Societal Threefolding and Good Governance: Part III

Nicanor Perlas
02 March 2009

In Part I, we saw the need, especially for bearers of the new politics, to go beyond the traditional checks and balance of power as originally envisioned in creating the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of government. In Part II, we outlined the importance of a new concept of governance involving the state, civil society, and business, that would almost be impossible for totalitarian pseudo-democracies to co-opt. In this final installment, we will give some examples of how the societal threefolding approach to good governance has started revolutionizing the way global and local problems are addressed and solved.

The Example of the UN Millennium Summit

The United Nations recognizes the importance of bringing in all the key stakeholders of society in achieving good governance. And the UN is walking its talk.

At its Millennium Summit in 2000, where it set its millennium goals to address world problems, the UN mobilized its version of societal threefolding. Its approach calls for the activation of “global public policy networks” or “tri-sectoral” networks consisting of government, business, and civil society, to solve world hunger, climate change, deforestation, violence, and the dozens of other problems that plague the world.

Kofi Annan, then General Secretary of the United Nations, required all UN agencies to implement this new tri-sectoral approach to addressing world problems. In addition, the UN even partially funded a graduate course in Cambridge University, United Kingdom, to teach tri-sectoral skills. The UN realized that the new approach of tri-sectoral networks requires a new set of paradigms, approaches, and skills to make it effective in the world.

This innovative approach was partially influenced by the joint advocacy of Philippine civil society and government and the practice of societal threefolding processes at the 1998 UN Commission for Sustainable Development (UNCSD) annual meeting. In that year, the Philippines was chair of the UNCSD in the person of Dr. Cielito Habito, who was then Cabinet Secretary of Socio-Economic Planning and Chairperson of the Philippine Council for Sustainable Development (PCSD). And he invited his civil society co-chair to be part of the Philippine Delegation at the UNCSD and to assist him in reaching out to global civil society leaders attending the UNCSD.

As part of its unique contribution to the UNCSD, the Philippine Chair, in the person of Dr. Cielito Habito, invited global civil society and business leaders to dialogue directly in the presence of government ministers at the UN. While the innovation took some bumpy turns, in the end, the UNCSD carried on the Philippine innovation in its future meetings and became one of the starting points for the UN’s support for tri-sectoral and global public policy networks.

GAN-Net and “Societal Learning”

The proliferation of tri-sectoral and global public policy networks around the world stimulated the formation of the Global Action Network or GAN-Net. The primary focus of this new meta-network is to provide scientific and training support for the various global tri-sectoral networks that tackled various world problems, including water, dams, biodiversity, global climate change, and a host of other concerns.

GAN-Net has grown in size through the years. It is now a network of over 40 global action networks (hence the name GAN-Net). They have formed a “community of practice” among themselves; that is, the leaders of these global networks have started coming together to exchange experiences and learning on how to make tri-sectoral work more effective in addressing world issues.

GAN-Net calls its approach, “societal learning”. This approach recognizes that issues are embedded in a complex web of economic, political, and cultural factors and cannot be solved without the involvement of key institutions in culture (civil society), politics (government), and the economy (businesses).

GAN-Net fosters dialogue and collaborative approaches among the three key powers of society. In the process of dialogue and collaboration, each key actor begins to learn the perspective of the whole. Dialogue participants begin to see the dynamic web of relationships that constitutes society and that drives specific issue areas including climate change, agriculture, deforestation, desertification, biodiversity erosion, and other burning issues. When the key actors begin to appreciate the dynamic, structural, and social complexities embedded in the various challenge areas, they can then begin to craft creative solutions to world problems.

Center for Social Partnerships

The societal threefolding approach to good governance also finds its own independent expression in the Center for Social Partnerships (CSP), an institution established by the Government of Denmark. The CSP is one of the world’s most advanced attempts to seriously involve and institutionalize civil society and business participation in the formation of government policy. The CSP has attracted a lot of attention not only in Denmark, but also all over Europe.

Interestingly, European corporations are increasingly being attracted to the CSP approach. Acknowledging regulatory, civil society, stockholder and employee pressure, an increasing number of European corporations are trying to find mutually satisfying approaches to advance their “triple bottom-line”: social, ecological and financial sustainability. Business executives are increasingly realizing that their triple bottom-line goals cannot be achieved without a meaningful engagement with either civil society movements or governments.

