Transcript
Transcript: Understanding Complex Governance Networks
[00:00:00 Video opens with animated title page showing hands raised in the air, and dialogue bubbles. Text on screen: Complex Governance Networks.]
[00:00:04 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen. Text on screen: Göktuğ Morçöl, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, School of Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Hello there. I want to talk about Complex Governance Networks, which may sound like an esoteric idea, but it is actually quite relevant for public servants, I think, around the world. This is what I have been talking about and writing about for some time now.
[00:00:24 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide. Text on screen: What is a "Complex Governance Network" and how did you come to develop this concept?]
Göktuğ Morçöl: I want to address, first of all, what is it and how I and others have developed this concept framework, if you will.
[00:00:35 Slide. Text on screen, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: First of all, from my perspective, what motivated my research was how have humans solved, or tried to solve, their collective problems in history? And particularly what roles did the governments play in solving collective problems? And more specifically, how is it happening in the institutionalized forms in the early 20th century? So, these are, of course, broad questions, but there are some specific and real-world answers to them.
[00:01:15 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide. Text on screen: What is a "Complex Governance Network" and how did you come to develop this concept?
CGN is a product of decades of work. A flow chart with four boxes:
- Network (Sociology, mathematics, biology)
- Governance (Political science, public policy, public administration)
- Complexity (Mathematics Economics, business management)
These three boxes are connected by arrows pointing to the fourth box – Complex Governance Network (CGN).]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Just to give you a little bit of a background, Complex Governance Networks is a product of decades of work and there are multiple parts to it. I would say, as the name suggests, there is governance, there is networks, and there is complexity.
[00:01:34 Split screen: Previous slide is joined by a series of books:
- The Transformation of Governance
- Democratic Governance
- Collaborative Governance Regimes
- Interactive Governance
- Governance Networks in the Public Sector
- Governance Networks in Public Administration and Public Policy
- Network Governance
- Managing Chaos and Complexity in Government
- Complex Governance networks
- Managing Complex Governance Systems
- Complex Systems Governance]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Governance studies have been going on for quite a while now, I would say maybe going back to 1990s, even some studies earlier than that. And there are studies on networks, governance networks, that are developing again late 1990s and 2000s. And there are also studies on complexity, complex systems, complex adaptive systems, which came a little later in terms of their adaptation and use in public policy and public administration. But their histories actually are quite longer than that.
So, put all these together, essentially, we are talking about Complex Governance Networks, or some call them Complex Governance Systems. And there are a few books that came out on these topics, including mine, which was published last year.
[00:02:34 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: In terms of these three concepts, what do they represent? In a very simplified, short way, I can say that governance,
[00:02:45 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: or more specifically polycentric governance, means that there are multiple actors that play roles in a governance system in the solution of collective problems. This includes governments as well as non-governmental organizations, nonprofits, and private organizations, and so forth. So, that is the core idea.
In networks, or governance networks, the core idea is how are these actors interconnected? And can we study and understand the structures of these interconnections. And complexity, complex systems theories, complex adaptive systems, they are about the dynamics of these relationships.
So, put all these three together. We are talking about multiple actors that are connected structurally and these are dynamic relationships, network systems. So, that essentially encapsulates the idea behind Complex Governance Networks.
[00:03:54 Text on screen: What are some examples of Complex Governance Networks?
How can it help to clarify governance issues for governments?]
Göktuğ Morçöl: All right, then you may say these are some theoretical issues, but what are the implications and are there any examples of these?
[00:04:04 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Yes, actually, I want to give you two examples. One from Canada, one from the United States.
The one from Canada is about the recycling in the City of Ottawa.
[00:04:18 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: And I lived in Ottawa in the first half of 2022. This was the tail end of the pandemic. And I did my academic work as well as making some observations in the city. I enjoyed it very much, by the way.
It's a very nice city. I'm looking forward to going back.
Now, recycling in Ottawa. This is a complex system. I would call it Complex Governance Networks. And there are multiple actors in it, as governance studies suggest. There are multiple actors. For example, there's a city, there's the citizens, there are businesses in the city. There [are] garbage collection companies, business improvement areas, and probably others. And each one of these interacts in some way or fashion to make things happen.
[00:05:19 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: And let's remember that not all these entities have the same structures, or intentions, attention spans, knowledge level. They're all different and they have different priorities. But they have to work together somehow to make things happen, [for] recycling to happen in the city.
How does it work?
[00:05:45 Additional text on slide:
Pre-Collection: The City of Ottawa's Solid Waste Management Department makes the "blue, black, and green bins available to citizens."
- Citizens request bins.
- The City delivers bins to residences.
- The City's website informs the public about the recycling process at its website.
- The City makes public receptacles available.
Collection: Recyclables are collected by the City.
- In some neighbourhoods and facilities by WM recycling company.
- Some are dropped off by citizens/businesses at privately owned recycling centres.
