Social ontology of government

Philosophers of social science have directed renewed attention to issues of ontology with regard to the social world. What kind of entities, powers, forces, and relations exist in the social realm? What kind of relations tie them together? What are some of the mechanisms and causal powers that constitute the workings of these social entities? Are there levels of social organisation and structure that can be identified?

This focus complements the traditional philosophical focus on matters of epistemology.

Better thinking about social ontology is important for the progress of social science. Bad ontology breeds bad science.

These issues are especially interesting when we consider the nature and role of “government” in the modern world. What is government? How does it work? How are the many agents and subjects of government tied together through constraints, values, incentives, emotions, and interests?

Government is not one unitary thing. Instead, it is an composite thing that encompasses many social functions, doings, and powers, at multiple and overlapping levels. Government is not exactly “laminated”, in Bhaskar’s suggestive phrase. Rather, it consists of multiple systems, organizations, groups, specialists, brokers, and rogues working sometimes with considerable independence and sometimes with great coordination and subordination.

Consider some of these examples of the face of government, and notice the great heterogeneity they represent: the cop on the beat, the health inspector, the city health department, the state and federal revenue services, the national science foundation, the state economic development agency, the mayor’s office, the elected school board, the NRC, and so on ad infinitum. There are ties among these nodes, both formal and informal, and there are sometimes organization charts that display functional relationships, authority structures, and flows of information along various offices and actors. But there is also substantial contingency and path dependence in the development of these institutions and relationships and a quilt like arrangement of jurisdictions and histories.

A great deal of recent work in sociological theory has provided new tools for describing social arrangements.
For example, this is a perfect zone of application for Fligstein-McAdam strategic action field theory. Government is well conceived as interlinked action networks with tighter and looser linkages and strategic actions by a variety of actors. (Think of the jurisdictional struggles between FBI, state and local police authorities.) The theory of assemblages is another suggestive theory of social ontology in this context. Manuel DeLanda spells out some of the connections. The social ontology of assemblage illuminates the modular and contingent arrangement of offices, networks, and actors that make up government at a period in time. And recent discussions of generativity and emergence offer new ways of thinking about the relations between higher level and lower level social entities.

Setting policy

Legislation, rule setting through democratic process

Establishing programs — war on poverty, social security, voting rights expansion

Establishing sets of rules — through legislation and through executive action

Scope and powers of regulatory agencies

Administration of policy

Agencies with staff, mission, executives, resources

Inter-agency agreements and cooperation

Oversight, compliance, and enforcement of internal actors

Adjudication of proscribed action

Investigation, prosecution, adjudication, penalties

The dysfunctions of government

Corruption

Self dealing and conflict of interest

Strategic control of information, internal and external

The mechanisms of administration

How does administration work? Definition of mission and task. Definition of role responsibilities. Supervision and oversight. Principal-agent problems, fidelity, corruption. Compliance. Intrinsic vs external motivation.

Practical ontology

What kinds of things do participants and scholars refer to in discussing government?

• Institutions
• Organizations
• Executives
• Power
• Lines of authority
• Interests
• Values
• Loyalties
• Collective decision-making processes