We invite you at CADI, on Friday, 6thMay 2011 at 1800 to take part in a discussion regarding polycentricity, starting from the article written by Dragoș Aligica and Vlad Tarko.
The complex structure of the modern societies results from the coexistence of multiple decision centres, with different interests, perspectives and values, which act in a specific framework of formal and informal rules. These decision centres can be economic agents, political parties, lobby groups, judges, governments etc., and the social order is what emerges from their interaction.
The concept of polycentricity makes possible the analysis of complex social phenomena and offers a method to draw non-ad hoc analogies between different types of social organization, as market economy, democratic process, management in corporations, customary right, international relations and others. These informed analogies produce new research lines and help us to imagine and evaluate new possible types of institutional arrangements. Furthermore, they put the existent debates in a new light.
Each organizing and decision taking method within the complex social systems framework has its own good and bad parts. The difficulty consists in understanding how to take the good parts of an organization form in another decisional framework and how to improve the bad parts. The classic approach was based on analogies with the market economy: Ostrom imagined the introduction of some market type organization within the public administration, Koch Industries or Walmart have created the market type corporatist management, and Hayek emphasized the importance of the customary right, or the way in which Weingast has conceived the federalism aims to show the conditions in which the legal systems will develop in a similar manner with the market. On the other hand, the advocates of the regulated market try to make the economic system resemble more the democratic process or traditional corporatist management. In all these cases, the analogies are intuitive and are not based on strict theories concerning the way it can or can’t be made this kind of analogies. The concept of polycentricity tries to bring exactly this accuracy that was missing until now.
Program
18:00 Vlad Tarko presents
18:20 Discussions
Text
Dragos Aligica & Vlad Tarko, 2011, „Policentricity: From Polanyi to Ostrom, and Beyond”, in Governance).
(available by request because of copyright reasons)
