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Ok fellow ploggers, what have we
learned so far? Although it masquerades
as a democracy, the United States government does not deliver for American
citizens. The next author I will focus on goes into detail about the way the work of millions of people employed by the United States' civil service, is organized. Is it organized efficiently so we don't waste money? Nope. Is there usually a boss we can point to, to take responsibility when things go wrong? That's called accountability by the way. Erm.. nope. When a problem is urgent does the US political system allow us to move swiftly and decisively? Not particularly. Part of the problem is that the American people are supposed to direct government via the election process but the system is too big and complicated for people to understand and cast judgement. To get your head around it you have read "long and boring" books like the one I will cover here. And no one wants to do that. Ah but do not fear! Mackie is here. I invite you to gain a deeper understanding of how American politics works, quickly and easily by reading my summary of this fantastic book by the illustrious Francis Fukuyama (with the cool name.)
Stanford Scholar Francis Fukuyama’s 2015 tour de force “Political Order and Political Decay” is a 500 page tome, with what I expect is the tiniest writing allowed. It is a giant endeavor in documenting how political systems around the world developed into what they are today and how well they work. The short version is that due to America’s historical trajectory, which will be outlined in more detail below, our political system is overly controlled by special interests. Secondly it is impeded by veto points and conflicting layers of government, which makes decision-making difficult and reduces accountability. Finally our system is overly subject to clientilism which is the practice of exchanging public sector favors (mainly welfare or jobs) for votes. The author goes on to detail why other countries around the world have avoided these problems and how their systems work. It’s pretty useful and dare I say (for those wonky enough to be delving into these posts) riveting stuff. I’ve skipped a fair amount of the chapters relating to foreign governments wishing only to focus on that which explains the United States’ political system.
Stanford Scholar Francis Fukuyama’s 2015 tour de force “Political Order and Political Decay” is a 500 page tome, with what I expect is the tiniest writing allowed. It is a giant endeavor in documenting how political systems around the world developed into what they are today and how well they work. The short version is that due to America’s historical trajectory, which will be outlined in more detail below, our political system is overly controlled by special interests. Secondly it is impeded by veto points and conflicting layers of government, which makes decision-making difficult and reduces accountability. Finally our system is overly subject to clientilism which is the practice of exchanging public sector favors (mainly welfare or jobs) for votes. The author goes on to detail why other countries around the world have avoided these problems and how their systems work. It’s pretty useful and dare I say (for those wonky enough to be delving into these posts) riveting stuff. I’ve skipped a fair amount of the chapters relating to foreign governments wishing only to focus on that which explains the United States’ political system.
People often ask why I call my blog a plog so let me digress for a second here and explain. First of all plog obviously sounds like blog and when you smoosh the word politics into the front of the word blog, it turns into the word plog which is a good start. After that the word plog is the gift that keeps on giving. It sounds an awful lot like plod, which is what you do when you are reading long books, so I like that. Finally I am British and we have a really bad habit of enjoying toilet humor. It's just terrible. So I quite like the fact that lurking surreptitiously under the word plog is plog's ugly brother plop. I've just bared my naked soul.
POLITICAL ORDER AND POLITICAL DECAY BY FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
As is customary the author fleshes out the subject of state formation with a bit of history.
As is customary the author fleshes out the subject of state formation with a bit of history.
History
A state (a.k.a. a country) is defined as an entity which "[possesses] a monopoly on legitimate coercion.. [which it] exercises.. over a defined territory." China was the first country to form a state. In China the state was formed for the same reason European states were formed - prolonged and pervasive military competition.
A critical component of a state is the court system (a.k.a. the judiciary.) Interestingly, the rule of law was most
deeply institutionalized by the Roman Catholic Church. In the eleventh century
it emerged as the guardian of a Roman law based on the sixth-century Justinian
code put in place by Emperor Justinian of Rome. Monarchs in Europe did not have absolute power because they had to follow this external code of law. The Chinese state never developed a transcendental
religion and perhaps because of this, never developed a true rule of law. This led to a centralized absolutist China (meaning the government of China had absolute power over its people.) Absolutist Russia emerged because the Eastern Church found itself subordinate to
the state.
