Namur Conference November 2008-08-21
http://www.info.fundp.ac.be/IG3T/workshop1.html
Workshop 1: Theoretical Approaches to the Problems and Limits of Governance defined in Terms of Ethical Normativity and the Elaboration of a Common Good

Matthias Kettner, Witten/Herdecke University, Germany

A Pragmatic Approach to Polynormative Governance 

I. On the very idea of governance: Grammar, Practice, Reflexivity, Relativity.

There is more than a decade of debate and a vast literature about wider and narrower meanings of the term governance. The term governance, and the range of concepts covered by that term, has been used in a variety of ways with a range of different emphases (Pierre 2000). One quite common reading of the term is that governance has primarily to do with the steering of actions of public authorities to shape their environment (Mayntz 2003). Other authors (e.g., Pierre and Peters 2000) see governance more as an administrative learning process of state-governments and nations to steer society in new ways. On this government-oriented reading, the concept of governance marks an emphasis on more bottom-up and participatory approaches to political decision-making (Kamarck and Nye 2002) and on the development of complex communicative networks (Newman 2001) of democratic debate and other forms of exchange within civil society. This is set against conceptions of control as top-down hierarchical power structures. In this vein, the term governance can come to mean a process of political communication in which both the governing instances and the people who are being governed negotiate a common way more or less on an equal footing (Bang 2003). A third reading of governance with a view to business corporations (Mallin 2003) and to public management emphasizes control through contracts (Donahue and Nye 2002). Some writers use the semantics of governance in order to indicate alternative mechanisms of decision-making that arise where economic market forms falter. 
Notwithstanding these differences most writers on governance agree that in some way governance is about collective decision making in various forms, on different levels, and in different arenas. The semantics of governance, then, centers on formal and informal rules and forms that guide collective decision-making. The reference to rules conveys a sense of procedures that are expressed in institutional form and relatively stable over time, although not unchanging. Perhaps one reason for a growing interest in governance is a growing awareness that established institutional forms of governance appear insufficiently flexible and responsive in the face of increasingly complex and dynamic modern problems (e.g., climate change, developing the global internet, controlling unemployment and inflation) with which state and other agencies have to cope. 
Governance, in distinction to related notions such as shaping, designing, steering, directing, and reigning, has a pronounced dynamic connotation of control-in-action. To characterize control processes as governance processes is often to point to their reflexivity, i.e. reacting to itself all along the way with the ever changing subject matter that is the object of governance. 
Obviously, we are confronted with multifarious conceptual articulations of governance. Instead of attempting to integrate and combine this variety into one single conception at a more abstract level, I will try to return to basics with the following question: Is there something like a general depth-grammar underlying any particular project of governance on any level that one might want to distinguish? 
Conceiving of governance merely as some process would not do. What specifically does it take for a process to count as a process of governance? Governance processes must be in principle intentional, though the intentionality of governance need not be the full-blown intentionality that we attribute to intentional action as performed by autonomous agents (Mele 1995). Governance is an activity. 
This activity has as its proper object or target some other activity. And it has as its proper subject an actor doing the governing who is, and can be held to be, responsible for the activity of governing and its consequences for the proper object of governance. 
It seems we cannot be said to govern natural processes as such. We cannot say that we govern, for instance, “the atmosphere”. Properly speaking, we can govern e.g. emission rights of the atmosphere, traffic activities in the atmosphere, or the use of the atmosphere. Where governance is exercised, there must be some cultural form already in place and it is in this cultural form that governance gets a grip on its object. Consider this distinction: The laws of nature (if there are such things) determine all events in the universe, they do not govern them. In contrast, natural law (if there were such a thing) would govern all legitimate human affairs in all cultural worlds, it would not determine them.
The subject of governance, the governor, need not be an individual natural person. A collective form of agency (e.g., a government, a board, a council, a task force, a committee) is sufficient, provided that attributions of rationality (in a minimal sense, cf. Cherniak 1986) and accountability can be channelled through that form and attributed to the individuals who are acting under that collective form of agency. 
The quality of the activity of governing is, in the widest sense possible, that of guidance in attaining some goal in some proper, orderly, favourable or good way – as it were, in a ceteris paribus better way than ungoverned. The very idea of governance contains an irreducible evaluative or normative element. 
This analysis of the depth-grammar of governance invites us to construe governance as a practice that is related in a specific way to other practices, a practice within, or internal to, practices. Note that it would be odd to construe governance as a meta-practice, i.e. a practice that has other practices as its object in the sense in which a so-called meta-language has other languages as its object. The activity of governing, for being a practice, is continuous with the practice that is its proper object. The target practice must already contain in itself some augmentable quality of the very governance that is provided to it, it is not a natural process completely devoid of governance. 
In conceiving of governance as a practice that is situated within other practices, whose aim is lending guidance to these practices, the question arises whether the practice of governance itself stands in further need of governance. This question is superficially similar to the notorious problem of an (infinite?) hierarchy of meta-languages. But unlike to meta-languages, here an answer can be provided by looking at the reflexivity of governance: It does not make sense to search for an ultimate ungoverned governor, or absolute governance process, since any practice of governance GP is always relative to the limited affordances of some particular practice P, where P stands in need of governance only in as much as we think that within P things go comparatively worse than they should go and could go. The idea of “the best governance possible” is an incomplete thought and does not make sense. Governance is better or worse only in relation to the practices that are its objects. This leaves room for iterations of the governance relation: Given PG/P, if things within PG go comparatively worse than they should go and could go, an augmentation of governance is called for, now taking PG as its object: PG’/PG/P.									

