The RISCOM model: dialogues and requisite organisation

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of transparency in policy‐making processes.

Development and application of conceptual framework for policy studies.

Complementarity of Habermas's theory of communicative action and Beer's Viable System Model. Relevance of the ideas of requisite organisation in policy‐making and of “orthogonality” in social communications.

Transparency of policy processes is more than making information available to stakeholders; it is enabling the development of an effective organisational system for the policy of concern.

This paper relates Beer's organizational cybernetics and Habermas' political philosophy and produces an original model of transparency in policy‐making.