Seeing Like a State: How Tops-Down Management Styles Create Disaster in Complex Systems | William Hurst

William Hurst is all too familiar with the disasters that have resulted from tops-down governance. William has documented firsthand the chaos that ensues when decision-makers remain isolated from the realities of life on the ground in his decades of fieldwork in China and Indonesia. In this episode, Dart and William explore how companies experience similar problems when they try and optimize complex systems for narrow outcomes.

William is the Chong Hua Professor of Chinese Development at Cambridge where his research focuses on Chinese and Indonesian politics. He is the author of Ruling Before the Law: the Politics of Legal Regimes in China and Indonesia and The Chinese Worker After Socialism.

In this episode, Dart and William discuss:
- Seeing Like a State, and other works from James C. Scott
- How behavioral economics has reshaped our thinking of “the rational actor”
- The failure of governments to optimize complex systems for specific outcomes
- High modern authoritarianism, and how it shows up in our companies
- The inseparable relationship between states, coercion, and violence
- The limitations of tops-down management styles to govern at scale
- How good intentions led to the starvation of 35 million people in China
- The unstable future of China’s economy
- The qualities that make work meaningful
- And other topics…

William Hurst is the Chong Hua Professor of Chinese Development at Cambridge where he works on labor politics, contentious politics, political economy, and the politics of law and legal institutions, principally in China and Indonesia. Prior to Cambridge, William spent 8 years at Northwestern University where he served as the Professor of Political Science. Before Northwestern, William was a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford and an assistant professor at the Universities of Texas and Toronto.

William is the author of several books including Ruling Before the Law: the Politics of Legal Regimes in China and Indonesia, and The Chinese Worker After Socialism. He is currently completing a book manuscript on the comparative politics of law and legal institutions in China and Indonesia since 1949.

Resources Mentioned:
Seeing Like a State, by James C. Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp/0300078153
Weapons of the Weak, by James C. Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Weak-Everyday-Peasant-Resistance/dp/0300036418
Moral Economy of the Peasant, by James C. Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Moral-Economy-Peasant-Rebellion-Subsistence/dp/0300021909
Against the Grain, by James C. Scott: https://www.amazon.com/Against-Grain-History-Earliest-States-ebook/dp/B0747RTP2W
Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance, by Richard A. Horsley: https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Transcripts-Arts-Resistance-Applying/dp/9004130535
Professor William Hurst at the University of Cambridge: https://www.devstudies.cam.ac.uk/ourpeople/williamhurst
Scholarly publicati

Work with Dart:
Dart is the CEO and co-founder of the work design firm 11fold. Build work that makes employees feel alive, connected to their work, and focused on what’s most important to the business. Book a call at 11fold.com.