social tension and conflict, for example around the procurement and selection decisions. Such conflicts can set in motion initiatives to mobilise opinion and support, to bring about new rules and policies through either state or professional regulation, leading to changes in the dynamics of the process. Typically, at key social or collective decision moments in the OTS, medical and everyday cultures confront one another - embodied in the participating actors. In the case of organ donation decision-making, the profane perspective of medicine regarding dead bodies confronts the family (and everyday) perspective that views the dead person as sacred, deserving of special respect and ritual. In the case of recipient selection, dilemmas may arise between decisions based mainly on medical considerations (such as minimising the risk of organ rejection) and consideration of fairness or justice, such as waiting time in a queue. The analysis in this research stresses the Weberian idea of the centrality of rational conceptions of man and society in legal systems. The legislation process especially in the area of technology, science, medicine, entails the mobilization of experts in formulating laws, in preparing legislation that will enjoy legitimacy and function effectively (Turner, 1992). That is, the juridical area I examine here combines formal law with medicine. Cohen and Arato (1992:264) single out these "non-normative developments within law and legal discourses that are implicit in the modem structure of power". The use of medical, 135

136 psychological, sociological expertise, of statistical data, in short of empirical information and non-legal languages within legal discourses to make one's case, is proof that the disciplines of science and empirical knowledge have penetrated the juridical structures and rendered them positive, functional, and quasi-disciplinary in character (Cohen and Arato, 1992:264). In the formulated laws, there are cultural assumptions, encodings about the rational citizen who has the capability to know what she wants, to choose, etc. In other words, citizens are constituted as "reasonable", "rational", "capable" beings in particular terms. This also means they are knowable, calculable, and normal - from the prospective of policy-makers, regulators, and the knowledge producers who serve them (Cohen and Arato, 1992: 268). Research on laws relating to medical actions on the body suggests a certain coherence and consistency to the laws, although there has been no systematic juridical effort at integrating all laws discussed in this work. There has been, however, recent attempts to integrate several of the laws (e.g. Transplantation, Dissection and Autopsy Acts dealing with medical actions on the body), but issues concerning the distinctions between living and necro-donation and current developments in reproductive technologies made these efforts problematic; and impede the legal construction of a new unified Act. Selected Publications Tom R. Burns and Helena Flam (see Part III, Bureaucracy and Formal Organizations ) 1987 The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London, Sage Publications. Nora Machado 1998 Using the Bodies of the Dead:Legal, Ethical, and Organizational Dimensions of Organ Transplantation. Aldershot/Brookfield USA: Ashgate. Svein Andersen and T. R. Burns 1992 Societal Decision-making: Democratic Challenges to State Technocracy. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publications. N. Machado and T. R. Burns 1998 Complex Social Organization: Multiple Organizing Modes, Structural Incongruence, and Mechanisms of Integration. Public Administration: An International Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 2, pp T. R. Burns and A. Midttun1986 "Conflict and complexity: The case of hydropower construction in Norway. Human Systems Management, 6, 21:33,

137 Note 18. SOCIO-TECHNICAL SYSTEMS, COMPLEXITY AND RISK ANALYSIS Among other things, this research conceptualized the multi-dimensional "human factor" in risky technology systems and cases of accidents. ASD was applied to the analysis of hazardous technology and socio-technical systems, their complex dynamics, and risky dimensions. The "human factor" is often vaguely identified as a risk factor in hazardous socio-technical systems, particularly whenever accidents occur. At the same time, the human factor is often viewed more or less as a "black box", under-specified and under-analyzed (particularly in the design of new systems). Three key aims of the ASD research on technology and socio-technical systems have been: (1) to identify and theorize in a systematic way the multi-dimensional character of the "human factor" in risky systems and accidents; (2) to enable the systematic application of a substantial social science knowledge to the regulation of hazardous systems, their managers and operatives as well as regulators, especially relating to the "human factor;" (3) to serve as an guiding tool for researchers and regulators in the collection and organization of data on human and other factors in risky systems and accidents. In sum, the research articulated a systematic approach to analyzing many of the diverse human risk factors associated with complex technologies and socio-technical systems, thus contributing knowledge toward preventing -- or minimizing the likelihood of -- accidents or catastrophes. In sum, ASD was applied to the analysis of hazardous technology and socio-technical systems, their complex dynamics, and risky dimensions and likelihood of accidents. It identified many of the diverse human risk factors associated with complex technologies and socio-technical systems, thus contributing knowledge toward preventing -- or minimizing the likelihood of -- accidents or catastrophes. In related work, Burns and Machado (2010) addressed the broader issues of risk conceptions, analysis, and management in contemporary society including policy and other practical aspects. The social systems perspective and its derivations were contrasted to such impressionistic conceptions as those of Ulrich Beck. Part of the research introduced the topic of risk as a discursive concept in contemporary society. The point of departure is the earlier research on socio-technical systems, an approach contrasted to that of Ulrich Beck, who eschews systematic theorizing at the same time that he denigrates empirical sociology. The ASD research stressed that contemporary society is not so much threatened by high risks all around (as in Ulrich Beck's risk society ) but is more characterized by its highly developed risk discourses (a great deal owing to Beck himself), risk consciousness, risk theorizing, and risk management. What is truly characteristic of modern society are discretionary powers to determine dimensions, levels, and regulation of risk, that is, choices can be made whether or not to develop a technology, whether or not to not to tightly regulate it, for instance limiting or banning its use or whether or not to allow its widespread application, and under what conditions. The research treated risk and risk analysis in a systems perspective, emphasizing the limitations of risk assessment and the risk management of complex, hazardous systems. Several principles were formulated which can serve to guide policymaking and regulation with respect to the hazards and risks of complex technologies and socio-technical systems. In sum, four factors make risk a major discursive concept in contemporary society. (1) With modern science and engineering continually providing innovations, powerful agents can 137

138 introduce and construct on an ongoing basis technologies, many of them causing, or threatening to cause, substantial harm to people and to the social and physical environments. (2) The complexity and originality of the innovations exceed the immediate capacity of relevant agents to fully understand and regulate them and their impacts. In this way, human communities are confronted with systems of their own making that are not fully knowable or controllable in advance and, therefore, are likely to generate negative, unintended consequences (the Frankenstein effect ). Serious, unexpected problems, near misses, and accidents indicate that human knowledge and capacity to control such human constructions and their consequences are bounded. (3) Those managing and operating these systems often learn to know them better -- in part through experience with them -- and may be able to construct or discover better models and methods with which to diagnose and correct malfunctioning and negative unintended consequences.2 (4) Within modern democratic societies, there is increasingly collective awareness and critical public discussion about the limited knowledge and control capacity with respect to technology and some of the substantial risks involved. Growing public awareness about the level of ignorance and the risks involved in the context of democratic societies contributes to the politicalization of technology and technological development and to growing skepticism about, and delegitimation of, major technological initiatives. 1. System design, redesign and development 2. System risk perspective 3. Multiple risk factors with complex socio-technical systems, including the human factor. 4. stabilization and de-stabilization of socio-technical systems Selected Publications T. R. Burns and H. Flam 1987 (see Part III, Expertise, Technology, and Social Organization )The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London, Sage Publications. T. R. Burns and N. Machado) 2009 "Technology, Complexity, and Risk. Part I: Social Systems Analysis of Risky Socio-Technical Systems And The Likelihood Of Accidents" Sociologia: Problemas e Praticas. No. 61. T. R. Burns and N. Machado 2010 "Technology, Complexity, and Risk. Part II -- A social systems perspective on the discourses and regulation of the hazards of socio-technical systems. Sociologia: Problemas e Praticas. No. 62. Nora Machado 1998 Using the Bodies of the Dead:Legal, Ethical, and Organizational Dimensions of Organ Transplantation. Aldershot/Brookfield USA: Ashgate. N. Machado and T. R. Burns 2001 The New Genetics: A Social Science and Humanities Research Agenda. Canadian J. of Sociology, Vol. 25, No W.E. Woodward, J. Ellig, and T. R. Burns 1994 Municipal Entrepreneurship and Energy Policy: A Five Nation Study of Politics, Innovation, and Social Change. New York: Gordon and Breach. T. R. Burns 2005 Social Sciences and Technological Change Brussels: EU Commission, Social Science and Humanities Advisory Group, Background Paper (BP6) ( ) 138

139 T. R. Burns 2005 Social Sciences in EU Technology Platforms: Methodological and Practical Reflections. Brussels: EU Commission, Social Science and Humanities Advisory Group, Position Paper ( ) T. Baumgartner and T. R. Burns 1984Transitions to Alternative Energy Systems: Entrepreneurs, Strategies, and Social Change. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. T. R. Burns 1988 R. Ueberhorst 1988 Creative Democracy: Systematic Conflict Resolution and Policymaking In a World of High Science and Technology. New York: Praeger. 139

140 NOTE 19: DEMOCRACY STUDIES: HISTORY, CONTEMPORARY CRISIS, NEW FORMS OF DEMOCRACY, FUTURE CHALLENGES In a democracy, politics is the issue for all citizens, and the issue of politics is the moderate design and regulation of social life. For this, we require principles and procedures to realize democratic decision-making in pursuit of justice, security, and responsible developments (in particular, technological innovations and developments) (Willy Brandt in the forword of Tom R. Burns and Reinhard Ueberhorst, Creative Democracy, 1988). Parliamentary institutions have had increasing difficulty in addressing and dealing with the growing complexity, highly technical character and rapidity of many developments in modern societies. Deficits in representation, in knowledge and competence, and in engagement or commitment have step by step eroded the authority and status of parliamentary government, even in societies such as the U.S., U.K., France, and Sweden with long democratic experience. Major rule- and policy-making activities are being substantially displaced from parliamentary bodies and central governments to global, regional and local agents as well as agents operating in the many sectors of a highly differentiated, modern society. Governance and sovereignty are increasingly diffused upward, downward and outward beyond parliament and its government. We have identified problems, practical as well as normative, with this general development and discussed the possibilities and limitations of reform. The research reported in this note concerns democratic institutions, major institutions in modern societies. It concerns itself with historical development, contemporary problems and failings, the emergence of functional equivalents in contemporary society, and future challenge to democracy and democratic principles. 1. The Evolution Of Parliaments: A Comparative, Historical Perspective on Assemblies and Political Decision-making This research considered a major component of the modernity complex, namely representative assemblies and parliaments as part of the modern state. It focused on the emergence and institutionalization of parliament as an arrangement for collective representation, reflexivity, and production of collective knowledge and decision-making. The analyses were grounded in three key tenets. (1) In contrast to the abstract generalities of the reflexive modernists (Beck (1992, 1997), Beck et al (1994), Giddens (1990, 1991), and Lash (1999), among others), we stress the importance of specifying and examining in their historical, political, and cultural contexts institutions such as forms of representative assemblies, bureaucracies, markets, and market governance structures, among others as loci of collective representation, reflexivity and the production of collective knowledge and decisions. Thus, we focus, as in this chapter, on a particular institution or institutional arrangement and follow its historical emergence and development in particular contexts. This allows for a greater degree of specificity than available from much of those theorizing about modernity. While we agree with the significance of, for instance, reflexive processes in modern societies, our approach 140

141 identifies and analyzes particular institutional arrangements such as representative assemblies and parliaments that play a role in societal reflexivity and deliberation. (2) Our approach identifies a complex of factors -- power conditions, functionality or usefulness of such assemblies to rulers and powerful groups in society, and culturalinstitutional factors -- that contribute to explaining the logic of institutional development in different socio-political and cultural contexts (Burns, 2001, 1999; Burns and Dietz, 1992; Burns and Flam, 1987), in this chapter, representative assemblies or parliaments. (3) We reject the prevalent, dualistic analysis of modernity -- and in particular, of its institutions -- that contrasts Occident and Oriental developments. The legacy of Orientalism was established in part not only through the theories of Max Weber and Karl Marx, but those of Georg Wilhelm Hegel, John Locke, and others (Kamali, 2001). Among contemporary theorists, Ernest Gellner, Jeffrey Alexander, and Samuel Huntington explain the failure of democratic development in Islamic countries as compared to those in the West by the lack of civil society and individualism in the Islamic world. Our approach rejects the simple formula of searching for and identifying selected differences between the West and non-western societies, e.g. differences in democratic development. Such a formula serves to characterize the West as all-too-unique. As we have argued and illustrated, European and North American countries have also a crooked history of democracy. We bring into the discussion the developments of early representative assemblies in a few non-western societies, for instance the empires of Iran and Ottoman. In this way, the evolution of representative assemblies in contemporary Iran and Turkey as well as other Islamic countries can be better understood as a continuing struggle, each with its own dialectics, much like many of the struggles that have taken place, and continue to do so, in Europe and elsewhere. The increasing role and authority of parliaments in Europe and elsewhere have been highly uneven and subject to substantial setbacks and reversals in different socio-political and cultural contexts -- for instance, in the interwar period. Our study suggests not only the diversity of developments in the European context but the similarities between some developments in European societies and those in non-european countries. The chapter aims to contribute to the concept of multiple modernities, by focusing on the development logic of a particular institution in different socio-political and cultural contexts. 2. The Crooked Road to Parliamentary Democracy Parliament is a type of assembly. Assemblies are a universal construction based on human linguistic, conceptual, and organizational capacities: (1) the gathering of elders in villages and tribes (Mair, 1962; Maquet, 1971); 59 (2) assemblies in classical Greek cities (demos); (3) the councils and synods of Christianity; 60 (4) councils of Italian city-states; (5) the moots 59 Elders and councils of elders (men) would meet to resolve disputes, redress wrongs, and to take decisions on ways to deal with disasters such as disease, drought, invasion of locusts, or competition with or threat of outside groups (Mair, 1962). In many societies, elders were believed to have special knowledge not only about rituals but about the accumulated wisdom. Also, often they were seen as being in close contact with ancestor spirits, whom they could be expected to join in the not distant future. 60 Examples of the councils of the Church are those of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople I (381). The purpose of early ones was to determine whether specific theological innovations were orthodox or heretical. Two of 141

142 of the Saxons and the tings of the Scandinavians (the Althing, the parliament of Iceland, dates from 930); (6) councils and consultation arrangements (for instance Shoura and Mashverat in Islamic societies 61 ), courts, and, in some cases, parliaments linked to monarchs and emperors; (7) modern parliaments as a core part of contemporary democracy. In general, deliberative assemblies are a major social institution in every society, for conducting collective reflectivity, deliberation, and decision making. The formation and development of states and empires provided a context for the utilization and evolution of assemblies in one form or another. Princes -- for example, medieval European monarchs, the monarchs of Persia and Ottoman, the emperors of China -- sought advice from persons chosen typically at the discretion of the Prince for their knowledge, competence, and trustworthiness. 62 Often, there was an interest in having them report from the entire realm and then to convey the Prince s directives and tax demands back to their communities, tribes, and regions. The pattern of selection of such advisors tended to follow actual or established social structures for instance, the nobility and clergy, possibly city merchants; the elites from diverse tribes. In some cases, as in Sweden, commoners were represented in the parliament. A number of assemblies that evolved into democratic parliaments had their origin in the council to the Prince, in Europe, the curia regis: the great council of Britain, the Cortes of the Spanish kingdoms, the Diet of the Holy Roman Empire, the diets of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, and the parliaments of the Scandinavian countries. All represented to varying degrees the principal estates of the realm. Their purpose was to give counsel to the Prince and provide unity to the realm. But they became important in some cases in supplementing the Prince s normal feudal income through agreement to special taxes. Also, the Prince could use the assembly to find out about special problems, opposition, or unintended consequences of specific policies and institutions. Such assemblies evolved very differently in diverse contexts. 3. Post-parliamentary Democracy and the Future of Democracy 3.1 Challenges to Democratic Institutions Modern society is undergoing several major transformations: globalization, technological revolution in the life and medical sciences, explosion of media and communication, multiplication of organizations and authorities, and societal them, the 2 nd Council of Lyons (1274) and the Council of Ferraro-Florence ( ), were concerned with attempts at re-conciliation between Eastern and Western Christianity (both of which failed in this). 61 Shoura (Council) and Mashverat (the principle of consultation (with others) were both established in Islam, in part based on the Qur an and the Sunnat (the Deed of the Prophet). Forms of Shoura and Mashverat also appear in the Ottoman and Persian Empires and relate to the emergence of modern parliaments (see later). The traditional assemblies during the Arab Empire were based on shoura. The counselors were representatives of different tribes and important families who had converted to Islam providing the military power of the Empire. The elders of different tribes were accustomed to gathering to discuss matters of government and to choose a leader. Following the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, the establishment of many Arab countries was achieved through tribal cooperation making use of collective Shoura. 62 Max Weber (1991) stressed the importance of expertise in the political struggles relating to centralization of political power. 142

143 democratization, among others. These transformations have profound implications for parliamentary government, its capabilities, its authority and its legitimacy. Today in Western Europe, parliaments and elective assemblies on all levels have substantial difficulties in dealing with the growing complexity, highly technical character and the rapidity of many developments in modern society. There is a structural deficit between societal conditions and forces, on the one hand, and government institutions and capabilities, on the other. ST Our research has identified a number of serious problems which parliamentary governments and parliamentarism face today. Nevertheless, we have stressed that parliament has a vital and new role to play in the evolution of democracy in our turbulent times (REF). Most of the developments pointed out here are found in one form or another throughout Western Europe.1 This calls for a profound reflection on the forces and transformations of which we are not only witnesses but participants to varying degrees. This article argues that parliamentary institutions have increasing difficulty in addressing and dealing with the growing complexity, highly technical character and rapidity of many developments in modern societies. Deficits in representation, in knowledge and competence, and in engagement or commitment effectively erode the authority and status of parliamentary government. Major rule- and policy-making activities are being substantially displaced from parliamentary bodies and central governments to global, regional and local agents as well as agents operating in the many sectors of a highly differentiated, modern society. Governance and sovereignty are increasingly diffused upward, downward and outward beyond parliament and its government. The author identifies problems, practical as well as normative, with this general development and discusses the possibilities and limitations of reform. 3.2 Emergence of Organic Democracy Earlier papers and reports have identified several of the key factors that make for a new democratic politics (Andersen and Burns, 1996; Burns, 1999; Burns et al, 2000, among others). In spite of the evidence relating to the developments identified below, it is still largely assumed in Western Europe that the core of modern governance is and must be the parliamentary institutions as well as the citizenry, and that political parties mediate between citizens and parliamentary government. All of this takes place within an established political mythology and set of cultural assumptions relating to the symbolic center of authority, the locus for deliberation, policy-making and legislation.15 Democratic rituals and myths contribute to a certain sense that parliamentary democracy functions in a business-as-usual sense. In their roles as citizens, people vote for parties, electing representatives to parliament as well as to regional and local assemblies. Parliament decides a number of issues, the responsible government appears to govern, and governments replace one another regularly, 143

144 even frequently in some countries such as Italy. In most Western democracies, if there are serious public troubles or a crisis develops, parliamentary government is expected to intervene. Transparency and accountability are expected. Parliament (and its central government) fail to encompass sufficient expertise or to represent a broad enough spectrum of publics or interests to deal effectively with many of the contemporary problems or issues identified above. They cannot effectively represent each and all relevant interests or the intensity of the interests of those who are or would be concerned about any given issue, and there are an increasing number and variety. Indeed, many representatives in a parliament may be unconcerned or have extraneous interests with respect to any given policy area or issue. Indeed, they may complicate the decision and policy-setting; they may be pressured to vote according to party dictates or strategy or may arrange to trade their vote, but neither they nor most of their constituents have a profound interest (or expertise) in each and every issue or problem. But the issue will be of genuine and deep concern to many of those directly or indirectly affected by a policy (or lack of policy) and its ramifications. The standard democratic model is built up on the principle of self-governance through state institutions, territorial representation, and clear-cut, monolithic sovereignty. Those articulating and/or adhering to this model typically ignore or misunderstand the new venues of politics that correspond to the diminishing scope and power of the state as an agent of collective action (Warren, 203:9), the development of non-territorial representation, the diffusion of sovereignty to agents inside and outside society. Warren (2003: 19-20) points out: When places were less connected than they are today, territorially-organized politics could encompass most of the issues relevant to the people living in the territory. Today, many issues do not correspond to the territorial units through which state-based democracy is organized problems relating to migration, labor, environment, terrorism, information systems, and markets, for example. 63 Most of these emerging issues have been met with new ad hoc arrangements: NGOs, treaties and trade pacts, and networks of associations. The opportunities for citizens to exercise influence across borders, through publicity, political pressure, direct action, and the like have never been greater. Indeed, many predatory states that could once rule over their populations with impunity now find that they can no longer control information, and also find that they must answer to NGOs for their abuses. Global corporations can find their practices under such scrutiny that they feel compelled to change for fear of losing their markets. By publicizing labor conditions in overseas factors, for example, a relatively small number of students at American universities forced several makers of shoes and clothing to commit to improved pay and work conditions in their overseas factories.had these students sought to gain import controls through the U.S. government to achieve the same objective, it is unlikely they would have succeeded. 63 This raises other problems, for instance, the difficulty of applying the democratic principle to include all affected by collective decision-making becomes even greater than within territorial units of decision. 144

