Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems: Key Points

Consensus Building and Complex Adaptive Systems

Consensus building is increasingly used to find strategies for uncertain and complex policy tasks; it is a sophisticated form of collaborative planning.

Key Aspects of Consensus Building:

  • Conflict Resolution: A strategy for resolving conflicts where other methods have failed.

  • Societal Response: Adapting to networked societies with distributed power and diverse knowledge.

  • Stakeholder Dialogue: Involves long-term, face-to-face dialogue among stakeholders with a facilitator.

  • Consensus-Oriented: Seeks agreement through inclusive methods, respecting all voices and focusing on interests.

Evaluation Framework

A new framework is needed to evaluate collaborative planning, modeled on complex adaptive systems rather than Newtonian mechanics. Consensus building involves experimentation, learning, and shared meaning.

Grounded in Three Sources

  1. Research and practice in consensus building.

  2. Complexity science.

  3. Communicative rationality.

Consequences of Effective Consensus Building

Effective consensus building leads to high-quality agreements, tangible products, and intangible products.

High-Quality Agreements

  • Achieved among stakeholders who might not otherwise communicate.

  • Produce mutual-gain solutions.

  • More durable and implementable due to considering more interests.

  • Based on unique knowledge from each stakeholder and widely accepted technical information.

  • Foster innovative ideas through dynamic group discussion.

Tangible Products

  • Formal agreements, plans, policies, legislation, and regulations.

  • Agreed-on data and analyses.

  • Second and third-order effects, such as spin-off partnerships and collaborative projects.

  • Innovations: new strategies, actions, and ideas.

Intangible Products

  • Social, intellectual, and political capital.

  • Stronger relationships and trust.

  • Shared understanding of interests and problems.

  • Political capital to influence public action.

  • Learning and Change: Single and double loop learning.

Paradoxes in Evaluation

Conventional evaluation ideas may not capture the unique values of consensus building and may lead to misinterpretations of success and failure.

  • Agreements: Quality matters more than just reaching an agreement.

  • Goals: Shared goals may evolve during the process.

  • Implementation: Lack of implementation doesn't always mean failure.

  • Process and Outcomes: Intertwined; acceptability of the process is crucial.

  • Boundaries: Consensus building has no clear boundaries in space, time or participation.

Complexity Science Perspective

Complexity science offers a way to understand the emerging network society and value intangible consequences.

World as Machine vs. World as Organism

  • Machine: Mechanistic view focused on control and prediction. Interventions should produce intended outcomes.

  • Organism: Complex systems adapt and change in uncertain environments. They evolve and learn, displaying intelligence and innovation.

Key Concepts from Complexity Theory

  • Emergence: Simple elements with simple rules produce complex patterns.

  • Self-Organization: Systems evolve and adapt based on feedback and interaction.

  • Edge of Chaos: Innovation occurs in unstable but not chaotic environments.

Communicative Rationality

Communicative rationality involves ideal conditions for discourse that can lead to emancipatory knowledge, transcending societal rationalizations.
Emancipatory knowledge can be achieved through dialogue that engages all those with differing interests around a task or problem. For dialogue to produce emancipatory knowledge, the stakeholders must be equally informed, listened to, and respected, and none can be accorded more power than others to speak or make decisions.
Principles include equal information, respect, and the ability to challenge assumptions. Consensual conclusions reached under these conditions are considered rational and ethical.

Principles for Evaluation

Evaluate consensus building as a self-organizing, evolving process that gathers information, makes connections, and promotes learning and creativity. It should challenge accepted knowledge, experiment, empower participants, and build trust.

Process Criteria

  • Inclusiveness.

  • Meaningful Purpose.

  • Self-Organization.

  • Engagement.

  • Challenge to the Status Quo.

  • High-Quality Information.

  • Consensus-Seeking.

Outcome Criteria

  • High-Quality Agreement.

  • Ending Stalemate.

  • Cost-Effectiveness.

  • Creative Ideas.

  • Learning and Change.

  • Social and Political Capital.

  • Accepted Information.

  • Cascade of Changes.

  • Flexible Institutions.

Linking Process and Outcomes

Meeting process criteria increases the likelihood of meeting outcome criteria. Inclusive and well-informed processes are more likely to produce implementable proposals and build trust. Good processes should lead to just, fair, and sustainable outcomes.

Existing Evaluations of Consensus Building

Existing studies provide a foundation, but many are unpublished or focus narrowly on specific aspects.

Common Evaluation Methods

  • Surveys and interviews.

  • Facilitator evaluations.

  • Comparative case studies.

  • Analysis of dispute records.

Limitations

  • Lack of long-term assessments.

  • Potential for bias.

  • Focus on easily measurable variables.

Concluding Reflections

Consensus building is valuable for coping with uncertainty and change by linking the distributed intelligence of many players. Complexity science and communicative rationality help explain why this approach fosters learning, shared understanding, and adaptive action.