institutional design for planning

INSTITUTIONAL DESIGN FOR PLANNING: LESSONS FROM CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE1 Richard S. Bolan Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs University of Minnesota

INTRODUCTION There is a curious paradox for the theory of planning that has come to light with the collapse of communism in the USSR and Central and Eastern Europe. The institutional setting that one would imagine most amenable to planning -- a totalitarian state controlling the entire economy and wholly dedicated to "central planning" as the primary tool of governance-- actually ended up as a serious impediment to effective planning. In essence, rigid, closed institutions, even though dogmatically dedicated to planning in theory, actually helped to defeat planning in practice. Equally challenging for planning theory is to examine the process of building new institutions in Central and Eastern Europe since their peaceful revolutions of 1989 and what these transformations imply for planning. In this presentation, I will try to address both questions, since they are interrelated, and will explore the issue from recent theory in sociology. I will try to use the experience of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe to illustrate the impediments to planning that existed under communism and how planning is emerging as these countries dismantle old institutions and create new democratic and market institutions. The key question is whether

1. This is a draft of a work in progress. Comments are welcome but please do not quote. This paper has been aided financially by a grant from the Ford Foundation.

Bolan: Institutional Design for Planning

these new efforts at institution building are more or less responsive milieu for permitting effective public planning. In essence, I will conclude that collective planning is largely only contingently possible. There are severe limits to macro-scale collective planning and these limits are the consequence of both the ontological conditions from which social entities are formed, and the processes entailed in resolving a whole host of dialectical enigmas. There is in effect an II

institutional space" for societal planning which bounds every collective effort to capture the

future. This "institutional space" both enables collective planning and constrains it, and the character and quality of the "space has much to do with whether the emphasis is on II

enabling or constraining. But in the end, we are never wholly free to plan.

EXPLAINING THE FAILURE OF COMMUNIST CENTRAL PLANNING With the collapse of the Soviet-type communist system, there have been many explanations offered as to what caused the collapse (although planners have been relatively silent on the subject). It is clear that the entire system, intended as a model of industrial society, fell prey to a colossal economic failure. Since the economy was the full responsibility of central planning, this has to be construed as a failure of planning itself. With competent powerful planners in charge of the system, how could things go wrong? With the clarity of hindsight, here are some possible explanations. I present these not with an eye to knocking them down or refuting them. In fact, I will only be offering the more plausible and serious explanations. In the end, I hope to show that they all indeed fit into a

2


deeper scheme that relies on the notion of duality of structure. The first and most obvious explanation, of course, is that a modern industrial economy is too large and too complex for human understanding and that no group of central planners, however well trained and competent, could possibly absorb sufficient information to completely exercise effective central command. Theory is inadequate and the data base problems stretch to infinity. Central command planning simply is not within our grasp. As is often the case, the most obvious explanation is by no means the worst. Economists have clear enough explanations of what happened. Some exhibit strong ideological undertones and place the blame squarely on the lack of a competitive market and its presumably more accurate and efficient allocative system of "invisible hand" pricing. There is evidence that in the Stalinist period planners followed a theory of development where allocations favored investment in heavy industry and gave low priority to consumer industry, services and agriculture. In doing this, planners underpriced inputs to favored industries and overpriced those for low priority activity, seriously distorting the use of raw materials, labor and energy in the process. The problems arising from these distortions actually showed up quite early in the communist reign in central and eastern Europe -shortly after Stalin's death in the mid-1950's to be exact. The predominant history of the region is really, then, a story of two generations of economic reformers who were unable to overcome the valuation distortions of the Stalinist period. Thus, explanations need to go deeper since reform-minded economists in the region had very similar views as to what needed to be done. Hungary's so-called "New Economic

3


Mechanism" was a typical example of reform thinking that called for decentralized planning, more autonomy for factory managers, and more encouragement of private ventures. Its first version first appeared in the early 1970's, to be followed by a second version in the 1980's. Political economists, such as Batt (1991), suggest that the close intertwining of the economy and the one-party political apparatus of the Stalin era meant that, however the economic reforms might have been conceived, they were thwarted by conservative political leadership within the Party and, thus, the state. Efforts to decentralize the economy were not accompanied by similar decentralization of the political system so that the economic reforms only served to strengthen vested interests within the party and bureaucracy. Underlying the whole problem was an institutionalized incentive system where rewards came not from the economic system but from the political system. This leads to explanations coming under the heading of the "public choice" model that generally addresses the power of bureaucracy and how individual bureaucrats strive to feather their own nests. Communist party leaders were notorious for their pursuit of personal privileges and perquisites. At a broader level there was also considerable rivalry for resources between the bureaucratic ministries that controlled industrial sectors. Each ministry engaged in competition that at first was focused on making sure that production targets could be met. As various reforms, however, loosened the grip of the central planners, sectoral ministries also began to vie for power, status and resources by seeking higher wages, housing , recreation and other benefits for their constituencies. In short, "rent seeking" behavior was the reality and its pursuit undermined the policy monopoly of central planning.

