Knowing Better: Improving Collective Decision-Making in Higher Education Shared Governance
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KNOWING BETTER: IMPROVING COLLECTIVE DECISION-MAKING IN HIGHER EDUCATION SHARED GOVERNANCE By CHRISTOPHER J. D. MANICK A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2016 © 2016 Christopher J. D. Manick To my family ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project is not just about the power of collective intelligence. In many ways, it is also the result. I sincerely thank the members of my committee: Les Thiele, Leslie Anderson, Larry Dodd, Dan O’Neill, and Sevan Terzian. The coherence of this project is due to their helpful feedback and support. Special thanks are due to Ian McMullen and Matt Chick at Washington University for inviting me to present a chapter at the Workshop in Politics, Ethics, and Society, and to its ever-generous attendees, who provided invaluable feedback. The Friday afternoons spent at WPES have been formative, illuminating, and have helped determine the broad strokes of this project. I also thank Hélène Landemore and everyone who attended the “Advances and Limits of Epistemic Democracy” panel at APSA 2016 for offering very constructive comments on a chapter I presented there. I owe a special debt to all the members of the 2015 Summer Institute for Civic Studies at Tufts University, but especially to Peter Levine, Karol Sołtan, and Jennifer Greene for the invaluable insights they shared and feedback they gave about this project. A chapter on academic civic renewal was ultimately cut, but the spirit of such an idea still underlies the entire project. Of the many graduate colleagues who have helped me along the way, Jennifer Forshee and Dustin Fridkin deserve special mention. This project has benefitted from their hospitality, friendship, wisdom, institutional insights, and intellectual engagement. Most of all, I would like to thank my family for always supporting my educational pursuits: Dad, Debbie, Cindy, Grandma, Yia-yia, Megan, and Traci. They have provided for me in countless ways throughout my education and I could not have finished this 4 project without their help. A special thank you is in order to Sarah Bisceglia, for being there for me every day and enduring the inhuman demands a semi-structured graduate program places its students and their loved ones. I also thank the Hunks—Ryan, Matthew, Chris, Christopher, and Kiren. Their constant support and distractions have been crucial for finding a sustainable work/life balance. Finally, I am most indebted to my mother, who did not live to see this project to completion, but whose unwavering goodness, empathy, and concern for helping others are woven into its pages. I am grateful for the motivation and purpose that both her life and death have given me. 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................... 4 LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................................. 8 ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... 9 CHAPTER 1 FINDING REASON TO DEMOCRATIZE: AN INTRODUCTION .............................. 11 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 11 Building a Smarter Camel: The Epistemic Promise of Deliberation .......................... 12 Epistemic Deliberation, Defined ................................................................................. 16 Why Deliberation? Whose Deliberation? ................................................................... 20 Limits to the Argument ................................................................................................ 20 Epistemological Assumptions and Premises ............................................................. 23 Background and Context ............................................................................................ 27 Civic Renewal and Education Reform ................................................................. 31 Finding Reason to Democratize .......................................................................... 33 Chapter Summaries .................................................................................................... 37 2 FROM PROCESS TO OUTCOME: THE DISCONTENTS OF SHARED ACADEMIC GOVERNANCE ...................................................................................... 40 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 40 Shared Governance: Its Meanings, Complexities, and Failures ............................... 41 From Inclusion to Division .......................................................................................... 44 Shifting Landscapes and Wicked Problems: Explaining the Divided Governance Trend ........................................................................................................................ 47 Reactions to Shifting Landscapes .............................................................................. 51 Divided Governance Through the Optic of Democratic Theory ................................ 55 Fairness as Rightness: The Procedural Conception of Democratic Legitimacy ......................................................................................................... 59 Collective Wisdom: The Epistemic Conception of Democratic Legitimacy ........ 65 Expressing Interests Versus Adjusting Beliefs .................................................... 72 Shared Governance: Wicked Problems, Procedural Solutions ................................. 75 Conclusion................................................................................................................... 80 3 THE POWER OF PERSPECTIVE: COGNITIVE DIVERSITY, EXPERTISE, AND DIFFICULT PROBLEMS.................................................................................... 82 Introduction ................................................................................................................. 82 “Consensus Kills Innovation”: The Expertocratic Critique ......................................... 83 6 The Expertocratic Case for MOOCs .......................................................................... 85 Cognitive Diversity: An Inclusive Approach to Wicked Problems.............................. 90 Diversity Theory ................................................................................................... 91 Uncertainty, Risk, Democratic Inclusion .............................................................. 93 Difficulty, Complexity, Cognitive Diversity ........................................................... 97 If Deliberation Is So Great, Why Doesn’t Shared Governance Work?....................101 Conclusion.................................................................................................................104 4 WHEN TO TALK IN SCHOOL: AN EPISTEMIC THEORY OF DEMOCRATIC DELIBERATION IN ACADEMIC SHARED GOVERNANCE ...................................107 The Problem of Group Decision-Making ..................................................................107 When Deliberation Works .........................................................................................110 Epistemic Requirements For Deliberation ...............................................................112 Deliberation as Decision-oriented Debate .........................................................114 Deliberation as Reason-giving Debate ..............................................................119 Relevant Diversity, Democratic Participation ....................................................128 Limiting Inclusion and Diversity ................................................................................132 Conclusion.................................................................................................................135 5 THE SILENT MAJORITY RULE: RETHINKING THE EPISTEMIC VALUE OF NON-UNANIMOUS DECISION RULES IN COLLECTIVE DECISION-MAKING ...137 Introduction ...............................................................................................................137 The Epistemic Defense of Unanimity in Broader Context .......................................139 Necessary Conditions of the Epistemic Defense: Meta-consensus, Shared Interests, and Oracle Solutions .............................................................................143 Problems with Unanimity ..........................................................................................149 Non-epistemic Objections: Agreement Through Conformity ............................150 Epistemic Objections ..........................................................................................154 Individual Judgments of Collective Solutions: The Problem with the Diversity Argument ...............................................................................................................156 Epistemic Acceptance and the Rule of Non-opposition ..........................................160 Non-opposition as Realistic Stopping Rule ..............................................................167 Conclusion.................................................................................................................170 6 CONCLUSION ..........................................................................................................173