145 Warren (2003:26) goes on to point out the fact that there are now non-territorial ways of participating in politics, including politics at the global level. 64 This means that individuals in these affected countries can include themselves by working with global NGOs, addressing global publics, making common cause with environmental organizations within the U.S., and so on. Yet, short of a formal global government (although there are pieces and bits of specialized governance structures such as WTO, IMF, International coufrts), it is difficult to see how democratic rules of inclusion, equal voting, and equal control over the agenda could apply, since political units tend to form in ad hoc ways, drawing participants from those who push themselves forward for inclusion (Warren, 2003:26). Finally, parliamentary representatives are insufficiently specialized and knowledgeable to effectively address many of the issues. The high degree and widespread engagement of NGOs and other organizations ( independent of the state ) in policymaking and opinion formation. They focus on what are key issues and policy settings for themselves; hence, the intensity of their engagement; their mobilization of necessary expertise; their persistence. The increased role of experts The high degree of specialization and application of specialized and expert knowledge in differentiated policymaking areas The flexibility in organizing and managing specialized policy arenas, on different levels, in different time frames, in functional terms (rather than territorial, although for some policy issues, the latter remain an important basis of socio-political organization. Shifts in sovereignty, representation, accountability, and the nature of law and policy, which have profound constitutional implications. The increased marginalization of parliaments because they lack specialized focus, and expertise, and are typically organized on a territorial basis and relate primarily to state agents, rather than the new political agents and arrangements. (The parliamentary government arrangements (based on national sovereignty, territorial representation, state arrangements and accountability, and legal foundation) tend to be comparatively rigid, slow, and inappropriate). These developments do not depend on globalization, but globalization has amplified a number of the problems. Thus, the development of the EU has made many of the trends identified above more visible and profound (Andersen and Burns, 1993; Burns, 1999). The emergence of new types of discourses about demoncracy transcending liberal and parliamentary democracy emphasizing functionality, participaion, As pointed out above (also see Burns (1999), Burns et al (2000)), the new politics entails the diffusion of sovereignty to non-state agents inside as well as outside society, the development of non-territorial representation. In the case of representativity, there is a move away from 64 Or refusing to participate or to take appropriate global action. Warren (2003:26) provides an example: Let us say that the people of the U.S. decided democratically not to deal with global warming, even though they produce more CO2 emissions than any other country. If their decision contributes to the changing patterns of floods, storms, and droughts, it will affect countless individuals in other nations. 145

146 territorial and parliamentary representativity toward functional representativity; sovereignty (and ultimate authority) is diffused upwards and downwards from the state but also outwards into many, normal civil society agencies and networks; there is a responsibility/accountability problematique (powerful or influential agents should be subject to responsibility and accountability claims rules, for instance, as demanded by the ethics movement; the targets are not only heads of government, but corporations, NGOs, experts, etc.). Civil society agents 65 who constitute themselves, mobilize and engage in diverse public and policymaking activities are wide-ranging, among others: Economic interest organizations: industries, banking, other business interests, labor unions, etc. professional associations voluntary organizations performing community services, organizing community activities neighborhood associations and networks church and other religious organizations NGOs acting to influence public opinion formation, public policy, law-making and law implementation. NGOs take a wide variety of forms: folk movements, political parties, interest organizations, lobbyists, religious organizations (which engage in lobbying and opinion formation, Amnesty International, Green Peace, action groups, concerned citizen groups. 66 Parts of a political or other movement, for instance religious movements confronting secular states. This can be seen in the USA, also throughout much of the Islamic world. In the 19 th century there were Christian movements, largely Catholic that confronted liberal, secular states and eventually came to power. Mafia and terror organizations can be seen in civil society. In the context of this paper, we are interested in those organizations which try to influence opinion formation, policy, law-making, and law-implementation. They take a variety of forms: NGOs, public interest organizations, lobbyists, corporate representatives, etc. Organizations including NGOs, corporations, lobbyists, representatives of cities, regions, and other states are increasingly involved in a variety of policy areas and legislative processes. Along the lines we have argued earlier, Warren (2003:9) stresses: The most dramatic developments over the last couple of decades include the rise of power of non-governmental organizations in the international arena, and the dramatic increase in associations devoted to problems of collective action that replace, displace, or work in concert with state powers. [Civil society associations] can generate the social power that can check economic power and produce state responsiveness (Warren, 2003:23). 67 The rules (rights and obligations) of such participation and influence are not clear-cut or transparent. Many of the organizations claim to represent significant constituencies, but 65 Our concept is sociological, not ideological. Civil society and organized civil society is neither good nor evil. 66 This means that many organizations in civil society are not NGOs in this sense: they are not intentionally involved in influencing public opinion and policy formation. 67 But one should not idealize these association they vary in their honesty and goodness of purpose as much as individual citizens. 146

147 precisely who they represent and how much they represent any given constituency is not always clear. These organizations and groups emerge from, and represent Civil Society. They play not only a representative role but roles of power agent and educators. They manifest and increase the capacity of citizens to participate in public life. They also feedback into Civil Society, bringing about learning processes. Arenas in which they try to exercise influence: established or institutionalised government, inter-governmental and nongovernmental settings where agendas, policy, and other proposals are formed. This occurs at local, national, and EU policy levels as well as internationally: World Trade Organization (WTO), International Monetary Fund (IFM), World Bank, Group of 8; NGO conferences and planning sessions other NGOs and organizations such as major corporations Mass media Public opinion, opinion formation, and judgments about the legitimacy of political leaders and their policies. Government and private, e.g. corporate, policy settings and implementation processes The issues may concern the economy, banking, technological innovation and change, envirionmental issues, societal change, issues of new regulative and government arrangements, new policies and norms in a wide spectrum of societal sectors. 3.3 Implications of Major Societal Trends for Legislative Functions and the Role of Parliaments5 What have contemporary societal trends implied for law-making and policy-making, for public regulation and service functions, and more generally, for democracy? First, there have been cognitive and knowledge limitations: parliament and its government have not and cannot be expected to be an academic institution or a research organization. Nor are political parties any more accomplished in this respect. Second, there have been regulative limitations. Reflect for a moment on the problems of centrally steering the multifarious processes of modern society relating to, among other things, commerce, industry, financial and monetary institutions, government service production, welfare, research, education, gender relations, public health care, bio-technologies and life science developments, globalization, etc. One could continue listing. The point is clear. Central detailed regulation through laws and government policies of such diversity is not an enterprise for mere mortals. Undertaking from the center of society such tasks as monitoring, judging and steering a significant part of the multitude of key processes, decisions and new developments is utopian, and destined to fail. On the one hand, Parliament should, in principle, be concerned about and engaged in multiple key issues in each and all of these areas as well as many others. On the other hand, parliamentary government was never designed to deal with such a complex array of problems, processes and new developments. Most members of parliament (and those in government leadership) like most citizens lack the education, training and experience in dealing with most of such a world with its many specialties, technicalities 147

148 and scientification. These are not learnable or overseeable either by parliament or by the central government, no matter how sophisticated and well-staffed. In sum, neither parliament nor its government is capable of effectively performing a number of key functions, given today s constitutional and institutional arrangements and the great complexity, rapid change, and scientification of modern society. 1 This means that in many instances parliamentary government cannot effectively take into account or represent the diversity and complexity of the modern world: its variety of values, perspectives, organizations, groups, and movements. Consequently, there is a representation deficit. 2 There is also a knowledge and competence deficit in that parliamentary representatives (its political parties as well as committees) lack sufficient diversified and technical knowledge in the face of a progressively high-tech, scientized world. 3 Finally, there is a deficit of commitment or engagement in that parliamentary representatives are typically general representatives, not particularly engaged or interested in many of the issues and problems that are part of the modern political and policy-making agenda (this characterization also applies to political parties). Indeed, as discussed below, many agents of civil society prefer to represent themselves or to select directly their own representatives ( lobbyists ). They also recruit their own expertise and try to engage directly in relevant policy and rule-making. A parliament lacking sufficient capabilities of representation, knowledge and engagement is unable to effectively monitor, judge and regulate the array of contemporary developments, many of which cry out for at least some degree of regulation. This increasing deficit leads to public frustration and vulnerability to ready criticism and skepticism. In the face of growing complexity and dynamism and the limitations or failings of parliamentary forms new forms of regulation and governance have been emerging. On the sectorial level, one finds various stable policy networks or communities, sub-governments6 and private interest governments involving interest groups engaged in sectorial or particular policy issues and problems (Andersen and Burns, 1992, 1996; Bogason and Toonen, 1998; Burns and Andersen, 1998; Heclo, 1978; Kenis and Schneider, 1991; Kooiman, 1993; Rhodes, 1991; Wright, 1988). We have referred to a complex of these forms as organic governance.7 Such governance develops parallel to and in interaction with at times in cooperation with, at times in competition with parliamentary government. Organic governance in its variety of forms is largely based in, and involves agents of, civil society, but they interface and interpenetrate with state agencies in many instances. The agents of civil society are not only market agents and economic interest groups, but public interest groups, social movements, self-help organizations and associations of many kinds. These agents are motivated by diverse goals and interests (economic, political, professional, idealistic, etc.) and engage themselves selectively in specialized public issue and policy settings ranging widely: money and banking, industrial and labor market conditions, the environment, natural resources, consumer interests, public services, the handicapped, pensioners, women, genetic screening and biotechnologies generally, etc. 148

149 A common denominator in the current development of non-parliamentary systems of governance is the introduction and engagement of private and semiprivate actors in public policy-making, that is the reconquest of political authority by societal actors, agents grounded in or emerging from civil society. Nonparliamentary and nongovernmental forms of legislative function and regulation are increasingly common and penetrate most policy areas of modern society. They may also interface with government in a variety of patterns. Examples are many and varied, and in some cases well-known, especially when it comes to the involvement of economic interests. I will mention four cases. 1 National and international financial communities obviously wield great power today, fully capable of influencing or shaping national economic policy-making In a number of European countries, business interests and government (or business, labor and government) participate in discussions and deliberations about economic policies, including macro-economic policy, labor market policy, pension and social security policies, inflation and unemployment tradeoffs, etc. (Schmitter and Lehmbruch, 1979). In many cases, parliament s function is limited to tacitly or formally accepting such policy agreements or covenants. 3 Environmental public interest organizations engage and exercise influence successfully in a variety of policy sectors without engaging in electoral politics. Such organizations as Greenpeace as well as many other environmental organizations, including local ones, to a large extent ignore electoral politics. They influence policy and law-making through direct action and media engagement and participate in concrete negotiations and policymaking processes (see note 14 on Greenpeace). It might appear paradoxical that the environmental movement is much more influential and effective in civil society and in sectorial policy-making than in electoral or party politics (their proportion in European parliaments remains quite low even in countries such as Sweden where they have been influential in a national referendum on nuclear energy and in many sectorial policy processes). The women s movements and the animal rights movement in northern Europe also typically ignore electoral politics and engage directly and often successfully in a variety of relevant policy sector arenas. All of these are examples of civil society agents that are prepared to more or less bypass many of the channels of parliamentary government. 4 A growing number and variety of public interest organizations concern themselves with the policies, production and quality of public services. A typical strategy is to directly engage with the responsible administrative units, whether on the national, regional or local levels. For instance, they may monitor performance, collect complaints, organize public meetings, 68 The weight of the judgements and reactions of financial communities to the decisions and policies of governments or even to discussions and preparations for voting in parliament are such that the latter are compelled to be cautious and to take into account the opinions and judgements of that financial community, lest it dump the national currency, reduce public credit ratings for public bonds, or, in general, wreak economic chaos for the country. Thus, economic and related policies of parliamentary government are seriously constrained in many cases, and even directed in some, by the anticipated reactions and judgements of international financial interests. 149

150 formulate charters and policy proposals, ultimately negotiating directly with public administrators at different levels with respect to changing policy, procedures or particular practices and programs. This type of citizen activity varies widely. For example in Italy, it ranges from dealing with agencies responsible for natural catastrophes (earthquakes and floods) to traffic safety or to hospital functioning, among other areas. In the case of hospitals, for instance, such public interest engagement may concern policies about family visitation to patients, about routine procedures in caring for patients, or about improved or new treatments, etc. In general, we find government agencies and services are directly confronted and in many instances influenced by such movements engaging in cooperative ventures and problem-solving. Changes in policy and practices may even be formalized through charters and a sustained involvement of associations of various types with government agencies. Further examples could be provided from a wide range of policy areas: monetary policy and banking, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, information technology, property rights developments and many other important arenas, each with a variety of highly specialized, focused policy groups which negotiate and make decisions. In general, many of the most strategic arenas of argument, negotiation, conflict resolution and rule-making bypass or transcend the domain of the parliamentary framework. The key agents are groups, organizations and networks of various types in civil society. Each form of organic governance, whether a specialized network or sub-government or neo-corporatist arrangement, typically brings together relevant interests as well as experts who are able and motivated to deal purposively and technically with specific problems and issues in the policy sector. The representation is specialized. Groups and organizations represent themselves or directly select their representatives. They meet, negotiate and often solve problems. Solutions are found in part because the sub-governments or policy communities have established institutionalized strategies to deal with problems and to resolve conflicts, but also because issues are highly focused and circumscribed within these arrangements. In general, direct specialized self-representation is combined with relevant specialized expertise. Focused, organized discussions, negotiations and policy-making are maintained over time and space. This type of process is typically accomplished in much more flexible and systematic ways than is possible within parliamentary/central governmental forms. As we point out elsewhere (Burns, 1999), the flexibility and freedom of organic forms of governance make up one face of a coin whose other face may be abuse of power, corruption and non-accountability. Today, the national democracy of individual citizens and their parliamentary representatives and institutions tend to be bypassed and surpassed by a de facto direct democracy of organized interests, citizen groups and movements that engage themselves directly in issues that particularly concern them. Direct participation9 in problemsolving and rule-making has never been so widespread and so far-reaching as today. However, this is the participation of groups and organizations, not so much that of autonomous, individual citizens. This system of governance is largely one of organizations, by organizations and for organizations. The development of 150

151 a complex of such governance processes entails significant changes in key components of political order: sovereignty, representation, responsibility and accountability, and in the very character of laws and regulation. We discuss briefly below, on the one hand, limitations of parliamentary forms and, on the other hand, ways in which organic forms of governance developing in or in connection with civil society partially overcome such limitations. 1 Representation Parliaments and political parties are typically built up on territorial representation. In the complex, dynamic modern world, this is not enough. Parliamentary democratic forms based on territorial and general representation fail to represent effectively the diverse interests, value communities, organizations and social movements that are engaged in or concerned about a wide spectrum of special issues and programs. In general, a great variety of perspectives, values and interests cannot be effectively represented by parliamentary members, most of whom are generalists (and are expected to be general representatives of their constituencies).10 Contemporary realities are all too complex. Other types and forms of representation gain voice and engage themselves in governance processes (Hirst, 1995). These agents often want to be directly involved themselves in critical policy- or rule-making, or if not directly involved to be represented by those with suitable orientations and with specialized knowledge and concerns relevant in their view to the problem or issue at hand, whether Shell International, Greenpeace, the environmental movement, or, in Italy Confindustria (General Confederation of Italian Industry), Fiat, a feminist association, or an association of dialysis patients. In a hyper-differentiated modern society, there is a wide spectrum of special interests, organizations and value-committed groups that engage themselves in or are drawn into governance processes. The organizations and interest groups are capable of articulating their concerns and needs and participating themselves rather than trying to exercise influence through parliament s general representatives and party configurations. They have the possibility in sector or specialized policy networks and sub-governments to engage directly and forcefully in what they consider policy- and law-making processes relevant to their concerns. Some refer to a radical new pluralism : the explosion in number and variety of interest groups, NGOs, public interest groups and movements that take initiatives and engage themselves in a wide range of governance as well as service activities. Elected representatives and political parties are no longer the only or the main way to define and act to realize one s expectations or needs. Many of the organizations and interest groups have only weak ideological ties or commitments to political parties, or lack them altogether. Typically they do not fit easily on to a left right dimension. They make specific demands relating to particular areas of social life (regardless of political affiliation): the elderly or their spokespersons concerned with pensions or the availability and quality of health care; or single parent families, or women, or handicapped; consumer advocates concerned with, among other things, consumer protection; local citizen groups concerned with public services or with the environment. Today manifold discussions, negotiations, policy-making and implementation take place in many thousands of specialized policy settings or sub-governments, 151

152 mostly outside parliamentary contexts. Each specific policy process requires technical as well as scientific expertise and engages multiple interests and groups with special concern or interest in the area. They represent themselves, that is, it is a system of self-representation, contrasting sharply with the territorial representation in parliamentary democracy. In sum, there is a great diversity of types and forms of representation. The concept of parliamentary and political party representation must be critically assessed in light of this representational complex in the modern world, for instance: 1 specific national agencies, possibly with considerable autonomy, that represent areas or sectors such as energy, education, health or social welfare departments; 2 international government (for instance, the European Union) as well as inter-governmental or non-government organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, Greenpeace, the Red Cross, etc.; 3 local and regional bodies that deal with complex and diverse local and regional problems and the problems of delivering public services such as education and health care; 4 non-government representatives special interest and other group associations involved in self-representation; 5 parliamentary representation of territorial populations as well as local and regional councils representing populations defined within defined areas; 6 parties representing their constituencies and themselves; 7 representatives of expertise, science and systematic knowledge recruited to participate in particular discourses, negotiations and policy-making processes. In general, representation in modern governance is highly heterogeneous, specialized and distributed. It is only to a limited extent territorial, and the territories may be local, regional, national and global, but not necessarily following the usual divisions on these levels. In this sense, parliaments and political parties have limited capabilities to represent these particularities as well as diversity (regardless of the number of members of parliament or the number of political parties). 2 Sovereignty and authority. Sovereignty entails the idea that a political authority or community has undisputed right to determine the framework of rules, regulations and policies in a given territory and to govern accordingly. A political center for instance parliament or its government exercises a type of supreme command over a particular society. Government, however it is defined and operates, is supposed to enjoy the final and ultimate authority within that territory; in principle there is no final and absolute authority above and beyond the sovereign state (in our consideration here, a democratic one) (Held, 1989: 215). 152

153 Today there is emerging a new dispersed sovereignty. It is layered, segmented and diffused, and is increasingly non-territorial. An agent or a complex of agents may have a part but not the whole. While parliament as a general representative has an important part of sovereignty, it is not undivided sovereignty. It is absolutely not absolute either in Italy or elsewhere in the modern world. Sovereignty in practice has become more and more differentiated and diffused, horizontally as well as vertically. There is a decentralization of political engagement and authority downwards into regions and municipalities and a centralization upwards into international networks and institutions; there is also an outward diffusion into numerous sectors of civil society. This obviously entails a complexification of sovereignty in Europe today. In practice, and in the developing arrangements of authority and governance, we discover a particular complex of sovereignty which is in part, due to sectoral governance within societies and, in part, due to the diffusion of authority and control into regions and localities as well as into transnational collectivities (EU and IGOs) but also into NGOs and various agents and associations in global civil society. The sovereignty complex in each European society tends to be specialized, distributed and to a significant degree increasingly non-territorial (or especially difficult to map to specific territories). Finally, a key element in European political culture is the tendency to limit formal political authority (parliament and government) by the rule of law.12 In sum, the hegemony of the modern democratic state in the West is arguably more an illusion than a reality; it is less and less centralized and non-territorial and increasingly diffused into society as well as into global arrangements. Yet, in written constitutions and in much political mythology, the matter of sovereignty remains relatively clear-cut. 3 Responsibility Responsibility and accountability for law-making, policymaking and regulation formally resides in the system of parliamentary democracy. In practice, other agents and their arrangements have assumed a great deal of this responsibility and power; only in a few cases is it formally delegated, for instance, to special regulative public agencies. Often, however, there are no such formal arrangements. In the public mythology, the institutions of representative democracy and its leaders retain a high degree of responsibility. The problem areas and issues for which parliament (and the central government) are considered responsible have increased substantially, and continue to expand. At the same time, central regulative capacities and influence are declining, partly because of the exponential growth of highly complex problems, issues and questions which defy ready-made regulative solutions, partly because of a lack of expertise and other resources (at least internal to the government), and partly because of the diffusion of sovereignty and powers of regulation. In a word, their practical authority, their possibilities of monitoring and governing, are substantially reduced. Most of those actually engaged in, and exercising influence over, the policymaking and governance of modern society are not accountable to the larger public; they are accountable to their specialized organizations and interests as well as to themselves. These discrepancies or contradictions between responsibility and power are the source of major misunderstandings, public frustration and disillusionment with contemporary politicians, their parties and parliamentary democracy in general. Public expectations about responsibility and power or control are misplaced. 4 The transformation of law and public policy-making In the past, one distinguished 153

154 between laws which were legislated or determined through governmental processes and norms and contracts emerging through organic processes in civil society. Today we have a wide variety of collectively determined rules and regulations as well as regulative forms. The rules and policies formulated within policy networks and sub-governments may be combined with more legal forms. For instance, in some cases, informal rules and policies are validated or legitimized by official acts of parliament or government. Thus, a medical policy may be worked out by professional and administrative actors along with public-interest associations in the health care sector. This formulation may be eventually sanctioned not only by the department of health but possibly by parliament. However, there are many policies, regulations and governance practices that are not validated in any such formal way, and may even be opposed by some parliamentarians. Laws today not only increasingly require a variety of informational and technical inputs (fact-finding, analyses); but, paradoxically, must be viewed as increasingly tentative, uncertain as to their effects and tenure in a complex, dynamic world. In general, laws are crude devices for regulation under such conditions. For instance: (a) Technical changes may make a law quickly obsolete. (b) Laws, regulations and programs are in complex settings always experiments and have to be adjusted and adapted in the face of complex, dynamic developments. (c) Situations to which laws are to be applied vary considerably, in part because of increased complexity, in part because actors simply know more and are aware of or alerted to variation and difference (whereas in the past more attention was given to standardization and simplification). Formal laws are not the only, or always the best, means for structuring and regulating social life. Community and organizational norms and relationships, professional and occupational identities and engagements, rituals and patterns of discourse, competition and a variety of other social control mechanisms operate in any society, maintaining and changing social order. It follows that increased numbers and even quality of laws do not necessarily lead to greater or more effective regulation. Laws may clash with strong community or professional norms, or with established social relationships and practices. They may contradict one another. One of the common effects of an elaborate legal development particularly in the complex, dynamic modern world is, ironically, a loss of regulative power. In other words, a democratic state may attempt to do too much, to exceed its capacity, or to use its capacities in ineffective or inappropriate ways, so that the net result is less than what could have been accomplished (that is, suboptimal) with less direct ambitions. International, regional and local as well as sectorial agreements on rules and regulations are discussed, negotiated and determined in the manifold forums and arenas of organic governance, taking place outside of, or at the interface with, formal parliamentary government. Such agreements are enforced through a complex of social control processes most often having little to do with coercion or administrative power in any strict sense. 5 Governance of, by, and for organizations (rather than by citizens or by their particular representative organs) Agents of diverse forms of governance are not to any great extent individual citizens (although citizens are, of course involved) but groups, organizations, associations, parties, factions and a variety of other collectives including numerous hybrids.13 While political parties have been key 154

