Institutional Epistemology of Open Order

Building on work of Helene Landemore, studies in division of cognitive labour, New Diversity Theory and Ostromian political economy, I present the institutional structure of an Open Order, and show how it outperforms representative democracy, minimal state and technocracy in solving complex problems due to its epistemically reliable use of diversity and collective intelligence.

Open Order is composed of two levels of governance responsive to two types of complex governance problems. First, Open Society upgraded with minimal epistemic infrastructure is epistemically reliable in responding to “wicked problems”, in which sustained redundant diversity conditions social learning. Second, Open Democracy upgraded with issue-based non-geographic evaluative subsidiarity is reliable in responding to “learning problems”, in which solution discovery is conditioned on transient diversity in the deliberative phase and the evaluative reliability of the problem’s “natural polity” in decision-making phase.