BLOGPOST DESTROYS MY POSTS YET AGAIN

 My apologies for the text interfering with the right-hand column of the last post. THere's nothing I can do to deal with this!!

THE DECLINE OF STATE CAPACITY

Recent posts from Aurelien and 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 (if belatedly) 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 to be published 
in 2021, before is ignominious resignation.
One of the signatories to the note on a New Vision for the UK government
was Matt Flinders who has written this response to the 2013 book on
 “Blunders of Government”  

There can be no doubting that King and Crewe provide 12 “horror stories”
to support their argument, but without any meaningful reference
points against which to evaluate the frequency or nature of these
cases the reader is left with little more than an entertaining list
of policy failures. (“the politics of pessimism”) without offering a greater 
sense of balance or governing perspective. Even the briefest discussion of
Bernard Crick’s classic In Defense of Politics (1962 and recently
republished by Bloomsbury) with his warnings about the innate messiness and 
fragility of democratic politics would have broughtwarmth to an otherwise 
cold book. The insights and arguments offered by scholars including Andrew 
Gamble (Politics and Fate, 2000), Gerry Stoker (Why Politics Matters, 2006),
and Colin Hay (WhyWeHate Politics, 2007) would all have added tone and texture 
and balance in way that intensified the social relevance and reach of the book. 
Others who would have challenged the general narrative offered by King and Crewe—
Natan Sharansky (The Case for Democracy, 2007), Peter Riddell (In Defence of 
Politicians, 2011), Danny Oppenheimer and Mike Edwards (Democracy Despite Itself, 
2012), Stephen Medvic (In Defense of Politicians, 2012), and Cobb (Unbroken 
Government, 2013) to mention just a few—are equally absent and sorely missed. 


It is also true that many of the “blunders”—but not all—will be well known to 
many readers, as will many of the explanations that King and Crewe offer to 
explain the frequency of such failings. Failure in British Government (David 
Butler, Tony Travers, and AndrewAdonis) and Groupthink in Government 
(Paul ‘t Hart)—books that deal with specific failures or explanations were 
both written two decades ago, whereas Gerald Kaufman’s How to Be a Minister
(first published over three decades ago) provides a magisterial insight into the dangers of departmentalism, reshuffles, and
ministerial hyperactivism that King and Crewe offer as explanatory variables. 
More recent books like Christopher Hood’s The Blame Game (2013) or the 
content of specialist journals like Contingencies and Crisis Management might 
also have added a clearer sense of the complexities of modern governance. 
The theories, the concepts, the analytical depth, and comparative analysis are 
absent to a great extent because this is a book that is written for a broad public
audience and not a narrow band of political scientists. Such endeavors are to be 
applauded if they contribute to the public understanding of politics, but the risk 
is that without some sense of balance, they contribute to rather than address 
public cynicism about politics. In many ways and like all good books, The Blunders 
of Our Governments raises as many, if not more, questions than it answers. In many 
ways, it provides a rich seam of empirical material that has been expertly
prepared and now demands careful mining from a range of perspectives and 
positions in order to tease out exactly what, if anything, the 12 cases of 
failure provided by King and Crewe tell us about the changing nature of 
British government. One provocative step along this intellectual journey 
might attempt to turn King and Crewe’s thesis inside-out and upside-down by
daring to suggest that the changing nature of political rule (i.e.,the sociopolitical 
context within which political decisions are now taken) actually undermines their 
argument about blunder frequency and blunder avoidance. Could it be that a 
careful analysis of the changing nature of political rule in the twenty-first
century leads to the conclusion that blunders are actually far rarer—actually 
far more infrequent—than analysts might expect from the scale of challenges 
faced by those in the business of government? The hook, twist, or barb in this 
argument is the manner in which it draws upon Anthony King’s own work on the 
concept of “political overload” in the mid-1970s. 
“Once upon a time, then, man looked to God to give order to the world,”
King argued in Political Studies (1975, Vol. 23, p. 288). “Then he
looked to the market. Now he looks to government. The differences are
important. . . .One blames not ‘him’ or ‘it,’ but ‘them,’” and in the decades since King’s article was first published, a
massive literature on “disaffected democrats,” “the crisis of democracy,”
 and “why we hate politics”  underlines the simple fact that large sections 
of the public increasingly blame “them” (i.e., politicians and governments) 
for a range of social ills.
The important element about King’s analysis, however, was his focus on
expectations and intractability (or what we might relabel capacity
and demand). The former simply highlights that the range of tasks,
issues, and functions for which governments are now held responsible
increased greatly during the quarter of a century following the
Second World War; the latter adds a qualitative dimension to this
fact by noting that not only had the responsibilities of governments
increased but also the nature of the challenges being faced by
governments was becoming more intractable.
The business of government was becoming far more difficult, and there
were no simple solutions to complex problems. The crux of the issue
for King in the mid-1970s was therefore that “the reach of British
government exceeds its grasp; and its grasp, according to our second
proposition, is being enfeebled just at the moment when its reach is
being extended (288). Feed that logic through the three decades
covered by The Blunders of Our Governments and then set it against
even the most cursory appreciation of the social, technological,
economic, and political trends that are so beautifully captured in
Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of “liquid modernity,” and “the blunders of our 
governments” arguably appear far less damming and our systems possibly 
even slightly more resilient that at first might appear.
The challenges faced by governments are more complex (the “wicked
issues” of the twentieth century replaced by the “super wicked
issues” of the twenty-first that demand complex and inevitably
risky “megaprojects”) and the public’s expectations more immediate and 
unrealistic than ever before. (No government can fulfill a world of ever-greater 
public expectations.) If the resources of governments (physical, financial, 
intellectual, etc.) have declined relative to the rate of demands (quantity and
intractability), then is it any wonder it is possible to identify a series of blunders? 
Although counterintuitive, an increase in the number and visibility of government 
blunders is theoretically consistent with a less  blunder-prone, more resilient, and 
ever more transparent governmental structure. 
Could it be that blunders are to some extent woven into the very fabric of
modern governance in a way that defies political science’s way of interpreting 
the world? Could it be that blundersare, to some extent and echoing Bernard 
Crick, little more than the price we pay for living in a democracy? Can something 
really be a blunder if it is a failed response to a unique problem? Could it be that 
this book is not really about the politics of failure but the value of hindsight?
These are the questions that The Blunders of Our Governments points to but 
arguably does not answer.

