Purposive Government

Who could possibly disagree with the idea of governing with a sense of purpose??

But, as I look back over the past 50 years, I realise that such a notion has been – for all but a few years and in all but a few countries – treated with total incredulity

France was fairly exceptional, in the post-war period, with its system of national planning – although the UK very briefly toyed with the idea when the 1964 Wilson Government set up the Department of Economic Affairs as a rival to the Treasury.

But such aspirations were quickly stifled – with the Heath government of 1970 reasserting the market approach which was fully developed in the 1980s with the Thatcherite privatization programme. 

These forces were so powerful that, during the 1970s, writers on policy analysis seemed near to giving up on the possibility of government systems ever being able to effect coherent change - in the absence of national emergencies. This was reflected in such terms as “government overload” and "disjointed incrementalism": and in the growth of a new literature on the problems of "implementation" which recognised the power of the "street-level" bureaucrats.

Although the New Labour governments of 1997-2010 – particularly its “modernizing government” programme - used the language of strategy and targets, its ideology was an open continuation of the market-friendly and neoliberal policies of Thatcher 

Why “purposive government” is so difficult

·       the electoral cycle encourages short-term thinking

·       the 24-hour media ensures there is always a crisis for governments to deal with

·       programmes and priorities create sticks with which to beat politicians

·       politicians need to build and maintain coalitions of support - not give hostages to fortune. They therefore prefer to keep their options open and use vague rhetoric rather than commit themselves to programmes they won’t be around to gain benefit from

·       The machinery of government consists of a powerful set of "baronies" (Ministries/Departments), each with their own interests

·       the permanent civil servants have advantages of status, security, professional networks and time which effectively give them more power than politicians who often simply "present" what they are given.

·       a Government is a collection of individually ambitious politicians whose career path has rewarded skills of survival rather than those of achieving specific changes

Even before the pandemic, there were voices urging governments to snap out of their focus on short-term thinking and face up to the huge challenges facing all societies – be it the ageing of the population, AI or climate change. But it is not just the realities of politics which makes that difficult – it is the domination over the past 30 years of the financial calculus in business decisions with companies nervously checking the swings of share prices….

In theory Covid – and the realisation it has brought of the dangers of pandemics – strengthens the case for more strategic government. A senior Australian civil servant currently enjoying an academic sabbatical in the US has an interesting reflection on this -   

An important question is whether there is something about the practice of democracy today or the forces it is subjected to which make it harder for democracies to think strategically. It is possible that the ‘professionalisation’ of politics has created a cadre of apparatchiks hardened and motivated by political battle rather than policy challenges.²⁷ Perhaps feeding a rapid news cycle traps government and media alike in a short-term, reactive hamster-wheel that prioritises sensation over substance.²⁸ The rise of social media seems to have hardened partisan positions in the public, which bleeds into politics — and provides fertile ground for nefarious state and non-state actors to stoke for their own purposes using new technologies.²⁹ Moreover, perhaps the nature of the challenges that liberal democracies now face — such as climate change, or a China that is savvy about gaining ground without crossing the threshold of Western military responses — are not immediate enough to trigger the compulsion for national defence that usually switches democracies from tactical to strategic.

 

In the face of such an array of difficulties, it may be tempting for some to reach for a dramatic redesign of democracy as the only way to set the system straight. A better course of action may be to understand how to more routinely trigger democracies’ already existing capabilities to think and act strategically. For these triggers to work, they need to offer something to all stakeholders, and demonstrate value through tangible progress and real outcomes toward the risks and opportunities that democracies are facing. They would need to offer elected leaders something to challenge the current incentives that prioritise short-term competition and partisanship. And they would need to show the public something different — to allow them to feel more confident in the ability of their government to meet opportunities and challenges, and more confident that their society is on the right path.

What is impressive is that the article also recognises the importance of more direct forms of democracy 

One obstacle to a more strategic and ambitious policy in the United States and Australia is a view that there is little real public appetite for it. Voters may say they want vision and strong action, but if this requires more taxes it is a non-starter. In one Australian survey taken before the last federal election, seven out of ten Australians supported more spending on public services, but only very small percentages in each tax bracket felt that they were not paying enough tax.35 Few elected leaders want to take on this issue. However, questions like these may not be getting at the issue in the right way. Connecting taxes and revenue with specific choices over what public money buys may yield different results.

On a much smaller scale, the city of Lincoln, Nebraska, experimented with this concept more than a decade ago. When Chris Beutler was elected mayor in 2007, his administration faced circumstances familiar to many democratic governments large and small: not enough revenue to pay for services and a population hostile to the idea of tax increases, reductions in services and generally distrustful of political leaders.36

Beutler created an initiative called Taking Charge, which brought the community into the budget process as participants, not just observers. They engaged citizens directly on questions of specific trade-offs, like the costs of different levels of snow removal. This appears to have been an open and transparent conversation about the fiscal challenges the jurisdiction faced, and the available choices of cutting services, raising revenue or doing both. When engaged in this way, citizens supported some surprising outcomes. In one 2011 survey, a staggering 84 per cent were willing to raise property taxes to preserve services.37 The city found that citizens were willing to cut some ‘sacred cows’ from the budget when they understood the trade-offs; and — arguably just as important — this process endowed residents with a higher level of confidence in the city government. Not only did Taking Charge give the city’s leadership the space to pursue reform, but it also improved the conversation between public and government.

The challenge is how to take a local government model like the experiment in Nebraska and apply it at a national level, where the issues are more complex and the distance between political leaders and citizens is greater. Indeed, direct democracy is regarded with suspicion by some experts who see it as a pathway to community division rather than as a unifying tool.38 One low-risk, high-payoff way to make a start at the national level would be to identify a specific inspirational initiative each year, such as in exploration or big science. After an information campaign to inform the public about the initiative and what it would mean for them, voters would decide if they wanted to dedicate extra tax to its realisation. 

The Conversation is an excellent site encouraging scholars to contribute concise pieces which has been online for almost 5 years – and has an excellent discussion here on this subject.

Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Oxford, argues that our obsession with short-term planning may be a part of human nature – but possibly a surmountable one. Chris Zebrowski, an emergency governance specialist from Loughborough University, contends that our lack of preparedness, far from being natural, is a consequence of contemporary political and economic systems. Per Olsson, sustainability scientist and expert in sustainability transformations from the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, reflects on how crisis points can be used to change the future – drawing on examples from the past in order to learn how to be more resilient going into the future.