Welcome to Week 3

Welcome to the final week of the course. In the previous weeks, we explored how self-governance mechanisms operate in a variety of policy arenas. This week, we will consider how these arrangements stand up to a set of evaluative standards.

Should we always prefer self-governance arrangements to solve public policy dilemmas? What are the limitations or downsides of self-governance as an alternative framework to markets and states?

Our goals are to understand:

● effectiveness arguments that self-governing institutions can mobilise local knowledge, provide incentives and generate institutional learning

● moral arguments that self-governance is compatible with a respect for human reason and agency

● practicality objections that self-governing institutions may lead to an unnecessary duplication of efforts or inability to operate at scale

● inequality objections that self-governing institutions will generate inequalities in service provision between communities or propagate discriminatory attitudes

● possible responses to the above objections

Let’s get started with the case for self-governance in the next session before moving on to the objections.