DailyKos contributor, Adam B., noted yesterday that Mark Schmitt at TAP had some interesting observations regarding the Obama candidacy and "theory of change". Among other things, Schmitt had written regarding the Democratic primary:
This is not a primary about ideological differences, or electability, but rather one about a difference in candidates' implicit assumptions about the current circumstance and how the levers of power can be used to get the country back on track. It's the first "theory of change" primary I can think of.
I would like to add that before "theory of change" was popularized, Donella Meadows had written on the topic with what I think was some brilliant insight.
For anyone who might not already know, Donella Meadows founded the Sustainability Institute, among other accomplishments. She was the lead author of the classic "Limits to Growth" and and a follow-up twenty years later, "Beyond the Limits."
Trained at Harvard and MIT, Meadows was a pioneer in the application of system dynamics to critical issues of human survival — poverty, growth in population and consumption, ecological degradation. Systems dynamics is a modeling approach for understanding the often non-linear and counter-intuitive behavior of complex systems over time.
Meadows died in 2001.
While living, Meadows also wrote a brilliant weekly column, "The Global Citizen," which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1991. She was a "genius grant" recipient, a MacArthur Fellow.
In the 1990s Meadows attended a NAFTA meeting that left her somewhat alarmed. She realized a large new system was being proposed -- with very tiny levers of control. Partly in response, she wrote in her column an essay that evolved into "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System (PDF)."
These leverage points are worth summarizing in their entirety. From wikipedia, here they are in order of lowest leverage to highest leverage.
12. Constants, parameters, numbers (such as subsidies, taxes, standards)
Parameters are points of lowest leverage. Though they are the most clearly perceived among all leverages, they rarely change behaviors and therefore have little long-term effect.
For example, climate parameters may not be changed easily (the amount of rain, the evapotranspiration rate, the temperature of the water), but they are the ones people think of first (they remember that in their youth, it was certainly raining more). These parameters are indeed very important. But even if changed (improvement of upper river stream to canalize incoming water), they will not change behavior much.
11. The size of buffers and other stabilizing stocks relative to their flows
A buffer's ability to stabilize a system is important when the stock amount is much higher than the potential amount of inflows or outflows. In the lake, the water is the buffer: if there's a lot more of it than inflow/outflow, the system stays stable.
For example, the inhabitants are worried the lake fish might die as a consequence of hot water release directly in the lake without any previous cooling off.
However, the water in the lake has a large heat capacity, so it's a strong thermic buffer. Provided the release is done at low enough depth, under the thermocline, and the lake volume is big enough, the buffering capacity of the water might prevent any extinction from excess temperature.
Buffers can improve a system, but they are often physical entities whose size is critical and can't be changed easily.
10. The structure of material stocks and flows (such as transport network, population age structures)
A system's structure may have enormous effect on operations, but may be difficult or prohibitively expensive to change. Fluctuations, limitations, and bottlenecks may be easier to address.
For example, the inhabitants are worried about their lake getting polluted, as the industry releases chemicals pollutants directly in the water without any previous treatment. The system might need the used water to be diverted to a waste water treatment plant, but this requires rebuilding the underground used water system (which could be quite expensive).
9. The length of delays, relative to the rate of system changes
Information received too quickly or too late can cause over- or under-reaction, even oscillations.
For example, the city council is considering building the waste water treatment plant. However, the plant will take 5 years to be built, and will last about 30 years. The first delay will prevent the water being cleaned up within the first 5 years, while the second delay will make it impossible to build a plant with exactly the right capacity.
8. The strength of negative feedback loops, relative to the effect they are trying to correct against
A negative feedback loop slows down a process, tending to promote stability (stagnation). The loop will keep the stock near the goal, thanks to parameters, accuracy and speed of information feedback, and size of correcting flows.
For example, one way to avoid the lake getting more and more polluted might be through setting up an additional tax, relative to the amount and the degree of the water released by the industrial plant. The tax might lead the industry to reduce its releases.
7. The gain around driving positive feedback loops
A positive feedback loop speeds up a process. Dana indicates that in most cases, it is preferable to slow down a positive loop, rather than speeding up a negative one.
The eutrophication of a lake is a typical feedback loop that goes wild. In an eutrophic lake (which means well-nourished), lots of life can be supported (fish included).
An increase of nutrients will lead to an increase of productivity, growth of phytoplankton first, using up as much nutrients as possible, followed by growth of zooplankton, feeding up on the first ones, and increase of fish populations. The more nutrients available there is, the more productivity is increased. As plankton organisms die, they fall at the bottom of the lake, where their matter is degraded by decomposers.
However, this degradation uses up available oxygen, and in the presence of huge amounts of organic matter to degrade, the medium progressively becomes anoxic (there is no more oxygen available). Upon time, all oxygen-dependent life dies, and the lake becomes a smelly anoxic place where no life can be supported (in particular no fish).
6. The structure of information flow (who does and does not have access to what kinds of information)
Information flow is neither a parameter, nor a reinforcing or slowing loop, but a loop that delivers new information. It is cheaper and easier than changing structure.
For example, a monthly public report of water pollution level, especially nearby the industrial release, could have a lot of effect on people's opinions regarding the industry, and lead to changes in the waste water level of pollution.
5. The rules of the system (such as incentives, punishment, constraints)
Pay attention to rules, and to who makes them.
For example, a strengthening of the law related to chemicals release limits, or an increase of the tax amount for any water containing a given pollutant, will have a very strong effect on the lake water quality.
4. The power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure
Self-organization describes a system's ability to change itself by creating new structures, adding new negative and positive feedback loops, promoting new information flows, or making new rules.
