The State and democracy

It’s not easy to write a book about THE STATE that grabs the readers’ attention. I know because I’ve tried it – with The Search for Democracy (2024) which is actually about the various reform methods which have been attempted since that became fashionable in the 1970s (for more on this see the reading recommended below)

The State is all around us  - everywhere and, these days, nowhere. It’s 

not something we like to be reminded of – but it does spend, in most european 

countries, approaching half of a country’s GNP. But journalistic comment is 

relatively rare – save as rants about the amount of money being wasted by 

the public sector on which subject they are flooded with material from right-wing 

Think Tanks funded by the corporate sector. 

Most academic books about THE STATE are, frankly, boring and, well, academic! 

I wish someone would produce a comic/graphic guide to the State – just a question 

of extracting the essential ideas and illustrating them with some graphics. 

In the absence of such a book, I recommend  Geoff Mulgan’s 

”Good and Bad Power – the ideals and betrayals of government” (2006) – not least because he is one of the very few writers who gives us a short SUMMARY OF THE book’s ARGUMENT at the end of the book. Reduced to basic essentials, these can be summarised as

• Human needs translate into a set of consistent demands – whether on 

family, tribe or state 

• These are

  • security from aggression, 

  • food, 

  • fair treatment and 

  • truthful information

• the advent of large communities led to a need for a social contract

• states emerged as they became valuable – but have been captured by 

small groups.

• violent revolt was the only way to challenge power but gradually new 

• tools were invented eg elections, division of power, rule of law, free speech and open media

• this has helped the moral character of states develop – but active 

citizenry is still needed

• Power corrupts – characteristic features of power are oppression, 

arrogance, deceit and theft but also the use of abstraction.

• The enabling state is a new development

• as is the realisation that the future needs to be serviced

An extremely rare study of how to make public services more democratic is Hilary Wainwright’s Public Sector Reform – but not as we know it (Unison and TNI 2009)

Recommended Reading about “the State”

- The Sociology of the State; Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum (1983). An interesting non-Anglo-saxon view of the subject

- The Sources of social power – vol I history from the beginning to 1760AD; Michael Mann (1986). The first of what turned out to be a 4 volume study, reminding us that “the State” is a modern construct and only one of four types of power (political) – the other three being ideological, military and economic. Not an easy read…

- The State – its nature, development and prospects G. Poggi 1990. A highly readable 

introduction although needing some updating after the Fukuyama and Mann volumes

- The Modern State; Christopher Pierson (1996); one book I would recommend since, unlike most books with such titles, it is actually readable - if a bit boring - but seems to touch base with all relevant issues.…

- The Retreat of the State; Susan Strange (1996) who talked the most sense about the contours of the modern state – identifying, for example, the importance of multi-national companies including the global consultancies; the Mafia; the technocrats of global institutions, let alone the private protection sector. She also authored Casino Capitalism (1986); States and Markets (1988) and, her last book, Mad Money (1998)

- The State in a Changing World (World Bank 1997) – the report that indicated the powerful World Bank had had to eat some its scathing words about the role of the state. Goes on a bit!

- Globalisation and the State (UN Public Sector Report 2001); a more balanced analysis of the role of public administration than the World Bank is capable of

- Governance in the 21st century (2001 OECD) rather geeky overview

- The State - theories and issues; ed Hay, Lister and Marsh (2006). Probably the best read on the subject with chapters from a variety of authors on the various issues

- You and the State – a short introduction to political philosophy Jan Narveson (2008) an excellent introductory text

- Those who want a more detailed historical treatment can now dip into Francis Fukuyama’s marvellous 2 volumes which he introduces here. I never imagined that 700 page books with titles such as The Origins of Political Order – from prehuman times to the French Revolution (2011); and Political Order and Political Decay – from the industrial revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy (2014) could be so engrossing....

