"Ungovernability
"
Syllabus for Seminar at New York University, Fall
2007
R. Pardo-Maurer
PART I. PARAMETERS
Week 1. The Dark Matter of Governance
What can be governed?
Case Study : NYU and New York City
00Discussion : Parameters of the seminar; why is it easier to destroy than to build?;
"governability" as an elemental assumption of "governance"; ungovernability as the
"dark matter" of governance; prescriptive issues: "what can be governed" not the
same as what "should be" governed, or how; formal, constitutional, and other
approaches to governance; efficient institutions and social performance; defensive
governance; who governs?
00Readings from : Hobbes, Leviathan ; D.C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change,
and Economic Performance .
Week 2. Governing Nature
The evolution of social behavior.
Case Study: Chimps, Bonobos, and You.
00Discussion: Fresh insights from the life sciences, classical economics, and game
theory; a brief history of Homo sapiens before the Ice Age; survivability and the
evolution of social behavior; changing environments, demographic pressure, and
migration; scarcity and security; competition and cooperation; coercion, consent and
the transformation of anti-social passions; the family and concepts of blood kinship;
the invention of "human nature".
00Readings from : M. Ridley: The Evolution of Human Cooperation.
Week 3. Effective sovereignty and the Social Contract
Power as the prime resource.
00Case Study : Hurricane Katrina
00Discussion : Security and legitimacy; Social Contract theory and the role of
expectations; rise of the nation state and the figure of the sovereign; classical,
American, and non-Western perspectives on sovereignty; security, economic
efficiency, and the social costs of enforcement; perspectives from game theory and
neoclassical economics on rent-seeking phenomena and the "free rider" problem, as
applied to security; the problem with neutrality and fence-sitters; macrocosms and
microcosms of governance.
00Readings from : Hobbes, Leviathan ; Department of Defense, Report on Catastrophic
Climate Change; Central Intelligence Agency, Report on Long-Term Global
Demographic Trends .
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Week 4. The Limits of Power and Authority
What lies beyond the limits of might and right.
Case Study: the Sea.
00Discussion : Authority, political will and the instruments of national power; the
evolution of the modern international order; overlapping, ambiguous, and ineffective
authorities; the role of institutions; legality, legitimacy, and the nation-state as the unit
of accountability in international affairs; the sovereign and the exception; prestige and
moral authority; the illusion of power; piracy.
00Readings from : Hobbes, Leviathan ; C. Schmitt, The Concept of the Political ; D.C.
North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance .
_______
PART II. Paradigms and Case Studies
Week 5. Mere chaos
Power vacuums and failed states
Case Studies : Rwanda, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan.
00Discussion : Is anarchy better than no government at all? ; evolutionary, revolutionary,
and catastrophic discontinuities of sovereign authority; what regimes see as they fall;
distinguishing between regime collapse and state collapse; failed states; the United
Nations and evolving principles of humanitarian intervention; logistics of
peacekeeping, coalitions, and problems of unity of command; finding a new "center".
00Readings from : A.-L. Barabaszi, Linked .
Week 6. Nihilism and Anarchy
The political uses of mobs, gangs, and factions.
Case Studies : the gangs of New York.
00Discussion : Physical space, young males, and social control; urban geography and the
making of history; patronage and the public square; the role of spectacle and the
media; praetorian politics; doctrines of anarchy, civil disobedience, and rebellion; the
role of intelligence and rumor; social atomization and the civil foundations of
absolutist and authoritarian regimes; the continuum of political violence and common
crime; civil society and the seductions of fascism.
00Readings from : H. Asbury, Gangs of New York ; M. Bakunin, Statism and Anarchy .
Week 7. Shadow Regimes
Hermetic organizations and belief systems in the penumbra of weak states
Case Studies : The Mafia in Sicily; Voudou in Haiti
00Discussion : Symbiosis between hermetic organizations and weak states; identity,
loyalty, and ostracism as building blocks of power and authority; who is the Mafia? ;
why "organized crime" gets organized; kidnapping, protection rackets, and extortion;
priesthoods and the political impact of soteriology; assassination as an instrument of
policy; political vs. criminal violence; the usefulness of honor.
