We spend

We spend a great deal of time thinking about policy problems; we spend less on the mechanics of how
we make the decisions that try to solve them. But understanding decision-making is essential to getting the
results we want. The following articles look at some of the behavioural science that helps explain where we
fall short. And they ask whether changes to the decision-making environment, from the arrival of big data to
the emergence of global networks in the Internet age, can help us get better at it. Nous consacrons
beaucoup de temps à réfléchir aux grandes questions politiques, mais beaucoup moins aux mécanismes de
décision qui permettraient de les résoudre. Il est pourtant indispensable de bien comprendre les processus
décisionnels pour obtenir des résultats probants. Les articles qui suivent se fondent sur les sciences du
comportement susceptibles d’expliquer nos insuffisances. Leurs auteurs se demandent également si l’évolution
de l’environnement décisionnel, marqué à l’ère d’Internet par l’avènement de mégadonnées et l’émergence de
vastes réseaux mondiaux, nous aidera à faire de meilleurs choix.
Making
Decisions
Why We’re Bad At It...
How We Could Be Better
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Jennifer Jacquet
model where we can test how different interventions work
in the lab to explore possible ways to curb discounting and
whether some policy interventions might have unintended
effects. Our results explain why it is important to find policies
that provide short-term benefits. They help to explain why
adaptations to climate change — for example, large sand-bars
and carbon capture and storage — might be more attractive
than mitigation, because the benefits of adaptation would
accrue to current generations, while the benefits of some forms
of mitigation might provide gains only in the distant future.
Our results also show some curious behaviour that
economists would probably diagnose as irrational. While no
group in our third, intergenerational treatment succeeded in
reaching the €120 target, the average group contribution was
still €57, and one group even got as close as €116. We need
to find the reason for this intergenerational cooperation. The
individuals in our experiment were playing our game for
money, but in this third intergenerational treatment, other
things they valued obviously came into consideration.
Lab experiments can provide insights into human
behaviour, but there are limitations. In the real world,
we’re dealing not with six players but with hundreds
of countries and corporations, and these countries and
corporations come to climate negotiations with different
resources, political power and influence. In addition, the
costs of climate change and the benefits of mitigation are
not evenly distributed across all actors, as they are in our
experiment. We know that the tropics and small island
states will bear disproportionate punishment for a problem to which they barely contributed. We know certain
species, like coral reefs, are going to be less able to adapt
to climate change than others.
But the biggest difference, one that is so obvious it feels
glib to mention it, is that there is no chance of pressing the
reset button, as we can in our experiment. What’s happening to the earth’s atmosphere is not a game, and we cannot
start over. n
The network solution
Don Tapscott
The emergence of global solutions networks
offers hope for a better way to address global
problems. But we need to understand how
they work and protect them from nationstates that sometimes try to suppress them.
Si l’émergence de « réseaux mondiaux de
solutions » laisse espérer de meilleures façons
de résoudre les problèmes planétaires, il nous
faut mieux comprendre leur fonctionnement
et les protéger contre les États-nations tentés
de les bâillonner.
T
echnology has brought us to the cusp of new hope for
solving global problems. Until now, we’ve relied on a
model based on nation-states and global institutions
controlled by states. Throughout the 20th century, national governments cooperated to build global institutions in
order to facilitate joint action and address global problems.
Most of these organizations were part of the post-SecondWorld-War global architecture: the Bretton Woods system
for managing commercial and financial relationships
among the 44 founding states, followed by international
organizations such as the International Monetary Fund,
the World Bank, the G7 (later the G8 and now, following
Russia’s takeover of Crimea, probably back to the G7 again)
and the World Trade Organization.
But in recent years, these large international institutions have fallen short of expectations. While we have
seen progress on issues such as poverty, half of the world’s
children remain destitute and malnourished. Some countries’ priorities remain egregiously misplaced: 1 percent of
the global military budget could fund public education for
every child on the planet. Progress on issues like trade lib-
shutterstock
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Don Tapscott is the executive director of the Global Solution
Networks program at the Rotman School of Management,
University of Toronto, and the author of 14 books, most
recently (with Anthony D. Williams) Macrowikinomics:
New Solutions for a Connected Planet. @dtapscott
eralization and dealing with climate change has been slow
or nonexistent, leading to despair in some quarters that the
world lacks effective tools to deal with issues and crises of
global dimensions.
