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CHAPTER 4: Weak cognitive infrastructure
- University of Ottawa Press
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The wooden horse cannot be eaten. — alexandre vialatte It is not sufficient for government to experiment with new mechanisms or collaborative arrangements, such as P3s, to deliver public goods that they have provided directly, or to partition public services into different regimes. Even though these are clearly useful devices, they cannot suffice. An experimentalist philosophy aimed at building open-source, serious-play governance in Canada must have the necessary infrastructure to enable and/or ensure the required deliberation. Such an infrastructure, both formal and informal, exists in part today. We have a variety of loci where multilogues are carried out on different issues. They range from official political forums, such as the House of Commons and the provincial/territorial legislatures, to all sorts of committees and forums organized by diverse groups in civil society. However, there is a great deal of ad-hocery about many of these sites, and many are rather exclusive, being under the control of powerful vested interests. This can make many of them somewhat ineffective in allowing free and honest deliberation, and in achieving much effective influence. CHAPTer 4 Weak cognitive infrastructure (written with Ruth Hubbard) PART II: WEAK INFRASTRUCTURE 107 AND INADEQUATE SCAFFOLDING Issues such as resolving the fiscal imbalance, a government ’s responsibilities and its ability to finance them, or redesigning inadequate health care or education systems may appear to be simple technocratic issues, but such a view is quite misleading. In a diverse and pluralistic world, in which the objectives pursued are many and evolving, and means–ends relationships are ill-defined and unstable, neither the experts nor the populace know what the optimal response to such “wicked problems” ought to be. Discussions with all actors, only partially informed and partially dispassionate as they are, about the institutional infrastructure most likely to ensure effectiveness , efficiency and fairness, are not just an option but a necessity, if appropriate trial-and-error exploration and social learning are to ensue. This sort of discussion is not likely to emerge organically in a world plagued with a great deal of ignorance about the root causes of existing problems. Pitched battles between interest groups, underhanded manoeuvres and shamefully misleading arguments are omnipresent. Mass collaboration cannot materialize unless some reliable information is available, along with places where citizens can interact, deliberate and co-create ideas, arrangements and institutions. Whatever names one may want to give to these exchange sites, any ethnography of the institutional scenery in any country quickly reveals important gaps that prevent the “normal” processes of discussion, collaboration, learning and co-governance from proceeding and evolving as they should under ideal circumstances. Indeed, identifying such gaps has become a cottage industry (Tapscott and Williams 2007). Governance experts have already begun to provide tool kits intended to help in defining ways in which such institutions might be constructed (Ostrom 2005). The central question, then, is to identify the exact nature of these institutional gaps, and to imagine which of these formal or informal forums, agoras and platforms might be put in place or allowed to emerge so [3.144.248.165] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:56 GMT) 108 CRIPPLING EPISTEMOLOGIES AND GOVERNANCE FAILURES that: (1) wherever discussions take place, they start with a credible base of information; (2) open forums exist, if needed, where conversations and debates can take place; and (3) such forums can be constructed in such a way as to enable both the necessary reliability, and the requisite innovation and exploration of new paths that have the potential to create new positive-sum games. Having in place the capacity to explore new possibilities and exploit the arrangements that are already in place is the challenge, and this sort of mix of exploration and exploitation is at the heart of successful social learning (March 1991). In the case of a great number of important issues, there is, in Canada, not only a shortage of credible and objective information, but also of specific places and forums for discussion. In addition, the experimentation needed for unleashing the requisite creativity is suppressed more often than it is promoted. The situation may best be illustrated by the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Chaoulli case. This decision stated that if a citizen is not adequately served by public-sector health care, that citizen has a right to seek such services elsewhere. The Supreme Court’s decision did not state how this should happen, and one might have imagined that there would be discussion within and...