I have always found ecological metaphors compelling. When Burke argues that the state evolved over the ages, 'the happy effect of following nature, which is wisdom without reflection, and above it', I find it intuitively plausible. (Whether 'entailed inheritance' of the precise structure of society is the only means of protecting the transmission of this happy effect - and indeed whether it's actually all that happy - is a different mattter.) Burke goes on to say:

By a constitutional policy, working after the pattern of nature, we receive, we hold, we transmit our government and our privileges, in the same manner in which we enjoy and transmit our property and our lives. The institutions of policy, the goods of fortune, the gifts of Providence, and handed down, to use and from us, in the same course and order. Our political system is placed in a just correspondence and symmetry with the order of the world, and with the mode of existence decreed to a permanent body composed of transitory parts...

(Thereafter he starts rambling somewhat, in a blustery parliamentarian kind of a way.)

Burke, it would seem, has looked at nature and seen that forms persist, as the 'transitory parts' move through them. He's come to the conclusion that this 'pattern of nature' requires the constant, but cautiously changed, transmission through society.

Fritjof Capra would agree on the insight: dissipative structures in nature are all about the pattern, and the input and output of material to maintain the pattern.

Of course, Burke's argument can be dismissed as romantic nonsense, originating solely in his fear for his class, as he looked over the channel to the turmoil in France. And even if we could now say there was some validity to his notion about 'patterns of nature' in state and society (and the role of his class in maintaining and transmitting that pattern), this doesn't allow us to endow Burke's notions with a retrospective validity.

Equally, my own intuition on whether something is plausible or not doesn't make it any more likely to be true.

But that doesnt mean he was wrong. This is one of the most intriguing - but tangled - aspects of the PhD proposal. He could in fact be right about the central fact - societies evolve, in ways that we can't understand by looking at our own actions. The quote I always come back to is Constitutional theorist, A.V. Dicey's (a fan of Burke):

The [British] constitution... was the fruit not of abstract theory but of that instinct which (it is supposed) has enabled Englishmen, and especially uncivilised Englishmen, to build up sound and lasting institutions, much as bees construct a honeycomb, without undergoing the degradation of understanding the principles on which they raise a fabric more subtly wrought than any conscious work of art.

But even if they are both right about the epistemological point - societies evolve their structures without intelligent design, perhaps accreting many instances of choice and interaction that were in themselves intelligent, into something beyond anyone's ability to understand - they then have to move on to say something about what that means for human action. Burke certainly does this, propounding a whole set of notions about the evils of 'innovation', the great oak of the state, trimming branches and staying away from the trunk, etc. He's also very keen on the notion that change must happen. (The correct management of change is a key theme of what conservative theory there is on the subject.)

But his arguments come back to a single point: change will at any rate happen naturally, as long as you don't interfere with the natural order of society. Those already entrusted to act as the vessels for the transmission of the body of state are there because that's how things evolved.

Which seems entirely plausible, if human society is exactly like an ecology.

During the PhD, I'm charged with learning how to model societies, using things like agent based modeling. This kind of work, I'm proposing, is a big step closer to the creation in a virtual lab of just the sort of things Burke and Dicey are talking about. You can set up experiments, and observe results. (I'll come back shortly, or maybe in another post, to the serious problems with what this approach still fails to capture, or whether the results can ever be anything but trivial...)

Another example I tend to refer to is Leakey's, from his book 'the Sixth Extinction', which is a nice little joining of modeling and Burke's point. In it, he argues that we still fail to understand the importance of history, and path dependence. The networks within ecologies, still thinking that we can re-create them from their components like one might build a lego house.

How [ecological communities assemble] remains a major question, as do the behaviour and characteristics of the community once it is formed. These issues are immensely complex, because they involve many variables (that is, individual species) that may interact in many different ways. As a result, the range of potential patterns is immense, even infinite. // Mature, species-rich communities are much more difficult to invade than newly established ones. There seems to be something in the maturation process that strengthens the emerging protective network with the community. The community seems to be improving itself, almost purposefully getting better in a way that is difficult to define.

The parallel with Burke and Dicey is obvious; Leakey even articulates his own version of the non-interference principle: models of evolved communities have been carried out, with a number of virtual species interacting over time. They were then taken apart, before the virtual lab-folk tried to re-assemble the species into the same community from scratch. As Leakey says:

It doesn't work. Neither does it work in nature. Ecologists in the prairies of the mid-west and the Florida Everglades attempted to do the same in the real world – they knew which species should be there, and so simply attempted to re-introduce them. This always failed – and now we know why.

Why? Because dynamic network connections evolve over time that are as vital to an ecosystem as a circulatory system is to a human body. The fact that its not immediately apparent to human senses doesn't mean it's not there, and doesn't mean it's not a life or death issue. Or so the theory goes.

Now lets look at some societal cases - one I picked up today in the Guardian that prompted me to write this post, and one from the Economist.

