Marco Verweij

Clumsy Solutions for a Complex World

Successful solutions to pressing social ills tend to consist of innovative combinations of a limited set of alternative ways of perceiving and resolving the issues. These contending policy perspectives justify, represent and stem from four different ways of organizing social relations: hierarchy, individualism, egalitarianism and fatalism. Each of these perspectives: (1) distils certain elements of experience and wisdom that are missed by the others; (2) provides a clear expression of the way in which a significant portion of the populace feels we should live with one another and with nature; and (3) needs all of the others in order to be sustainable. ‘Clumsy solutions’– policies that creatively combine all opposing perspectives on what the problems are and how they should be resolved – are therefore called for. We illustrate these claims for the issue of global warming.

The Case for Clumsiness

Most climatologists agree that by burning fossil fuels and engaging in other forms of consumption and production we are increasing the amount of greenhouse gases that float around in the atmosphere. These gases, in trapping some of the sun’s heat, warm the earth and enable life. The trouble is, some predict, that if we continue to accumulate those gases, over the course of the new century the average temperature on earth will rise and local climates will change, with possibly catastrophic consequences. Will this indeed happen? Does climate-change put the future of the world at risk? Can only a radical reallocation of global wealth and power rescue us from this threat? Or should people not be overly worried, as the steady march of technological progress will see us through in the end?

Why is the river Rhine cleaner than the Great Lakes (despite looser regulation)

In this article, I compare the efforts to protect two transboundary watersheds that are home to some of the largest industrial areas in the world: the Great Lakes basin in North America and the Rhine river in Western Europe. Specifically, I show that the industrial discharges into the Great Lakes have been more toxic than the releases into the Rhine. This is puzzling as the laws and international agreements pertaining to the Great Lakes have been more stringent than those concerning the Rhine. I solve this puzzle in three steps. First, I show that the many voluntary investments in water protection by companies along the Rhine have outdone the considerable efforts that the U.S. laws have required of Great Lakes corporations. Thereafter, I argue that these different inclinations to invest in water protection have sprung from two alternative modes of conducting environmental politics: an adversarial one in the Great Lakes basin and a more consensual one in the Rhine valley. Last, I use an historical-institutional approach to show which institutional differences (at both the domestic and international levels) have led to the emergence of these different modes of conducting environmental politics in the two basins. Introduction In this article, I compare the efforts to restore two fragile watersheds that are home to two of the largest industrial areas in the world. More precisely, I compare the attempts that have been made to keep toxic substances out of the industrial releases into the river Rhine and the Great Lakes. The Rhine flows from the Bodensee in the Alps, through Switzerland, France, and Germany, before scattering all over the Netherlands. Along its shores, some 18% of the worlds chemical industry has been located. The 1,320 kilometers-long river connects the worlds biggest seaport (Rotterdam) with the largest inland port on the globe (Duisburg). Nearly 50 million people presently live in the Rhine valley (International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine, hereafter ICPR, 1998). The Great Lakes in North America (encompassing Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) and the region surrounding them are also of paramount economic importance. Of the 500 largest industrial companies within the United States, almost half have their headquarters in Great Lakes states (Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New York). About 33 million people live in the Great Lakes basin (Environment Canada 1995). In sum, both the Rhine valley and the Great Lakes basin form sites where ecological values and huge economic interests come together, and because of this it is interesting to compare environmental protection efforts in these two regions. For methodological reasons that I explain later, my analysis is limited to a comparison between the effluents of the firms that are bordering the Rhine and the releases of the enterprises located on the United States side of the Great Lakes watershed. This comparison produces a remarkable puzzle. Compared to their counterparts on the Rhine watershed, companies on the United States side of the Great Lakes basin have been confronted with: (1) stricter domestic water protection laws; (2) more ambitious international agreements pertaining to water protection; and (3) powerful actors that have relentlessly pushed for water protection, including an influential international organization, a well-organized epistemic community of scientists, and a large number of cooperating and vigorous environmental organizations. These factors would lead one to assume that the effluents of U.S. corporations into the Great Lakes have been less toxic than those of European enterprises into the Rhine. This appears not to be the case, however. Instead, it appears that the opposite has occurred. The primary aim of my article is to unravel this puzzle. I do so by employing an institutional approach. To be more precise, I use the historical version of new institutionalism. …

Singapore: Does authoritarianism pay?

The same policies that fostered decades of prosperity in Singapore have also led to longer-term economic ills that might have been averted in a freer society.

