The energy at the edges

The system is dying from the middle, but there’s vitality at the periphery

[NB: I’ve been on book leave for a few months, hence the radio silence. I’m going to start posting again but shorter pieces than normal. Mostly fragments related to the book and the wider work I’m doing. I’ve shared some more info on the book and my other work at the end of this post, in case people are interested.]

In June last year, just before the UK general election, I wrote a piece on the oddness of the political moment. I wrote that politics felt odd for a few reasons, one of which is that the system is dying from the middle out, or from the top down — it’s dead in the middle but thriving at the edges.

Recently I had a lovely chat with Hilary Cottam and she made a similar point — that all the energy is at the edges of the system. This theme has also come up in a number of other conversations I’ve had recently, e.g. with people at US progressive foundations, or with public service reformers in Australia, or with large funders here in the UK.

If anything, this dynamic feels more pronounced now than it did a year ago. I also think it affects the Left more than the Right, and indeed it explains a lot of the difference in tone and style between Left and Right.

The progressive Left leans professional, managerial, technocratic, and the Right leans energised, slapdash, insurgent. This seems to be at least partly because the Right, and Trumpism in particular, has mainlined energy from every weird corner of the internet, while elite progressivism is relatively detached from the wider ecosystem from which it drew energy historically.

Some people would say this is a function of progressive politics being at a low ebb in general. But I don’t think that’s quite right. It seems to me the vitality is out there, and is arguably at quite a high point, it’s just widely dispersed. And, for complicated reasons — maybe to unpack in a future post — this energy isn’t really flowing into, and reviving, the middle.

When I make this point, people sometimes ask me to point to the energy I have in mind, so I thought it might be interesting to name some examples. So, without trying to be comprehensive, here are ten dispersed pockets of impressive, hopeful, thoughtful work that I would call progressive.*

[* — I’m using the word ‘progressive’ here quite broadly, in its more literal and historical sense. I’m not saying that these are examples of ‘leftwing’ energy. I’m calling them progressive in the sense that they embody high hopes for what people can achieve by collaborating. i.e. these are all people working hard to improve governance, broadly defined. Or, even more broadly, they are people who are developing new and more effective cooperative practices — ways we can make our lives better together.]

