1983 Review： The Eye of Power： The Politics of World Modeling.pdf

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Review: The Eye of Power: The Politics of World ModelingAuthor(s): Richard K. AshleySource: International Organization, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Summer, 1983), pp. 495-535Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706453 .

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The eye of power:the politics of world

modeling RichardK. Ashley

StuartA. Bremer.Simulated Worlds:A ComputerModel of NationalDecision-Making.Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1977.

GlobalModellingReappraised.SpecialIssue of Futures,Vol. 14, No. 2.London:Butterworth,April 1982.

Harold Guetzkow and Joseph J. Valadez, eds. Simulated InternationalProcesses:Theories and Researchin Global Modeling.BeverlyHills,

Calif.:Sage, 1981.BarryB. Hughes. WorldModeling:TheMesarovic-PestelWorldModel inthe Context of Its Contemporaries.Lexington,Mass.: Lexington Books,1980.

Wassily Leontiefet al. The Futureof the WorldEconomy:A UnitedNations Study. New York:OxfordUniversity Press, 1977.

Donella Meadows, John Richardson,and GerhartBruckmann.Groping n

the Dark: The First Decade in GlobalModelling.New York:John Wiley,1982.

Rarelydoes a social scientificmovement enjoy a more auspicious-or con-spicuous-debut. The time is March 1972. The place is the SmithsonianInstitution. Elliot Richardson, representingthe current administration,ispresiding.An audienceof distinguishedscientists, ambassadors,and publicofficials s assembled.The tone is serious,even urgent;and understandablyso. For the occasion is the premiereof a scientificpublication hat has taken

advantage of the most sophisticated computer modeling and forecasting

Thoughtsdevelopedin this piece have benefitedconsiderably rom discussionsat the July1980 Conferenceon Large-ScaleGlobal Modeling,Wissenschaftszentrum, erlin.The articleitself has benefited romthe comments,suggestions, nd criticismsofferedby PeterKatzensteinand an anonymousrefereeon an earlierdraft.

InternationalOrganization37, 3, Summer 1983 0020-8183/83/030495-40 $1.50? 1983 by the Massachusetts nstituteof Technologyand the World Peace Foundation



496 InternationalOrganization

techniquesto illuminatethe long-termglobalpredicamentof humankind-and that predicament,it says, is deadly serious. The heraldedpublication

reportsupon the work of Dennis Meadows and his associatesat the Mas-sachusettsInstituteof Technology; t is called The Limits to Growth. In allof its simulationruns, the "world model" presented n this volume forecastsa persistentsystem behavior:exponential growth, in both populationandindustrialcapital,followedby system collapse.In sombersilencethe Smith-sonianaudience hearsthe practical mplications:only the most drasticmea-sures, such as reducingthe growthof globalpopulationand capitalto zero,urgentlytaken, can avert global catastrophe.

Almost overnight the M.I.T. study receives worldwide publicity.Soon it

is at the center of a swirlof controversy.Within months the idea of worldmodeling(onceconsidered horoughlyaudacious f consideredat all)becomesimaginableto governments and general publics, as well as to professionalsocial scientists.And within a few more months numerousfollow-on worldmodelingstudies areunderwayaround the globe.What Karl Deutschwouldproclaim"a new stage... in the studyof worldaffairs," he "stageof large-scale computer-basedworld models," is upon us.2

Worldmodelinghas, indeed, "arrived."Consider,for instance,the sheer

volume of worldmodelingresearchproducedover the last ten years:WIM,MOIRA, LINK, SIMLINK, GOL, FUGI, IEES,IPS, SARUM, GLOBUS,SIPER-the acronymsalone have proliferatedat an extraordinary ace.Theworld modeling literatureis now rich, consisting of mutually responsiveproject reports,critiques,technical reports,and programmaticstatements.Worldmodelingactivityis transnationaln scope: projects,conferences,andseminars have been conducted from France to Fiji, from SwitzerlandtoSenegal.It has attractedmany diverse supportingagencies:not only nationstatesbutprivate oundations, ntergovernmentalrganizations,multinational

corporations,and transnationalgroups-even the State of California-havefunded ordirectlyundertakenworldmodelingresearch.Andworldmodelinghas achieved a "recognitionfactor": where once the idea of developingcomputer-basedmodels capableof forecasting ong-termglobalfuturesmighthave been widely receivedas fantastic, today just the reverseis the case. InHarold Guetzkow's words, "world modelinghas become an integralpartofthe intellectualscene throughoutthe world."3

Certain eaturesof the worldmodelingenterprisearenowreasonably lear.In general,world modeling can be said to involve the attempt to develop,

1. DonellaH. Meadows,Dennis L. Meadows, J0rgenRanders,and WilliamK. Behrens II,The Limits to Growth New York: Universe, 1972).

2. Karl W. Deutsch, "On WorldModels and Political Science,"PublicationsSeries of theInternational nstitute for ComparativeSocial Research,Wissenschaftszentrumerlin 1978),p. 1.

3. Harold Guetzkow, "Six ContinuingQueriesfor Global Modelers:A Self-Critique,"nGuetzkowand Valadez,SimulatedInternationalProcesses,p. 333.



Politics of world modeling 497

validate, and exercisecomputersimulationmodels of globalprocesses andrelationsthat have potentially significant ocial,political,technological,eco-

nomic, and natural environmentaleffects. It can be said, too, that worldmodeling is typically rationalizedas a response to what is perceivedas anever more pressingneed-the need to overcome, via computer-aidedsyn-thesis, the falsely partitionedunderstandingsof global reality imposed bydisciplinarydivisionsof scholarly aborand by spatial,temporal,and sectoraldivisions of social practice.And it can be said that the perceptionof thisneedfor a "holistic"perspective s not bornin isolation.Itreflects hegeneralrecognitionof crisis n the worldpoliticaleconomy.Thanks o the prominenceof world modeling, this much is plain.

What is far less plain, even among world modelers themselves, is worldmodeling'spractical social role and potential political significance.In fact,one mightventure to saythat,on thewhole,world modelersexhibit a strangeambivalence toward politics.

On the one hand, there is evidence that world modeling,from its earliestdays, was conceived of and supportedbecause it is a potentiallyeffective,possiblyconvincingtool forpoliticaldialogueon globalfutures.As describedby Clarkand Cole and Gilette, for example,Jay Forrester'swork on "world

dynamics" and the subsequentwork of Meadows and others reportedinLimits to Growthwas seen by the sponsoringClub of Rome as a means todrive h-me the Club's position among publics and politicalleadersworld-wide.4In the words of Italianbusinessmanand Club founderAurelioPeccei,"What we needed was a strongertool of communicationto move men onthe planet out of their ingrainedhabits. This is the reason for the MITstudy... ."IEver sincethe publicationof Limits to Growth,worldmodelinghas been more or less directly involved in this continuingdebate on globalfutures.Sometimes deployedas an "authority," ometimes used to criticize

others'positions, sometimes on the side of neo-Malthusian"doomsayers,"and sometimes allied with "technologicaloptimists," world modeling hasbeen a key aspect of a continuingworldwidedialogue.6

On the otherhand, despiteits evidently politicalnature, he so-calledworld

4. JohnClarkand Sam ColewithRayCurnow nd MikeHopkins,GlobalSimulationModeling(New York: Wiley Interscience,1976), p. 6; R. Gilette, "HardSell for a ComputerView ofDoomsday," Science 175 (10 March 1972), pp. 1088-1092; Jay Forrester,WorldDynamics(Cambridge,Mass.:Wright-AllenPress, 1971).

5. Quotedin Gilette, "Hard Sell."6. Worldmodelinghas contributed o andafforded eferencepointsfor a continuingdialogueamong such figuresas KahnandWiener,Falkand Mendlovitz,Ehrlich,Hardin,and Heilbronerof the United States; Schumacherof the United Kingdom;Kothariof India; Herreraandassociates t Fundaci6nBarilochenArgentina;Galtung fNorway;Tinbergenf theNetherlands;Dumontof France;Kayaand associatesof Japan;Kosolapov,Modrzhinskaya,nd Stephanayanof .he Soviet Union; and many others. A constructivereview of controversiespertaining oworld modeling s HaywardR. Alker Jr.and Ann Tickner,"SomeIssues Raised by PreviousWorld Models," in Karl W. Deutsch et al., eds., Problems of WorldModeling (Cambridge,Mass.: Ballinger,1977).




modeling communityis strikingly uperficialn its attemptsto grasp ts ownhistoricalplace, politicalcontent, and practical mplications.Its practice oo

often rangesbetweensmugindifferenceand total naiveteas to such mattersas the social conditions that make the enterprise possible, the historicalcontingencyof the epistemology upon which it rests, or, to use the term inthe Gramsciansense, the mode of "hegemony"worldmodeling mightchal-lenge or perpetuate.7

This limitation on the world modelingcommunity's criticalself-reflectionmight be explained in several ways. For example, one explanationrefers toworld modelers' pragmatic assessmentsof priorities.Technical issues nec-essarily take precedence in all discussions of world modeling, one mightargue, for without the technicalwork there would be no models to worryabout.

A second explanationmight try to taketime and maturation nto account.It stresses that, in general, world modelers have postponed any attemptexplicitlyto representpoliticaland social processesin their models. So farconcentrating rimarily n demographic, conomic,technological, nd naturalenvironmental"dynamics,"most world modelers have hithertolargely g-nored those questions that, if taken seriously, would call into question the

historicalsignificance,political content, and practical import of their ownenterprise.A third plausible explanation notes the disciplinaryaffiliationsof world

modelers. Of forty-three project directors and core team members of thefirst seven major groups, most were from engineering,economics, or thenaturalsciences. Only two describethemselves as political scientists;thereare no historians,no sociologists.8Suchdisciplinaryconcentrationmakes itmost unlikelythat world modelers would be steeped in, say, Marx, Weber,Durkheim, Marcuse, Habermas, Ellul, Foucault,and otherswho have pon-

deredthe social meaningand political significanceof scientific-technological"progress."9

Stilla fourthexplanationsuggests hatthe limit on modelers'self-reflectionis imposed by their tacit, possibly unconscious, but nonetheless total ac-ceptance of and identificationwith one or another ideology of historicalprogress. To illustrate, one might conjecturethat world modelers take forgranteda theme of progresscontained in the work of Weber, reflectedinParsonsand Bell,andcriticizedby Marcuseand Habermas:world modeling,

7. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. by Quintin Hoareand Geoffrey Nowell Smith (New York: International, 1971).

8. See Meadows, Richardson, and Bruckmann, Groping in the Dark, pp. 20-2 1, Table 1.9. See, e.g., Herbert Marcuse, "Industrialization and Capitalism in the Work of Max Weber,"

in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968); JiurgenHabermas, Towardsa Rational Society, trans. by Jeremy Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1970), especially the article"Technology and Science as Ideology"; Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeologyof the Human Sciences (London: Tavistock, 1970), and The Archaeology of Knowledge (NewYork: Pantheon, 1972).




so characterized,would comprehend itself as extendingthe universalizing,world-rationalizing, bjectivelynecessary, and hence value-neutral ogic of

a post-industrial,post-ideological,and "scientized"society.'0So long as thistheme is takenfor granted-not necessarily onsciously,butperhapsas "doxicknowledge"definingthe limit of collectively imaginablepossibility"-therewill be no felt need for critical self-reflection;methodological norms andunderstandingsof science associatedwith this theme would in fact sharplylimit it.'2

There is much to commend each of these explanations; shall touchuponeach and, in particular,my position can be regardedas a variationon thefourth.In line with the fourth explanation,my position mightbe interpretedas extending and applying Jiirgen Habermas's critique of the limits andideological ignificance f a certain ormof positivistsocialscience nadvancedcapitalistsociety.I

Specifically,Habermaswascriticalof a positionthatmightbe called"liberalpositivism," itself a controversialterm. 4 This suggestsa particularoining

10. For discussions of these themes see Marcuse, "Industrialization," and Habermas, Towardsa Rational Society.

11. Pierre Bourdieu uses the term doxa to refer to a social condition wherein "there is a

quasi-perfect correspondence between the objective order and the subjective principles oforganization.... Under these conditions, he writes, "the natural and social world appearsself-evident." See his Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (London: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1977).

12. Useful reference points in this connection are Habermas, "Technology and Science," andTheodore Adomo et al., eds., The Positivism Dispute in German Sociology, trans. by G. Adeyand D. Frisby (New York: Harper, 1976), especially the exchange between Habermas and HansAlbert.

13. Ibid. See also Jiurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. by JeremyShapiro (London: Heinemann, 1971), and "A Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests,"Philosophyof the Social Sciences3 (1975).

