Coordinators: Wiebke Denecke (MIT), Johannes Makar (Harvard University), Michael Puett (Harvard University)
The Idea: Motivations & Scope
Worldwide, political consensus is eroding at alarming rates. Institutions which once embodied political accord are under threat, while new technologies such as TikTok and ChatGPT are reshaping human communication in ways we have yet to fully grasp. More than ever, our experience of the everyday feels unsettled. In times of both extraordinary uncertainty and opportunity, how can we build toward a stable future for humans and the planet?
In this pillar we study models of governance that have historically promoted cooperation, human flourishing, and social justice. With new comparative knowledge of concepts and practices of governance in deep time and space, we can analyze why political systems break down—and how we can build them to perform better and endure.
Governance has often been studied in an isolated fashion, either with an undue emphasis on Euro-American perspectives in the Social Sciences or within cultural silos of Area Studies and other Humanities disciplines. This pillar bridges disciplinary divides in an effort to examine models of good governance that have withstood the test of time and can contribute to a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable political future for human societies.
Selected case studies will be drawn from world history, as well as literature, and philosophy: from the Persian Book of Kings to the acutely resonant allegories of Orwell’s 1984, from Confucian political ethics and Aristotle’s Politics to Egyptian wisdom literature or Arabic mirror for princes. By pooling the expertise of historians, political theorists, and literary scholars, we will explore global traditions of good governance in relation to current political trends and ideological shifts, and advocate for them to educational, political, and diplomatic institutions.
Guiding Questions
- What are the concepts, narratives, and symbolic frameworks that have shaped governance across different regions and historical periods? What patterns of continuity and rupture can we observe in historical visions of good (and also bad) governance?
- How have concepts of governance evolved over the past millennia as peoples and cultures interacted and ideas traveled across borders? What mechanisms—including trade, diplomacy, war, or intellectual exchange—facilitated these transformations and how can we leverage them for today’s world?
- How have humans responded to environmental, economic, social, and political crises—and which models have proven effective? In what ways have moments of upheaval served as catalysts for reimagining governance, both its successes and its failures?
- What roles have cultural practices such as diplomacy, knowledge exchange, athletics, poetry, music, or religious beliefs and practices played in fostering unity? How can we turn supposedly “soft power” strategies into more impactful “hard power” tools in an age of global interdependence of people, governments, economies, the environment, and the planet?
- How have theories and practices of governance across world history intersected with other foundational human pursuits that underpin societies, in particular education? How can our new comparative knowledge of human governance across world history inspire more consensual forms of civil society and civic education?
Goals & Actions
- Study and conceptualize theories and practices of governance comparatively across the world’s diverse cultures and in deep time
- Share our insights broadly about models of governance that have historically promoted cooperation, human flourishing, and social justice and collaborate with educational and political institutions, media outlets, NGOs and transnational organizations to develop more effective and locally tailored strategies to put this deeper understanding into action
- Develop a fuller understanding of political and diplomatic crises around the world that are rooted in deep local and regional histories and create sharper tools to address these in their full local, regional, and global complexity
PROJECT1: Comparative Diplomacies for Global Governance
PROJECT2: Three Millennia of Diplomatic Craft in East Asia
PROJECT3: Athletes, Equality & Diplomacy