How to Win a War Against Reality

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Review by Abby Smith Rumsey: “How does a democracy work if its citizens do not have a shared sense of reality? Not very well. A country whose people cannot agree on where they stand now will not agree on where they are going. This is where Americans find themselves in 2025, and they did not arrive at this juncture yesterday. The deep divisions that exist have grown over the decades, dating at least to the end of the Cold War in 1991, and are now metastasizing at an alarming rate. These divisions have many causes, from climate change to COVID-19, unchecked migration to growing wealth inequality, and other factors. People who live with chronic division and uncertainty are vulnerable. It may not take much to get them to sign on to a politics of certainty…

Take the United States. By this fractured logic, Make America Great Again (MAGA) means that America once was great, is no longer, but can be restored to its prelapsarian state, when whites sat firmly at the top of the ethnic hierarchy that constitutes the United States. Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy and self-identified liberal, is deeply troubled that many liberal democracies across the globe are morphing into illiberal democracies before our very eyes. In “Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future,” he argues that all authoritarian regimes know the value of a unified, if largely mythologized, view of past, present, and future. He wrote his book to warn us that we in the United States are on the cusp of becoming an authoritarian nation or, in Stanley’s account, fascist. By explaining “the mechanisms by which democracy is attacked, the ways myths and lies are used to justify actions such as wars, and scapegoating of groups, we can defend against these attacks, and even reverse the tide.”…

The fabrication of the past is also the subject of Steve Benen’s book “Ministry of Truth. Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.” Benen, a producer on the Rachel Maddow Show, keeps his eye tightly focused on the past decade, still fresh in the minds of readers. His account tracks closely how the Republican Party conducted “a war on the recent past.” He attempts an anatomy of a very unsettling phenomenon: the success of a gaslighting campaign Trump and his supporters perpetrated against the American public and even against fellow Republicans who are not MAGA enough for Trump…(More)”

Standards

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book by Jeffrey Pomerantz and Jason Griffey: “Standards are the DNA of the built environment, encoded in nearly all objects that surround us in the modern world. In Standards, Jeffrey Pomerantz and Jason Griffey provide an essential introduction to this invisible but critical form of infrastructure—the rules and specifications that govern so many elements of the physical and digital environments, from the color of school buses to the shape of shipping containers.

In an approachable, often outright funny fashion, Pomerantz and Griffey explore the nature, function, and effect of standards in everyday life. Using examples of specific standards and contexts in which they are applied—in the realms of technology, economics, sociology, and information science—they illustrate how standards influence the development and scope, and indeed the very range of possibilities of our built and social worlds. Deeply informed and informally written, their work makes a subject generally deemed boring, complex, and fundamentally important comprehensible, clear, and downright engaging…(More)”.

Research Handbook on Open Government

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Handbook edited by Edited by Mila Gascó-Hernandez, Aryamala Prasad , J. Ramon Gil-Garcia , and Theresa A. Pardo: “In the past decade, open government has received renewed attention. It has increasingly been acknowledged globally as necessary to enhance democratic governance by building on the pillars of transparency, participation, and collaboration (Gil-Garcia et al., 2020). Transnational multistakeholder initiatives, such as the Open Government Partnership, have fostered the development of open government by raising awareness about the concept and encouraging reforms in member countries. In this respect, many countries at the local, state, and federal levels have implemented open government initiatives in different policy domains and government functions, such as procurement, policing, education, and public budgeting. More recently, the emergence of digital technologies to facilitate innovative and collaborative approaches to open government is setting these new efforts apart from previous ones, designed to strengthen information access and transparency. Building a new shared understanding of open government, how various contexts shape the perceptions of open government by different stakeholders, and the ways in which digital technologies can advance open government is important for both research and practice…

the Handbook is structured into five sections, each dedicated to highlighting important facets of open government. Part I delves into the historical evolution of open government, setting the stage for the rest of the Handbook. In Part II, the Handbook presents research on the core components of open government, offering invaluable insights on transparency, participation, and collaboration. Part III focuses on the application of open government across diverse policy domains. Shifting focus, Part IV discusses open government implementation within different geographical and national contexts. Finally, Part V introduces emerging trends in open government research. As a whole, the Handbook offers a comprehensive view of open government, from its origins to its contemporary progress and future trends…(More)”.