Ten pockets of vitality

1. Contemporary civics. There’s a whole plethora of great working happening — both theory and practice — to rejuvenate a thicker, more active conception of citizenship and civic life. This work sits in a long history arguing for less procedural/transactional conceptions of the state-citizen relationship. In the US, see the work of Danielle Allen, or work on prosocial digital spaces at New Public, or the great work at Demos in the UK (disclosure: I’m a Board member). In the UK, one interesting sub-branch is the notion of civic or social infrastructure, e.g. see this work by The British Academy and Power to Change, which is one example among many.
2. Community agency. A more specific set of techniques, now mature in both theory and practice, to activate agency in communities. And often to re-activate agency where a community’s confidence and capacities have been depleted. There are countless examples, from Wigan to Blyth to Grimsby, and codified approaches, such as the Citizen Incubator or the 100-Day Challenge. In the UK, this work has gained momentum partly thanks to injections of money and institutional support from organisations like Power to Change, Big Local, and an increasingly contemporary approach at NLCF.
3. Deliberative democracy. Again, a mature set of practices ready to be used more widely, supported by a vibrant sector. This work likewise has deep foundations in theory, reaching back to the pragmatist conception of creative democracy (see the wonderful opening essay from Ruth Anna Putnam in this collection). An obvious exemplar is the open tech stack developed by Audrey Tang and others in Taiwan. This work is about seeing democracy as a living process in which we debate, listen, and change our minds. It sees democracy as residing in neighbourhoods, more than in elections. Digital tech gives us a suite of amazing new tools to make this vision a reality. This then blends into a wider agenda on collective intelligence and collaborative technology. e.g. see the deliberative techniques developed by the Centre for Collective Intelligence Design, or the wider thinking on digital forms of collective governance from the Collective Intelligence Project, or work on collaborative technologies by Plurality.
4. Relational state capacity. Likewise a mature craft, underpinned by deep theory but also embodied in a set of ready-to-use practices. e.g. see this Working Paper on relational state capacity from Dan Honig, as part of a wider research agenda. And, for the craft, see countless examples of relational services, from Bolton’s Peer Navigators to scaled examples like Buurtzorg. The London Borough of Camden is a pioneer here, with their Centre for Relational Practice. When done well, we know that relational approaches are far more effective than technocratic solutions that treat the symptoms of isolated individuals. Yet, like the other practices in this list, these readily available approaches are still little understood, or are viewed with scepticism.
5. Internet-era ways of working. This is an obvious one but it’s worth mentioning because diffusion still has decades to run. We now have a whole generation of people who are native to internet-era operating models, moving up through the public and civic sectors, transforming institutions from within. These people are still in the minority, and the winds of inertia are still gale force, but they’re a powerful and widely dispersed source of energy — dotted across local government, charities, and in central departments. They gather in networks like OneTeamGov and Camp Digital and consultancies like Public Digital and TPXimpact and of course across DDaT professions, and increasingly beyond them. This work has also now spawned other movements which are mature in their own right, such as the public design community, e.g. see the UK’s Public Design Review. (Design really deserves its own spot on the list, but 11 is an ugly number, sorry!) I should also add a caveat that this is an area where, at least in the UK, the centre is pushing, with some good work happening at DSIT, although there is a lot of catch-up to do and a lot of new territory still waiting to be explored.
6. Beyond digital operating models, we have a new delivery philosophy for government and a new way to go about public sector reform. This is a complicated picture, but two agendas have currency. The first is mission-driven government, which is a broad idea — a new statecraft tailored to problems of extraordinary complexity and ambition, e.g. net zero, halving obesity, closing school readiness gaps, etc. Credit to UCL IIPP for pioneering this work, and to others for fleshing it out: Demos Helsinki, Vinnova, Future Governance Forum, and my old haunt Nesta. The other, complementary, approach that has momentum is ‘Test & Learn’ (or ‘Test, Learn & Grow’). It is a bottom-up model of public service reform in which local, mixed-discipline teams work close to a problem, iterate in response to real world feedback, and drive change up and through the system. (The Radical How is good on this model.) The basic idea is to transform the centre of government by working at pace at the edges, and seeing what stops you. This is a rare case where the centre is well-aligned and actively supporting change at the periphery, thanks to great work from people like Georgia Gould and Nick Kimber in the UK Cabinet Office. For a flavour, see these principles Nick shared recently. Projected forward, this starts to prefigure a different type of state — less of a hierarchy and more of a mesh or network of local teams; more agile, porous, and human.
7. Novel institutional forms. Linked to this last point, there’s a lot of energy around new institutional forms — ways to organise human activity that differ from the predominant forms of the 20th century (the corporation, the bureaucratic department, etc). See, for example, the mutualism movement, or the lively debate about governing the commons. This strand of thinking draws on decades of work by practitioner-scholars like Elinor Ostrom, whose workshop develops techniques for understanding and improving institutions. It envisages a very different role for government, less as solving problems and more as ‘building institutions that bring out the best in people’. This links to the rise of institutional architecture (see the work of TIAL). I sometimes think about this work as the rebirth of political economy — i.e. we now realise we lost something when we lowered our sights to managerialism — running institutions, rather than shaping and building them — and so we are trying to relearn the craft of institution-building. Finally, this broadens out into a more abstract but important debate about the right metaphors and mental models for future governance. What should replace the image of ‘the government as a machine’? These debates are especially global in character, e.g. later this year I’m joining a gathering on these topics in Colombia with broad international representation, especially from a new cohort of reformers across Africa, which is a particular source of optimism.
8. The climate movement. Again obvious, and this is different to the others in the list in that it’s a vertical rather than a horizontal. Still, I think the climate movement is worth naming for two reasons. First, the sheer scale of the work: money, attention, institutional capacity, urgency, etc. Second, because the best climate work is prefigurative. By which I mean the best climate work acts on two levels: (1) it responds directly to an aspect of the climate crisis and (2) it models a new way of doing things. Examples include the Transition Town movement — a grassroots effort, structured as a network, to help towns transition to net zero. Or think of the highly decentralised circular economy movement, e.g. local re-use and repair initiatives. Or the vitality of the community garden movement (see initiatives like Incredible Edible, which started locally and has now spread internationally). These efforts might sound small compared to the scale of the climate challenge, but they’re worth naming because they are dynamic and act as demonstrators of different models. (Side note: It seems to me net zero is quite a telling example of the centre-periphery disconnect. The UK government’s decarbonisation mission is genuinely impressive, but it is broadly technocratic in conception, so it doesn’t really tap into the energy of these networks.)
9. Post-capitalist or non-extractive economic models. These are tricky phrases, but the essence of this work is to experiment with economic models that are regenerative and distributive by design, e.g. see the thriving community around the Doughnut Economic Action Lab. There are lots of great examples, such as Onion Collective. This is one of many areas where JRF’s Emerging Futures work is active (NB: JRF’s work crosses into many of the other headings on this list too). See these recent posts from Jessica Prendergrast and Sally Lowndes on their work mapping an ecosystem of organisations, and Sophia Parker’s posts on JRF’s wider programme.
10. Regulating a digital economy. There’s a lot of really imaginative thought going into the question of how we regulate a digital economy. This work is energetic partly because regulators have been relatively well protected from budget cuts, and so have decent research budgets and well-paid staff. This work also has energy because regulators are on the frontline of the fallout from AI and other technologies, and are often the first to confront their societal implications. Some regulators have been more responsive than others — in the UK, I would put the CMA and FCA top. (Disclosure: I used to sit on the FCA Consumer Panel.) When I talk about pockets of energy here, I’m thinking partly of the more creative/rebellious thinkers working on these challenges within regulators, but also of the high calibre of debate that exists around regulators. This wider community has done great work on a host of ideas, from interoperability to the notion of a public good in a digital age. These communities are again very international, given the global nature of the challenge. e.g. I’ll be in Brisbane and Sydney later this year with Australian regulators, talking about the fascinating double challenge of digital tech/AI and being on the frontline of renewables.