155 agents of democratic orders for some time, they are particular types of organizations, among many others. In contrast to the central government, parliament and party configurations, many large multinational corporations such as Shell or Fiat and international NGOs such as WTO, IMF, Greenpeace and Amnesty International not only are often better organized, have access to greater expertise, have more precisely formulated goals, policies and programs, but also in general exercise substantial influence in the policy arenas in which they engage themselves, whether at the global level or on the national as well as local levels (where in the last case they would be concerned about their facilities and the conditions of their employees).14 Public-interest and citizen groups have greatly expanded the issue agenda, for instance in the agricultural domain where the introduction of food safety and nutrition concerns (and other methods and quality controls) challenge the values and approaches of many high-tech agricultural methods (Jordan and Maloney, 1997: 576). Major processes of governance escape the reach of the nation-state. Its parliament, parties and government, therefore, by no means determine what is right and appropriate exclusively for their own citizens (Held, 1993: 25 6; Offe and Schmitter, 1995). The increasing number of organizations and groups that define their interests and values (with respect to the economy, community, status, religion, ethnicity, gender, etc.) constitute a significant part of the power relations in a modern society. In this context government, the sovereign in the traditional sense of the word and as such supposed to be placed super partes is one power elite among others and not always the strongest one (Bobbio, 1987: 127). 6 The powers of science and expertise Today we are witnessing an exponential expansion of technical, scientific and other forms of systematic knowledge. Expertise developed in highly specialized areas typically plays a key role in the formation of particular laws, policies, regulations and programs as well as in their implementation and follow-up analysis. Various types of regulations are shaped and influenced by, as well as legitimized by, expert knowledge (as opposed to popular, commonsensical, everyday knowledge). Parliaments and their members lack, in general, the legal, technical and specialized knowledge and skills essential to judging, applying and expanding the use of such knowledge. Contemporary governance and regulation is so much more diverse and technically and procedurally more demanding than even the most educated politician or representative can know about or deal with. As a result, effective monitoring, overview, deliberation and decision-making about many, if not most policy areas today is far beyond the capacity of a typical parliament (or its parties and its general membership), no matter how large, how capable, how well organized or how specialized. At the same time, elected representatives find it impossible, or very costly, to acquire the minimal technical knowledge entailed in the variety of problem areas or issues with which they deal, or might be expected to deal. For any given issue, such as money and banking, bio-technology, environment, nuclear energy, telecommunications, or pharmaceuticals, the necessary technical knowledge as well as possible normative or policy positions vary enormously. In much contemporary lawand policy-making as well as implementation, experts from such fields as engineering, natural science, economics, management, jurisprudence enjoy a type of sovereignty. The sovereignty of experts complements as well as competes with parliamentary or popular sovereignty. 155

156 In sum, a new not yet clearly defined political order is emerging (Anderson, 1976; Andersen and Burns, 1996; Burns, 1994; Dahl, 1993; Held, 1995; Kohler-Koch, 1995). Modern governance, increasingly divided into semi-autonomous, specialized sectors, is multi-level and multi-polar. There is a de facto diffusion of authority and decision-making into specialized policy sectors in civil society as well as a decentralization downwards into regions and municipalities and a centralization upwards into international institutions and networks. In other words, there is no longer a single center. It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain the public image of the centrality of parliamentary democracy in the face of growing democratic deficits and substantial gaps between acknowledged responsibilities and actual capabilities of governing. 3.4 Explaining Organic Governance: An Alternative Democratic Development Emerging from Civil Society Organic forms of governance work in part because the agents who participate in governance tend to be highly motivated and competent agents; they find and exploit opportunities to shape and maintain new appropriate law and policymaking arrangements, utilizing their rights and privileges as well as private resources. They have access to and mobilize resources and expertise (scientific, technical, legal, managerial). These arrangements are especially effective for focused problem identification, negotiation, conflict resolution and policymaking. In general, the many informal networks and sub-governments and related forms of governance provide effective alternatives to territorial, parliamentary representation. The robustness of the organic forms of governance is based not only on their specialized effectiveness but on their democratic legitimacy. This legitimacy is weaker or more open to criticism than that of popular sovereignty/representation, which is part of a sacred core of Western civilization (Burns, 1994). But, nonetheless, these forms also realize, in a certain sense, general cultural notions of democracy, namely the right to form groups or organizations in order to advance or protect interests, the right to be informed or to know, and the right to voice an opinion and to influence policies or laws that affect one s interests or values.16 Centralized, formalized law-making within a parliamentary framework is, in general, organizationally and technically inferior to the organic forms of governance and is displaced, sometimes openly, sometimes covertly through selective processes (Burns and Dietz, 1992). The superiority of the organic forms rests on factors pointed out earlier: 1 They bring together many of the actors most directly interested in a given area or issue, in defining problems, in finding solutions, and in policymaking and regulation. 2 Moreover, they allow for the direct mobilization and participation of a variety of experts in the process of formulating laws and policies, that is, readily draw in and engage agents with specialized expertise essential to identifying problems and solving them in the area in question. They provide a flexible basis, with a variety of forms and procedures for organizing participation and representation. 3 Relevant knowledge and knowledge production can be brought to bear on 156

157 the sectoral problems or issues. Through their collective activities, the actors involved in a particular policy network or sub-government build up or develop specific norms and practices relevant and practically useful to the governance processes. In part, the organic forms provide a creative context of flexible rules and procedures, for instance, for identifying commonalities and mediating conflicts, mobilizing technical knowledge and expertise. They are less constrained than the formalized modes that in most instances must take into account and satisfy strict, uniform definitions and realizations of legally defined concepts such as due process, authority, legitimacy, law, compliance, accountability. 4 Policies and laws agreed to in policy networks and sub-governments are interpreted and implemented in large part through these same arrangements. This increases the likelihood of effective forward integration, linking the organic forms of policy-making to implementation (whereas in the usual parliamentary/administrative arrangement, law- and policy-making are separated from implementation). 5 The organic forms can be considered democratic in character in several respects, at least in the sense that one finds self-representation and direct group participation in, and exercise of influence over, specialized rule and policy-making. In general, there is an extraordinary variety of alternative governance arrangements operating today: parliamentary government, various forms of organic governance as well as transnational powers, regional and municipal governments. There are also hybrids and patterns of interpenetration of state agencies and agents of civil society. Although parliamentary institutions are considered the core of Western political systems, systematic erosion of their authority and prestige is a universal problem. Major rule- and policy-making activities are being substantially displaced from parliamentary bodies to other parts: global, regional and local levels as well as those in numerous sectors of modern society. Modern governance, as pointed out earlier, is multi-polar. In such a characterization, one can distinguish between government based on representative democracy, on the one hand, and governance based on a complex of different regulative, representative and authority processes, on the other (Hirst and Thompson, 1995). The current arrangements of parliamentary government lack the structural capacity or competence to deal with the myriad of differentiated processes and governance problems of modern societies. Even where representative government is incapable of effectively monitoring, holding accountable, and assuring the systematic overview and regulation of a vast array of major societal activities and developments, parliamentary institutions and representatives remain, nevertheless, accountable in everyday popular culture as well as in normative theory. Their responsibility has an open-ended character. Without an effective redefinition of representative democracy s role or function, its profound incapacity and marginalization are not only likely to continue, but to contribute to loss of faith in and support for democratic institutions. It will become increasingly difficult to maintain the public image of the centrality of parliamentary democracy in the face of growing democratic deficits and substantial gaps between presumed responsibilities 157

158 and actual capabilities of governing. The development of new levels and forms of governance need not imply that parliamentary democracy has become superfluous or has no future role to play. It still remains the major basis for legitimizing political authority and regulation in Western societies. Parliament is defined and understood as the symbol and agent of the nation, as ultimately responsible to the people for laws and policymaking. However, the opportunities for popular representatives and their institutions to play their proper roles are very limited, unless new conceptions and institutional arrangements are tried and developed. 3.5 Limitations of Organic Democratic Governance Having argued here the inadequacy of parliamentary democracy to deal with the complexity, dynamics, and scientification of the modern world, we want to point out that, nonetheless, organic forms of governance have several serious limitations. 1 Abuse of power and elaboration of forms of corruption In this type of governance, economically well-endowed groups as well as highly organized groups and impassioned movements with focused interests can concentrate on policy areas of particular concern to them. They are not only motivated but can mobilize the resources to pay for participation and for the transaction costs of policy-making. They can co-opt, buy off or in innumerable ways pervert the policy-making process to their advantage. Their engagements may take perverse forms such as corruption, state-business enterprises and irresponsible private governments and, finally, the erosion of democratic principles and forms of governance. 2. Exclusion of Substantial Populations and Parts of Modern Society In the specialized forms of non-parliamentary governance, large, unwieldy citizen populations and groups with broad collective interests are at an obvious disadvantage, whereas in parliamentary democracy their votes count in expressing dissatisfaction or in bringing about the circulation of political elites. The powerlessness of diffuse citizen populations, even large ones, is especially the case in policy arenas where economically endowed group and highly intense (or impassioned ) minorities with focused interests can mobilize expertise and other resources and conduct effectively disciplined discourses, negotiations, and policymaking in many technical areas where the specialized groups and organizations can mobilize essential expertise and other resources and can conduct focused discourses, negotiations and policy-making. The problem is not only that most individual citizens and even entire citizen populations lack comparable resources to participate and compete in different arenas or a particular sector, with for instance multinational corporations or with environmental or other highly mobilized interest groups and movements; many populations and groups of people lack the minimum capabilities and resources to mobilize themselves, to articulate their goals or demands and to negotiate changes in policy (Held, 1989: 45). This is especially the case of highly marginalized groups such as immigrants, who often lack citizen rights, education and access to resources to organize and engage effective in the new organic forms of governance; but similar exclusion from 158

159 post-parliamentary mechanisms characterize non-unionized workers and the unemployed, In general, there are substantial risks of sustained outsider or nonintegrated positions, that is, the alienation of those outside the organic democracy domains. In general, there are substantial risks of not only massive abuses of power by political elites but the marginalization of substantial populations in the new politics governance order. (This sets the stage for anti-establishment politics and the rise authoritarian leaders (like Trump, Le Pen, etc.) promising to represent excluded citizens, right wrongs, 3. Non-transparency There are serious and growing problems of a lack of transparency. Organic forms, by their informal or non-public character, are less visible or accessible. The hidden hands of power are not always clean a point that I need not stress in the Italian context. 4. Weak or non-existent normative regulation and accountability The organic forms of governance maximize flexibility; hence the variety of forms ranging from policy networks and communities to sub-governments, to neo-corporatist arrangements. These forms provide openings for the abuse of power, the avoidance of or outright violation of laws, concealment from public scrutiny and non-accountability generally. These and related conditions contradict a fundamental principle of democratic culture that the governors, those making major consequential decisions that affect people s lives, should be accountable to the governed (Held, 1989). 5. Integration and other over-arching problems Although the organic forms of governance tend to bypass or crowd out parliamentary influence in specialized areas of policy-making, particularly those involving the application of specialized expertise, they are not readily applied or effective in dealing with many global societal problems such as those relating to radical new technological developments, for example the revolutions in the life sciences, bio-technology and medicine. Another problem area is the exclusion of large numbers of people from access to education, or access to computers and other information technologies, or access to jobs (which are today a scarce resource). The national parliamentary governments, the governments of the regions and cities and the EU have not yet found solutions to such problems. The organic forms are not especially capable of dealing with the current fragmentation of policy-making, where the multitude of piecemeal but interrelated developments such as those concerning sustainability may lead unintentionally or unexpectedly to serious, even catastrophic economic, social or ecological consequences. 6. Legitimization problems A further weakness is that the specialized organic forms are generally unable to fully and effectively legitimize themselves through, for example, public ceremonies and rituals. Typically, the formal democratic arrangements, in any particular parliament, continue to be essential in this respect. 159

160 New Directions A revitalization and reform of democracy in Western Europe calls for bringing to public attention and discussion several of the developments identified in this and related research. Who, or what agents, will take the initiative, assume responsibility and organize for this purpose? Failure to do so entails a genuine risk of a progressive, invisible erosion of representative democracy. Many ordinary citizens will continue to become disillusioned with the doctrine that they (or their representatives) can exercise influence over government, or with the belief that they can hold political leaders accountable. 3.6 New Directions A revitalization and reform of democracy in Western Europe calls for bringing to public attention and discussion several of the developments identified here. Who, or what agents, will take the initiative, assume responsibility and organize for this purpose? Failure to do so entails a genuine risk of a progressive, invisible erosion of representative democracy. Many ordinary citizens will continue to become disillusioned with the doctrine that they (or their representatives) can exercise influence over government, or with the belief that they can hold political leaders accountable for policies and developments exactly when democratically elected rulers can, in practice, do embarrassingly little. Is there hope? Yes, but with some reservations. First, there is in Western Europe a widely shared set of core democratic principles, a vital political culture. There is also considerable social discipline, rationalized actors and well-established and functioning governance processes. Important here also is the diffuse network of social controls that enables all of us to participate in modern experiments in various forms of disciplined anarchy (but which is certainly not chaos). This modern anarchy actually works. Of course, the order operates within certain limits, as is the case with any social order. One important pre-condition here is the firmly established principle of excluding the use of armed force as a means to resolve conflicts. A related condition is the fact that most (although not all) agents in Western Europe, whether in Italy, Germany or Sweden, operate within the framework of a more or less common political and institutional culture which encompasses the rule of law, property rights, equality, rationality and democratic procedure. Western Europe enjoys a great advantage in that, thus far, many of its institutions work more or less effectively. Also, on some levels and in some areas Western European societies have developed and have considerable experience of institutionalized arrangements for reflective processes (journalism, mass media, centers of social science research and investigation) to identify and critically examine failings, traps, dead-ends, vicious circles and the like (Burns and Engdahl, 1998). This complex of arrangements is a very substantial asset and is essential to the future of democratic development. There is a solid foundation on which to launch reform. A major conclusion of the analysis here is that modern societies are faced with 160

161 two major governance challenges, which must be confronted in dealing with the threat of a growing democratic deficit. First, we need to develop normative principles and guidelines that define and effectively regulate and hold accountable agents engaged in organic governance; and second, we need to reconsider and redefine the role of parliamentary bodies in relation to these and other contemporary societal developments. The moral basis of a new order There is an obvious gap between the explicit normative theory of democracy and the contemporary practice of organic governance. A normative theory of democracy orients us to representative parliamentarism based on popular sovereignty. Organic governance involves diverse interests, associations, lobbies and organizations often representing themselves and directly engaging in various forms of policy-making and regulation. This gap, as well as other problems, concerns many political leaders and citizen groups as well as segments of the general public. For some there is a sense of institutional and moral crisis. What is to be done? What is required to accomplish a minimum regulation of the agents and processes of organic governance? Several steps can and should be taken towards publicly regulating the organic forms and their agents and establishing standards and organizing principles and procedures for doing so. One normative principle that could serve as a legitimate point of departure for reform is the following. Parliament should regulate and hold accountable as well as secure greater legitimacy for the organic forms and their agents. More specific measures might be as follows. First, parliament, or its agents, could give explicit authorization, or empowerment, in the form of charters, mandates, or other general delegative instruments, to specialized or sector policy-making groups or communities, as one has done in the past for cities, private universities, or other incorporated entities. Second, it should explicate the concept of a citizenship of organizations, and define constitutionally the role, rights and obligations of organizations in contemporary governance. Explicit or public laws regulating their access, behavior and accountability should be articulated. This would put them in the broader context of public law. This entails establishing basic norms and organizing principles for them, without restricting unnecessarily freedom and self-governance. Third, the role of expertise must be defined and regulated (Burns and Ueberhorst, 1988). This implies formulating explicitly in a new constitution the role, the duties, responsibilities and accountability of expertise and scientists in democratic politics. At present, the status of such participants and their exercise of influence in policy- and law-making, whether direct or indirect, is highly ambiguous. Indeed, one claim for the involvement of experts in governance processes is that they contribute to making right decisions, laws, or policies (although these may be incompatible with the wishes of citizens or of parliament). Moreover, their role is not grounded in a normative theory of democracy, but in principles of rationality (key components of modernity).19 Democratic constitutions typically say little or nothing about the role of experts, their powers, responsibilities and accountability, in either government or governance processes. This gap should be filled. These considerations imply the architecture of a legitimate new political order, combining parliamentary and organic forms of governance and their interrelationships. An 161

162 appropriate modern constitution should then not only refer to parliament, formal government and citizens but also to organizations, agents of civil society and experts. It would also articulate and legitimize particular standards or ideal forms of organic governance. This would entail defining, among other things, rights, limits, responsibilities, means of transparency and accountability (as discussed below). Thus, the forms of organic governance would be constitutionally defined, regulated and more securely legitimated in a new democratic political order (partially already operating). Parliament as a meta-sovereign in the realm of dispersed sovereignty Precisely what role can parliament play in a new political order with differentiated, diffused sovereignty, representation and rule-making and a wide variety and number of organic forms of governance? One major potential role for parliament would be that of holding accountable and monitoring key organic forms of governance and their agents (as argued earlier). Thus, it would concern itself less with the innumerable detailed, practical governance issues and policy-making in highly specialized or technical policy areas. These can often be more effectively handled in sectoral governance as well as regional and local governments with widespread, direct participation of relevant agents (as argued earlier).20 Parliament s role in the context of a great diversity of organic governance can be reconceptualized according to the following principles (this is only a sketch, presented here for the purposes of further reflection and discussion). 1 First, parliament s overall integrative function should be stressed: its role as representative of the people of an area, addressing all-encompassing societal issues and developments as well as those of long duration. 2 It should act as a meta-sovereign, the generative source of sovereignty and the authority to empower, authorize or delegate to agents in key areas of self-governance and self-regulation. It would do this in part by defining the general ground rules and principles for participating and playing a part in organic governance processes. This meta-sovereignty would be exercised both on the national as well as the local levels. On the international level, it could negotiate bilaterally and multilaterally with its counterparts to perform these functions in strategic areas. The general ground rules and principles would include guidelines and norms for organizing discourse and negotiation and for establishing public accountability. It would also monitor compliance with and sanction the breach of key rules and principles, such as those concerning openness, access and public accounting. In key technical areas, it could establish special authorities or independent agencies responsible for monitoring and ensuring that governance processes operate according to certain general ground rules and parameters decided by parliament, and make them accountable to parliament for operating within the frame of a defined mandate. 3 Moreover, parliament would formulate rules and procedures for public accountability, in part for reporting and accounting about governance arrangements, participating agents, types and levels of participation, and key decisions and overall developments (just as today public corporations and many voluntary organizations are required to give public financial accounts 162

163 of themselves). Periodic accounts (for example, yearly) could be demanded from any sector which is of sufficient public significance to impose such public accountability. In some critical or problematic areas, parliament might conduct public hearings and other investigations, especially in those areas that are either of great long-term significance or of critical public concern. These include, of course, areas of environmental problems or those of major technological developments, relating, for instance, to bio-technologies, medicine and communications. Other important areas are those that concern large numbers of citizens such as welfare provisions, employment conditions and the place of women in society. In such ways parliament would reaffirm itself as a major general representative and voice of peoples and they do need a voice. In sum, parliament would assume a higher authority and responsibility meta-role -- in a complex, differentiated world with multiple, diffuse sovereignties. In its role as meta-sovereign it would contribute to defining and enforcing general standards of governance and procedures for registering (or obtaining a charter or delegation) and giving accounts. Such strategic reforms would increase transparency and contribute to reinforcing general public trust in these and related arrangements. Such trust in key institutions and in diverse and distant processes and decisions is essential to any modern society. Parliament would, in this way, reaffirm itself as a general representative and voice of the people by, for instance, holding the participants in key areas of organic governance accountable. This would entail, in part, determining if particular actors should be allowed to continue to operate as sovereign agents (just as corporations and many voluntary organizations are required to give accounts of themselves; they may be sanctioned or even de-accredited as organizations if they break key rules, including those of providing proper accounts). Of course, independent courts could serve as forums to determine, on appeal from groups or agents excluded or sanctioned, whether parliament has acted correctly and responsibly in its determinations. In the face of the complexity and dynamism of modern society, parliament could and should assume an active, far-reaching constitutional role. As a representative of a general collective sovereignty, it could confront and deliberate on the long-term and far-reaching transformations in society, including changes in sovereignty, representativity and accountability that characterize organic forms of self-governance. In this context where we are subject to several major transformations simultaneously the consequences of our ignorance, or of our failure to act, or of our irresponsible actions are much greater than they were 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago. We run the risk of increasing fragmentation, nonaccountability and disorder. This opens up opportunities for all types of extremes, a risk that we dare not take, especially given modern powers of undesirable and destructive transformations. We must continue to face and grapple with the new challenges and prepare ourselves properly for the next century, institutionally, democratically and also morally Conclusions This research stresses the causal heterogeneity in the development of parliaments as particular types of representative assemblies. Some emerged through a process of struggle and reform between a state (or its elite) and parts of civil society. In other cases, assemblies were introduced by the political elite, in many cases simply adopting forms already 163

