Dan Greenwood, Effective Governance and the Political Economy of Coordination

In Effective Governance and the Political Economy of Coordination, Dan Greenwood explores the challenges and opportunities of policymaking, emphasizing what he terms “coordinative effectiveness” (p. 2). Defined as the ability of policymakers to select appropriate means to achieve their goals and ensure that policy outcomes align with their intended objectives, coordinative effectiveness requires a system of governance capable of overcoming epistemic and incentive compatibility issues that often lead to a misalignment between a policy’s design and implementation, ultimately ensuring outcomes “reflect the ends sought by decision-makers” (p. 94).

Greenwood’s analysis of effective governance draws on key insights from the Austrian, Bloomington, and Virginian schools of political economy. From the Austrian school, he highlights the epistemic challenges inherent to both markets and policymaking; from the Bloomington school, he emphasizes the importance of a multi-layered approach to institutional analysis; and from the Virginia school, he illustrates the importance of incentives in shaping decision-making. Greenwood weaves these perspectives together into a multidimensional framework for understanding the complexities of effective governance, with a belief that incorporating these ideas could help policymakers and scholars in political science, public administration, and political economy better address social dilemmas.

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