Shaping Institutional Evolution: PH'5Q4sH

Responsibilities

That there are responsibilities to sustain and develop societal institutions is all too evident—at least to those living in a liberal-democratic society preoccupied with the quality of their government, levels of education, state of health care, handling of welfare, legal backlogs and other social issues.

However, institutions cannot simply be improved directly in the way that an organisations may be changed to be more efficient or effective. As explained initially, institutions are too diffuse and complex. They evolve and whether any particular development is actually an improvement may be hard to determine even in the long term.

So this framework is about "shaping evolution" rather than "enabling improvement" even if many of those involved believe that is what they are doing. (In the Re-labelling section below I refer to improvement to reflect that belief.)

Institutions are the concern of all in society. There is no management structure when it comes to determining which values and beliefs should count. Active engagement with their issues and deficiencies involves personal choices and a sense of civic responsibility.

Those who are active in society in relation to its values and beliefs are often labelled «activists». The association of that label with unhelpful, attention-getting anti-social behaviour is unfortunate.

Anyone working in politics, the law, journalism, social sciences is likely to become engaged with institutions and concerned for their improvement. But when it comes to the most basic level of responsibility—L1-promotion of the public interest—everyone potentially has a role.

Re-labelling

Because the orientation is towards improvement, the 3-word labels from the Spiral will be adjusted so as to make the notion of a need for improvement for the public explicit.

L1: Promote Vested Interests becomes Promote the Public Interest because the institution is not improved if the public does not benefit.

L2: Discuss Potential Remedies becomes Discuss Practical Remedies because many remedies offered by popular opinion are wholly impractical.

L3: Analyse Topical Issues becomes Analyse Controversial Issues because analysis needs to be focused on those topics where there is most argument and uncertainty.

L4: Construct Credible Narratives becomes Construct Alternative Narratives because the existing narrative is typically meant to reassure the public and protect powerful vested interests.

L5: Present Shocking Statistics becomes Present Comparative Statistics because a context, either past performance or other countries, substantiates the requirement for improvement.

L6: Challenge Diverse Perspectives becomes Challenge Damaging Perspectives because this focuses on those approaches that impede general improvement.

L7: Demand Maximum Transparency becomes Demand Radical Transparency because what is regarded as a sensible maximum by powerful interests typically permits hiding much that needs public exposure.

This differentiation of responsibilities to enable the evolution of institutional functioning immediately poses issues of how these can be integrated. Such integration is taxonomically provided by a structural hierarchy.

The Structural Hierarchy

The taxonomic form that provides for the necessary integration is a Structural Hierarchy. Each Level in such a hierarchy is a Grouping and contains all Levels of the originating hierarchy. This section will investigate the Groupings and offer provisional formulations which deserve further checking and refinement.

Technical Details:

Structural Hierarchies are developed by progressively grouping adjacent Levels of THEE’s 7-Level holistic hierarchies in all possible ways. «Holistic» means that Levels in the hierarchy broadly imply or include each other, and this applies here.

The first «Level» in a Structural Hierarchy is a Grouping of 1 Level i.e. Grouping-1 (G1) contains 7 Groups that are Monads i.e. made up of 1 original Level. The next «Level» will contain all Groups of 2 adjacent Levels i.e. G2 contains 6 Dyads…and so on until we reach G7, the Heptad Grouping where there is just one Group consisting of all 7 original Levels. As a result, every G-Level contains all the Levels of the originating hierarchy i.e. the original differentiation of an entity into Levels has been replaced by a re-unification applicable at each G-Level.There are 28 Groups (components) in a Structural Hierarchy.

However, definition of this THEE form is far more complex. Internal Levels i.e. the Levels within any Group, have distinctive qualifiers, and are labelled with a lower case 'g', e.g. g4 refers to the 4^th Level in each of the Tetrads, Pentads, Hexads and the Heptad; and so g4 does not exist in the Monads, Dyads or Triads which have less than 4 internal Levels.

See sH Image:

The Groupings and their Groups are ways to integrate work and overcome the differentiation and discontinuity demanded by the hierarchical stratification of responsibilities. They have unique functions and properties and explain phenomena easily noticed in social life.

Unlike the framework of consent, where personal factors are virtually irrelevant, the requirements of handling consent within a society must now be integrated with a variety of personal and social factors. The result is to provide for a development process that can not only get needs met and generate well-being but can also deliver on the varied expectations and obligations intrinsic to rational life in a liberal-democratic society.

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Get Started

• For an advance account of the analysis, read this orientation.

• See the full picture and summary tables in the review section.

  OR

• Start with the status quo.

 

Originally posted: 18-Mar-2024. Last updated 27-Mar-2024.