ABSTRACT
Each mode of governance fails in its own way. Market failure, state failure, network failure, and solidarity failure have their own criteria of failure: inefficient allocation of scarce resources, ineffective collective goal attainment, failure to negotiate partnership goals, betrayal of unconditional commitments. Each is also subject to attempts to improve the efficiency of markets, of effective collective goal attainment, of continued ability to negotiate network commitments, and to enhance conditions for solidarity. Besides these first-order responses to governance failure, there are also second-order responses that attempt to rebalance the weight of different modes of governance. These can be called metagovernance. This also fails because there is no point from which the conditions for metagovernance success can be identified unambiguously and without contestation. In this sense metagovernance also fails. This poses the question, what lessons can be learnt from governance and metagovernance failure? These are identified in terms of the need for requisite variety, requisite reflexivity, and requisite irony and the need to learn from failure.