II. An elementary pragmatic conception of normative governance 

In this section, I introduce a general conception of governance as the governance of norms and of normative textures. This account brings in classical and recent resources of philosophical pragmatism. We can go one step in the direction of the pragmatic account of governance of normative textures by asking what it means to govern a practice. What is a practice? And what about a practice makes practices amenable to being governed by a practice of governance? Philosophical pragmatism provides an answer in terms of a realistic theory of norms. Practices are concrete compositions of norms. Norms are guides to what is a reasonable procedure; guides to appropriate ways of doing things, e.g. to appropriate ways of pursuing goals. Governance, then, is guidance in reference to norms. Within practices, the norms that compose the respective practices are what governance latches onto. Norms are the direct object of governance. It is by directly influencing their norms that a practice of governance indirectly influences the corresponding governed practices.
How are we to think about norms? I favour a realistic account of norms as social-psychological entities. As far as I see, the best such account has been worked out in contemporary philosophical pragmatism, in particular by Frederick L. Will (1988, 1993). According to Will, "A norm is not just a form of action. It is a form of appropriate action, of appropriate response; and this appropriateness is something that is determined in its relations with, among other things, other norms: by the role which this or that mode of action or response plays in the constitution of individual and communal life" (Will 1988, 93 f.).
Norms are clearly “collectivist” entities. This runs against the tide of methodological individualism which is the preferred style of theorizing not only in applied ethics but in many other branches of philosophy, theories of normativity and rationality included. The concept of a norm at least in the Anglo-Saxon universe of discourse tends to be biased towards, on the one hand, strongly socially sanctioned and formally elaborated norms (usually of the criminal law, cf. Ullmann-Margalit 1977, 12-17) or, on the other hand, highly contingent social conventions and rules of etiquette. This overly narrow range of paradigms of norms tends to obscure the fact that any and every human practice is composed of norms of all kinds, or is, as I would prefer to say. “normatively textured”.
Viewed realistically, norms are intrinsically socio-psychological entities that interlock with each other and are rooted deeply in the practices of individuals and their communities. Embedded in these practices, norms are principally open-textured. By “open-textured” I mean that norms are open to further definition and revision whenever and wherever serious anomalies in their existing forms in ongoing practices are encountered. 
For a realistic doctrine of norms, it is important to recognize that norms defy an ontology of discrete atomistic entities and to acknowledge the corporate, or compositional, or - if you will - holistic nature of norms. In order to invent a distinctive term for the intrinsically polymorphic nature of norms when norms compose practices I propose to speak of normative textures of practices (Kettner 1999). Of course, we can count norms and linguistically or otherwise symbolically represented normative contents one by one, just as we can count linguistically or otherwise symbolically represented propositions or beliefs about what is the case, or just as we can count numbers. However, we should be aware philosophically that what we single out as some determinate normative content is a symbolically stilized representation. A symbolically stilized representation is abstracted from the practice to which the norm pertains, a representation whose determinate identity conditions are tailored to the very purpose of sorting things out, whereas in order to grasp the very point of the norm it takes much more in the way of understanding the purposes of the practices in which some particular norm plays a role in conjunction with other norms that are equally part and parcel of the fabric of those practices. 
Piecing together some of Will's acute observations on normative change and the changing of normative textures, the realistic account of norms yields a realistic account of governance: We experience again and again how norms, or more or less extended components of normative textures for a variety of reasons, and in various degrees, falter and fail in praxis. However, such failures are not always merely "negative". Rather, they often provide stimuli and grounds for change. Bodies of norms enduringly - sometimes more and sometimes less - suffer from (1) incompleteness and (2) inconsistency. As to incompleteness, we encounter our normative repertories never as something complete: Occasions for decision, conviction, fixation of opinion and action arise for which there is no ready decision procedure. 
As to inconsistency, inconsistency appears at various places in the repertory where contrary procedures seem to apply, yielding indecision which can be resolved only if we manage to revise components of the body of norms so that the debilitating clash is overcome. Further, as a result of the corporate character of these bodies of norms, if changes are generated in one set of norms these changes will have certain impacts upon other sets of norms are associated with the respective set because of the holistic nature of interlocking practices. Such resonance effects may sometimes include responsive changes and sometimes defensive dispositions to resist change. Always and everywhere, we are faced with having to mutually accommodate many different sets of norms. The stress that is generated among many different sets of norms, the abrasion and confusion that arises in their being jointly followed, as they should, provide motives for this accommodation: "What may appear in its local environment as merely negative, as the faltering, failure, or confusion in certain readily formalisable procedures, in a larger context may be revealed to play a most important positive role. The faltering, failing, and confusion may provide not only motivation for revision of these procedures, but also indications of the general location where revision is called for and the general direction the revision should take" (Will 1988, 39).
A pragmatic conception of governance can now be formulated. Governance covers both the critical and the constructive activities in which we are engaged with the character, the establishment and the maintenance of norms, as well as with their dis-establishment and elimination. Governance of norms (following Will 1993, 21) encompasses the development of norms, criticism of norms, refinement, reconstruction, reinforcement of norms, as well as the weakening and the elimination of norms. Governance comprises the entire range of activities, individual and collective, deliberate or without much conscious effort, of
•	fitting multiple norms to each other and to the circumstances in which they are followed; 
•	generating new norms and reconstructing already extant norms once they have revealed serious insufficiencies in practice; 
•	removing norms that have been rendered anachronistic because of substantial change in the very forms of life whose circumstances used to provide contextual fit for the norms; 
•	broadening or narrowing norms in appropriate reaction to the surprises and vicissitudes that we permanently encounter in the practices whose workings are textured by those norms.