14. Habermas's position, a later contribution to the so-called Positivismusstreit in West German

sociology, represents a broadening of critical theory's attack on positivism to include the influentialperspective of Karl Popper. Part of the controversy centers on the term "positivism" itself.Popper, on the defensive, insists on a "quite specific and precisely defined sense" of the term,and then suggests that it does not apply to him: "I have fought against the aping of the naturalsciences by the social sciences, and I have fought for the doctrine that the positivistic epistemologyis inadequate even in its analysis of the natural sciences which, in fact, are not carefully generalizingfrom observation as is normally believed, but are essentially speculative and daring; moreover,I have taught, for more than 38 years, that all observations are theory-impregnated, and thattheir main function is to check and refute, rather than to prove, our theories. Finally, I havenot only stressed the meaningfulness of metaphysical assertions and the fact that I am myselfa metaphysical realist, but I have also analysed the important historical role played by metaphysics

in the formation of scientific theories" (quoted in Anthony Giddens, ed., Positivism and Sociology[London: Heinemann, 1974], p. 18). As Giddens writes (p. ix), "The word 'positivist,' like theword 'bourgeois,' has become more of a derogatory epithet than a useful descriptive concept,and consequently has been largely stripped of whatever agreed meaning it may once have had."Thus I shall try to refer only to "liberal positivism" as a specific form characterized by thecommitments mentioned here. Extremely useful critical overviews of the controversy appearin Hayward R. Alker Jr., "Logic, Dialectics, Politics: Some Recent Controversies," in Alker,ed., Dialectical Logics for the Political Sciences, vol. 7 of the Poznan Studies in the Philosophyof the Sciences and the Humanities (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1982); Gerard Radnitzky, Contem-porary Schools of Metascience, 3d enl. ed. (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1973); and Richard Bernstein,




of positive and negative commitments underlying, orienting, and limitingresearchpractices, ncludingthe role of criticism n science. Among positive

commitmentsone would includea commitment to the aim of science as thegraspingof an objective realitythat operatesaccording o certainfixed struc-tural relations ndependentof humanwilland consciousness;a commitmentto the expectationthat this objective realitycan be interpretedas organizedaccording o a single, contradiction-free ogicor structure; commitment tothe expectation hat the sought-after esultof science s theoreticalknowledgeadvancingcausalgeneralizationsand expandinghuman capacitiesto makepredictions,orient efficientaction, and exert control over an externalreality;and a commitment to a correspondence theory of truth as opposed to a

consensus theory.'5Among negative commitments,one would emphasizeacommitment againstall interpretationsof social relationsthat diminish ordemean the role of individuals'conscious norms, values, expectations,andrationaldecisions n the constitutionof socialreality.That is, this commitmentopposes methodological ollectivist-as opposedto individualist-approachesto the constructionof socialtheory.'6Together, he two sets of commitmentspartially describe the liberal positivist target of Habermas'scritique. Myattitudeto worldmodelingfindsmuch of its inspiration n this controversialcritique for, as I shall suggest, the world modeling enterprise,taken as a

whole, is very much oriented by these same "liberal positivist"commitments.I

I shall, however, develop my comments-which are more suggestive handefinitive-at a somewhat more general plane. World modeling is limitedin its political reflectivity, I shall suggest, because world modelers lack acriticalperspectiveon their enterprise.As many have themselves acknowl-

The Restructuring of Political and Social Theory (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976).See also Michael Shapiro, Language and Political Understanding (New Haven: Yale UniversityPress, 1981).

15. A definition in terms of these commitments is largely due to Giddens, Positivism. Butsee also Alker, "Logic, Dialectics, Politics"; Radnitzky, Contemporary Schools; and Bernstein,Restructuring. On consensus versus correspondence theories of truth see Jiirgen Habermas,"Wahrheitstheorien," in H. Fahrenbach, ed., Wirklichkeit und Reflexion (Pfullingen: Neske,1973). The anonymous and undated English translation of "Theories of Truth" that I haveseen was provided by Hayward R. Alker Jr.

16. See John O'Neill, ed., Modes of Individualism and Collectivism (London: Heinemann,1973). For a recent exposition of related issues-flawed by the authors' (excepting Giddens andperhaps also Berger and Offe) mistaken presupposition that functionalism exhausts the serious

alternatives to methodological individualism-see the pieces by Jon Elster, G. A. Cohen, AnthonyGiddens, Philippe Van Parijs, John Roemer, and Johannes Berger and Claus Offe, in Theoryand Society 11 (July 1982). Papers by Hayek and Popper in the O'Neill volume make clearthe political liberal concerns behind and animating the appeal for methodological individualismin the social sciences. The exchange of papers in Theory and Society is noteworthy insofar asit makes clear the affinity between methodological individualist and theoretical utilitarian pointsof view (a methodological principle for the former is an ontological premise for the latter).

17. For a similar position see Hayward R. Alker Jr., "On Cybernetic Hierarchies in Socio-cultural Change," paper presented at the XIth World Congress of the International PoliticalScience Association, Moscow, U.S.S.R., August 1979.




edged, world modelers lackan explicit"metamodel"within whose frame itwould be possiblenot only to justifybut also to orientthe criticalquestioning

of theirown enterpriseand its politicalcontent.Lackinga metamodel,worldmodelersare unableadequately o locate,interpret,problematize,anddefinethe limits of theirenterprise-its rules,expectations, onsciousclaims, explicitpremises, implicit presuppositions,mystifications, and lapses-within thecontext of the historicallyevolving social and physicalrealities that the en-terprise tselfpurports o comprehend.Thustheyareunpreparedo call intoquestionnot only the evidentlymaterialaspectsof global life butalsoknowl-edgeand socialconsciousness,the conditions and rulesof theirconstitution,and the role of knowledgeand consciousness(includingworldmodeling)in

the makingand unmakingof any social order.My purpose is straightforward: seek a dialogue that aims to arrive at

such a metamodel of world modeling. In the next section I ground mycomments in the worldmodeling literatureby brieflyconsidering he severalcontributions isted in the headnote.These six contributionsarenoteworthyin that theyrepresentattempts to come to gripswithpoliticsin world modelsor world modelingin global politics: with how world models will or mightrepresentpoliticalaspects of global life, or with how world modeling mightbe implicated,perhapsinescapably,in these politicalaspects. Then I offera tentative metamodel as a framework or interpreting he world modelingenterprise,its current limits, and its future prospects. In this respect mycontributions, no doubt, provocative.ForI shallsuggest hat theappropriatemetamodelfor world modeling-one that more or less adequatelyportraysthe social role, politicalcontent, and liberatingpotentialof the enterprise-can be defined by analogywith JeremyBentham'sprinciple or discipliningknowledgein the interest of power:his Panopticon.

1. Six contributions to world modeling

Two observationson the sixth InternationalInstitutefor Applied SystemsAnalysis (IIASA) symposium on global modelingbear repeating.The firstis by PeterRobertsof the U.K. SystemsAnalysisResearchUnit, Departmentof the Environment.As rapporteurorthe secondsession,on methodologicalproblemsin world modeling, Robertsremarkedthat "Speakerswere in nodoubtof the importanceof socialand political elements; ndeed,the general

sentiment expressedwas that of regretthat modellershad so far failed toachieve satisfactoryrepresentation f these elements.. ."18 The second ob-servation was made toward the end of the meetings by sociologist PaulNeurath. Speakingto world modelers, he said:

... I am, to some extent, astonished that so many of you skirtthe es-

18. Groping n the Dark,p. 199.




sentially social, economic, and politicalnature of your work, of your re-sults, and of the impact that it has on the social and political world

around you. True, each of you is fully awareof this. Nevertheless, Ifind it amazing that so eminently political an activity can be discussedin such generallyunpolitical terms.'9

These observations offer benchmarksfor the six volumes considered here:in varying degrees and in varying ways, each reflects a struggle o "achievesatisfactory representationof [political]elements" in world models or tocome to gripswith "the essentially social, economic, and politicalnature of[world modeling] work," or both. My brief comments on each of the six

volumes will focus on these two aspects.

a. The Futureof the WorldEconomy

An initial encounter with Leontieff, Carter,and Petri's UN study givesthe impressionthathere, especially,Roberts'sobservation s apt.The modelappearsnot all concernedwith the classicalstuff of internationalpolitics.Itis just what its authors claim it to be, "basicallya generalpurposeeconomicmodel,"pureand simple.20Makingextensiveuseof Nobel LaureateLeontieffs

invention of over forty years ago, the model involves input/output matricesfor fifteenregionsof the world,describeseach regionin terms of fourdozeninput/outut sectors, and joins the severalregions via (price-adjusted) radein some forty categories. Moreover,the project's stated objectives make itappeara more or less logical "second generation"follow-on to Limits toGrowth.The work aims to investigatethe interrelationships etween futureeconomic growth and development, on the one hand, and environmentalprospectsand limits, on the other.

Still, The Future of the WorldEconomy does have a distinctly politicalcast.Inparticular,heprojectwas formulatedandpresentedasaninstrumentin the serviceof a fairly specificset of interests. These are the interests andobjectives of the United Nations InternationalDevelopment Strategy,atvarious points defined in terms of the satisfaction of people's basic needs,the creation of jobs in underdevelopedcountries, achievingminimumratesof agricultural nd food production, ncreasingdevelopingcountries'sharesof world markets in manufacturedgoods, improving income distributionwithin developing countries, accelerating he eradicationof mass poverty,

closing the income gap between developed and underdevelopedcountries,andachievinga new international conomic order.2'Theytake distributional

19. Ibid., p. 268.20. Future,p. 6.21. Groping n the Dark, pp. 84-85. Many of these same concerns animated work on the

so-called Barilocheworld model. See AmilcarHerrera,Hugo Scolnik,et al., Catastrophe rNew Society?A Latin American WorldModel (Ottawa: nternationalDevelopment ResearchCenter, 1976). Explicitly esponding o the parochial"developedworld"perspective f World3,




questions-not just how much and when, but who gets what, when, how, atwhat cost to whom, and at the expense of what future developmentalpos-sibilities as central.

It is thus not surprising hat the study would concentrate argelyon oneworry, a worry underscoredby Limits to Growth:environmental limits,includingconditions of resource scarcity,might make development targetsmutually incompatible or unreachable.Are there physical barriers-mostespecially in agriculture,minerals, and environmental pollution-to theachievement of economic development objectives?If so, how serious arethey? Can they be surmountedunder (in principlerealizable)adjustmentsof a political,social,or institutional ort?Clearly, hese are sensitive questions

from the point of view of underdeveloped societies. They ask, in effect, isthere physical "room"for Third World aspirations?Or are these aspirationsillegitimatebeyond the pale of rationalinternationalpoliticaldiscourse-because, in a strictly physicalsense, they are unrealizable?

The UN study's resultssupply a generalanswerto such questions:growthlimits, however real they might be, pose no physical barrier o developmentin this century.Mineral,agricultural, nd environmental imits in no senselicense resignation o the persistenceof underdevelopment."[T]heprincipallimits to sustainedeconomic growth and accelerateddevelopment,"the au-

thors argue,"arepolitical, social, and institutional n character."22Since the UN input/outputmodel does not expressly representpolitical,

social, and institutional processes and relations,it is interesting hat this isthe authors' main conclusion. How did they sustain it? They have experi-mentedwithjust these political,social,andinstitutionalimits. More correctly,they have considered a numberof scenarios,defined in terms of aggregategrowth rates of population and gross domestic productper capita for de-veloped anddevelopingcountries,of which at least some would be impossiblein the absence of deep political, social, and institutionalchange. Scenariosthat, to be effected,would not have entailed deep political, social, and in-stitutional change uniformly produced "pessimistic"results. But at leastsome of those that would have entailedpoliticaladaptationsgeneratedresultsthat Leontieff, Carter,and Petri styled "optimistic."This is the basis fortheir claim that the real limits on development are social and political.23

Herein,though, is a problem. For all the authors'emphasis on changeinthe world economy, the UN model accordsto economic aspects of globallife the status of a "separate sphere"whose existence is taken to be un-

the Bariloche modeling group has taken positions that, methodologically and epistemologically,represent radical challenges to the predominant point of view of world modelers discussed here.

See especially Groping in the Dark, pp. 142-65, where representatives of the ASDELA Groupof the Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro, respond to a questionnaire circulated to allmajor world modeling groups. Their answers stand in sharp contrast to those supplied by othermodeling teams.

22. Future, p. 48.23. Future, chap. 1.




problematic, n need of no explanationin terms of society as a whole. Eco-nomic (and economic-environmental)relations are thus treated as if they

are objectively given relationsthat exist independentlyof politicalwill andoperate accordingto quasi-naturallaws. This is a positivist attitude parexcellence,but it also accordswithand, indeed, presupposesa classical iberalposition.