I’ve kept that list intentionally miscellaneous because my point is that there is a whole messy, vibrant, and diverse world of thinking and practice out there for progressives to tap into. This belies the common image of progressivism as being rather dried up and technocratic.

I could have gone broader than this — I’ve focused on work to develop new governance philosophies, mentalities, and techniques, or new cooperative practices. i.e. ways to support human flourishing under contemporary conditions. I have stopped short of talking about more intellectual and fringe examples, from metamodernism to contemporary phenomenology to the rising influence of the wisdom traditions. Much of this work has value too.

In essence, I think what’s happening here is that the dominant logic of the old system — a blend of social democratic Fabianism, technocracy, and a narrow class institutional forms and managerial practices — has proven incapable of governing affordably, safely, and responsively in contemporary conditions (for example, in light of the complexity of accumulated ecological and human crises (loneliness, mental illness, etc), and the first and second order effects of digital technology).

It is not at all surprising that the buds of new approaches are growing at the edges of the system — from local services, to pioneering councils, to the dynamic edges of civil society, to reform-minded team leaders.

The edges of the system are, after all, in direct contact with the new environmental conditions, so they feel more keenly the inadequacy of the prevailing methods. The edges also tend to be more engaged in direct delivery, as opposed to policy, so they have a useful pragmatism — they have no choice but to find workable ways to do things. The edges also have quicker feedback loops, so they learn faster what works. Also, people at the edges are less deep in all the sociological/Durkheimian dynamics that police and keep alive the old dominant logic long after it’s failing.

