Operationalizing The Jones Model through COG

[Bob's World]

Col. Jones,

By "control" I generally mean the ability to enforce your governance (whatever it is) and prevent competitors. In your example it's not enough, in my view, to simply provide a justice system - even one that's perceived as superior to the Taliban's - one must also have the capacity to enforce adherence to that system's decisions as well as to credibly prevent competition ranging from vigilantism to a full-blown shadow government.

In other words, building a system of justice is not the same thing as actually providing justice. For the latter you need much more than judicial institutions. "If you build it, they will come" does not apply.

We can build courthouses, we can train people to operate a judicial system and teach them the concepts of law, etc. All that is wasted if the Taliban can come in, post a bunch of night letters and assassinate a few judges as examples. If you can't prevent the Taliban from doing that, then what credibility do you have with the populace? Why should they trust your justice system if you can't even do that?

So I'm skeptical that it's possible to focus on one discrete part of government (ie. Justice) and work only on that. I'm skeptical that one government good can be singled out and improved or implemented without improving the governance system more generally. Governance is probably more interrelated that it initially appears.

Read the paper. There are 4 causal perceptions as assessed through the eyes of the populace. Does the populace perceive that the system of law as applied to them to be just. In the example the way determined to help build this perception is through providing quality justice workers, retaining them through good pay, keeping them safe in secure homes and offices, and putting them where the populace has access. It's just an example, not a universal cure for perceptions of injustice. You must assess all perceptions and strive to work all of them.

I would argue, however that you have "control" as a first order effect or even a task; whereas I see it as a second order effect. So you might put is in the CR box, I would have it in the CC box. IF one can produce Good Governance, then one will have "control" over their populace. One can have very Poor Governance indeed, and exert extreme control (task) over the populace to keep them in line. That is no state I want to live in. You just described a dictatorship. Oh, like the Saudis. They control the populace. No place I'd want to be a citizen of.

Here in Afghanistan we don't focus on building perceptions of Justice, in fact we are focusing on imposing "Rule of Law" instead. God how I hate that phrase, and I am a former Prosecutor. It smacks of the "control" you speak of. I for one do not want to live in a state that exists to control my behavior. Obviously they all do to some degree, or it is Anarchy, but it is all in the degree and the means applied. Good Governance is a nuance one must always be tuned into, or you can quickly find that what once worked is no longer producing the same effect and you are slipping in the wrong direction.