7. Boundaries

Conducting a complete assessment of the governability of the Pangasius farming and environmental certification system using the interactive governance (IG) framework has a far broader scope than could be contained in this Master’s thesis. To that end I have chosen two particular concepts to highlight that are integral to understand system dynamics, boundaries and embeddedness, relating to the governance system (GS) and the other to the system-to-be-governed (SG), respectively. The concept of system boundaries is important because it provides insight into how the GS defines the system it operates in. For the SG embeddedness is an important idea because it highlights how actors in the system act and are acted upon. Focusing on boundaries and embeddedness  and how they interact within the IG framework will hopefully allow a clearer assessment of the potential “governability” of Pangasius aquaculture/Environmental certification governance system, and the relevance of Interactive Governance theory in practice.

Throughout the IG literature systems thinking is alluded to as an heuristic by the authors, an heuristic that is used frequently. For instance many of the core concepts of the theory contain the word ‘system’, however, the idea seems to be used rather uncritically.  What is a system and how do the authors define it? One area in which these authors touch on ideas of defining systems is in relation to the governance system’s core feature of ‘scale’ which is defined by Kooiman and Bavinck (2005 p. 14) as “time and space dimensions of systems to be governed as well as governing systems.”  Bavinck and Salagrama (2008) attempted to operationalise this core feature in their evaluation of Bay of Bengal Fisheries and reached two key conclusions as regards scale. First that there are as many ways of defining systems as there are different perspectives and second that there is no one definitive approach as there are no unequivocal system boundaries. My conception of boundaries seizes on this beginning in IG and is expanded by using ideas from the school of Critical Systems Thinking (CST) to develop a critique of how GS’s develop and understand the boundaries of the systems they are intended to govern.

The boundary critique as elaborated by Midgley (1998) arises in response to the normative demand for critical awareness, one of the themes pursued by CST authors (see Flood and Jackson 1991). Essentially, this approach says that a fundamental step in intervening in a system is the definition of the boundaries of the system, specifically where to intervene. Boundary critique argues that system boundaries cannot be considered as ‘given’ based on existing reality but are a social construction. The definition of system boundaries is fundamentally an ethical and political question because it determines what is to be included and consequentially excluded from a system and the process of defining boundaries occurs in public dialogue. Figure 1 is a visual representation of system boundaries meant to demonstrate marginalization, elements whose inclusion in the system are under debate, which means that boundaries are rarely clearly identifiable. An example of this process, taken from Midgley (1992) is the organizational boundaries of a service business. Should it include the employees? the customers? the local unemployed workforce? Certainly there are arguments for inclusion of all of these elements, and the decision in the end is a value judgement. Churchman (1970) argues that broadening of system boundaries leads to involvement of more stakeholders, redefining of expertise and reprioritisation of system needs. However, pragmatically in the end boundaries must be set.

The governance case examined by this thesis can be considered a kind of intervention and as such boundary critique is a valid tool for evaluation. How a GS determines it’s boundaries for inclusion will determine who are the stakeholders, the experts and what the needs and potentialities of the system are.  The drawing of boundaries can ultimately affect the effectiveness of an intervention.

In the next posting I will continue to elaborate on my second significant concept, embeddedness.