The middle of a system, by contrast, isn’t just insulated, but, worse, is subject to forces that inhibit change or distort the necessary signals and feedback loops. For one thing, the middle of a system is where those sociological forces are strongest. Deep inside systems, people get locked into a gamified world that has a tight internal coherence, but little link to outside conditions. And people at the top of a system also tend to have got there by spending a long time in the system and learning how to embody its expectations. Politics also suffers from the distorted feedback loops of the contemporary media environment, which if anything make it harder for the system to adapt (they encourage people to be risk-averse, short-termist, and to put framing over substance).

All of which is to say: energy is out there, and it’s not especially surprising that this is how the system is adapting.

Summing up

A couple of thoughts to close with, one small and the other bigger/more strategic.

The small thought, which is a life hack really, is that if you ever want to feel hopeful, turn off your usual media streams and go to visit the edges of the system, ideally in person. Spend time in some of the movements I have described above, with people doing the work. It is genuinely inspiring.

I say this is small, but I think it’s really important, for the simple reason that where we focus our attention is critical. Indeed, we could argue that in an attention economy — and an attention politics — the way we manage our attention is everything.

At the moment we are giving almost all of our attention to the spectacle of the old system dying. This is a problem because building new systems is really hard work, and requires a lot of attention.

Sophia Parker has a lovely quote from adrienne marie brown in the post I linked above: “what we pay attention to, grows”. It seems likely that we will only escape the doom spiral when we manage to redirect our attention to the kind of positive work I have described, and that means turning away from the middle to the edges.

Finally, a bigger thought, related to how we go about this. If we do manage to direct our attention to the work, what is the work we should be doing? And what is the role of the centre/middle, given its ongoing power?

It seems to me the work is quite largely about ushering the new system into being — tapping into the peripheral energy, spreading it, learning from it, harnessing its ingenuity and enthusiasm.

(Note that, by ‘new system’ here, I’m not thinking of a single alternative system, to replace the old one. I’m using the term ‘new system’ as a shorthand to describe a complex range of techniques, mentalities, institutions, and qualities that, in combination, would be capable of governing in contemporary conditions.)

There is a real craft to this task of speeding the transition, and indeed I might make this the subject of a future post because it’s important. I would say the craft includes, by way of example, strategies such as: pushing resources and decision-making to small teams at the edges; carving out legitimating environments for rebels in the system (money, permission, etc.); and sprinkling small sums of unrestricted money liberally around the edges of the system as fertiliser.

Those are just some examples — there is a lot more to this. In general, I think this craft is key to renewing/rescuing the progressive project.

A word on what I’m up to

I said I’d finish with a quick word on what I’m up to.

The short story is that I’m writing a book on more human ways of organising our lives together — what would a more human and organic class of cooperative practices look like? If government isn’t a machine, what is it? This, it turns out, has to start with an alternative history of bureaucracy, because we need to explain how we ended up in this pickle in the first place. Why did we fall so hard for the machine?

The heart of the book, though, is positive. It’s an account of the new settlement that is emerging from all this vitality. This is part of a wider research project to study and catalogue these practices and detail their properties— to describe, and to some extent codify, the emerging system.

As to wider work, the first two months of the year were full-time on the book. Since then I’ve been dialling up consulting with a range of lovely organisations on these topics, working on many of the techniques above.

The thrust of my work is helping purpose-driven organisations to understand and use contemporary practices. This ends up being a mix of advising, writing, public speaking, convening, and helping to develop organisational strategies. Sometimes the work is tangible and specific — codifying a method, and helping people to use it. Sometimes it’s higher-level — e.g. how should we, as a funder or a department, navigate these new methods? Or how should we talk about these approaches with our staff/Board/funders/partners? Sometimes it’s standalone things, e.g. come and talk to our staff/Board/clients about this stuff.

Much of the work is in the UK, but a decent chunk is international, with a focus on the US and Australia. (Albeit trying to limit long haul flights as much as possible for obvious reasons.)

This is still evolving, so drop me a line if you’d like to work together. In the meantime, you can follow my writing on Blue Sky, Medium, or Substack. For more on similar themes, here’s an essay I wrote for Renewal on contemporary statecraft, a piece on the medical paradigm of policy-making, and that earlier post on the oddness of the political moment.