development and complexity

I am presently considering merging development studies with complexity theory, 
it goes something like the following and maybe some of these consideration 
have some relevance for WST as well:

DEVELOPMENT AND COMPLEXITY


Impasse of development
Past epochs have all offered their own different solutions to the problem of 
stimulating progress amongst the distant poor.  These have ranged from 
attempts to transfer technology in order to stimulate the economy, to a focus 
on rolling back the bureaucracy and state apparatus to enhance individual 
initiative.  Now the focus is shifting to civil society and the inauguration 
of democratic conditions.  This is done to enable “the people” to take their 
fate into their own hands, participate in the government of their country and 
solve the problem of poverty by making sure that resources are allocated 
democratically.
        None of these “solutions” to the lack of progress and development has 
had any significant influence on living conditions in the targeted places. In 
UNDP´s Human Development Report for 2002 entitled Deepening Democracy in a 
Fragmented World (UN, 2002) the main message is that despite a growing number 
of at least nominal democracies in the world today, the suppression of 
political freedoms, human rights and civil liberties has not diminished 
significantly.  
This dire scenario would appear either to indicate that the notions of 
development and universal progress have reached a dead end, or else that they 
are based on a misconceived idea of the constitution of social reality.  All 
the above-mentioned solutions to the problems of the so-called Third World 
were born of a modernist paradigm according to which it is possible to plan 
the development of the Third World.  Post-modernism has criticised this 
paradigm, saying that the notion of development is a way of fixing the social 
forms in the Third World as backwards and in need of help.  Even though post-
modernism has exposed the derogatory attitude behind the modernist paradigm, 
it nonetheless merely constitutes a change in approach - another way of 
conceptualising the problem - that does not address the material differences 
encountered in the present world.
The suggestion here is that we have to move beyond the modern-postmodern 
dichotomy, integrating these paradigms into a coherent theoretical framework: 
that of complexity, wherein social systems are understood as changing 
(progressing) but with different “destinations”.

Critique of development
Not surprisingly, there has been a mounting dissatisfaction with the outcome 
of the large-scale investments in aid and development and their lack of 
impact, followed by an increasing scepticism towards the model and theories 
used in Development Studies.
Classical science emphasised order and stability.  However, this would mean 
that the world would be a static, predictable place, and so “we would not be 
here to predict it” (Priogine 1997:55).  In contrast, the critics of classical 
science see only fluctuations, instability, multiple choices, and limited 
predictability, and much of the critique of development agendas and their 
practical implementations stresses the unpredictability of the venture and 
calls for theories that take this into account.  Various factors are put 
forward to explain this impasse, e.g., that the social field is seen as a 
battlefield with no pre-given outcomes; a world of choices which cannot be 
determined in advance because of individual strategies that create a complex 
situation.
Others blame the categories used when explaining development, claiming that 
properties are given to non-existent entities, i.e., “society”, thus missing 
rationale of developmental processes.  Some say that these entities are 
defined using foreign concepts, thus misrepresenting the local world that is 
to be developed; or else that these local worlds are replete with forces 
emanating from beyond their horizons, making any entity the wrong analytical 
unit.  Instead of units and properties, it is suggested that processes, 
systems, interaction, relations should be focus points: local strategies 
and “global” conditions, battlefields and constraints, exchange and resources.

