Post-normal governance: an emerging counter-proposal.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to bring together three bodies of interrelated thought (complexity, governance and civics) in order to begin to develop the concept of post-normal governance as a counter-proposal to the notion of managerial ecology. Managerial ecology has developed, or coevolved, with human institutions over the past several decades as a pervasive, but almost implicit, framework for environmental decision-making. It is characterized by top-down, 'command and control', often bureaucratic structures, which can be seen to short-circuit more participative, democratic decision-making. It will be argued, based on insights gleaned from complex systems thinking, that due to the high uncertainty and high decision stakes associated with making decisions within complex systems that a more ethically-sound, 'post-normal' approach to science and decision-making, in which the 'peer community is extended', should be explored. This notion of post-normal science will be contextualized within recent governance literature and related to a civics approach to planning developed by Nelson and others in an effort to explore an extension of Funtowicz and Ravetz' notion of a post-normal science to governance.

L'objectif de cet article est de tenter de reunir trois types de pensees interreliees (complexite, gouvernance et civique) afin d'elaborer la notion de gouvernance post-normale comme contre-proposition a l'ecologie de gestion. Au cours des dernieres decennies, l'ecologie de gestion s'est developpee et a evolue de concert avec les institutions pour devenir un cadre de travail envahissant, et presque implicite, lors des prises de decisions en matiere d'environnement. Elle est caracterisee par des structures descendantes, directes, souvent bureaucratiques, qui court-circuitent les prises de decisions plus democratiques et participatives. En se basant sur la theorie des systemes complexes, cet article soutient qu'a cause du haut degre d'incertitude et des importants enjeux associes a des prises de decisions dans le cadre de systemes complexes plus ethiques, une approche << post-normale >> de la science et de la prise de decision, dans laquelle la << communaute des pairs s'elargit >>, doit etre exploree. Des ecrits recents de Nelson (et d'autres) sur la gouvernance associee a l'approche civique de la planification permettront d'explorer le prolongement logique du concept de science post-normale de la gouvernance de Funtowicz et Ravetz.

Key Words

Complexity, governance, civics, post-normal science, post-normal governance

Introduction and Outline

The postmodern world view, which ... is paralleled in aspects

of new science emphasizing the chaotic, paradoxical

and transient nature of order and disorder, requires an approach

that allows the theory and practice of organization

and management to acquire a more fluid form (Morgan

1993: 282-283).

With major institutions, most recently, and perhaps notably, the National Science Foundation, 'embracing complexity' through their recent biocomplexity funding agenda (NSF 1999), complex systems theory is receiving considerable attention and exposure. Complexity-based conceptual models of ecology, and even human societies--including economic and political models--have expanded the heuristic toolkit of researchers and practitioners alike with concepts that include self-organization, bifurcations, and nested or holarchic (or panarchic) structures of systems, among others. The use of these heuristics and conceptual models, as well as the broader implications of the theory --really a body of interrelated theories--are being explored through a wide variety of disciplines, beyond physics, chemistry, biology, ecology and mathematics from which they were originally conceived. However, their implications can arguably be seen to also question some of the very tenets of traditional modern, 'normal' scientific thought.

The notion of scientific objectivity, for instance, is challenged under a complexity-based, post-normal (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994, Ravetz, 1999b) approach. A top-down, command and control approach, such as managerial ecology, can be challenged on ethical and philosophical grounds from a post-normal perspective. A post-normal approach to decision-making, in fact, requires an extension of the peer community to more ethically address the uncertainty and decision-stakes associated with policy-making and governance in complex systems. Of course, complexity scientists and postnormalists are not the only ones to promote more participatory or democratic approaches to planning and decision- and policy-making. Participatory planning approaches have been advanced by transactive planners, participatory planners, organizational theorists and civic-oriented planners among many others for decades. However, the decades old trend towards integrating public participation--particularly in environmental policy and decision-making--can be seen to be running up against a contrary political-economic trend towards smaller, more stream-lined, efficient government which appears to be making broader public participation less of a public decision-making priority.

Much of the governance and political-economic literature documents this kind of political-economic shift--due, in no small part, to the impacts of economic globalization. Such a shift has generally resulted in a much more corporate or managerial model and an often market-based form of governance--especially when dealing with issues that are often considered externalities, such as the environment. Managerial ecology--defined by Bavington (2002: 5) as the "unquestioned faith in management as the solution to deep seated ecological and social problems"--is linked to this political-economic shift.

In the first of these two theme issues on managerial ecology (Bavington and Slocombe 2002) the authors laid out the problematique of the science, economics, politics and ethics of managerial ecology through explorations of the etymology of the term management, and through perspectives based on the work of Marx, Arendt and Bauman. In his commentary on these papers McMurray (2002) asked the pertinent, 'next' question, "and so ...?". He notes that, "a management regime that gave more than passing attention to its own fallibility would be salutory, for it would be grounded in human kind's boundless ignorance rather than its fragmentary and fleeting knowledge" (McMurray 2002: 74).

It would seem, then, that any attempt at answering the "and so ...?" question and developing a counter-proposal to managerial ecology must contextualize interventions and be cognisant of the inherent complexity of ecological and human social, political-economic systems and our 'fragmentary and fleeting' knowledge of them. This paper attempts to bring together complexity-based, post-normal, political-economic and governance literatures for this purpose. In addition, Nelson's (Dempster and Nelson 2001; Lawrence and Nelson 1999; Nelson 1991) civic approach to planning will be introduced as what seems to be a logical extension of the post-normal agenda. Finally, the related notion of post-normal governance will be proposed.

To begin, several complexity-based heuristics, that can be applied in an attempt to characterize human social and ecological systems will be described. This will provide a context for a short discussion of Funtowicz and Ravetz' notion of post-normal science. This will be followed by a discussion of the implications of elements of the governance, political-economic and globalization literatures as they describe a context for environmental decision-making. This is meant to set the stage for a consideration of Nelson's civic approach to planning and its relation to the concept of post-normal governance.

Complex Systems Thinking

A body of theory has emerged over the last two and a half decades that explicitly addresses the complex, uncertain and inherently pluralistic nature of human socio-economic as well as biophysical systems. The 'new science' or complexity theory refers to a group of interrelated theories--catastrophe theory, chaos theory, hierarchy theory and the theories of self-organization--that have been derived in several scientific disciplines including chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology and ecology. For applications to ecological systems and human social/organizational systems, see Gunderson and Holling (2002) and Jackson (2000), respectively.

It is argued by complex systems theorists that complex systems exist at a threshold between order and chaos, too complex to be treated as machines and too organized to be assumed random and averaged. Newtonian and stochastic conceptual tools, for the sake of mathematical tractability, often seek to eliminate the very complexity and uncertainty (by assuming mechanistic linear causality) and macro-level order (by assuming chaotic or random distribution) that characterize complex systems. The types of errors that result from the potentially inappropriate application of these tools have, to some extent, come to be expected by the general public in policy matters and are often justified away by citing the inadequacy of the data or limitations of a particular technique. The underlying epistemology is not often considered. In fact, many of these represent errors on an epistemological level.