4


Ministries devoted to heavy, high priority industries tended to be the winners in the competition, thus further tilting the distortions in their direction. There is a parallel line of reasoning that applies not to the nomenklatura but to ordinary citizens. In the face of the rigid, unbending institutions of the state, party and economy, people developed their own "alternative" institutions, or "black markets." Black marke~s.

of course, exist within the framework of any economic system, but, as Hewitt's

study of the Soviet Union (1988) suggests, black markets had a strange but powerful dialectic duality in the Communist system. Fundamentally, black markets served to undermine central command planning, while at the same time their existence was essential if the formal economic arrangements were to work. Black markets filled gaps that existed in the command system; yet those gaps existed in part because of the black markets' ability to scavenge scarce resources away from the formal economy. In short, by the 1980's, the Soviet economy had come to rely on black markets and overlook their illegality. Such markets also existed throughout Central and Eastern Europe and took many different forms. Overall, one might imagine a duality theory of institutional development. Just as there is an intrinsic dual solution in mathematical linear programming, so too, one might hypothesize that, in the development of institutions, there are dual "shadow" institutions that emerge in parallel with formal, legitimated institutions. These shadow institutions exist with norms and rules in defiance of the formal , legitimated norms, rules and standards. One might also imagine the corollary proposition that the more rigid and controlling the formal institution, the more influential and powerful the "shadow" or dual institution. There are

5


some intriguing ideas in this line of thought for future research. This leads to the ideas of implementation theory as developed by Pressman, Wildavsky (1973), Bardach (1977) and others. A recent formal expression of this is found in Wolf (1990). The foundation premise of implementation theory is that collective policy never gets carried out as envisioned when adopted. Just as a contractor seldom builds a building exactly as the architect specified it, so too the carrying out of public plans and policies encounter many contingencies not foreseen in the original plan or policy. There is, in effect, a deep doubt about the limits of planning lurking here. The reasoning behind this is a variation of public choice theory. Bardach perhaps best exemplifies this in his description of the numerous "games" implementers play (1977). In any cooperative effort to carry out a project, there is an underlayer of competition and conflict over rewards, statuses, "turfs," etc. The larger the system being changed by new plans or policies, the greater the potential for undermining games and conflicts. By this line of reason, the very scope and ambitiousness of central command planning in the Soviet system was doomed to failure . As Wildavsky has said, "if planning is everything, maybe it's nothing." He would argue, I'm sure, that the collapse of the Soviet system well illustrates the aphorism. As noted, I do not hold any of these explanations to be wrong. All, however, seem limited. They tend to be one-dimensional, focusing primarily on factors which are highlighted in the underlying theories. They provide useful insights into the relation of institutions and planning, and they seem to vaguely point to my original paradox that a wholly powerful planning system undermined planning. However, taken together, they also

6


hint at an underlying multi-dimensionality that no one explanation fully addresses. In an effort to draw out the character of this underlying complexity, I offer a conceptual frame below based on recent work in sociology drawing on the "social construction" paradigm earlier suggested by Berger and Luckmann (1967) and recently fleshed out by Habermas (1984, 1987), Giddens (1979, 1984, 1990), and Sztompka (1991).

A CONCEPTUAL FRAME FOR ANALYZING PLANNING AND INSTITUTIONS Reading the essays on USSR planning presented in the latest issue of Planning Theory (1991), I was struck by how planning was always described as a system, but seldom were actual human beings mentioned. The planning system was reified, which is to say that it had become an institutional structure so powerful in imagery that it took on a non-human quality-- that it was an independent phenomenon beyond human beings. The planning system had traits and characteristics of its own that were detached from and sovereign over the humans that toiled within it. This had also been, until recently, a characteristic of leading Western social theory. Followers of the tradition of Durkheim and Parsons tend to treat institutions as not only as rule systems but also as frameworks that became increasingly "frozen" or solidified with time. Structural, institutional, and general systems social theorists increasingly removed human agents from their theory. Human life and its opportunities and potentialities was largely predetermined by the statuses, roles and ascriptions of the institutional arrangements embedded in social systems. This stance lent itself to examination by statistical methods

7


offering potentiality for empirical, quantitative analyses of social systems. However, sharp criticism came from Giddens who contended that Parsons viewed individual humans as "cultural dopes." (1979) Parallel formulations also developed from the standpoint where human action and human agency were claimed as primary. Following Weber, Mead and Schutz, phenomenology, linguistics, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology ascended in sociology with counterpart movements in political theory. This perspective maintained that nothing happens in society --be it political, economic or social -- that is not the result of some human action arising from intentions, needs, fears and interests. These theorists, in turn, also came under fire from critics who argued that 'society' had become lost in the minutiae of everyday greetings, rituals, conversations and transactions. In true dialectical fashion, spurred by Berger and Ludemann's The Social Construction of Reality (1967), the last two decades have witnessed a search for a new

paradigm that would resolve the gulf between macroscopic views of rigid, frozen, reified structures and microscopic views of the flow of everyday human life. There is an acknowledged need for a 'third' view --bridging the chasm between structure and action. As one member of this new undertaking has put it: "It [is] recognized that obviously each individual has only a minuscule say in social change, but at the same time social change must be treated as a composite result of what all individuals do . ... Thus, individuals and collectivities together shape the twisting course of human history" (Sztompka, 15)

8


1. Root Assumptions: The Ontology of the Social World To analyze what this view means for the relation of institutions and planning, it is essential to start with its central assumptions. To begin, social structures are not, a priori, externally constituted entities binding and regulating all human action. Social reality is a dynamic process -- composed of events not objects. The social world occurs rather than exists. This is illustrated by an example I used in an earlier paper (1991). Should a business firm close down and furlough its work force for a two week summer holiday, it ceases to exist in real, empirically observable terms. Its' building, as an object, continues to stand, but the building is not the firm. The firm only comes back into being when the first group of employees return and resume acting out their assigned roles and participating in the firm's 'events' (Giddens, 1979, 61-65).

