Good Government: A Perennial Need

A well-governed state is a country in which people are safe, prosperous and free. A country where people want to live.
An ill-governed state is a country where most people are poor, a country where many are at risk, a country in which people are stuck. It usually is an authoritarian state, where critical people refrain from expressing their opinions.
A failed state is a country where the economy is in shambles, a country without an effective government, a country in which people are subject to arbitrary authority and unforeseeable violence, a country where people flee from. There is lack of government, or rather many local and competing governments. Often a repressive or incompetent government has been overthrown by popular revolt.
Imprudent government and incompetent government in the end lead to rebellion and civil war. The worst evil is an endless civil war with no clear winner in sight. An evil that may be further compounded by racial or religious conflicts. Think of states like Somalia, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Think also of Venezuela, a state if not failed, at least imploding, decaying.

So our fundamental political challenges are:
Maintain well-governed states in shape. That effort never stops and is less certain than it has long been the fashion to believe. Plurality easily leads to majority and majority may lead to repression.
Introduce plurality in monopolistic states: difficult and risky.
Restore failed states: almost impossible. It requires competent benevolent dictatorship. That is rare. And it ultimately digs its own grave as it dulls civic society. The only alternative is the suspension of national sovereignty. Since the disrepute of protectorates under the League of Nations that hasn't been tried anymore.

Whatever the kind of government, leaders matter. Leaders of states are not just figureheads, even in democracies. After assassinations, important domestic and foreign policy changes do happen. Who is leading makes a difference.

One of the most successful states ever was Rome. It was successful for many centuries. Even its downfall took centuries. How came? What where the secrets of its success? In modern parlance: what were its critical success factors? We have an extensive analysis of those in The Discourses of Machiavelli, an analysis still relevant today.

Machiavelli writes that the two fundamental success factors in life, certainly in public life, are virtu and fortuna, quality and good-luck.
He sees as the critical competences for a well-ordered, a 'virtuous' republic, in order of importance, prudence, discipline and justice.

Prudence, or sound judgment and practical wisdom, is the ultimate quality. The main source of prudence is education. People who are well-educated (not the same as having been to school) appreciate prudent leaders.
Discipline is practical morality, embodied in law enforcement. The main source of discipline is, according to Machiavelli, religion, a religious mindset. Discipline is needed to make the necessary tough decisions in the face of crime, corruption, unrest, famine or war. Discipline is needed when sacrifices must be made.
The main aspect of what Machiavelli considers justice is a culture of equality before the law—Roman citizenship.
Every society has many differences in interests and in views. The most fundamental difference is between the few—rich and influential— and the many—poor and menial. In Rome, those were called the patricians and the plebeians. Today we may talk about the elite and the ordinary people. Aristocracy gives power to the first group, democracy to the second. In Rome, the patricians made for a long time sure that no one among them could grasp permanent power. Halfway, they allowed the rest of the people to have its own representation and power base. Of course, slaves were excluded, though some became citizens.

The opposite of 'virtue' is vice. What does Machiavelli see as the cardinal political sin? Corruption. Imprudence, indulgence and injustice are the three chief vices that corrupt a republic. Wide-spread greed ticks all three boxes.
The main breeding ground of injustice is inequality. Think of the many forms of discrimination, stereotyping, elitism. Without a common identity, differences easily become divisive. Pluralism is the hallmark of a well-ordered society. We may be all different, but we share being human. We are all people. The deepest political sin is to label and treat others as not fully human: as Jews, as blacks, as women, as backward, as scum, as alien. Or as profiteers on one side and loafers at the other side.

