The Hidden Architecture of Power

Coordination: A Cross-Disciplinary History, Theoretical Foundations, and the Emergence of Coordination: the Fabric of Power (CFP)

1. Introduction: What Is Coordination?

Coordination refers broadly to the process by which multiple elements—whether individuals, systems, actions, or components—are aligned toward achieving a coherent outcome. Definitions vary across disciplines. In management studies, coordination implies the efficient alignment of workflows and responsibilities. In biology, it encompasses the synchronized actions of cells or organisms in response to internal and external stimuli. In social theory, it points to the harmonization of human behavior toward shared objectives or collective goals.

One of the most enduring challenges in coordination theory is captured by what neurophysiologist Nikolai Bernstein called the problem of degrees of freedom—how complex organisms or systems select a single effective movement or action from an infinite array of possibilities. This Bernstein Problem is not merely a challenge for motor control but for all coordinated behavior. Whether in a physical body, a social collective, or a multi-agent system, the fundamental tension remains: how to reduce complexity without eliminating adaptability.

As such, understanding coordination is not only a matter of utility but of critical importance to navigating contemporary challenges across domains.

2. A History of Coordination Research Across Disciplines

The historical development of coordination theory spans a wide array of disciplines, each grappling with its own version of the Bernstein Problem—how to produce reliable, purposeful action from a context of uncertainty and multiplicity.

In management and organizational theory, early figures like Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol viewed coordination through the lens of central control and optimization. Taylor's scientific management sought to reduce uncertainty through strict standardization, an approach that effectively attempted to eliminate degrees of freedom. Fayol, though more nuanced, still emphasized top-down planning.

Chester Barnard’s 1938 theory of cooperative systems marked a shift: coordination was no longer simply imposed but emergent from communication and shared willingness. Yet even here, the challenge was clear: how to align actors with different interpretations, incentives, and capacities in a coherent system—an institutional version of the Bernstein Problem.

Cognitive science, particularly through Edwin Hutchins’ theory of distributed cognition, expanded the unit of analysis to include tools, social roles, and environments. Hutchins’ famous study of ship navigation demonstrated how coordination among a crew emerged through continuous micro-adjustments and shared artifacts—an embodied response to the Bernstein Problem that emphasizes emergence over control.

Systems theory and cybernetics, from Norbert Wiener to Niklas Luhmann, approached coordination through feedback loops. Control, in this view, is not about suppressing variability but harnessing it adaptively. Luhmann’s autopoietic social systems further articulated how systems maintain internal coherence through recursive communication—an abstract, yet potent response to the uncertainty inherent in social coordination.

In biology, coordination is a fundamental problem of life itself. From the flocking of birds to the firing of neurons, coherence arises not from central command but from dynamic interaction rules. The work of Maturana and Varela on autopoiesis explicitly recognized the Bernstein Problem in living systems: coordination must emerge from within, through continuous coupling with the environment.

Economics and game theory formalized coordination as a strategic problem. David Lewis's theory of conventions and Thomas Schelling’s work on focal points showed how mutual expectations stabilize choices. But these models often assumed away the Bernstein Problem by positing rational agents in structured games, thereby limiting their applicability to real-world complexity.

Elinor Ostrom’s empirical studies of commons governance tackled coordination under real-world uncertainty and limited control. Her Institutional Analysis and Development framework offered a modular way of thinking about how rules, trust, and adaptation function under diverse and shifting conditions—a step toward operationalizing responses to the Bernstein Problem in social settings.

Computer science and artificial intelligence, particularly in multi-agent systems, treat coordination as both a design challenge and an emergent phenomenon. Here, the Bernstein Problem appears as the tension between local rules and global outcomes: how to write distributed protocols that produce coherent behavior without centralized control.

