Size Matters: Dysfunctional Government Edition

Via Andrew, Francis Fukuyama has a new gig at Stanford University running a Governance Project. Introducing it, he lobs a hand grenade at one aspect of American Exceptionalism:  

I would argue that the quality of governance in the US tends to be low precisely because of a continuing tradition of Jacksonian populism. Americans with their democratic roots generally do not trust elite bureaucrats to the extent that the French, Germans, British, or Japanese have in years past. This distrust leads to micromanagement by Congress through proliferating rules and complex, self-contradictory legislative mandates which make poor quality governance a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US is thus caught in a low-level equilibrium trap, in which a hobbled bureaucracy validates everyone’s view that the government can’t do anything competently. The origins of this, as Martin Shefter pointed out many years ago, is due to the fact that democracy preceded bureaucratic consolidation in contrast to European democracies that arose out of aristocratic regimes.

Moreover, the European Union's present woes surely demonstrate the shortcomings of a top-down approach to politics that often seems unconcerned by what the common people actually think about anything. There are times, to be sure, when such an approach can have useful consequences but there are also, I think, quite severe limitations to this way of organising government.

Nevertheless, despite their differing traditions the EU and the United States have something in common: size. Is it possible to maintain effective government that is also sensibly democratic in countries or continents that contain more than 300 million people? At what point do the advantages conferred by the economies of scale and the pooling of resources become outweighed by the muscle-bound sclerosis and sectional stalemate government on this scale must surely produce?

Take a trivial-yet-telling example: there is, once again, a proposal to replace the dollar bill with a dollar coin. This, like eliminating the penny, has been suggested before and gone nowhere. A similar fare seems likely this time too. Why? Because it pits the interests of western mining states such as Wyoming against those of Massachusetts, home of the only company producing the paper from which US banknotes are made. One Congressional delegation tries to eliminate the dollar bill; the other seeks to terminate the dollar coin. Cue stalemate.

Sure, this isn't the gravest issue facing the United States. Nevertheless, it is indicative of the problems size brings. Every interest is met by a counter-interest. Sectionalism triumphs. This produces a politics in which horse-trading is the only way to get ahead. But when parties become more homogenous (as they have) even horse-trading becomes difficult. And when legislation must be crafted to ensure no-one loses at all, it's easy to appreciate why many problems are parked in limbo for years on end. (Universal healthcare, for instance, was, notionally at least, a bipartisan goal that took half a century to happen - and it remains in doubt.) Again, often there are good reasons for this. That is, the arguments on each side of any given dispute are rarely wholly worthless.

But in a continental-sized democracy of 300 million citizens it is not merely the proliferation of interests that is a problem, but their size and power. There are very few tiny interests and even those may command Congressional protection. There are, granted, advantages to size and scale but the downside, especially when coupled with a federal government that is simultaneously too strong and too weak to achieve its stated aims, is considerable too. Few areas of American life are free from Washington's oversight these days, yet the structure of government is notably ill-equipped to manage this accumulation of power.

The European Union's present difficulties may demonstrate the problems of a weak central authority but moves to strengthen that centre seem likely to come at the expense of democratic accountability and, in the end, will invite many of the same problems Washington and the American states must contend with. Which makes it curious that there is such a tendancy on the American left to both despair about "broken Washington" and implore the EU to become more like Washington. That is, more centralised, notionally more efficient and yet, surely, bound to run into some of the same problems that make these American liberals despair of life in Washington.

Each side of the atlantic appears, at present, to demonstrate the shortcomings of, on the one hand, technocracy and, on the other, political or democratic oversight. What they have in common, however, is the problem of size which, in turn, brings the problems of evenly-matched interests into permanent conflict and, perhaps, stalemate.

There may be advantages to smaller, more homogenous states dominated by a handful of interests (corporate, class, geographic or whatever) they are, notionally at least, able to be nimbler, faster ships that can change direction more easily than the heavy-shotted ships of the line. On the other hand, they may lack the security that's craved in the modern world and are, perhaps, more easily captured by demagogues and other unsavoury types precisely because they lack the balancing heft of counter-interests.

Anyway, Fukuyama's project looks as though it will be worth keeping an eye upon.