It is possible to model economic relationsas if they were objective relationsonly if one assumes that society as a whole, in respect to production andexchange, s effectivelyneuteredas a subjectivity esponsible o andin controlof itself. It is possibleto model economic relationsas objective "dynamics,"in other words, only if one presumes that, with respectto a bounded set of

relations to be described as "economic,"9 ociety is incapable of reflexivelymonitoring,regulating,and creativelytransforming ocial practices, he con-ditions of social practice,and the intended and unintendedconsequencesofsocial practice. In turn, this assumption presupposessomething more. Itpresupposes that those decisions giving form and movement to economic"dynamics"are immunized againstthe substantive, historicallygrounded,and consensually recognizedsocial norms, values, expectations,and under-standingsby which society as a whole recognizesand monitors itself. More

to the point, it presupposesthe "privatization"of the economic sphere:theconsensual recognitionand legitimationof the economicsphereas a domainof activity governed by the private decisions of private individuals,whichdecisions are answerableonly to privatemotives.24

This is an essentially liberal consensus, unique to captialist society. Totake the positionthat the worldeconomy can be modeled naturalistically san independent, objective relation, as The Future of the WorldEconomydoes, is to side with this consensus(however implicitly),rule out opposingperspectives,and assume its absolute dominance in the shapingof human

practices, and hence social structures,worldwide.In noting this we confront the irony of the UN study. The import of the

study is scientifically o stripall attemptsto oppose or impede internationaldevelopment programs by appeal to purely technicalargument, especiallythe idea of physical limits, of legitimacyand hence to force debate back tothe sphere of political decisions, which must be grounded in collectivelyrecognizednorms, values, and expectations.Ironically,however, the authors'modelingstrategydeniesthisintent.Ensnaredna liberalpositivist ramework,Leontieff, Carter, and Petri have constructed a model whose omission ofpoliticalvariablesand relations s itself a politicalstatement.It is a statementto the effectthat, vis-a-vis the economicrelations heydo model,thepolitical,social,and institutional elationsuponwhichtheystake theirhopesforchange

24. This is an explanation roma point of view that I shalllaterbe calling"communitarian."Quite evidently, t departsradically rom a utilitarianpointof view, whichsimply presupposesthenecessityof-and seesno need toproblematize raccount or-the privacyof the individualactingunit and its economic decisions.




can at best react, but never control.In effect theirpracticerenders he socialnorms, values, and expectations hey would want to see as decisive impotent

in the determinationof economic change.

b. WorldModeling

The first sentence of Barry Hughes's book invites the expectation thatWorldModeling will be a long dry spell for those thirsty for reflectiononpolitics. "The purpose of this book," Hughes writes, "is to document theWorld IntegratedModel (WIM)."WIM, Hughes tells us, "is the most recentgenerationof the Mesarovic-Pestelworldmodel, the globalcomputermodelwhich was the underpinningfor the second report to the Club of Rome[Mesarovicand Pestel's popularMankindat the TurningPoint]."25Detaileddocumentationon world models is essential to the enterprise.Without it,replication and reliability studies would be impossible. Hughes's effort inthis respect is commendable and successful-a model of sorts in its ownright.26But such writings,Hughes'sincluded, are hardly notorious for eithermetaphysicalreflectionor deep insightsinto politics and social history.

Even so, political scientist Hughes is right to say that "WIM considers

social and politicaldecision makingto be of exceptional importance."27 tleast it is fair to say that WorldModeling and the WIMstructureupon whichit reports do make implicit "statements" about internationalpolitics-andabout the role of world modelingin the politicsof globallife. In part, thesepolitical statementsare implied by WIM's multiregional tructuring,which,as in the case of the UN input-output model, permits the assessment ofcross-regional nterdependencies nd distributional ffects.28 utin part, too,thesepoliticalstatementsareimplied byWIM'shierarchical tructure,designand intended use as a planningand decision-making ool, and multifaceted

approachto validation.Reflectingthe multilevel hierarchical ystems theory of Mesarovic,WIM

is structured not only as a twelve-region system but also as a five-levelhierarchyof "world development system strata."29 rom lowest to highest,

25. (New York: Dutton, 1974).26. The problem of documentation in world modeling research is very significant. Donella

Meadows writes, "[Global models'] documentation should be (1) clear to both analysts andlaymen, (2) easily available, and (3) timely. Not one global model, including our own, has met

all three of these documentation conditions; most have met none of them. This lack of doc-umentation is a disgrace. No other supposedly scientific discipline would permit such irresponsiblereporting" (Groping in the Dark, p. 245). Measured against these demanding standards, Hughes'seffort performs fairly well (although the real test of documentation is: does the documentationpermit one to reconstruct and actually run the model?). I do not mean to attack his effort byholding it up to standards he did not intend to meet.

27. WorldModeling, p. 29.28. Ibid., especially chap. 3.29. Mihajlo Mesarovic et al., Theory of Hierarchical, Multi-Level Systems (New York: Academic

Press, 1970).




the five strata are environment,technology,demographic-economic, roup,and individual. The relation between strata is not altogetherclear from

Hughes'sdescriptionbut in generalthe discussion and diagramssuggest hateach layer (say, the group stratum)is "superior" o and to a considerabledegree"controls,""influences,"or "affects" ayers immediatelybelow (say,the demographic-economic tratum)whilelowerlevels impose "constraints"on levels above. Hughes is quite clear, however, on the logical autonomy(perhaps ontologicaland certainly disciplinary)accordedto each stratum.Each stratumhas its own distinguishabledynamicthat operates over somedistinguishabledomain-where the distinctionsare defined prior to and in-dependentlyof the whole multilevel structure.Hugheswrites:

... Under normal circumstances he various levels in the hierarchyop-erate almost independentlyof the other strata. Thus it has been possi-ble, for instance, for economists to model the economy withoutrepresentation n their models of the availabilityof naturalresources(that is, without representing he constraintposed by the environmentalstratum).... It has similarlybeen possible for demographers o repre-sent the dynamicsof populationgrowthby lookingat fertility patternsand mortality patternsalmost exclusively....

[I]t is useful conceptuallyto structure he models on each stratum

with theirown internaldynamicsand then to representthe influencesand constraintsamong the stratain periodsof majorchangeand crisis.In additionto being substantively reasonable,this procedurealso maxi-mizes the opportunityfor expertsin the traditionaldisciplinarycate-gories to contributeto the model development.30

Especiallynoteworthy is WIM's treatmentof the top two levels, the in-dividualand the group.These levels, whichfor Hughes represent he properlocus of "sociologicaland politicalprocesses,"aretakento be hierarchicallysuperior n the sense just given.3'About this, Hughes says, "[t]herecan beno question."32Furthermore, n the main these two levels, unlike the lowerenvironmental,technological,and demographic-economic,are not endog-enous components of the WIM causal model.33 nstead, these levels-andapparentlyalso the sociologicaland political processeslocated here-enterWIMprimarilyexogenously,via "open-loops" n the model, as userssupplyscenarios indicatingpolicies and parameters.34

30. World Modeling, p. 31, emphasis added.31. Ibid., pp. 30-34.

32. Ibid., p. 31.33. Ibid., p. 32.34. Ibid.,p. 32. Hugheswrites:"...[R]ather than a singleeffort o close these upper-strata

loops, it has been found more productiveto proceed incrementally.Specifically,WIM hasincreasingly losed loops which represent ocietaland politicalprocesses n individualaspectsof lower strata.For instance, nitially he loop which alters fertilitypatterns n the society wascompletelyopen and only scenariosaffected ertilitypatterns.More recentlyWIM reliesupona relationship etween ncome evelsof thesocietyandthepatternof fertility.Thisloopimplicitlyrepresentsthe change in values and decisions regarding amily size which occurs as familyincomesrise."




An importantdesignfeatureof WIMis that it is "embedded n a softwarepackage named Assessmentof Policies Tool (APT)," a so-called "scenario

analysis package" hatallows usersto interactwiththe model in the analysisof "if-then" relationships.The user is able to specifya scenario-the "if'-and thenuse the modelto generateresults-the "then."According o Hughes,a scenarioconsists of two typesof variables: olicy variables, r "variables..over which governments and societies have considerablecontrol," and un-certainparameters,or "variables over which we have little or no control,whose values are uncertain, but which are important to future develop-ments."35The latter ncludes both parametersof the causal model and dataon unmodeledexternalconstraints.)AlthoughwhatHughescalls the standard"off-the-shelf' version of WIM already prespecifiesall variables, many aresubject to user manipulation. Hughes reviews possible user-manipulablevariablessubmodel by submodel,including he population,economic,phys-ical, energy, agricultural,materials, machinery, trade, and aid and loanssubmodels. In most cases, Hughessuggests,the userwill want to maintainmost prespecifiedvaluesunchanged,with the scenariobeingdefined n termsof specificalterations n "relativelyfew" variables.

"Modelvalidity," Hughes indicates, "can be discussed eitherin terms of

the faithfulnessof the model's structureto the structureof the real-worldsystemit representsor theaccuracyof the forecastsgeneratedbythemodel."But "[i]nreality," he adds, "models are judged primarily rom forecastac-curacy."'n chapter 10 Hughesidentifies and very brieflydiscusses the fourtechniquesused in validatingWIM:first,historicsimulation of submodels(does the model generatedatareproducinghistoricaldata?); econd,ex anteforecasting (does the model generate forecasts over future periods corre-spondingto actual results?); hird, subjectiveplausibilityof test runs (aremodel performances consistent with common-sense expectations or

paradigm-linkedexpert judgments?);and fourth, comparison of forecastswith those produced by other models or techniques (is there an evidentconsensus,or discrepancy,among forecastsacrossmodels, techniques,andmodelingteams?).

Hughes's renderingof WIM, its structuring, ts user-friendlydesign andapplications,and its proceduresfor validationconveys a coherentportrait.The portraitis thoroughlyconsistent with the "basic purpose underlyingdevelopmentof the Mesarovic-PestelandWIMsystems."Thatpurpose"hasbeen to establisha flexibletool for the analysisof alternativeglobaldevel-opment patternsand especiallyto facilitatethe assessmentof the impactofalternativepoliticaland social developmentson those patterns."

These statementsexpress the consciousaim of WIMmodelers.However,WIM'shierarchical tructure,approach o validation, and design and use asa planningand decision-making ool implyotherstatementsrichin political

35. Ibid., pp. 188-89.




content. Severaldeservebrief mention. First, the WIMstructurempliesthatthe subjective dispositionsof politicaldecision makers-the norms, values,

expectations, habits, and interpretativeframeworksthey bring to theirchoices-are autonomous of processesand relationsat the lower-levelsocial,economic, technological, and environmental strata. This is implied in thespecificationof "open loops" at upper-level strata and, one might add, inthe asymmetricaland history-lessdeterminationsof the overall hierarchy.

Second, the WIM structure mplies that the aggregatedecisions and non-decisions,whichtogethergive form and motion to lower-level"dynamics,"are devoid of political content. They can be treated as quasi-natural,nor-matively neutral, or objective. This is implied in the a priori and unprob-lematic distinction among discipline-linkedstrata-a distinction evidentlynot subject to questioningwithin the context of the model.

Third, the WIMstructurempliesthatpoliticalpractice, nsofaras it entersthe shapingof historicalalternatives,s reducible o a technical-rationalesignenterprise ntervening n an objective or objectifiedreality.This is impliedin the failure to specify communicative relations of practical interaction,within which partiesmightappealto coreflectively ecognized chemes, prin-ciples, significations,norms, and rules;organizecollectiveexpectations;and

orient practices n ways that would lend coherenceto collective action.Fourth, the WIM structure and approach to validation imply that thetruthof theenterprises properly o be measured nterms of correspondencesbetween the enterprise's statements or claims, on the one hand, and an"externalreality,"on the other. This is implied in the WIM emphasis on"forecastaccuracy."Eventhoughsome emphasisis givento consensus(e.g.,plausibilityn lightof common-senseappearances nd comparisonof forecastsacross programs), t remainshighly questionablewhether these alternativestandards mplyan appealto a genuineconsensustheoryof truthor, instead,

appealto a consensus that is itself subordinated o a correspondence heory.36

c. Simulated InternationalProcesses

To read the Guetzkowand Valadez volume in the context of a broaderworld modeling literature s to experiencea dizzyingsuccessionof emotions.The first is that sense of warmth one sometimes feels upon encounteringlong-missed friendsand findingthat they have stood the test of time: theyare just as cheerful, just as excited about possibilitiesunexplored,just assure that progressawaits those who will try, just as rich in important ac-complishments, yet just as humble about thoseaccomplishmentsas we hadremembered.The volume is a long overduesummaryreporton the SimulatedInternationalProcesses(SIP) project,directedby HaroldGuetzkowthrough-out a periodwe may recallas the "formativeyears"in the scientificstudy

36. See Habermas,"Theoriesof Truth."




of internationalrelations, the sixteen years from 1957 through 1972. Withcontributions rom Guetzkow,Valadez,CharlesElder,RobertPendley,Paul

Smoker, StuartBremer,and GaryTygesson,the volume recountsa journeyfrom the earliest beginningsof the Inter-NationSimulation (INS), throughInternational Processes Simulation (IPS) and Simulated InternationalProcessER(SIPER),to SIP's seemingly fated intersectionwith world mod-eling-and stops along the way to considerthe context of internationalre-lationstheory and the project'scontributions n the wayof validity research.

The second emotion is a sense of regretthat, for all theirqualities,theseold friends did not fare better, did not leave the lasting mark they mighthave, had in fact slippedinto the recesses of ourmemories until this volume

summoned forth a fond recollection.At one point in the text Guetzkow,who is unsurpassed n his commitment to cumulation among "islands oftheory," expressesa similar emotion.37He regretsthat his work of fifteenyears "provided no catalyst"for world modeling.38The fault, if fault therebe, is in bad timing. "If modeling is to be influential,"Jay Forresterhasobserved,"theworkmust be done neithertoo earlynortoo late.Had WorldDynamics and Limits to Growth ppeared20 years earlier, he concernwouldhave been premature,and the books probablywould have disappearedun-

noticed."39Viewed as a multifacetedworld modelingenterprise,Guetzkow'ssimulationwork in internationalrelationswas nearly that far ahead of itstime.

The third emotion is hope. For if one views the NorthwesternSIPprojectas a contributionto world modeling, then one must say not only that SIPwas aheadof its time but also that, relative to SIP, worldmodeling still hasa bit of catching up to do. Among global simulation programs,SIP stillstandsas theunexcelledexemplarof modeling nternationaloliticalprocessesand relations. Thanksto Guetzkow'sdeep and continuing nterestin world

modeling-John Richardsonhas called him the "fatherof the GLOBUSproject"40-one may hope that world modelers will learn from SIP'saccom-plishments.Thanksto the GuetzkowandValadezcompilation, earningmaybe that much easier.