Accountable government first emerged in Europe in England (your plogger is of that ilk!) because of the fact that the estates (the aristocracy) and the monarchy were both as powerful as each other so the estates organized a cohesive parliament and had the power to block the King’s initiatives. England beheaded King Charles I and formed a republic under Oliver Cromwell from 1688-1689. When a monarch was reinstated he did so under the condition of "no taxation without representation." The new monarch William of Orange was accompanied by philosopher John Locke. Locke introduced the concept of ruling with the consent of the governed and that rights were naturally granted in human beings. This was a crucial moment in history because the concept of giving the people power over their own government was entirely new. A century later American colonists would use the same rhetoric as they revolted against the British. However, both the new political orders of 1689 Britain or of the United States in 1789, ratified via the United States' Constitution, were not modern democracies because voting (and other privileges) were restricted to white male property owners. Nevertheless Locke’s principle was durable and no one has since argued that government should not be accountable to the people.
Accountable government first emerged in Europe in England (your plogger is of that ilk!) because of the fact that the estates (the aristocracy) and the monarchy were both as powerful as each other so the estates organized a cohesive parliament and had the power to block the King’s initiatives. England beheaded King Charles I and formed a republic under Oliver Cromwell from 1688-1689. When a monarch was reinstated he did so under the condition of "no taxation without representation." The new monarch William of Orange was accompanied by philosopher John Locke. Locke introduced the concept of ruling with the consent of the governed and that rights were naturally granted in human beings. This was a crucial moment in history because the concept of giving the people power over their own government was entirely new. A century later American colonists would use the same rhetoric as they revolted against the British. However, both the new political orders of 1689 Britain or of the United States in 1789, ratified via the United States' Constitution, were not modern democracies because voting (and other privileges) were restricted to white male property owners. Nevertheless Locke’s principle was durable and no one has since argued that government should not be accountable to the people.
Political decay in America – The American system is wasteful
and easily controlled by special interests because politicians are in control
of government agencies so they use government resources to achieve political
goals. How did we get here?
Fukuyama says that the states with
highest efficiency and least corruption are those that developed under an
autonomous system before every person in the population was given the right to
vote. An autonomous state system is in
place when government agencies from transportation to defense (a.k.a. the civil service) are not
controlled by politicians, but instead have independent methods of hiring leaders and workers for the agency. This means
the agencies can fill leadership roles via a merit-based system where the best
candidates can be selected instead of allowing the party in power to assign
party members to run the agency. Examples
of such autonomous systems can be found in Germany and Japan. Those countries that became democratic before the civil service achieved autonomy did not do
so well. Examples include the United States, Italy and Greece. In these countries the political party in power controls who works at the agencies and can dole out jobs and money in exchange for votes in a practice called clientilism, mentioned earlier.
Universal male suffrage (which means the right to vote) happened first in the United States in 1870. It did so before the country had a chance to develop an autonomous state and as a result practically invented the practice of clientilism as political parties used state resources to achieve political power. It suffered from this for much of the 1800s as the various class tiers were enfranchised (or given the right to vote.)
As an example of a country that formed a democracy before a strong bureaucratic state could take hold the author mentions Greece. Clientilism is still rampant in Greece today. Socialist parties handed out public sector jobs to party supporters so indiscriminately that between 1970 and 2009 those jobs increased five fold and the average public wage was one and a half times higher than a private sector one! When Greece recently led the public debt problems in the Euro zone their debt woes had largely been caused by this. Today Greece and Italy are notable because although they are modern industrialized societies they haven't succeeded in reforming their public sectors and eliminating political patronage and clientilism.