164 established elsewhere. In a few cases, a parliamentary order was imposed from the outside, in some cases by victors in war, in many cases by a colonial power. Many non-western countries such as African and Asian colonies have been influenced by, or forced to follow, Western models of democracy. Our theoretical approach is, in general, consistent with the notion of multiple modernities (Featherstone et al, 1995; Therborn and Wallenius, 1999, among others), in particular diverse paths to, among other things, representative assemblies and parliamentary democracy. It entails rejecting the conception of the West versus the Rest and, instead, stressing the diversity of modern developments and the parallels of (as well as differences between) Western and non-western developments. Assemblies, of which parliaments are a special case, are universal and antedate modernity. They are not simply a creation of Europe. Modern parliaments are a special type of assembly and a source of societal power they represent a major institutional innovation and a key part of modern state-building. But already today, however, one can discern the emergence of new formations of governance, conceptions of representation, and patterns of sovereignty not only in Europe but in other parts of the world, which we have referre to in terms of post-parliamentary democracy, in particular "organic democracy", relating to new "democratic" orders. APPENDIX: Green Paper for the Conference of the Speakers of EU Parliaments THE FUTURE OF PARLIAMENTARY DEMOCRACY: TRANSITION AND CHALLENGE IN EUROPEAN GOVERNANCE OVERVIEW AND SYNOPSIS (presented in Rome - September 22-24, 2000) The Green Paper was prepared by a scientific group: Tom R. Burns (chairperson), Professor, University of Uppsala, Sweden; Carlo Jaeger, Professor, PIK-Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Germany; Masoud Kamali, Docent, University of Uppsala, Sweden; Dr. Angela Liberatore from the EU Commission, Directorate General XII; Yves Meny, Professor and Director of the Robert Schuman Centre, European University Institute, Florence, Italy; and Patrizia Nanz, Researcher, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Democratic institutions such as modern parliaments are inspired by the concept of rule by and for the people. The concept envisions a polity of " the people," or Demos, who choose their representatives to Parliament and in whose name Parliament deliberates and decides on laws and policies. Parliament is the symbol and agent of Demos. In European societies (as well as most other parts of the world), it is also the major basis for legitimizing political authority and legislation. No other societal agents - whether government agencies, intergovernmental authorities such as OECD, World Bank, World Trade Organization, or non-government organizations (NGOs), political parties, and groups of scientists and experts - can compete with Parliament in symbolizing "the people" and providing political legitimacy. Parliament, however, is not only a symbol of a polity but its agent, ultimately accountable to "the people" for laws and regulation. Yet today many of the most important changes in society take place through mechanisms 164

165 beyond the scope of parliamentary purview. Some of these changes may threaten to have, or are already having, significant negative impacts on economic, political, and cultural dimensions of life and are, therefore, matters of considerable public concern. If Parliament is not to be marginalized in the face of globalization and other major societal transformations, new conceptions and institutional arrangements must be considered. The clock cannot be turned back to simpler, more consistent arrangements for governance. Modern society is all too differentiated, too complicated and dynamic to be overseen in any detail from a 'center'. At the same time, there has emerged in many policy areas a variety of highly flexible and adaptable forms of 'self-governance' that make the old forms of regulation - e.g., detailed legal and administrative regulation - less applicable and less effective. This is particularly so in the case of specialized, technically advanced sectors of modern society. This Green Paper first identifies several of the social and political forces at work transforming the conditions and problems of contemporary policy-making and regulation. Next, it considers the implications of these developments for parliamentary democracy. Finally, it discusses possible responses of Parliament to these new realities. In particular, it explores the desirability and possibilities - in the context of ongoing societal transformations - of re-conceptualizing and reforming the role and practices of parliaments. It identifies several of the opportunities for revitalizing and re-establishing Parliament's central role as a collective representative and authority in modern societies. The fundamental question with respect to major societal changes is one of governance - in particular the patterns of responsibility/accountability and authority. Five key functions of a modern Parliament, which entail problems in the context of the governance transformation discussed here, are: policy making, legitimation of collective decisions and policies. oversight of government and other authorities, maintenance of a public space for discussion and reflection, protection and maximum realization of the values of transparency, accountability, and open democratic process with respect to Parliament itself as well governance processes currently operating outside of Parliament purview. These functions are interrelated, as we shall see in the following discussion. Part I of the Paper analyzes the transformation of governance and regulative mechanisms whereby new forms of regulation and politics are being created both within a society and beyond its boundaries. In a word, there is a reconfiguration of political power. The Paper stresses the increasing scientification of politics (in particular, the regular and systematic use of expertise). It also emphasizes the expanding role of organizations (especially, nongovernment organizations) as vehicles of collective decision making. Contemporary policy making is more and more characterized by the engagement of multiple agents, not only those formally responsible. These include appropriate government authorities (GOs), business and other relevant interests along with NGOs, and international government and inter-governmental agencies such as IMF, World Bank, and OECD, as well as groups of experts. Representatives of Parliament may or may not be involved in the policy group or process. In general, major legislative and policy-making activities are being substantially 165

166 displaced from parliamentary bodies and central governments to global, regional, and local agents as well as agents operating in the many specialized sectors of a differentiated, modern society. In other words, governance is increasingly diffused - upward, downward and outward - beyond Parliament and its government. Direct participation in public or collective problem-solving and policy-making has never been so widespread and far-reaching as today. But this entails something new: the participation of groups and organizations more than that of autonomous, individual citizens. The new emerging governance order is largely one of organizations, by organizations, and for the organizations, involving as well a significant role for experts. The development of new governance arrangements entails substantial changes in key components of political order such as the following four dimensions: sovereignty, representation, responsibility and accountability, and the very character of law and regulation. The emerging complex of governance has major implications for the role of Parliament. Modern governance -- increasingly divided into semi-autonomous, specialized sectors -- is multi-level and multi-polar; it is also democratic, at least in the sense that there is adherence to norms of mutual respect, due process, and collective deliberation. There is a de facto diffusion of authority and decision-making into specialized policy sectors in civil society as well as a decentralization downwards into regions and municipalities and a "centralization" upwards into international institutions and networks. Under these conditions, there is no longer a single center. Consequently, it is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the public image of the centrality of, for instance, parliamentary democracy in the face of growing gaps between, on the one hand, its acknowledged responsibilities and, on the other, its actual capabilities of governing. First, there are cognitive and knowledge limitations: Parliament and its government are not - and cannot be expected to perform as - specialized experts or research organizations. Second, there are organizational limitations. Reflect for a moment on the problems of regulating from a single national or international center the diverse and dynamic processes of modern society relating to, among other things, commerce, industry, financial and monetary institutions, the production of diverse government services, research, education, public health care, bio-technologies and life science developments, gender relations, globalization, etc. One could continue listing. The point is clear. Detailed regulation from the center - through laws and government policies - of such great diversity is not a feasible undertaking. Attempts at such regulation are doomed to be counter-productive and the source of new, possibly magnified instabilities and regulative problems. The new types of governance, while flexible and consistent with norms of selfgovernance - all to the good - allow also for ready abuse of power and new forms of corruption. Economically well-endowed groups as well as highly organized groups and impassioned movements with focused interests can concentrate on policy areas of particular concern to them. They are not only highly motivated but can mobilize the resources to "pay" for participation and for the "transaction costs" of policymaking. They can coopt, buy off, and in innumerable ways bias the policy-making process to their own advantage. Their engagements may take perverse forms such as irresponsible private governments, powerful state-business interlocks, and violation of democratic principles and forms of governance. 166

167 In the diverse, specialized forms of non-parliamentary governance, large, unwieldy citizen populations and groups with broad collective interests are at an obvious disadvantage, whereas in parliamentary democracy their votes sometimes count in expressing dissatisfaction or in bringing about the replacement or circulation of political elites. The powerlessness of diffuse citizen populations, even large ones, is apparent in policy arenas where economically well-endowed agents as well as highly organized groups and intense (or "impassioned") minorities with focused interests can mobilize expertise and other resources and conduct effectively disciplined discourses, negotiations and policy-making. The problem here is not only that most individual citizens lack comparable resources to compete with, for instance, multi-national corporations or with highly mobilized interest groups or movements in the new governance structure. But there is also the problem that many populations and groups of people lack minimal capabilities and resources to mobilize themselves, to articulate goals or demands, and to negotiate changes in policy. This is especially the case of highly marginalized groups, such as immigrants, who often lack citizen rights, education and the resources to organize and engage effectively in the new forms of governance. In general, there are substantial risks of massive abuses of power in the emerging governance order; this is a major reason for developing normative concepts and regulative regimes to address such problems. Arguably, there is a significant gap between the explicit normative theory of democracy and many contemporary practices of governance. The normative theory orients us to representative parliamentarism based on popular sovereignty. The emerging governance complex - referred to in the Paper as organic governance - involves diverse interests, associations, lobbies, and organizations often representing themselves and directly engaging in various forms of policymaking and regulation. The substantial gap between democratic theory and actual practices and other related problems are of concern to some political leaders and citizen groups as well as to several segments of the general public. For many there is a sense of institutional crisis; for some, there is a growing "democratic deficit" in the context of globalization and other transformations. Part II of the Paper identifies several potential opportunities for Parliament to position itself in relation to, and to deal with, these societal transformations and emerging problem complexes. First, attention is given to ways of enhancing parliamentary access to, and capacity to use, high quality information. The Paper suggests that the quality and legitimacy of parliamentary performance can be improved, in general, through reforming parliamentary knowledge systems, functions, and roles. Parliament would be better able to deal with several major contemporary problems such as revolutionary technological developments, fragmentation of society, globalization, the emergence of a major class of influential political agents such as NGOs, and the power of experts. In this context, it is essential for Parliament to establish greater accountability and transparency for the farreaching and diverse policy- and 'law'-making that goes on outside of the normal domain of Parliament and its government, for instance in private or semi-public settings. Consideration of this relates to a general need to enhance the capacity of Parliament to monitor and regulate contemporary governance developments. Among the relevant points emphasized in the Green Paper is that parliament should try to protect and maximize the realization of the values of transparency, accountability, and open democratic procedures in the emerging complex of contemporary governance. 167

168 New potential parliamentary roles and measures are discussed. For instance, Parliament or its government may consider regulating and legitimizing specialized sector groups or communities with their mixtures of agents, government organizations, NGOs and lobbyists, and specialized experts, etc. This could be accomplished by, for instance, explicitly authorizing or empowering them as one has done in the past for cities, private universities, or other incorporated entities. It could explicate the concept of a citizenship of organizations, and define in public law or in the constitution the role, and rights and obligations, of organizations participating in governance which is of substantial public concern. This involves establishing basic norms and organizing principles for them -- without restricting unnecessarily their freedom and self-governance. A further task is to define and regulate the role of expertise, formulating explicitly the character of the role, the duties, responsibilities, and accountability of expertise and scientists in democratic politics. Currently, the status of such participants, and their exercise of influence in policy- and law-making, whether direct or indirect, is highly ambiguous. Indeed, one claim for the involvement of experts in governance processes is that they contribute to making "right" decisions, laws, and policies (although these may be incompatible with the wishes of citizens or of Parliament). However, the role of expertise is not grounded in a normative theory of democracy, but in principles of rationality (key elements of the modern world). Democratic constitutions or public law typically say little or nothing about the role of experts, their powers, responsibilities and accountability, in either government or governance processes. This gap should be filled. One should try to raise public consciousness about (1) some of the differences between specialized expertise and basic value issues; and (2) the fact that scientific expertise (which is not always as neutral as assumed) should be subject to monitoring and norms of appropriate public involvement and accountability. A proper modern constitution might refer then not only to Parliament, formal government, and citizens but to organizations, other agents of civil society, and experts. It would also articulate and legitimize particular standards or ideal forms of organic governance. This would entail specifying, among other things, rights, limits, responsibilities, means of transparency and accountability (as discussed below). Thus, the forms of organic governance would be constitutionally defined, regulated and more securely legitimated in a new democratic political order (which is partially already operating). In sum, the Green Paper argues that Parliament, by adopting a role as meta-sovereign, could enhance its capacity to monitor and regulate current governance developments as well as to facilitate public participation in and learning about these new governance forms. It would define and enforce general democratic standards of governance. Among other things, this would entail establishing procedures for powerful governance groups or communities to be registered (and possibly chartered) and to give periodic accounts of their policy making and legislative activities just as government ministries do presently vis-a-vis Parliament. The concluding part (Part III) compares the emerging selfgovernance forms with formal parliamentary democracy. It specifies some of the normative dimensions and prerequisites of the emerging governance processes. The Paper stresses that while parliamentary democratic models have been situated in a particular territory with a defined population of citizens (Demos), which is homogenous, or aspires to homogeneity, the new forms are substantially different. They are manifestations of a diffused democratic culture of norms and procedures. These are 168

169 applied in policy deliberations, whether in formal or informal settings, often regardless of territory and irrespective of nationality, ethnicity, religion, gender, etc. [The Green Paper was intended to increase the awareness of parliamentarians of the current transformations of policy-making and regulation and the role that Parliament could play in these developments. It emphasizes strengthening some of its functions and de-emphasizing others. It proposed that European parliaments play - as they are already playing in some areas - a major role with respect to key current developments. In part, Parliament can do this by assuring that the values of transparency, accountability, and democratic procedure - which lie at the core of the European heritage - are guaranteed and developed in contemporary governance, whether public or private, or local, national, or international. The analysis of the Paper identified the architecture of a potentially new political order, combining formal parliamentary and organic forms of governance]. REFERENCES Beck, U The Reinvention of Politics: Rethinking Moderninty in the Global Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. Beck, U Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Beck, U., A. Giddens, and S. Lash (eds.) 1994 Reflexive modernization: Politics, Tradition and the Aesthetic in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press Burns, T. R. (2001) Revolution: An Evolutionary Perspective. International Sociology. Vol 16(4):1-25. Burns, T. R. (1999) The Evolution of Parliaments and Societies in Europe: Challenges and Prospects. European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp Burns, T. R. and T. Dietz 1992 Cultural Evolution: Social Rule Systems, Selection, and Human Agency. International Sociology 7: Burns, T. R. and E. Engdahl 1998 The Social Construction of Consciousness: Collective Consciousness and its Socio-cultural Foundations. Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5. Burns, T. R. and H. Flam 1987 The Shaping of Social Organization: Social Rule System Theory and Its Applications. London: Sage Publications Burns, T.R, C. Jaeger, M. Kamali, A. Liberatore, Y. Meny, and P. Nanz 2000 The Future of Palriamentary Democracy: Transition and Challenge in European Governance. Green Paper prepared for the Conference of the Speakers of European Union Parliaments, Rome, September 22-24, Rome, Italy: The Italian Parliament. Burns, T. R. and R. Ueberhorst 1988 Creative Democracy. New York: Praeger. Eder, W Aristocrats and the Coming of Athenian Democracy. In: I. Morris and K.A. Raaflaub (eds), Democracy 2500-Questions and Challenges. Archaeological Institute of America. Colloquia and Conference Papers Nr. 2 Dubuque, Iowa: Farah, C.E. (Ed) 1993 Decision Making and Change in The Ottoman Empire. Kirksville, Mo.: Thomas Jefferson University Press at Northeast Missouri State Univeristy. 169

170 Featherstone, M., S. Lash, and R. Robertson (eds.) 1995 Global Modernities. London: Sage Giddens, A Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Giddens A The Consequences of Modernity Cambridge: PolityPress. Held, D Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Global Governance. Cambridge: Policy Press. Hirst, P. and G. Thompson Globalization and the future of the nation state. Economy and Society 24, no. 3: Kamali, M Revolutionary Iran: Civil Society and State in the Modernization Process. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Civil Society and Islam: A Sociological Perspective, in European Journal of Social Theory, No (in press) The Modern Revolutions of Iran: Civil Society and State in the Modernization Process, in Citizenship Studies, vol. 2, pp Kayali, H Arabs and Young Turks. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lash, S. (1999) Another Modernity, A Different Rationality: Space, Society, Experience, Judgment, Objects. Oxford: Blackwell. Mair, L Primitive Government. Baltimore: Penguin. Maquet, J Power and Society in Africa. New York: McGraw-Hill Meny, Y. (with Andrew Knapp) 1993 Government and Politics in Western Europe: Britain,France, Italy, and Germany. 2 nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Moore, Jr. B Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press. Therborn, G. and L. Wallenius (eds.) 1999 Globalizations and Modernities: Experiences and Perspectives of Europe and Latin America. Stockholm: Forskningsrådsnämnden. Tumin, J The Theory of Democratic Development. Theory and Society, Vol. 11: Weber, M From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Edited, with an Introduction by H.H. Gerth and C. W. Mills and with a New Preface by B. Turner. Routledge: London. Weber, M The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism. New York: Macmillan. References T. R. Burns 2004 "O Futuro da democracia no contexto da globalização e da nova política: desafios e dilemas" (The Future of Democracy in the Context of Globalization and the New Politics: Challenges and Dilemmas). In José Manuel Leite Viegas, António Costa Pinto and Sérgio Faria (eds), Democracia, Novos Desafios e Novos Horizontes. Oeiras: Celta, pp T. R. Burns 2004 Democracy, Reflectivity, and Social Action. Opening Address to the Vth Congress of the Portuguese Sociological Association, May 12, 2004 T. R. Burns and M. Kamali 2003 The Evolution of Parliaments: A Comparative, Historical Perspective on Assemblies and Political Decision-making. In: G. Delanty, E. Isin, and M. Somers (eds), Handbook of Historical Sociology, Sage Publications, London, A variant of this paper written by Burns, Ugo Corte, and Kamali also appears as 170

171 L evoluzione dei parlamenti. Panorama storico-comparativo delle assemblee parlamentari e dei processi di decisione politica in L. Violante (ed), Storia d Italia: Il Parlamento, Annali, n. 17 Torino, Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2002 T. R. Burns 1999 The Role and Functioning of Parliament in an Era of Transition. European Commission, Research Directorate-General (ed), Governance and Citizenship in Europe: Some Research Directions. Workshop Proceedings, Brussels, Belgium, September 8-9, Andersen, S. and T. R. Burns 1992 Societal Decision-making: Democratic Challenges to State Technocracy. Aldershot, Hampshire: Dartmouth Publications. S. Andersen and T. R. Burns 1998 L Unione e la politica postparlamentare, Il Mulino: Rivista Bimestrale di cultura e di politica, No. 3, anno XIVII, numero 377. (Also ARENA Reprint 21/98, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway). S. Andersen and T. R. Burns 1996 The European Union and the Erosion of Parliamentary Democracy: A Study of Post-Parliamentary Governance. In: S. Andersen & K. A. Eliassen (eds), European Union--How Democratic is It? Sage Publications: London. T. R. Burns and J. Nylander 2001 The European Union: What is it Becoming? A Cultural- Institutional Perspective. In: S. Andersen (ed) Institutional Approaches to the Analysis of the European Union. Oslo, Norway: Arena Publications T. R. Burns 1994 "Post-parliamentary Democracy: Sacralities, Contradictions, and Transitions of Modernity. In Carlo Mongardini (ed), Religio: Ruolo del sacro, coesione sociale e nuove forme di solidarieta nella societa contemporanea. Rome: Bulzone Editore. T. R. Burns 1988 R. Ueberhorst 1988 Creative Democracy: Systematic Conflict Resolution and Policymaking In a World of High Science and Technology. New York: Praeger Note 20. RELIGIOUS PROCESSES AND MOVEMENTS 171

172 The application of the agent-system-dynamics perspective in studies of powerful, symbolic and emotionally, social phenomena indicates the importance we attach to understanding the dynamics between psychological, cultural and magical dimensions in, for example, ecstatic religious gatherings or the experience of apparitions. Among the studies in our research, are: Case studies of Virgin Mary visitations (for instance, Fatima) and their institutionalization into Catholic Church Dogma (also, failed cases of efforts to institutionalize apparitions have been of interest). Constructions of religious experience (Nora Machado, Peter Hall) Case studies and analyses of the sacred and sacralization Among the results of this research, we can report the following. Sacred visions, supernatural visitations and revelations appearing to chosen visionaries have for millennia been an important, if relatively marginal, form of Christian religiosity. One of the key concerns regarding these supernatural phenomena is their authenticity and their particular forms of sacrality. This research focuses on the ways in which the shrine of Fátima in Portugal grew into a sacred configuration that coalesced in the form of Marian sacrality, combining specific social, iconic and political elements involving different agents and agencies (e.g. charismatic virtuosos and their followers, as well as religious, political, and administrative institutions), but also objects and temporal/spatial patterns charged with spiritual power and significance (e.g. consecrated places, sacred statues and relics, holy dates, and sacred and powerful rites such as certain prayers and rituals). Specifically, this research concerns the social definition and governance of Marian sacrality in Fátima, Portugal. Apparitions of virgins, saints, and angels have been important sources of devotion, such as pilgrimages and other forms of mobilization among Catholics since the Middle Ages. Even if this phenomenon is relatively marginal in the overall picture of global Catholicism, it occurs even today and attracts and motivates a significant number of followers (the latest now in 2010, 2015, even if not officially approved). These events have a polysemic character, social, religious, political, national, and mediumistic allowing for religious devotions that are often not necessarily within the established beliefs or church canons and rituals. The lack of scriptural or theological foundation (like the scarce presence of the Virgin in the original testaments) might be considered problematic from an established religious perspective -- it has not been. It may even be seen as a potential advantage, since the focus in many of these mobilizations is rather ritual performance and intense experiences generating powerful emotional and psychological forces, than affirming established beliefs on a particular saint or virgin. Visionaries, visionary performances, apparitions and miracles continue to be recurrent phenomena affecting millions of devotees the world around, apparently impervious to rational/scientific explanations and counter-arguments. Discussions concerning the plausibility and authenticity of those phenomena are widespread. This presentation reflects on the mechanism and governance of visionary performances and their reception by devotees, particularly Marian apparitions, not as informative enunciations, or straightforward messages of heaven to be proven true or false, but as complex and inspirational transformative collective performances, mobilizing personal and collective sacred realms. The force and charisma of these events and described phenomena have been analyzed from natural science, historical, social, psychological, anthropological and sociopolitical perspectives.the stress in the ASD perspective is on the multiple factors. 172

