Gilles Paquet: Homo hereticus

Chapter 16. Building Cooperation through Conversation

 151  Chapter 16 Building Cooperation through Conversation  Chris Wilson Introduction Robert Wright (2000) argued that the history of humankind could be characterized by what he called the “vector of life,” the tendency of human beings to evolve larger and more complex systems of social cooperation. The direction of this arrow of history, he said, points clearly toward increasing interdependence and the adoption of non-zero sum relationships. Despite the long and obvious human history of zero sum relationships typified by win-lose interactions, social Darwinism, conflict, and war, this very competitiveness, Wright argued, continues to move humanity toward greater cooperation, to the point where today it struggles with cooperation at a species level and on a global scale. That said, cooperation remains an epic struggle to take advantage of the forces that are driving us together while mitigating the forces that togetherness inspires that also drive us apart. Within this context, Gilles Paquet has made important contributions to enabling us to accelerate this trend of human and organizational cooperation within a modern context. He is an astute observer of the dynamics of governance (which he describes as effective coordination when information, resources, and power are widely distributed) as well as a relentless commentator on public policy and administration. His 1999 book Governance through Social Learning is a compilation of many of his ideas regarding relational governance, and it presents governance as a lens through which one can observe the dynamics of organizational cooperation. Despite his “official” retirement some years ago, Paquet continues to contribute to GILLES PAQUET  HOMO HERETICUS  152  a growing collective narrative about the need to find better ways to live and work together, and especially about how to do so. With respect to a recent book of Paquet’s on governance, The New GeoGovernance : A Baroque Approach, published in 2005, H. George Frederickson (2006) commented in Public Administration Times that Paquet “creates a wordpicture of the highest quality, and his portrayal of our likely governance future is a conceptual tour de force”. Frederickson went on to say that Paquet had advanced the work of leading thinkers and observers, such as Robert Axelrod, Harlan Cleveland, and Peter Drucker, on collaborative governance, especially in the area of public administration, through his emphasis on the technologies and mechanisms of geo-governance, by which Paquet means the many ways in which (1) individuals and institutions (public, private, and civic) manage their collective affairs in space, (2) diverse interests accommodate and resolve their differences, and (3) these many actors and organizations are involved in a continuing process of formal and informal competition, cooperation, and learning in space. There is no doubt that Paquet’s work continues to underscore Wright’s theme. At the same time, his special contribution has been in the area of mechanisms of cooperation, reflecting a degree of pragmatism uncharacteristic of many of his peers and unusual for a non-practitioner. Governance Today Today’s fast-paced, globalized world demands that people in advanced democracies such as Canada find better ways to cooperate in life and work. For the past while, Paquet’s message, much like that of Block (1993) and Cleveland (2002), has consistently challenged the popular myth that “someone is in charge” while encouraging organizational leaders to embrace cooperation and shared governance like a surfer riding a wave—adapting through small movements and social techniques that over time cumulatively begin to shift management paradigms and practices. The importance of this approach became clear to me the first time I met Paquet, in late 1995, at a tax policy convention for the Conservative Party after its ignominious defeat in 1993. Paquet had been invited as a sort of éminence grise to advise party officials on possible changes to its taxation platform. The social contract between citizens and government has been steadily weakening since the early 1970s, as evidenced by the steady decline in the public’s BUILDING COOPERATION THROUGH CONVERSATION  153  trust in government. That trust hovers now as it did in 1995 around thirty percent (Graves 2008; Wilson 1998). Paquet urged the Conservatives to stem this tide by finding ways to engage with citizens in a collective conversation about the means and ends of government intervention. Such a conversation was likely not only to encourage greater tax compliance, he said, but also to contribute to better policy effectiveness and social coherence. Paquet appreciated that citizens needed...