An institution, or social collectivity, is not an object but a set of relations -- a fluid network of relations that includes both harmony and conflict. The network is a complex matrix, or confluence, of differentiated, heterogenous, multi-directional processes. Yet, these processes are fashioned by human endeavor; nothing happens but that someone' s actions brings it about either acting individually or as participants in collectivities. Every moment in social process is a blend of opportunities, resources, facilities -- we face the future with a pool of possibilities. Social collectivities are incessantly changing. The social world is inherently historical (but not in any idealistic or teleological sense). Individuals have an inbuilt capacity for selftransformation or self-transcendence (Merleau-Ponty, 1979); and this also follows for the

9

Bolan: Instirutional Design for Planning

collectivities in which they participate. Thus, human agents, within their collectivities, shape history and are shaped by it. People do not construct social processes purely as they please. Through the matrix of social relations, some of any actor's autonomy and freedom is taken away by the co-presence and co-actions of others. As well, the structures of the past are constraints. They are never absolute constraints; some may appear more rigid and inflexible, others more open and free. One lesson from the experience of the Soviet bloc is that even the most rigid structural, institutional arrangements were never absolutely rigid or unchanging.

2. The Fundamental Paradoxes of the Social Construction of Reality Underlying every effort to construct social or political theory are two fundamental paradoxes of human experience which have consistently thwarted efforts to construct positivistic, mathematical or mechanistic social theory analogous to theory in the physical sciences. The first is the clash between the autonomy of the individual as against the constraints of the social environment. This paradox has been described in many different ways: freedom versus order; individuality versus participation; uniqueness versus membership; subjectivity vs. objectivity; action vs. structure. In its most philosophical terms it deals with the question as to whether the actions of human persons are the results of freely chosen behaviors stemming from rationality, need or intentions (free will), or whether actions are determined by the social structures within which the person resides (determinism).

10


Institutions clearly sit in the middle of this quandary. Institutions are typically conceived as being very heavily tilted towards the deterministic pole of the dilemma. They are usually identified with coerced constraint. The literature often refers to them as systems of rules, protocols, procedures which circumscribe behavior. In Parsons' theory, as the institutionalization process advances, the rules and norms become more and more solidified in place through continual reproduction. While acknowledging their origination in humanly struck agreements, institutions in the structural view seem more and more supra-human. (Berger and Luckmann, 1967) On the other side, however, to focus strictly on actors implies that institutions are mere backdrops. Being humanly constructed, institutions, in principle, can be changed, they are malleable. Sartre held the most extreme position asserting that each of us at any moment, however we may sense constraint by tradition or norms, are actually radically free (1963) . We face each new moment with totally free choice and, for Sartre, this is our "anguish." Given the previous discussion of the ontology of social reality, institutions may also be seen as a dualism, simultaneously enabling and constraining. There is no action possible without institutions and in this sense they are enabling. Yet, in order for them to be enabling, action is constrained.

The second major paradox is that of persistence versus change. This may also be expressed as the clash between stability as against movement; repetition versus novelty; or continuity versus transformation. Structural or deterministic theories are easily identified by

11


their emphasis on stability or "equilibrium." Systems, as supra-human entities in such theories, always follow "pattern maintenance" behavior to insure stability or equilibrium. For those who focus on actors, on the other hand, all is change. Actors, even in the process of reproduction, do not repeat conduct precisely and all actions have the seeds or potential for change. Institutions again, seen from a traditional view, tilt heavily toward the structural pole. Institutions, by their very definition, are seen as repetitive, reproduced actions. They hold things together by offering stability, continuity and repetition. When we wake up in the morning, we can plan our day's activities because we know institutions are operative. Yet institutions can and do change. The transformations currently taking place in Central and Eastern Europe are dramatic evidence that this is so. From our description of the ontology of social life, moreover, the synthetic view would be that institutions are constantly under pressure to change. Every action, no matter how much oriented to reproduction and repetition, has within it potential for change, even if only minuscule. Planning is integrally caught up in these paradoxes. Plans have an intrinsic thrust toward change; they are necessarily challenges to existing arrangements. As an effort to capture the future, planning entails envisioning the future and then acting so as to realize it. In effect, planning has profound historical qualities. Institutions constrain us in both vision and action; our visions of the future are conditioned by how we have been shaped in the past; our actions are constrained by the normative and practical repertoires we have learned in the past.

