RUMINATIONS ON WHAT THE STATE CAN AND CAN’T DO

Twitter was alive yesterday with the aftermath of Monday’s big speech from the UK PM about the grim actions needed to repair the 22 billion deficit left from the Conservatives (whoever said they managed the economy well?? The Labour party generally is left inheriting their mess)

This has brought into focus the question of whether states actually need to 

balance their budgets. Economists such as David Blanchflower and Richard Murphy 

are amongst those who take a different view, supporting the work of Stephanie 

Kelton in her The Deficit Myth – Modern Monetary Theory and the birth of 

the people’s economy (2020) which she presented (with useful slides) in a 

discussion a few years ago with the OECD. It’s not an easy topic to get your 

head around and I found this a good objective presentation 

But it takes me back to a more fundamental question which has been exercising 

me for the past couple of decades – namely the limits on state capacity. 

Recent posts from Aurelien and crazed Dominic Cummings on this coincided 

with this more positive post from Paul Cairney about a new vision for UK government.

Cairney’s post references a 2021 article of his which has, at the end, a link to 

“a contemporary story of policy” which links in turn to a fantastic article on  

“Ostrom and the bright side of public service” which superbly summarises the 

entire literature on government failures and suggests a way forward.
It’s hardly surprising that some 50 years of neoliberalism have seriously dented 

the capacity of the State. But it’s taken some time for us to notice the combined 

effects of privatisation and Austerity on the British State.  
I’m loathe to credit Cummings with anything since he was the brains behind 

Brexit and also the key political adviser not only to Michael Grove (when he was 

Education Minister) but also to Boris Johnson (before becoming one of his bitterest

 critics). But the man blogs interestingly eg

almost all large organisations incentivise (largely implicitly/unconsciously) preserving 

existing power structures and budgets, preventing system adaptation, fighting against 

the eternal lessons of high performance excluding most talent, and maintaining 

exactly the thing that in retrospect will be seen as the cause of the disaster. 

Large organisations naturally train everyone who gets promoted to align themselves 

with this dynamic: dissent is weeded out. Anybody pointing out ‘we’re heading for an 

iceberg’ is ‘mad’, ‘psychopath’, ‘weirdo’ — and is quickly removed. And even the very 

occasional odd characters who a) see, b) are able to act and c) have the moral courage 

to act are highly constrained in what they can do given the nature of large institutions 

and the power of the forces they confront. (Even Bismarck in 1871-5 or Stalin in the 

1930s, more powerful than anybody else in their country, were highly constrained in 

their ability to shape forces like automation, though they could help or hinder their 

particular country’s adaptation

Even Boris Johnson was forced to put his pen to an admission of failure when 

he allowed this Declaration on Government Reform published in 2021, before 

his ignominious resignation. In 2024 this note on a New Vision for the UK government

 was published by the Academy of Social Sciences 

Positive Public Policy embraces a range of approaches aiming to facilitate effective 

government and policymaking. Some are relatively new while others have been discussed 

and studied for decades without realising their full potential. These include the 

concept of the strategic state, systems-thinking, place-based approaches, evidence

-informed government, public participation, and behavioural public policy. 

What connects these approaches is (i) an appreciation of the complexity and 

inter-connected nature of policy contexts, (ii) a belief in the capacity of collective 

action to address shared challenges, and (iii) a commitment to the collection, synthesis 

and application of different forms of knowledge. Each has been tested and is 

underpinned by an accumulation of evidence – including, good practice, frameworks, 

case studies, and policy learning – and together they provide a coherent reform 

agenda and a fresh portfolio of ways of designing and delivering high-performing 

public policy.
Years of instability in UK government have eroded underlying capacity for reform. 

The General Election will be conducted against the backdrop of financial stress 

across government, and no reform is cost-free. Will an incoming government give 

priority to getting its own house in order? And taking the leap of faith reform 

requires? Positive Public Policy embodies the vision of real change to drive change 

to address the significant social, economic and environmental challenges we face. 

It provides a range of approaches, tools and methods for designing and delivering 

effective public policy, and the clear, coherent and sustainable story of reform 

required to lower barriers to change and to leveraging resources.
What we need is the political will and sustained capacity to trial and test the insights 

of Positive Public Policy in a UK context, and this in turn calls for investment in 

connective and catalysing engagement opportunities between researchers and 

policymakers. There’s an urgent need to connect the positive public policy academic 

community with practitioners at scale in order to help constitute the policymaking 

tools that governments can use as they grapple with the ‘art of the possible’ to 

translate lofty ideals into practices that might work in their own context. 

Now is the time to attract and devote resources towards trialling, tracking and 

evaluating experimentation in more future-oriented, holistic, and more participatory 

approaches to government.

Quite a few mouthfuls there!!

See also “Pathways to Positive Public Administration”  a book scheduled to 

come out in October 2024. The opening chapter is here; and the second here