Our author cites Britain as an example of a country that created an autonomous civil service before the country's voting franchise was expanded to include more of the population. In 1855 an independent committee investigated the Crimean war and found there was poor organization of intel, logistics and strategy. The risk to the lives of soldiers and civilians led to a disgruntled populace and subsequent reform to the military and civil service which meant appointments would be given on the basis of merit rather than patronage. Patronage is the practice of staffing the government with friends and families of those who rule. Through the 1860s only one out of eight British citizens could vote. Mass political parties did not get underway in Britain until the 1870s by which time the civil service was autonomous which meant that parties could not use the mass distribution of government jobs as vote-getting opportunities.
Because of this difference Britain’s system cannot be compared to the American one despite America’s Anglo Protestant roots. The British Westminster system is biased towards rapid decision-making. There is no federalism (where a system of government has several states which remain independent in internal affairs,) no Supreme Court to invalidate legislation, no separation of powers between the executive and legislature and there is strong party discipline. The executive is the prime minister or president and their staff or ministers which execute governance. The legislative branch is Congress or parliament which make the laws. The judicial branch consists of the courts which enforce the laws. Governments around the world usually consist of three branches: the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Although America imported the common law system from Britain in Tudor times it became "stuck in time" and did not centralize as Britain’s did. Since the Constitution was ratified at a time the Americans were rebelling against the British, this emphasized anti-statism and made Americans shun a strong central state leading to decentralization and an emphasis on checks and balances to put constraints on government power. America’s physical size and dispersed rural population also led to the fact that it would be governed on a decentralized basis.
America was a pioneer in the idea of
mass political parties, which lead to clientilism. It was patronistic until non-elite president
Andrew Jackson was elected in 1829. He started the ball rolling from a
patronage system to a clientilistic system. For example in 1849 president Zachary Taylor
replaced 30 percent of all federal officials in his first year in office! Later Lincoln would complain that he was
trapped in a system in which doling out bureaucratic offices was an integral
part of building political coalitions. Politicians
needed to recruit precinct captains and ward heelers to succeed. Ward heelers were people that would commit illegal acts like
tearing down an opposition party's posters or paying constituents for their
votes. In return for his services the
ward heeler was often given a job, perhaps in the city's civil service, which
was controlled by the party. One of the
reasons socialism did not take hold in the United States is that the parties
captured poor Americans by offering short-term rewards.
In what ways is the US political system dysfunctional?
As a case study of American state
building and dysfunction the creation of the much needed railroad regulation agency
is described. It was set up to be
governed by a board of party appointees so it ultimately served party
interests. On top of that it was not
given powers to enforce things like rate policies which would instead be enforced
by the courts. During the First World War a problem caused by German
interference with European bound American shipments caused goods to start
piling up at an American port and the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) could
not deal with the problem so President Wilson nationalized the rail system. 3 years later it was returned to private
control and the ICC continued to be run by party appointees but this time is was
given more regulatory power. So the
problems swung in the other direction and the excessive regulation eventually led
to a crisis in 1970s with many railroads entering bankruptcy. Allowing
party power to influence the economy means it will eventually get captured by
interest groups at the expense of the general public. The moral of the story is bureaucratic systems
must have autonomy to make decisions that protect the greater good of the
people.
All modern societies started off as
patrimonial (patronage) states. Both
classical Marxists and contemporary economists agree that democracy emerges
when the threats made to the rich are severe enough that the rich make
concessions. The middle classes can make
alliances in either direction but are more often bought off by the rich. Fukuyama believes that when there is a large
middle class of over 30% of the population, a stable democracy is much more
sustainable. This stability may have
begun to unravel in the developed world because income inequality has increased
massively since the 1980s. This is most
notable in the United States where the top 1% of families took home 23.5 % of GDP in 2007 which grew from 9% of GDP
in 1970.
According to administration specialists
the overall efficiency of the United States government has been deteriorating steadily for
more than a generation. The number of
government workers has been capped at 2.25 mill since the end of World War II and in 2005 it was actually lower at 1.8 mill. However, the reason for this is that the government is
using outside agencies and contractors to give the impression that we have
capped the size of government. The
number of outside contractors is currently larger than the number of direct
employees! Also, the United States
public service has departed from being an energized merit-based system. One of
the reasons for this is that half of new entrants are veterans and many of them
are disabled. Within government there is
a sense that a job well done goes unrewarded. 67% of people in public service responded that
their organization was not good at disciplining poor performance. More generally institutions fail to adapt because human
nature encourages norm following beyond rationality (cognitive rigidity.)
