Conceptualizing Destructive Coordination

This chapter conceptualizes the destructive mode of coordination as a social coordination through intimidation, threat, and the use of coercive means. The key role of parallel institutions, confiscatory measures, indeterminate property rights, and res nullius will be underlined. Different examples of destructive coordination will be provided to illustrate its specific political and economic rationale. Destructive coordination (ordered anarchy) will be discussed and compared with other types of coordination using two examples: traffic circles (roundabouts) and prisons. Appropriation through pirating will be discussed as a further mechanism of destructive coordination. Biopiracy (blood patenting) will be first examined to clarify the relationships between destructive coordination and the institutionalization of property rights. Then, I will tackle the question of rivalrous or complementary relationships between different modes of coordination and focus on the articulation and disarticulation among them in the absence of a dominant mode. It will be argued that destructive coordination should be conceived as a mechanism that emerges in a period marked by parallel institutions. It may persist but may also provide the soil where the other modes of coordination may take root.