173 Selected publications Machado Des Johansson, Nora (2016) Marian Apparitions: The Construction Of Authenticity And Governance Of Sacralization In The Shrine Of Our Lady Of The Rosary In Portugal The Relational Dynamics of Enchantment and Sacralization: Changing the Terms of the Religion Versus Secularity Debate. Edited by Peik Ingman, Terhi Utriainen, Tuija Hovi, Måns Broo, Helsinki Machado, N Marian apparitions in Portugal: The Construction of Authenticity and the Governance of Sacralization In Utriainen,Terhi; Broo, Måns; Hovi, Tuija and Peik Ingman (eds.) The Relational Dynamics of Enchantment and Sacralization. To be published by Equinox, IAHR series (International Association for the History of Religions). Machado Des Johansson, N Apparitions and Catholic Devotionality. Presentation Congress of the ISA Forum, Vienna, Austria, 11 July 2016, Machado Des Johansson, N. (2016) Visionary performances and emotional mobilization International Congress of Espirito Santo, Lisbon, Portugal, September Kevin McElmurry and Peter M. Hall 2012 Meta-Power, Staging Work, and Constructing a Religious Experience. In: T. R. Burns and P. Hall (eds), Meta-power Paradigm: Impacts and Transformations of Agents, Institutions, and Social Systems. Lang Publishers: Frankfurt/Oxford/NewYork. Tom R. Burns 1994 "Post-parliamentary Democracy: Sacralities, Contradictions, and Transitions of Modernity. In Carlo Mongardini (ed), Religio: Ruolo del sacro, coesione sociale e nuove forme di solidarieta nella societa contemporanea. Rome: Bulzone Editore. 173

174 Note 21. STUDIES OF GOVERNANCE, POLICYMAKING, AND SOCIAL PROBLEMS Governance refers to a complex of public and/or private coordinating, steering and regulatory processes established and conducted for social (or collective) purposes where powers are distributed among multiple agents involved, according to formal and informal rules. Governance systems are developed and applied to a vast array of objects in modern society, for purposes of shaping, governing, and regulating such objects. The range of objects varies from natural, technical, and biomedical (genetic structures, biotechnologies, body parts, life and death) to organizational and cultural (including gender relations, scientific knowledge, abstract human constructions such as money, credit, and debt, and sacred objects (buildings, areas, animals), among others. Governance systems are the basis on which to make as well as reform, interpret, implement, and enforce complexes of rules and policies with respect to domains of policy and regulation in social life. The agents both directing governance systems as well as subject to them may be diverse: political actors (parties, states, international government organs), economic interests (private companies, business alliances and associations), non-profit organizations, NGOs, groups and associations of scientists and other experts, local communities, networks, or any social entity that conducts activities of deciding, governing, coordinating, regulating, allocating resources, etc. Given the contrasting objects of regulation systems (and the diversity of human behavior and the material and socio-cultural contexts related to the objects of governance), it is not surprising that governance arrangements exhibit great variability, in particular in their specific relation(s) to the objects of regulation. Governance design and functioning take into account or reflect characteristics of the governance objects and their environmental context. Thus, a governance institution combines ( composes if you will) social structural facts with material facts (human biology, environment, time and space, natural conditions) with their different types of causality and logics. This is apparent in the case of socio-technical systems; for example, in the case of a hydro-power system, diverse but more or less integrated governance arrangements deal with water reservoirs and flows, land, people, electricity production and distribution the different governance sub-systems have varying social organization, expertise, essential resources and technologies and problem-solving models. The concept of governance was articulated in the 1980s necessitated by the emergence of entirely complex hybrid forms of coordination and regulation in contemporary society. Public-private boundaries had become blurred, where business interests as well as NGOs increasingly became intimately involved with government (and in some cases more important than government agents), and where in a related development much power and sovereignty had been shifting upwards to supra-national bodies, downwards to regional and local levels and outwards to multiple agents in civil society. Diverse stakeholders, organizational citizens and the new politics of organic democracy are part and parcel of a major transformation of contemporary governance arrangements and, more generally, democratic politics. The conceptual development of governance ideas was then motivated by the realization that state and state-centric international regimes are not the only or the most important forms of rule- and policy-making, implementation, and regulation in a number of 174

175 areas. Business interests and NGOs as well as other non-business associations and communities have come to play key roles in shaping and influencing the design and establishment of governance mechanisms Selected references 2002 (with S. Andersen and J. Nylander) What is it, The European Union? Constitutional Frame, Organic Governance, and Public Entrepreneurship in an Emerging Polyarchic Supranational Polity. (in Italian). In: Arianna Montanari (ed) Identitá, Nationali e Leadership in Europa. Rome: Editore Jouvence (with M. Carson and J. Nylander) EU s Social Dimension: From Market to Welfare? The Emergence and Expansion of the Social Dimension in EU Policymaking. International Journal of Regulation and Governance, Vol. 1, No. 2: Marcus Carson, T. R. Burns and Dolores Gomez Calvo Public Policy Paradgims: Theory and Practice of Paradigm Shifts in the European Union. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. Tom R. Burns and with C. Stöhr 2011 Power, Knowledge, And Conflict In The Shaping Of Commons Governance: The Case of EU Baltic Fisheries. The International Journal of Commons (Special Issue: The 20th anniversary of Elinor Ostrom s Governing the Commons), Vol. 5, No.2.: Tom R. Burns and C. Stohr 2011 The Architecture And Transformation Of Governance Systems: Power, Knowledge, And Conflict Human Systems Management, Vol. 30:

176 Note 22. STUDIES OF PUBLIC POLICY-MAKING: Welfare, gender, chemicals, food, energy Baltic fishing, sustainable development: multiple agents using diverse types of knowledge and resources/technologies, exercising power in differing institutional, cultural and material contexts of policymaking. Over the past twenty years a constellation of concepts, principles, and models has emerged which entail a promising new approach to capturing the interactions between ideas, organized actors, and institutions in political, administrative and related social processes. This work investigates and theorizes public policy paradigms, within which policy ideas are embedded and on the basis of which policies are framed, articulated, and implemented. To our knowledge, the work reported in Carson et al (2009) is among the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical treatments of public policy paradigms. It considers theoretically the architecture of paradigms, their role in framing and organizing action, and the ways in which paradigm transformations are brought about. The theory construction draws upon three major developments in the social sciences: institutional theory, cognitive sociology, and social movements theory. The research presented in the Carson et al (2009) book, besides introducing and applying the concept of public policy paradigm, also extended those efforts by specifying and analyzing processes of paradigm formation and development based on the sociology and politics of paradigms (innovation, competition, alliance formation, proselytizing, power and control processes, etc.). 69 The general goal of this book has been to develop and apply public policy paradigm theory in investigations and analyses of policy dynamics and developments. The theory might be characterized as cultural-institutional, in that it emphasizes the importance of socially transmitted cognitive-normative models, institutional rule-based structures that organize human activity, and ways in which organized actors mobilize and struggle to realize their ideals as well as to pursue more mundane interests. The individual case studies identify the mechanisms linking ideas and cognitive frameworks to institutional arrangements and to policy outcomes and developments. The cases focus on the actors who formulate or bear ideas trying to exercise influence over policymaking; they also identify and analyze the conditions under which actors manage to exercise their influence or fail to do so. Policy paradigms serve, among other things, as a conceptual structure within which public issues and problems can be framed and provide a type of modern totem around which supporters of the paradigm may collect and coordinate. But paradigms also constrain and bias policies that policymakers are likely to consider and select. In sum, we have seen the emergence of a systematic theory and body of empirical knowledge of what are referred to as public policy paradigms. The theory combines cognitivenormative models, institutional analysis, and strategic interactions in which organized actors 69 The paradigm concept itself is of course most often associated with Thomas Kuhn s work. Kuhn s paradigm was inherently political in nature, making it suitable for the examination of conceptual models that apply to the political sphere, as in the Carson et al book. The broader conception of what may be referred to as the sociopolitics of paradigms is therefore particularly applicable to public policy processes such as those investigated in the book. 176

177 seek both to realize their ideals and pursue their interests. An important goal of this book has been to set out the foundations of the theory and provide a range of applications. The book also identifies several of the methodological principles and rules of method that characterize public policy paradigm research. Finally, in a more general sense, the book illustrates the usefulness and potentialities of public policy paradigm research program(s). Policy action is driven, shaped, and regulated by the ways in which cognitive frames and interests of participating agents shape and define issues and analyses and the involvement of particular authorities, experts, problem-definitions and solutions. To understand these complex processes is particularly important in the realm of democracy policymaking, where agents drive by divergent interests and alternative principles struggle to preserve or reform policy, law, and institutional arrangements. This work, among other things, has analyzed continuity and change in EU policy and provided a systematic understanding of the interactions between ideas, organized actors, power processes, and institutions in political, administrative, and related social processes. This research (Carson, 20xx; Carson et al, 2009) developed public policy paradigm theory as well as offered a number of applications of the theory in EU policy studies, ranging from food security and chemicals to energy, Baltic fishers, climate change, and gender. The applications concerned then diverse issue or problem contexts, configurations of actors, power conditions and dynamics, and policy developments. This work is the first comprehensive theoretical and empirical treatment of public policy paradigms. 70 It specified theoretically, the architecture of paradigms, their role in framing and organizing action, and the ways in which paradigm transformations were brought about. 71 The theory construction drew upon three major developments in the social sciences: institutional theory, cognitive sociology, and social movements theory. In the comparative investigations and analyses of selected EU policymaking processes, the ASD teams were able to identify a few underlying dimensions. In particular, it was suggested that there were powerful forces and tendencies driving consideration of health, social and environmental aspects of policy situations. In a word, we claimed that the EU is not only about markets. There occurred a partial decommodification (Esping-Andersen, 1985) of food, asbestos, and chemicals generally as well as gender. Gas remained a commodity but it went from a national commodity to an EU commodity. The exceptional and ironic case concerned GHGs (green-house-gases) the commodification through the Emission Trading System (ETS) market but this was developed in the interest of environmental considerations (after attempts at regulation in the EU by taxation failed to materialize). There was multi-level change in all cases the Europeanization of policy typically involved new agents, authorities, and procedures at the EU level. That is, the EU policy initiatives in our cases not only dealt with concrete policy issues but entailed advances in EU 70 A book which we discovered a few months prior to the publication of the Carson et al (2009) book concerns economic paradigms and policymaking: Akira Iida s Paradigm Theory and Policymaking: Reconfiguring the Future (2004). The ASD book was too far advanced in the preparation for publication to engage with Professor Iida s work. It was apparently written in complete ignorance of the use the paradigm concept in policy studies, as discussed here. 71 Besides those working in the area of public policy, a group of researchers working in particularly Brazil and Italy who developed and applied the paradigm conceptualization in a non-kuhnian way it concerned industrial organization and the transformation of Ford/Taylor type production systems into new forms of industrial organization (again, these were not applications to scientific theories). 177

178 power and status. The studies revealed also a variety of social organizational innovations and transformations (Carson et al, 2009). EU Treaties served in practice as a sort of constitutional framework, which was particularly strong in the area of the internal market as witnessed by our gas and CO2 emission case studies. Such fundamental authority has been lacking in many non-economic areas, thus barring the EU from taking action in some domains or requiring difficult-to-reach unanimity among member states. The mainstreaming of gender and of environmental and public health concerns subtly changed what appeared to be an all-too-market orientation, although far less subtly than many imagined, by providing an open-ended, if more modest, mandate. Our studies suggest the institutionalization of a more comprehensive paradigm shift with respect to public health and consumer safety issues as well as social and environmental issues a development acknowledged by member states of a new paradigmatic order in these and other policy sectors (Carson, 2004). It is also intertwined with, and is yet another reflection of, the changing perceptions regarding the kinds of issues that can be considered "European" as opposed to national or local. In each of the cases, the emergence of new, social, health, and environmentally focused policy principles and goals becoming part of a long-term development process in which market integration was initially the major thrust. In each of the EU cases investigated, the policy changes of the mid-to-late 1990s took place in the context of the long-term, ongoing development of new policy ideas and strategies. This dynamic is clearest in the area of gender equality policy as its history reaches most unambiguously and decisively back to the original Treaty of Rome (1957) even if the first decisive steps were taken only in the 1970s. To the extent that occupational health and safety can be taken as a precursor to public health, then it too dates back to the original Treaties. Occupational health and safety gained qualified majority voting status with the Single European Act (1987), a development that is not completely consistent with what is often characterized as the neo-liberal character of the Act. Similarly, the environment awareness that informs chemicals policy emerged in the 1970s, but only gained formally legitimate status with the passage of the Single European Act. Although policy developments in each of the sectors began at different points, they do appear to have gained substantial ground during the same general time period. Following a surge of social protest in the late 1960s and 1970s, significant gains were made in gender equality policy (both in new directives passed and in the ECJ), in chemicals policy pertained to health and safety regulations and in environmental protection (in particular, establishment of DG Environment and the implementation of the first of a series of action programs). The individual cases of food, asbestos and chemicals, gender equality, and climate policy each provide an interesting study in the emergence and gradual institutionalization of a new overarching paradigm conception. A comparison across the cases makes a strong case for a major secular trend. Notwithstanding the important differences in case characteristics and the overall timing of the developments, several of the parallels are striking. These developments can be traced through examining changes in: (1) policy substance; (2) policymaking participation and the processes by which policy is made; and (3) organizational capacity and competence at the EU level. In each instance, the underlying principles and policy goals that emerged placed a high priority on social and environmental concerns, setting boundaries on what kinds of market activity are considered desirable and acceptable. Participation on the part of NGOs, the European Parliament, and civil society increased in the process, and the general direction of new policy was more or less consistent with what these actors demanded. The "advocacy coalition" pressing for these changes included the Commission as a crucial actor, although its role has been at times ambiguous: reactive rather 178

179 than initiating. Over the course of the 1990s, the formal competence and formal and informal capacity to engage in social, health, and environmental issues have been systematically expanded and developed at the EU level. In sum, while market integration remains, in principle, a core mission of the EU, that integration must now be pursued in a manner consistent with improving gender equality and achieving a high level of public health and social and environmental protection. Moreover, the integrated market activities already in place have been and are being tempered, as suggested in the sustainability discourses, to reduce specific kinds of risks and hazards relating to human beings, other species, and the environment. Selected Publications Marcus Carson, T. R. Burns and Dolores Gomez Calvo Public Policy Paradgims: Theory and Practice of Paradigm Shifts in the European Union. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. Tom R. Burns and with C. Stöhr 2011 Power, Knowledge, And Conflict In The Shaping Of Commons Governance: The Case of EU Baltic Fisheries. The International Journal of Commons (Special Issue: The 20th anniversary of Elinor Ostrom s Governing the Commons), Vol. 5, No.2.: Tom R. Burns and C. Stohr 2011 The Architecture And Transformation Of Governance Systems: Power, Knowledge, And Conflict Human Systems Management, Vol. 30: R. de Man and T. R. Burns 2006 Sustainability: Supply Chains, Partner Linkages, and New Forms of Self-Regulation. Human System Management, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1-12 J. Nikoloyuk, R. De Man, and T. R. Burns 2010 Sustainable Palm Oil: The Promise and Limitations of Partnered Governance Journal of Corporate Governance, Vol. 10, No. 1,

180 Note 23. Lobbying, Pressure Groups and Policymaking in a Comparative Perspective Mobilizing and trying to exercise influence over policymaking is part and parcel of democratic politics (but is found in non-democratic systems as well). But such lobbying is organized differently in different polities because of the diversity of the contexts, the agents, their goals, and the institutional and cultural arrangements in which they act and interact. 1. Introduction and Overview 72 Lobbying in relation to policy-making and legislative processes is one of the pillars of contemporary democracy, along with "rule of law" and other pillars such as electoral politics, institutionalized democratic values and procedures, and the mass media. But it is worth keeping in mind that "lobbying" as a form of pressure group politics is found also in nondemocratic polities. Policymaking and legislative processes within democratic structures are multi-agent, collective decision processes. Interest representation, particularly lobbying, may have a substantial effect not only on policy outcomes but on the structure of democratic institutions themselves. In view of current trends and challenges facing democratic institutions, better understanding of the processes and mechanisms by which policymaking and lobbying operate is particularly important. This research develops a theoretical, comparative approach to the analysis of political systems with a focus on describing and analyzing policymaking and lobbying in different systems, in particular in Europe and the USA. The research highlights several of the major differences in policymaking and "lobbying" processes in different political systems. Pluralist and neo-corporatist arrangements of influence articulation are distinguished. It is argued that these do not correspond to, or fit EU policymaking and lobbying, and a model of EU arrangements is formulated. The research investigates -- and attempts to explain -- the degree of openness, the volatility (and unpredictability), and predispositions and biases in the different systems. Of particular importance on the interaction level are the strategic assessments and choices made as actors assess their opportunity structures and circumstances in different political environments, and develop strategies through which they pursue their interests (within certain institutional and situational constraints) Democratic systems are constructed and re-constructed though social interactions, including powering, conflict and struggle, cooperation including alliance formation. An important instance of such struggle is the collective process by which policy is made. Interest articulation in general and lobbying in particular are processes by which sub-groups and corporate entities of the larger population attempt to influence policymaking in pursuit of their particular interests and goals. This pursuit of interest, with success often comes at the expense of other 72 Based on joint work of Svein Andersen, Tom R. Burns, Marcus Carson, & Johan Nylander 180

181 groups in a society. Such a view of pressure groups is elaborated, among others, by Becker (1983, 1985) who analysed the competition among pressure groups as a game. He considered such a game as zero-sum with regard to the successful powering, and negative sum with regard to taxes and subsidies due to dead weight losses. For instance, what one interest wins in the form of subsidies, the other looses due to increased taxes. Since all of this is distributed and administrated by a central power, there are costs or losses where no one gains, that is, dead weight losses. Recent economic models include the very plausible idea that one reason why lobbyists are able to influence public policy is that they either have, or can acquire, information that is relevant to the politician in his policy making (Lagerlöf 1997: 616). This stress on interactions and information exchanges between interest groups and government officials, blurs the earlier notion within economic interest group theories and representation pressures. In the more recent work, the question is more one of information transmission (Lagerlöf 1997, Potter 1992). However, economists remind us that even lobbying that has the character of information transmission or exchange is not necessarily welfare enhancing (Lagerlöf 1997: 616). Lobbying places significant strain upon democratic institutions, at the same time that such institutions are designed or expected to deal with these strains and conflicts. Such considerations are especially significant in light of other developments that have stretched the limits of democratic institutions: globalization, 73 the increasingly technical nature of many problems, increasing specialization, the accelerating pace of change, among others (Kaase, 1995; Burns, 1999). Held (1996) points out that the history of... political institutions reveals the fragility and vulnerability of democratic arrangements. The fact that lobbying has the capacity to amplify many of the other forces straining democratic systems makes it especially important and urgent that we more thoroughly understand the mechanisms and processes by which it works. 74 This research developd a general model of political systems focusing on policymaking and lobbying. It builds on existing institutional theories, outlining a theoretical framework for describing and explaining policymaking and lobbying. Application of the model to real-world policymaking arenas reveals an important interplay between two complexes of variables, the particular institutional arrangements, on the one hand, and the configurations, orientations, and resources of actors, on the other, and the ways in which this interplay and actors particular assessments and strategies influence policy processes and outcomes. 2. EU policy-making compared to neo-corporatist and pluralist policy-making systems 75 The three systems can be compared on the basis of, on the one hand, the organizing principles for arranging or conducting policy-making activities and, on the other hand, the number and 73 Increasing economic internationalization is an undeniable fact, and there has been considerable acceleration of this process during the recent period. Yet, references to the global economy seem premature and can only be made under poetic licence (Tsoukalis 1997: 231) 74 This is particularly true concerning the EU: A complex system of trans- and suprantional interest representation has emerged; this not onlu shares the characteristic features of the EC system as such, but it seems to reinforce those characteristics and aggravate its weaknesses (Kohler-Koch 1997: 49). 75 In work we have come across recently, Weiler (1999) compares the EU system to neocorporatist and con - associational systems. 181

