(2025-01-13) When Politics Dams Feedback

When politics dams feedback. Dan Davies’ account of how complex institutions drive decisions and actions while shielding themselves from accountability is a major contribution to public policy analyses. I applaud him for bringing cybernetics back in and for developing a model that surpasses the standard economics approach to information.

relative neglect of the political and power arrangements that can distort or even ignore that feedback loop.

As a political scientist, what I find missing are politics and power. They are mentioned in the forthcoming book, yet get short shrift there and in his essay for Hypertext

Davies focuses on outsourcing through contractual relationships between public agencies and private firms. I wish to return the focus to the relationships among public agencies at different levels of government. The creation and evolution of the authorities tasked with water management of the upper and lower basins of the Colorado River offer a case in point, as well documented in Mark Reisner’s Cadillac Desert.

Davies’ cybernetics framework provides some of the reasons for this immunity. However, without analysis of the politics and power, interventions aimed at improving feedback from the locals and others affected will have little consequence.

This case raises an additional issue. Management needs more than feedback and the capacity for change: It also needs criteria and methods for arbitrating the conflicting feedback it will receive, given the different needs of an institution’s constituencies

This system may have succeeded in getting water to those with the most clout and awarding contracts for building dams to those with the most influence. However, it was power and politics, not communication issues or an “accountability sink,” that led the authorities to ignore the interests of Mexico, weaker state governments, and small farmers

Dan Davies, I’m sure, is well aware of the issues I’ve raised. My purpose here is to point out where there are gaps we collectively need to fill to ensure that Davies’ work has the impact we want for it.