The art and craft of government

Any book about the exercise of power that carries a ringing endorsement by Peter Hen- nessy on its dust-cover promises well. Perhaps, therefore, it is the fault of this reviewer that he felt that Professor Mulgan had generated rather less excitement than Professor Hennessy had promised. Hennessy’s own books reflect his own personality: they fizz, they crackle with excitement and find it difficult to suppress whoops of laughter. Yet they illuminate and inform.

In this book, Geoff Mulgan’s remarkable command of the literature of power ranges not just over the European tradition, from Solon to Bobbitt, but, in a world where Western supremacy is being challenged by China, India and Islam, over Eastern traditions as well. He certainly informs and, in his historical analysis, illuminates. He is, however, perhaps a little short on fizz and excitement. In a book so carefully referenced, where some of the footnotes are at least as interesting as the text, it is also rather reassuring to find that he commits at least one glorious howler. Surely, it was Robert Armstrong and not Robin Butler who made notorious the phrase ‘economical with the truth’?

This all sounds rather grudging, perhaps unfairly so. Mulgan has set himself a formidable task: to analyse the principles and practice of good governance and to suggest how they might be applied to our increasingly interdependent world. On many things it is difficult to disagree with him. For instance: ‘Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies’ (p. 291). He adds, ‘And they lay claim to a superior moral standing because their leaders are directly elected by the people.’ However, nine pages later, he notes, when discussing the need for some sort of world government:

Europe has shown how government can be organised in a network.