Reconciling open science with technological sovereignty

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by C. Huang & L. Soete: “In history, open science has been effective in facilitating knowledge sharing and promoting and diffusing innovations. However, as a result of geopolitical tensions, technological sovereignty has recently been increasingly emphasized in various countries’ science and technology policy making, posing a challenge to open science policy. In this paper, we argue that the European Union significantly benefits from and contributes to open science and should continue to support it. Similarly, China embraced foreign technologies and engaged in open science as its economy developed rapidly in the last 40 years. Today both economies could learn from each other in finding the right balance between open science and technological sovereignty particularly given the very different policy experience and the urgency of implementing new technologies addressing the grand challenges such as climate change faced by mankind…(More)”.

Nurturing innovation through intelligent failure: The art of failing on purpose

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Paper by Alessandro Narduzzo and Valentina Forrer: “Failure, even in the context of innovation, is primarily conceived and experienced as an inevitable (e.g., innovation funnel) or unintended (e.g., unexpected drawbacks) outcome. This paper aims to provide a more systematic understanding of innovation failure by considering and problematizing the case of “intelligent failures”, namely experiments that are intentionally designed and implemented to explore technological and market uncertainty. We conceptualize intelligent failure through an epistemic perspective that recognizes its contribution to challenging and revising the organizational knowledge system. We also outline an original process model of intelligent failure that fully reveals its potential and distinctiveness in the context of learning from failure (i.e., failure as an outcome vs failure of expectations and initial beliefs), analyzing and comparing intended and unintended innovation failures. By positioning intelligent failure in the context of innovation and explaining its critical role in enhancing the ability of innovative firms to achieve breakthroughs, we identify important landmarks for practitioners in designing an intelligent failure approach to innovation…(More)”.

Cities in International Decision-Making

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Book edited by Agnieszka Szpak et al: “…argues that cities are becoming more active participants in international law-making and challenging the previously dominant nation-state approach of recent history.

Chapters explore key literature and legal regulations surrounding cities, providing the latest information on their international normative activities. This book includes multiple interviews conducted with the official representatives of cities and various international institutions, such as UN-Habitat, the EU Committee of the Regions, and the Congress for Local and Regional Authorities of the Council of Europe. The authors investigate how, despite their strong role in international relations and international law implementation, the importance of cities has still not been adequately reflected in the structures of the Council of Europe, the EU and the UN. Ultimately, the book finds that cities have more impact on policy-making than on decision-making processes…(More)”.

Disinformation: Definitions and examples

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Explainer by Perthusasia Centre: “Disinformation has been a tool of manipulation and control for centuries, from ancient military strategies to Cold War propaganda. With the rapid advancement of technology,
it has evolved into a sophisticated and pervasive security threat that transcends traditional boundaries.

This explainer takes the definitions and examples from our recent Indo-Pacific Analysis Brief, Disinformation and cognitive warfare by Senior Fellow Alana Ford, and creates an simple, standalone guide for quick reference…(More)”.

Legitimacy: Working hypotheses

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Report by TIAL: “Today more than ever, legitimacy is a vital resource for institutions seeking to lead and sustain impactful change. Yet, it can be elusive.

What does it truly mean for an institution to be legitimate? This publication delves into legitimacy as both a practical asset and a dynamic process, offering institutional entrepreneurs the tools to understand, build, and sustain it over time.

Legitimacy is not a static quality, nor is it purely theoretical. Instead, it’s grounded in the beliefs of those who interact with or are governed by an institution. These beliefs shape whether people view an institution’s authority as rightful and worth supporting. Drawing from social science research and real-world insights, this publication provides a framework to help institutional entrepreneurs address one of the most important challenges of institutional design: ensuring their legitimacy is sufficient to achieve their goals.

The paper emphasizes that legitimacy is relational and contextual. Institutions gain it through three primary sources: outcomes (delivering results), fairness (ensuring just processes), and correct procedures (following accepted norms). However, the need for legitimacy varies depending on the institution’s size, scope, and mission. For example, a body requiring elite approval may need less legitimacy than one relying on mass public trust.

