From Planning to Prototypes: new ways of seeing like a state

Modern states have pursued what James C. Scott characterised as projects of legibility and simplification. Maps, censuses, uniform measures, universal naming conventions, population studies, national economic plans: these are the measures by which modern states have taken stock of their subjects, interests and territories. Market-driven standardization has, to some degree, carried on that tradition, albeit with an orientation away from the state. In either setting, critiques of these practices abound. As criticism has continued, however, the synoptic techniques with which states, international institutions and major market players tend to work have changed. They have got thicker and more dispersed, some to an almost inestimable degree. States and other governance institutions now draw, sometimes in real time, upon immense, multi-source repositories of data, and aspire to do so more. Modes of analysis too have changed. No longer is legibility a precondition for action. Governance practice has come to be informed by methodologies of product and business development that prefer prototypes over plans. States and international institutions continue to plan, but alongside this, they pursue iterative learning gleaned from the release of minimally viable policy mock-ups and rapid evaluation of their reception. Critiques of modernist calculation and design have limited purchase on these practices. Scholars and others concerned about maximizing their potential, and minimizing the violence and wastage that they bring about, must devise new ways of loading questions into prevailing truisms and giving pause to the churn of contemporary governance practice.

Fleur Johns is Professor and Associate Dean of Research in the Faculty of Law at UNSW Australia.

Stewart Motha is Reader in Law and Acting Dean, Birkbeck School of Law.

Dr Stephen Humphreys is Associate Professor of International Law at LSE.

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