International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

The supposed or real possibility to govern systems.

In any case, governability is at best a limited possibility. R. VALLÉE observes: "The governability problem is the steering problem: A dynamic system is perfectly governable if, whatever the initial instant and initial state, and whatever the final instant and final state, it is possible to find an input function (command) that, applied from the initial to the final instant, gives the possibility to lead the system from the initial to the final state".

VALLÉE is however somwhat skeptical: "There is a certain mathematical duality between observability and governability and it is obvious that a system cannot be totally governable, just the same as it cannot be completely observed" (1995, p.23).

Governability therefore, is not much more than hypothetic wishful thinking, even in human systems. Within the limits of a more or less metaphorical comparison, insect societies appear to be self-steered, i.e. their members automatically create a global order through their interactions and, at the same time, become submitted to it. Could human societies really be "governable" in a different and more volitive sense?

→ "stigmergy".

In insect societies, global reliability is obtained, just like in a von NEUMANN automaton, notwithstanding the possible poor quality of some components.

If human sociosystems are self-governed, or self-steered in the same way, the nature, goals and achievements of politics in its most general and purposeful sense become very difficult to assess.

Finally, governability is in most cases an illusion. In St. BEER words, who had much practical experience of such situations: "A minister can always call for an elaborately reorganized set of data, on which complicated mathematics have been done; but it is the computer that generates the variety, and not the real world This is quite fundamental nonsense" (1974, p.40)".