Complexity and the art of public policy : solving society's problems from the bottom up

319 Pages·2014·3.083 MB·English

by  Colander, David C., Kupers, Roland

C O M P L E X I T Y A N D T H E
A R T O F P U B L I C P O L I C Y

C O M P L E X I T Y
A N D T H E A R T
O F P U B L I C
P O L I C Y
Solving Society’s Problems
from the Bottom Up
D A V I D C O L A N D E R A N D
R O L A N D K U P E R S
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2014 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,
Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street,
Woodstock, Oxfordshire ox20 1tw
press.princeton.edu
All Rights Reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Colander, David C.
Complexity and the art of public policy : solving society’s problems
from the bottom up / David Colander and Roland Kupers.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-15209-7 (alk. paper)
1. Economic policy. 2. Complexity (Philosophy) 3. Evolutionary
economics. 4. Policy sciences. I. Kupers, Roland, 1959– II. Title.
hd87.c65 2014
339.5—dc23 2013038771
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Slate Pro and Verdigris MVB Pro
Printed on acid- free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
PART I. THE COMPLEXITY FRAME FOR POLICY
Chapter 1. Twin Peaks 3
Chapter 2. Government With, Not Versus, the Market 19
Chapter 3. I Pencil Revisited: Beyond Market Fundamentalism 31
Chapter 4. The Complexity Policy Frame 44
PART II. EXPLORING THE FOUNDATIONS
Chapter 5. How Economics Lost the Complexity Vision 67
Chapter 6. How Macroeconomics Lost the Complexity Vision 89
Chapter 7. Complexity: A New Kind of Science? 109
Chapter 8: A New Kind of Complexity Economics? 131
Chapter 9. Nudging toward a Complexity Policy Frame 156
PART III. LAISSEZ- FAIRE ACTIVISM IN PRACTICE
Chapter 10. The Economics of Influence 179
Chapter 11. Implementing Influence Policy 195
Chapter 12. Laissez- Faire Activism 214
Chapter 13. Getting the Ecostructure of Government Right 237
PART IV. THE LOST AGENDA
Chapter 14. Getting the Ecostructure of Social Science
Education Right 259
Chapter 15. The Lost Agenda 270
Notes 281
Bibliography 291
Index 301

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As we discuss in the first chapter, this book was the product of
serendipity— the two of us finding ourselves on a flight together
and discovering how closely our views meshed. Of course serendip-
ity is seldom fully serendipitous, and had Carlo Jaeger, of the Pots-
dam Institute for Climate Impact Research, not invited us both to
the climate policy conference in Berlin, we would have never met.
So in many ways Carlo put us together. Carlo, early on, saw the
implications of complexity work for policy and after reading one of
Dave’s books on complexity called Dave out of the blue when he was
at Princeton and convinced him to become one of the organizers of
the transdisciplinary Dahlem Conference on the role of mathemat-
ics and modeling in the social sciences. Earlier Roland had worked
with Carlo on a study on behalf of the German government that
took a complexity view on the economics of climate change policy
in Europe. Few academics have the breadth and insight of Carlo; he
represents, in many ways, what we have in mind when we discuss in
chapter 13 forming a creative transdisciplinary social science where
researchers are comfortable with the highest level math, but equally
comfortable with what Nicolas Georgescu Roegan called dialectic
concepts— concepts that blend into others and, applying current
technology, require a humanist culture to contextualize.
Once we started writing, we passed drafts on to many friends
and acquaintances, and presented our ideas at numerous confer-
ences and forums. Dave would especially like to thank David Hor-
lacher, Brian Arthur, Katy Delay, Ric Holt, Barkley Rosser, and the
students of Dave’s history of thought classes at Middlebury, who
had lively discussions of early versions of the historical overviews.
Katy, in particular, went through some chapters line by line from
a sophisticated free market supporter’s view and improved the
exposition. Another person Dave would like to thank is Buz Brock,
with whom Dave has discussed many of the ideas here as they were
viii | acknowledgments
contemplating writing a more technical book on the same theme.
They never quite got around to it, but discussing any idea with Buz
is always enlightening, and his ideas about how complexity science
can guide policy are to be found throughout the book.
Roland would especially like to thank Angela Wilkinson, who
helped frame the arguments through many discussions about
integrating irreducible uncertainty into policy and management.
Thanks go to the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment
at Oxford for generously extending a fellowship to Roland during
the writing of this book. The feedback from students while teaching
a Sciences Po MPA class on complexity and public policy together
with Diana Mangalagiu was very valuable. Also special thanks to
Fred Lachotzki, Luciano Pietronero, Alexander Rinnooy Kan,
Sterre van Leer, Laurenz Baltzer, and Yongsheng Zhang. Thanks to
Jan Vasbinder and Ann Florini for reinforcing the complexity and
policy link in Singapore. Finally Roland would like to thank his
father, whose genuine curiosity about the boundaries of economic
policy, after a career as a diplomat and an economist, is a continuing
source of inspiration.
Once we decided to write the book, we contacted Peter Dougherty
and Seth Ditchik at Princeton University Press, and they provided
helpful advice on the audience and level at which we approached the
book. They also played a central role in choosing a title for the book.
As the book progressed, Beth Clevenger helped guide it along. The
copy editor, Joseph Dahm, did a great job.
Finally we want to thank our wives, Patrice and Hester, who were
supportive of the project even though it meant that our minds were
often focused on abstract ideas of complexity rather than the real-
world complexity that fills out everyday life.
PART I
The Complexity Frame for Policy