Governance Through Social Learning THE CENTRE ON GOVERNANCE SERIES Governance is about guiding: it is the process whereby an organization steers itself. Studying governance means probing the distribution of rights, obliga- tions, and power that underpins organizations and social systems; under- standing how they co-ordinate their parallel activities and maintain their coherence; exploring the sources of dysfunction and lacklustre performance; and suggesting ways to redesign organizations whose governance is in need of repair. Governance also has to do with the complex ways in which the private, public, and civic sectors co-ordinate their activities, with the manner in which citizens produce governance through their active participation in a democra- tic society, and with the instruments and processes required to ensure good and effective stewardship. This series welcomes a range of contributions - from conceptual and the- oretical reflections, ethnographic and case studies, and proceedings of con- ferences and symposia to works of a very practical nature - that deal with particular problems or nexus of issues on the governance front. Director Gilles Paquet Editorial Committee Caroline Andrew Robert de Cotret Daniel Lane Donna Winslow Centre on Governance http://www.governance.uottawa.ca IN THE SAME SERIES David Mclnnes, Taking It to the Hill: The Complete Guide to Appearing before (and Surviving) Parliamentary Committees, 1999 Sheries Gilles Paquet Governance Through Social Learning University of Ottawa Press Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Paquet, Gilles, 1936- Governance Through Social Learning (Governance) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-7766-0488-0 1. Corporate governance—Social aspect. 2. Public administration—Social aspects. 3. Social learning. I. Title. II. Series: Governance (Ottawa, Ont.) JF1351.P36 1999 658 C99-900359-3 University of Ottawa Press gratefully acknowledges the support extended to its pub– lishing programme by the Canada Council, the Department of Canadian Heritage, and the University of Ottawa. UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA UNTVERSITE D'OTTAWA Cover design: Robert Dolbec Cover photograph: Used with permission of Canadian Information Processing Society and Design 2000 Communications «A11 rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher." ISBN 0-7766-0488-0 ISSN 1487-3052 © University of Ottawa Press, 1999 542 King Edward, Ottawa (Ont.), Canada KIN 6N5 [email protected] http://www.uopress.uottawa.ca Printed and bound in Canada TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction - Governing, Governance, and Governability 1 Part I - A Framework 1. New Patterns of Governance 23 2. Tackling Wicked Problems 41 Part II - Social Learning in Action A - International Perspectives 3. Elegant but Not Helpful to Navigation: Social Sciences Research and the Free Trade Debate 55 4. Science and Technology Policy Under Free Trade 79 B - National Perspectives 5. A Social Learning Framework for a Wicked Problem: The Case of Energy 93 6. The Environment-Energy Interface: Social Learning Versus the Invisible Foot 109 C - Social Perspectives 7. Multiculturalism as National Policy 127 8. Liberal Education as Synecdoche 137 D - Administrative Perspectives 9. How to Scheme Virtuously: The Role of Public Service Commissions in Meeting the Needs of Changing Societies . .153 10. Granting Councils in Search of Excellence: Dynamic Conservatism Versus Social Learning 169 Part III - New Directions 11. The Strategic State 183 12. Betting on Moral Contracts 205 13. Distributed Governance and Transversal Leadership 217 Conclusion - The Burden of Office, Ethics, and Connoisseurship 233 References 247 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION GOVERNING, GOVERNANCE, AND GOVERNABILITY* Je ne crois pas aux choses mais aux relations entre les choses. - Georges Braque Over the past 10 years, I have worked on the problems raised by the governing, the governance, and the governability of complex organizations and socio-eco- nomic-political systems. This terrain has been explored by many researchers. Indeed, over the last 10 years, these themes have become the centre of important debates on every continent (Kumon 1992; Kooiman 1993; Castells 1996). However, governance studies are still in their infancy. Although many interesting approaches and perspectives have been proposed, there is still no consensus on the best way to handle these issues, nor is there agreement on a lexicon or vocabulary for formulating these questions. This compendium of papers is a progress report on work that strives to generate new responses to these problems. These studies are unified by the choice of a particular strategy