“Collaborative Leadership” and “Creative Capitalism”

In January 2008, a version of societal threefolding got prominent support from a totally unexpected quarter, Microsoft founder, Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) calls its version of threefolding “collaborative leadership”. The WEF reported that its annual meeting in 2008 in Davos, Switerland, closed “with a call by business, government and civil society leaders for a new brand of collaborative and innovative leadership to address the challenges of globalization, particularly the pressing problems of conflict, terrorism, climate change and water conservation.” The WEF is an annual meeting of thousands of CEOs of the world’s largest corporations, heads of state, and influential leaders of global civil society.

Bill Gates, who attended this WEF meeting, calls his version of threefolding, “creative capitalism”. ‘Creative capitalism is an approach where governments, business and NGOs [his shortcut for civil society] work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit or gain recognition doing work that eases the world’s inequalities’.

A Cautionary Word on Global Threefolding Developments

These developments call for both excitement and caution. They generate excitement because threefolding continues to make inroads at the highest level of articulation, policy crafting, and decision-making. If there is an authentic understanding for threefolding at the level of individuals and institutions that currently shape the fate of nations and the world, then this development can only generate excitement and optimism on a large scale and for years to come.

At the same time, the call by WEF for its version of threefolding also raises not only serious concerns but alarm bells. By virtue of its resources, political clout, and media/intellectual power, WEF can emasculate a very potent approach to world transformation and render it servile to the powers that extract benefits for the elite at the expense of billions. In short threefolding will be used to advance unsustainable elite globalization instead of creating sustainable societies and a more living planet.

Bill Gates’ understanding of threefolding as contained in his call for “creative capitalism” is an example of this potential to emasculate. In Gate’s version, civil society is there to serve market forces. And the major motive for engaging in “creative capitalism” is the profit motive plus social recognition.

This is how Bill Gates puts it. ‘If we’re going to find a sustainable way to help those who can’t pay [that is, the poor], we have to use self-interest and caring – capitalism and philanthropy – to direct attention to people who have been left behind.’

This statement clearly spells out the trap behind the call for “creative capitalism”. Gates wants to appeal to lower motives to achieve higher ends. In the TruthForce! version of threefolding, the higher ideals of humanity create the context and motive for exemplary and service-oriented action, not the other way round.

There is an implicit battle for the true image of the human being behind these two seemingly similar approaches to creating a better world. The Gates’ approach basically sees the human being as egotistic at its core and therefore one should appeal to that egotism, through the lure of more profits and social recognition. On the other hand, authentic societal threefolding recognizes the reality of a spiritual Self whose true nature is authentic compassion and service to the world. And within this context, as far as business is concerned, financial sustainability will emerge as a by-product of serving authentic needs of human beings, and not as the primary outcome of self-interest.

For those truly concerned about authentic societal threefolding and good governance, the time for action to advance it at the national and global levels is now. Many powerful world leaders are finally getting exposed to the general concept of threefolding. They are in the beginning process of their education in this area. It is of strategic importance for those, who think they truly understand authentic threefolding, to help leaders discern between manipulative and authentic threefolding.

Advancing this educative effort is important. The discernment of the fundamental difference between self-centered and authentic threefolding will determine whether egotistically-oriented threefolding and good governance will dominate the world and create more problems or whether authentic threefolding and good governance will unleash creative and encompassing energies that will truly heal the ills of the planet.

What New Politicians Can Institute and Avoid

Based on these global experiences, the new breed of politicians, can jumpstart the new governance by institutionalizing the participation of civil society and business in its policy making, monitoring, and implementing processes. This will not be token participation but a real nuts and bolts operation. After all, the Constitution and the Local Government Code already mandate such participation. And societal threefolding is already embedded in official government documents including Philippine Agenda 21 and SIAD, A Guidebook for the Operationalization of Philippine Agenda 21.