Fortunately, a new paradigm for solving global problems is emerging. The Internet’s connectedness, transcending national borders, has given rise to rich networks of
problem solvers, decision-makers and activists. New nonstate networks of civil society, private sector, government
and individual stakeholders are achieving new forms of
cooperation. They address every conceivable issue facing
humanity, from poverty, human rights, health and the environment to economic policy and even the governance of
the Internet itself.
This is a new development on the world stage that holds
the promise of helping us make better decisions in solving
global problems. Enabled by the digital revolution, these
networks are proliferating across the planet and increasingly
have a major role to play in enabling global cooperation and
governance. We call them global solutions networks.
But the rise of these networks also brings new questions: Do these networks lack legitimacy because they were
not democratically elected? In whose interests do they act?
To whom are they accountable?
And just as they show signs of becoming an effective
mechanism to address global problems, the old nation-state
is fighting back to reassert control over what it perceives as
a threat to its power. The technology that enabled activists
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Don Tapscott
to organize and challenge governments in countries such
as Egypt has been appropriated by authoritarian rulers to
help reassert control in Syria, for example. Edward Snowden’s leaks of extensive National Security Agency (NAS)
surveillance and access to data have prompted a backlash
in many countries, with some governments — opportunistically or otherwise — seeking to establish national control
over their digital pipes and data.
This has brought these young global solutions networks
to an inflection point. A battle is shaping up between the old
and new paradigms. And if we are to seize upon the opportunities offered by these new networks, it is essential to
understand them better, so we know what we
are nurturing.
U
ntil now, there has been no systematic study of global solutions networks or an attempt
to understand their potential
to improve the state of the
world. Little has been done
to evaluate what makes
these networks tick, how
they succeed or fail and
what impact they have
on solving problems.
Nor do we have a handle
on how they address the
tough issues of legitimacy,
accountability, representation and transparency.
That’s why the Martin
Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, in partnership
with 15 corporations, foundations
and governments that include
those of the United States, Mexico and Ontario, has launched a
multimillion-dollar global investigation of the new networks in
order to understand how they can
be more effective and fulfill their
enormous potential.
These multistakeholder networks have four characteristics. First, they are coalitions,
attracting participants from at least two of the four pillars
of society: government or international institutions; corporations and business interests; civil society; and individual citizens. Second, the networks are global or at least
multinational. Third, they harness some form of digital
communications tools and platforms to achieve their
goals. Fourth, they are not controlled by a state. They
can be created by the nation-state but must have been
released from its control.
Our research has identified 10 types of networks.
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There are policy networks, such as the International
Competition Network, that create policies for companies
and governments. Watchdog networks like Human Rights
Watch are funded by corporations and philanthropists
and scrutinize the behaviour of governments everywhere.
Knowledge networks like TED create global knowledge on a
scale never seen before.
Operational and delivery networks actually deliver the
change they seek, supplementing or even bypassing the
efforts of traditional institutions. Diasporas are global communities formed by people who are dispersed from their
ancestral lands but share a common culture and strong
identity with their homeland.
Some networks act as platforms for
those who seek change. A great example is Ushahidi—the website
that was initially established
to map reports of violence
in Kenya in the post-election fallout of 2008 and
evolved into a global
network to enable
people to share information and organize
for change.
Standards networks, driven largely
by corporations, now
determine global
standards in most areas
of human activity. More
elaborate networked institutions, such as the World
Economic Forum or the
Clinton Global Network, are addressing a wide variety of issues
but, unlike formal state-based
institutions, are self-organizing
rather than being controlled by
governments.
There are resources on the
planet governed by multistakeshutterstock
holder networks rather than
traditional government institutions. The Internet itself is managed by such a governance
network, where states have little involvement, let alone
control.
A new approach to meeting the challenges posed by
climate change offers one example of global solutions
networks in action. At this year’s World Economic Forum
in Davos, notwithstanding record revenues for some companies and all-time highs in some stock markets, much of
the conversation centred on a deep concern that climate
change is poised to wreak havoc on the world’s people and
economy.
