2014 Lecture: A Three-Level-Model of Societal Change- to Analyze and Design Societal Change Processes SYNOPSIS
Every group of people is coordinated by formal and informal rules that from time to time need to be adapted. To understand the complexity of rules and regulations in modern societies, Talcott PARSONS (1954) offered a three level model: The technical level (or micro–level) is the space of all operative activities, i.e. the daily life.
In the next level (the organizational or mezo- level) our daily activities are guided by a regulatory framework, which is defined by agreed arrangements. On the third level (the institutional or macro- level), we are guided by a more formal level of laws and regulations.
The organizational level has a crucial role for the speed and quality of adaptation in a changing world. The framework must not only work top-down, but also look into the quality of implementation and must be open to proposals, complaints and problems forwarded to it bottom-up from the technical level.
The three levels can only fulfill their tasks when they are mutually interconnected. Elinor OSTROM, Nobel-prize winner for economics in 2009, introduced the term arena for the space where the discourse about governance of public goods takes place. When we want to change procedures, we must not only understand how the bodies on the organizational and institutional level work horizontally, but also how they communicate with each with and with the technical level, so that we can adequately feed in our concerns and proposals, i.e. develop a vertical communication strategy.
A reduced model that integrates PARSON’s and OSTROM’s concepts will be presented and its applicability and limits discussed. The model has been developed to train professionals implementing German-Arab development cooperation projects in the fields of water management, renewable energy, economic reform, education management, and town planning.