For example, microorganisms have the ability to not only change to fit their new polluted environment, but also to undergo an evolution that make them able to biodegrade or bioaccumulate chemical pollutants. This capacity of part of the system to participate to its own eco-evolution is a major leverage for change
3. The goal of the system
Changes every item listed above: parameters, feedback loops, information and self-organisation.
A city council decision might be to change the goal of the lake from making it a free facility for public and private global use, to a more touristic oriented facility or a conservation area. That goal change will effect several of the above leverages : information on water quality will become mandatory and legal punishments will be set for any illegal polluted effluent.
2. The mindset or paradigm that the system — its goals, structure, rules, delays, parameters — arises out of
A society paradigm is an idea, an unstated assumption that everyone shares, thoughts, or states of thoughts that are sources of systems. Paradigms are very hard to change, but there are no limits to paradigm change. Dana indicates paradigms might be changed by repeatedly and consistently pointing out anomalies and failures to those with open minds.
A current paradigm is "Nature is a stock of resources to be converted to human purpose". What might happen to the lake were this collective idea changed?
1. The power to transcend paradigms
Transcending paradigms may go beyond challenging fundamental assumptions, into the realm of changing the values and priorities that lead to the assumptions, and being able to choose among value sets at will.
Many today see Nature as a stock of resources to be converted to human purpose. Many Native Americans see Nature as a living god, to be loved, worshipped, and lived with. These views are incompatible, but perhaps another viewpoint could incorporate them both, along with others.
It is interesting to consider the health care plans of the three top-tier candidates from the perspective of these types of interventions, but that's a topic for another diary. Here, I want to amplify on Schmitt's observations.
This is not a primary about ideological differences, or electability, but rather one about a difference in candidates' implicit assumptions about the current circumstance and how the levers of power can be used to get the country back on track. It's the first "theory of change" primary I can think of.
Earlier, in an essay published in the Atlantic, "Goodbye to All That," Andrew Sullivan alluded to Obama's paradigm-shift (my word) potential:
Obama’s candidacy in this sense is a potentially transformational one. Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us. So much has happened in America in the past seven years, let alone the past 40, that we can be forgiven for focusing on the present and the immediate future. But it is only when you take several large steps back into the long past that the full logic of an Obama presidency stares directly—and uncomfortably—at you.
Sullivan observed the substantive similarity of our top-tier Democratic candidates. Still, he noted this difference:
But it is more a fight over how we define ourselves and over long-term goals than over what is practically to be done on the ground. [emphasis added]
Yesterday, DailyKos contributor Femlaw offered part 3 in an excellent series intended to analyze:
Obama For America as a framing strategy - defining progressive values as fundamentally American, challenging us to live up to them, and convincing us we have the power to make change. Obama's unique ability to sell the Democratic party to Americans makes him a potentially realigning political figure.
On this general topic, theory of change, Ezra Klein at the American Prospect wrote that he couldn't see that Edwards apparent theory of change was "actionable." Klein also used fairly contemptuous language to describe from his perspective Obama's theory of change, although he thought, at least, that Obama's was actionable.
From my perspective, Obama is inviting the potential of profound change, and alone among our top-three candidates, using a theory of change appropriate to the otherwise reasonably likely catastrophic challenges facing the US and humanity.
The Challenges
We all know them, but sometimes we forget how serious and intractable they are.
For one, let's begin with exponential growth, the driving principle of capitalism and cancer. Almost nobody is talking about this huge, deadly assumption of continued exponential growth at the core of our capitalist system. Edwards is ready to label corporations as the problem, but as far as I've seen, he has not gone so far as to recognize the underlying assumptions of capitalism as a more profound issue. The problem of Edwards (and Clinton), however, is that he embraces an exclusionary and hostile negotiating style that ensures the conversation will never happen. Obama is not talking about the impossibility and dangers of continued exponential growth, either, but he embraces an approach that 1) creates space for the conversation to happen, 2) invites consideration on the merits rather than endless, low-leverage polemic at the level R.-vs.-D or C.-vs.-O.-vs-E. tribal identity.
Let's consider global warming. Those of us paying attention know that we are way behind in terms of being able to constructively tackle this complex global problem. In terms of greenhouse gases humanity has already emitted, we have already locked in an escalating pattern for 40 years. That is the minimum lag time of greenhouse gases effect. Add to that the delay time it will take to turn around our dependence on fossil fuels, etc.. The problem is huge.
Let's consider our reliance on oil and natural gas at a time when global oil production and North American natural gas production is peaking. We are entering an era of always-increasing-scarcity of high quality primary energy resources that faces us in stark contrast with the era of always-increasing-abundance of high quality primary energy resources that characterizes the period of phenomenal growth of the last 150 years plus.
From my perspective, the only way we have hope to turn our emissions pattern around will largely depend on our ability to develop popular political will along the scale of the two highest leverage points identified by Meadows. The only way we are going to really address important, intractable relationships among these topics of exponential growth, global warming, and peak high-quality energy, will be by addressing the mindset that propels the insatiable aspects of our whole social/economic system.
I know I am an outlier in these observations. Clearly, none of our candidates are in a place to acknowledge in any detail the extent of what I see. But alone among our candidates, in his shared learning approach to address problems, Obama invites the possibility of actually really allowing some real, meaningful public conversation right and left that could begin to illuminate the paradigm shifts that either we can give shape to or that will give shape shape to us.
Notice, for example, how frequently Obama says about what he wants to do regarding the Iraq war. "I also want to change the mindset that got us into this war." Obama understands the power of intervention at this level. That is some reason for hope, if not optimism, that he will apply this systemic understanding to other intractable problems.