I’ve been interested in the area of improving governance for a long time! On a societal level, there are some organizations and efforts in the space like One Project and RadicalXChange. Unfortunately I’m not aware of research that evaluates the efficacy of various governance models. I’ve been thinking about doing that for quite a few years. Doing that research is a high priority on Roote’s backlog. We haven’t tried getting funding for it yet, but it is somewhat related to our funded Civic Abundance and Web3 & Society initiatives. For example, for Web3 & Society, given the proliferation of alternative governance methods in Web3 as well as the transparent nature of decisions and performance results with DAOs, we can directly assess the efficacy of various DAO governance models.
Rhys (also from Roote) here. Agree with Brendon that there isn’t too much literature evaluating the “efficacy of various governance models”. Some links you may want to look into, Holden:
(This is less about academic research and more about IRL experiments.)
On the non-crypto side, Rob Reich has great thoughts on this. I found this convo between him and Stuart Russell re legitimacy and AI governance helpful. (49:30)
In the spirit of your final experimental point: Long term, I do think a lot of this will just be understood (and computationally modeled) as social groups (bounded by a Markov Blanket) abiding by the Free Energy Principle / Active Inference with Bayesian generative models, co-evolving into evolutionarily stable strategies. But we’re not there yet! 🙂
I believe that governance is a technology. Thus, while there may be no “perfect” governance system, humanity’s knowledge on it will improve greatly over time. That will improve the default governance models used (right now, representative democracy is a very common default with company shareholders, most developed countries, etc.) as well as humanity’s ability to customize governance models to particular situation. Since representative democracy is so commonplace, I think making default models better will produce most of the benefit, rather than the adapting to the context as you mention.
Regarding getting there, as indicated in Holden’s article, governance can be applied to many human systems, not just a government. Governments change, of course, but organizations change faster and emerge at a higher rate. Take public benefit corporations (PBCs) for example. Delaware (the most popular state for incorporation), passed PBC legislation in 2013 and we already have PBCs IPOing.
There are also very creative ways to influence governments with technology. For example, in Taiwan, while the governance model hasn’t changed, the government is deploying technologies like Polis to improve democracy, using it to effectively come up with policy proposals for potentially contentious issues that improve society and enjoy high consensus. I think that developing “add-ons” to entrenched governance models is a decent strategy, and it’s one of the routes that our Civic Abundance project is taking.
I’ve been interested in the area of improving governance for a long time! On a societal level, there are some organizations and efforts in the space like One Project and RadicalXChange. Unfortunately I’m not aware of research that evaluates the efficacy of various governance models. I’ve been thinking about doing that for quite a few years. Doing that research is a high priority on Roote’s backlog. We haven’t tried getting funding for it yet, but it is somewhat related to our funded Civic Abundance and Web3 & Society initiatives. For example, for Web3 & Society, given the proliferation of alternative governance methods in Web3 as well as the transparent nature of decisions and performance results with DAOs, we can directly assess the efficacy of various DAO governance models.
Rhys (also from Roote) here. Agree with Brendon that there isn’t too much literature evaluating the “efficacy of various governance models”. Some links you may want to look into, Holden:
(This is less about academic research and more about IRL experiments.)
Lots of governance experiments are happening with DAOs in crypto. See Vitalik’s back and forth here: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1442039126606311427
Or my response here. I find it helpful to visualize these systems: https://twitter.com/RhysLindmark/status/1446276859109335040 and https://www.rhyslindmark.com/popper-criterion-for-politics/ . Those pieces contain lots of political economy books like The Dictator’s Handbook. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/11612989
More crypto stuff: https://gnosisguild.mirror.xyz/OuhG5s2X5uSVBx1EK4tKPhnUc91Wh9YM0fwSnC8UNcg. These are interchangeable “Modules” that DAOs can use like DeGov. https://otherinter.net/research/ is doing research on DAO governance as well.
On the non-crypto side, Rob Reich has great thoughts on this. I found this convo between him and Stuart Russell re legitimacy and AI governance helpful. (49:30)
Worth differentiating how much groups disagree on what should be (goals) vs. what is (current state). https://twitter.com/RhysLindmark/status/1294107741246517248
This feels close to the work Ian David-Moss et al are doing here https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/tag/effective-institutions-project
Many of the governance issues take the form of one of Meadow’s “system traps” https://bytepawn.com/systems-thinking.html#:~:text=Thinking%20in%20Systems%2C%20written%20by,furnace%20to%20a%20social%20system.
In the spirit of your final experimental point: Long term, I do think a lot of this will just be understood (and computationally modeled) as social groups (bounded by a Markov Blanket) abiding by the Free Energy Principle / Active Inference with Bayesian generative models, co-evolving into evolutionarily stable strategies. But we’re not there yet! 🙂
Beyond social choice theory, not sure there’s a better field you’re looking for. Maybe Political Economy, Public Choice Theory, or Game Theory? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Anywho, good luck and excited to see what you unearth!
I think the problem is not so much to find the perfect governance system (which changes over time and with context) …
… but how to get there from here?
In business schools this is addressed through the research category ‘Management of Change’.
In politics, why it’s easier in France is a perennial topic.
I believe that governance is a technology. Thus, while there may be no “perfect” governance system, humanity’s knowledge on it will improve greatly over time. That will improve the default governance models used (right now, representative democracy is a very common default with company shareholders, most developed countries, etc.) as well as humanity’s ability to customize governance models to particular situation. Since representative democracy is so commonplace, I think making default models better will produce most of the benefit, rather than the adapting to the context as you mention.
Regarding getting there, as indicated in Holden’s article, governance can be applied to many human systems, not just a government. Governments change, of course, but organizations change faster and emerge at a higher rate. Take public benefit corporations (PBCs) for example. Delaware (the most popular state for incorporation), passed PBC legislation in 2013 and we already have PBCs IPOing.
There are also very creative ways to influence governments with technology. For example, in Taiwan, while the governance model hasn’t changed, the government is deploying technologies like Polis to improve democracy, using it to effectively come up with policy proposals for potentially contentious issues that improve society and enjoy high consensus. I think that developing “add-ons” to entrenched governance models is a decent strategy, and it’s one of the routes that our Civic Abundance project is taking.