Panarchy – Paul B Hartzog
Complexity + Networks + Connectivity => Panarchy
“What makes political systems cross over the threshold into parameter transformations? Some breakpoints occur when a technological development enables individuals to engage in previously unimagined activities and collectivities to pursue previously inconceivable policy goals… a turning point that occurs when the resources or practices of a system can no longer cope with one more increment of change and its parameters give way under the cumulative load.”[1]
In times of great transformation, civilization finds itself in T.S. Eliot’s Wasteland.[2] Old rules become increasingly useless and do not result in the same successful outcomes as they did in the past, but a new Kuhnian paradigm has yet to emerge from the chaos of turbulent times.[3] The discovery of a new path lies in the process of recognizing and illuminating patterns in the vectors that are operating in the transforming civilization.[4]
The primary hypothesis that I will endeavor to support is that leveraging the benefits of network organization constitutes a new source of power and a new way of accomplishing global governance. As individuals and groups engage each other globally, the locus of global governance shifts from state-centered activities to distributed networks. The cumulative effect of the shift from hierarchies to networks is a system of overlapping spheres of authority and regimes of collective action called “panarchy.”[5]