On top of the problems caused by
government contractors in that they make for a fuzzy line of accountability,
another grave problem is that often no one person is really in charge. “The
welter of congressional committees.. produce conflicting mandates. There are dozens of congressional committees
through which all bills must pass before they get a vote on the house or senate
floors. This decentralized system
practically invites special interest groups to protect their interests. Barack Obama’s affordable care act in 2010
turned into.. a monstrosity.. as a result of all the concessions that had to be
made to interest groups including doctors, insurance companies, and the
pharmaceutical industry.” My next piece is going to shed more light on the inner workings of lawmaking in Congress.
In other words there is a patchwork of
government branches in the United States that can each issue different orders
to the same agency. The author cites the forest service as an example of a department which has competing
mandates. This area of government was
simultaneously captured by the interests of home owners and of environmentalists. Preposterous economic impracticalities arose
and the government ended up spending $1 million on fire protection per $200,000
home! On top of that the forest service
has failed to meet the original mandate of sustainable wood production, an
endeavor that should easily turn a profit but instead loses money every year.
Water always seeks its own level and during the nineteenth century
government functions in the United States, which in Europe were performed by an
executive branch, started to be performed in a round about way by judges and elected representatives thereby
causing Stephen Skowronek to characterize the US as a “state of courts and
parties.” A merit-based bureaucracy arrived
in 1880 but the amount of classified civil servants only reached 80% after the
new deal in 1930s. In 1954 we reached a
turning point in history. A
lawsuit started by the NAACP – The National Association for the Advancement Of
Colored People named Brown v. Board
of Education made segregation illegal. Because the state was
controlled by pro-segregation forces, private groups found they had to use the court system to fight to overturn segregation law. Since
then social movements such as environmental protection, women’s rights, consumer
safety and gay marriage have been pursued though the courts. There is no other liberal democracy that
proceeds in this fashion. “The decay in the
quality of democratic government is rooted in the fact that.. the courts and
legislature have usurped many of the proper functions of the executive, making
the operation.. incoherent, unaccountable and inefficient… The courts.. have become alternative
instruments for the expansion of government.”
Another notable change was the explosion
of lobbyists from 175 individuals in 1971, to about 12,000 (who spent $3.2 billion) in 2013. When a congressperson is
exposed to a particular viewpoint it is called intellectual capture. A pervasive and troublesome effect has been
that “while nominal tax rates in the US are much higher than in other developed
countries, very few American corporations actually pay taxes at that rate
because they have negotiated special exemptions and benefits for themselves.”
Fukuyama presents a graph depicting the number
of veto points against the difficulty of decision-making and the graph shows
that the US has the most difficulty of all contemporary democracies in making
decisions. His conclusion is that
America is a vetocracy in gridlock.
The United States differs from most
democratic counterparts in other ways. Examples of countries that have parliamentary systems are the United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, India and South Africa. In a parliamentary system a lot of laws are drawn up by the executive
branch with the help of the civil service, and the civil service is administered by ministers. That means the people writing up the laws deciding where money is spent are the people responsible for making the money work for the good of the people. Do you remember I explained before that there are three branches of government: the executive, the legislative and the judicial? The way to remember it is that instead of having three branches, a parliamentary system seems like it really has two branches because some of the key functions of the executive and legislative branches are merged. In contrast the United States'
Congress writes and passes laws independently from the Whitehouse/President (the executive.) Congress' overlapping committees produce
duplicative and/or conflicting mandates and result in a governance without clear direction which is
thus unaccountable. As
an example of the result of this setup the Pentagon is asked to produce 500 reports a year often on
duplicate issues consuming huge amounts of time and energy. Financial sector regulation is shared by 9
regulatory bodies and by State Attorney Generals. “It was easy for the banking sector to game
this system.. in the late 1990s.”