LEVELLING UP

Paul Collier is an Establishment economist who delivered this lecture in 2022 which is well worth viewing in its entirety and nudged me to some thoughts. Briefly his presentation argued that - 

• Areas do not stabilise through the working of the market but rather 

intensify existing social, political problems

• 3 new social sciences can help us better to deal with regional disparities – 

evolutionary social psychology, moral philosophy (mutual trust) and decisions under uncertainty

• a chart on “intergenerational earnings elasticity”(!!)  shows the scale of 

what Britain and Italy are up against, with each having only 50% social mobility but Denmark 15%

• the importance of local context and of local leadership – rather than 

the “best practice” favoured by international banks

• the need to learn from others 

• and to “cross the river by touching the next stone” (as  Deng Xiaoping 

put it) that is, to learn from practical experience

Clearly I very much agree with his caustic dismissal of mainstream economics but to talk these days about local context is to engage in a similar discourse to that of “apply pie and motherhood” – it has become the everyone’s mantra. But it does need to be challenged not least because it has become, in many places, a recipe for (and rationalisation of) corruption

The December 2019 UK General Election brought Boris Johnson to power and saw many Labour seats in the North of Englsnd switch to Conservative (the famous Red Wall). And this was duly followed a couple of years later by the White Paper on Levelling Up the UK - arguably the most important spatial policy document for more than 80 years

Recommended Reading

Reframing development for “left-behind” places 2022

levelling up in the UK

According to Mazzucato and Dibb (2019), a mission-based policy should be characterized by three features: strategic orientation (direction, legitimacy), policy coordination (horizontal and vertical), and effective implementation (mix of interventions, appropriate funding and learning). There are reasons to doubt whether the mission-orientated LUWP satisfactorily meets these criteria. First, in terms of strategic orientation, each mission should be based on an inspirational aim that encourages private, voluntary and public sector groups to collaborate and innovate to resolve the problem and meet the target. Choosing the right goal is fundamental as missions depend on having legitimacy and something that all groups can ‘buy into’. Only some of the proposed missions come close to this sense of direction. The adoption of a missions approach suggests that policy should not be top-down, but instead co-created by actors at different levels, so that the eventual mix of policy instruments and schemes emerges from a process of joint working and collaboration. There is an evident contradiction here, however as most of the proposed levelling up funds are to be implemented in a primarily top-down and conditional manner.

https://www.geoffmulgan.com/post/does-levelling-up-match-up-or-why-we-should-think-of-this-as-version-1

https://research.ncl.ac.uk/beyondleftbehindplaces/blogs/Levelling%20up_AcSS%20blog_final.pdf

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781032244341/levelling-left-behind-places-ron-martin-ben-gardiner-andy-pike-peter-sunley-peter-tyler

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/levelling-up-missions-regional-inequality

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)