Government ain't what it used to be.
Maybe it never was.
We learn that elected officials make the key decisions, and professional administrators implement them. We should all vote in order to influence what is done in our name, and how our tax money is spent.
It is time to revise the lesson.
If we did not know it until now, the economic crisis and assorted swindles should teach us.
Government officials throughout the world cannot, or do not want to run everything that is formally accountable to them. More than a century ago they established government owned companies to be run by "business methods" without political interference. There is an equally long history of commissions, set up at "arm's length" from politicians and given responsibility for overseeing whole segments of the economy like banking, transportation, communication, and the stock exchange. Universities and hospitals, whether ostensibly public or private, operate with a combination of public and private funds. There is likely to be a board of directors with government appointees, or a board that is partly or entirely independent and perpetuates itself by appointing successors to those who retire. The professional personnel of hospitals and universities (i.e., professors or physicians) also have a hand in running them.
Social services are provided to the public by bodies called non-profits, tax-exempt, charitable, or quasi-governmental. They may be secular or associated with religious congregations. They offer soup kitchens, home care and transportation for the elderly and handicapped, hospices, clinics, legal services for immigrants or indigents, counseling of various kinds, half-way housing for released prisoners, the mentally ill, or others in need of custodial living, as well as housing for the homeless. Originally these organizations may have supported themselves with contributions, plus nominal fees for services. Increasingly, however, they offer their services as contractors to government agencies. They supplement or replace programs that government agencies had provided. A government may supply most of their money, as well as share formal responsibility for selecting clients and defining services.
Usually the actual work of government agencies is minimal. The theory is that private organizations can do it better. The people in charge of the organizations want government money but not government interference. Elected officials like the role of supporting social services, but few of them look closely at what the organizations are doing with the public's money.
If all these devices work well, and they do much of the time, everyone is happy. There are services for people with need. Both elected officials and the people running the organizations share the credit. The organizations have autonomy, and government officials have none of the headaches associated with administration.
It does not always work well. Of course, this is also true of things still run by government, like public schools, the police and the army. (We will leave aside the industries of private schools, security guards, prisons, and military contractors. They are part of the larger story. There are more employees of contractors providing food service, laundry, transportation, and guarding in Iraq than American soldiers. They do jobs that soldiers used to do. Contractors may be cheaper.)
Nothing works perfectly. Federalist Paper #51, written in 1788, put it this way:
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
During Israel's 2006 war with the Hizbollah of Lebanon, 3,986 rockets landed in the northern region. They caused 44 civilian deaths and close to 2,000 injuries. They also caused a collapse of social services. Care givers, paid as well as volunteers, chose to stay home or leave the north for safety elsewhere. Clinics associated with the quasi-governmental health services did not open, home helpers did not show up, the cadres of volunteers that supplement the police virtually ceased operation.
As some workers fled south, the media portrayed the problems, and a stream of ad hoc volunteers headed north. Often they traveled with their own money and supplies. The results may not have been catastrophic, but they were not orderly and predictable, as we expect from government and government-supervised activities.
Meet Bernie Madoff.
According to the headlines, $50 billion invested with him went somewhere else. A large slice of it came from universities, hospitals, and foundations that support research and social services. We do not know everything, but each day's news portrays other organizations that have cut back, cannot meet their obligations, or have closed altogether. The Hebrew University is on the list. My friend the budget officer is busy.
All those people who trusted Bernie with their money, and that of their organizations, may have thought he was an angel.
He is not.
Neither are the personnel in government bodies with responsibility for overseeing him and other financial wizards. Nor all the bankers and entrepreneurs who got the world into a bind with sub-prime mortgages and more complicated inventions.
What is the solution?
I do not know.
"More regulation," "Better regulation," or "Better people in government and business" are not likely to solve the problems. Remember the Federalist Paper. Men are not angels. Women were not an issue for political commentary in 1788, but we can guess that they are not angels.
Even more oppressing are all the responsibilities that governments have acquired. They continue to increase with demands by citizens and their representatives for additional services. There is too much to be supervised. Officials do not want to, and cannot implement, all the controls that laws provide to them.
The Federalist perceived a "great difficulty" back in 1788, and does not offer a foolproof solution. Then government was nothing like it is today.
Every once in a while, there is a scandal.
We hope that they are not too severe, nor too frequent.
Not enough angels.
Due to spam, I do not permit comments on the blog. I welcome comments sent to my personal e-mail address, below.
Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Dept of Political Science
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
msira@mscc.huji.ac.il
Tel: +972-2-532-2725
Fax: +972-2-582-9144