- Recyclables in public receptacles are collected by the City or a BIA.
Processing: Recyclables are sorted and baled at the City's sorting facility.
- Recyclables are shipped to various privately owned processing plants in Ontario, Quebec, and Malaysia.
- Recyclables are converted into consumer products at these privately owned facilities.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Well, I sketched out, based on my observations and reading when I was in Ottawa, I sketched out this kind of simplistic image, but it gives you an idea about the scope of the recycling system and the actors involved in it.
There is this pre-collection phase, there's this collection phase, there's this processing phase. In each one there are multiple actors who are involved in this process. You can begin to see the complexity of the situation with multiple actors, their relationships, and the dynamics of those relationships.
[00:06:23 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: I made an observation, and I took some pictures when I was in Ottawa. Again, it's a wonderful city and I took many, many pictures, but this was one of them.
[00:06:33 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: This is a garbage can receptacle on Rideau Street. The reason I took this, and it caught my attention, and there are many others like this, of course, was this. It looks like a mess. And it looks like that the purpose of sorting recyclables was not achieved. You can see that there are these labels, there are three receptacles and there are labels for each. And certain kinds of, for example, paper should go into one and the plastics should go into another. Trash goes to the other one. But people did not do that.
Why is that so? Well, first of all, the way this is set up, designed, and placed on the street was done by multiple actors. And even there are even more actors who are citizens, just pedestrians that walk by and put their trash or recyclables in these bins, so there are many, many actors who play roles in this. And I wanted to focus on particularly the actors, the citizens who put their stuff in these bins. Because this is a mess, we can ask, okay, why did they do this? Were they confused? Were they not informed? Well, there's information there. But then I started thinking, well, actually, it may be more than that.
First of all, why should we assume that individual citizens should have the attention span, knowledge, and understanding of what this means and how it works, and what is the importance of sorting things into these bins? As you can imagine, everybody has their own lives and they have their priorities – again, attention span – and they may not even think about which receptacle they should put their stuff into.
And there also, I particularly thought about the homeless on the streets. As you probably know, particularly on Rideau Street, there are many, many homeless, unfortunately. And many of them are, in fact, not even capable of thinking about these issues because they have very different concerns in their lives. But they are the ones, or they are among the ones, who put things into these bins. And sometimes some of them actually take things out of these bins.
So, essentially what we are talking about is multiplicity of individuals with different interests, different understandings, and knowledge scope, that are participating in this process. This is an extremely complex process. This may sound like a simple process, but it is complex. So essentially, it's a Complex Governance Networks. There are multiple actors. There are interconnections with their nonlinear, I will say nonlinear, dynamic connections.
[00:10:00 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Thinking about that recycling problem in the City of Ottawa, I tried to make some simplifications. One of them is that information matters in complex systems.
[00:10:13 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: How you make information available to multiple actors matters. It matters a lot.
Here is an example, again from the City of Ottawa, but this is not from Rideau Street. This is about the curb-side recycling at homes. This is a table that I collated from the information at the City of Ottawa website in 2022. They list the percentage of items that are recycled in each one of these categories. And you'll notice that some of them are coloured black, others are in blue. The reason for that is the instructions at the City's website say that papers – newspapers, cardboards, box boards, computer papers and so forth – they should put into black bins. Plastic bottles, soup cans and others, aluminum cans should be put into blue bins. And it also says milk/drink/soup cartons should be put into blue bins.
And I noticed that this group of items has the lowest rate of recycled in the City of Ottawa, as it is reported by the city. Why is that? It may be counterintuitive to place the cartons in blue bins because they look like cartons, they are paper. I'm sure there is a good reason for them to be put into blue bins, but this is counterintuitive.
[00:12:00 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen. Text on screen: Göktuğ Morçöl, Professor of Public Policy and Administration, School of Public Affairs, Pennsylvania State University.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: So, could it have contributed to the low recycled rate for soup cartons, milk, drink cartons and so forth? I think this illustrates the importance of information, disseminating information and getting correctly in a way that people will understand, the actors in the system will understand.
[00:12:21 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: I will give you another example. This is from the United States. If you think that the City of Ottawa recycling example was a small example, small scale example, here's a big one – the climate change, climate crisis.
As you probably know, there is this law in the US called the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed in 2022, passed by the Congress and approved by the President – Biden, at that time – and when it went into effect. Now, this is considered to be the biggest investment in climate action in history. It pledges $369 billion in clean energy incentives. Just to give you a comparison and scale, in Canada there is a similar, I would say not a separate act, but it was part of the 2023 budget in Canada, the federal government's budget, which allocated $80 billion for clean energy investments.
So, going back to the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States. This is, again, real big in scope and scale, and it created a complex system of incentives for multiple categories of actors. That is the way it was designed to work. I think that is the critical issue.
Essentially this act, the IRA, created a very complex system I would call a Complex Governance Network, or Complex Governance System, with multiple actors involved. Each one has their attention span, priorities, capabilities.
