CompleX matters...

http://ceg.nl/agenda/bericht/collective-decision-making-in-compleX-matters

http://www.ucsia.org/main.aspx?c=*UCSIAENG2&n=118985:

On 13-14 November 2014, UCSIA organizes the academic workshop ‘Collective Decision Making in Complex Matters’.

International organisations, governments and societies at large increasingly have to deal with multilayered problems to which solutions are sought through complex processes of decision making.

What complicates these processes? Is it the magnitude of the problem in itself? Is it the complexity of growing interdependence and globalization? Is it the expansion and dissipation of knowledge and expertise? Is it the scale, number and divergence of the actors involved? Is it a problem of participation or implementation? Is it a problem of lack of leadership and decisiveness?

From global environmental issues, over the financial crisis in the European Union, national social security issues and local issues of urbanisation, - to give but a few examples -, all these issues situated at different decision levels, which are often intertwined, are to be negotiated with different groups concerned, who hold diverging opinions and have unequal access to knowledge and information.

When successful, the process of collective decision making in itself may be rewarding. When common ground is reached, knowledge shared and actors are made owner of the issue that concerns them, this paves the way to participative democracy (and possibly more novel forms of deliberative and epistemological democracy).

Negotiation processes also raise issues of legitimacy, transparency and accountability. Is participation a necessary prerequisite for legitimisation of decisions and vice versa? Sometimes undemocratic decisions may hold legitimacy for those concerned, while in other instances democratic decisions may not be legitimately applicable. What mechanisms guarantee transparency in the decision making process (input legitimacy)? How is the process being managed and controlled and who may be held accountable (output legitimacy)?

Different academic disciplines have developed different negotiation theories and decision making models (such as game theory, rational choice theory, social constructivism, common apostolic discernment) in relation to the field and the actors they study. Rarely insights in these mechanisms of collective decision making are exchanged between scholars of international, European or local politics and/or political scientists, sociologists, economists, etc.

What are the advantages and pitfalls of different decision-making models and how may they inform each other? In what contexts and under what conditions can these different models best be introduced?

The workshop aims to analyse the challenges in collective decision-making processes, to evaluate various methodologies of decision-making and to define good leadership and governance. It will investigate challenges (issues of complexity, heterogeneity of actors, necessary conditions for decision-making), as well as good practices and issues of governance and leadership.

http://www.ucsia.org/main.aspx?c=*UCSIAENG2&n=118987... keynotes speakers.

With on TAXATION & TRUST: http://www.ucsia.org/main.aspx?c=*UCSIAENG2&n=119746

P.s: petit rappel pour les BIG Ones.