them as the relevant actors attempt to pursue them in an often-turbulent environment and monitor how far these projects are being achieved, and to organize the material, social and temporal conditions deemed necessary and/or sufficient to achieve them. Moreover, in contrast to the hierarchy of command, reflexive self-organization does not involve actors’ acceptance of pre-given substantive goals defined from above on behalf of a specific organization (for example, a firm) or an imagined collectivity (for example, a community or nation) and the centralized mobilization of the resources to achieve these goals. Instead it involves continued negotiation of the relevant goals among the different actors involved and the cooperative mobilization of different resources controlled by different actors to achieve interdependent goals. For these reasons and to distinguish it from the anarchy of the market and the hierarchy of command, it is also common to refer to these forms of reflexive self-organization as heterarchic in character.
Reflexive self-organization
There are various forms of reflexive self-organization. One way to classify them is in terms of the level of social relations on which they operate. We can distinguish collaboration based on informal interpersonal networks, the self-organization of interorganizational relations, and the indirect steering of the coevolution and structural coupling of intersystemic relations. The individuals who are active in interpersonal networks may represent only themselves and/or articulate the codes of specific functional systems. However, although they may also belong to specific agencies, groups or organizations, they are not mandated to commit the latter to a given line of action. In contrast, interorganizational relations are based on negotiation and positive coordination in task-oriented ‘strategic alliances’ derived from a (perceived or constructed) coincidence of organizational interests and dispersed control of the interdependent resources needed to produce a joint outcome that is deemed to be mutually beneficial. The key individuals involved in interorganizational relations are also empowered to represent their organizations and to negotiate strategies on their behalf for positive interorganizational coordination. Another layer of complexity is introduced by the more programmatic or mission-oriented, decentred, context-mediated nature of intersystemic steering. Whereas noise reduction involves the mediated nature of intersystemic steering, here noise reduction and negative coordination are important means of governance. Noise reduction comprises practices that are intended to facilitate communication and mutual understanding between actors and organizations oriented to different operational logics and rationalities; negative integration involves taking account of the possible adverse repercussions of one’s own actions on third parties or other systems and exercising self-restraint as appropriate.14
Although governance in the sense of reflexive self-organization occurs on all three levels, the term itself is often limited to interorganizational coordination mechanisms and practices. However, where the relevant agencies, stakeholders or organizations are based in different institutional orders or functional systems, problems relating to intersystemic steering will also affect the ‘self-organization of interorganizational relations’ even if they are not explicitly posed as such in this context. Indeed, more generally, all three forms of reflexive self-organization may be linked in tangled hierarchies. For example, interpersonal trust often helps to maintain markets and hierarchies (cf Granovetter, 1985). It can facilitate interorganizational negotiation and/or help build less personalized, more ‘generalized trust’ as organizations and other collective actors (including interorganizational partnerships) are seen to sacrifice short-term interests and reject opportunism (cf Luhmann, 1979: 120–2; Marin, 1990).
Table 1.2: Two-dimensional hybridity
| Primacy of profitability | Primacy of command | Primacy of dialogue | Primacy of solidarity | |
| Secondary role of exchange | n/a | Mafias, new public management | Benchmarking, good governance | Trade unions, syndicalism |
| Secondary role of command | Firms, mixed economy | n/a | Public–private partnerships, deliberative democracy | Bund, commune, associational democracy |
| Secondary role of dialogue | Guanxi, network economy | Parties, soft law, cooperative state | n/a | Community, communitarianism |
| Secondary role of solidarity | Social enterprises, cooperatives, social economy | Commune, subsidiarity | Social movements, civil society | n/a |
Source: Jessop (2017)
In turn, interorganizational dialogue across systems eases intersystemic communication by reducing the ‘noise’ that can arise from major differences between systems in their respective institutional logics, operational codes and modes of calculation. If organizations representing different systems can formulate and communicate these contrasting desiderata and legitimate them in terms of their respective functional requirements, this may promote mutual understanding and the search for mutually beneficial trade-offs. It thereby permits ‘systemic trust’ (in the integrity of other systems’ codes and operations) by promoting mutual understanding and stabilizing reciprocal expectations around a wider ‘societal project’ as the basis for future self-binding and self-limiting actions. In turn, the resulting noise reduction can promote interpersonal trust by enhancing mutual understanding and by stabilizing expectations. In negotiated economies, for example, a few formal organizations and forums are entrusted to formulate and represent the identities and interests of different subsystems at the same time as they contribute to the definition and promotion of a wider ‘societal project’.
The rise of governance practices
The rise of governance is partly due to secular shifts in political economy that have made heterarchy and solidarity more significant than markets or hierarchies for economic, political and social coordination. I now consider the reasons for this by undertaking two tasks: first, identifying the logic of governance as a distinctive coordination mechanism in contradistinction to markets and imperative coordination; and second, considering more fully what societal (or macro-social) changes might have made heterarchy more appropriate as an economic coordination mechanism.
First, the most general case for the shift from government hierarchy and pure market exchange to heterarchic governance can be made in terms of the evolutionary advantage (the relative capacities to innovate and learn in a changing environment) that it offers in certain circumstances. Self-organization is especially useful in cases of loose coupling or operational autonomy, relations where a plurality of interdependent but autonomous organizations, each controlling important resources, need to coordinate their actions in the face of complex reciprocal interdependence, complex spatio-temporal horizons and shared interests or projects to produce a joint outcome that is deemed mutually beneficial. Mayntz (1993) has discussed networks as a form of heterarchic governance in these terms. She suggests that their typical logic is that of negotiation directed to the realization of a joint product, such as ‘a specific technical innovation, a city plan, a strategy of collective action, or a problem solution in public policy’ (Mayntz, 1993: 11). In this way, common short-term objectives can be identified, and their self-interested realization used to promote generalized compliance with interorganizational expectations and rules (Marin, 1990: 15; Scharpf, 1994). Crucial to the success of such arrangements
