Found your interpretation of the Kenyan crisis very insightful and also that of Sri Lanka. Just some questions, what is happening in the system? Who are the actors? What are the incentives? Would be interesting to understand the bigger picture around the systems. Am currently working on something similar that’s why am intrigued. Using causal loops looking at the negative effects and positive and trying to understand the patterns, different effects and how different factors ie. Debt, fiscal policies etc are undermining, reinforcing and how different effects impact on the economic system as a whole.
thank you! - and all good questions. I guess this is where my being rude about long lists and narrative reports comes back to bite me as the system sketches also have obvious limits - especially when drawn quickly, so aiming to be timely rather than exhaustive.
On what is happening, actors, incentives etc I see the system picture as a starting point but then I literally put my finger on the component and talk about/get people to talk about exactly these things.
The Kenya diagram gets into this a bit - drawing on Ken Opalo's analysis of debt, whereas the Sri Lanka diagram was more static and 'architectural'. However, my aim would be to further develop this kind of system diagram and sub systems, and draw in different kinds of data - such as naming key actors, interests, and enabling and disabling forces for different system outcomes (this introduces more political economy into the system).
I think this takes us towards 'ecosystem' models which, borrowing from environmental science, would also show flows - so perhaps flows of money through system (in place of the carbon, energy, water flows common in bio-environmental ecosystem models).
Found your interpretation of the Kenyan crisis very insightful and also that of Sri Lanka. Just some questions, what is happening in the system? Who are the actors? What are the incentives? Would be interesting to understand the bigger picture around the systems. Am currently working on something similar that’s why am intrigued. Using causal loops looking at the negative effects and positive and trying to understand the patterns, different effects and how different factors ie. Debt, fiscal policies etc are undermining, reinforcing and how different effects impact on the economic system as a whole.
thank you! - and all good questions. I guess this is where my being rude about long lists and narrative reports comes back to bite me as the system sketches also have obvious limits - especially when drawn quickly, so aiming to be timely rather than exhaustive.
On what is happening, actors, incentives etc I see the system picture as a starting point but then I literally put my finger on the component and talk about/get people to talk about exactly these things.
The Kenya diagram gets into this a bit - drawing on Ken Opalo's analysis of debt, whereas the Sri Lanka diagram was more static and 'architectural'. However, my aim would be to further develop this kind of system diagram and sub systems, and draw in different kinds of data - such as naming key actors, interests, and enabling and disabling forces for different system outcomes (this introduces more political economy into the system).
I think this takes us towards 'ecosystem' models which, borrowing from environmental science, would also show flows - so perhaps flows of money through system (in place of the carbon, energy, water flows common in bio-environmental ecosystem models).