Legitimacy is also dynamic—it ebbs and flows in response to external factors like competition, crises, and shifting societal narratives. Institutional entrepreneurs must anticipate these changes and actively manage their strategies for maintaining legitimacy. This publication highlights actionable steps for doing so, from framing mandates strategically to fostering public trust through transparency and communication.

By treating legitimacy as a resource that evolves over time, institutional entrepreneurs can ensure their institutions remain relevant, trusted, and effective in addressing pressing societal challenges.

Key takeaways

  • Legitimacy is the belief by an audience that an institution’s authority is rightful.
  • Institutions build legitimacy through outcomes, fairness, and correct procedures.
  • The need for legitimacy depends on an institution’s scope and mission.
  • Legitimacy is dynamic and shaped by external factors like crises and competition.
  • A portfolio approach to legitimacy—balancing outcomes, fairness, and procedure—is more resilient.
  • Institutional entrepreneurs must actively manage perceptions and adapt to changing contexts.
  • This publication offers practical frameworks to help institutional entrepreneurs build and sustain legitimacy…(More)”.

Redesigning Public Organizations: From “what” to “how

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Essay by the Transition Collective: “Government organizations and their leaders are in a pinch. They are caught between pressures from politicians, citizens and increasingly complex external environments on the one hand — and from civil servants calling for new ways of working, thriving and belonging on the other hand. They have to enable meaningful, joined-up and efficient services for people, leveraging digital and physical resources, while building an attractive organizational culture. Indeed, the challenge is to build systems as human as the people they are intended to serve.

While this creates massive challenges for public sector organizations, this is also an opportunity to reimagine our institutions to meet the challenges of today and the future. To succeed, we must not only think about other models of organization — we also have to think of other ways of changing them.

Traditionally, we think of the organization as something static, a goal we arrive at or a fixed model we decide upon. If asked to describe their organization, most civil servants will point to an organigram — and more often than not it will consist of a number of boxes and lines, ordered in a hierarchy.

But in today’s world of complex challenges, accelerated frequency of change and dynamic interplay between the public sector and its surroundings, such a fixed model is less and less fit for the purposes it must fulfill. Not only does it not allow the collective intelligence and creativity of the organization’s members to be fully unleashed, it also does not allow for the speed and adaptability required by today’s turbulent environment. It does not allow for truly joined up, meaningful human services.

Unfreezing the organization

Rather than thinking mainly about models and forms, we should think of organizational design as an act or a series of actions. In other words, we should think about the organization not just as a what but also as a how: Less as a set of boxes describing a power hierarchy, and more as a set of living, organic roles and relationships. We need to thaw up our organizations from their frozen state — and keep them warmer and more fluid.

In this piece, we suggest that many efforts to reimagine public sector organizations have failed because the challenge of transforming an organization has been underestimated. We draw on concrete experiences from working with international and Danish public sector institutions, in particular in health and welfare services.

We propose a set of four approaches which, taken together, can support the work of redesigning organizations to be more ambitious, free, human, creative and self-managing — and thus better suited to meet the ever more complex challenges they are faced with…(More)”.

Bayes is not a phase

Curated on Posted on by Stefaan Verhulst

Blog by dynomight: “Because everyone uses Bayesian reasoning all the time, even if they don’t think of it that way. Arguably, we’re born Bayesian and do it instinctively. It’s normal and natural and—I daresay—almost boring. “Bayesian reasoning” is just a slight formalization of everyday thought.

It’s not a trend. It’s forever. But it’s forever like arithmetic is forever: Strange to be obsessed with it, but really strange to make fun of someone for using it.

Here, I’ll explain what Bayesian reasoning is, why it’s so fundamental, why people argue about it, and why much of that controversy is ultimately a boring semantic debate of no interest to an enlightened person like yourself. Then, for the haters, I’ll give some actually good reasons to be skeptical about how useful it is in practice.

I won’t use any equations. That’s not because I don’t think you can take it, but Bayesian reasoning isn’t math. It’s a concept. The typical explanations use lots of math and kind of gesture around the concept, but never seem to get to the core of it, which I think leads people to miss the forest for the trees…(More)”.