12

Bolan: Institutional Design for Plannjng

3. Overcoming the Paradoxes: The Model of 11 Social Becomingu Contemporary social theory has been diligently engaged in developing the synthetic view. In recent times, a number of theorists have worked to deal with the major paradoxes and integrate structure and action. Recently, the Polish sociologist, Sztompka, published his model of 11 Social becomingu (1991) and I will work from this formulation to try and develop a way of looking at recent events in Central and Eastern Europe and how they might help us understand the relation between institutions and planning. Sztompka starts by specifying two levels of social reality: the level of individualities and the level of totalities (wholes). By individualities he is referring to people as individuals or as members or participants in collective activities (groups, associations, movements) seen neither as passive objects nor as fully autonomous subjects but as bounded agents. He describes totalities as abstract social wholes (societies, cultures, social systems) interpreted neither as mere aggregates nor as metaphysical entities but as structures. Sztompka then postulates two modes of existence of social reality: 1) the mode of

potentiality that embodies the inherent germs or seeds of the future that lie emergent within tendencies, capacities, abilities, and powers developed in the past; and 2) the mode of actuality that encompasses processes, development, conduct, activity. The two modes can be embraced by each of the two levels of social reality: structures may be treated as

potentialities that actualize (unfold) themselves in operation; individuals may be seen as agents that actualize themselves (mobilize) in action.

13


The modes of potentiality and actuality are linked by mutual feedback loops. There is an incessant back-and-forth oscillation between what is possible and what actually occurs, extending in time. This Sztompka defines as becoming. For him, social reality is a "living

socio-individual field in the process of becoming." He elaborates: "In this idea all the six poles of ambivalence so pervasive in the perception of society (whether in common sense or in theoretical discourse) are merged and fused: persons and groups, order and change, possibilities and realities. "Society in the image proposed here, exists only as social becoming. In its very essence it is multidimensional, ambivalent, dualistic, 'dialectical." (95)

The basic model combines these modes of social being as shown in the following diagram. FIGURE 1. BASIC COMPONENTS OF THE MODEL POTENTIAUTY

ACTUALITY

TOTALITY

STRUCTURE

OPERATION

INDIVIDUAUTY

AGENT

ACTION

From: Piotr Sztompka (1991). Society in Action: The Theory of Social Becoming. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 88.

In the vertical dimension is proposed the complementary relations of emergence and

autonomy. Structures are seen as emergent with respect to agents. This means that despite encompassing agents, structures possess their own, specific properties and regularities. They are "inter-agential networks," not reducible to the sum of agents. Agents, in tum, are also not reducible to the structures wherein they reside; they possess some measure of autonomy

14


and relative freedom to choose and decide. Agents are not merely "nodal points" of structures, but themselves are self-contained entities with specific properties and regularities. In short, human agents are never fully and completely socialized: they deviate, innovate, rebel, evade structural constraints and so forth. Giddens originally introduced the notion of "duality of structure" to signify the mutual dependence of structure and agency (1979). Sztompka builds on this in attempting to further make explicit this coupling. He argues that, in gestalt fashion, the levels of structure in operation and of agents in action are neither analytically separable nor mutually reducible and that there is neither agential nor structural reality per se. From this, in Pepper's root metaphor of "contextualism," (1942) Sztompka asserts the real ingredients that make up society are events. Not individual acts or 'social facts,' but their intimate concrete fusions . Social collectivities and individuals have only a 'virtual' existence if abstracted and isolated from each other -- only in their coalescence can they be said to have a 'real' existence. With Giddens, Sztompka asserts the importance of history in understanding society and institutions. No social phenomena exist in a timeless void. The social world is always located in a temporal context, as moments or episodes in the continuous sequential chain of a process. In this view, all social reality is engaged in constant living movement and change.

No social process exists without some aspect that is changed, transformed, modified. Giddens saw the origin of this in the very character of speech and language (1979, Ch. 1), the most fundamental of all human actions.

15

Bolan: Institutjonal Design for Planning

Events fuse individualities and totalities, persistence and change, potentiality and actuality. Events are the only primary ontological entity bridging all the three dualisms or dichotomies. In their basic composition, they always have the synthetic quality of enveloping all dimensions of social being. They link some person(s) acting within the context of some social collectivity that, in its tum, is bolstered or reshaped by the action. Events, themselves, do not occur in isolation but are historically bound up in clusters, sequences, routines, procedures, chains and processes that are connected in space and time. Sztompka use the term praxis to portray where operation and action meet. Praxis is conceived as the nexus of operating structures and acting agents. Thus, praxis can be understood as the actual manifestations of the social fabric. It is doubly fashioned: from above by the phase of functioning of the wider society; from below by the conduct of individuals and their groups. It is not, however, reducible to either. It is anchored to the two core concepts of the model: operation and action. (96) The concept of agency is complementary to praxis. It is the meeting ground of the opening core concepts of structure and agent. It is located at the same level but refers to a different mode of existence. Thus, agency is the potentiality for praxis. These are the basic elements of Sztompka's model. They are portrayed on Figure 2 on the next page, together with further elaboration of the feedback loops noted above occurring at every level in the scheme. The diagram also notes two additional conditioning factors in the model. Social reality exists in two environments correlated with the two basic levels of the model. At the level of structure, social reality is influenced by nature. At the