182 variety of actors.20 In the view of some researchers, the EU policy-making apparatus represents a new composition of structural elements, differing substantially from either neocorporatist or pluralist orders (Burns, Carson, and Nylander 2000; Burns and Nylander 2001; Weiler 1999). The EU as a system of policy-making and legislation is usually more organized and formalized than typical pluralist systems such as those in the US. On the other hand, it is more open to multiple interests and has much more differentiated and specialized governance and policy-making structures than do most neo-corporatist systems. Among the major institutional and structural differences, we have stressed the centralized and institutionalized character of the neo-corporatist system, as opposed to the polycentric and shifting structure of the liberal/pluralist system of policymaking. The EU represents a complex hybrid in which there is increasing centralization in the form of the gradual crowding out of national sovereignty in a number of policy domains. This is true, for instance, in energy, pharmaceuticals, and economic policy (Carson, Nylander, and Burns 2001). But this centralization is not converging to a single authoritative centre, but is instead evolving into a central polyarchic complex. In effect, there is a marked, but selective movement from the level of European member states to this supranational, polycentric level. The expansion and deepening of EU regulation is constrained and developed selectively as a result of opposition from those with vested interests in, and representing and struggling for, member state sovereignty and national parliamentary democracy (Burns and Nylander 2001). In a neo-corporatist system as well as in some sectors of the EU (Carson, Nylander, and Burns 2001) policy processes are carried out in accordance with well-defined institutional arrangements. Certain procedures and norms make for orderliness, conflict resolution, and more or less predictable outcomes. But established procedures and norms are not per se necessarily integrating and stabilizing. Some contribute in a particular socio-political context to instability and unpredictability. This is the case of the neo-corporatist system as well as some EU policy sectors that ignore deep cleavages and substantial minorities. This may occur when these are not defined as an integral part of the system and therefore not included in deliberative and conflict-resolution processes. Pluralist systems are more open and flexible to emerging groups and interests, if the latter can mobilize resources or find powerful allies. However, such systems leave the policy process exposed to powerful, resource-rich interests (at the expense of resource-poor interests) as well as self-proclaimed interests who can readily mobilize resources or allies. Pluralist systems are also vulnerable to the chaotic introduction of problems or issues as well as solutions or strategies. In other words, the policy process is vulnerable to garbage-can type policy-making (March and Olsen 1976; Andersen and Burns 1992). Any modern society is characterized by multiple cross-clea vages. But these cleavages articulate differently, and are mediated differently in different policymaking systems. There is formal as well as informal bridging and regulation of cleavages in neo-corporatist systems. The cleavages are relatively welldefined and institutionalized in particular ways in a pluralist system. There is more fluidity, more self-definition and selfrepresentation, and cleavages may be articulated in a variety of possibly shifting ways. However, they may fail to be bridged or regulated in any systematic or orderly way. The EU recognizes and institutionalizes cleavages, e.g. between the supra-national and national levels, between capital and labour interests, between industry and consumer and 182

183 environmental interests. This recognition translates into recruitment (and encouragement) of interest groups to participate in policy-making even to the point of providing resources to such groups to be able to operate and participate in lobbying and policy-making. In the neo-corporatist system, the participating actors are relatively few, but well-defined collective interests such as central employers associations, central labour unions, and the central government. The participants are expected to adhere to agreed-upon principles of overall, collective benefit, distributive justice, and compromise. In a liberal/pluralist system, on the other hand, special or individual interests tend to take precedence over general or collective interests. In the EU, the stress is on EU collective interests, at the same time allowing for considerable initiative and negotiation by special interests and lobbyists. In established policy areas, there are well-organized and clear-cut procedures. Hence, these sectors in the EU demonstrate many of the organized characteristics of neo-corporatist systems. In a neo-corporatist arrangement, established pressure groups have highly institutionalized engagements and relationships. Allies and opponents are well defined, as are discourses, resources, and data. Outside lobbyists target these institutionalized lobbyists. In a pluralist system, there are, of course, norms guiding the process of policy-making (and even lobbying), but any given policy process is less formally institutionalized than in neocorporatist or many EU policymaking processes. In pluralist systems, just as there are shifts in the actors participating, there are ambiguous, shifting discourses, resources utilized, and data called upon (although typically not reaching the degree of openness and chaos envisioned in the garbage-can model of policymaking [March and Olsen 1976; Andersen and Burns 1992]). In other words, pluralist policy processes are neither as orderly, nor are the outcomes as predictable, as in integrated, multi-actor regimes with well-defined relationships and forms of policymaking and more or less predictable policy outcomes. The EU is characterized by a spectrum of arrangements and processes between these two poles; that is, there are highly institutionalized, well-defined and well-organized areas of policy-making that approach a neo-corporatist type of order, on the one hand, and more open, issue-driven processes and fragmented (or as-of-yet non-integrated), unpredictable policy-making (as in the alcohol or public health areas), on the other. 3. Discussion Openness of Policy Systems 76 Governance and policy-making systems can be distinguished in terms of their degree of openness (Flam 1994). For our purposes here, we dichotomize open and closed policy systems corresponding to pluralist and neo-corporatist systems, respectively. 76 The distinction between closed, stable, and predictable structures and open, dynamic, and unpredictable ones relates to older distinctions in the institutional and organizational literature such as mechanical and organic or institutionalized and non-institutionalized. The most extreme form of open process is the garbage can process (March and Olsen 1976; Andersen and Burns 1992). This proposition probably relates to Greenwood s hypothesis (Greenwood 1997) that well-defined and relatively concentrated sectors have an advantage in organizing at the European level, because they can develop common cognitive frames, normative orders, strategies, etc. 183

184 Alternative concepts for relatively open as opposed to relatively closed policy systems are issue networks and policy communities, respectively (Rhodes 1991).21 A policy community such as in a neo-corporatist set-up or in well-established EU sectors such as energy or pharmacy is characterized by highly restricted membership and stable relationships and procedures, as stressed earlier. These relatively closed structures are likely to have a welldefined bargaining centre or power locus, or to be highly homogeneous.22 The concept of issue networks, on the other hand, is close to that of open networks. Such networks have no single focal point or dominant centre where actors negotiate and bargain. The structures are polycentric; there are several centres, typically heterogeneous, rather than simple homogeneous relations or a clear-cut bargaining and power centre in the network. Such structural concepts (Knoke 1990) should be regarded as ideal types. (These hypothetical models of networks, polycentric, clearly polarized, etc. (Knoke 1990) are, however, not mutually exclusive in the real world, and should be regarded as ideal types.) Neo-corporatist arrangements (and also some well-established EU sectors such as agriculture) tend to be relatively closed and solitary (that in a certain sense accomplish homogeneity), with a defined core of participants and procedures, and rather predictable outcomes and developments. They have relatively standard and effective procedures for producing policies, negotiating, resolving conflicts, etc. The maintenance of closure usually indicates a commitment to or acceptance of and even trust in a common rule regime (including rules for excluding irrelevant agents, potential deviants, and irrelevant or improper issues and strategies). That is, other things being equal, the more closed the structure, the more orderly and predictable the policy process. (b) Agent strategies in open and closed policy structures If we assume that agents, in trying to influence policy processes to their advantage, try to create and maintain social linkages that are effective, then we would expect different strategies in different types of structural contexts. Actors participating (or trying to participate) in policy-making will develop strategies for forming ties as a function of whether a policy structure is open or closed. In order to achieve this, they try to create and maintain, for instance, network ties that are effective. These would include, for example, networks that provide lobbyists the necessary opportunities or efficiency in the mobilization of resources and influence in striving for their goals. In an open network, one establishes redundant linkages for mobilizing sufficient levels of each potentially essential resource, as well as other resources that might be important in an uncertain and unpredictable future. Thus, the actors strive to maximize their contacts and to foster redundant contacts, since the context is much more uncertain and risky than in closed networks. Actors cannot know beforehand what might be redundant or unnecessary. In other words, given that the actors in open networks are more likely to be faced with an uncertain and risky environment but also one with potentially new (and yet to be discovered) opportunities they strive to maximize contacts and even to make redundant, or apparently unnecessary contacts. This very strategy tends to increase the size of the network but does so in ways that elaborate its open, unstable nature. Thus, one would expect to find linkages to several actors in 184

185 each type of position or role, whether they be bureaucrats, interest groups, or experts corresponding to known, essential valuables. Thus, what might appear to be non-essential or redundant linkages (but which relate to potential future needs or valuables) European Union, neo-corporatist, and pluralist governance arrangements 159 International Journal of Regulation and Governance 2(2): tend to be established. In contrast, within closed policy structures such as a neo-corporatist arrangement or the EU energy and pharmaceutical sectors (Carson, Nylander, and Burns 2001), the policy processes are more stable and predictable. Participating actors level of uncertainty and sense of risk are lower. In such contexts, actors tend to minimize redundant or unnecessary contacts (at least those that entail costs or burdens) so as to reduce costs and to free up resources for investment in core relationships. Participants know the major resources and how to mobilize them in the network of neo-corporatist relationships. That is, they know which actors to turn to for information, resource mobilization, and alliances. Interaction processes are relatively stable and predictable. The level of perceived risk tends to be low and to a certain extent can be calculated. Consequently, one can strategically minimize redundant or unnecessary contacts. In general, in a closed structure, an actor may determine the strategic values (resources, programmes, contacts), which he/she requires in exercising influence in the network. He/she establishes linkages with those agents who can provide each of these. There would be one link for each valuable, provided that the link is secure and enables the level of the valuable necessary. If a key resource is accessible through a given linkage or channel is not sufficient, then the actor would be motivated to establish additional ties (sufficient to providing the necessary resources, votes, etc.). Such a self-limiting or conservative and deliberative approach to establishing social ties for policy purposes contrasts sharply with the expansive character of open networks. This argument corresponds to Burt s (1992) hypothesis that closed networks (as defined here) are characterized by non-redundant contacts. The aim of participants is not to build large networks, but to build a network out of nonredundant contacts sufficient to deal with the problems, resource mobilization, voting requirements, etc. that confront them (Burt 1992). There is, then, a built-in tendency to limit the extension or size of such closed policy structures. The distinction between open and closed structures and more specifically, open and closed social networks suggests strategic and behavioural patterns Conclusions Each governance arrangement, which we have examined in this research, entails a particular authoritative rule complex or regime providing a systematic, 77 Network structures are, however, never fully closed. Even if new actors are not readily admitted, there are external developments which impact on the network, generating new problems or suggesting new strategies and initiatives. Thus, the principle formulated earlier that closed structures provide for more stability of the policy process and predictability of policy outcomes calls for qualification. Under some conditions, opening up a structure may serve to stabilize a policy process and policy outcomes (that is just the opposite of the principle that closure would stabilize the policy process and make policy outcomes more predictable). In the EU, a key actor such as the Commission manages policy networks, opening them up in some ways, even creating new networks, or making a network more exclusive in order to reinforce support for, and the realization of, a policy initiative. These moves are intended to stabilize and make more predictable policy processes and outcome. 185

186 meaningful basis for actors to orient to one another and to organize and regulate their interactions, to frame, interpret, and to analyse their performances, and to produce particular commentaries and discourses, criticisms, and justifications. Each system specifies to a greater or lesser extent who may or should participate, who is excluded, who may or should do what, when, where, and how, and in relation to whom. It organizes specified actor categories or roles vis-à-vis one another and defines their rights and obligations including rules of command and obedience and their access to and control over human and material resources. Each system has not only a certain interaction logic and coherence and pattern of development but also established expectations, meanings, and symbols as well as normative discourses (the giving and asking of accounts, the criticism and exoneration of actions and outcomes within the particular institutional arrangement). Our previous research utilizing the perspective of the new institutionalism and in particular our EU research emphasizes the role of culture in explaining the ways in which conceptions of governance and policy areas guide action and policy outcomes. That is, attention is focused on the ways in which public issues and problems as well as solutions are framed and defined within a particular culturally defined conceptual framework established (and reproducing) system of governance expressing or embodying a public policy or governance paradigm. Thus, each of the governance arrangements is not only a different institutional arrangement but is an expression or embodiment of a distinct model or paradigm for governance, public policy-making, and regulation (Burns and Carson 2002; Burns, Carson, and Nylander 2001; Carson 2002; Hall and Taylor 1996). More specifically, a public policy paradigm typically indicates or articulates: (1) which problems or issues are public and call for public policy-making (also, which issues should be defined as private and excluded from public consideration); (2) the location and distribution of appropriate problem-solving responsibility and authority to frame problems and solutions, make judgments, adopt strategies, and initiative action; (3) the location and distribution of experts that are knowledgeable on the problem and its solution; and (4) solution complexes for dealing with the problem or issue, that is appropriate institutional practices, technologies, and strategies. Variation in public policy paradigms entails differences in one or more of these components, for instance the contrast between a liberal or free market paradigm and a public interventionist paradigm, or the contrast between a national policy paradigm and a Euopeanisation paradigm. In sum, these social systems of governance not only operate in very different ways and generate different policy-making patterns and developments, but entail substantially different ways of thinking about and judging matters of governance and politics, policy-making, potential problems, and solutions. Our characterization of the three governance and policy-making systems is summarized in the following tables (this structure is based on a multi-level, evolutionary systems perspective,24 stressing not only macro-structural factors (Table 1), but interaction and strategic conditions (Table 2), and outputs (including feedback effects) (Table 3). Table 2 specifies the opportunity structures and strategic conditions characterizing the three systems. Table 3 shows some of the outcome and development patterns, in particular, degree of stability 186

187 and predictability in the different systems. Clearly, the EU policy-making apparatus differs in several ways from either neo-corporatist or pluralist orders. On the one hand, the EU, as a system of policy-making and legislation, is more organized than typical pluralist systems. On the other hand, it is more open, flexible, and diversified than neo-corporatist systems. The neo-corporatist arrangement is more stable and predictable than the EU system, and the latter is more so than pluralist systems. The latter are likely to function more effectively in a turbulent context than either the neo-corporatist or the EU systems, addressing new problems and issues, in part because they are more open and adaptable, less formally institutionalized. Arguably, the EU combines the best of both systems. The EU modes of policy-making, like those of the neocorporatist system, stress the management of conflict and the use of technical knowledge and cooptation in conflict resolution. This is not to overlook the serious problems and challenges to the EU system such as the following. 78 (1) EU policy processes are highly fragmented as in pluralist systems. Neo-corporatist systems tend to generate greater overall coherence in policy-making. The proliferation of EU modes of governance with highly diverse (and flexible) arrangements results in incoherence and contradictions or interference between sector-specific policies. There are attempts to overcome this at the Commission level by increasingly involving multiple DGs in any given policy area. (2) EU organic forms of governance typically lack transparency and parliamentary oversight. Standardization and simplification would contribute to transparency. However, the proliferation of modes of governance and the very adaptability to specific situational conditions effectively operate in opposition to standardization and reduce insight and control. (3) One of the most characteristic features of EU organic governance is the involvement of diverse interests in committees and quasi committees25 for preparing policy and carrying through policy processes. Committee participants come from member states, often with technical expertise, together with independent experts, and representatives of industry, NGOs, and other stakeholders. They participate because they expect that policies and regulations will impact on their interests and that they should and can try to influence them (Weiler 1999). But there are major problems with these arrangements as indicated earlier issues of transparency and representation, 78 Underlying our analysis is a multi-level, evolutionary systems perspective (Burns, Baumgartner, and DeVille 1985; Burns, Baumgartner, Dietz, et al. 2003; Burns and Carson 2002; Burns and Dietz, 1992; Burns and Flam, 1987). This theory focuses on configurations of actors (individuals and collectives) exercising agency, their interaction processes, the institutional arrangements within which and on which they operate, selective environments, and key evolutionary processes (processes of generating innovation and variety, selection and reproduction and transformation). This perspective stresses the importance of human agents in cooperation and in conflict in the generation, selection, and development of institutions a factor largely missing in conventional evolutionary and functional approaches (or, if human agency and social conflict is considered at all, it is done in an ad hoc and incoherent fashion). 187

188 equal access, and political accountability. The democratic deficit of the EU is multi-dimensional and a threat to long-term stability and viability (Andersen and Burns 1996, 1998). As Weiler (2000) argues, the intolerability of governance without government will, indeed become intolerable. The violation by Europe of the most basic and fundamental norms of democratic accountability the ability of the electorate to throw the scoundrels out and its violation of the most basic and fundamental norm of democratic representation the ability of the electorate to influence, through elections, the policy orientation of European institutions will begin to undermine the success of the past and impede would-be successes of the future. Hence the need to touch the hitherto untouchable: the basic Community architecture. 79 Selected publications T. R. Burns, M. Carson and J. Nylander 2001 The EU as a Loybbying and Policymaking System: A Comparative Sectoral Analysis. Research Report Paper Series, No. 83. Athens, Greece: Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS). T. R. Burns M. Carson and J. Nylander 2000 Lobbying and Policymaking: Theoretical Models and Comparative Analyses of Neo-corporatist, Pluralist and EU Arrangements. Research Paper Series No.78. Athens, Greece: Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS). T. R. Burns and Marcus Carson 2002 European Union, neo-corporatist, and pluralist governance arrangements: lobbying and policy-making patterns in a comparative perspective. International Journal of Regulation and Governance, Vol. 2, no. 2: This form is referred to as Comitology (Føllesdal 2000; Weiler 1999). It is unlike corporatist mechanisms or normal lobbying in pluralist systems. It is less open and more organized than the latter. It is less fixed more open to new participants and issues than neocorporatist systems. Above all, Comitology in the EU context unlike neo-corporatist mechanisms or lobbying in pluralist systems in that such activities are regulated, at least formally, by national parliaments that remain sovereign to overrule such processes. These EU arrangements remain beyond the control and hence beyond the responsibility and accountability of any single directly or indirectly elected body; the European Parliament has challenged Comitology as undemocratic and lacking in transparency, a major area where the de facto and de jure powers at EU level are not sufficiently under democratic control (Weiler 1999). 188

189 Note 24. RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, AND STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION In our perspective structural discrimination consists of (I) institutional discrimination (norms, rules, regulations, procedures plus defined positions that determine access to resources, fate control) and (II) cultural discrimination (widely shared systems of categorization, stereotypes, and social paradigms that, among other things, distinguishes us and them ). Norms and other rules may operate in indirect ways that is, they are not necessarily discriminatory in their original intent. Nevertheless, they may motivate exclusion of those who deviate from or challenge in other ways the norms; in other words, the discrimination and exclusion need not be reflections of prejudice or racism but more a concrete judgment of a contradiction or misfit between established norms and the behavior (or the potential behavior) of deviants. Also, there are a number of areas of social (political, cultural) life where a high degree of trust is required. Foreigners are not completely trustworthy. Fellow-Nationals such as Swedes, on the other hand, are defined as honest, reliable, socially competent (in particular ways) which are essential qualities to serving on boards of directors, being accepted as accountants or lawyers, functioning in work teams which have substantial responsibility. Institutions together with widely shared categorization systems, cultural stereotypes and attitudes, along with powerful norms and strategies may operate in discriminatory ways irrespective of the intentions, personal attitudes, or beliefs of the individuals involved. Most of the major forms of structural discrimination are institutional and cultural in character: economy, government, education, health system, political parties, associations and NGOs. In any given institution there are established organizing principles, rules and regulations, procedures, role definitions and relationships, etc. which may (intentionally or unintentionally) discriminate against individuals and groups that do not belong (fully) to majority society, or are marginal to it. Also, there are cultural elements shared in the majority society such as established and legitimised category systems, concepts, stereotypes, judgment principles, generalized strategies, and societal norms that cut across institutions. They are societal in character ; they may be carried and reproduced by particular institutions, professional groups and networks, and some of these elements operate to discriminate against particular individuals and groups who do not belong (fully) to majority society, or are marginal to it. Previous research in Europe as the research reported here -- indicates widespread discriminatory and exclusionary attitudes and practices in and through European institutions. This is often the case in spite of the good (or possibly only hypocritical but public) intentions of established political elites. For our purposes here, we distinguish analytically two general institutional forms of discrimination, which can be investigated and analyzed using the tools of institutional case studies: (I) Pure structural discrimination (institutional and cultural forms of discrimination) entails the automatic operation of rules and procedures including informal ways of doing things -- in ways that disadvantage immigrant groups. (II) Institutional agentic discrimination. Institutional agents are in positions of authority or power (organizational) to make discriminatory decisions or to carry out discriminatory actions that disadvantage immigrant groups as compared to natives. That is, incumbents of these positions in organizations can use their positions, exercising their rights and authority, to make a difference in people s live. The research is particularly interested in agents who play gatekeeping roles, that is exercising fate control and determining life changes of immigrants in institutional contexts such as markets, workplaces, schools, political parties, state agencies, and NGOs and other voluntary organizations 189

190 An institutional approach emphasizes that social institutions embody power and have real consequences, in some cases unintended, for minorities and immigrants as well as for different host populations. For instance, state power is used (or not used) through law and the exercise of administrative and statistical power in such a way as to normalize discriminatory or exclusionary practices. Institutionalized category systems, stereotypes, and models define other. Institutionalized discrimination and exclusion concerns public agencies, labor markets, housing, education, etc. In any such setting, decisions are made, resources are allocated, opportunities given (or denied), persons included or excluded: in other words, Who is being discriminated against and excluded, where, through what mechanisms. Key mechanisms identified in our research has been, among others: (1) Legal restrictions: laws and policies, procedures; (2) Particularistic norms of appearance, language, and behavior; (3) Biased procedures (tests, ways of behaving in interviews, appropriate forms of classroom performance); (4) Biases in judging experience and certification; (5) Cost factors imposed through laws, bureaucratic regulations and requirements; (6) Agents in key positions of power and authority who exercise discretion: school counselors, coordinators; labor market mediators; personnel office chiefs and staff; (7) Gatekeepers may or may not be racists but operate with derived or indirect discrimination (concern with the reactions of customers or clients or employees); absolutization and statistical discrimination (a few bad experiences or rumors of such experiences are generalized to an entire class or category of persons such as in Sweden Somali or Muslims ); (8) Normalization of discriminatory discourses; (9) Denial and lack of self-reflection; (10) Spillover mechanisms. The research concludes by arguing that, in general, model European societies can be characterized as very robust discriminatory systems with multiple mechanisms. Legislative acts and educational campaigns, while important, will not do the trick cultural and institutional revolutions are necessary. (The countries included in the EU segment of the research ( Xenophob ) were: Austria, Cyprus, England, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and Sweden). T. R. Burns 2011 "Toward a Theory of Structural Discrimination: Cultural, Institutional and Interactional Mechanisms of the European Dilemma " In: Gerard Delanty, Paul Jones, And Ruth Wodak (eds) Identity, Belonging and Migration. Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, England T. R. Burns, Nora Machado, Zenia Hellgren, and Goran Brodin 2007 Power, Culture and Control over Immigrants Life chances: Multidimensional Perspectives on Structural Discrimination in Sweden (in Swedish Makt, kultur och kontroll över invandrares livsvillkor: Multidimensionella perspektiv på strukturell diskriminering i Sverige ). Uppsala: Uppsala University Press 80 T. R. Burns 2006 A Swedish Dilemma: The Immigrant Problem, Social Powers, and Modern Democracy. Power Investigation Report (Makt Utredning). 81 Marcus Carson and T. R. Burns 2006 A Swedish Paradox: The Politics Of Racism And Xenophobia In The Good Society (Folkhemmet). 82 (preliminary book manuscript) 80 This book was prepared for the Swedish Government Investigation ( ) of Power, Integration, and Structural Discrimination based on Ethnic and Religious Association, directed by Professor Masoud Kamali. 81 This book was prepared for the Swedish Government Investigation ( ) of Power, Integration, and Structural Discrimination based on Ethnic and Religious Association, directed by Professor Masoud Kamali. 82 This book was prepared for the Swedish Government Investigation ( ) of Power, Integration, and Structural Discrimination based on Ethnic and Religious Association, directed by Professor Masoud Kamali. 190