Learningfrom others' experiences, however, is never just a matter ofgrasping iterally their own reconstructionsof that experience. Even whenreconstructions orthrightlyportraythe researchers' incereunderstandingsof theirwork-what theyactuallythoughtthemselvesto be doingandwhy-the words chosen or the rationalesprofferedmay correspondpoorly to the

actual, perhaps deeper, logic-in-use.Bearing n mind that the same can besaidof critics'high-handed ttempts o interpret thers'work,I would venture

37. See Harold Guetzkow, "Long-range Research in International Relations," American Per-spective 4, 4 (1950), pp. 421-40.

38. Simulated International Processes, p. 332.39. Jay W. Forrester, "Global Modelling Revisited," Futures 14 (April 1982), p. 103.40. John M. Richardson Jr., "A Decade of Global Modelling," ibid., p. 139.




that SimulatedInternationalProcessesmisrepresentsSIP'sgraspof politicsand potential politicalrole in at least two respects.

First,worldmodelersare ikely o beconfusedby Guetzkow's epresentationof his enterpriseas holistic in orientation.Guetzkow writes that "[t]hesim-ulations exercised n SimulatedInternationalProcessesattemptedto exhibitthe world as a whole." He adds that "in many respectsthe researchers ellshort of theirgoal. Only gross approximationswere made in operatingourglobal models."'" The problem is that Guetzkow's subsequentdiscussionseems to confuse comprehensive(orcomplete)with holistic.The two wordsdo not mean the same thingand neither do theirrespectiveantonyms, "par-tial" and"atomistic."To tryto be comprehensives to tryto covereverythingon dimensionsof spaceand time. To try to be holistic, by contrast, s to tryto get past the fragmentaryappearancesof things like sectors of social life,or nation states,or commoditiesas common sense presentsthem to be andlay bare an underlyingessential whole, which manifests itself, perhaps onlymomentarily,in the individuation and reproductionof just these apparentthings. If one wants to be comprehensive, then one wants to be sure toincludeevery thing, all the relevant phenomenaand the external relationsamongthem.If one's stance s holistic,then it is very likelythat,in attempting

to presentthe whole, one will want to call into questionthe facticity,truthcontent, and historicalcontingencyof what immediately appearto be thedistinct things of reality. (To be properly"holistic," then, it is not enoughto allow that the Ando-Simon theorem might not apply to the analysisofthis or that domain.)42

If we use these words in this way, then we can agree with GuetzkowthatSIP fell shortin an attemptto be comprehensive.Butwe must also say thatachievinga holistic graspof internationalrelationswas not, in the truth ofits practice, the SIP project's goal. Let me give two examples, one "sub-

stantive" and one "methodological."With respect to substance, and most especiallyin the INS formulation,

SIP was understoodto present international elationsfrom the viewpointofrealpolitik,with an emphasis on the states system, interstateconflict, andimplicationsfor violence.43Whatwe have here, though,is a very primitiverealpolitik hat views the states system not as a culturalor tradition-linkedsystem with historicallyevolving rules, rights,and duties that define andlimit the practicesof states that are parties to it, but as an externaljoiningof states whose identities as such are independentof the system itself. Thisbecomes clearer n Smoker's Parsonianreformulation, PS, wherethe statessystem is representedas an externalrelationamong "goal-attainment" ub-systems of nationalsocieties;and againin Bremer'sSIPER,wherelearning

41. SimulatedInternationalProcesses,p. 341.42. AlbertAndo et al., eds., Essays in the Structureof Social ScienceModels(Cambridge:

MIT Press, 1963).43. SimulatedInternationalProcesses,chaps. 7 and 8.




is never at the "social" level of the state-systemic collective but always atthe level of individual, purposivestates. Deep insightsinto the evolutionary

possibilitiesof the statessystemas a whole,such as thoseadvancedby MartinWight, Hans Morgenthau,or Hedley Bull, are thus ruled out. Internationalpolitics per se comes close to being representedas necessarilyHobbesian.

The methodological xamplerecallsGuetzkow'sunparalleled ommitmentto cumulation through synthesis among fragmentarybodies of theory, acommitment expressedin his famous urgingto link up "islands of theory."As it happens, the physical quality of the metaphor-which envisions noproblematizingof the islands in the linking of them-is matched in the

consciousreconstructionsof SIP'sapproach o synthesis.Guetzkowspeaks,forexample,of a strategywithinwhich"mini-modulesmight... beassembledinto more comprehensive models,"44 strategynot unlikethat deployedinthe development of WIM and used in the constructionof GLOBUS.Andcomplementingthis "bottom-up"development, he also speaksof a simul-taneous "top-down" development of a "macro-model"(a kind of main-frame, I take it) "so there may be articulationof the partsinto a whole."45Such a strategymight yield some semblance of completenessinsofaras themacromodelassignsa placeforevery module,witheverymodulein its place.

Since one can easily summon to mind an image of a mastercircuitboardwith plug-in modules, one can readily magine why the strategywould have"intuitive"appeal.Since it so evidentlymapson to a center-periphery ivisionof modeling labors, one can readily see why the strategywould appeal toscholarsresponsiblefor bringing arge modeling projects throughto com-pletion. Yet such a strategyanticipatesthe identificationof a "whole"as anexternal set of causallinkagesor flowsamong preidentifiedmodules. It doesnot envision a deep and historicallyevolving social whole, which might

manifest itself in the partitioningof social reality.Thesecond pointon whichSimulatedInternationalProcessesmisrepresents

SIP has to do with the expressed purposeof the enterprise.In their publicrationalizationsand self-judgmentsSIP participantshave regarded heir en-terprisethrougha lens of "respectable" cientificexpectationsthat system-aticallyscreens out all possibilityof recognizing he project'sgreatestmeritsand operativeends. On the one hand, project participantshave consciouslygrasped and rationalizedtheir work within a positivist frame.Accordingly,they have understoodtheir work not as a genuinely participatoryactivitybut as a more or less autonomous enterprisethat aims to enhance meansof forecasting,explaining,and exertinghuman control over an "objective"reality,which operates accordingto some fixed laws or structures hat canbe "captured"or representedvia models. This is the project'sexplicit self-

44. Ibid., p. 344.45. Ibid.




understanding, speciallyas it manifestsitself in SIP validationstudies andtheir explicit reliance on a correspondencetheory of truth. On the other

hand, it is possibleto make a strong case that these positivistends and thistheory of truth,though explicitlyentertained,were not what drove and ori-ented SIP's evolution. Quite the contrary,I invite world modelersto readSimulatedInternationalProcesseswithaneye to understandingheenterpriseas an open-endedmediumfor socialsciencediscourse-an enterprisewhoseevolution was guided,more than anything,by an implicit consensustheoryof truth.46

d. Simulated WorldsStuart Bremer is the first to stress that his Simulated International

ProcessER(SIPER) earneda greatdeal from SIP. In fact, Bremer'sSIPERis rightlyregardedas an importantelement of the SIP project;Bremer hasa chapterin SimulatedInternationalProcesses n which he presentsan up-dated account of an evolved SIPER. "What is particularlyunusualaboutthe computer simulationeffortdescribedin these pages,"Bremerwrites inSimulated Worlds,"is that it draws heavily upon priorwork with a man-machine simulationin Inter-NationSimulation."47NS was SIP'sprototypeperson-computer imulation,with human beings oined as teams of nationaldecisionmakers confronting nternaland external circumstances argelyde-terminedbycomputer-governedules.HavingobservedINSat Northwestern,Bremer "concludedthat if the participants n the INS could be successfullyreplacedwith sets of decision-makingand information-processingules, andincorporatedin a computer programwith the programmedassumptionspresent n the INS, the resultwouldbe a complete and self-containedmodelof some importantaspectsof world politics."48Hence the subtitleof Bremer's

book, "A Computer Model of National Decision-Making."The accomplishment s remarkableespecially considering hat much ofthe first modeling work for Bremer's SIPER was completed by 1970 andalso consideringthat, now rare among such efforts,it is virtually the workof one person. In many ways, I suspect, Bremerhimself would probablynow look upon his SIPERwork as the productof an immature phase, bothin his own development as a world modelerand, more generally, n worldmodelers'understandings f how to model politicaland decision aspectsof

46. This theme requires onsiderable laboration.Fornow,I simplyfollowHabermas o offerthe undefended nterpretative ypothesis:what was primarilydecisivein the evolutionof SIPwas not so much a fit betweenthe simulationsand an objective(pseudo-objective)ealitybutthe anticipation hat each evolutionary tep, viewed as a statementaboutthe world, couldbedefendedas true,truthful sincere),appropriateo the circumstances, nd comprehensible.Thatis, each step was undertaken n the anticipation hat it somehow held out the promiseof afreelyarrivedat consensusspanningall partiesand joiningtheir descriptiveunderstandingsf,and normativestances toward,theirworld.

47. Bremer,Simulated Worlds,p. 4.48. Ibid., p. 5.




society. Even so, the accomplishment-like SIP itself-represents a necessarystage in world modelers' earning.Certainly t foreshadowsBremer'scurrent

work, headingthe BerlinScienceCenter'sGLOBUSteam, a worldmodelingteam alreadyknown for its emphasison grasping"the political dimension."Besides,as Guetzkowand Valadezpoint out, one of Bremer'smoreimportantcontributions n connectionwith SIPER is not just to computerizepoliticaldecision processesbut to do so in a way explicatingmany previouslytacitassumptions,grounding his specifications n the scientific literatureon in-ternational politics, and thereby focusing and providing a medium forargument.49

In view of its lineage, it is no surprise that Simulated Worlds exhibitsmany of the misunderstandings hat characterizeSIP in general.There isthe same obsession with validation,where validity is understoodon a cor-respondence nmodel, espite the facts that first, what validity one typicallyaccords to SIPER is primarilybased on its adequateor inadequate repre-sentationsof existingtheoriesor arguments;and that second, Bremer'sownassessmentof the model's strengths ends to emphasize its roleas a mediumof communicationamong "islandsof theory." There is the same tendencyto regardaggregateand comprehensiveatomism as a substitute for holism,

both methodologicallyand theoretically.Computerrepresentationmakes explicitnessnecessaryand thus the im-plications of this atomistic outlookfor our graspof internationalpolitics areeven moreplainthan in, say, INS. Writingof INS in SimulatedInternationalProcesses,Guetzkowacknowledges hat with one modest exceptionthe workhad given "no attention ... to normative considerations."50 remer's de-scriptionof SIPERamplydisplayshowsuchinattention o normativerelationsyields a reductionistrepresentationof internationalrelationsin generalandthe states system in particular.

Leavingout normativeaspectsof internationalife, SIPERrepresents tate-systemic relations as the more or less mechanicalinterplay (with some ar-ithmeticallyderived "emergentproperties")of purely instrumentalactionsamong autonomouslyexisting goal-seekingsystems, that is, states. "Nego-tiations"among statesarerepresentedas involvingno appealto consensuallyshared and perhapsnormatively binding experience.Norms, values, iden-tifications,tradition-all enter negotiationonly as instruments.5'Nowhereis it allowedthatthe professedgoals of individual tatesmightnotbe internallygeneratedattributes. Nowhere, that such goals might instead take form inreflectionof a transstatenormativesystem. Nowhere, that such goals mightbe publicrationalizationsof historicallyevolved programsof action on thepartof entities- states-whose identities and competencesas things capable

49. Guetzkow and Valadez, Simulated International Processes, p. 8.50. Ibid., p. 355.51. See Bremer, Simulated Worlds, chap. 2, especially pp. 39-54.




of internationalpolitical practice depend upon recognitionby the overallsystem;whoseprogramsof actioninternalizenorms of the system;andwhose

rationalizations, n terms of systemicallyrecognized"goals,"serve to bindall to a communityof practiceand lend integrity o the systemas a whole.52

In short, by depreciatingthe historicallyreflective, normatively laden,communicativeaspect of internationalpolitics, Bremer'smodel omits pre-cisely that which lends to internationalpolitics its statusas a coherentwholeobserving a logic unlike the physical vectoring of forces or the economiccalculationof gain.Absent is an understanding f politicsas acommunicativeprocesscapableof social learning n the norms and institutions that governsystem-widesocial practice. nternational olitics s thus reduced o its crudestutilitarianaspect. What is left is politics as the unregulatedeconomics ofpower.

Theissue here-the depreciation f this communicative ideof internationalpolitics-is an importantone for world modelers.For, amongotherthings,it implicatestheir positions as participants n the politics of global life. Tothe extent thatthe world actually s the utilitarianorderthatBremer'sSIPERportraysit to be, then world modelers can only agreewith Jay Forrester'sposition:

[T]heworld problematique .. could not be dealt with at the worldlevel as such. There is no world authoritycapable of solvingthe worldproblems.There is no reason to believe that a single solution to the is-sues raisedby world modelingshould be imposed uniformlyon everyregionand country.The only feasibleway of dealingwith the threatsarisingfrom continued growthin a limited space is to arrive at nationalpolicies that solve the problemslocally, in ways compatibleat the ag-gregateworld level....

