The Governance Gauge: Your Next Government
“This book is not a paean to polycentric law. Nor is it a polemic against the monocentric law of nation states. Instead, it presents monocentric and polycentric law as two manifestations of fundamentally the same phenomenon: the law. The question is not which predominates, but how they interact and to what end. The structure of a legal system — whether its power issues from one center or many, whether it dominates the environment or shares it — is not as important, normatively speaking, as whether the legal system’s power operates with the consent of those it touches. Instead of monocentric or polycentric law, friends of humanity should seek autocentric law.” — Tom W. Bell
We hope you enjoy this week’s Governance Gauge: for more reading material, you can always visit our reading list for more on governance, special economic zones, best practices and studies!
“Your Next Government?” by Tom W. Bell can be regarded as one of the best introductory books to the competitive governance field. This is partly because it covers a great variety of topics, but also due to it being a light read, thanks to the author’s engaging writing style.
The book begins by exploring the current market for governance and its related enterprises. First, the importance of governance itself is shown, with data from the World Bank indicating that human capital and institutions are the biggest constituents of human wealth, as measured by the rule of law. That section is then followed by data on the state of governance related enterprises, indicating a growth trend in the adoption of SEZs and intentional communities.
In the next part, the author proceeds to define the concept of autocentric law (see quote). In monocentric legal systems, explains Prof. Bell, there is only one source of law — as in usual nation states. In polycentric ones, law arises in an evolutionary process from different sources — as in many customary societies, such as in England. The focus, however, should not be if power comes from one center or many, but whether that power is consensual or not. This kind of law based on consent is named Autocentric.
To firmly ground the autocentric law, — and explain why we should want it — the author lists the benefits of consent, which encompass three spheres: the moral, the legal, and the economic. That is followed by a more detailed elaboration of the nature of consent, which is explained as not being a binary construct, but rather a “ladder” of many degrees. According to Prof. Bell, these degrees of consent impact the justifiability of actions, so the more consent, the better. The section on consent ends with proposals about how governments can try to climb this consent “ladder” and deliver governance in a more voluntary way.
The following chapters leave theory and get into practice. Firstly, 6 best practices for governing services are presented. Secondly, the case for the abolition of governmental immunity is laid out. A proposal for the establishment of citizen courts follows.
The chapters about private cities are also very good introductions to that specific field. In them, the economic problem of orphan cities is explained — since they’re unowned, municipalities suffer from the tragedy of the commons. The solution is to establish ownership over cities. But can that be done? The book explains different ownership models, such as those of HOAs, Co-ops, Condominiums and Citizen-owned cities. Further, decision-making systems for these entities are presented. Those are shareholder democracy, corrective democracy and their combination, double democracy.
Lastly, this work also launched the first version of Ulex. Ulex is an open source, common-law based legal system that wants to become for law what Unix was for software: a universal interoperable platform serving as basis for legal innovation. Prof. Bell created it by putting international legal best-practices together. The system is divided into procedural and substantive rules. These rules can also be adapted by their users by adding extra modules, for example. You can find out more about the Ulex project here.
The book is divided in 3 parts of 19 chapters total. The first part provides facts and statistics on governance and SEZs, while the second part deals with consent and constitutional theory. Lastly, the third part deals with best practices and new initiatives in and solutions for the field.
Creators of zones and societies will find in chapters 1.2–1.4 different case studies of previous and ongoing innovative governance enterprises. Also, 3.4–3.5 covers organizational models for private cities and 3.7 presents the Ulex open source legal system.
Policymakers and analysts can refer to chapters 3.1–3.3 and 3.6 for existing best practices and an array of proposals for the next generation of governments, from an upgraded US SEZ model to a citizen courts system.
Scholars and experts may read chapters 1.1 to 1.3 for an overview of the state of governance related enterprises and SEZs, both in the US and abroad. Chapters 2.1–2.4 also explore the theoretical aspects of consent and constitutional theory in depth.
The book can be found here.
Written by: Francisco Litvay
