Large System Architecture
Policy Design for Large Social Systems
January 2021 · By Walter McClure
If the organizations in a macrosystem are chronically malperforming . . . not performing as society wants . . . it is almost always because the fundamental system structure is flawed and rewards the undesired performance and punishes the desired performance. Difficult as it is, there is no enduring remedy except to restructure the larger system (“macrosystem redesign”) so that it rewards the desired performance and punishes the undesired performance.
The policy discipline to accomplish this I term Large System Architecture (LSA), the idea being that if you wish a system to perform well for society, you must intentionally architect it to do so rather than let the system develop by topsy and historical happenstance.
Policy Design for Large Social Systems is available for print and Kindle on
Amazon.
Thinking Out the How
April 2021 · By Ted Kolderie
This book of recollections, covering the author’s time in public affairs here, is mainly about Minnesota’s experience in changing and modernizing its public systems.
Section Six tells the story of the transformation of public education in the state, from the conventional franchised public utility into today’s range of public options. This new edition brings the education story up to date through 2021.
Readers might find other chapters useful in explaining the civic structure that makes major change possible.
Thinking Out the How is available as a
free PDF here. Print copies are available on
Amazon .
Large System Architecture: Toward a more systematic discipline for policy design and analysis of large social systems (McClure 2017, first RAND lecture)
Dr. McClure will outline a general theory and systematic methodology, Large System Architecture (LSA), for analyzing, designing and politically implementing policy to improve the performance of large social systems such as e.g. education, health care, the economy, etc.
Architecting Large Social Systems (McClure 2016)