16


level of the agent, consciousness is a shaping factor. This is in keeping with the dual nature of the human constitution -- .. as natural object and conscious subject at the same time" (100). Each of these in tum possesses an important duality. Nature refers not only to climate, ecology, hydrology and geology but also to the biological and genetic endowments of agents. Consciousness refers not only to individual capacities for perception, meaning construction and reflexive self-understanding but also to interactive networks that produce, reinforce and modify ideas, beliefs and concepts which become socially manifest in ideology, doctrine, tradition and theory. An important feature of the theory is Sztompka' s depiction of the feedback loops at each level. In many ways, these loops can be linked to the traditional sociological images of the institution building process. The eventuation process that loops back from praxis and reconstructs agency corresponds with processes of legitimation and integration; the mobilization of agents and their reshaping or molding calls to mind the socialization process; structures unfolding into operations while simultaneously acting back to remake structure suggests not only legitimation once again but also what Habermas refers to as .. cultural reproduction" or the process of validating systematic knowledge (1987; also see Bolan, 1991). Sztompka's model suggests, however, that these processes cannot be extracted out and viewed as analytically separable; they are a gestalt. The act of socializing new members of a collectivity cannot be done without simultaneously implicating the processes of agency construction and structure building (legitimation, integration, cultural reproduction).

18


From this, we can conclude that institution building and its design inherently involves the process of becoming: a process that embodies historical events as played out by actors embedded in social structures conditioned by nature and consciousness (agency) evolving into a gestalt of actions and operations (praxis) which in tum loops back into reshaping agents and structures and their nexus. This is a further articulation of the point originally made by Berger and Lucl(mann: humans create a world that simultaneously acts back and recreates the original creators (1967, 61). One important feature of Sztompka's model is his treatment of power. This, too, is seen as a duality springing from the different levels of the model. Power lies in the nexus of agents and structures and is defined by its potential for activating consequential praxis or a significant shaping of the historical process. The duality of power is expressed in hegemony and domination. The sources of hegemony are latent within the capacities, knowledge and skills of agents; the sources of domination are contained within the capacities and roles of structures. Power is not manifest, however, except insofar as these dual elements-hegemony and domination -- are linked in agency. As Sztompka states it: "The power of the agency is therefore the combined product of domination exerted over it by the structures, and hegemony exerted over it by the agents. The input from both sides need not be equal; there are all sorts of empirical possibilities, from the extreme domination of the rigid structures, when agents have very little say, to the extreme hegemony of powerful agents, able to suppress the influence of weak or flexible structures. The power of the agency may derive mainly from the strength of structures (domination), or from the strength of agents (hegemony), but normally emerges as the mixed balance of both." p. 130

19


For Sztompka, the "master variable" in social becoming is the potential for "selftranscendence. " Here, he borrows somewhat from Etzioni in seeking to analyze the ingredients of an "active society" as distinct from a "passive" or stagnating society. This capacity for self-transcendence is wrapped up in the quality of agency -- the balance or mix of the hegemony of agents and the domination of structures. Figure 3 is a rough approximation of his analysis, although I have abridged his model somewhat. FIGURE 3: THE DETERMINANTS OF AGENCY FEATURES OF STRUCTURES

TRAITS OF AGENTS

PERMISSIVE

ENABLING

CONSTRAINING

REFORMIST

RELEASED ACTIVISM

ENCOURAGED ACTIVISM

BLOCKED ACTIVISM

CONSERVATIVE

UNREAliZED OPPORTUNITIES

COERCED ACTIVISM

TOTAL STAGNATION

Adapted From: Piotr Sztompka (1991). Society in Action: The Theory of Social Becoming. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 134.

In this diagram we see three basic features of structures. At one pole may be found rigid, repressive, prohibitive, constraining structures; at the other pole permissive, loosely controlling structures. At the center is depicted a rule-bound, enforcing structure that is facilitating and encouraging. The diagram also suggests two basic .traits of agents (again either as individuals or as participants in collectivities): reformist (change seeking) or conservative (change resistant). From the diagram emerges a rough typology of different forms of activism and passivism arising from different ways in which agents and structures come together to create agency. 20


This diagram provides a beginning delineation of what at the outset I called "institutional space" for planning. By this, I mean that combination of agent and structure traits and characteristics that best permits a society to envision a desirable future of selftransformation, calculate its risks and costs, and marshall the resources (praxis} that can encourage and support new behaviors (operations and actions} to bring it about. In terms of the model as depicted on Figure 2, I consider planning as the core of the eventuation process. It sets direction and purpose to the unfolding of agency into praxis. If planning is lacking, eventuation is more marked by drift and passivity. As a first hypotheses, the diagram suggests that "Encouraged Activism" is that combination of agents' traits and structural features that would most facilitate an effective planning process. The other active cells ("Released Activism" and "Coerced Activism"} would suggest potentialities for planning but with somewhat less efficacy than "Encouraged Activism." Finally, Sztompka provides a more detailed typology for perceiving structure. He sees structure unfolding and being reconstructed at four basic levels: 1}

the ideal level (after Scheler, Schutz} that is focused on ingrained ideas, beliefs, and images leading to creeds, ideologies, doctrine;

2}

the normative level (after Durkheim, Weber} that is focused on customs, mores, traditions, laws;

3}

the interaction level (from Simmel, Mead) that is concerned with the development of networks of communication, interaction, interpersonal

21


access; and 4)

the level of hierarchy (from Marx, Weber) that is focused on the configuration of inequality, stratification, or class (Sztompka also refers to this as the opportunity networks). (Sztompka, 1991, 124-126)

These four levels are also operate in complementary or gestalt fashion. Deep seated traditions (such as the authority of the family in Japan, or Catholicism in Poland) may reinforce or contradict the opportunity networks (access to education, employment) which, in turn, may be aided and abetted by the interactive structures (communication between generations. between classes, etc.). This completes the depiction of Sztompka's model for my immediate purposes. From this, I would briefly like to provide a short interpretation of events in Central and Eastern Europe to illustrate some of the empirical potentialities of the model for research and for a more comprehensive approach to planned social change and societal development.

