Dan Greenwood

The Challenge of Policy Coordination for Sustainable Sociotechnical Transitions: The Case of the Zero-Carbon Homes Agenda in England

Emerging in recent research on sociotechnical transitions towards a low-carbon economy is the question of the extent to which such transitions require centralised, intentional coordination by government. Drawing from Hayeks conceptualisation of coordination, I evaluate the effectiveness of policy for low-carbon and zero-carbon homes in England. A detailed analysis is presented of how policy makers address complex choices and trade-offs as well as significant uncertainty. Particular attention is given to those policy decisions which are widely agreed by stakeholders to cause distortive effects. The focus here on the impacts of policy definition and delivery in terms of multiple evaluative criteria can complement and enrich the more process-orientated cross-sector and multilevel analyses that predominate in existing research on policy coordination. Furthermore, the coordination problems identified yield further insights into the actual and potential effectiveness of policy processes in shaping complex sociotechnical transitions.

Markets, Large Projects and Sustainable Development: Traditional and New Planning in the Thames Gateway

The transition from traditional hierarchical government to new forms of governance and planning can be overstated. The regionalisation of planning and new ambitions for spatial planning in the UK are commonly understood to have created an overcomplex system concerned with co-ordination and integration across jurisdictional spheres. However, this new governance of planning sits alongside traditional planning processes such as the public inquiry and ministerial decision. This case study of a large port development near London suggests that the emphasis upon the move to new, collaborative practices understimates the influence of traditional governmental structures. This provides cause for questioning the capacity of the current planning system to address the challenge of sustainable development, a central concern for the new planning.

The halfway house: Democracy, complexity, and the limits to markets in green political economy

Abstract The argument of the Austrian school of economists that markets are indispensable in the face of social and economic complexity is of defining importance for the modern-day case for markets. The dominant paradigm in green political economy accepts this view, whilst proposing that markets be combined with a thick layer of democratic, non-market institutions to ensure environmental sustainability. Closer attention to the relationship between the Austrian and green arguments reveals important implications for both. The Austrian thesis raises significant challenges for the ‘halfway house’ combination of market and non-market that greens propose. Also, potential responses to the Austrians emerge from green thought. New light is shed upon the problem of complexity and how it might be addressed by non-market political institutions.

Commensurability and beyond: from Mises and Neurath to the future of the socialist calculation debate

Abstract Mises’ ‘calculation argument’ against socialism argues that monetary calculation is indispensable as a commensurable unit for evaluating factors of production. This is not due to his conception of rationality being purely ‘algorithmic,’ for it accommodates non-monetary, incommensurable values. Commensurability is needed, rather, as an aid in the face of economic complexity. The socialist Neuraths response to Mises is unsatisfactory in rejecting the need to explore possible non-market techniques for achieving a certain degree of commensurability. Yet Neuraths contribution is valuable in emphasizing the need for a balanced, comparative approach to the question of market versus non-market that puts the commensurability question in context. These central issues raised by adversaries in the early socialist calculation debate have continued relevance for the contemporary discussion.

Facing Complexity: Democracy, Expertise and the Discovery Process

As politics continues to be intertwined with complex, rapidly advancing bodies of knowledge, the question arises of how we are to understand the relationship between democracy and expertise. Recent discussions have focused on the capacity for democratic political institutions to address complex technical and scientific issues. These discussions have a post-positivist starting point, emphasising the contested, varied and dispersed nature of technical-scientific knowledge and expertise. Yet, as this article explores with particular reference to the work of Hayek, the sources of tension between democracy, complexity and expertise involve complex economic as well as technical-scientific dimensions. Starting from a similarly ‘post-positivist’ view of economic knowledge, Hayek famously concludes that over-reliance upon political expertise carries the danger of authoritarianism. He looks to the market as the most suitable institutional process for addressing complex economic choices, reflecting the various goals of individuals across society. As more recent writers have shown, this radically pro-market conclusion overlooks the profound social and environmental implications of market failure. Yet it is argued here that we can draw from the Hayekian understanding of complexity and its implications to enrich our understanding of how non-market, democratic institutions might handle those dimensions of complexity that cannot be adequately addressed through markets alone. Hence Hayekian insights can serve as an aid to re-conceptualising the concept of expertise as performing a potentially enabling role on behalf of political democracy.