Furthermore, t is only at the national level that we will have suffi-cient publicconsensusand the possibilityof sufficientlystrong govern-ment to deal with issues raised ten years ago in WorldDynamics.53

But what if one sees the states system not as a vectoring of instrumentalactions among would-beempiresbut as an historicallyevolving normativesystemof practiceanchored n a European radition;a systemthat celebratesthe pluralizationof authorityas its organizingprincipleyet now experiencesa serious crisis as it reachesglobalscope and the consensuallypresupposedconditionsof its normaloperationare called ntoquestion? f a worldmodeleris at least open to this latter view, then Forrester's"nationalismby default"argumentno longer has the force of logical necessity. True, we can agreethat there is no singularpolitical institution,no "worldauthority"on the

52. SeeAnthonyGiddens,CentralProblemsn Social Theory Berkeley: niversity f CaliforniaPress, 1979), chap. 2.

53. Forrester,"GlobalModellingRevisited,"pp. 95-96.




hierarchicalpatternof the state, capable of solving global problems.But itdoes not necessarily ollowthat only at the national evel can world modelers

find a social consensus capable of being translated nto social practice.Forgiven the latter and richer understandingof internationalpolitics, we canbreakwith the assumption,which Forrester'sview implies, that a practicalconsensus, to be effective,must findexpression n some hierarchicalpoliticalapparatus appedby anagencywe candescribeas "strong."Wecanrecognize,instead, a community of internationalpolitical practiceanchoredin a trans-national consensus as to its own pluralistic,nonhierarchical rganization;wecan understand that such a community has evolved througha process ofsociallearning n the consensuallyendorsed norms and expectationsof prac-tice; and we can recognize that, at this level of learning,world modelingmight have an important role to play.54

e. Groping n the Dark and GlobalModellingReappraised

Groping n the Dark and GlobalModelling Reappraised ry to reflectonworld modeling as a whole. They representa fairlyrecent turn in the worldmodeling literature,a reflective turn toward graspingnot only how world

models represent politics but also the political significanceand practice ofworldmodeling as an enterprise hat participates n the social reality it rep-resents. That is not all the two volumes have in common, however. Bothhave their roots in IIASA conferenceson global modeling. Groping n theDarkstartedout to be the officialproceedingsof theOctober 1978 LaxenbergConference,a conferenceorganizedout of the widelysharedbelief that "thetime had come to attempt an appraisalof the [worldmodeling]state of theart."55GlobalModellingReappraised,a special issue of Futures, compilesedited versions of several papers given at the September 1981 Laxenberg

Conference.Both volumes also have in common the influences of DonellaMeadows,John Richardson,andGerhartBruckmann.56 he three combinedtheirenergies o edit and writeGroping n theDark.As forGlobalModellingReappraised,Bruckmannand Richardson cochaired the 1981 IIASA con-ference romwhich the special ssue wasderived,andRichardsonand Mead-ows contributedpapers.

GlobalModellingReappraised resumably eflects he more recentthinkingamongworldmodelers. The firstcontributors AurelioPeccei,"founderandguiding spiritof The Club of Rome," who attemptsto suggestthe "spirit"

54. As I discuss later, this is a "communitarian" erspectiveon internationalpolitics-aposition pioneeredby KarlDeutschin postwar nternationalistcholarship.

55. Groping n the Dark, p. 2.56. Meadows,of DartmouthCollege, was trainedin biophysics and is principalauthor of

Limits to Growth.Richardson,a political scientistwho workedon the Mesarovic-Pestelworldmodel, is with the Center for Technology and Administrationof The AmericanUniversity.Bruckmann"majored n seven different ields, ranging romengineeringo economics, at fiveuniversities";he is on the staffof IIASA.




of world modeling. His title identifies his view, which is fairly typical amongworld modelers, of world modeling's constituency: "Global Modelling for

Humanity." Peccei's global expression of a global vision is immediatelyfollowed by Jay Forrester'sreflections on "long cycles"within a pragmaticnationalist frame of reference.57Later in the volume Eduard Pestel pointsout that the latest model of the Mesarovic-Pestelworld model "wasexpresslydesigned to serve the political decision maker" at the national level, but healso laments several tendencies, includingthat of focusingon short-term,oversimplified,andimmediatelynational ssuesbroughtaboutby politicians'competition for approval and power.58Still later, Peter Roberts reflects onhis experience as a modeler within government and assesses the politicalaspectsof governmentalsupportfor andusagesof worldmodeling.It is hardto find a clear consensus in all of this, but Meadows and Richardson offerpapersthat try.

Groping n the Darkis surelythe moreinterestingvolume, largelybecauseMeadows, Richardson, and Bruckmann seek (always enthusiastically)toidentify and share key aspects of a consensus defining a world modelingcommunity. More than just a compilation of conferenceproceedings,thevolume reflectsthe editors' valuable attempts to review the history of world

modeling (includingbrief summariesof seven major projects) orthe benefitof unfamiliarreaders,distill areas of agreementand disagreementamongworld modelers, dentify substantive essons, considermethodological ssues,and offer their personalreflections.In all of this, they aim to reachbeyondthe typical audience for conferenceproceedings, professionals n the field,to open up communications with both policy makers "who are formallyresponsiblefor making complex social systems work" and "[t]hosewho livein and care about the complex social systems that the modellers model andthe decisionmakers decide about."59Of particular mportance,they present

the results(innarrative orm)of an attemptto appraise he overallenterprisevia an extensive questionnaire hat was circulatedamong several modelinggroups.

Inthe last chapter, he editorsoffera helpful synopsisof areasof agreementanddisagreement mongworld modelers.Their ist of disagreementsncludesquestions like, "Shouldmodels be made in directresponseto pressing ssuesof public policyor should the goalbe a general mprovement n understand-ing?" "Should models be normativeor descriptive?""How should a model

be tested?"Their

listof

maximson which world

modelers agreeincludes:"Computermodels of social systems should not be expected to produceprecisepredictions." Methodsshouldbe selected o fit problems or systems);problems (or systems) should not be distorted to fit methods." "The most

57. Forrester,"Global ModellingRevisited."58. "Modellersand Politicians,"pp. 122-28.59. Groping n the Dark, p. ix.




important forces shapingthe future are social and political, and these forcesare the least well represented n the models so far."

In large part, though, what makes Groping n the Dark interesting s asmuch its style as its substance. Not for these activist editors the deadlydulltask of compiling conference proceedingswith a few words of organizingcommentary here and there. No, their book has pagesin four colors(yellowfor the editors' "personal thoughts, experiences,and reflections";blue for"importantconclusions"and conferencehighlights;white for the actual pro-ceedings; gold for pages introducingthe field of world modeling and itshistory).On eachof the nonwhitepagesone is likely o encounterabewilderingvariety of devices designedto signalthe reader:"Look here!Rememberthis!Key point on this page!" Ideas hurl themselves from the page in italics, allcapital letters,all capital italics, boldface, staggeredprint offsets, fables,andcartoons-not to mentionrepetition.Forexample,theprefacepresents welvelessons about the world learnedfrom the world modeling experience o date,and then concludes:

In short: CHANGE IN THE STATUS QUO IS CERTAIN. IMPROVEMENTIN THE STATE OF THE WORLD IS BY NO MEANS IMPOSSIBLEANDBY NO MEANS GUARANTEED.WE ARE A LONG WAY FROM KNOW-

ING EVERYTHINGWE NEED TO KNOW. AND YET WE KNOWENOUGH ABOUT WHEREWE WANT TO GO AND HOW TO GETTHERETO GET STARTED.THE SITUATION IS NOT HOPELESS;T ISCHALLENGING.60

Later, on pages 15 and 16, the same twelve lessons are repeated, word forword and with no additional elaboration, followed by the same summaryparagraphn the same capi4 11 letters. Afterrepeatedlyconfrontingsuch ex-clamatorydevices, one can only agreewith the editors'prefatorycomment:

This book may not beREAD BY MILLIONS

But we are pretty sure that it isDIFFERENT...61

I do not mean to trivialize this commendable effort by concentratingonstylistics.On the contrary,I think a large part of the book's "message"isimplicit in its "medium"of expression.The editorspulledout all the stopswith these devices for a reason, and in that reason we may find a definiteif still implicit understanding f society andof world modeling'sparticipationin it.

While several reasons might be imagined-including the possibilitythatthe editors arejust plain playful-I stress the one interpretation hat seems

60. Ibid., p. xix.61. Ibid., p. viii.




to me consistent with their argumentsas whole: the editors use these ex-clamatorydevices not only as a means of making the volume accessibleto

a wideraudience but also as a means of penetrating,even exploding,whattheysee to be outmodedbutstilldominant"paradigms"r"waysof thinking"about the world. They do so with a practical,even emancipatory ntent-an expectation that such assaults on paradigmaticblinders might be, inthemselves, seriouscontributions o the processof system change.

"The currentcondition of our globe is intolerableand we make it so,"they write. "It is changingbecause of what we decide.... Each of us canmake a difference."62he trouble,in the editors'view, is that our decisionsreflect our paradigms,our mental models, our intuitions, our fractionated

understandingsof the whole. These lead us astray and, in the aggregate,produce outcomes we neither want nor expect. Fortunately,they seem tofeel, world modeling promises if not a panacea,at least a partialremedy.Computerizedworld models "enforcerigorous hinkingand expose fallaciesin mental models we have alwaysbeen proud of."63They push "ourmentalmodels to be a bit closer to reflectingthe world as it is." They locate ourseemingly solateddecisionsituationsamidsttheinterdependencieshat definethe actual orderof the globe. They demystify.Hence, to the extent that we

are willing to check our views in lightof worldmodels, and respectthe needto do so, we can improve our chances of escapingthe illusions that orientourpractices n secretcomplicitywith disaster-prone endencies.So enlight-ened,we canexpectthatourparticipationwillcome "abit closer" o producingwhat we will all recognize(being enlightened)as the desirableorder.

This, to be sure, is an interpretation, ot a literal ranslation,of the positioncharted by Meadows,Richardson,and Bruckmann.I think, though, that itis fair and, if apt, it suggests that what we find in Groping n the Dark is aglobalized version of liberal philosophy coupled with the classic political

justificationof positivist social science,as a means of liberatingwomen andmen from the atavistic, irrational,tyrannizing,and progress-defyingorceof tradition-boundllusion and myth, includingabsolutiststatism and ideo-logies of nationalism.In world modeling,Groping n the Dark seems to say,the universalizing endencies always contained in liberalpositivism are atlast approachingheirglobalend.A harmoniousglobalorder,realized hroughthe interplayof actors serving their enlightened self-interests with worldmodelingas the agencyand instrumentof enlightenment-this seems to bethe vision, the "mentalmodel," the paradigmat work.

If Groping n the Dark locates the social significanceof world modelingin termsof sucha paradigm thatof liberalpositivism),it also displayssomeof the problemsof that paradigm.Perhapsthe foremostproblemlies in thetendency to atomize social wholes, and especiallythe subjectiveaspectsof

62. Ibid., p. 290.63. Ibid., p. 288.




society. On the one hand, Meadows,Richardson,and Bruckmannwouldbethe first to urge a holistic perspectiveon world society. On the other hand,

when they attempt to confront the role of paradigms,belief systems,mentalmodels, ethical systems, or subjectiveprocesses in general-let us referto"ideology" their liberalpositivist interpretation eflectstheir attention romthe level of deeply structuredpracticalsocial consciousnessembracingandbounding society as a whole. They ignore, indeed theirvocabularydoes notseem to have wordsfor, the possibilityof a transindividual ocialconscious-ness that might be materiallyembodied, might normativelysanctionor war-rant social action, might impose limits on each human being'sunderstandingsof what she or he might do or become, might circumscribe he range ofcollectively imaginablepossibilities,and, in all of this, mightbe the locus ofcollectivewillorienting ociety'sconstitutionof social structures.Theeditors'interpretation eads them insteadto define the confrontationat the level ofthe individualhumanbeingas the abstractand isolatedagentof subjectivity,autonomous determinerof personal ethics (through personaldecisions orindividual commitment), and possibly the victim of a false understandingof objective truths. The biases, illusions, or ideologies that orient womenand men in the makingof the world's structures, he editors seem to think,

are things that only individualshave. They are thingsthat can in principlebe correctedor disabusedindividually.That is why, at one point, we aretreated o the editors'exercise n exploring

their personal biases-an exercise apparentlymeant to be exemplarybutnonetheless shallow. That is why, frustratingly,Meadows, Richardson,andBruckmanncan worry repeatedlyabout the evident contradictionbetweenwhat people might know intellectually, n the idealist sense of objectivatingor theoreticalknowledgeof the sortworldmodels purport o offer,and whatpeople do as a matterof practice,in interactionwith others in theirday-to-

day lives, without once stoppingto wonder about the historicalevolution,conditions, and contingencyof a practical social consciousnessthat mightconstrainthe range of socially responsibleaction. That is why, when theeditors confront this gap and want to overcome it, they can only imaginedevising new means to communicate the messageto individualminds-asifputtingkey pointsin verse form or "all-caps"would propel heintellectualistlessons of world modeling below the level of the reasoning ntellect to thelevel of individualconsciousnessat workin day-to-daypractice.That is whyMeadows, Richardson,and Bruckmann an claim, as individuals, o deplorethe currentorder without conveyingany sense of outrageon behalf of hu-mankind: hey see moralstandardsand social values that couldbe offendedby the currentorder of things not as properly the province of the humanspeciesas a whole and not as matterspossibly having scientificallydecidableobjective truth content, but as purely "subjective"matters to be decidedonthe basis of individuals'personalcommitments, beliefs,or faiths. And thatis why, aware of their own idealism, the three editors are finallydriven to




a most dreary form of argument.They are driven to an anti-intellectualistdismissal of those critics who would point out that, given the recurring

prisoners'dilemmas of an atomized social order, the editors' appeals toindividual commitments and decisions have little chance of bringingaboutthe changes they would like to see.