Messy Institutions for Wicked Problems: How to Generate Clumsy Solutions

The idea that ‘wicked’ environmental and social problems can be resolved with ‘clumsy’ solutions has been increasingly supported by empirical evidence. Clumsy solutions emerge from a new type of dialogue-based problem-solving strategy, derived from what Funtowicz and Ravetz call ‘post-normal science’. How, then, can such dialogues best be organised? We offer an answer by combining the framework from which the notion of clumsy solutions was derived – namely Mary Douglas’ cultural theory – with the many decision-making procedures for addressing wicked problems proposed in policy and organisational studies. Employing the former theory, we explore 17 widely applied decision-making processes. The analysis identifies six methods most likely and seven methods least likely to successfully initiate post-normal dialogue. Moreover, the analysis suggests four processes that ‘almost’ fulfil the criteria for generating clumsy solutions. The paper then explores and suggests ways of extending and augmenting these ‘almost’ cases to enable post-normal dialogues and clumsy solutions.

A watershed on the Rhine: Changing approaches to international environmental cooperation

Since the 1950s, the governments of the riparian countries of the Rhine have attempted to protect the ecosystems of the river basin through international cooperation. Before 1987, their relations were unproductive and antagonistic. International programs for the protection of Rhine were far less effective than domestic policies. From 1987 onwards, international cooperation on the protection of the Rhine has been exemplary, and has led the way in domestic and international water protection policies. Many existing frameworks of international relations are not able to offer an adequate account of this wholesale change. In this article, an attempt is undertaken with the help of grid-group theory.

Emotion, rationality, and decision-making: how to link affective and social neuroscience with social theory

In this paper, we argue for a stronger engagement between concepts in affective and social neuroscience on the one hand, and theories from the fields of anthropology, economics, political science, and sociology on the other. Affective and social neuroscience could provide an additional assessment of social theories. We argue that some of the most influential social theories of the last four decades—rational choice theory, behavioral economics, and post-structuralism—contain assumptions that are inconsistent with key findings in affective and social neuroscience. We also show that another approach from the social sciences—plural rationality theory—shows greater compatibility with these findings. We further claim that, in their turn, social theories can strengthen affective and social neuroscience. The former can provide more precise formulations of the social phenomena that neuroscientific models have targeted, can help neuroscientists who build these models become more aware of their social and cultural biases, and can even improve the models themselves. To illustrate, we show how plural rationality theory can be used to further specify and test the somatic marker hypothesis. Thus, we aim to accelerate the much-needed merger of social theories with affective and social neuroscience.

Clumsy Conclusions: How to Do Policy and Research in a Complex World

John Maynard Keynes, who was not renowned for his politeness, once wrote on a Treasury paper that had been passed to him for comment: ‘I would be in full agreement with this if the word “not” was inserted in every sentence.’1 Much the same, we feel, holds for orthodox policy analysis. Indeed, as we have argued for some time now,2 much progress can be made simply by slipping the words ‘not’ or ‘never’ into the precepts that have long been drummed into the heads of those who aspire to be policy analysts: A single, agreed definition of the problem is the first essential. Always clearly distinguish between facts and values. Establish a simple metric — dollars, quality adjusted life years, expected utility, etc — so as to be able to compare and assess policy options. Optimize. Turning all these ‘dos’ into ‘do nots’, we might expect, would be mightily resisted, both by those who analyse policy, and by those who make or implement it. Indeed it was, when these heretical shibboleth-inversions were first proposed, twenty or so years ago. Back in the 1980s, for example, when John Adams first spelt out the implications of the risk compensation hypothesis for Britain’s road safety policy (recounted in Chapter 6 of this book), enraged cabinet ministers demanded that he be dismissed from his university position.

Towards a Theory of Constrained Relativism: Comparing and Combining the Work of Pierre Bourdieu, Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and Alan Fiske

In this article, I seek to compare Pierre Bourdieus theory of practice, the cultural theory developed by Mary Douglas and Michael Thompson, and the relational models theory pioneered by Alan Fiske, and attempt to sketch how these theories could possibly be combined. I argue that the three theories are among the most interesting conceptual enterprises in the social sciences of the last few decades, as they all represent –quite similar– syntheses of long-standing social-science dualisms, such as objectivism vs. subjectivism, social structure vs. free will, functionalism vs. social conflict, etc. Besides these commonalities, I spell out the relative strengths and weaknesses of each of these approaches. This allows me to conclude by considering whether, and how, it might be possible to synthesise these syntheses by picking the most interesting features of the three theories, and avoiding their less appealing ones.

Culture in World Politics: an Introduction

The purpose of this book is to discuss and show the importance of applying a variety of cultural theories to the study of world politics. The general case for this can be made in at least two ways. First, it can be argued that existing theories of international relations (IR) overlook important explanations and aspects of world events by not focusing on cultural phenomena. A powerful argument along these lines is made by Yale Ferguson in chapter 2. The importance of the adoption of cultural studies within IR can also be highlighted by pointing to the proliferation of cultural analyses within other branches of the social sciences during recent decades.1 Perhaps it has never been a wise move to exclude cultural issues from international theory. However, the argument can be built that with the increased use, variety and sophistication of cultural studies within sociology, political science and literary studies in recent times, IR’s neglect of the issues of culture and identity has become even more untenable.