If normative governance has a rational quality, how can we model the rational quality of governance activities? A rational model of governance activitivies would have to model the kind of improvement that the governing practice GP is seeking, and it would have to model changes in normative textures of the corresponding governed practices P. Neither the logical forms of inductive reasoning nor that of deductive reasoning can adequately represent changes in concrete practices. In order to model the rational quality of governance processes it is necessary to enhance these forms by the logical form of abductive reasoning. According to the early American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce, abduction is a valid form of inference which permeates human experience. Abduction is the kind of reasoning that we employ when we are faced with explanatory gaps, or other gaps in our coherent understanding of things, in order to frame new hypotheses that are rationally warranted, would restore coherence, and would serve to close such gaps. 
According to Peirce, the logical form of abductive reasoning can be captured in the following schema of premises and conclusions: First premise: A surprising fact is observed. Second premise: But if such-and-such were true, this fact would be a matter of course. Conclusion: Hence, there is reason to suspect that such-and-such is true (Fann 1970, Kettner 1991). An abbduction can never be formulated as an algorhythm. An abduction can only be represented as a rational constraint on creative invention, not as a calculation of creative invention. 
Using the schema of abductive inference, the rational quality of governance activities can be modelled in the following way. First, some hypothesis has to be framed concerning an identifiable source of the problem that surprisingly occurs in some practice P composed of a certain set of norms: 

1. Unexpected undesirable results are observed in the performance of some generally accepted practice P, where P is traditionally textured by the norms Ni , Nj ... Nz
2. If some norm Nx (within the entire normative texture of P) were to be followed routinely, those undesirable results would be a matter of course.
3. Therefore, it is reasonable to devote and direct governance specifically to Nx within P.

In order to lay out and set up a promising governing practice GP concerning P, four assumptions have to be made and interpreted: 

1. Assumption: P is important enough for us, all things considered, to want to continue P.

Otherwise we might as well abandon P and try to establish instead an altogether different practice Q.
2. Assumption: It is not equally important for us to maintain Nx
3. Assumption: We are sufficiently clear about the extent to which P allows for change in its normative composition while remaining recognizably a composition of that very practice, namely P.
4. Assumption: We are sufficiently clear about the constraints that limit the range of possible and acceptable surrogates (successors, alternatives) of Nx within P.