The problem, however, is that, as usual, trapos always have a trick up their sleeves. So, they design the token involvement of pseudo civil society groups and friendly business interests in their local development councils. Civil society refers to fake NGOs as BINGOs, if they are business initiated NGOs, and GRINGOs, if they government established NGOs. If BINGOs, GRINGOs and other fake civil society organizations dominate the local council, then it will be politics as usual. Then trapos will be able to overcome the potential of the societal threefolding approach to good governance.

The solution, then, is for the new breed of politicians to ensure the involvement of genuine civil society and business participation. In this way, the real, new and more formidable balance of power can be activated. Genuine politicians can then pass meaningful and effective laws and sustain these reforms even beyond their terms. And, in the end, it can only benefit the authentic bearer of the new politics and, even more important, the public good that he or she has vowed to serve.

Societal Threefolding at the Local Government Level

Some civil society leaders understand this societal threefolding approach. They have convinced some candidates and progressive mayors to try this new approach to good governance in their towns. The results are nothing short of outstanding.

In the towns of Batad and Bingawen in Iloilo Province, the mayor agreed to try out this innovation in good governance. Under the leadership of Iloilo Caucus of Development NGOs (Iloilo CODE), civil society crafted a People’s Agenda. They sent this agenda to all the candidates. Those candidates who agreed with the People’s Agenda signed a Covenant with civil society and business representatives of the town. They pledged to follow the agenda if they got elected.

Once elected, the new mayor implemented the Covenant. He based his budget allocations according to the Covenant and people participated in the formulation of those budget allocations. Then, every six months, the mayor gave his report to the town, highlighting achievements and gaps in connection with his covenant with the people. Invariably the performance of the mayor dramatically improved and he successfully ran for re-election twice.

Because of the involvement of genuine civil society, the town of Batad still implements the Covenant seven years after it was started. Every six months the mayor gives his report. And the people really look forward to this event. It has become the main event of the town—a town that is becoming more and more progressive.

This innovation in good governance has won two prominent global awards. The World Bank cited it as the second most important governance innovation in the world. And CIVICUS, the global assembly of civil society organizations and networks, cited the Batad and Bingawen examples as something to implement globally.

The Temptation of Civil Society

For a long time, civil society has stayed outside the political arena. But increasingly civil society is getting fed up with the stonewalling tactics used by trapos to thwart well-researched and reasonable policy proposals that could solve major problems. Thus civil society is increasingly thinking of moving directly into the political arena.

But from the above considerations, it is clear that this move will be a strategic mistake. Civil society cannot collapse itself into a purely political movement. This will destroy the new balance of power required to make the new kind of good governance functional. A significant majority of civil society leaders and organizations needs to remain in their important work in the cultural sphere of civil society.

The German Greens made this mistake. They transformed the vibrant environmental movement of Germany into a political party. The results have been disastrous.

In 2004, the German Greens were at the height of their political power. They were now in the mainstream. The Greens had four cabinet members in the coalition government of Schroeder. The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Joscha Fischer, a member of the Green Party, was the most popular German politician, even more popular than Schroeder himself.

But in 2004, the equivalent of the CEO of the German Greens had only one thing to say. Externally we look powerful. But, in reality, we have never felt so powerless in our whole existence. We have made so many compromises as minority members of the coalition government of Schroeder that we have eroded our basic beliefs and principles.

It was therefore not surprising that members of the Green Party, in one of their annual meetings, threw red paint on Joscha Fischer for abandoning Green principles for the horse-trading of traditional politics. Furthermore, the environmental agenda of Germany was held hostage by the internal compromises that the Greens had made with traditional politics. They were forced to compromise. Green politicians could not rely on the backing of an independent civil society force outside government to maneuver their way out of the compromises and horse-trading of traditional politics. The transformation of the environmental movement into a political party had dealt an almost fatal blow to German civil society. So there was no independent and strong civil society around to support the Greens when they most needed that support.

The Task and the Promise

The politics of 2010 is more than just choosing and supporting candidates who would embody the new politics. It is also about being able to set up a new approach to good governance that would ensure that all the promising policies and programs for the people get passed and implemented. For this to happen, the new breed of politician has to be fluent in the new language of a tri-polar world, in the reality of a threefolded world. They have to be adept in harnessing the resources and the power not only of governments, but also of business and civil society, and employ this unified power, not to subvert society, but to serve it with vision, passion, depth and effectiveness.