APPLICATIONS OF THE MODEL In his final two chapters. Sztompka illustrates the potential of the model for empirical analysis. His focus is on phenomena that he believes most illustrate social becoming: social movements and revolutions. These analyses are quite insightful, but my own focus is somewhat different because of my concern for the potentials of the planning process. As a planner, I am concerned with 1) why did planning fail under communism-- a professed planning system? and 2) what are the prospects for planning at the present time in the new regimes that have replaced the Soviet system?

22


L.

The Failure of Planning in the Soviet System

A number of possible explanations for the failure of planning in the Soviet system were offered at the outset of this discussion. In many ways, the Sztompka model incorporates all of those explanations but provides deeper insight than any of them taken alone. Imposing the Soviet model in Central and Eastern Europe meant imposing alien elements into existing structures and their operations. It also meant deep seated forced imposition of new values, beliefs, and ideology. Examination of some of the premises within the model would suggest why the system failed, whether in Poland (vigorously anti-Russian throughout) or in Bulgaria (generally proRussian in the 1940's). In terms of the Sztompka model, serious inner contradictions emerge in the relations between structures and agents. Clearly the Stalinist design places great stress on individual energies directed not to personal needs but to the needs of the state. This premise is obviously based on the dominance of the state while denying the individual's role or needs in agency and praxis. The designers of Soviet institutions fell prey to what Sztompka terms the "illusion of reification" -- "here only societies are endowed with true existence and people exist only as the raw material of society." (93-94) Thus, people (agents) were treated as pawns in the unfolding and construction of structure. Social collectivities or human individuals taken in isolation have only a 'virtual' existence -- not a 'real' existence. As structure became more and more dominant, seeking more and more to stifle the latent potency of agents, efforts at central planning became self-defeating. There was failure

23


to realize the importance of feedback loops and the system was designed to stifle them. Leaving no room for failure meant no room was left for creativity or irmovation. By so doing, the animation necessary to carry out the aims of the state began to ebb. Some energy of agents went into resistance and the creation of alternative institutions. Much simply dissipated into a fatalism that produced lethargy. The aims of structure and agency were at cross-purposes. This would seem to be an untenable set of circumstances for planning. For the professed unity around goals was an illusion. Planning simply cannot function without the potency of agency (the energy, the creativity and the impulse toward reform and change). If, as argued above, plarming is a core ingredient of the eventuation process so, too, is a populace that is endowed with a voluntarist, activist, reformist stance. A domineering, totalitarian, coercive structure -- no matter how devoted to planning -- works against such a stance by creating mixtures of fear, resistance, fatalism and passivity. In terms of the framework portrayed in Figure 3, the historical process of Soviet power might be interpreted as a path from coerced activism to blocked activism to total stagnation. Perhaps the key lesson from planning in the Soviet system is that planning carmot function without creativity and irmovation. In tum, these only stem from active, reformist agents who are possessed of some sense of hope that change is both possible and worthwhile (see: Hirschman, 1970 and his discussion of exit, voice and loyalty).

24


2.

The Potential for Effective Planning in the New Conditions of Central and Eastern Europe

In 1992, the Warsaw Pact has vanished and Central and Eastern Europe exist under entirely new conditions. The structure of each society is being transformed. Presently, in terms of the model, structure is more diffuse and more dynamic. In terms of the structural features shown in Figure 3, most of the countries in the region could be characterized as "permissive." As well, the most likely portrayal of the traits of agents today would be "conservative." As a consequence, there is a very mixed record concerning planning. The large central organs of state are permissive in character because it is not clear what form of future direction they will take. Aside from the obvious problems of Yugoslavia, Poland and Czechoslovakia represent transitional problems of considerable perplexity in the region. Poland went from the extreme of leftist totalitarian socialism to the opposite extreme of a rightist laissez faire society. There was general popular consent that the transition had to go as rapidly as possible --gradualism, in 1990, was explicitly rejected. The reality is that haste and so-called "shock therapy" has created major economic and social dislocation and erosion of popular support. Solidarity, after splitting into factions in the summer of 1990, is no longer the focus of national unity and in the Parliamentary election of October 1991 was not a serious factor. Twenty nine parties currently sit in the country's legislative body and 1992 saw the appointment of three different prime ministers in seven months time. Labor strife has been almost continual starting in the summer of 1991. Under the circumstances, planning at the national level has had serious trouble. In 1989, after the crucial elections that started the fall of communism, the word 'planning' was 25