In search of Green political economy: steering markets, innovation, and the zero carbon homes agenda in England

Advocates of a democratic ‘Green state’ challenge Hayekian free-market environmentalist proposals for a minimal state and the emphasis of ecological modernisation discourses on technological innovation as the primary route towards ecological sustainability. However, these more strongly pro-market traditions raise important questions and provide useful insights concerning the challenges of translating the political ideology of ‘ecologism’ into practical proposals for democratic governance. Hayekian thought raises vital questions concerning the capacity of political processes to address complex challenges of coordinating the formulation and delivery of the sustainability objectives of ecologism. Scholarship on ecological modernisation and the ‘new regulation’ offer important insights into how shifting interrelationships between the state and private sector in the policy process might enable this challenge to be more effectively addressed. These areas for further developing proposals for a Green state are illustrated here through a case study of the zero carbon homes policy agenda in England.

The problem of coordination in politics: what critics of neoliberalism might draw from its advocates

As critics of neoliberalism highlight the significance of market failure, contemporary political science tends to refrain from explicitly addressing evaluative questions about the relationship between politics and markets. This article explores how political analysis, even where deeply critical of neoliberalism, might draw from the work of “Austrian” theorists who inspired the emergence of neoliberal ideas. Friedrich A. Hayek, in particular, emphasizes the profound epistemological challenges that complexity poses for the political sphere. How, he asks, can it address complex choices and trade-offs involved in formulating and achieving policy objectives? How can the political sphere achieve coordination in a way that is sufficiently decentralized to capture the locally situated forms of knowledge and values dispersed across society? An analytical focus exploring these questions can help achieve a balanced assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of political and market processes in a way that complements and enriches widely used post-positivist approaches in political science.

Non-Market Coordination: Towards an Ecological Response to Austrian Economics

Although the ecological tradition tends to favour a substantive role for non-market institutions in securing objectives such as environmental sustainability, Green theorists have paid relatively little attention to the important challenge posed to such proposals by the pro-market arguments of Austrian economics. The methods of ecological economics, such as multiple criteria evaluation, offer important potential for responding to the Austrian thesis that democratic, non-market institutions face a coordination problem in the face of complexity. However, the development of an adequate ecological response to the Austrians requires clarification of the conceptual underpinnings and potential scope of such methods.

From market to non-market: An autonomous agent approach to central planning1

In the longstanding debate in political economy about the feasibility of socialism, the Austrian School of Economists have argued that markets are an indispensable means of evaluating goods, hence a prerequisite for productive efficiency. Socialist models for non-market economic calculation have been strongly influenced by the equilibrium model of neoclassical economics. The Austrians contend that these models overlook the essence of the calculation problem by assuming the availability of knowledge that can be acquired only through the market process itself. But the debate in political economy has not yet considered the recent emergence of agent-based systems and their applications to resource allocation problems. Agent-based simulations of market exchange offer a promising approach to fulfilling the dynamic functions of knowledge encapsulation and discovery that the Austrians show to be performed by markets. Further research is needed in order to develop an agent-based approach to the calculation problem, as it is formulated by the Austrians. Given that the macro-level objectives of agent-based systems can be easily engineered, they could even become a desirable alternative to the real markets that the Austrians favour.

Governance, Coordination and Evaluation: the case for an epistemological focus and a return to C.E. Lindblom

While much political science research focuses on conceptualizing and analyzing various forms of governance, there remains a need to develop frameworks and criteria for governance evaluation. The post-positivist turn, influential in recent governance theory, emphasizes the complexity, uncertainty, and the contested normative dimensions of policy analysis. Yet a central evaluative question still arises concerning the capacity of governance networks to facilitate “coordination.” The classic contributions of Charles Lindblom, although pre-dating the contemporary governance literature, can enable further elaboration of and engagement with this question. Lindblom’s conceptualization of coordination challenges in the face of complexity shares with post-positivism a recognition of the inevitably contested nature of policy goals. Yet Lindblom suggests a closer focus on the complex, dynamically evolving, broadly “economic” choices and trade-offs involved in defining and delivery policy for enabling these goals to be achieved and the significant epistemological challenges that they raise for policy makers. This focus can complement and enrich both post-positivist scholarship and the process and incentives-orientated approaches that predominate in contemporary political science research on coordination in governance. This is briefly illustrated through a short case study evaluating governance for steering markets toward delivering low- and zero-carbon homes in England.