191 T. R. Burns, Helena Flam, Masoud Kamali, and Rebecca Lawrence (in collaboration with others) Power, Culture, and Control over Immigrants Life Chances on European Labor Markets: Structural Patterns in Eight Countries. EU Xenophob Project Report to the EU Commission. Uppsala: Multi-ethnic Centre, Uppsala University T. R. Burns, Rebecca Lawrence, Masoud Kamali (in collaboration with others) 2006 European Discrimination in Educational Systems: Structural Patterns in Eight Countries. EU Xenophob Project Report to the EU Commission. Uppsala: Multi-ethnic Centre, Uppsala University T. R. Burns and Rebecca Lawrence (in collaboration with others) The European Dilemma: A Comparative Perspective on Institutional Patterns of Discrimination in Labour Markets, Places of Work, and Schools; Structural Patterns in Eight Countries. EU Xenophob Project Report to the EU Commission. Uppsala: Multi-ethnic Centre, Uppsala University T. R. Burns 2005 Institutionell diskriminering: Makt, kultur och kontroll över invandrares livsvillkor. SSKH Notatk 6/2005. Helsinki: Research Institute, Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki 191

192 Note 25. SOCIETAL EVOLUTION AND TRANSFORMATION A. The Expansive Creative/Destructive Powers of Modern Society The analyses in our work (see Note 6 on power and meta-power) have brought attention to the massive powers of capitalism and the state (in the latter case, not only the diverse intelligence and police powers but also a wide spectrum of social powers and regulatory functions) (Burns and Hall, 2012). Some have argued that capitalism and the state countervail or limit one another. While there is a significant element of truth in this in some areas, capitalism and state also reinforce one another, capitalism providing financial, technical, service resources essential to the state, and the state in turn providing legitimation, necessary and stabilizing regulation, and social order essential to the functioning of capitalism. In addition, there is much wealth exchange, legitimacy exchange, exchange of technical and management personnel. Capitalism (and in particular the market system) has produced more wealth, goods and services than any other form of human social organization (Fligstein, 2001). Capitalism, however, not only produces goods but bads. Many of these externalities including instabilities and disorders must be dealt with. It does not (or only to a limited degree) have to concern itself about the overall welfare of society s population, their education, their security (each enterprise limiting its concern at best to its own employees). These more encompassing functions and many of the instabilities and disorders a great many deriving from the functioning of capitalism have to be dealt with (regulattted and compensated for) by the state. The costs of regulatory government, of caring for the health, education, and welfare of people in general as well as the environment must derive from wealth produced by capitalism. As Schimack (2011:6-7) puts it: It is the economy and only the economy which provides all of modern society with money. Money is a fundamental resource not only of the economy but of all other subsystems, [it is] the one generalized means of social influence which is much more universally deployable than any other. The mutual functionality between state and capitalism is not, however, without contradictions and tensions: There is the possibility that the contradictions and tensions are intensifying because of globalization, demographics, and the demise of welfare The powerful national idea of the state up to now is limited in its global powers, while some capitalist enterprises have become extremely powerful at the global level. Parliamentary democracy (and its elites) have played a role historically in exposing and countervailing some of the numerous failures of capitalism as well as of the state. It countervailed and limited to a certain extent many of the abuses and failures of state and capitalist powering and meta-powering. But the growing powers, technical and resource capabilities, and complexity of these systems exceed 192

193 the capacities of conventional democracy, as suggested earlier. The failures of the latter in the face of market and state developments have provided opportunities for new movements, associations, and forms of accountability and deliberation to partially fill the gap. NGOs and social networks monitor, bring to public attention (using the old and new media), mobilizing the public, challenging business leaders and top administrators as well as politicians locally, nationally and globally. That is, as discussed in Part Four, new forms and practices of democracy are emerging: organizations are the citizens and the shakers and movers of these new forms. The channels of monitoring and influencing are typically (but not only) extraparliamentary. When it comes to matters of societal meta-powering, the vast majority of people in any contemporary society are in large part powerless. They are not strategically involved in the major structural initiatives and developments of society. They are not key shakers and movers of contemporary capitalism, powerful economic and technological developments, corporate or quasi-private governance systems, or national and international government institutions. Of course, some few may be engaged in NGOs such as Greenpeace, WWF, or Amnesty International which mobilize and exercise some degree of meta-power and support opposition and resistance to the major societal powers of capitalism and the state as well as international organizations. But most people normal citizens are in large part outside the networks of mutually supporting elites who are in a position to mobilize and exercise metapower in the course of launching new large-scale projects, programs, corporate or government innovations and reforms, and transformations of institutional arrangements. Of course, they may enjoy some forms of power and meta-power in their local or marginal systems, but these do not encompass the major corridors of power and meta-power. Most people in the face of contemporary large-scale systems such as markets (labor, capital, commodity markets), government bureaucracies, electricity systems, fuel systems, or nuclear power systems, feel they have little economic or political agency with respect to these structures and the conditions of their lives. They have learned that their democratic rights provide them limited leverage (but of course are nevertheless important, better than few or no rights at all) Powerful economic, technological, and administrative mechanisms rule their lives, their life conditions and chances. They do not understand or know these systems or even know of concrete ways to influence them, much less change them. They never voted for the systems they have got and, in all likelihood, will never be able to vote for maintaining or changing them; politicians for that matter do not decide much either. Those few with meta-power capacities typically shared and reciprocated support investigations for making reforms or improving the performance of the institutions which they lead or can influence. 193

194 There is no reason for major societal developments, in part driven and steered by relatively small elite groups, to evolve in ways particularly beneficial for the weak and the marginal that is, unless system shapers and movers take it on themselves to advocate and take on this particular responsibility and initiate appropriate reforms. Typically, these agents have much larger agendas than the welfare and betterment of the marginal and powerless of society, although, resources permitting, they may initiative some improvements for common citizens and possibly (but not likely) even for non-citizens. Selected Publications: Tom R. Burns and Peter Hall in collaboration with Tom Baumgartner and Philippe DeVille, among others) 2012 The Meta-power Paradigm: Structuring Social Systems, Institutional Powers, and Global Contexts. Peter Lang: Frankfurt/New York/Oxford. T. R. Burns, T. Baumgartner and P.DeVille) 1985 Man, Decisions, Society. London/New York: Gordon and Breach. T. Baumgartner, W. Buckley, and T. R. Burns 1976 "Unequal Exchange and Uneven Development." Studies in Comparative International Development, 11: T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and D. Meeker 1976 "Toward a Systems Theory of Unequal Exchange, Uneven Development, and Dependency Relationships." Kybernetes, 5: T. R. Burns and Marcus Carson 2005 Social Order And Disorder: Institutions, Policy Paradigms and Discourses An Interdisciplinary Approach. In Paul Chilton and Ruth Wodak (eds), A New Agenda in Critical Discourse Analysis: Theory and Interdisciplinarity, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam/Philadelphia. Dusko Sekulic 2008 Social Rule System Theory and the Disintegration of Yugoslavia. In: Helena Flam and Marcus Carson (eds.) 2008 Rule System Theory: Applications and Explorations. Peter Lang Publishers, Frankfurt/Oxford/New York. 194

195 Note 26. THE THEORY OF SOCIO-CULTURAL EVOLUTION WITH HUMAN AGENCY AND MULTIPLE SELECTION MECHANISMS ASD has been developed into a theory of sociocultural evolution building on theoretical concepts such as the social construction of systems and the restructuring and selection of institutional arrangements and cultural elements (Burns, Baumgartner, Dietz, and Machado, 2003; Burns, 2001, 2000; Burns and Dietz, 1992a, b). By sociocultural evolutionary theory is meant a complex of models conceptualizing social processes that explain the evolution of institutions and cultural forms: the generation of variety in rules and rule systems, the transmission or reproduction of rules, and the operation of systems of selection and other processes (migration, distorted or incorrect knowledge transmission, etc.) (for important parallel theoretical developments, see Boyd and Richerson (1985), Loye (1998), and Richerson and Boyd [2005]). Selective processes determine that some of the practices of agents utilizing a particular rule or rule system obtain more resource gains han others operating with different systems, gain greater collective support and legitimacy, and, in general, enjoy greater reproductive robustness than others. These processes maintain and change the distribution of rules within and between populations over time. In such historical developments, human agents play a major but bounded role. In this theoretical work, Dietz and Burns (1992, 2001) formulated a general theory, which provides a useful point of departure for the description and analysis of cultural and institutional dynamics and evolution. ASD theory defines culture and institutions as systems of social rules, produced and reproduced by human groups and formulates the evolutionary dynamics of such rule systems. In the context of the resurgence of evolutionary thinking in the social sciences in the past few decades, we distinguish between our evolutionary approach and earlier developmental or evolutionist approaches. By evolutionary we mean models of the generation of variety, transmission of cultural information in the form of rules, symbols, and paradigms, and the operation of selection and other processes (migration, distorted or incorrect knowledge transmission, etc.) on the distribution of cultural information within and between populations over time. The key units of information in our evolutionary formulation consists of social rules, the production, reproduction and transformation of which is the core of the theory. In this scheme macro or population-level phenomena and structures are shaped by micro-level processes and in turn are the selective environment for the micro-level processes. Historical developments are seen as the result of complex contingencies rather than representing a tendency for key variables to move toward a static or dynamic Aristotelean natural. In historical developments play a major role in the generation of variety, transmission of rules, institutional arrangements and cultural formations, but often not in the ways they intend or anticipate. A distinctive feature of this theory is that it stresses, on the one hand, material constraints and selective processes and, on the other hand, the capability of human agents to construct to a greater or lesser extent their selective environments, in particular institutions and institutional arrangements, sociotechnical systems, and cultural forms. Such bounded constructionism refers not only to the agential powers of actors but also the constraints on agency and the limited capacities of actors in any given context to adapt, reform, or transform social rule systems and, thereby, to affect the evolution of the sociocultural systems. Depending on the pattern and 195

196 balance of selection, migration, innovation, recombination, and transmission, the prevalence of various rules in the cultural system remain stable or change. Reproduction usually occurs when the implementation of a rule system generates sufficient returns (quality, quantity, and diversity) to sustain and reproduce the system. The reproductive success of any particular rule or rule system is measured in terms of fitness based on its ability in a given social and physical environment to compete successfully with alternative rule systems. Reproducible rules satisfy multiple criteria of fitness including the requirement that they are understandable and implementable. In other words, the rules work or appear to work effectively in interaction processes and in the social and material developments they generate. In this sense, fitness is largely a relative term. Rule systems that satisfy a set of selection criteria internal to a group or collectivity may fail, however, in the face of stringent external or environmental selection. For instance, established and valued practices of a group, nation, or the entire global community can result over the long run in ecological collapse or sociopolitical or economic disintegration. Innovations that are regressive or non-adaptive within the collective context may entail some improvements that, however, are inadequate in the face of other selection criteria characteristic of, for instance, a highly demanding or competitive environment. Many social innovations are experiments in this sense and may be regressive in terms of the criteria of reproductive success (in other words, numerous innovations are tried, few succeed over the long-run). Human agency plays a key role in each of the major mechanisms of sociocultural evolution, in particular. Agency in the generation of variety. Evolutionary processes are based on variability in the rule systems of a culture. There are several possible sources of variation in any given rule system. One is error, the miscopying of a rule from actor to actor, community to community. Another is migratory movement, where a community acquires new rules introduced by agents from outside the community. But while both of these mechanisms are certainly important, they do not capture the full range of human creativity and the rapid, complex paths of sociocultural change. Agency, in the form of human innovation and problem-solving processes, provides a mechanism for generating change in rule systems that is often far more powerful than error or migration, one that encompasses the dynamic, inventive, and often playful, character of human activity. This is made particularly apparent in many sociopolitical revolutionary developments; this is also apparent in directed problem-solving activities such as the development of new theories, new technologies, and institutional reforms human activities that are largely neglected by most contemporary evolutionary theories. Such directed problem-solving and transformative processes obviously differentiate a sociocultural theory of evolution from biological evolutionary theory. Agency in selection processes. Actors structure the selective environment. They introduce new institutional arrangements, technological systems, infrastructures, and regulatory regimes, among other major formations, thus defining the conditions for the operation of agency in the future. Such selective environments constrain action possibilities, setting limits on agency. But the environments are not simply constraining. They also provide opportunities and facilitate certain types of activity. The selective environments allocate resources to actors, which they may use (decide to use) in innovative ways, for instance, by restructuring particular social systems 196

197 or establishing new systems. Human agents thus play a direct role in societal selection processes, for example, through recruitment processes, through directly exercising power and control, and through dealing with problems and challenges in contingent and ad hoc ways (rather than allowing institutionalized values, policies, and practices to deal with the problems). Role of agency in the replication and diffusion of rules. Replication is socially organized through the institutionalization and reproduction of rule complexes, and depends on establishing and sustaining not only the commitment of key actors to, but also their level of knowledge of, the rules and the situations in which the rules are to be implemented, maintained, and replicated. In other cases, a large proportion of those involved must be committed and knowledgeable if successful reproduction of social order(s) such as institutional arrangement(s) is to take place. Reproduction also depends on the power and resource base that enable those involved to effectively execute as well as enforce the rules. The social and physical environments in which institutionalized activities are carried out operate selectively so that, in a given time and place, the institutional arrangements tend to either persist, or decline and possibly disappear. The processes of establishing and maintaining a rule system may be organized by a ruling elite that allocates resources and directs and enforces the activities of maintenance and reproduction. Many formal institutions are maintained, at least in part, through relatively well-defined and organized prescriptions and enforcement, as well as through systematic socialization and recruitment practices. Institutional reproduction may also be organized with a broad spectrum of participants engaged in processes of knowledge transmission, socialization, and sanctioning as well as the fostering of institutional loyalties. Typically, institutional reproduction takes place through both elite direction as well as the engagement of non-elite members. Whenever elites and other participants (including peripheral groups) stand in opposition to one another, this generates not only tensions but also uncertainty about the effective maintenance or reproduction of institutional orders, and raises the possibility of radical structural transformation or revolution (Burns and Dietz, 2001). In general, power resources, knowledge, and commitment are key factors in the consolidation and maintenance of rule systems or institutional arrangements. A new order will be institutionalized that is successfully established, maintained, and replicated to the degree that the power-holders (and their policies and rules) together with their supporters and allies (cf. Stinchcombe, 1968): effectively control the emergence and selection of leaders, successors to themselves; control socialization for elite positions as well as for key groups on which the social order depends (the military, judiciary, and possibly religious and educational groups as well as economic elites); effectively control the conditions of incumbency and career patterns of participants in key governance structures; inspire awe, respect, and a sense of legitimacy for the order and its elites. Cultural transmission has a variety of properties that give a dynamic to social rules independent of advantages (fitness) associated with their realization in practice. This de-coupling of sociocultural developments from conditions or changes in the material environment can operate, however, only for limited periods of time or in particular contexts. Although there may be no immediate societal response to changes in the physical or social environment for example, resource depletion, climatic change, or geopolitical developments the material environment still has 197

198 a direct impact on activities essential to the long-term sustainability of a set of societal institutions. Collectivities may of course fail to adapt to physical or social environmental changes, and instead are bypassed, absorbed, or eliminated by other more successful collectivities. On the other hand, many changes in rules and institutional arrangements take place without environmental stimuli or pressures. Agents may take initiatives based on symbolic considerations, social competition, or power struggles to alter rules, rule enforcement, and transmission processes that affect performance levels and long-term sustainability. Such social processes may lead to deviation from a previously successful match between the sociocultural order and the social and material environments, a match that had enabled earlier long-term successful performances and robust reproduction. Thus, sociocultural evolutionary processes need not result in more advantageous or efficient social rule systems. Historically, a number of initially (or apparently) successful cultural institutional frames have ended in substantial maladjustments and even self-destruction, as, for instance, the histories of the Communist and Nazi orders point up. Sociocultural innovation and dynamics can result in practices that alter the natural environment negatively, even self-destructively (as in the Easter Island phenomenon [see note 7]). The theory implies then that institutional arrangements and sociocultural formations are not necessarily optimally adaptive to their environment, nor is the direction of rule change necessarily toward optimality. In sum, ASD draws on the evolutionary concept of selective mechanisms but incorporates the central role of human agency in evolutionary processes. It considers not only material/ecological selective mechanisms but agential and social structural mechanisms. In general, human agency plays a major role in many socio-cultural and material evolutionary processes. We emphasize that there are multiple selective mechanisms: Agential, social structural, and material/ecological. Evolutionary developments are creative as well as destructive (self-destructive). The ASD theory of sociocultural evolution, as opposed to earlier developmental or evolutionist theories, allows considerable play for the creative/destructive action of individual and collective actors. It also recognizes and conceptualizes the conditions under which such agency will be constrained by the natural world, by the structural limitations of a sociocultural system, and by the powers exerted by other agents. These relationships define, in part, the mix of structural determinism and human agency or freedom that characterize human history. Selected Publications T.R.Burns and T. Dietz 2001 Revolution: An Evolutionary Perspective. International Sociology, Vol. cv16, No. 4: T. R. Burns and T. Dietz 1992 "Cultural Evolution: Social Rule Systems, Selection, and Human Agency." International Sociology, Vol. 7: T. R. Burns and Tom Dietz 1992 "Human Agency and the Evolutionary Dynamics of Culture." Acta Sociologica, Vol. 35:

199 F.H. Buttel, T. R. Burns, and T. Dietz 1990 Evolutionary Theory in Sociology: An Examination of Current Thinking. Sociological Forum, Vol. 4: T. R. Burns and A. Midttun 1992 "Institutionelle Dynamik: Ein evolutionärer Ansatz.", Journal fur Sozialforschung, Vol. 32: T. R. Burns and Tom Dietz 1992 "Technology, Sociotechnical Systems, Technological Development: An Evolutionary Perspective." In M. Dierkes and U. Hoffman (eds.), New Technology at the Outset: Social Forces in The Shaping of Technological Innovations. Frankfurt/Main: Campus. 199

200 Note 27. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT The literature on the concepts sustainability and sustainable development is vast. These influential concepts emerged out of political and administrative processes, not scientific ones. Like the concept of development itself, sustainable development has been a contentious and contested concept, not only with respect to controversies between advocates of capitalism and those of socialism, between industrialized and developed countries, or between modernization advocates and their diverse opponents. In other words, to earlier contentious issues have been added environmental issues. These have been and continue to be divisive, for instance between those who advocate constraining or blocking socio-economic development in order to protect or reclaim the environment, and those who stress the need of socio-economic development to alleviate poverty and inequality, if necessary at the expense of the state of the environment. Historically, the linkage of sustainability and development has been, in large part, the result of global political and administrative processes and the diverse interests driving these processes. The term sustainable development was coined as a political-administrative term to bridge differences between developed and developing countries in the context of UN negotiations and resolutions. The UN World Commission on Environment and Development (hereafter, World Commission), chaired by Gro Harlam Brundtland (former Norwegian Prime Minister), produced an influential report in 1987, Our Common Future (World Commission, 1987). The Brundtland Commission had been established by the UN in 1993 in response to growing awareness and concerns of the deterioration of the human environment and natural resources at the same time developing countries were pushing for higher levels of economic growth (with the likelihood of increased damage to the environment). The Commission was to address the environmental challenge as it was intertwined with economic and social issues. i The Commission concerned itself with environment and growth/development as well as a number of related issues. The term sustainability development was intended to build bridges between the economic, ecological, and social areas of concern. Above all, the concept was meant to refer to development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising (or jeopardizing) the ability of future generations to meet their needs [World Commission, 1987]. (Numerous other definitions have been proposed; see Burns (2015), among others. During the course of negotiations, the developed or industrialized countries stressed, in general, the need for societal constraints and the strict regulation of hazardous emissions and waste management, the mitigation of resource depletion and environmental degradation generally. The developing countries, on the other hand, stressed their ambitions for economic growth and development, even if it entailed hazardous emissions and environmental degradation. The Brundtland report (World Commission, 1987) stressed that sustainable development requires the promotion of values that define consumption standards within the bounds of the ecological acceptable and to which all can reasonably aspire. Finally, the Report argued that economic growth is a necessity in developing countries, while economic growth should be curbed in the developed parts of the world. Of particular significance, the report brought the problem of environmental deterioration and ruthless exploitation of natural resources into the global context of the relations between North and South. ii Thus, issues of equity and distributive justice were raised and became part and parcel of global discourse. It is not feasible to construct a precise definition of sustainable development, based on entirely technical or ecological criteria; concepts such as sustainable development and 200

