Governance in an age of transition: an evolutionary perspective

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Notes

1 Joseph A. Camilleri and Jim Falk, Worlds in Transition: Evolving Governance across a Stressed Planet (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2009).

2 John Ruggie refers to ‘governance gaps’ in his analysis of the impact of TNC operations on human rights (John Ruggie, ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights’, Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises, A/HRC/8/5, April 7, 2008).

3 See Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, trans. and notes Charles Francis (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1926–28); Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, trans. . John Wilkinson; intro. Robert K. Merton (London: Cape, 1965, first published 1954); Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and Crisis, trans. Mildred Adams (London: Allen & Unwin, 1959); Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). See also Joseph A. Camilleri, Civilization in Crisis: Human Prospects in a Changing World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

4 Reflexivity here is used to denote the societal dimensions of purposive behaviour. For definitional approaches to the concept see Ray Holland, ‘Reflexivity’, Human Relations 52, no. 4 (1999): 463–84.

5 See Kevin N. Laland, John Odling-Smee, and Marcus W. Feldman, ‘Niche Construction, Biological Evolution, and Cultural Change’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (2000): 131–46.

6 See Anna Maria Mercuri, Laura Sadori, and Paloma Uzquiano Ollero, ‘Mediterranean and North-African Cultural Adaptations to Mid-Holocene Environmental and Climatic Changes’, The Holocene 21, no. 1 (February 2011): 189–206.

7 Concepts such as ‘heterarchy’ (C.L. Crumley, ‘Heterarchy and the Analysis of Complex Societies’, in Power Relations and State Formation, ed. T.C. Patterson and C.W. Gailey (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1995), 155–69) or the ‘segmentary state’ (A. Southall, Alur Society: A Study in Processes and Types of Domination (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1956)) have provided new approaches and alternatives to the simplistic paradigm of hierarchy as the exclusive or dominant mechanism driving social and political integration.

8 For an instructive application of this wider perspective to international relations, see John Gerard Ruggie, ‘Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations’, International Organization 47, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 139–74.

9 See Kevin Farnsworth, ‘Governance, Business and Social Policy: International and National Dimensions’, in Governance, Globalization and Public Policy, ed. Patricia Kennett (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2008), 35–55.