When everyone is so sophisticatedthat they can't believe it could be simple to be honest and to care

And everyone is so smartthat they know they don't count

so they never try

You get the kind of world we've got.64My point is not that Meadows, Richardson, and Bruckmannare pie-in-

the-sky idealists or that worldmodelingis shot throughwith such idealism.Rather,I want to emphasize that Groping n the Dark fundamentally ailsin one of the things its editors desperatelywanted to do-locate and groundworld modeling as a practicallysignificantaspect of society. It fails becauseit proceeds from a point of view within which the idea of society itself isdeprivedof meaningas a social wholebearinga normativeforceindependentof the individualscomprisingt. Society tself comes to be scientifically iewedas largely a derivative relation, a relation derived or emergingfrom theactions and coactionsof individualspursuing heir essentially privateends.Socialnorms, values, institutions,the collective relations that transcend n-dividuals,are to be scientificallygaugednot in terms of their truth contentat the level of the social whole but in strictlyinstrumental erms:as meansto ends or as servingfunctionsfora collectivitydescribableonly by referenceto the interestsand actionsof the individualsthatcomprise t. KarlPopper'semphatic endorsementof "methodological ndividualism" s symptomatic

of this point of view:[A]ll social phenomena,and especiallythe functioningof all social insti-tutions, should alwaysbe understood as resultingfrom the decisions,actions, attitudes,etc. of human individuals.... [W]eshould never besatisfiedby an explanationin terms of so-called "collectives."65

I do not think that the three editors mean to endorse this position, norwould they ever explicitly say that they do. Their overall argumentsuggests,though, that they are trappedin a vocabularyof social understandinghat

deprives them of an ability to imagineotherwise.Worldmodelingteachesthe lessons of holism, they tell us. Unable to developthose lessonsfullywithrespect to society, the authors cannot comprehend where and how worldmodeling might find a practicalsocial role. Preaching he need forpersonalcommitment comes to be the only course.

64. Ibid., p. 291.65. Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 2 (London: Routledge, 1966), p. 98.




2. Interpreting the world modeling enterprise

As Michael Shapironotes, "The prefix meta affixed to a term implies aninterest in analyzingcommitments that are logicallyanteriorto the usualreferents of that term."66So it is with the term metamodel. In turningtometa-worldmodels, my focus shiftsawayfromthe usual referentsof worldmodeling discourseand toward the commitments and presuppositionsre-gardingsociety, its evolutionarypossibilities,and the role of knowledge hattypical participants n that discourse implicitly share. I raise questions forwhich that discoursetypicallypresupposesanswersand, hence, I raise ques-tions that that discoursecharacteristicallyinds no need to entertain.

The metamodelI pose here affordsno definitiveor final portraitof worldmodeling and its political commitments. All I claim is that it begins toprovide a reasonablycoherent, if hypothetical,understandingof the limitsand problemsof worldmodelingevidenced by the literature ust examined.I stressthe word "hypothetical," or my purposeis to provoke,not to close,a productivedialogueon the politics of world modeling.The metamodel Ihavein mind canbe presentedas a metaphor o a "worldmodeling" nterpriseof sorts undertakenby JeremyBentham,nearly two centuriesago. I begin

by briefly describing Bentham's design, the Panopticon or "inspection-house."67This prepares he way forme to drawout certainkey features hatare suggestiveof the political situationof world modelingin modern inter-national society.

a. ThePanopticonmetamodel

In 1787, Jeremy Bentham, then in Crecheff n White Russia, drafted aseriesof letters to a friendin England.He wrote againstthe backgroundof

the FrenchRevolution, the diffusionof a new mode of sovereignty,popularsovereignty,and ever sharperproblems n the politicalmanagementof mas-sifiedpublics.The old monarchicalmodes of power-discontinuous, costly,and capableof penetrating o the level of the individualonly in the mostclumsy ways-had become ever more evidently ineffective.68

In these letters Bentham sought to promote a principleof constructionthatwouldbeapplicable"withoutexception, o all establishmentswhatsoever,in which ... a number of personsare meant to be kept underinspection."69Not one for understatinghis accomplishments,Benthamclaimed that his

66. Shapiro,Languageand Political Understanding, . 2.67. All referencesare to the (John)Bowringedition of Bentham'sCollected Works,vol. 4

(New York: Russell& Russell, 1971).68. See MichelFoucault,"TheEye of Power," n Foucault,Power/Knowledge,ditedby Colin

Gordon(New York:Pantheon, 1980),pp. 152-53. As willquicklybecomeevident, my readingof Bentham s indebtedto Foucault.I borrowthe title of this articlefrom Foucault.

69. Bentham, CollectedWorks,4: 40.




principlewouldapply"No matterhowdifferent, reven oppositethepurpose:whether t be thatof punishing he incorrigible,uarding he insane,reforming

thevicious,confining hesuspected,employing he idle, maintainingthe help-less, curing the sick, instructingthe willing in any branch of industry,ortrainingthe rising race in the path of education."70

Benthaminitiallyintroducedhis principlenot in the abstractbut in termsof a specific application-an applicationto a prison. Leaving aside manydetails, his earliestdescription s as follows:

The building is circular.... The apartmentsof the prisonersoccupy thecircumference.... The cells are divided from one another, and the

prisonersby that means secludedfrom all communicationwith eachother, by radii issuingfrom the circumference owardsthe centre....The apartmentof the inspectoroccupies the centre [a tower called theinspector'slodge]....

Each cell has in the outwardcircumference,a window, argeenough,not only to light the cell, but, throughthe cell, to affordlight enoughtothe correspondentpartof the lodge....

To save the troublesomeexertionof voice that might otherwisebenecessary,and to prevent one prisonerfrom knowingthat the inspector

was occupied by another prisonerat a distance, a small tin tubemightreach from each cell to the inspector's odge....71

Bentham especially stressed "the centralityof the inspector'ssituation,combined with the well-known and most effectual contrivancesfor seeingwithoutbeing seen." The essence of the plan, he wrote, was "the apparentomnipresenceof the inspector .. combinedwith the extreme facility of hisrealpresence."72

Benthamwas keenly awarethat his plan was not merelyan architectural

design. It amounted, he saw, to a generallyapplicable,everywhererepro-ducibleprincipleof a system.In Michel Foucault'swords,theprinciplecalledfor a society organizedaround "a centralobservationpoint which served asthe focus of the exerciseof power and, simultaneously,for the registrationof knowledge."73n Bentham'swords, it was a principlefor "a new modeof obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto withoutexample."s74

Benthamattributedhe efficiencyof thisnew mode of powerto its tendencyto find its mirror n its own objects,to reproduce tself in the order it woulddiscipline,to make of "each comradean overseer,"and therebyto producewhat Foucaultwould describe as "a machine in which everyone is caught,

70. Ibid., p. 40, emphasis in original.71. Ibid., p. 40-41, emphasis in original.72. Ibid., p. 44-45, emphasis in original.73. Foucault, "Eye of Power," p. 148.74. Bentham, Collected Works, 4: 39.




those who exercise powerjust as much as those over whom it is exercised."Accordingto Foucault, Bentham'sprinciplerendereda "machine"of extra-

ordinary simplicity:Just a gaze. An inspectinggaze, a gaze which each individualunder itsweight will end by interiorizing o the point that he is his own overseer,each individual thus exercisingthis surveillanceover, and against,him-self. A superb formula:power exercisedcontinuouslyand for whatturns out to be minimal cost.75

The principle of the Panopticon, in other words, was not only a generalformulabutalso a self-reproducing geneticcode"for an economyof power.

It was this that Bentham saw when, enamored of his discovery, he referredto the principleas a veritable"ChristopherColumbus'segg"in the orderofpolitics.76

The Panopticon principle may also be understood, now in the languageof Deutsch's Nerves of Government,as a "strategic implification" volvingin answerto the politicalpredicamentof the time.77At the time of Bentham'swriting, the bourgeois revolutions were toppling personalist forms of statepower; state power was becoming, in Foucault's words, "a machinerythatno one owns" as it was becoming an agency of bourgeoispower dissociatedfrom individual might. At the same time, the problem of justifying andstrategically rientingthis new mode of powerwas fused with a Rousseauistdream for reversingthe old technology of power (based on principlesofdungeonsand darkness).It was a dream of

a transparent ociety, visible and legible in each of its parts,the dreamof there no longer existing any zones of darkness,zones establishedbythe privilegesof royal poweror the prerogativesof some corporation,zones of disorder. It was the dream that each individual,whateverposi-

tion he occupied, might be able to see the whole of society, that men'shearts could communicate, their vision be unobstructedby obstacles,and that opinion of all reignover each.78

In Bentham's principle, this problem-this "problematique"of definingand focusing power undernew forms of rule constrainedby a liberal com-mitment to a transparentpopularorder-seemed to find its answer,but witha twist. Bentham'sprinciple-at once a program,a utopia,and a technologyof power-echoes the liberalpredicamentby posingtheproblemof visibility.

Yet its answer is a "universalvisibility which exists to serve a rigorous,meticulous power."79Bentham's principlealso respondsto the commitment

75. Foucault, "Eye of Power," pp. 156, 155.76. Bentham, Collected Works, 4: 38.77. KarlDeutsch,TheNervesof Government:Modelsof PoliticalCommunication nd Control

(New York: Free Press, 1966), pp. 251-52.78. Foucault, "Eye of Power," p. 152.79. Ibid., p. 152.




to an egalitarianorder. Yet it realizesthis commitment in the expectationthat each object of the "tower's"gaze would internalize that one single

viewpoint,makingthat viewpointits own. And Bentham'sprinciplesatisfiesthe liberaloppositionto personalistforms of state power.Yet it does so bydrawingeach comrade, now an overseerhimself, into complicitywith theanonymousand unseen inspector.

None of this is to say, surely, that Bentham'sCrecheffdesignssomehowshapedtheemergingbourgeoispoliticalorderof Europe; arfrom it. Itwouldbe much more accurate to arguethat Bentham'sPanopticonprinciplewasa politicallyself-consciousconceptualizationof a schemealreadyat workincapitalistsociety.That schemehad found partialexpression n the economicsphere,just eleven years before in Smith's notion of the invisible hand.80This is plain when one allows that, despite Bentham's reputationas the"Fourierof police society,"the central"tower"of his Panopticonneed nottake the concreteform of a centralpolicingand administrativeapparatus.8'A more adequaterenditionof the scheme behind Bentham's mageryof thefaceless, mpersonal,all-seeing ower-and truer o thePanopticonprinciple-is an internal relation that unites state, society, and market relations in

capitalistlife.82

Ratherthan develop such an argumenthere, it is necessaryonly to pointout a number of closely related featuresof Bentham'sdiabolicaldesign.

1. Bentham'sprinciple s not, in the end, based on physical contrap-tions and barriers.83t depends on a deeply recognizedconsensusof

80. On the long evolution of this epistemic shift, see Albert 0. Hirschman, The Passions andthe Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton: Princeton Uni-versity Press, 1977).

81. See Foucault, "Eye of Power,' p. 146.82. On the concept of internal relations, as opposed to external relations, see Bertell Ollman,

Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, 2d ed. (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1976), chap. 1 and appendices I and II. Any attempt to discern a Panopticonprinciple at work in the structuring of capitalist life would mention (1) the institutionalizedexpectation of an autonomous, objectively given market existing and operating independentlyof normatively laden social communication, including political discourse; (2) the reduction ofmarket transactions to a single metric having its basis in the (presupposed) universal intercon-vertibility of human labor; (3) the subordination of economic practice to a putatively objectivetechnical-rational logic of action; (4) the commitment to the ontological privacy and objectivityof the "possessive individual" and his or her economic interests; and (5) the commitment tothe pluralistic conception of the state as an anonymous entity having no "personality" orinterests of its own but finding its meaning and social import in its unique abilities to unite (ormanage conflicts among) contesting, always partial vantage points and interests and to organizeand orient collective action in ways transcending particular interests, thereby solving technicaldysfunctions.

83. This feature of Bentham's design may not be immediately evident, especially from thebrief description given here. It was not even immediately evident to Bentham in his earliestcorrespondence on the subject. Yet it was in just this feature that Bentham would later takespecial delight. As his argument proceeds Bentham discovers, to his evident glee, that he candispense with many of the physical contraptions. At times Bentham is not even sure whetherone really needs to have a physical presence in the all-seeing tower-just the self-discipliningrecognition that the gaze might exist is enough to assure the principle's rule.




norms, expectations, values, institutions, and self-understandings.Moredefinitely, the Panopticon consensus involves the institutionalizedex-

pectationthat society and human practiceultimatelyconform to aunique, singular,and contradiction-freeruth,which exists independ-ently of people's knowing and to which all are subordinated.Benthamunderstands hat his principleis anchoredin an intersubjectiveconsen-sus and not in physical or naturalrelationships.But his principlepre-supposes the participants'consensualmisrecognitionof their socialworld as a kind of "second nature," a limitingand almost physicalreal-ity, a deaf-and-dumbrealityknowableonly as nature is knowable.Ben-tham's principle presupposesa consensus that naturalizes ts world,including those aspects of the world produced in accordancewith theconsensus itself.