These assumptions prepare the ground for more reasoning. A range of variation in the normative composition of the governed practice has to be staked out, and we have to zero in on some norm within that range and change that norm:

1. Bearing constraints on sameness of P in mind, we explore how the set of norms that compose P can be extended. We find that P is recognizable as P not only in the received composition of norms {Ni, Nj ... Nz } but also in a similar but amplified composition {Na , … Nd, Ni , Nj ... Nz}
2. If some norm N* of those belonging to the set of possible amplifications {Na , … Nd}could replace Nx in P and were to be followed routinely, then the unexpected undesirable results that we observed in P would probably not occur in P.
3. Therefore, it is reasonable to modify P so that N* succeeds Nx in P.

III. How to govern governance?

The preceding section introduced an elementary pragmatic conception of governance as a practice within other practices and attempted to model the rational quality of governance activities. In the third section, finally, I want to combine two of the points that were made in the first section. The first point that I want to take up again is (1) the reflexivity of governance practices, i.e. their reacting to their own activity all along the way with the ever changing object of governance. The second point is (2) that governance is itself normative, not only in the sense that norms are the object, but in an adverbial sense, i.e.  that governing contains an irreducible evaluative or normative element in virtue of which governance practices themselves are open to critical judgment, for instance, critical judgments as to how well they reach their aims. Combining both points makes clear that the normative governance of a normatively textured practice is itself a normatively textured practice. This observation brings into focus the question of full reflexivity. How to govern governance? Can governance take care of itself? 
Governance practices can be more or less reflexive, no doubt. But what would a fully reflective mode of governance amount to? Is there a paradigm for such a mode?
I admit that the only practice that looks to me like a fully reflective governance practice is argumentative discourse, the term “discourse” taken not in the descriptive sense of Michel Foucault but in the normative sense elaborated by philosophers like Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. Argumentative discourse is a dialogical practice of evaluating determinate reasons as better or worse in relation to the purpose of justifying validity-claims with good reasons. In a certain sense, argumentative discourse serves as “the governance practice of last resort” for all of our practices of giving and taking reasons. Discourse, I would hold, is also the governance practice of last resort when governance practices of any kind come under critical scrutiny.
In utmost generality, the following consideration can be used in critical judgments of governance practices: 

	Of two different governance practices GP1/P and GP2/P, 
	one is better governance if and only if 
	one of the two different recompositions of P 
	that are effected by GP1 and alternatively by GP2
	remedies more “deficiencies” in P 
	and creates fewer new “deficiencies” in P 
	and in all associated practices P’… P’’ 
	than the other recomposition.

	Deficiencies in which respect(s)? By what kind(s) of  standard(s)? This raises what I propose to call the problem of polynormative governance. Processes of governance are as multifarious as the practices that need governance. Different forms of governance in different domains of practice may differ drastically in their advantages and disadvantages when compared from some particular evaluative point of view, and they will differ drastically across different evaluative points of view. Take, for example, bureaucracy as a form of governance and think of what becomes of academic life when universities are predominantly governed by bureaucracies. Then compare this rather nasty scenario with the effects of bureaucratic governance in a different setting, for instance, think of the indisputable advantages in the change from feudal practices of governing the affairs of state-administration to bureaucratic modes of governing these affairs.
The general point – that different forms of governance in different domains of practice may differ drastically when compared from different evaluative points of view – holds also for moral points of view. Moral points of view are a subset of evaluative points of view. As a consequence, moral judgments, although providing an important resource for critical judgments about governance practices, are not the only such resource. Moralists tend to think that moral discourse is the ultimate governance practice. This is a serious mistake in thinking about governance. Pragmatists will avoid that mistake.
Current notions of democratic governance, and in particular deliberative democratic governance (Kettner 2007), can be reconstrued as particular specifications of the general conception of normative governance of normative textures. This particular specification of the general conception is oriented to democratic legitimacy, i.e. a complex mode of validity. In a (deliberative) democracy, other modes of validity, e.g. moral and juridical legitimacy, have to be integrated into democratic legitimacy in complex ways.
Within the confines of this essay, it is not possible to pursue this question further. The complex relation that holds between argumentative discourse (as the governance practice of last resort for all our practices of giving and taking reasons) and democracy (as the governance practice of last resort for all our practices of exercising political power) needs a thorough exploration.

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