—Unleashing collaboration
Almost all people on earth are ruled by government systems that were developed centuries ago, which may be obsolete. For example, the constitution of the United States was ratified in 1788, a full 50 years before the first telegram was sent by Samuel Morse in 1838, 115 years before the Wright Brothers first powered airplane flight in 1903, and 140 years before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928, the first antibiotic.
Today we have indoor plumbing, air travel, space exploration, electric automobiles, smartphones, and advanced medical procedures. Technology evolves quickly because many innovations are subjected to selection pressures that test fitness for use. Similarly, we can accelerate the evolvability of government systems by harnessing variability and subjecting government policies to effective selection pressures.
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The objective of this course is to accelerate the evolution of governments to better serve the needs of the people as we harness the wisdom of humanity.
This is a course in the possibilities curriculum, currently being developed as part of the Applied Wisdom Curriculum.
If you wish to contact the instructor, please click here to send me an email or leave a comment or question on the discussion page.
Evolution occurs when variability is subjected to selection pressures.
In biological evolution living organisms are selected primarily based on reproductive success. In his book The Evolution of Everything[1] , Matt Ridley describes the evolution of the universe, morality, life, genes, culture, the economy, technology, the mind, personality, education, population, leadership, government, religion, money, the internet and the future. Each of these systems evolves based on specialized generation, variation, and selection mechanisms.
Evolvability is the capacity of a system for adaptive evolution. Evolvability increases when more variation is generated and when selection pressures are enhanced.
While these ideas are well studied in biological systems, they are not often analyzed and applied to governance systems. This course applies these concepts to governance systems.
Generating variation is the first component of evolvability. There are several existing and potential sources of variation in governments. These include 1) history, 2) comparisons, 3) leadership and policy changes, and 4) experimentation. These are discussed further below.
Historians, political philosophers, political scientists, and others have studied the structure and results of government systems throughout human history. Political historians study the political history of the world and the history of political thought. Much is known about the results of various government approaches. By applying criteria for evaluating government results, the effectiveness of various government structures is evaluated. As we discuss in the sections on democracy, various forms of democracy have provided the best results to date.
Businesses routinely use benchmarking to compare the results of various industry practices and identify best practices. Policy makers, government officials, and citizens have a similar opportunity to practice comparative politics and compare the results of various governments. These are forms of natural experiments. Examples of this work include:
Several specialized comparisons study the performance of various policies. Examples include:
Leadership changes occur because of term limits, elections, succession, coups, or revolution. This provides citizens and researchers with an opportunity to evaluate the results obtained by one leader compared to others. This comparison is often difficult because of the complexity of government and the need to distinguish between local and global effects and short term and long-term effects. Access to reliable information regarding the effectiveness of various policies is often difficult to obtain and evaluate due to propaganda, unreliable reporting, media bias, limited data availability, and the effort required to collect, analyze, and interpret the data. In addition, each of us is constrained by our bounded rationality—the limited capacity of people to direct attention to these issues and make optimal decisions.
Policy changes also take place and provide opportunities and difficulties like those in evaluating leadership changes.
An experiment is a procedure carried out to determine the effectiveness of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Experiments vary greatly in goal and scale but always rely on a repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results.
In a laboratory experiment condition are controlled, one factor to be studied is manipulated and the results are recorded, analyzed, studied, and reported. It is rarely feasible to carry out such experiments in social settings because of the difficulties and ethical concerns of manipulating groups of people. Natural experimental studies are used in these cases.
A randomized controlled trial (RCT) or Randomized Field Trial (RFT) is a form of scientific experiment used to control factors not under direct experimental control. Examples of RCTs are clinical trials that compare the effects of drugs, surgical techniques, medical devices, diagnostic procedures, or other medical treatments.
Participants who enroll in RCTs differ from one another in known and unknown ways that can influence study outcomes, and yet cannot be directly controlled. By randomly allocating participants among compared treatments, an RCT enables statistical control over these influences. Provided it is designed well, conducted properly, and enrolls enough participants, an RCT may achieve sufficient control over these confounding factors to deliver a useful comparison of the treatments studied.
Randomly controlled trials can be used to conduct social experiments, as the following examples show.
The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) is an excellent example of using experimentation to inform policy decisions. The lab is a global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence. J-PAL conducts randomized impact evaluations to answer critical questions in the fight against poverty, and builds partnerships with governments, NGOs, donors, and others to generate new research, share knowledge, and scale up effective programs.
Other organizations conducting actionable research using social experiments include the EdRedesign Lab[4] , and the work of John A. List in performing field experiments in economics.
Experiments in government are carried out in various national and local settings. Ongoing experiments include:
Author Jim Manzi advocates institutionalized social experimentation.[8] Decentralized experimentation would be encouraged and would be subjected to standardized experimental evaluation and reporting to Congress. He suggests conducting as many social policy randomized controlled trials as we do clinical trials, about 10,000 each year.