- Governance for Health (2012 WHO) A good overview of health indicators and coverage (if that's what turns you on)

- The State – past, present, future Bob Jessop 2016 This is the classic text on the subject from the go-to expert – but is very heavy going

- Government at a Glance 2017; A recent and very handy analysis of the scope and impact of public services. Only for the 35 member states of OECD (so the Baltic States, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia are included – but not Bulgaria or Romania)

- State Formations – global histories and cultures of statehood J Brooke et al (2018)

REFORM

Dismembered – the ideological attack on the state; Polly Toynbee and D Walker (2017) a clear analysis by two british journalists

“The 21^st century public manager – challenges, people and strategies”; Z van der Wal (2017) An interesting-looking book written by a Dutch academic and consultant who has spent the past 7 years as a Prof at the University of Singapore

Reclaiming Public Services – how cities and citizens are turning back privatisation; TNI (2017) An excellent overview by the radical international think tank of this very welcome trend

How to Run a Government so that Citizens Benefit and Taxpayers don’t go Crazy; Michael Barber (2015). A clearly written and rare book about the approaches favoured by a consultant who became Tony Blair’s favourite "go-to" fixer

The Fourth Revolution – the global race to reinvent the state; J Micklewaithe and A Woolridge (2015) Editors of no less a journal than The Economist give us a breathless neoliberal analysis

The Tragedy of the Private – the potential of the public; Hilary Wainwright (PSI 2014) an important little pamphlet

Public Sector Reform – but not as we know it; Hilary Wainwright (Unison and TNI 2009) A rare readable case study (Newcastle) of a bottom-up approach to reform. We need much more of this..…

Leadership for the Common Good; Crosby and Bryson (2^nd edition 2005) Probably the most comprehensive of the practical guides to getting the public services working well. Clicking the title gives the entire 500 pages!

The Essential Public Manager; Chris Pollitt (2003) A great and very practical analysis of the political and technical aspects of the search for effective public services

“The Values of Bureaucracy”; Paul du Gay (2003) Proceedings of an academic conference on du Gay's 2000 book which was a rare attempt to rescue aspects od this all-too-easilymaligned institution. You should be able to access the full book by googling the title

“The Captive State – the corporate takeover of Britain; George Monbiot” (2000) A powerful critique of the nature and scale of corporate involvement in our public services which first alerted me to the nature of public-private partnerships

In Praise of Bureaucracy; weber, organisation, ethics; Paul du Gay (2000) It may be academic, but is clearly written and has become a classic defence of a much maligned institution. Well reviewed here

Change the World; Robert Quinn (2000) Simply the best analysis of the process of social and organizational change

Creating Public Value – strategic management in government; Mark Moore (1995) One of the few books which actually looks at examples of effective leaders in the public sector. Started a wave of (in-house) discussion which led to what could be the third stage of public admin

Reinventing Government; David Osborne and Graeber (1992) The book which started the New Public Management revolution.

More specialist recommended reads

Supporting small steps – a rough guide for developmental professionals (Manning; OECD 2015)

A Governance Practitioner’s Notebook – alternative ideas and approaches (Whaites et al OECD 2015)

Rethinking policy and politics – reflections on contemporary debates in policy studies ed C Ayres (2014)

Reinventing Organisations; Frederic Laloux (2014)

People, Politics and Change - building communications strategy for governance reform (World Bank 2011)

Governance Reform under Real-World Conditions – citizens, stakeholders and Voice (World Bank 2008)

The 21^st Century Public Servant; C Needham and Mangham (undated) Results of a British research project

The Blacksburg Manifesto and the postmodern debate about PA; Marshall and White (1990)

Capitalist Democracy - another failing God

Krishnan Nayar has just produced a challenging read in his Liberal Capitalist Democracy – the God that failed (2023) which argues that

the pre-consumerist, pre-welfare capitalism of a penurious working class and severe precarity was far more likely to lead countries to right-wing, aristocratic autocracy than to democracy.

Branko Milanovic honoured it with an extensive review which made three points -

First, he argues that bourgeois revolutions frequently failed to lead to democracy, a view strongly embedded in the Anglo-American Whiggish history and in simplified Marxism. Rather they provoked aristocratic reaction and the authoritarian economic developments which in many respects were more successful than those of bourgeois democracy. In other words, democracy does not come with capitalism and, as we shall see, capitalism often destroys it. The authoritarian modernizers (Nayar studies four: post-1848 Germany, Louis Napoleon’s France, Bismarck’s Germany, and Stolypin’s Russia) enjoyed wide support among the bourgeoisie who, fearful for its property, preferred to take the side of the reforming aristocracy than to throw in its lot with the proletariat.

Second, Nayar argues that the unbridled Darwinian capitalism always leads to social instability and anomie, and that social instability empowers right-wing parties. He thus argues that Hitler's rise to power was made possible, or was even caused, by the 1928-32 Depression, and not as some historians think by either the fear of communism or bad tactics of the Communist Party which instead of allying itself with Social Democrats fought them.

