In any democracy there is a fairly obvious correlation between
the growth of government bureaucracy and a trend towards de facto one party
rule. This seems to be inevitable due to the huge size and vast complexity of
modern bureaucracies allied to the fact that they long outlive most elected
governments.
As bureaucracies grow, political parties become less
relevant due to a pervasive
bureaucratic inertia and its overriding need for consensus. Political life evolves
into a stage show as the exercise of genuine power leaks away into the bureaucracy. Not necessarily a national bureaucracy of course.
We are almost bound to end up with a one party state in all
but name because the supporting bureaucracy is effectively a one party state
with one set of policies and one consensus on every mature issue. Consequently we
see a slow migration from old notions of a political centre towards what used
to be viewed as the political left where the state is all powerful and has its finger
on every pulse.
Here in the UK things have changed to such a degree over
recent decades that anyone wishing to vote for a mixed economy socialist party
could comfortably support the Conservatives. Anyone with more centralised and even totalitarian tastes could with equal comfort support Labour. One could easily
argue that our two major parties are trending towards socialist and communist even though our
political language does not reflect that. Such an argument may struggle against ingrained terminology but it could be made and sustained. However neither party is interested in
language which keeps pace with political reality.
The problem of what we call such trends is acute because the
old left/right mythology is hardly adequate to handle a situation which is all
left and no right even though virtually all the major actors still strive to keep
the old language intact. Reassuring for some I suppose, but not particularly
accurate in these altered and rapidly ossifying times.
4 comments:
"As bureaucracies grow, political parties become less relevant due to a pervasive bureaucratic inertia and its overriding need for consensus. Political life evolves into a stage show as the exercise of genuine power leaks away into the bureaucracy. Not necessarily a national bureaucracy of course."
Spot on. Hence the "European Problem" which we are currently experiencing. I suspect there is an extra dimension here, which is that bureaucracies tend to reach inexorably outwards and link up with other bureaucracies. British paper-shufflers will tend to liaise with European ones, and they in turn will link up with global ones. It looks as if there is nobody in charge directing this, but the training and instinct of the bureaucrat is to find other bureaucrats to talk to, and to create new structures to populate. It's what they get credit and promotion for. The "self-made man" is now someone who starts a small local charity and then ends up running a multi-national NGO, etc. Meanwhile, the problems that the bureaucracy was created to solve are festering, and there is no way of addressing this without joining the bureaucrats oneself, and learning to speak their language.
A visual analogy: http://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.com/2018/01/democracy-is-neither-right-nor-left.html
The "planning" is in reality done for the immediate past mostly on data from a decade or two back. A feature of this is the absence of reliable costings for maintenance, amendments, dealing with the old remaining things and persuading the present people that the next generation or two will think and know the same as they did. When the airlines were nationalised it was on the basis of propeller driven aircraft. So when jet engines became the norm it was not long before the British actual services bore little relation to demand or the aircraft that became available.
Sam - yes bureaucracies do tend to reach outwards and link up with other bureaucracies. They even seem comfortable in a junior role as long as they retain enough of their original remit.
Sackers - I've seen something similar described as the "horseshoe theory" where far left and far right are much closer than is usually presented.
Demetrius - which suggests that in general planning only works if things change very slowly or not at all. Even then there can be problems - education for example.
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