Skip to content

Key Concepts (1) — Relational Stability

Relational stability is that quality in a network – specifically the degree to which its rules, protocols and structure embody mutual knowledge, synergy and fairness – which makes network members more visible to one another as human beings and more strongly incentivized to cooperate.

Relational stability arises partly from hard variables like location and technology (because proximity, transport and IT influence how people meet and interact). It also arises from customs, habits, and, crucially, the formal and informal rules embedded in the networks joining people and institutions together – rules that to a large extent determine how visible these stakeholders are to each other and how strong and useful their relationships can be.

Three Questions

The relational stability of a network can be assessed and quantified using variables that answer three broad questions:

  1. Do people really know each other? How far does the network embody direct, durable, diverse interaction, including needed information flows?
  2. Are they aiming for the same things? How far does the network embody a congruence of values and goals, including rules governing competition?
  3. Is the arrangement that connects them fair? How far does the network embody a balance of fairness for all parties, including future generations?


The questions are fundamental because:

  • They deal with basic human experience and motivation.
  • They indicate the potential of a network to support affective qualities (trust, loyalty, engagement).
  • Analysis based on them can be used to interrogate the mass interfaces created (largely without our consent) by big organisational structures, bureaucracies, government treaties, and financial markets.


Institutions like government, markets and companies connect us all, en masse, on terms over which we have very little control. The key insight of relationists is that we can build a sustainable society only if we set out to make our institutions relationally stable.

The ideas behind Relational Stability were first laid out by Michael Schluter and David Lee in The R Factor (Hodder and Stoughton, 1993), and further expanded in John Ashcroft et al, The Relational Lens: Understanding, Measuring and Managing Stakeholder Relationships (CUP, 2017).