Governing sustainable development: the future

Metaphoric Revolution: in quest of a manifesto for governance through metaphor (Part #7)

Sustaining the movement of meaning: It is a truism that development is an essentially dynamic process. It is however less evident that the modes of thought enabling that process need to be equally dynamic if that process is to be sustained (cf Ashby's Law). The dilemma is that any concrete action tends to have to be designed in terms of specific goals, models and institutions which must necessarily be characterized by a certain static quality in conflict with such dynamic flexibility. Loss of dynamism appears to be the price of concreteness. The argument here is that loss of specificity is the price of sustainability.

The points in the previous section make it possible to suggest that a desirable form of governance should focus its attention on the emergence and movement of policy-relevant metaphor-models in society. Instead of regretting or resisting the life-cycle that Galtung identifies, many possibilities lie in enhancing and ordering that movement, which is better conceived as the life-blood of the international community. The challenge lies in bonding metaphors to concepts to provide vehicles for the latter to move effectively through information and institutional systems - as motivating concepts rather than solely as part of the streams of information processed.

Governance is then fundamentally the process of ensuring the emergence and movement of such 'guiding' metaphor-models through an information society, as well as their embodiment in organizational form. Such stewardship also requires sensitivity to the progressive devaluation of any metaphor-model (at the end of its current cycle) and the need to adapt institutions accordingly. The stewardship required of the metaphor-model 'gene pool' is analogous to that currently called for in the care of tropical forest ecosystems - as the richest pools of species and as vital to the condition of the atmosphere.

The merit of this vision of governance is that it does not call for a radical transformation of institutions - which is unlikely in the absence of any major catastrophe. Rather it calls for a change in the way of thinking about what is circulated through society's information systems as the triggering force for any action. At present governance in the international community is haunted by a form of collective schizophrenia -a left-brain preoccupation with 'serious' academic models and administrative programmes, and a right-brain preoccupation with the proclivities of public opinion avid for 'meaningful' action (even if 'sensational'). This schizophrenic battle between models and metaphors could be resolved by legitimating the metaphoric dimensions already so vital to any motivation of public opinion as a vehicle for the models. There needs to be a two-away flow however from model-to-metaphor and from metaphor-to-model, as in any interesting learning process.

In a sense this proposal is only radical in that it advocates the legitimation and improvement of processes which already occur - if only in the sterile and demotivating manner highlighted by Galtung. New metaphors are constantly emerging in the arts and sciences. They are used by politicians. Presumably some of them are used in the existing policy-making processes of governance. But the ecosystem of metaphor-models is an impoverished one. It is totally divorced from the cultural heritage of the world. In terms of Figure 2, there is a need to shift the level of analysis to the Transformative Group (Arena IX). This shift is consistent with the analyses of the 'post-modern' predicament (39).

Configurations of options: the contrast to relativism: This paper is not simply an argument for relativism. The current approach to governance focuses on the attempt to achieve consensus on a single policy which is appropriate -- usually for an unspecified long-time. This does not correspond to the challenge of sustainable development in a learning society. A next stage could best be described in terms of a configuration of metaphors -- each one of which is a distinct mode of perceiving the development process. Such metaphors are to be perceived as complementary -- appropriate to different conditions or different actors -- and implying the necessity to shift between them according to circumstance. No one of them reveals the whole truth, but the pattern of alternation between them provides a best approximation to appropriate action.

The set of alternative structures, between which alternation takes place in any learning cycle, may be more clearly understood in the light of the theory of resonance. Johan Galtung first explored the possibility of using the organization of chemical molecules to clarify the description of social organization (40). He dealt with fixed structures and not with the transition between alternatives. The theory of resonance in chemistry is concerned with the representation of the actual normal state of molecules by a combination of several alternative 'resonable' structures, rather than by a single valence-bond structure. The molecule is then conceived as resonating among the several valence-bond structures, or rather to have a structure that is a resonance hybrid of these structures.

The best illustration of this is a resonance hybrid which is the form that best describes the dynamic structure of the benzene molecule -- basic to most organic substances (see Figure 3).

In such a light, it would be important in policy-making to design a set of complementary policies which would be successively activated or deactivated according to circumstances. Some might be implemented simultaneously by organizations whose countervailing preoccupations would ensure an appropriate pattern of checks and balances. To ensure sustainability of development the focus would be on building complementarity into the design of the set. Such complementarity might necessarily entail that certain policies be opposed to one another or have opposite effects in order to respond appropriately to turbulent conditions in the social environment.

It could be argued that such a set would be increasingly appropriate to sustaining development to the extent that the number ofcomplementary policies composing it -- namely the diversity of policies -- increased. The challenge is to design large coherent policy sets but in which the coherence is defined dynamically rather than statically. The dilemma is that the larger and the move diverse such a set becomes, the more difficult it is to comprehend, and the more difficult it is to understand the dynamics through which its coherence can be recognized. Hence the importance of metaphors to providing insight into coherent patterns of alternation between policies within the set.

Cycles of policies: illustrative metaphors: The difficulty in exploring patterns of alternation between modes of organization is the seeming lack of concrete (as opposed to abstract) examples by which the credibility of such patterns in practice may become apparent. In an effort to clarify the nature of such alternation, some 80 metaphors have been explored elsewhere (41).

In searching for appropriate metaphors to illustrate the need for cycles of policies there is a certain appropriateness to using a process which has traditionally been considered basic to sustaining the productivity of the land, namely crop rotation (see Annex I). The rotation of agricultural crops is an interesting 'earthy' practice to explore in the light of the mind-set which it has required of farmers for several thousand years.

A cycle of seemingly incompatible practices, such as crop rotation, appears coherent to a large extent because of the establishment of a rhythm. Recognition of the complementarity over time is reinforced by the rhythm. Particular practices are eventually recognized to be appropriate to particular phases in the cycle. This sense has been lost in high-tech agriculture, just as it has in contemporary policy-making. Policy-making today, with its short-term focus, may be said to be essentially 'sub-cyclic'. As such it becomes the victim of cycles whose temporal scope it is unable to encompass. Focusing on the design of individual policies, rather than a cycle of policies, effectively builds inappropriateness and nonsustainability into the policy. As an example, a recent newspaper article (entitled 'Scandals grow when a party has ben too long at the trough') states: 'What the Reaganites face...is a growing national feeling that the Republican occupants of Washington's executive branch have been at the trough too long. They have become too caught up in self-interest to pay attention to the public interest'. The same article notes a similar situation with respect to the Democrats in 1952.

Figure 3: Resonance hybrid: an illustration of variable organizational geometry

Sustainable development can only be sustained by a sustainable cycle of policies: This must necessarily encompass the necessary changes of particular policies associated with changes of government. Whilst government needs to be free to change policies in the short-term, a different attitude is required to cultivating and enriching the metaphors which give coherence to the cycle of such policies. In a very real sense those metaphors symbolize for people the significance of the process of human development in which they are engaged -- irrespective of the phases of abundance or austerity by which the policy cycle may be characterized. Without such metaphors, abundance and austerity are simply associated with the promises and failures of different policies rather than as characteristics of a cycle of policies through which the society develops.

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Governing sustainable development: the future