Third, and for the present time perhaps the most interesting, Nayar argues that the success of Western capitalism in the period 1945-1980 cannot be explained without taking into account the pressure that came on capitalism both from the existence of the Soviet Union as an alternative model of society, and from strong left-wing parties linked with trade unions in major European countries. In that sense the period of “les trente glorieuses” which is now considered as the most successful period of capitalism ever occurred against the normal capitalist tendencies. It was an anomaly. It would not have happened without socialist pressure and fear of riots, nationalizations, and, yes, defenestrations. But with the rise of neoliberal economics after 1980 capitalism gladly went back to its original 19^th and early 20^th century versions which regularly produce social instability and strife. The lesson to be taken from Nayar is in some ways simple. Capitalism, if it's not embedded in society and does not accept limits on what can be commodified, has to go through recurrent slumps and prosperities.

If we look at the three main theses in Nayar’ s book none of them is new. But they are when strung together and placed in their historical context.  The authoritarian modernizations have of course been a subject of many books some of which, like Barrington Moore’s classic, are cited here. The rise of fascism was, and is, increasingly linked with austerity policies as was recently done by Mark Blyth’s Austerity: History of a Dangerous Idea (2013) and Clara Mattei’s The Capital Order: How Economists Invented Austerity and Paved the Way to Fascism (2022).

The question which is on everybody’s mind after having read Nayar’s book is, What next? Because if capitalism continues along the current trajectory that Nayar believes almost preordained, it must again produce instability and rejection. And that would—again--play into the hands of right- wing movements. A century later we may be replaying the same story that we have seen in the 1920’s Europe. History seldom repeats itself word-by-word or drum-by-drum: but we already see parties with roots in nationalist or quasi fascist movements coming back to power and undoing globalization, fighting immigrants, celebrating nationalism, cutting access to welfare benefits to those who are not “native” enough. Is it fascism? Its light variety? This is the melancholy conclusion that can be made based on this sweeping study of western political and economic developments in the past two centuries.

Nayar’s book very much challenges the conventional thinking about the 

trajectory of present trends and I strongly recommend it – as well as the 

Blyth and Mattei books mentioned in Branko’s review

WHY HAS the notion of ‘’THE DEEP STATE” BECOME SO POPULAR?

The first book on this subject may have been The American Deep State – Wall St, Big Oil and the attack on American Democracy by Peter Dale Scott which appeared in 2015 - but I have just plotted an ngram on the subject which records that its use became exponential only in the new millennium. And that it was in use between 1880 and 1890 – presumably at the time of US populism. 

The term has spread like wildfire throughout the world since it does seem 

to represent a new phenomenon – namely the way judicial and security systems 

have combined to create new targets who, coincidentally, tend to be those 

challenging the status-quo. The concept is much-loved by those of a conspiratorial 

bent and is frequently used in ex-communist countries such as Romania whose 

infamous Securitate still very much alive – one the best articles on this aspect 

of the country is Romania Redivivus 

The tentacles of the Deep Security State. Meanwhile, beneath the surface of democratization, the authoritarian tenor of Ceauşescu’s rule persists in Romania’s powerful security forces. The Securitate, the most ruthless police force in the Warsaw Pact, has been rebranded and is now run by a generation of operatives whose average age is 35, trained at special intelligence universities. They are, in many cases, the children of the 16,000 Securitate members who provided the backbone of the Romanian state after 1989, having emerged as the undisputed winners of the ‘revolution’ of that year. At least nine of these new services exist. The predominant one, the Serviciul Român de Informaţii (SRI), monitors Romanians internally; with some 12,000 operatives, it has double the manpower of any equivalent agency in Europe and, with military-grade espionage equipment, conducts upwards of 40,000 wiretaps a year.10 The older generation of Securitate agents managed the privatization schemes of the 1990s; they are now shielded by the younger cohort from legal oversight.

This interlocking of economic influence—four out of the five richest Romanians have a Securitate background—and legal inviolability—Romania’s judiciary is too dependent on the SRI to prosecute it—allows the deep state to operate with impunity. The security services have vast stakes in telecommunications and big-data collection. They oversee their own ngos, run their own tv channels and have their people on the editorial boards of the major Romanian newspapers and across the government ministries. The permeation of the state by these networks comes to light only occasionally. In October 2015, a nightclub fire in Bucharest killed sixty-four, more than half the deaths due to infections contracted later at a local hospital. Why? The hospital’s disinfectants, concocted by a company called Hexi Pharma to which the government had granted a monopoly"