Eliezer: Here’s another example similar to ones other people have raised, a story I heard once, that might explain why I think it’s an important and useful concept.
Supposedly, in the early nineties when the Russians were trying to transition to a capitalist economy, a delegation from the economic ministry went to visit England, to see how a properly market-based economy would work. The British took them on a tour, among other things, of an open-air fresh foods market. The Russians were shown around the market, and were appropriately impressed. Afterwards, one of the senior delegation members approached one of his escorts: “So, who sets the price for rice in this market?” The escort was puzzled a bit, and responded, “No one sets the price. It’s set on the market.” And the Russian responded, “Yes, yes, I know, of course that’s the official line. But who really sets the price of rice?”
The Russian couldn’t conceive that an organization as complex as the open air market could have assembled itself; he was sure someone must have designed it in order for it to work. It had to have been set up. But markets and prices are an emergent phenomenon; the price isn’t set by one person and doesn’t have any one cause. And yet the markets function.
Similarly, a lot of people seem to have a mental model of democratic institutions that says it’s a non-emergent phenomenon: if you write a constitution and hold elections, you get a democracy with the rule of law. Others (including myself) claim that democracy and rule-of-law are emergent phenomena: if they don’t exist, there’s no specific set of actions a central actor can take that will cause them to exist. They exist because of millions of decentralized and uncoordinated actions of individuals without specific direction. If you hold the first view, projects like the establishment of the new Iraqi government make sense: we set up a government with a constitution and elections, so it should become a free democratic state. If you hold the second view, the project is insane: freedom and democracy require millions of individual and low-level cultural shifts that can’t be imposed from above, so there’s no way for us to turn the nation into a democracy. My point here isn’t that one view is right or wrong, although I have a firm belief. My point is that it’s highly relevant to our foreign policy to ask whether democracy is emergent or not.
Usually when you say, “You can’t just impose X from above,” you’re claiming X is an emergent phenomenon; the hallmark of a non-emergent phenomenon is that it’s possible for a single actor to take a series of actions that either cause or prevent it.
Eliezer: Here’s another example similar to ones other people have raised, a story I heard once, that might explain why I think it’s an important and useful concept.
Supposedly, in the early nineties when the Russians were trying to transition to a capitalist economy, a delegation from the economic ministry went to visit England, to see how a properly market-based economy would work. The British took them on a tour, among other things, of an open-air fresh foods market. The Russians were shown around the market, and were appropriately impressed. Afterwards, one of the senior delegation members approached one of his escorts: “So, who sets the price for rice in this market?” The escort was puzzled a bit, and responded, “No one sets the price. It’s set on the market.” And the Russian responded, “Yes, yes, I know, of course that’s the official line. But who really sets the price of rice?”
The Russian couldn’t conceive that an organization as complex as the open air market could have assembled itself; he was sure someone must have designed it in order for it to work. It had to have been set up. But markets and prices are an emergent phenomenon; the price isn’t set by one person and doesn’t have any one cause. And yet the markets function.
Similarly, a lot of people seem to have a mental model of democratic institutions that says it’s a non-emergent phenomenon: if you write a constitution and hold elections, you get a democracy with the rule of law. Others (including myself) claim that democracy and rule-of-law are emergent phenomena: if they don’t exist, there’s no specific set of actions a central actor can take that will cause them to exist. They exist because of millions of decentralized and uncoordinated actions of individuals without specific direction. If you hold the first view, projects like the establishment of the new Iraqi government make sense: we set up a government with a constitution and elections, so it should become a free democratic state. If you hold the second view, the project is insane: freedom and democracy require millions of individual and low-level cultural shifts that can’t be imposed from above, so there’s no way for us to turn the nation into a democracy. My point here isn’t that one view is right or wrong, although I have a firm belief. My point is that it’s highly relevant to our foreign policy to ask whether democracy is emergent or not.
Usually when you say, “You can’t just impose X from above,” you’re claiming X is an emergent phenomenon; the hallmark of a non-emergent phenomenon is that it’s possible for a single actor to take a series of actions that either cause or prevent it.