Putting Civil Society in Its Place. Jessop, Bob
Rationality
Source: Jessop (2017)
Reflexive self-organization can be distinguished from the other three types of coordination in terms of the basic rationale for its operations and its institutional logic (see Table 1.2). Thus, market exchange is characterized by a formal, procedural rationality that is oriented to the efficient allocation of scarce resources to competing ends. In contrast, imperative coordination has a substantive, goal-oriented rationality that is directed to the effective realization of specific collective goals established from above. In turn, governance, as defined here, has a substantive, procedural rationality that is concerned with solving specific coordination problems based on a commitment to a continuing dialogue to establish the grounds for negotiated consent, resource sharing and concerted action. As such, it is a form of self-organization that, in contrast to the anarchy of exchange, depends not on purely formal, ex post and impersonal procedures, but on substantive, continuing and reflexive procedures.
Solidarity, conversely, relies on an unreflexive and value-oriented rationality. It has roots in the voluntary giving of public goods, akin to classical liturgical associations (Kelen, 2001: 7–40). Since then it has taken many forms in ancient societies, analysed by Marcel Mauss (1990) in his book on gift giving, and it appears across history in diverse forms of commoning based on solidarity, mutuality and conviviality (de Angelis, 2017). More recently it is seen to depend on attitudes of mutual acceptance, cooperation and mutual support in times of need (Banting and Kymlicka, 2017: 3). Following Banta and Kymlicka (2017: 4), we can distinguish three dimensions of solidarity:
•Civic solidarity: this involves mutual tolerance; a commitment to living together in peace, free from intercommunal violence; acceptance of people of diverse ethnicities, languages and religions as legitimate members of ‘our’ community; and openness to newcomers from diverse parts of the world.
•Democratic solidarity: this involves support for basic human rights and equalities; support for the rule of law and for democratic norms and processes, including equal participation of citizens from all backgrounds; tolerance for the political expression of diverse political and cultural views consistent with basic rights and equalities; and acceptance of compromises among legitimate contending interests.
•Redistributive solidarity: this involves support for redistribution towards the poor and vulnerable groups; support for the full social inclusion of people of all backgrounds to core social programmes; and support for programmes that recognize and accommodate the distinctive needs and identities of different ethnocultural groups.
Governance procedures are concerned to identify mutually beneficial joint projects from a wide range of possible projects, to redefine them as the relevant actors attempt to pursue them in an often-turbulent environment and monitor how far these projects are being achieved, and to organize the material, social and temporal conditions deemed necessary and/or sufficient to achieve them. Moreover, in contrast to the hierarchy of command, reflexive self-organization does not involve actors’ acceptance of pre-given substantive goals defined from above on behalf of a specific organization (for example, a firm) or an imagined collectivity (for example, a community or nation) and the centralized mobilization of the resources to achieve these goals. Instead it involves continued negotiation of the relevant goals among the different actors involved and the cooperative mobilization of different resources controlled by different actors to achieve interdependent goals. For these reasons and to distinguish it from the anarchy of the market and the hierarchy of command, it is also common to refer to these forms of reflexive self-organization as heterarchic in character.
Reflexive self-organization
There are various forms of reflexive self-organization. One way to classify them is in terms of the level of social relations on which they operate. We can distinguish collaboration based on informal interpersonal networks, the self-organization of interorganizational relations, and the indirect steering of the coevolution and structural coupling of intersystemic relations. The individuals who are active in interpersonal networks may represent only themselves and/or articulate the codes of specific functional systems. However, although they may also belong to specific agencies, groups or organizations, they are not mandated to commit the latter to a given line of action. In contrast, interorganizational relations are based on negotiation and positive coordination in task-oriented ‘strategic alliances’ derived from a (perceived or constructed) coincidence of organizational interests and dispersed control of the interdependent resources needed to produce a joint outcome that is deemed to be mutually beneficial. The key individuals involved in interorganizational relations are also empowered to represent their organizations and to negotiate strategies on their behalf for positive interorganizational coordination. Another layer of complexity is introduced by the more programmatic or mission-oriented, decentred, context-mediated nature of intersystemic steering. Whereas noise reduction involves the mediated nature of intersystemic steering, here noise reduction and negative coordination are important means of governance. Noise reduction comprises practices that are intended to facilitate communication and mutual understanding between actors and organizations oriented to different operational logics and rationalities; negative integration involves taking account of the possible adverse repercussions of one’s own actions on third parties or other systems and exercising self-restraint as appropriate.14
Although governance in the sense of reflexive self-organization occurs on all three levels, the term itself is often limited to interorganizational coordination mechanisms and practices. However, where the relevant agencies, stakeholders or organizations are based in different institutional orders or functional systems, problems relating to intersystemic steering will also affect the ‘self-organization of interorganizational relations’ even if they are not explicitly posed as such in this context. Indeed, more generally, all three forms of