The evolution of government will depend on the selection pressures each government system is subjected to. Selection pressures have two parts 1) selection criteria—identifying what we want—and 2) selection forces—making changes that progress toward the selection criteria. These are the system feedback mechanisms. Each is described below.
Selection criteria form the basis for choosing the best alternative from several available choices. Evolution is accelerated when useful selection criteria are coupled with effective selection forces. In this section we develop useful criteria for selecting the best government options.
It may be easier to select wise leaders than it is to understand, evaluate, and select various policy options.
In addition to choosing wise leaders, it is helpful to advocate for policy positions that lead to good government and good governance.
The United Nations is playing an increasing role in promoting good governance. According to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, "Good governance is ensuring respect for human rights and the rule of law; strengthening democracy; promoting transparency and capacity in public administration." To implement this, the UN follows eight principles:[9]
Going beyond these general principles, good government is most likely to mean supporting policies that strengthen the democratic processes.
Although not necessarily the best possible governance system, democracy is widely acknowledged as the most effective governance system in wide use today. For example, Derek Bok states “In this regard, it is noteworthy that almost all the countries in the world that rank highest in overall satisfaction with life have been successful democracies for more than 80 years.”[10]
Although democracy is generally understood to be defined by voting, no consensus exists on a precise definition of democracy. Karl Popper says that the "classical" view of democracy is "in brief, the theory that democracy is the rule of the people, and that the people have a right to rule." Kofi Annan states that "there are as many different forms of democracy as there are democratic nations in the world." One study identified 2,234 adjectives used in the English language to describe democracy.[11]
Democratic principles require all eligible citizens being equal before the law and having equal access to legislative processes. For example, in a representative democracy, every vote has equal weight, no unreasonable restrictions can apply to anyone seeking to become a representative, and the freedom of its eligible citizens is secured by legitimized rights and liberties which are typically protected by a constitution.
Freedom House provides this characterization of democracy:
“Democracy means more than just majority rule, however. In its ideal form, it is a governing system based on the will and consent of the governed, institutions that are accountable to all citizens, adherence to the rule of law, and respect for human rights. It is a network of mutually reinforcing structures in which those exercising power are subject to checks both within and outside the state, for example, from independent courts, an independent press, and civil society. It requires an openness to alternations in power, with rival candidates or parties competing fairly to govern for the good of the public as a whole, not just themselves or those who voted for them. It creates a level playing field so that all people, no matter the circumstances of their birth or background, can enjoy the universal human rights to which they are entitled and participate in politics and governance.”[12]
Freedom House has established detailed criteria for evaluating various forms of democracy.[13] These criteria are summarized below:
While the Freedom House characteristics of democracy criteria are extensive, a more extensive set of criteria is used by the V-Dem institute to evaluate democracies around the world. Their document “V-Dem Methodology v11.1”[14] describes their methodology in detail. Interested students can study that document for more detail.
Other authors advocate for additional characteristics including increasing human capital[15] through more effective and relevant education[16], improving our shared knowledge base, increasing emotional intelligence, and increasing our collective intelligence.[17],[18]
Better governance systems attain better results. A governance system can be evaluated by the contribution it makes toward helping the governed organization reach its goals. If the governed organization is a corporation, then the best governance system is the one that results in the most profits, along with consideration of customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, relevant regulations, and social responsibility. For other organizations, the effectiveness of a governance system can be judged by how well the governed organization meets its stated mission. In the case of international, national, state, regional, or local governments the mission will be assumed to be the well-being of the people.
One attractive option recognizes that “There are powerful arguments for making happiness a focal point for government policy.”[19] Because happiness is often fleeting, we propose a more substantial and enduring basis for evaluating and selecting government systems.
Here we suggest that
The government that meets more of the needs of more of the people is the better system.[20]
To be specific, in this definition we use Maslow’s hierarchy of needs[21] as our reference standard for defining the needs of the people. A population where more people are meeting more of their higher-level needs is benefiting from the better governance system. The fewer people who have unmet needs the better. The more people who have high level needs met the better.[22]
Alternative standards might include measures of:
In any case, the question of “what is the better government system?” can be answered empirically rather than hypothetically or speculatively.
Evaluating results would require an independent rating agency, such as the Government Accountability Office, a nationally recognized statistical rating organization, or other organizations, such as Freedom House, to study, analyze, and publish results.
Selection forces—actions that select for the preferred outcome—are the engine of evolution.
Within a nation with a functioning democracy, selection forces include:
Options are more difficult in non-democratic nations. In this case, read the book From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation[24] and complete the final assignment in the Intentional Evolution course. The Wikiversity course Confronting Tyranny may also be helpful.
Imagine how it can be!
This assignment is entirely optional, and it is likely that most students will skip it. The assignment is provided here to stimulate the imagination of interested students.
Students who are interested in learning more about evolving governments may wish to read these books:
I have not yet read the following books, but they seem interesting and relevant. They are listed here to invite further research.