The Governance Gauge: Complexities, Capacities, Communities

The Governance Gauge series has generated solid feedback among our subscribers, and we’ve thus decided to make the book reviews twice weekly: On Sundays and Wednesdays. We strongly suggest that our subscribers visit our reading list, and stay tuned for an event that will be announced soon!

“Complexities, Capacities, Communities” is a cooperative piece made by the University of Victoria and UNESCO’s chief researchers and senior staff. The work is split into 9 chapters, with the latter 2 being case studies in Malawi and Tanzania regarding the design and implementation of tools and solutions discussed in chapters 1 through 7.

Little attention is paid to models of prudent governance and rule of law, but rather on capacity building in a way that allows communities to spring up on their own and begin experimenting with with policy.

This is a necessary, but not satisfactory prerequisite for building a successful society. However, the key value that reading this work will bring the reader is a wealth of various methods for measuring prosperity in an objective way that allows for effective action almost immediately after collection.

Creators of zones and societies will find chapters 3 through 6 useful. In these segments, much about creating capacities for communities and scaling them to larger groups is specified.

Policymakers and analysts can use the case studies of chapters 8 and 9 as examples of how to accommodate new growth in communities (and the scaling thereof) with effective policy.

Scholars and experts can find spread throughout the work many newly minted metrics that are applicable even in societies with no formal statistical data.

A full version can be read here.