Yet it has been 16 years since the signing of the Kyoto
Accord, and the volume of greenhouse gas emissions continues to climb. Clearly the old way of addressing this
problem through international diplomatic negotiations
leading to an enforceable treaty is failing. Our challenge,
however, is that rescuing the fragile spaceship we call earth
still requires coordinated global action. No one country or
actor can solve this problem alone.
Thankfully there is a willingness to seek a new way forward. With states having made such little progress in addressing climate change, much of the action is now focused
on business and multistakeholder networks to generate
momentum toward action. Hundreds of advocacy networks
such as the Alliance for Climate Change are working to
educate, mobilize and change the policy of governments
and global institutions.
The next global government gathering to discuss climate change will be in 2015, but in preparation, the United
Nations will, for the first time, convene a climate summit
involving a meeting of heads of state and government along
with business, finance, civil society and local leaders. The
meeting in September is not part of a formal negotiating
process. But UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wants the
conference to catalyze decision-making among governments, business, finance, industry and civil society to drive
a global shift toward a low-carbon economy. Nation-states,
he believes, cannot get there alone.
T
o many, a global digital infrastructure that enables
these networks offers not just promise but peril. Past
media revolutions — the printing press, radio, television
and then cable television, to name the most prominent —
have arrived accompanied by grand claims that they were
ushering in a new paradigm that would democratize information. Each time, governments and corporations, initially
caught off guard, rallied to put fences around the latest
medium, reasserting control for reasons of power and profit.
The Internet faces the same array of forces. Courtesy of
Edward Snowden, we now have a sense of just how deeply organizations such as the NSA have inserted their tentacles into
the digital infrastructure to monitor the activities of hundreds
of millions of Americans and non-Americans. Many other
countries have their own version of the NSA. To be sure, states
have legitimate needs to ensure security and protect citizens
from bad actors such as terrorists. However, around the world
many states have crossed the line and are now using the Internet as a tool for spying, control and even repression.
The Internet has the potential for awesome neutrality.
It is a platform that can serve the “many to many,” and
ultimately will be what we want it to be. It will do what we
command it to.
If we want it to be a platform for mobilizing the world
to combat carbon emissions, that’s what it will be. If we
want it to be a tool for building a network to defund public
education, as some Tea Party members have proposed, it will
be that, too. The Web enables terrorist organizations such as
al-Qaeda to metastasize, and yet it enables us to deliver highlevel educational curriculum beyond Ivy League classrooms.
That neutrality threatens those interests that don’t like
the way the Internet embraces the philosophy of openness.
The corporate opponents of openness want to construct toll
booths that would charge different rates for different types
of service. Others want to prevent access to some portions
of the Internet completely. Many governments fear a world
in which their citizens are able to access and share information, like Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who has
tried to prevent his country’s citizens from seeing damaging
material on his government by banning Facebook and YouTube. In a cat-and-mouse game, Net-savvy Turks are trying
to find ways around his censorship, while he resorts to even
more authoritarian means to suppress Internet freedom.
Erdogan is hardly alone. China aggressively restricts
the type of information its citizens can share or that can be
The Internet’s neutrality
threatens those interests
that don’t like the way it
embraces the philosophy
of openness.
brought into the country via the Internet. Iran is trying to
organize its own Iranian Internet that would be closed to
the world and carry communications only with so-called
Iranian values.
It’s clear that something big is happening. Civil society organizations, companies, academia, governments and
individuals are working together in new ways on shared
concerns, endeavours and challenges. People everywhere
are collaborating like never before in networks, striving to
reinvent our institutions and sustain our planet, our health
and our existence. Just as behavioural scientists study the
human decision-making process, we need to understand
the digital DNA of these organizations in order to discover
how they tick, and how they can be made more effective in
the global policy-making process.
But to do so, we must protect them from attacks driven
by the self-interested urges of an old system struggling to
retain power and control. The fate of this struggle is not an
academic matter. Its outcome will have much to say about
whether this promising alternative to the old failed ways
can survive and flourish. n
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