2. Once this consensus is in place and internalizedamong the parties,it distortsand limits social communications n ways securingthe domi-nant consensus itself. Thanks to this consensus, all parties to it shareinthe presupposition hat the truthof communicationscan be determinednot by the discursiveinteractionof the partiesbut by essentially techni-cal operations-by the abilityof knowledge to fit, capture,or render

controllablesome collectively recognizedaspect of social expeiience.The consensus makes this technical orientationtoward knowledge ob-jectively true and in need of no justification.And thanks to the sameconsensus, this technicalorientation becomes the legitimateframeworkfor practical nteractionamong parties.From individuals to complexagencies,actorsare understood to behave "objectively."Theirbehav-iors correspondto mutuallyrecognizedexpectationspreciselywhentheir practicesare dominated by technical rationallogics of action. Thenorms and rules of social life appear before each actor as external,al-

most physical constraints. And the evident partitionsand systemboundariesof society, like the cells of Bentham'sprison,define the ob-jective givens of social action and communicativeinteraction.Com-municationsthat would question these logics, norms, partitions,andboundariesare denied legitimacyas a basis for social practice.Com-municationsthat would objectivate,and hence "capture,"a frozen so-cial order-that would aspireto replicatethe view from the singular"eye of power"-are deemed rational and warrantedas a basis for so-cial practice.

3. The Panopticon principle is thus a principleof powerand domina-tion; yet it is a mode of powerso all-encompassing, hat so thoroughlyfabricates ts agentsin its light, and so deeply embeddedin a socialconsensusthat it remainsunseen, unacknowledgedby those who live itand who, in living it, are captured by it. It is a technologyof powerbutnot a consciously wielded technology.For the "consciousness" hatwould wield it and the "intentions" t would serve reflect a singular




gaze-a gaze that is really nothing more than the refractedand mu-tually reinforcedexpectation of its singularauthority over an atomized

society.

Hereinis the geniusof Bentham's Panopticon.Its power depends upon apracticalconsensus that shields itself by celebrating he partitionsof socialreality. It fractionatesall interests as "private" interests behind these par-titions. It reducespracticeto the technical serviceof these interestsin lightof an expectationof the singularityand objectivityof truth. And, thereby,it limits the capacityof social practice o reflecton its own deepest structuresand expose to criticism the imprisoningconsensus itself.

These qualities of Bentham's design merit special attentionin the historyof utilitarian houghtbecausethey implyan importantconcessionto a starklyopposed traditionof thought, a tradition that HaywardAlker calls "com-munitarian."84On the one hand, accordingto Michael Hechter, utilitarian"doctrine-whetherin theguiseof neoclassical conomicsor game, exchange,or rational choice theory-assumes the theoreticalprimacy of individualactors rather hanpre-existentsocialgroups."85 onflictamongtheseactors,theirperspectives,andtheirself-explaining nds,underconditionsof scarcity,is taken to be primary. Power relations among these competingactorsare

seenlargely o determineorder.Socialorder s largely xplainedas aderivative,even instrumental elation-a consequenceof the self-serving, ationalactionsof individualactors.Ontheotherhand,communitarians,uchasKarlDeutschamongstudents of international elations, end to takeprecisely he oppositeposition: every long-enduringsocial system, whether or not it manifestsharmonyamong participants, s anchored n and integratedby an underlyingconsensus of symbols, norms, rights, remembrances,and coreflectiveself-understandingshat serve to coordinateexpectationsand to orient and limit

practices. Power, for the communitarian, s not prior to order. It is rootedin the dominant consensus,as in Deutsch's referenceto power as "the co-ordinated xpectationof significantly robable anctions, hatis, of substantialshifts in the allocationof highlysalientvalues."86Clearly,the positionsareirreconcilable.

Yet the Panopticonprincipledoes reconcilethem. Remarkably,utilitarianBentham'sresolution mplicitlyconcedesthe primacyof the communitarianposition. In his design and in his argumentfor it Bentham acknowledgesthata utilitarianorderof the sort he wouldproduce s artificial,notnecessary.

More than that, he acknowledges hat any attempt to producea utilitarianordermust be pitchednot at the utilitarian'sown, superficialevel of social

84. See,forexample,HaywardR. AlkerJr.,"FromPoliticalCybernetics o GlobalModeling"in Richard L. Merrittand Bruce M. Russett, eds., From National Development o GlobalCommunity:Essays in Honour of Karl W.-Deutsch(London:Allen & Unwin, 1981).

85. Michael Hechter,"KarlPolanyi'sSocial Theory:A Critique,"Politics and Society 10, 4(1981), p. 399.

86. Nervesof Government, p. 120-21.




understanding ut at the deeper evel of communitarian oncerns.A utilitarianorder,he realizes, s at once a powerrelationand a special orm of community.

As such, it must be anchored in a practicalconsensus as to the truth andlegitimacyof utilitarian rinciples. towesits existence o a practical onsensusthat is also an order of domination, a practicalconsensus that takes theartificial and contingentutilitarianprinciplesto be natural and universal,and thus orients all practice in ways that produce a world conformingtotheseprinciples.How to shapesuch a consensus-how to disruptand distortcommunicationsin ways that establish and perpetuate he conditionsof itspossibility-is Bentham's main concern. The concern marks an importantjuncture n the evolutionof utilitarianhought:recognizinghe need to groundutilitarianprinciplesin communitarian erms, Benthamimplies the logicalpriority of communitarianperspectives.

b. Implications or worldmodeling

How might the Panopticon principle, tself a "world model" of sorts, alsobe, as I have suggested,a metamodelfor world modeling?Let us recall threecritical themes that recurredas I addressedthe six books here considered.

Each of these themes, I shall suggest, corresponds o one of the three state-ments about the Panopticon principle presented ust a moment ago.First, a principaltheme throughoutmy commentary on the six volumes

is their evident commitment to positivistconceptionsof the world modelingenterprise.Now, "positivism"has become a frightfulword,overloadedwithunhappyconnotations.87 use it to referto the four positive commitmentsI mentioned earlierin connectionwith "liberalpositivism." These are:

a commitment to the aim of science as the graspingof an objective

reality operatingaccordingto certain fixed structuralrelations;a commitment to the expectationthat this objective realityis inter-pretable as organized accordingto a single, contradiction-free ogic orstructure.Reality is expected to appear,in other words, as if it wereauthored from a single, centralviewpoint in time and space;

a commitment to the expectation that the object or sought-afterre-sult of science is the formulationof theoreticalknowledgethat advancescausalgeneralizationsand expands human capacities to make predic-tions, orient efficientaction, or exert control in the serviceof human

values; anda commitment to a correspondence heory of truth as opposed to a

consensus theoryof truth.88

These positivist commitments, we have seen, pervade all six volumes.

87. See the works cited in note 14 above.88. See Habermas,"Theoriesof Truth."




Thoughnever expressly tated,theymaketheirpresence elt in thebackgroundof world modeling discourse,as a supposedlyunproblematic ramework or

public discourseon the problems and prospectsof world modeling.89Forinstance,while the authorsarenot expliciton the point, such commitmentsevidently frame Guetzkow's and Bremer'sexplicit understandingsof their"validationstudies"; Hughes'sassertionthat "models are judged primarilyfrom forecast accuracy";and the physicalisticmodelingof economic "dy-namics" by Leontieff, Carter,and Petri.

This theme-the commitment to positivist understandingsof modelingpractice-is strikingly lose to the first statementabout the Panopticonprin-ciple. The Panopticon principleis based not on physicalconditions but on

a practicalconsensus celebrating he singularityand externalityof truth;forworld modeling, the commitment to a positivist understandingof the en-terprise s the equivalentof this firstquality.

A second theme of criticism points to some of the consequencesof thefirst.Especiallywhen coupledwithliberalpresuppositions boutthe essentialprivacy of the individual, the positivist consensus among world modelersimposes limits upon communications.90Like the forms of consensus sharedby membersof any social community, the liberalpositivist consensus (hy-

pothetically)sharedby world modelers integratesthat community and es-tablishescoreflectivenorms, values, and identificationsamong participants.It establishesexpectationsas to the kinds of researchpracticesthatare war-ranted, comprehensible,appropriate,and worthyof community support.Atthe same time, however, the same consensus imposes boundaries.It cir-cumscribesthe kinds of researchproblemsand programs hat will find rec-ognitionandsupport n theworldmodelingcommunityas a whole. It definessome kinds of researchand some forms of social science discoursenot aswrong per se but as incomprehensibleor unwarranted or both).

The six volumes provokedthis theme in the form of my criticism to theeffect that, in the modelingwork upon which they reportor in their com-mendatoryattitudestowardthe world, they tend to underestimateor ignorethe role of communicative or practical interactionin the constitution ofmanifest sectors of world societyand agenciesof social and political action.The UN studyaccords an ontologicalstatusto economic dynamicswithoutquestioning he historically ontingentandnormatively adenconsensusuponwhichan "autonomouseconomicsphere"would depend.Bremer reatsstatesin SIPER as unproblematicdecision-makingunits, not as symbolicallyme-diated and problematic oinings of contradictorynational and transnationaltendencies.Still a third example is found in the travailof Meadows,Rich-ardson,and Bruckmann eforetheunquestionediberal deal of theindividual

89. See also HaywardR. Alker Jr., "Global ModelingAlternatives" mimeo,n.d.).90. See C. B. Macpherson,The Political Theoryof PossessiveIndividualism New York:

OxfordUniversityPress, 1962). See also James Tully,A Discourseon Property New York:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1980).




subjectwho can be individually onfrontedwith demystifying ruthsand canrid herself or himself of illusion and myth through individual acts of

commitment.This second criticaltheme echoes the second of the three qualities of thePanopticon discussedabove. The consensus upon which the Panopticon isbased, I observed, distorts and limits communicationsin ways that securethe dominant consensus.The same is true of the liberalpositivistconsensusshared by world modelers.This dominant consensus limits communicationsuch that world modelers, as a community, are unable to know their ownconsensual basis or to reflect criticallyon the correlation, f any, betweentheir own deep presuppositionsandthedominantstructures f world society.

If this is true, then it is little wonderthat world modelersfind no place forworld modeling in their models. Little wonder, too, that world modelerscannot even begin to comprehend-but can only regardas an unspoken,unexamined article of faith-the political significanceof theirenterprise.

The thirdtheme,speakinggenerally, oncernsworldmodelingas an elementof powerin modern society. More specifically,worldmodelingmay be under-stood as an enterprise constituted by, and representinga medium for, apredominant practicalconsensus that centers on utilitariannorms, values,expectations,and coreflective self-understandings.As such, world modelingfinds its power not as a technocraticdesign for world control but as anideologicalapparatus,which ritualistically ehearses andbrings he authorityof scienceto bearto secure the predominanceof) collectiveand coreflectiveexpectationsas to the singularity,externality, and objectivityof the givenorder.As such, too, world modelinglends ideologicalreinforcement o thedominanceof technicalreason as the organonof social reason and,withthis,negates reflective interaction as a legitimatebasis for the questioning andpossible transformationof the given order.

The Panopticonprinciple,I noted, is a principleof powerand domination.But I also noted that, as a mode of power, the Panopticonis so all-encom-

passing, so deeply embedded in the social consensus, that it remains un-acknowledgedby those who wield it. Much the same can be said of theideologicalpowerof world modeling.It is a mode of power. It enforces theexpectationof a singular"eye of power."One might even hypothesizethatworld modelingredeployspositivist social sciencein reactionto a worldwidecrisis in a community that recognizesutilitarianprinciplesas the orderingprinciplesof social life. Yet if this is so, worldmodelersdo not consciouslywield this ideologicalforce. As much victims as perpetrators,many worldmodelers see themselves as critics of the world in which they live even as

the limitingconsensus to which they adherejoins their enterprise n secretcomplicity with the given order of things.

Variety,criticism,and changein worldmodeling

To suggestthat world modeling might reflect a Benthamiteworld project,might anticipatesomethingon the orderof a world-encompassingPanoptic




gaze, and mightthereby help to legitimizea dominant utilitarianconsensusanchoredin such expectations-to suggestall of this is to interpretmain or

dominant tendencies of world modeling as a movement. But it is not tosuggest hat thatis all there is to worldmodeling,norall that worldmodelingmight be. Indeed, such a one-dimensional nterpretation f world modelingfalls into the very trapin which positivism ensnaresevery inquiry: he trapof mistakingthe dominant order of things for the singular,necessary, andobjectively given orderof things.In the case of worldmodeling,sucha one-dimensional interpretationwould be unfortunate or at least two reasons.

First, no structuralnterpretationof the worldmodeling movement, suchas that containedin the Panopticonhypothesis,can dojustice to the varietyof world modeling projectsand the "competing possibles"they exemplify.I have largely gnored, for example, a major earlyworld modeling project,the Barilocheprojectand its Latin AmericanWorld Model. Radicallyde-partingfrom the liberalpositivist grammarof worldmodeling practice,theBariloche roupproduceda model thatwaswidelyapplaudedor itsexpressionof normative commitments, even if it was then thoroughly neglected bysuccessorgenerationsof world modelers who questionedits "explicitly de-ological"content.91

Similarly, necaninferadepartureromliberalpositivistnorms nHughes'sdescriptionof structural-specificationlternatives for lower-level stratainthe WIMmodel.Suchalternativesgive the decision makera heady overdoseof (simulated) power over his or her social, economic, and environmentalstructures; hey minimize the realpractical(including deological, strategic,andsocial-organizational)imitsandconstraintson decision makers'choices;and they thus invite a false inference of consciousintentionalitybehindtheconstructionof social,economic,andenvironmentalstructures.At the sametime, they at least have the virtueof underscoringhe human-madequality

of those same structures; nd in this they open the wayforcriticalchallengesto attemptsto "naturalize" r "officialize"he dominantstructuresof globallife.

To offer yet another example, INS, IPS, and SIPER departedfrom theliberalpositivist norminsofaras their approaches o model constructionandreview sought consensus rather than fit. Arguably,the real significanceofthese enterprises-INS above all-was as media of critical communicationamong partiallyopposedparadigms ather han as the theoretical nstrumentsof predictionand control, which their authorstoo often rationalizedthemto be.