as taboo among Polish leadership as it was in the United States. Planning, as such, was limited to supply side economic planning as negotiated with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Western creditors. Midway through 1991, the second post-communist government began to realize that the nation needed an industrial policy and that large-scale state enterprises were going to need planning help if they were going to successfully be restructured to private firms. In early 1990, Polish economists were arguing that state owned firms were inefficient and made products for market that didn't exist. Such firms should go bankrupt, their large labor forces were redundant. By mid-1991 came the awareness that these firms were not really able to privatize themselves and were not going to go bankrupt quietly. The redundant labor force was not going to take unemployment lightly. Polish strikes are growing more numerous and recently have included hunger strikes while unemployment has risen to 12% and the labor situation keeps worsening. In tenns of Sztompka's model, the Polish society has been transformed into a pennissive structure in the extreme. Agency is presumed to be the province only of agents -structures are highly suspect and at the national level are losing credibility in serious ways. Yet the agents lack the repertoires of a laissez faire society. People still expect structures to take care of them, yet they can't abide or trust them. At the level of consciousness there are perceived risks, fears and uncertainties which renders agents as mostly conservative. Thus, Unrealized Opportunities best characterizes the current situation in Poland. There are some exceptions, particularly in environmental planning, but for the most part Poland has yet to

26


develop an effective planning capacity at the national level. Czechoslovakia appears well on the road to splitting into two separate nations. The history of the country since 1989 has been continual bickering over the relation of the country's two republics to the central Federal government. The result has been the steady erosion of the Federal government as a framework for structure building. As this is written, the mechanics are in motion for the formal separation before the end of 1992. Vaclev Havel, the charismatic playwright who became Czechoslovakia's President, has been forced to leave office and new governments will be forming in the near future. Like Poland, Czechoslovakia attempted in these three years to create a democratic framework with free market conditions. Unlike Poland, there was more recognition of the role of public planning. The economic program of the Finance Minister Klaus was a well crafted document that took a much broader view of the transformation process, including a recognition of the need for programs to deal with the unavoidable social dislocations. As of today, however, Czechoslovakia has dissipated considerable energies in the concern for the conditions created by the Slovak nationalist movement. The creation of a democratic structural framework is thus moving very slowly and some fears have been expressed that such a structure may well be in jeopardy in the emerging Slovak republic. Throughout the region, issues of creating private property, real estate markets, private manufacturing capacity are continuing to be problematic. In each case, with the structural component ill-formed and still forming, agency is left almost entirely to agents who still have a residue of repertoires, norms and perspectives from four decades of the dominating

27


communist structures. Thus, the situation seems fraught with danger generally, and hostile to planning in particular. Further paradox threatens: at the very time effective collective planning is most needed -- at a time of rapid social change -- the elements of agency and praxis seem geared to be inimical to planning. Weak structures and conservative agents point to agency and praxis predominantly passive. One meaningful exception should be noted. Early in 1990, Poland passed laws establishing the self-governance of localities. This was a remnant of long-time local traditions in the country and, for Poles, it was a symbol of a return to populist democracy. Part of my current research in Poland is looking at local governments with particular reference to environmental and development policy. The data from the local level in Poland suggests active planning processes. With the impasse at the national level creating a permissive climate for planning at the local level, many of the larger cities are beginning to pursue local planning and implementation, albeit from a very limited resource base. Thus, local planning is actively going on with respect to environmental problems, growing traffic problems as auto ownership rapidly increases, and real estate development issues. There is, as well, attention being devoted new collective organizations which point to the development of a more differentiated sense of structure. Some of this activity includes the formation of social movements, such as the coalition of 70 organizations created to protest the construction of a dam in the southern mountains of Poland. Establishing quasi-private foundations to tackle regional water problems is occurring, notably for the Warta River Basin and the Rivers Olawa and Nysa K.lodzka. The Regional Foundation of Upper Silesia was

28


created last February. The Eco-Baltic Foundation has been formed concerned with Baltic Sea pollution. Additionally, an association of voivodeships has been formed along the coastline of the Baltic Sea. Associations of municipal govermnents have been formed in areas around Bialystok, Krakow, and Katowice. International associations of local govermnent have been formed with Czechoslovakia, Germany, Lithuania and Byelorussia. Thus, while I initially characterized the populace in Poland as conservative, there is clearly planning going on at the local level. One also senses at this level the development of a bona fide comprehensive sense of agency and praxis. There are caveats to this evidence, however. The data mostly concerns the larger cities and their environs. Recent analyses of a social survey we commissioned in Poland suggests a very strong urban/rural split in Poland. The split cuts across education, income, and religion. Thus, the emergence of activism and local planning is more representative of attitudes and approaches to active agency in the larger cities but not necessarily the country as a whole.

