[p2p-research] Governance discussion with david ronfeldt

[Michel Bauwens]

David has reacted to my presentation of his ideas here at

http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/david-ronfeldts-timn-and-the-four-forms-of-governance/2009/05/20/comment-page-1#comment-414802

He writes: (and a response below)

hello michel — many thanks for the interest, and for raising issues. it
helps keep me going. i’ve some comments in reply.

first, regarding fiske: i came across his work a few years ago. it remains
intriguing that he too is working on four forms, and that we each started at
about the same time in the early 1990s, he a couple years earlier.

to recap, his four forms — or relational models — are communal sharing (CS),
authority ranking (AR), equality matching (EM), and market pricing (MP). he
indicates that people learn them starting in childhood, in that order. he
also explains that they may occur in different mixes in different settings.
if he offered a simple summary table about them, i’d post it, but the only
table i find (fiske, 1991) goes on for pages (too complicated).

i have quibbles with his details. for example, he says (fiske & haslam,
2005, p. 271) that elders deciding who marries whom is an instance of AR —
but i’d say that in tribal/clan settings it has a lot more to do with CS.
[yikes, so many letters. sorry, readers.]

but even if we handle my quibbles, i still wonder about his framework. it’s
good that his CS, AR, and MP models align respectively with my tribal (T),
hierarchical institutional (I), and market (M) forms. as i recall, he agreed
in an email that his CS corresponds to tribes (my T).

but that leaves me wondering what to do with his EM. it does not quite match
up to my notion of networks (the N in TIMN). and when i look at the details
he lays out, it seems to me that some pieces belong under one form, and
other pieces under another. yet, of his four models, it seems the one most
suited to energizing civil-society relationships, though i don’t see
where/whether he makes that clear. moreover, his evolutionary view — CS
comes before AR, comes before EM, comes before MP — makes MP seem to be the
most mature and sophisticated of all his relational models, which makes me
cringe a bit.

so, i’m continuing to think that, from a social systems perspective, EM
should be broken up and distributed. i’m also thinking there’s a relational
form that lies beyond, that’s not in his framework yet. perhaps something to
do with knowledge-searching teamwork that doesn’t quite fit under his
existing models.

btw, i gather you associate P2P mainly with his CS (though i earlier thought
you associated P2P more with EM?). yet, fiske (table, 1991) associates peer
behavior with EM, not CS. but he associates the commons with CS, not EM. so,
i suppose some matters remain to be sorted out regarding P2P vis a vis
fiske’s models. i admit to being a little confused.

i quite agree that there are different kinds of networks, and that this
matters for governance. indeed, there are different kinds of tribes,
hierarchical institutions, and markets too. that might be for another set of
tables (but it’s not high on my agenda right now).

as for TIMN vis a vis P2P, there is still much to discuss. in my view, TIMN
means that +N is next, and that this will alter the earlier forms but not
subordinate or absorb them. for +N to work well in advanced societies,
culture wars (T-level) must subside. states (+I) will continue to be needed,
in new ways. markets (+M) must be brought back into balanced association
with the other forms. and maybe much of what you (and i too) like about P2P
will take place along the way. at the same time, i sense that your view of
P2P may be much more expansive across all the forms than is my view of how
+N may shape TIMN. we shall see. — onward, david


My RESPONSE:


A big thanks for this cogent response.

Some reactions:

1) first, you and Fiske are not talking about the same thing; yours is a
governance typology, his a relational model. In my view, different
relational models can co-exist in societies dominated with a particular
governance model

2) second, I associate P2P indeed with CS, i..e communal shareholding,
because it is contributions to undifferentiated wholes, without expectation
of a direct return from a particular individual

3) I do find the evolutionary implication of CS coming first, problematic,
because of my association of P2P with CS, and of the tribal economy with the
gift economy.

In my view of the literature, I’ve seen a lot of people describing tribal
economies as gift economies and therefore Equality Matching … Perhaps he is
talking about the very early, more undifferentiated tribal forms, where
there was little exchange with the outside? And I’m looking at the more
complex forms, using sophisticated gifting circles?

4) To remind you of the essential P2P challenge to TIMN: we are focusing on
distributed networks in particular, and of a particular governance forms
that emerges with self-aggregation in peer production; while for me, TIMN
generalizes different network forms into one model

5) Otherwise, I agree that P2P will emerge and operate within continuing
state and market forms for a long time to come


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