A good friend asked “which books should I read to understand the governance and its issues”, and I was baffled, because (a) Can you understand governance just by reading good books? What are the other mediums then? (b) Are people who are writing actually aware of these issues from an unbiased perspective? Here unbiased perspective is necessary because a bias changes the issue itself. (c) What is governance in general anyway? Is it just a national level governance which runs economies and big fat moneymakers, or governance is something more local which controls the dynamics of rules in our daily life? In layman corporate words, is it the CEO laid regulations of vision-mission or is it the HR who directs your daily schedule and sometimes even weekends?
Now, these questions are very difficult to answer. Thus, let’s go on it reverse order – from more basic questions to more concrete questions to help out my friend. So, what is governance – national or local? To understand this, I decided to break it down in a very traditional way, by starting what a dictionary would say. So governance is:
Fair enough, and by this definition, governance is mostly at the CEO level – i.e. national or hierarchically from the top. Now this governance has stayed so because of the way history has always given immense importance to power and was always written by people in power (knowledge or money). This is definitely not wrong if it helped for some time to gain peace/ bring food and help humans survive and progress. But in the same history what was not recorded were the history of commons. For example, panchayats in India or “local sovereignty rights” in Europe or the rules around dykes and agriculture in the Netherlands, have sustained communities without any interference from the governments/kings for ages. The only problem is there is no documentation of it. So was it just wiped out or submerged due to the powerful ones taking over, or was it not a success in its first place? Examples of panchayat raj do not say the former but also does not claim successfully about the latter.
So given the limited information we have, it might be a good idea to read for the top-level rules as governance now. The following are my favorites on those fronts, and also include the ones most recommended. I have arranged them in these orders as the questions posed – first those which talk about basic governance systems, globalization and changing trends (historically arranged in the order below).
Book on Politics by Aristotle
Book on constitution of democracy of the USA (+1) by Jefferson (and Madison)
Book on basics of communism by Karl Marx (Schumpeter has limited analysis)
Book on history of politics by Francis Fukuyama
Book on general governance systems by Schumpeter
Then, next comes those with more details and thus more bias but more stress to eliminate those biases, or at least more awareness of those biases (because details usually give one side of history/ story, as I have seen in such reads.) This is something unavoidable as well because if you get into details, you get into details from one side, and there are so many things to study, you cannot have one lifetime sufficient to get to the other side. Thus, obviously, my reading lists suggestions are heavily biased as well. I have one suggestion of such a possibly objective book on this front: Book on cultural impacts defining governances by Geert Hofstede. This is meant to be the most objective book (you see some stereotypical biases and genuinely I disliked it at points, but nevertheless there is an effort) it lays out the governance systems formation in different types of cultures through industries – resembling heavily their states.
Finally, talking about the governance issues, there are many famous books on those and the above-suggested books also partially share the issues. Below I will list those which are most famous due to the graveness of the problem (more general to more specific in order of the list below).
Book on fundamental social and political issues by Robert L. Heilbroner
Book on major failures in history in governance (+1) by Scott (Acemoğlu, Robinson)
Book on understanding foreign policies and issues (+1, +2, +3) by Noam Chomsky
Book on effects and issues of justice systems by John Rawls
Book on effects of shifting power by Joseph Nye, Jr.
Book on capitalism based economy issues by Thomas Piketty
Book on democracy issues in India by Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Book on rising issues and uncertain futures by Timothy Snyder
The answer to my friend’s questions lies above. But I personally do not want to stop here. Because policy issues are not the end, Rather, it helps start our (policy analysts and scientists) work to give policy solutions. For those, due to my limited exposure, and over-attachment to my birth-land and sciences, I follow the ideologies of Amartya Sen, Noam Chomsky, Nikola Tesla, Elinor Ostrom, to some extent Marx, and coming to the fiscal policies those of Raghuram Rajan. And thus I suggest some reads by them, or beyond (from more realistic to more dreamy solutions – in order):
Book on alternatives to reforms against capitalism by Rosa Luxemburg
Book on fiscal policy solutions affecting economy by Raghuram Rajan
Book on liberal government design by John Locke
Book with Resource based economy solution by Jacque Fresco
Finally, I believe myself that decentralization is the key solution to many policy issues and people I do not necessarily like but create a lot of buzz like Nassim Taleb, or people those I hear (blindly, sometimes) like Vitalik are proponents of them. For those interested to understand decentralization in bits and pieces from a historical perspective (Also they help in understanding decentralization as policy solutions): there are some nice blogs/books like below, but they are rather very academic – and do not talk to you like a normal human being. But nevertheless, an interested soul can always give these a try (arranging from basic reads to more complicated texts).
Blog by Jean Bonnal is very simple introduction
Book with stress on Small Towns and Decentralisation in India
Book on Uganda.
And coming to the final question, I have the cliche answer that: No, you cannot understand the governance by just reading books. Nevertheless, it is a far more (sometimes) trusted mode than the typical media consumption. I prefer some nice video channels like Big Think, Ted-Ed, School of Life, Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, PublicResources for understanding history and new trends, generally. I have my doubts about Vox due to its historical videos with many biases, but it passes a mar sometimes. For news I only have two sources: The Hindu and Al Jazeera. I loathe American media.
The most important tip (which works for me): I am very very very choosy about my (social) media consumption, I subscribe to very limited channels and follow limited people. Does that make me a hypocrite for my idea of being more broad and liberal? No. I test them, and if there is a very shallow or a one-sided discussion happening – I reject those mediums. This helps me gain more clear and quality knowledge about one system (in this case, governance) well.
Enjoy Reading!