Building on the previous chapters, this chapter compares state and society funded climate policy evaluation with a view to the three foundational ideas of polycentric governance, namely self-organization, context and interactions between governance centers. While self-organization through climate policy evaluation is limited, the comparison reveals that society-funded evaluations engaged more deeply with the context of climate policy than the state-funded ones. Society-funded evaluation also used more evaluation criteria in their work. But state funders appear to have greater levels of resources, which manifest in terms of the numbers of methods that they use, as well as more quantitative comparability metrics. The latter may help to carry insights from one governance center to another. On the whole, society and state funded evaluation therefore appear complementary, each uniquely contributing to polycentric climate governance. However, in both groups, there remains ample room for development with a view to leveraging the synergies of polycentric governance by the means of evaluation.

Of the 618 climate policy evaluations collected for this research, only 84 were society-funded. This means that while self-organization represents not only a theoretical possibility but also an empirical reality, the capacities for doing so are limited. Environmental groups are particularly active in climate policy evaluations, while research institutes and private-sector consultancies also contribute. These evaluations engage with context to a moderate degree, and their level of reflexivity, or critical engagement with extant policy targets, is not as high as polycentric governance scholars may expect. Interestingly, only about a quarter of the society-funded evaluations identified and addressed gaps left by state-funded evaluation. In sum, while self-organization thus manifests through climate policy evaluation, there remains great potential for greater engagement of societal actors. This type of engagement is not only be desirable from a polycentric, but also from a democratic perspective.

This chapter presents a detailed analysis of state-funded evaluations collected for this research. State-funded evaluations are by definition not self-organized, and they comprise the lion’s share of the 618 climate policy evaluations unearthed between 1997 and 2014 at the EU level, in Germany and in the United Kingdom. The chapter presents an analysis conducted with a novel coding scheme and demonstrates the growth of state-funded evaluations in number over time, as well as the fact that most evaluation remain within their own governance center in terms of funding, evaluating and the policy on which they focus. There is a strong focus on certain types of climate policy, notably renewables, cross-sectoral and energy efficiency. However, legal requirements for evaluation are not the main drivers. State-funded evaluations show a cursory treatment of context, and limited realized potential for driving interaction across governance-centers.

With this chapter, we sketch a picture of a future process-oriented praxis. We describe what is required to instigate a theoretical shift toward a process commitment, and what that shift might look like for the psychological praxis. To flesh this out, we conceptualize psychological science as a complex dynamic system whose behaviour is currently dominated by a substance-oriented attractor state. We describe the dynamic mechanisms that serve to integrate the layers of practices into a living, breathing praxis. And we describe how the current praxis might be perturbed, such that a new process-oriented praxis might emerge.

An overview of the foundational aspects of complex dynamic systems is provided. This chapter serves as a reference for applications of complex dynamic systems concepts and methods to concrete topics. This chapter argues that complex dynamic systems is an ideal candidate for realizing a process approach in psychology, without it necessarily being a monolithic framework.

With this chapter, we contrast the mainstream explanatory practices with forms of causality that are processual: complex causality. Complex dynamic systems are used as a framework, incorporating principles such as emergence, self-organization, circular causality, and perturbations. With this alternative, processes themselves are seen as causes, making causality a moving and dynamic phenomenon. We conclude with descriptions of various concrete causal models that can be used to help researchers understand causality via processes.

Chapter 2 argues that although the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment offers an argument for the necessity of teleological judgments of organisms, Kant is ultimately interested in the conceptual purposiveness of nature as a whole. He constructs an argument from the organism to this conclusion, because it allows him to assimilate characteristic features of a dialectic, specifically the fact that it ensnares ordinary understanding. This serves the end of showing that although the principle of the purposiveness of nature is a transcendental principle of reason, employing it is free of the sort of contradictions that typically beset reason. It has a legitimate and indeed necessary role to play in experience. The chapter further argues that the discussion of the methodology of biology is of great philosophical interest. For Kant all causal explanations are mechanistic and he develops a unique model for mechanistic explanations of the processes through which organisms produce or organize themselves. Teleological judgments of organic nature are not therefore a threat to the project of the comprehensive mechanistic explanation of the natural world. The chapter demonstrates this by examining Kant’s views of contemporary theories of generation, Blumenbach, his papers on human races and his evolutionary speculation.

A complex system is composed of many elements that interact with each other and their environment. The term emergence is used to describe how the large-scale features of the complex system arise from interactions between the components, and these system-level features are called emergent phenomena. This chapter reviews the multidisciplinary study of complex systems in physics, biology, and social sciences. This chapter reviews three topics: first, research on how people learn how to think about complex systems; second, how learning environments themselves can be analyzed as complex systems; and finally, how the analytic methods of complexity science – such as computer modeling – can be applied to the learning sciences. The chapter summarizes challenges and future opportunities for helping students learn about complex systems and for research in the learning sciences that considers educational systems to be complex phenomena.