[00:14:28 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: One of the studies that made a projection about this law – to illustrate my point of why Complex Governance Networks understanding is important –
[00:14:39 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: there is a paper published in Science by John Bistline, and his colleagues. It was a very good, tremendously important paper, in my view. They did some analyses, they essentially conducted some simulations, very sophisticated simulations, I think they used six different models and ran many, many iterations.
[00:15:10 Slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: And they concluded that if the IRA is implemented fully by the year 2035, the economy wide emissions in the United States would drop 43 to 48%. 43 to 48%. And you can see that range in this illustration in this chart. That's the 43 to 48% reduction. There is a range, there is some uncertainty. Different models predicted different levels of reductions. The authors admit that there is this uncertainty. We don't know exactly where it will fall within this range.
[00:15:59 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: But more important for me, from my perspective, is that they also admit that there is uncertainty beyond this 43, 48%. They say that in the end, when we are in 2035, the reduction may be less than 40% or higher than 50%. We don't know that. And they say that this is because there are so many actors involved in the process of making things happen.
They are, roughly – they mention these – there are producers, like the producers of solar panels, for example, heat pumps and others. There are household purchasers. These are people like ourselves – like myself and yourself – who purchase these things, [like] solar panels and heat pumps and electric vehicles. We make decisions about them. And there are also policymakers at the state and federal levels in the United States. In Canada, it would be provincial level and the federal level. And there are local decision makers, too.
So, all these decision makers will make many, many decisions in reaction to these incentives to make things happen, which is a very, very complex system. And what they do, can push these outcomes beyond the boundaries of 43 to 48%.
[00:17:34 Slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: And I did some initial studies on this and identified the groups of actors who are involved in the implementation of the IRA.
There are federal government agencies in the US like the Treasury, the Energy Department, and IRS, and EPA.
There are state governments, many, many state governments – of course, there are 50 of them – and they have variety of programs. There are mechanisms like solar renewable energy certificate markets, and there are facilitators in those markets which are essentially managing the financing of some of these options. There are utilities, obviously electrics, natural gas and so forth. There are solar panel companies that manufacture them. And there are installers of these panels. And there are, again, individual citizens, households. They make decisions to, whether or not and how, in what ways to install them or use them, purchase the EVs or not purchase them, and so forth. So, that is an extremely complex system.
[00:18:49 Slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: What practical lessons can we draw from these for public servants?
[00:18:56 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: I want to make just a few comments about that. I think one of the first things is that, as public servants, and educators of public servants – which I am one – we need to develop this understanding that governments do not solve collective problems alone.
[00:19:19 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: Actually, many of us, most of us, maybe all of us, are already aware of this. We know that. But then what do we do? Well, there are many, many scholars, researchers who wrote about these issues, and made the observations that public servants should have the understanding, training and capability of working with multiple actors outside their organizations' agencies. Because again, there are many, many actors involved, including private sector and nonprofits and so forth. And these researchers, scholars, said that public servants should develop or learn diplomatic skills, that's essential, and so-called soft skills to deal with these issues. So, this is one of the practical implications of understanding and implementing, if you will, Complex Governance Networks. But that's not all.
[00:20:33 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: As you can imagine, and as I mentioned earlier, there are all these network relations and dynamics of these network relations. And it takes some technical expertise, methodological understanding, to study them and deal with them.
[00:20:56 Split screen: Göktuğ Morçöl and slide, as described.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: And there are methods of dealing with them. I will mention two, but before I say that I want to emphasize this: Nobody can be an expert in all these methodologies. But public servants, I think, should at least try to develop some basic understanding of how they work, [and] what they mean.
I think the first one I want to mention is social network analyses. You may or may not be familiar with these, but some of them are simple, the others are more sophisticated, and they create images like these, network images, network maps. You probably have seen many, many of them. But the more important question is, okay, how do these maps work? Can we analyze them? Can we analyze the structures, relationships, and their evolution? What do they mean, and so forth? So, these are all social network analysis concepts and applications.
And the other group of methodologies we need to be aware of are these agent-based simulations. They are about the dynamics of relationships among actors. So, social network analyses are about the structures, agent-based simulations are roughly about the dynamics. And it would be very difficult to illustrate agent-based simulations in one image, but this image perhaps can give you some ideas. If you are doing some simulation, do you need some theory? Obviously, some data, big data these days particularly, and artificial intelligence obviously is involved in that.
And you have real life. How do you simulate real life to understand the dynamics of doing something, taking an action in this broader, larger system that essentially affects our lives and how we solve collective problems?
[00:23:11 Göktuğ Morçöl appears full screen.]
Göktuğ Morçöl: With that, I will stop here, and thank you for listening.
[00:23:18 The CSPS animated logo appears onscreen. Text on screen: canada.ca/school.]
[00:23:24 The Government of Canada wordmark appears, and fades to black.]
