Keith Hudson:
> So here's a short summary of my views of the Civil Service:
>
> The Civil Service in England (and undoubedly in all nation-states, too)
was
> started as a self-conscious top-down organisation and has remained so ever
> since, meanwhile "capturing" the so-called democratic process of politics.
> Essentially, even though it is an intellectual body rather than something
> established by force -- as almost all other governing bodies have been
> throughout history -- it suffers from not receiving sufficient feedback
> from the masses. These days, when economic life is so much more complex
> than ever before, hierarchical structures can't cope with the flow of
> information that's necessary for optimal governance. The typical civil
> services of nation-states are patently failing (as also mass membership of
> political parties) and, as a consequence, we are already seeing the
> emergence of powerful specialised pressure groups which are seeking to
> influence political decision-making from the bottom upwards, aided by the
> media and other devices (opinion polls, etc).
In my opinion, bureaucracies continually face two issues which severely
curtail their ability to respond to emerging problems. One is that they are
required to operate by fixed rules within fixed jurisdictional boundaries,
while the problems they have to deal with do not respect fixed rules or
boundaries. Within any bureaucratic agency, a great deal of time is spent
on determining whether an emergent problem is properly within its purview or
within that of another agency or indeed within that of any agency. As a
former bureaucrat, I spent a lot of time at interdepartmental meetings
sorting out how to deal with problems. Often, solving the problem was not
the issue, who had the mandate to solve it was.
The other problem is that government agencies do not ultimately respond to
the public, they respond to the political party that happens to be in power.
Senior public servants are enormously conscious of protecting the asses of
their political masters. It is not only their jobs that depend on it, but,
I would argue, the integrity of the nation state depends on it as well. Can
you imagine the chaos if bureaucrats openly disagreed with their political
masters?
I agree that the present system does not work very well. The fixed rules
and jurisdictional boundaries were, in many cases, set a long time ago in a
quieter and more containable world. Government agencies tend to be static,
while the problems they must deal with are dynamic and increasingly
difficult to define. We are seeing large vacuums develop around very
difficult issues such as the privatization of public services, free trade,
globalization, and environmental change, and new pressure groups arising to
fill these vacuums. Whether or not one sees the nation state as being able
to weather the storms and deal with these issues at least half-effectively
depends on whether one is a pessimist or an optimist. I for one am not
prepared to throw in the towel.
Ed Weick