3. Three Major Theories of Coordination

Three models remain foundational in contemporary coordination theory and have influenced my hypothesis more profoundly than the rest, though obviously this does not mean we have discarded the insights provided by others:

Herbert Simon’s Bounded Rationality and Hierarchy

Simon emphasized that human decision-making is limited by cognitive constraints, leading organizations to decompose problems and reduce complexity through hierarchical control. This approach responded to the Bernstein Problem by limiting freedom via role differentiation and decision channels. But it overemphasized top-down flow and underappreciated emergent or adaptive coordination.

Schelling and Lewis’s Conventions

Schelling and Lewis focused on mutual expectations and focal points as stabilizers of behavior. These conventions serve as cognitive shortcuts to resolve the Bernstein Problem by offering pre-coordinated solutions. However, these models often rely on idealized conditions—shared knowledge, equal capacities—that rarely exist in asymmetric or heterogeneous contexts.

Elinor Ostrom’s Institutional Self-Governance

Ostrom’s work showed that communities could develop robust mechanisms for coordinating shared resources. Her approach addressed the Bernstein Problem by emphasizing modular rule-making, iterative learning, and context-sensitive adaptation. Still, its generalizability to large-scale, fragmented, or algorithmically mediated systems remains in question.

4. Coordination: the Fabric of Power - A Synthetic Framework

The CFP framework begins with a transformative hypothesis: power emerges not from control over coordination but from coordination itself. That is, power is not a substance or resource to be held—it is an effect of how coordination is structured, constrained, and internalized.

This hypothesis reframes the Bernstein Problem as the central condition of social life: how do we coordinate amid vast degrees of freedom, uncertainty, and pluralism? Instead of suppressing complexity, effective power navigates it through patterned constraints—threads in a dynamic fabric.

Coordination is the invisible architecture of collective life. Whether in grassroots movements, markets, bureaucracies, or digital networks, coordination determines what actions are possible, who participates, and how decisions unfold. To understand the nature of coordination as a system of power, we must look beyond surface-level structures and examine the underlying mechanisms. Let us now look at the six dimensions of coordination—Origin of Coordination, Structure of Participation, Decision Flow, Scope of Coordination, Mode of Internalization, and Feedback and Adaptation—as irreducible analytical categories. These dimensions were selected through interdisciplinary synthesis, each representing a core structural attribute found in any coordination process. Together, they provide a flexible framework for analyzing coordination across historical, organizational, and ecological contexts.

Origin of Coordination

Who initiates coordination, and under what framing, is never a neutral question. The origin sets the boundaries of sense-making. It determines what is considered a problem, what responses are possible, and who has the authority to propose solutions.

Herbert Simon's work on bounded rationality shows that decision-making is always limited by cognitive constraints and shaped by initial structures. As he put it, "The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior." The point of origin, then, becomes a site of power—whoever sets the terms of coordination defines the field of possible actions.

In practice, the difference between a community-initiated mutual aid effort and a top-down disaster relief program lies precisely in this dimension: who frames the problem, who initiates the response, and what assumptions are embedded from the start.

Structure of Participation

Every act of coordination entails inclusion and exclusion. The structure of participation determines who is allowed to engage in coordination, under what terms, and with what degree of influence. This dimension encompasses membership rules, procedural access, and modes of representation.

Elinor Ostrom emphasized that the long-term viability of common-pool resource systems depends on clearly defined boundaries and participatory governance. "As long as a single center has a monopoly on the use of coercion," she warned, "one has a state rather than a self-governed society." Participation is not just about voice; it is about structural access to decision-making power.

For example, a worker-owned cooperative with rotating facilitation and open meetings exemplifies distributed participation, while a corporate boardroom limits coordination to shareholders and executives. These contrasting participation structures produce fundamentally different power dynamics.

Decision Flow

How do decisions move through a system? Are they centralized, decentralized, hierarchical, circular, recursive? Decision flow reveals the architecture of control, responsiveness, and influence within a coordination system.

Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory emphasizes that decisions in complex systems are not passed along unchanged but are reinterpreted and re-contextualized through recursive communication. "No matter how abstractly formulated are a general theory of systems," he noted, "all three theoretical components are necessary for the specifically sociological theory of society." Decision flow is thus not linear but iterative and conditioned by feedback loops.

Consider a global logistics network, where local nodes continuously send updates that affect routing decisions in real time. Contrast this with a command-and-control hierarchy in which decisions cascade from the top, regardless of changing local conditions. The former relies on distributed coordination and feedback, the latter on directive authority.

Scope of Coordination

Scope defines the range of phenomena that can be coordinated—temporally, spatially, and functionally. What is included or excluded from coordination? Is the system focused on a single function, or does it span domains such as emotional labor, ecological feedback, or data infrastructures?

David Lewis’s theory of conventions illustrates how mutual expectations create the perceived boundaries of coordination. Norms emerge not from centralized design but from recursive behavioral expectations. What is considered "within scope" for coordination often reflects unspoken social conventions and institutional histories.

A municipal transportation authority may coordinate bus schedules but ignore sidewalk infrastructure, relegating pedestrian safety to an entirely different agency. By contrast, an indigenous fire stewardship practice might coordinate land, weather, plants, and community rituals in an integrated scope.

Mode of Internalization

This dimension concerns how individuals come to embody and reproduce the norms of coordination. Internalization can happen through education, ritual, habit, disciplinary technologies, or the affordances of tools and infrastructures.

Edwin Hutchins’ theory of distributed cognition demonstrates that coordination is not just mental but environmental and embodied. "The navigation team as a cognitive and computational system," he wrote, "may have interesting cognitive properties of their own." Coordination norms are learned not only through instruction but through immersive participation in shared systems of meaning and practice.

A novice software developer learning version control practices is not simply memorizing commands; they are internalizing a logic of coordination shaped by tools, teams, and tacit protocols. The same applies to ceremonial practices, military drills, and platform interface design.

Feedback and Adaptation

No coordination system can survive without responding to error, change, or crisis. Feedback and adaptation refer to the system’s capacity for reflexivity—how it registers internal and external conditions, processes that information, and adjusts accordingly.

Nikolai Bernstein’s work on motor control provides a foundational metaphor: even the act of walking involves constant recalibration of muscle movements in response to shifting terrain. "The basic difficulties for co-ordination consist precisely in the extreme abundance of degrees of freedom." Effective coordination does not eliminate variation; it incorporates it through adaptive processes.

In decentralized disaster response networks like Mutual Aid during the COVID-19 pandemic, daily changes in need and capacity demanded flexible coordination practices, continuous feedback loops, and rapid reallocation of resources. Systems unable to adapt—such as rigid bureaucracies—often failed to meet community needs.

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These six dimensions—Origin, Participation, Flow, Scope, Internalization, and Feedback—were chosen because they capture the structural conditions through which coordination produces and distributes power. Each is analytically distinct but interdependent. Together, they form a diagnostic and generative framework for analyzing coordination systems across fields, from insurgent politics to digital platforms, from state institutions to mutual aid networks.

Understanding coordination at this granular level allows us not only to critique existing systems but to design new ones—to ask not simply what works, but how does it work, for whom, and under what terms? In doing so, we reveal the fabric of power woven through every act of coordination.

This framework directly engages with Bernstein’s original insight: that coordination is not about eliminating degrees of freedom, but organizing them. Power resides in the structures that select, constrain, and enable coordination under conditions of uncertainty.

Furthermore, the CFP model integrates with Lukes’ three dimensions of power (decision-making, agenda-setting, and ideological shaping) and reframes the four modalities of power:

The four modalities of power — "Power Over," "Power To," "Power With," and "Power Within" — were developed and popularized primarily by feminist scholars and activists, particularly in the context of grassroots organizing and empowerment theory.