201 sustainability are normative and political ones, much like democracy, "social justice", "equality," "liberty", etc. rather than precise, scientific concepts; as such, they are contested and part of struggles over the direction and speed of social, economic, and political initiatives and developments. Consequently, sustainability, as a normative and political concept, is used, among other things, to refer to a fair distribution of natural resources among different generations as well as among populations of the world today. It has also concerned values and 'rights' to existence of other species as well as notions about how much environmental capital one generation should bequeath to the next. In the language of policymaking, many refer to the three pillars or fields of sustainable development: economic functioning and prosperity, social welfare and justice, and environmental protection. The difficult challenge is to determine how one balances or combines these in a sustainable way, particularly since under many conditions they are contradictory: economic growth versus environmental protection and conservation, or limited growth versus increased public welfare and distributive justice. The concept's power and also contentiousness relates to it bringing together these apparently contradictory environmental, economic and social imperatives emphasizing, "Its contestation arises both from the emphasis placed on these three imperatives and from the difficulties encountered in the practical application of the concept. Doubts have been raised about whether maintaining a given level of natural capital is compatible with maintaining or improving welfare per capita (at least for some measures of welfare). Selected Publications T. R. Burns Sustainable Development: Agents, Systems and the Environment. Current Sociology, 2016, Vol. 64 (#6), in press. (e-publication, September2015) T. R. Burns and N. Machado 2016 A Sustainable Development Perspective On Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction. To appear in Ilan Kelman (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation, Kelman, I., Burns, T.R. and Machado des Johansson, N. (2015) Islander innovation: A research and action agenda on local responses to global issues. Journal of Marine and Island Cultures Vol.4, Kelman, I., Rosa, E., Burns, T., Machado, N., Olsson, L. et al. (2014). Millennium Aliance for Humanity and the Biosphere (MAHB): Integrating Social Science and the Humanities into Solving Sustainability Challenges. In M. Manfredo, J. Vaske, A Rechkemmer, and Ester Duke (red.) Understanding Society and Natural Resources Berlin/New York: Springer Berlin/Heidelberg T.R. Burns Sustainable Development 2013 Sociopedia. International Sociological Association s e-encyclopedia. London: Sage Publications T. R. Burns and Nina Witoszek 2012 Sustainability: A Humanistic Agenda. Journal of Human Ecology, Vol.39(2):

202 T. R. Burns 2009 The Irony of EU Climate Change Policy. In: Schneider, S.H., Rosencranz, A., Mastrandrea, M.D., Kuntz-Duriseti, K. (Eds.) Climate Change Science and Policy, Washington, D.C.: Island Press. R. de Man and T. R. Burns 2006 Sustainability: Supply Chains, Partner Linkages, and New Forms of Self-Regulation. Human System Management, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1-12 J. Nikoloyuk, R. De Man, and T. R. Burns 2010 Sustainable Palm Oil: The Promise and Limitations of Partnered Governance Journal of Corporate Governance, Vol. 10, No. 1, T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns, P. DeVille 1977 "The Oil Crisis and the Emerging World Order: The Structuring of Institutions and Rule-Making in the International System." Alternatives: A Journal of World Policy, 3, T. Baumgartner, T. R. Burns and P. DeVille1975 "Middle East Scenarios and International Restructuring: Conflict and Challenge." Bulletin of Peace Proposals, 6: Note 28. THE ASD PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL SYSTEM ADAPTATION TO DISASTER RISKS AND CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE LIMITS OF ADAPTATION The ASD team of Burns and Machado (2016) utilized a sustainable development perspective in a critical systems analysis of the major policy conceptions of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation. The concepts of sustainability and sustainable development were applied in relation to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Sustainability entailed apply the social system that encompasses the multiple functionalities of a social system and their interrelationships in particular environmental contexts. The systems perspective is applied in our consideration and analysis of disaster risk reduction (including climate change adaptation) and sustainable development. Section 1 introduces briefly sustainability and sustainable development, followed by a brief presentation of the theory of complex social systems (section 2). The theory conceptualizes interdependent subsystems, their multiple functionalities, and the agential and systemic responses to internal and external stressors on a social system. Section 3 considers disaster risk reduction (DRR) (including climate change adaptation (CCA)), emerging in response to one or more systemic stressors. It illustrates these with disaster risk reduction in the cases of food and chemical security regulation in the EU. CCA is illustrated by initiatives and developments in the Gothenburg Metropolitan area, which goes beyond a limited CCA perspective, taking into account long-term sustainability issues. Section 4 discusses the limitations of DRR (including CCA), not only their technical limitations but economic, sociocultural, and political limitations, particularly viewed from a sustainability perspective. It is argued DRRs are only partial subsystems and must be considered and assessed in the context of a more encompassing systemic perspective. Part of the discussion is focused on the 202

203 distinction between sustainable and non-sustainable DRRs. Section 5 presents a few concluding remarks about the importance of a systemic perspective in analyzing DDR (including CCA) and issues of sustainability. The systemic model identifies hazards and opportunities for DRR including CCA as well as risk reduction for other challenges. DRR and CCA as well as other systems or subsystems entail constructions (or re-constructions) of subsystems for the purpose of response to stressors and involve such operations as avoiding, regulating/blocking, reduction of vulnerability, transforming the stressors and/or the social system (see Table 1). The research analyzes in terms of our social system model the limitations of DRR and CCA, not only their technical limitations but economic, socio-cultural, and political limitations, particularly viewed from a sustainability perspective. It is argued DRRs are only partial subsystems and must be considered and assessed in the context of a more encompassing systemic perspective. Part of the analysis is focused on the distinction between sustainable and non-sustainable DRRs. We emphasize the importance of a systemic perspective in analyzing DDR and CCA in relation to issues of sustainability. The research then conceptualizes the restructuring or transforming a given system in order to adapt to or to overcome stressors such as climate change or other global environmental change (GEC), reducing exposure to hazards, reducing vulnerability, reducing or repairing damages to the system or system components effectively. System adaptation/transition may accomplish then a reduction in a stressor or vulnerability to it. A systems perspective enables us to identify agential, social structural, and political factors relating to system stressors such as destruction of infrastructure, weather changes, new disease vectors, and other vulnerabilities to them and how major agents in a system respond to these with strategies to overcome or perhaps fail in their efforts. In particular: Multiple powerful agents -- those controlling essential resources and expertise in the system are in many (but not all instances) mobilized and coordinate in addressing the hazards and vulnerabilities (and to overcome barriers and opposition to adaptation and systemic transition). That is, mobilizing and coordinating agents try to gain access to essential resources, authorities experts, stakeholders, etc. to address system stressors. There are typically multiple adaptations to one or more stressors: for instance, in the case of climate change, flood control response may be combined with retrofitting buildings to be more robust or less vulnerable to moisture and mildew. Thus, we emphasize not only the importance of agents and their culture, capabilities, and access to resources but also the complex social systems in which agents interact and upon which they operate. A complex social system has populations of social actors, rule regimes of social and cultural structures, resources (materials and technologies), and multiple production processes in a social and ecological context (as represented in Figure 1). 203

204 Figure 1: Multi-factor model of social system response to stressors SOCIAL AND ECOLOGICAL CONSTEXT Avoidance Stressors (internal and external), e.g., Climate change, volcanoes, hazardous-chemicals, risky foods, armed conflicts Resources, ecological services Regulation Transformation DRR INCLUDING CCA SUBSYSTEMS Multiple interrelated subsystems: economic, socio-cultural, sociotechnical, social ecological with participation of multiple agents in different subsystems and roles, making up social structures and production functions and other key processes Conceptualizing judging, modeling, designing, constructing Particular DRR (including CCA) subsystems In sum, the ASD systems perspective has been applied to a consideration and analysis of disaster risk reduction (including climate change adaptation) and sustainable development. The ASD model conceptualizes interdependent subsystems, their multiple functionalities, and the agential and systemic responses to internal and external stressors on a social system. Such responses were illustrated by consideration of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA)), emerging in response to one or more systemic stressors (see Figure below). These subsystem constructions were launched and developed by agents in order to deal with climate change and other system challengers. But many system functions do not relate directly to climate change or DRR. Sustainable development entails a more systemic perspective that encompasses multiple subsystems, which are differentiated and have diverse functionalities. 204

205 Note 29. REVOLUTIONS ASD research on an evolutionary theory of the formation, alteration, and transformation of social rule systems such as normative orders and institutional arrangements. The theory specifies processes of the generation of variety in social rules, retention and transmission of rules, and the selection of rules and rule systems. It stresses the role of human agents in generating variety and change, in structuring and manipulating selection processes and in the diffusion and transmission of new systems. 1. Agential Directed Problem-solving and Selection The research on revolutions applies evolutionary theory to problems of conceptualizing and analyzing revolution, that is, major transformations of social orders. We focused on cases of agential driven processes of transformation. Three general types of agent generated change have been identified and illustrated: (1) A dominant elite changes their paradigm of social order and uses its power to bring about transformation of the existing order; (2) Through a power shift, an established elite is replaced by an elite or coalition of elites with a different paradigm of social order which frames and guides the establishment of new institutional arrangements. These two types of transformation typically entail decisive events and actions, carried out by identifiable agents engaged in relatively well-defined founding moments. They are "legislative" in character. (3) Organic transformation entails the accumulative and aggregate effect of small actions and developments that add up to a major macrotransformation. The three types of transformation entail directed problem-solving and adaptation such as the development of new theories or paradigms, new technologies, and institutional reforms. Variety is generated in a way very different from undirected forms envisioned in biological evolutionary theory. Also different is the role of key concepts such as institutionalized social power, competition for power, and uintended consequences of directed problem-solving. In particular: (1) The distribution of systemic power enables certain agents to introduce (or to block) problem-solving and innovation processes; (2) Social competition among revolutionary agents drives and radicalizes directed problem-solving and transformation processes; (3) Directed problem-solving and adaptive processes in complex systems make for unintended, often problematic, consequences. 2. Paradigm Shifts and Societal Transformations: Meta-Power and Social Structuring How do major societal transformations come about, for instance in the case of systems of governance and regulation, which are key components of social paradigms? This section identifies several of the mechanisms of change. All of them are observable in initiatives to reduce some of the impacts of the human footprint on local, regional, and global environments. One mechanism, on which we will focus because of its centrality to and extensiveness in the sustainability revolution, is what we refer to as organic transformation (in a certain sense, from bottom up, but this is very misleading since many collective agents involved are very large and should not be understood as grassroots ). In spite of a great deal of excellent social science and sociological research on social change and transformation, there remain gaps and challenges. One of these shortcomings, which some of my collaborators and I have addressed in other theoretical and empirical research concerns several key mechanisms of social system formation and change, as 205

206 presented below (Burns & Dietz 2001, Burns & Stohr 2011b). The research also identifies a few key drivers explaining how social systems are established, maintained or changed through power, knowledge, and cooperation as well as contestation/conflict processes (Carson et al. 2009, Burns & Hall 2012, Burns & Carson 2002). 3. Mechanisms of Social Order Formation and Transformation Social systems are characterized by their institutional arrangements, populations of differentiated agents, organized forms of power, diversity of knowledge, and conflict/struggle within and over the systems (Burns 2006, Burns & DeVille 2007). Of particular interest in sociological and social science research are shifts from one system regime to another, for instance from state or public governance of goods to private (e.g., privatization of electricity or gas in the EU), or from a loosely regulated market regime (such as food in the EU) to a tightly regulated markets treated as a commons (for example, the security and public health aspects of food in the EU after the mad cow and other crises) (Carson et al. 2009). There are several major processes whereby a societal regime may be formed or reformed (Carson et al. 2009, Burns & Dietz 2001). Key factors concern not only power (and agents exercising power) and their values and interests but also the formulation and development of a paradigm concerning the design and functioning of societal and sectorial governance. The paradigm entails a type of knowledge, although the knowledge need not be necessarily correct or contribute to effective performance of the governance regimes. Conditions of power, knowledge (paradigms), and conflict are distinguished below in a consideration of the transition/transformation of social orders (with multiple governance systems) Dominant Power (Autocracy) Combined with a Shift in the Agent s Cognitive- Normative Framework83 A hegemonic agent (or alliance) adopts or develops (as a result of a learning or persuasive process) a new governance paradigm, using its power to establish and maintain the paradigm. This may operate locally, regionally, or globally (e.g., the USA at Bretton Woods after World War II is a global example; a more local instance would be business firm headed by a powerful executive (see below)). The hegemonic agent is able to launch a new paradigm by virtue of its position (although, typically, within some constraints). We have found in our investigations that this mechanism works in public sector systems as well as in the private sector. For instance, in the latter case, when the CEO of BP became convinced (through the influence of an external ENGO (environmental non-government organization) of the effectiveness of a company emissions trading system, he introduced and implemented it (Carson et al. 2009). In sum, under these power conditions, a dominant agent in a social system is able to initiate a new paradigm in order to deal with policy failures, problem-situations, or threats to 83 The domination may be based on administrative power, coercion, wealth, charismatic authority, etc. Of course, the resources and control activities differ significantly with the different modalities of power. Their limitations and vulnerabilities to erosion or collapse differ as well. 206

207 regime power, or opportunities for gain.84 Stinchcombe (1968) stresses the structural factors (including the power positions of actors in social structures) which enable them to initiate developments of new organizational arrangements within existing social structures. Of course, the agent may or may not have an interest in such initiatives or lacks sufficient political will (commitment to override other interests and values which she has) Power Shifts A shift in power takes place, and a new group or leadership assumes power bearing a different paradigm than the previous regime. The shift of power may occur through a democratic process (e.g., elections or a decision of a parliamentary body), a negotiation between elites, coup d état, or revolution. The pattern in a transformation with elite replacement is typically one of more or less open struggle for, and ultimately a shift in, domination relationships. A group, organization, or movement with a new paradigm of social order takes political power. These shifts may take place through the replacement of elites with relatively few persons or groups involved; or they may take place with substantial public participation, as in popular revolutions. Elsewhere several of my collaborators and I have considered transformative coup d état, popular revolutions including the Velvet Revolutions as illustrations of paradigm change associated with major power shifts (Burns & Hall 2012, Burns & Dietz 2001) A New Order Is Established Through Multi-Agent Negotiation (Possibly with Mediation or Some Arbitration in Relation to Conflicting Parties) The negotiation may be a rather simple bilateral negotiation, or it may be a complex multiagent negotiation process. Coleman (1998) and others (Carson et al. 2009) have demonstrated that, for instance, corporatist governance arrangements lend themselves to the cumulative, negotiated, problem-solving trajectory in bringing about policy paradigm changes, for instance in Canadian agricultural policy and programs. Norwegian and Swedish economic and labor-market policies and programs set up through neo-corporatist tri-partite bargaining (business, labor, and government) functioned in similar ways, capable of establishing new regimes (reforms) but ones which were accomplished through multi-lateral negotiation and compromise rather than dramatic shifts in power. Coleman (1998) contrasts, for instance, governance shifts based on negotiation with shifts based on power replacement: Following Risse-Kappen and Scharpf, we demonstrated that corporatist policy networks lend themselves to the cumulative, negotiated, problem-solving trajectory to paradigm change whereas state-directed or pressure group pluralist networks are 84 The paradigm(s) of modernization has been imposed selectively a recurrent pattern of social transformation since the Industrial Revolution: Among others, the Meiji revolution in Japan (1868), Haile Selassie s transformation of Ethiopia ( ), Pahlavis Shahs ( ) restructuring of Iran, and Gorbachev s initiatives launching glasnost (opening) and perestroika (restructuring). Transformations characterized by re-orientation of a ruling elite entail then processes of learning, conversion, and entrepreneurship. Under the direction of the elite adhering to a new paradigm, a new institutional order is launched and unfolds. A major structural feature of such transformations is the more or less intact domination by a ruling elite, at least initially (unintended developments take place, including erosion of elite power as an unintended consequence of some promising innovations). 207

208 more likely to be associated with crisis-driven changes Elsewhere several collaborators and I have empirically investigated and analyzed paradigm shifts through multi-agent negotiation (exemplified by the Kyoto Treaty, the establishment of the international Sustainable Palm Oil Roundtable involving multiple stakeholders, among others) (Carson et al. 2009, Nikoloyuk et al. 2010) Paradigm Shift Through Diffusion and Emulation ( Organic Transformation) The first three types of paradigm transformation are characterized typically by a few identifiable, more or less organized agents, whether with few or many participants, and substantial scope of power. The transformations, even if drawn out over considerable periods of time, have a decisive character. Through particular collective actions, a new order is legislated and constructed, provided there are sufficient resources and a feasible design. A contrasting modality is observable when a new type of social system is established through processes of diffusion and emulation (mimetic function) under decentralized conditions in which a multiplicity of agents make autonomous, yet similar decisions to shift to a new paradigm. On an aggregate level, there is an emergent development the process results in transformations of prevailing governance paradigms with different agents, goals, methods, and technologies. Such organic types of transformation entail multiple actors initiating change at local, meso-, and macro-levels, without obvious coordination or direction, although the actors are typically embedded in communication and other types of networks. The participating actors in the purest case have no intention to bring about the global transformation that they produce together. And the processes of transformation are diffused in time and space. It is difficult, if not impossible, to define a moment of change or transition. There are spatial and temporal continuities, at the same time that in a larger perspective, transformation emerges accomplished through the spontaneous, uncoordinated actions of many social agents at different levels. Although an organic revolution is not directed or determined at a global or macro-level, macro-institutional conditions and polices (forming a context) are likely to affect the course of the transformation, and may provide a certain directedness for many spontaneous processes. 208

209 Note 30. THE SUSTAINABILITY REVOLUTION This body of work argues that there is an ongoing "sustainability revolution" sharing some features, in particular its organic character, with the early industrial revolution. It concludes by addressing the question of what are the similarities and differences between the sustainability and industrial revolutions. And whether the sustainability revolution will be accomplished before the earth is no longer able to sustain current populations at current unequal levels of welfare The Emerging Sustainability Revolution Today we are witnessing the initial stages of a new societal revolution comparable in scale and significance to the industrial revolution. Tens of millions of people are considering and adopting new conceptions, goals, techniques and technologies, and practices relating to a wide spectrum of environmental concerns and developments. The ongoing paradigm development a gradual shift from the economistic, industrialization paradigm to one or more forms of a sustainability paradigm entail the establishment of new ways of thinking, acting, organizing, and regulating (in part, the establishment of a new cognitive-normative discursive framework and context). Sustainability ideas, norms, and values permeate an ever-increasing part of modern life and have a significant impact on everyday thinking and practices in substantial parts of the world. This is occurring not only in developed countries but also in developing ones such as China, India, and Brazil. From the 1960s there has been rapidly increasing global awareness and concern about damage to the environment Rachel Carson s book (1962) the UN Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972), the 1987 Brundtland report (The World Commission 1989), the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)), and so on. The Stockholm Declaration was formulated at the 1972 Conference a number of guiding principles for the protection of the environment were adopted. These have been critical in the successive development of other instruments. 85 For instance, in 1973 (elaborated 1978) there was global agreement on regulation of the pollution from ships (MARPOL). Also, the Convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area (HELCOM) was signed in Helsinki in 1974 by all the Baltic coastal states. There were other major international agreements as well as national developments. Private initiatives also were launched. The International Council of Chemical Associations (ICCA) established Responsible Care in These and other private, voluntary initiatives did not lead very far, however (although arguably they contributed to the growing attention to and concern about chemicals) (Carson et al. 2009). The Rio Declaration was published in The aims were to reduce unsustainable consumption patterns and to establish precautionary principles in relation to socio-economic 85 Another important outcome of this conference was the agreement to create a new programme for global environmental protection under the United Nations: Then United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). 209

210 and technological developments. Passage of the OSPAR Convention (1992) 86 also took place in this period it was aimed at eliminating the pollution of the North-East Atlantic. Another important development was the launching of negotiations in the mid-1990s to eliminate releases of persistent organic pollutants (POP). The negotiations focused on the 12 most hazardous substances the Dirty Dozen. In a historic agreement (the Stockholm Convention or the POPs Treaty) in Stockholm in May 2001, the nations of the world for the first time agreed to eliminate all releases of a number of highly hazardous chemical substances (Lind 2004). Earlier at Kyoto, 1997, three of the greenhouse gases that were agreed to be regulated are man-made chemicals (HFCs, PFCs, and SF6). Figure 3 indicates the rapid growth of international environmental agreements, some more enforced (and enforceable) than others. From the 1960s, processes of consciousness raising, defining threatening environmental realities, mobilizing agencies, enterprises, and citizens etc. have been taking place, and continue to do so; 87 these processes relate to a cascade of private and public initiatives and accomplishments in addressing environmental issues and challenges. The UN, environmental agencies, many enterprises, public intellectuals, researchers, NGOS, and media have succeeded to a greater or lesser extent in convincing multitudes of people that the environment and human life as well as life generally are threatened on planet earth and action is necessary (this is not to overlook the deniers and opposers who make for formidable resistance (see later) (Baker 1996, 1997, Lafferty 1995). Some instances of radical steps have been accomplished such as the EU chemical directive REACH (2006) in which Swedish EU agents and pressure groups played a significant role in passing it over the opposition of the European, American, and Japanese chemical industries as well as the political leadership of Germany, France, and the UK (Carson et al. 2009). Figure 3. Time trends of international multilateral environmental agreements by agreement type ( ). Diagram source: (Mitchell 2009) Today we are witnessing the early stages of a new societal revolution comparable in scale and import to the industrial revolution. This sustainability revolution sustainalization 86 This Convention concerned the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (from Gibraltar to northern Norway and Russia). 87 There has been growing and widespread concern with conservation, environmental pollution and degradation long before there emerged a sustainability concept, as suggested above. 210