Or, complex social systems as patterns and processes of relating in a landscape of power, incentives and institutions
“The system is not made in its parts. Where is the jungle? Is the jungle in the trees? Is it in the soil? Is it in the insects? Is it in the reptiles? It’s in the relationship between all of these organisms.” (Nora Bateson, Leviathan (film), by Alex Beiner - 1hr: 7 mins: 40 secs).
In this piece, I continue exploring how an understanding of the causal dynamics of behaviour at sites of positive deviance in complex social systems - including systems of corruption - can be used to inform policies intended to shape the behaviours and relationships that constitute such systems and drive their dynamics (Part 1, an introduction, is here. Part 2, on my work with SOAS-ACE on navigating the political economy of corruption, is here. Part 3, on identifying entry points in transnational systems of corruption is here. Part 4, on political economy analysis and islands of integrity is here.)
Combining perspectives ***
After many years of exploring how social systems change, I’ve had a bit of a breakthrough. I’ve always thought that the landscape of power, incentives and institutions shapes the behaviour of actors and in turn the dynamics of social systems; well, for at least 40 years - think O’ Level Geography, Thatcherism (“there is no such thing as society” 😡), and the Miners’ Strike in the UK! Political economy matters.
More recently, and decades later than I would have wished, I’ve realized that it is the qualities of relationships, and the patterns and processes of relating that actors knit together, and that knit actors together, that make social systems more than the sum of their parts. And most recently, that combining these two perspectives - one that focuses on power, incentives and institutions, and another that focuses on relationships, communication and learning - may be a very helpful way of understanding complex social systems, and informing our engagement in them (aka life).
This piece shares some reflections about this realization, and about the value of focusing on how relationships (and behaviours) both reflect, reshape and become part of the landscape of power, incentives and institutions, and the context for future rounds of acting, relating, communicating and learning. So, to recap …
*** Combining is also a wonderful book, full of entanglements and emergence, by Nora Bateson - see my piece on ecologies, words and engagement from 2024, and, in the references, my highlights from the book.
A journey of connection and bridging
At the same time as the SOAS-ACE work on navigating the political economy of corruption was coming to an end, and I was chatting with Søren Haldrup about identifying entry points (Part 3) and Dieter Zinnbauer about political economy analysis and islands of integrity (Part 4), I was also finishing off a piece on reflective relational practice. (The video of my May 2025 presentation to the Local Systems Community is here and my slides from a June 2025 presentation at the Towards Relational Public Services conference are here).
Motivated by the idea that it is relationships, learning and associated processes of emergence that make social systems more than - and qualitatively different from - the sum of their parts, my short piece on reflective relational practice proposed an approach to collaboratively assessing the quality of relationships along a number of key dimensions (see Figure 1), using a rubric to guide that assessment (See also, Graciela Selaimen on indicators of relational quality, here; and, the work of Anna Birney and colleagues which, with echoes of many indigenous ways of being, sees social systems as patterns of relationships and processes of relating - references here, and Perplexity summary here).
Dimensions of relationships, from my piece on Reflective Relational Practice
With the SOAS-ACE work and the conversations with Søren and Dieter fresh in my mind, an idea which I’d been tentatively exploring for a number of years began to crystallize. I began to think that there might be value in building a bridge between perspectives and approaches that focus on learning from the political economy of positive deviance for systems change, and approaches that focus on the role that relationships, communication and learning play in making social systems more than the sum of their parts, and shaping their evolution (See my April and May posts on reflecting on the dynamics of complex systems and power, incentives, relationships and learning, as well as a video where I share some preliminary thinking, below).
Watch on YouTube: Political economy, relationships and learning
That is, that efforts to understand the dynamics of complex social systems need to pay attention both to how power, incentives, and institutions shape actors’ behaviours, and to the relationships that emerge from actors’ behaviours. These relationships play a crucial role; enabling collaborative learning and sensemaking amongst the actors involved as they navigate complex social landscapes, and knitting the social system - a system full of differences, disagreements and conflict, as well as commonalities, trust and cooperation - together. This in turn enhances the adaptive capacities of those actors, and of the system as a whole, and reshapes the landscape, or context, for future rounds of action.
Social systems are not machines. Rather, they are living ecosystems, where the quality of relationships amongst people and organizations shapes whether patterns of positive deviance can take root and spread, and influences the adaptive capacity and resilience of the social system. (See the work of Dan Honig and colleagues on Relational State Capacity, and my summarized highlights, for a complementary take on relationships and capacity).
Putting this into practice
This stream of thinking is very much a work in progress; I’m actively exploring whether and how it might make sense to integrate the various stages of the SOAS-ACE process into the four dimensions of relationships from my note on reflective relational practice. If this strikes a chord for you, please do drop me a line.
For now, here’s a simple 4-step framework for a relational political economy approach which analyzes the dynamics of complex social systems in ways that bring together analysis of micro-level relational dynamics and macro-level structural factors, and their co-evolution:
- Observing actors’ behaviours, particularly those aspects of behaviour that seem to have a bearing on the focal challenge, for instance, the diversion of public resources for private gain (corruption) in a particular policy domain;
- Identifying sites of positive deviance, where patterns of behaviours, processes of relating, and the emergent dynamics of the system seem to be unfolding in directions that seem useful for addressing the focal challenge;
- Understanding the drivers of those behaviours, relationships and dynamics, with sites of positive deviance a particularly useful entry point for learning, and developing that understanding;
- Leveraging that understanding to inform the design of policies to encourage, amplify and extend the positively deviant behaviours, as well as the relationships and learning, that have the potential to shift the dynamics and enhance the capacity of the system.
As Dan Honig explains in his work on relational state capacity, this is about taking the pocket of positively deviant behaviours and relationships and making it into a full garment, and, I might add, doing that in ways that tailor the garment to the context to ensure it’s a good fit. So, for instance, identifying a community group that is doing a great job of helping refugees to feel at home in a new city, understanding the “magic” of the approach being taken, and using that understanding to encourage and extend the success of that group.
Or, as John Paul Lederach puts it in a recent piece on flying like bees and threading like spiders, identifying and learning from “small pockets of unusual relationships that make a difference”, and doing the “local stitching” that, to continue the tailoring, “gathers the whole” by enhancing the circulatory system through meaningful connections.
Put simply, positive deviance and healthy systems are about relationships, as well as behaviours. So, when you are exploring the dynamics of a complex social system, and seeking to learn from sites of positive deviance, it’s important to consider not only the landscape of power, incentives and institutions that shapes actors’ behaviours, but also the quality of relationships that support communication and learning amongst actors in that landscape, and in turn enhance their adaptive capacities to navigate and move forward effectively in a complex landscape.
And remember, “The most important unit of analysis in a system is not the part (e.g. individual, organization, or institution), it’s the relationship between the parts.” (Brenda Zimmerman, quoted in The relational work of systems change, Katherine Milligan, Juanita Zerda, John Kania).
Next up, I bring together the various threads of my explorations in the landscape of positively deviant behaviours and relationships.
Nora Bateson, the meadow-verse, from the book Combining
First published on LinkedIn, 31 July 2025.