Government agencies are run differently too. In a parliamentary system once a party is elected it runs the whole governmental system. In the United States that is not the case. Instead of straightforwardly delegating power to a single agency head it sometimes goes to a group of commissioners balanced between parties. This ultimately makes agencies and regulators less accountable.
Government agencies are run differently too. In a parliamentary system once a party is elected it runs the whole governmental system. In the United States that is not the case. Instead of straightforwardly delegating power to a single agency head it sometimes goes to a group of commissioners balanced between parties. This ultimately makes agencies and regulators less accountable.
How can the US system be fixed?
The success of anti-establishment
presidential candidates this year demonstrates that the United States has a
political system which is considered illegitimate by a lot of its
citizens. Legitimacy is a crucial component
to a well functioning system. A perfect
example of this can be seen in the moment when England
applied the principle of "no taxation without representation" to
their political structure in the 17th century. Because of it they were able raise
more money than France's coercive system which in turn allowed them to win wars
against France.
Fukuyama believes the United States has
devolved into a patronage system. “The
nascent American state was captured by democratic politicians and has been repatrimonalized
through interest group influence through Congress.” This has been aided in part by the huge
growth in lobbying groups and by a series of Supreme Court decisions which has
liberated these groups from constraints on spending money.
The American system was designed to resist tyranny but that has been at the cost of an ability to make decisions. This crippling effect means Congress will be unable to make very necessary changes to its infrastructure, health, immigration, entitlements, the tax code (to cite but a few examples of highly pressing issues) in the future. To expand on just one of these problems, an important challenge for democracies around the world is the unsustainability of their welfare-state commitments. Almost all welfare systems were created when birth rates were higher, life expectancy shorter and economic growth was more dependable. The failure of America to deal with the sustainability of its welfare state has been due to the polarization of its two parties, their perennial feuding and their race for more funding for themselves and their constituencies.
America is caught in a bad cycle. Americans distrust government so Congress mandates complex rules that reduce the government’s autonomy and make decisions slow and expensive... The government under performs which confirms the people’s distrust and so on. This decentralized system does not represent majority interests and instead gives excessive representation to the views of interest groups and activists. “A lot of political actors recognize the system isn’t working very well but have very deep interests in keeping things the way they are.” Many of these problems could be solved if we moved to a parliamentary system but that is unlikely since Americans love their Constitution. If change is to be made to the structure of the US political system it is important to note that too little or too much bureaucratic autonomy are both bad. A careful balance must be struck to find an optimal point.
Conclusion
Most United States citizens only pay
attention to politics during a presidential election. Clearly the responsibility of being a United States
citizen does not end at choosing the right president. A great president can do little to fix fundamental flaws in the design of the United States political system which was
framed in a different world. There are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators
and 52 states today. When the Constitution was institutionalized in 1776
there were only 56 delegates, 13 colonies and under 4 million, mostly disenfranchised and poorly educated citizens. Today, improved
communications have led to heightened governmental transparency and scrutiny
which means we can safely cut back on some of the checks and balances that are
hampering our ability to make critical changes.
Fukuyama suggests we move to a parliamentary system which has worked effectively
across the developed world. I say we
dare to hope for this, or a similarly effective and necessary change.
I am Cecilia Mackie, MPhys and I worked on Wall Street for 10 years where I rose to an executive level. The owners of a firm I worked at are now in jail. Because of this experience I have avidly researched corruption based issues over the last few years. Outside of this plog, I am building a tech platform which will allow people to participate in a community for political change.
Please go to www.mackiemusic.com to access my social media pages and learn more about my polymathematical world of wonder!
I am Cecilia Mackie, MPhys and I worked on Wall Street for 10 years where I rose to an executive level. The owners of a firm I worked at are now in jail. Because of this experience I have avidly researched corruption based issues over the last few years. Outside of this plog, I am building a tech platform which will allow people to participate in a community for political change.
Please go to www.mackiemusic.com to access my social media pages and learn more about my polymathematical world of wonder!