A call for Complexity
Critics have stressed the complexity of the development situation, but they 
have employed the term “complexity” merely as a synonym for complicated or 
indeterminate. Here it is important to stress that the term complex is not 
just another word for complicated, or difficult to understand.  Things can be 
complicated without being complex, like an aeroplane.  And complex does not 
just refer to the number of parts, fragmentation or differentiation within a 
social system – social systems are complex in the sense that they are open non-
equilibrium systems with the ability to perform random fluctuations.
        Priogine (e.g., 1997) has been very influential in defining complex 
systems.  His ideas constitute a radical break with the Enlightenment 
conception of stability and law-like propositions about evolution.  It is a 
break with the idea that “once we know the initial conditions, we can 
calculate all subsequent states as well as the preceding ones” (1997:11). This 
is also shorthand for the traditional concept of development, i.e. that if the 
trajectories can be established for a given social system, it becomes possible 
to direct it towards – move it faster along the path to – a subsequent state.  
Society then becomes an automaton which we can control, at least in principle.
Reversibility is the founding premise behind the view that societies move 
along the same path, and that different societies represents progressive 
points of development on the same scale, which is based on an idea of closed 
systems with inherent qualities.  But closed systems are rare, if not non-
existent.  There is no void in nature or in social systems.  Any kind of 
system almost always exchanges “energy” with its environment and surroundings, 
giving it a history. Thus, time becomes essential in the understanding of any 
social system; time becomes irreversible – “the arrow of time”, as Priogine 
calls it.
According to Priogine, “[i]ntegrable systems describe a static, deterministic 
world” (1997:39).  This, on the other hand, means that social systems are non-
integrable, since they have the capacity to change in unpredictable manners. 
But as long as we only look at a handful of individuals, we cannot say 
anything of the “state” they are in, be they in egalitarian or hierarchical 
social systems.  We have to consider “populations” in continual interaction, 
which means that we cannot take part of a system and study it in isolation 
(Priogine 197:45).
Following Emmeche (1997:10) and Cilliers (2000:4-5) we can list the following 
characteristics of complex social systems: Complex systems are often 
hierarchical – they consist of groups and sub-groups who interact repeatedly 
according to ‘simple’ and local rules, which gives a distinct overall pattern: 
e.g., forms of government.  So the history of interaction is vital.  Since 
there are several groups that interact, the ‘order’ they form is never in 
equilibrium, which makes the social order flexible, but not predictable, i.e. 
one evolutionary state is not necessarily followed by another predictable 
one.  The result of the collective interaction produces a pattern that is 
characteristic of the system as a whole - its state - which is not necessarily 
representative of its different parts/groups, which can have all kinds of 
orientations.  These groups interact in multiple ways through various forms of 
exchanges, but these exchanges are based on individuals who have limited 
information of the system as a whole.  They are ignorant of the behaviour of 
the system as a whole.

Consequences for development
The usual suspects of Development Studies – lack of democracy, lack of human 
rights and poverty – are all seen as inherent problems caused by some kind of 
mismanagement of “society”.  If this can be corrected, the “societies” under 
consideration can pull their strengths together and move forward.
According to the idea of complexity, the traditional solutions proposed by the 
development industry has turned things upside-down.  Institutional forms - 
forms of government - are seen within the modernist paradigm as separate from 
the interaction and exchanges in the rest of “society” which make institutions 
movable.  In contrast, complexity theory sees the properties of the overall 
systems as stemming from the multiple interactions of non-integrable groups 
and processes.  It is these interactions that produce the “higher” orders and 
the properties of the system as a whole, not the other way around.
It follows that it is not possible to move democracy around the globe to the 
supposedly waiting populaces.  This is, post-modernism claims, a way of 
disciplining the “others” by measuring their social system according to a 
universal standard, and it is tantamount to imposing solutions on other social 
systems that are founded on foreign principles that do not meet local truths.  
Such impositions may in fact create more conflict than collaboration, since 
people follow other rules than those laid down by democracy.
Instead, development should work on interconnections and the free flow 
of “energy” – resources, information, people, etc.  Monopoly in any form is a 
hindrance to development, since it precludes ever-more correlations: the more 
entries to, and the larger the resource base of a social system, the more 
opportunities.
According to complexity theory, small increments in group interaction, and the 
creation of more interlinkages, can produce a large effect on the higher order 
of the system.  Thus, it is important to establish conditions that make this 
possible, rendering exchange between groups viable and easy.
It follows that Development Studies should shift from studying and proposing 
solutions to the perceived shortcomings of other social systems (e.g., how to 
implement democracy and its obstacles), to studying the means to produce ever-
more opportunities for local groups to establish interlinkages and 
correlations.  Pluralism and progress.

Issues that should be included/considered in studies of complex systems:

1)  There must be a large numbers of actors who act according to the same 
simple rules – forming groups/populations with same strategies

2)  The actors exchange “information”, resources, etc.

3)  Actors forms hierarchical groups; groups and sub-groups

4)  Groups interacts with their environment as open systems

5)  The social system has a history

6)  Complex social systems are the result of the rich interaction of single 
actors who only respond to the limited information each of them are presented 
with – each actor is ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole, 
actors only respond to information that is available locally

7)  Complex social systems – or the properties of the system as a whole – 
emerge as a result of the patterns of interaction between elements