Thesearebutthreeexamplesof departuresrom thePanopticonhypothesis.But they sufficeto make the point that liberalpositivist norms and expec-tations, if dominant, are often violated amongworld modelers.In thinking

91. See Herrera,Scolnik, et al., Catastrophe r New Society?




about the future of world modeling, it is worth exploringhow yesterday'sheresy might become tomorrow'slegitimatepractice.

Second, it is possibleto advancean alternative nterpretation f the worldmodelingenterpriseas a whole. Specifically,one might referto the methodof "immanent critique."As developed by Horkheimer,Adorno, Marcuse,and others,immanent critique s a methodthataimsto confrontan ideology"fromwithin," as it were.92t startswithan ideology'sownavowedconcepts,principles,and historicalself-understandings-concepts,principles,and un-derstandingsthat the ideology recognizesas a harmoniousand completeunity.It proceedsto unfoldimplicationsandconsequences n lightof existingconditionsthat the ideologyat once reflectsand helps to reproduce.It aimsto draw out contradictions,to confront the ideology with the evident gapbetweenwords and deeds, and to make plain the limits of an ideologythathithertoknew itselfnot consciouslybut onlyas the universal ruth,exhaustiveof all possibility.

With this notion we may revise the earlierPanopticonhypothesis. Wemay continue to hold to the hypothesis insofaras we maintainthat worldmodeling, as an overall enterprise,workswithin a positivist and utilitarianideology.We may persist in seeingworldmodelingas an heir to a bourgeois

consensus of social understanding hat took form in Bentham'stime andfound abstractexpressionin his Panopticonprinciple.We would revise theoriginalhypothesis,however, nthe interpretationf worldmodeling'spoliticalsignificance-its impact. Withthe notion of immanent critique n mind, wemayoffer he hypothesis hat worldmodeling'sprincipalpoliticalcontributionhas been to work from within, in exposing the limits of the predominantconsensus.

Several contributionsto world modeling lend themselves to this morefavorable interpretation.Limits to Growth s an example. Workingwithin

the dominant deologyandjoiningin its celebrationof an unicentric echnicalreason, the authors of WorldDynamics and Limits to Growth"stake theircase"on the expectation hat it is possiblein principle o developa modelingtechnology capable of reducingthe comprehensionof global futures to asingularstructuralunity. In a contradictoryway, however, they obliquely"make a case"' o the effect that the self-blind faith in the correctiveandcreativepotentialof strictly echnological eason s fastapproachingtsgloballimit. Similarly,much of the importanceof Guetzkow'sINS/IPS work liesnot in its "capturing"of a frozen, objective reality but in its successfulsynthesesof "conventional" nd "disciplinary" isdom-including utilitarianwisdom-and in its demonstrationsof some of the (often surprising) on-

92. In the words of Max Horkheimer, mmanent critique confronts"the existent, in itshistoricalcontext,with the claim of its conceptualprinciples, n orderto criticize he relationbetweenthe two and thus transcend hem" (TheEclipseof Reason [New York:SeaburyPress,1974], p. 182). See also David Held, Introductiono CriticalTheory Berkeley:UniversityofCaliforniaPress, 1980),especiallypp. 183-87.




sequences for a "world"orderedas wisdom would have it. One might notethe same sort of thingabout SIPER, WIM, or the UN input/outputmodel.

Some recognitionof the value of immanent critiqueis implied by Gropingin the Dark's emphasis on world models as devices by which we call intoquestion our "mental models."

World modeling may thus contributeto a critical awarenessof the limitsof the existing order,as well as some of the closed-offpossibilities mmanentin it. By simulatingat the global level the long-term and universalizingm-plicationsof practicalunderstandings itherto imitedto specific imes, places,and disciplinarybounds,worldmodeling helps to showthat these one-sidedunderstandingsailby theirown lightsand by their own standards.In turn,by pointing up such contradictoryrelations,world modeling may serve toarouse.It may lend impetus to the reflectiveand creativeprocess by whichsocial learningproceedsand by which practicalnorms, values, institutions,and orderingprinciplesevolve.

Still, immanent critiquecan take one only so far.While the method canhelp expose the limits of a given ideology, it has limitsof its own. Groundedin the norms, values, expectations,and understandingsof the tradition orideology it critiques,the method always remainstime- and culture-bound.93

So it is with world modeling. Viewed as an exercisein immanentcritique,it remains the captive of the ideology whose contradictionsand limits itwould try to make plain. It remains, n the language f theoriginalhypothesis,a prisoner caught beneath, and reflecting, he penetratinggaze of an anon-ymous and singulareye of power.At every turn,no matterwhat its claims,world modeling must justify its claims in terms of utilitarianmetaphysics,positivist methodology,and technical-rationalnterestsin knowledgeas aninstrumentof control. It must justify its claims in these terms because it hasfound no other terms that can command consensualrecognition,organize

expectations, and orient collective and coreflectivepractices in the samedegree. In a word, it has found no other terms, no alternativeframes ofreference,that are so powerful.

Understood as immanent critique, then, worldmodelingcomes to some-thingof an impasse.So long as worldmodeling discourse s confined withinthe languageof the dominant consensus, it might prompt social learning;butitsparticipationwilltendto replicatea strangepathologyof social earning.Specifically, y refusing o understand ll formsof communication hatcannotbe made to fit withinthe dominantconsensus,worldmodelingwould distortsocial learningand limit its adaptive potential.Its participationwould tendto reduce social learningto a matterof expandingtechnicalskills of socialorganizationand environmentalappropriationntheserviceof somesingularset of pre-givenends. Its participationwould tend to obstructor trivializethe liberativeand creativepotentialof communicative nteraction.It would

93. Held, Introduction,p. 187.




tend to diminish the value of communicationsacross multiple, seeminglyopposedvantagepoints-communications that transcend ectoral, deological,

and historicaldivisions of social understandingand that seek to draw outthe inner relationsjointly constitutingthese vantage points in a unity ofoppositions.It would tendto diminish he valueof questioninghecollectivelyrecognizedschemes, principles,rules, and remembranceswith referencetowhich women and men coordinatetheir expectations,establish their self-understandings,divide their labors,set the limits of social possibility,orientand justify their practices,commit their resources and energies,and thusparticipaten the constitutionof social reality.Figuratively,worldmodeling'sparticipationwould tend to deprivesocial learningof precisely hosepractical

and communicativeaspectsthatwouldpermitemancipationrom thetyrannyof the Panopticgaze.

Certainly his impasse is not what most world modelers ntend.One mightstealfromworldmodelers' anguageof socialanalysisto saythat the impasseis an unintendedresult,even a "counter-intuitive onsequence,"of modelers'well-meaningbut short-sighted ehaviors.Behaviors ntended o help liberatethe human speciesas a whole, to join with women and men in the shapingof the human futurewith full will and consciousness,end up havingjust the

oppositeresult.In the case of world modeling, though,the short-sightednessis not just a matter of failing to graspintellectuallysome largernetworkofdynamics throughwhich the effects of modelers'work will reverberate.Ifthere is any truth to our interpretativehypothesis,then we can say that themyopia results mainly from world modeling's subordination to a powerrelation: so thoroughlyhas the world modeling community succumbedtothe consensually shared order of domination that it is systematicallyandtotally deprivedof the ability to see the world throughany other lens.

There are two practical mplications.First, if world modelingis to realize

its potential, t willneed to expand ts horizonsof socialtheory,mostespeciallyin the directionof what I earliercalled communitarianperspectives.In theirmodern variants,such perspectivesstressthe communicativebasisof socialorder, ncludingdominantsocial structures.94heydo so withoutfallingpreyto idealism and without neglectingthe power relations implicit in socialcommunications.As such, these perspectivesmake room for an enrichedunderstandingof the reflective and generativepotentialof social learning;they problematizeeven the most "self-evident"of social structures,settingevery discussion of social structureagainst a backgroundconcern for theconditionsof possibility;and they acknowledge-whatwe mightcall the "dis-

94. While the perspectives am calling"communitarian"ave muchin common,especiallyas contrastedwith utilitarianpointsof view,a comparisonof leadingcommunitarianhinkerslike Habermas,Foucault,and Bourdieu-discloses importantdifferences.See, e.g., JiirgenHa-bermas,Communicationand the Evolutionof Society,trans. by Thomas McCarthy Boston:Beacon Press, 1979); Michel Foucault,Language, Counter-Memory, ractice, ed. by D. F.Bouchard Ithaca:CornellUniversityPress, 1977);and Bourdieu,Outline.




cursive plurality of social reality," that is, the evolution of social realitythroughthe creative yet constrained interactionof multiple, mutually in-

terpenetratingvantagepoints on and within reality. In all of these respectsand more, communitarianperspectivesradicallychallenge the Panopticon-like principlesof world modeling's currentlydominant consensus. Concen-tratingon the constitutive role of social communications and knowledge,communitarianperspectives even demand a radical shift toward explicitacknowledgementof a consensustheoryof truth.And in so doing, they serveto reinstateworld modeling among other knowledge-makingactivities aspartof a social realityat once examinedand lived. Fromthesecommunitarianperspectivesin social theory, world modelinghas much to learn.

The second implicationis, if anything, even less cheering,for it points toa very practicaldilemma. Bluntlyput, the attemptto breakout of the worldmodeling impasse by movingin communitariandirectionswouldbe, for anyone modeler or modeling group,not some idealizedversion of rational ar-gumentbut a matterof struggle-even a sort of revolutionary truggle.Amongthe stakes in the struggleare the consensualrules, the organizingprinciplesand commitments, according o which worldmodelersorganizetheir inter-actions and in light of which they secure mutual recognitionfor their ar-

guments and claims. World modeling groups that would lead movement incommunitarian irectionsmustcontendwiththefactthat,relatively peaking,many of those with whom they would communicate "lag behind." Thosein the lead are ever under pressureto "translate" heir work into the "lan-guage"-the categories, commitments, presumptions, problematics, andwarranted olutions-of the still-dominantconsensus.If they do not do this,their argumentswill go unrecognizedand they will lead without followers.But the act of "translation" an become a kind of reductioad absurdum hattransmits the interests and insightsof the communitarianperspectiveonly

to the extent thatthey reinforce,and do not call intoquestion,the dominantconsensus.

An obvious and perhaps exemplary case in point is the currentwork ofKarl Deutsch as directorof the International nstituteof ComparativeSocialResearchat the ScienceCenterBerlin.Deutsch,I noted earlier,has trumpetedthe arrival of world modeling as a "new stage .., in the study of worldaffairs."Matchinghis verbal commitment with a commitment of energies,Deutsch's work at the Institute involves his overseeing of the GLOBUSmodeling project, the first majorworld modeling project developed underthe primaryguidanceof politicalscientists.At the same time, as I have alsonoted, Deutsch is, bar none, the foremost communitarian heoristof inter-nationalrelations n the postwarperiod.For instance, as Arend Lijpharthasobserved,Deutsch'sunderstandings f nationalismand integration,ncludinghisyet-to-be-fulfilled utlineof a programon pluralistic ecurity ommunities,represent a radicaldeparturefrom "traditionalist"perspectives,with theirHobbesian (and utilitarian) nterpretationsof internationalanarchyamong




states.95True to this communitarianoutlook, Deutsch's writings on worldmodelinghave beennoteworthy or their emphasison goalsand goal change,

the rolesof intentions,cognitive processes, and the developmentand break-down of consensusesthat unite and orient effectivepoliticalcoalitions.96

The work of the Wissenschaftszentrummodelingteam thus bears carefulwatching, or it confrontsprecisely he practicaldilemmaI havejust sketched.Will this most "political scientific"of world modeling projects lose its wayas it translates ts communitarian utlook ntothe termsof the liberalpositivistconsensusamongworldmodelers-a consensus hattoo oftenprefers echnicalsolutions over criticalquestions, and the comfortingillusion of a singularexternal truth over the liberatingdiscovery that we all bear responsibilityfor truth'smaking?Orwill the projectsucceedin the struggle o make roomin its models, and in its own self-understandings,or that most political ofprocesses:communicative nteractionand sociallearning?Will it make roomin its models for the role of social communicationand practicalknowledge,not just between and about the major sectors and institutions of globalexistence but in constituting he majorsectors and institutionsof globallife?Willit succeedin achievingrecognition or a modelingenterprise o oriented?The questions can be posed in more Deutschianterms:will the GLOBUS

project exemplify a tendency to driftamidst the currents of the dominantconsensus,utilitarian n its outlook and positivist in its methodologicalself-understandings?Or,alternatively,will the projectoffer an exampleof worldmodeling'sparticipation n humankind's struggle or freedomfrom hypos-tatized ideological constraints of its own making, for autonomy, for theenhancement of its capacity to gain control of itself and steer toward itsfuture?

Driftingor steering?The experienceof world modelingto date, includingthe contributionsweighed here, suggests that such questions need to be

asked. As world modeling matures, we can, I think, look forwardto theanswers.

95. Arend Lijphart,"KarlW. Deutsch and the New Paradigm n InternationalRelations,"in Merrittand Russett, FromNationalDevelopment.See also the Markovitsand Oliverarticlein the same volume-a comparisonof Deutschianand Durkheimianpositions.

96. See, e.g., his "On World Modelsand PoliticalScience."

Documents

1983 Review： The Eye of Power： The Politics of World Modeling.pdf