for dealing with governance problems. It is not intended to be le dernier mot on these matters, but only a premier effort to clarify the issues, using a method that has proved useful — the social learning approach. CHANCE EVENTS AND INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT The research program on which this volume is based originated in 1988-89 during a sabbatical leave from the University of Ottawa, but the original plans evolved as a consequence of many chance events and help from friends and colleagues at certain junctures. The first chance event was an invitation from Rod Dobell, president of the Institute for Research on Public Policy, to spend my sabbatical at the Institute. * This chapter contains excerpts from "States, Communities and Markets: The Distributed Governance Scenario." In Courchene, T.J. (editor), The Evolving Nation-state in a Global Information Era: Policy Challenges. Kingston: John Deutsch Institute for the Study of Economic Policy, 1997, pp. 25–46. 2 GOVERNANCE THROUGH SOCIAL LEARNING At the time, the Institute was very much a forum interested in exploratory thinking. My work there was entirely curiosity-oriented, but I had an oppor- tunity to discuss the results of my first analyses with Peter Dobell, Rod Dobell, Jeffrey Holmes, Steven Rosell, and Walter Stewart. Each of these colleagues forced different perspectives on these issues of governance on me, and they all had an impact on the reflections that stemmed from my sojourn at the Institute. The second chance event was David Zussman's invitation to present a paper on these issues at the Aylmer Conference of the Liberal Party of Canada in November 1991. This was an opportunity for a synthesis of work that, at that point, remained somewhat scattered and issue-oriented. Preparing a synthetic piece on the Strategic State was an occasion to refine my approach considerably and to sketch, however roughly, a research program that is still unfolding. A fragment of this paper was published in the proceedings of the conference early in 1992; a three-part document covering the same terrain much more thoroughly was published in Ciencia Ergo Sum (Paquet 1996a, 1997a,b). The latter version is included in this volume (Chapter 11). A third determining event was an invitation to become a senior research fellow at the Canadian Centre for Management Development (CCMD) in 1992. This opportunity, offered by Ralph Heintzman, who was then vice-prin- cipal (research) at CCMD, together with my extensive involvement with the teaching faculty at the Centre, at the request of Lise Pigeon, provided an extraordinarily rich cauldron in which these ideas could be stirred, debated, and further distilled. From 1993 on, various working papers were used in the classroom at the Centre; in them, the ideas were tested and polished through discussion with hundreds of senior executives in the federal public service. A number of papers emerged from this extremely rich experience at CCMD; a few have been collected here. The final important event was the creation of PRIME (Program of Re- search in International Management and Economy), which John de la Mothe and I pressed into existence in 1993 with the support of Dean Jean-Louis Malouin. This organized research unit brought together a number of col- leagues (Robert de Cotret, Georges Henault, Luc Juillet, David Large, Paul Laurent, Morris Miller, Christian Navarre, Jeffrey Roy, Robert Shepherd, Chris Wilson, and others) and a number of associates from the private, public, and civic sectors. The PRIME group has produced a stream of papers and books, in which we have all become more and more concerned with problems of governance. The success of the PRIME experience — both in terms of the interest it generated in the community and the financial support it elicited from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Industry Canada, Statistics Canada, etc. — prepared the way for our 1997 petition to the University of Ottawa for the creation of the Centre on Governance. The Centre is an umbrella organization for a variety of programs of research and organized research units with an interest in governance issues. The INTRODUCTION 3 support of Vice-Rectors Howard Alper and Gilles Patry and of Deans Caroline Andrew (Social Sciences) and Jean-Louis Malouin (Administra- tion) was most important in efforts to create the Centre and to assure sustained funding for its development phase. The purpose of the Centre is not only a certain mise en visibilite of the research personnel of the University of Ottawa and their partners, affiliates, and associates, but also, more importantly, the development of a particular maniere de voir — an approach to governance issues that holds the promise