Key contributors include:

• VeneKlasen and Miller (2002):
  In their book A New Weave of Power, People & Politics, Lisa VeneKlasen and Valerie Miller articulate and systematize these four types of power in the context of participatory democracy and advocacy. Their work is among the most cited in explaining these modalities.

• Jo Rowlands (1997):
  In Questioning Empowerment: Working with Women in Honduras, Jo Rowlands introduced the concept of Power Within alongside Power Over, Power To, and Power With, framing them in terms of women's empowerment and social change.

• Paulo Freire (1970):
  While Freire did not name these four modalities explicitly, his ideas in Pedagogy of the Oppressed deeply influenced their development, especially Power Within and Power With through notions of consciousness-raising and collective liberation.

You might notice that my categorization differs slightly from that of the feminist scholars. Notably missing is Power Within. I will discuss this at length in a future article, but for now it should be enough to point out that Power Within is not a Modality of Power. Rather, it forms the substrate upon which the Modalities of Power are built. In addition, I include Power Through, which was introduced in 2019 by Alessandra Galie, and C.R. Farnsworth as part of their research on Women's Empowerment.

• Power To → The capacity of an individual to navigate complex coordination.

• Power Over → Control over how coordination options are restricted or directed.

• Power With → Collective action through shared constraints and mutual adjustment.

• Power Through → The shaping of subjectivities and capacities by coordination infrastructures.

These Modalities are far more complex than these simple definitions might suggest, but again, we will address those in a future article when we dive more deeply into mapping out Power.

By grounding these forms in the shared challenge of the Bernstein Problem, CFP offers a universal analytic for assessing systems from the scale of the body to the planetary.

5. Conclusion: Toward a New Science and Politics of Coordination

In an age marked by ecological crisis, technological complexity, and political fragmentation, the challenge of coordination looms large. As this essay has shown, disciplines as diverse as biology, management, cognitive science, and governance have all confronted the Bernstein Problem in their own idioms.

What unites these perspectives is a search for how freedom, complexity, and coherence can coexist. The CFP framework offers a synthetic, interdisciplinary response. By treating power as an emergent property of coordination—and coordination as the response to uncertainty and multiplicity—it provides both a diagnostic and generative tool.

This new science of coordination does not seek final answers or permanent solutions. Instead, it emphasizes adaptive patterning, participatory constraint, and responsive feedback. It invites us to ask not just what is being coordinated, but who chooses, how it changes, and what is possible. In doing so, it confronts the Bernstein Problem head-on—not to resolve it once and for all, but to live with it well.

References

Updated to include key works on the Bernstein Problem and motor coordination theory.

• Bernstein, N. A. (1967). The Coordination and Regulation of Movements. Pergamon Press.

• Barnard, C. (1938). The Functions of the Executive. Harvard University Press.

• Fayol, H. (1916). General and Industrial Management.

• Galie, A., & Farnsworth, C.G. (2019) Power through: A new concept in the empowerment discourse

• Hayek, F. A. (1945). "The Use of Knowledge in Society." American Economic Review.

• Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. MIT Press.

• Lewis, D. (1969). Convention: A Philosophical Study. Harvard University Press.

• Luhmann, N. (1995). Social Systems. Stanford University Press.

• Maturana, H., & Varela, F. (1980). Autopoiesis and Cognition. D. Reidel.

• Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons. Cambridge University Press.

• Ostrom, E. (2010). "Polycentric Systems for Coping with Collective Action and Global Environmental Change." Global Environmental Change.

• Schelling, T. (1960). The Strategy of Conflict. Harvard University Press.

• Shoham, Y., & Leyton-Brown, K. (2009). Multiagent Systems: Algorithmic, Game-Theoretic, and Logical Foundations. Cambridge University Press.

• Simon, H. A. (1947). Administrative Behavior. Free Press.

• Simon, H. A. (1977). The New Science of Management Decision. Prentice-Hall.

• Taylor, F. W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper & Brothers.

• Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT Press.