Chapter 1 introduces collective intelligence (CI) as an academic concept. At a basic level, CI extends the conception of intelligence from an individual to a group level. Pierre Lévy formulated the modern version in 1994, when he described the invention of the Internet as a new universally distributed intelligence. Today, CI covers many different areas, but most definitions are vague and inconsistent across academic disciplines. Studies address collective problem solving in both small and large groups. At a micro level, researchers have identified a general group intelligence factor that is relevant for performance in small groups. At a macro level, studies of large groups have focused on different types of self-organization, including both stigmergy and swarm coordination. In addition, diversity examines CI as a core feature, both from the perspective of the “many wrongs principle” and the “many eyes principle.” Furthermore, the chapter provides a description of the book’s theoretical approach, building on Vygotsky and the inclusion of both biological and cultural-historical perspectives. The section on the methodological approach explains the data collection process, and the use of top solver perceptions of their participation in online innovation contests.

Two imprisoning factors, rumination and loneliness, on the individual level, and two imprisoning factors, social isolation and over-positioning economy, at the collective level are extensively described. Several implications for the organization of the self in contemporary society are outlined: the increasing density and heterogeneity of I-positions, frequency of “visits” by unexpected positions, and larger “position leaps.” Then, the phenomenon of “over-positioning economy” as one of the main implications of neoliberalism is discussed in more depth. A sociological theory is introduced to account for the “asymmetrical penetration” of the economic value sphere into other value spheres (e.g., education, science, love). Also, on the level of the self, a one-sided penetration occurs as economic positions, such as consumer and entrepreneurial positions, are increasingly influencing other I-positions that, as a consequence, are at risk of losing their uniqueness. In all these cases, possible trajectories into the direction of self-liberation are sketched.

Understanding network formation is essential to building a cohesive theory of network connectivity in the social relations that form historical regimes. Using diagrams of network structure in which nodes represent components and lines represent their interactions, we can recognize essential features of the interactive configurations that lead to patterns (institutions) and behaviors (regimes) and emergent properties. When we capture how agents interact and self-organize, we can infer structure; and knowing structure we can infer patterns of information transmission and thus collective behavior, including why system growth or breakdown follows a critical event. Theoretical network models – random, scale-free, small-world, and hub-and-spoke – capture these regularities and allow us to infer the principles underlying their construction and the trade-offs of stability and resilience. Knowing the patterns of structure and interaction, we gain a deeper grasp of two critically important and strongly correlated phenomena of contemporary political economy: the Great Divergence of East and West, and the global impact of China’s contemporary and unprecedented economic transformation.

Europe’s network structure had evolutionary advantages in its adaptability in innovation and resistance to collapse. While China’s imperial dynasties bequeathed political, social, and ideological foundations for national unity that endured largely intact for two millennia, behind that legacy resides a source of enduring structural weakness. Its system stability comes at a loss of flexibility. Fear of emerging chaos is memorialized in the narrative by which the Chinese Communist Party justifies its grip on power. An awareness of how vulnerability has led to failures predisposes China’s leaders to take insulating measures, e.g., censoring the Internet, constraining academic course content, imposing party oversight on enterprise, and hindering the acquisition of power and prestige that is independent of the regime. But bolstering system stability by strengthening centralized control mechanisms may undermine system resilience, reproducing the very weaknesses its designers seek to avoid and causing a massive disruption in the future. As these two great cultural systems begin to impinge on one another, network analysis has much to reveal about the choice of separation or integration that is before us.

In this chapter we address what we consider to be foundational aspects shaping emergent polycentric governance. They explain the scalar organization and diversity of governance arrangements as well as its performance. We argue that polycentric governance is founded on particular overarching rules that enable self-organization by those involved in governance of collective goods. Polycentric governance offers diverse ways to address social problems and performance criteria that actors introduce into negotiations over governance. Variability in social-problem characteristics leads to variable governance structures and performance. Heterogeneity of communities provides a further explanation of why people prioritize differing criteria of performance and pursue their aims through a diversity of governance arrangements. The chapter elaborates on the foundational roles of these variables for polycentric governance, and highlights gaps in research on these issues.

The idea of partial organization has not been fully explored. Relatively little attention has been paid to organization within organizations or to the possibility of partial de-organization. We explore this possibility in the context of business firms for which innovation and strategic renewal are imperatives. The firm’s top management created conditions for autonomous action in the form of a dedicated internal development program for strategic renewal. Thus, it attempted to partially deconstruct its organizational hierarchy and other elements of its decided order. Employees from all over the organization were invited to participate in the program and to present proposals for new strategic initiatives. The contribution of the paper is in the introduction of the concept of partial de-organizing and in the argument that partial organization is also observable within, and not just without, the boundaries of formal organizations.

The idea of partial organization has not been fully explored. Relatively little attention has been paid to organization within organizations or to the possibility of partial de-organization. We explore this possibility in the context of business firms for which innovation and strategic renewal are imperatives. The firm’s top management created conditions for autonomous action in the form of a dedicated internal development program for strategic renewal. Thus, it attempted to partially deconstruct its organizational hierarchy and other elements of its decided order. Employees from all over the organization were invited to participate in the program and to present proposals for new strategic initiatives. The contribution of the paper is in the introduction of the concept of partial de-organizing and in the argument that partial organization is also observable within, and not just without, the boundaries of formal organizations.