Polly Toynbee puts up a foot-stamping defence of the state in a comment piece today. She's attacking a book by the Policy Exchange, which is apparently the thinktank closest to David Cameron's heart. It's by Jesse Norman, and is called Compassionate Conservatism: What It Is, Why We Need It. Toynbee says:

Norman dates the beginning of society's downfall at precisely the point when the left would celebrate the foundation of the good society: Lloyd George's radical 1911 budget and the welfare state. But for him, here began the rot of "an invasive state" that "disrupts the voluntary bonds between people".

Norman argues that the voluntary sector, and local networks in general, should have more of a role, and that the state degrades these networks. (I think I may be paraphrasing, but that's about it.) Toynbee thinks this is all absolute nonsense: The state didn't destroy society, it created it, she says. By lifting millions out of poverty through national insurance and, more lately, working families tax credit, more people have been enabled to take part in society. She reckons:

this sentimental conservatism has all the historical truth of a Hovis commercial. // So who is going to stand up and say that government is a force for good? Who will say the blindingly obvious: there is no good society without a good strong state? Markets can only thrive with strong government regulation. The happiest, most socially just and economically successful are those that embrace big government: the Nordics.

So, how are we to adjudicate between these visions? Can there be any truth in the accusation that the welfare state has destroyed or degraded social networks? For Toynbee, this is a central battle line:

This book fleshes out that abhorrence of the state and all its works, the true dividing line between left and right.

So this as a question about statecraft, and its limits.

So far I've presented a few ecological metaphors to suggest that societies do indeed have invisible networks; networks that are the nervous system of any healthy society. I've also suggested (via Leakey) that its possible to disrupt these networks, and we're quite likely to do this, because we can't see them (and state actors can't see them with the optics they use to look with.) All very conservative. But then we come back to same point: what do we do with this? How do we act at all?

Well, a few things. First, try to investigate the claim further, by bouncing the idea off real-world examples. Second, think of a way of modeling it. My current thinking is that modeling of spending, local circulation of money and its correlation to social capital is going to be easiest, though still fraught.

Third, and most important, is that I think the devil's going to be in the detail. As usual. Its at least logically possible that you can enact policies that feed networks - the kind of networks you want. (Which is another point: who wants the kind of networks the state wants?)

For example, you could give everyone a citizen's wage - but its impact might depend on how and where it got spent. It would equally depend on how it would effect existing economic networks. The incentives, an economist might say, would all be wrong. But it would seem unlikely that a case can be made for or against a priori.

Rambling now: let's get on the economist article, from May 27 06, page 48 - the Charlemagne column. Oh, by the way, this was another RTR - Random Toilet Read.

It compares social mobility in Europe and the US, and poses a strange little paradox. Europeans, apparently,

deplore the idea that people may remain mired in poverty [and] they also resent the sight of rich families staying at the top for generations.

But also

social stability is desirable and if a certain amount of inflexibility is needed to underpin it, that is a price worth paying to avoid the restless uncertainties of America's market-driven model.

But it actually transpires that European countries are far less stable than America: social mobility is much higher in Europe. This is confirmed by two new research papers, which ranks countries on a scale from one to zero, with one meaning no mobility at all (e.g. child's income = parents) and 0 = perfect mobility (child's income bears no relation to parents'.)

Nordic countries score 0.2, Britain scores 0.36 and America 0.54.

A key finding from the studies, though, is about mobility at the bottom. An example:

Around three quarters of sons born into the poorest fifth of the population in Nordic countries in the late 1950s had moved out of that category by the time they were in their early 40s. In contrast, only just over a half of American men born at the bottom moved up.

The article then looks at the reasons for this, and ends with a conclusion that I found rather surprising, coming from the Economist:

For Europe, the secrets of greater social mobility are, first, tough redistribution policies that particularly benefit those at the bottom; and especially in Nordic countries, a more supple and less class-ridden education system, running from top to bottom. America could learn something from that.

Yikes!

So, Scandanavian countries seem to have survived this intensive statecraft, and come out as well-balanced societies. (Though whether Sweden's doing so well now, I'm not sure.)

Does this falsify all this stuff about networks being so important? Or does it suggest the pace of change was correct? What did they do that worked so well, where elsewhere, things went a little awry? Was it already existing social norms? Was it state structure? What?

Why is the question important? If the devil is, indeed, in the detail, then finding out some answers would help bring some sanity to the tennis-like arguments between left and right that Toynbee identifies as a central battleground. Without a lot more actual empirical (and modeling?) work - asking the right questions about social and economic networks when looking at the cases - we're not going to get past the ponk-ponk of the state versus natural-pattern argument.

And as regards all my lovely ecology metaphors, as Bertallanfy says of systems theory, he hoped:

by formulating exact criteria, general system theory will guard against superficial analogies which are useless in science.

He equally rather boldy hoped that his 'general science of wholeness' could cross disciplinary boundaries.

Better end there: except to say, I think 'superficial analogies' still have their place, not least for their role in inspiring further thought. And second, an imminent post will have to get stuck in to the question of science and politics.

Er, where to begin? Probably come on to J.C. Scott next, I think...