00Readings from : G. Falcone, Men of Honor ; W. Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow .
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Week 8. States within States
Power-sharing and autonomy.
Case Studies : Cocaine and the FARC safehaven in Colombia; the petroleum industry.
00Discussion : "No Go Zones"; deconflicting the seams of governance; between
subnational entities and national authorities; formal and informal, lawful and
unlawful organizations; centrifugal and centripetal dynamics of very large
organizations; patronage and protection in autonomous power centers; governance as
a process of negotiation and control of resources; transparency, accountability, and
corruption; the problem of crime where there is no Law; ungoverned spaces; militias.
00Readings from : D. Yergin, The Prize ; M. Bowden, Killing Pablo .
Week 9. Technology, New Frontiers, and Pioneer Governance
Security, services, and taxation in pioneer governance
Case Studies : The Pony Express, railroads, and the "Wild West"; the Internet.
00Discussion : Technology and standards as precursors to governability in pioneering
environments; overlapping and dubious authorities in new environments; vigilantism
and the coopting of outlaws; rival technologies and the drive to impose technical
standards; governance and control of linear (e.g. railroads) and non-linear (e.g.
wireless) networks; self-organizing systems; extending the writ of central authority.
00Readings from : A.-L. Barabaszi, Linked .
Week 10. Culture and Consent
The tensile strength of custom and tradition.
Case Studies : the Kilt and the Scots; English as the official language of India.
00Discussion : The individual as an object of governance; malleability of cultural
attitudes and social identities; public opinion and the consent of the governed as pivot
points of strategies for governance; mediating institutions and civil society; "social
engineering" in closed and open societies; Macaulay vs. Mill on the "right to
civilize".
00Readings from : L. Harrison and S. Huntington, Culture Matters ; E. Hobsbawm, The
Invention of Tradition ; T. B. Macaulay, Minute on Indian Education .
Week 11. Globalization and the Elusive Objects of Governance
What is governable? Who can govern?
Case Studies : Global capital markets; HIV/AIDS.
00Discussion : The expanding universe of governance; governance not limited to
governments; rise of non-state and non-sovereign actors in the international arena; the
changing role of the corporation and Non-Governmental Organizations; crises in self-
regulation and accountability; globalization and its critics; harnessing non-state forces
such as information, finance, demographics, and technology; the problem of
accountability; the individual as an object of global governance; the future of freedom
00Readings from : D.C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic
Performance ; World Heath Organization report, AIDS Prevention and Control .
_______
PART III. Conclusion
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Week 12. Democratic Vistas
American perspectives on the paradox of ordered liberty
Case Studies : Shifting political aims of the Union and the Confederacy in the Civil War.
00Discussion : Classical political thought and the imperatives of equilibrium; checks and
balances; dynamic and static equilibria; the crises of Federalism; creative destruction
and the "subversive" Jefferson; "Whig interpretations" of history and their critics;
doctrines of dynamic constitutionalism; finding new meaning on old laws; American
exceptionalism.
00Readings from : Hamilton, Madison, Jay: the Federalist Papers ; A. Lincoln:
Columbus Speech, Cooper Union Speech .
_______
Optional
Week X. Empire and Civilization
Resources, political will, and the continuum of domestic and foreign policy.
Case Studies : Rome under Augustus; the U.S., the "Global Community" and Iraq.
00Discussion : managing risk in the 21st century; national quests for total security; the
intersection of foreign and domestic policy; alternative global security managers;
unipolar, multipolar, and true balance-of-power systems; the myths of empire and
civilization.
00Readings from : Cassius Dio, Reign of Augustus; G.W. Bush, National Security
Strategy of the United States.
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