A well-ordered republic accepts, but manages its differences in interests and views. It institutes countervailing powers.
Even majorities need a countervailing power. "The winner takes all", especially with short-term views, is an unwise solution. Majorities should never suppress minorities. Successful democracies are inclusive, not exclusive, plural not singular. Inclusive societies are more stable—and more prosperous.
Authoritarian majority rule is as vulnerable as minority rule. It grows into dictatorship and suppression and so in injustice.
Rome handled the main conflict, between the rich and the poor, the patriciate and the plebs, explicitly in the tension between the senate with its consuls, and the tribunes of the plebs. Democracy was neither unleashed nor suppressed. The rich and powerful had to be as much disciplined as the poor and powerless. They had to obey the laws as well. Machiavelli gives strong historical examples of Roman discipline.
The separation of powers by Montesquieu: legislation, administration and judiciary, is another classical example of countervailing powers. Independent judges are the last defense in a democracy in which the differences between legislation and the administration have become blurred—or where the differences between public service and private companies have become blurred.
Countervailing powers prune all-too powerful players, either business monopolies or political monopolies. Paul Collier: "At the core of all successful societies are procedures for blocking the advancement of bad men." And in our enlightened age, bad women as well.
Wherever plurality is curtailed, society is stifling itself. Without countervailing powers, corruption spreads. Corruption is always and everywhere the mortal enemy of good government.

We need political competence: prudence, discipline and justice. If we have prudence and justice, we need law enforcement against corruption. But without prudence and without justice, law enforcement itself becomes the strong arm of corruption.
Good government doesn't bring heaven on earth, but is forever taking steps in the right direction. Lately, examples of the opposite direction abound.

Bureaucratic politics: the seventh systemic disease in organizations

A lot of buzz in an auction room. Small groups watch each other furtively. Bidding is about to start. Who will go home with what?

Maybe we should have started with this dynamic. It is so prevalent, that it often seems to be the natural condition: the way things are. Especially larger organizations are often like this: everyt issue, every plan, every decision, every action is turned into internal politics. People defend their turf, want to enlarge their turf or are eying for a next, bigger and better-paid turf. Is there an outside world? Yes, but mainly insofar it helps to define the turf, and influences who gets what money, prestige or power. Customers or clients, unless they represent big money, big prestige or big influence, are a necessary evil. They may have complaints and problems to solve, they have unrealistic expectations; basically they are a nuisance.

Is it possible to avoid or eliminate internal politics? No, it isn’t. But unattended it is a cancerous growth that will supplant all healthy tissue. It becomes especially evil when it is infected with fraud or corruption of any kind and when egotists at the top only allow other egotists to join their ranks.
What is the ideal counter-poison? Someone at the very top who has backing from external directors, with a direct interest in the services or products, in the end-users of these services and products, in the development and production of these services or products and the people who make that practically happen. Usually, but not necessarily, that person has come from the ranks.
Why is the top person so important? Isn’t that idolizing the strong man or the strong woman? No. The point is that such a person is essential to prevent people not really interested in these aspects to fill the positions below the top. The top person is not only a role model, but the only guarantee against empty careerists.

And not even that works always. Especially when the top executive is an entrepreneur who started his own company and the company becomes so big that he or she can’t handle everything anymore, such a person may be enamored by candidates for the number 2 position who come from bigger firms, often have very general backgrounds like financial and legal types. Marketing people are suspect, unless they have been in sales before. usually, marketing is for people who are too sensitive to engage in the rawer edges of the commercial world, like sales. Sales have the nasty habit that they often fail. Not all tenders are won, not every sales pitch hits home. And if you are too sensitive even for marketing? Then you can go into public relations. PR, darling, PR!

Of course both marketing and PR are legitimate functions, just like financial and legal work are. But they are more easily taken over by people with more form than substance. I have learned to watch for those managers who want to distance themselves as far as possible from the coal face, the place where real work is done. In public institutions it is often worse than in companies.
Now many companies are so big that you can’t expect top people to stay near to the primary process of developing, providing and selling products and services. There are simply too many products and services. So there the heroes are at the level of business unit managers. But size is less important than diversification. In huge companies of Shell or Apple the main products will still be known in the board room. There will be people there who actually held the new prototypes of the iPhone or know how an oil well and a refinery look like and smell.
But in a city it is possible that the manager of the sewage department has never seen or smelled a sewer and doesn’t plan to come near one.

In any organization internal politics is natural. But where reality is held at bay, internal politics take over. And good people leave, if they can. If left unstopped, the organization becomes a hollow organization, an empty legal and financial envelop. Everything is outplaced. The ideal of financial and legal types. Marketing types then preside over a collection of brands. They exploit trademarks.
When in a still large organization degeneration continues, this may change into the forth dynamic: executive psychopaths.