CONCLUSION From the above, I have redrawn Figure 3 to develop a typological framework for developing preliminary hypotheses about the nature of "institutional space" most amenable to effective planning. This is shown in Figure 4. Of the six cells in the matrix, I conceive of only two that truly create the conditions for effective public planning. Those cells in the matrix shown in grey shading depict significant weaknesses within the relations of agents and structures that tend to make planning difficult. With weak or permissive structures and

29

Bolan; Institutional Desjm for Planning

FIGURE 4: THE INSTITUTIONAL SPACE FOR PLANNING FEATURES OF STRUCTURES

TRAITS OF AGENTS

PERMISSIVE

ENABLING

CONSTRAINING

REFORMIST

RELEASED ACTIVISM Small Scale Localized Innovative Planning Dominated by Transformative Agents thru Small Scale Collectivities (Ex: Local Urban Poland today)

ENCOURAGED ACTIVISM Societal Guidance through Public and Private small and large scale collectivities Innovative Planning Indicative Planning (Ex:Sweden, Germany, Japan, France)

BLOCKED ACTIVISM Stilted Planning Command Planning Dominated by Large Scale Structures (Ex: Hungary 19701989)

CONSERVATIVE

UNREALIZED OPPORTUNITIES Drift Little Public Planning Planning Dominated by Risk Aversive Agents thru small scale collectivities (Ex: USA, CSFR today, Hungary today)

COERCED ACTMSM Restrained Allocative Planning (Ex: UK) Structures dominate risk-aversive agents

TOTAL STAGNATION No effective Planning Sttuctures all dominating Passive Agents (Ex: Poland under Martial Law, CSFR 1968-1989)

30


conservative agents, public planning occurs primarily at local or small scale levels with a focus on incremental adjustments to obvious immediate problems. Planning in this cell is predominantly "risk-aversive." In the cell characterized by conservative agents with enabling structures, planning tends to conform to what Friedmann has termed "allocative" planning (1973 , Ch. 3). Little risk taking or innovation is likely to occur under these conditions. In the cell portrayed as having constraining structures and conservative agents, labelled "total stagnation," planning would seem almost meaningless (as indeed it came to be under the Soviet system). The cell depicted with constraining structure and reformist agents is aptly labeled "blocked activism" and the reform efforts throughout the Soviet-bloc in the 1980's would seem to be good examples of this mix of agency and praxis. Reform in economic matters was sought in terms of trying to encourage decision-making by managers, privatization, and individual initiative. Reform, however, always seemed elusive. There was an effort to reform agents but not structures (see Batt, 1991). In our frame of analysis, then, the two cells that most encourage public planning are those labelled "encouraged activism" and "released activism. 11 "Encouraged activism" implies a structural framework that is not necessarily permissive but has a developed incentive system that facilitates and enables reformist and activist agents to link with structures toward pursuing common or societal goals. Examples of such planning enviromnents would seem to focus on Western Europe and Japan. The example of urban local govermnent in Poland would depict the climate for planning under "released activism."

31


These are, in effect, beginning hypotheses concerning the link between institutions and planning. The Sztompka model provides a promising theoretical framework which can help delineate the role of planning under different institutional configurations. Perceiving the world as one of social becoming involving processes that distinctly explicate the link between agents and structures offers a synthesis that not only helps better understand the social world but also the contingent role of planning within that world. It helps to locate planning as an activity in the center of "events" (as a core part of the process of "eventuation") rather than as a mechanism for conceiving objects. Additionally, it points the way to helping understand the institutional settings in which planning might be most fruitful. As such, I think the model helps set an important research agenda for planning theory and practice. Carrying out such research under conditions of rapid institutional transition, as in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, provides a unique opportunity to explore and develop the link between institutional design and planning.

32

Bolan: Institutional Design for Plangjng

REFERENCES Eugene Bardach (1977). The Implementation Game: What Happens After a Bill Becomes Law. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Judy Batt (1991). East Central Europe: From Refonn to Transformation. New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966). The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc. (Anchor Books Edition, 1967). Richard Bolan (1991). "Planning and Institution Design," Plannin& Theocy, 5/6 Summer/Winter, 7-34. John Friedmann (1973). Retrackin& America: A Theory of Transactive Plannin&. Garden City, NY: Anchor Press/Doubleday. Anthony Giddens (1979). Central Problems in Social Theocy, Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Anthony Giddens (1984). The Constitution of Society, Berkeley, CA: The University of California Press. Anthony Giddens (1990). The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Jurgen Habermas (1987). The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, Volume Two. Tr. by Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Jurgen Habermas (1984). The Theory of Communicative Action: Lifeworld and System: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, Volume One. Tr. by Thomas McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Albert 0 . Hirschman (1970). Exit. Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Finns. Organizations and States. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Antoni Z. Kaminsky (1989). "Coercion, Corruption and Reform: State and Society in the Soviet-Type Socialist Regime," Journal of Theoretical Politics, 1:1. 77-102. M. Merleau-Ponty (1979). The Phenomenolon of Perception, tr. by C. Smith. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 33

I


Elinor Ostrom (1990). Governin& the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. New York: Cambridge University Press. Stephen C. Pepper (1942). World Hypotheses. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jeffrey Pressman and Aaron Wildavsky (1973). bnplementation. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. J.P. Sartre (1963). Search for a Method. New York: Vintage Books. Alfred Schutz (1970). Reflections on the Problem of Relevance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Piotr Sztompka (1991). Society in Action: The Theory of Social Becomina-. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Roland Warren (1977). Social Change and Human Purpose. Chicago: Rand MacNally. Janine Wedel (1986). The Private Poland. New York: Facts on File Publications. Charles Wolf (1990). Markets or Governments: Choosin& Between bnperfect Alternatives. Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press.

34