What is the purpose of government? Sometimes amongst all the politics this rather fundamental question is left out.
Given the historical context, and the evolution of power over the past few thousand years, I think there is one purpose of government.
Any government should exist to create a state of social justice
[Please note I purloined the term social justice for the lack of anything better.]
This statement clearly needs to be expanded. To be specific the job of a government, as I see it, is to create a cultural and physical space in which all members of a given governed population may be judged and measured by and solely by their choices. Those choices, by definition, have to be both informed and free. That is, poor education is a limitation upon a person's choice because of the absence of options, and there should be no coercion in the choosing. Equally poor health, or other forms of "poverty" (both material and cultural) are barriers to free and informed choices.
That is to say, that societies should be about the choices of individuals, all adding up to the collective "will of the masses." Those choices should be totally free and unimpaired.
Now, this is very hypothetical stuff, given that I can't think of a single government that behaves solely in this manner. However, I feel it's not a far cry from what we should be asking from our governments. It is also rather ill defined, but that is because ultimately such judgements are cultural and complex. The measures of judgement of an individuals choices are subjective. Personally I would hold them to some broadly humanist scale but that is ultimately my own personal bias.
However, I think this is what we really desire from our politicians. To, in essence, allow us to make our own lives whilst ensuring that we don't impede on the lives of others in the process. It's a pretty fine line and many of the ideas that are common in politics stem from this basic desire, albeit oftentimes cloaked in deceptive biases of one form or another.
Happiness, goodness, and the likes are both fluid and temporary. Freedom, however esoteric and difficult to measure, is as close to a permanent measure of the relative success of a government. However free their populations are to pursue lives that are genuinely based solely upon informed and free choices, the "better" I feel they have performed.
Asking the purpose of a government is a tricky thing, mostly because there are so few examples of functioning modernity that lack a government. There's no point for comparison, so we can only compare the spectrum of existing governments and compare them to one another, and hypothesise from what we find.
Moreover, I eliminated measures like wealth, happiness and power as unrepresentative. Wealth is largely unhelpful because of the example of "relative poverty" - the concept that even the rich have their poor, and they are, whilst not as disenfranchised as the truly impoverished, are alienated from a political and popular culture that increasingly does not represent them.
Happiness is hard to define at the very best of times, and can be equally the result of chance and of intent. Suggesting that governments should make everyone happy implies that only the emotional results of what a government does is important and not the actual "moral" content of their actions.
As for power, even when it is somehow measurable it is as fluid as any other concept that exists solely in the minds of human beings. People can feel powerful even though they may not otherwise appear to be, and people can feel utterly disempowered even when they have the tools to make more of their personal power. Further, influence and power do not accurately measure a society's relative values. China is immeasurably fiscally powerful at the moment but that does not necessarily translate into the success or failure of that government relative to others, nor how it is viewed by it's governed population.
Now, all this said, I am fundamentally biased, I was born and raised in a culture that values freedom and fairness. However, freedom particularly is a useful measure of the relative success of a government because it demonstrates that it can control it's population sufficiently well to prevent them from impeding on one anothers happiness whilst allowing them to pursue it for themselves, allows individuals to pursue power or wealth with vigour whilst protecting others from the greed or malevolence of anyone for whom those things matter more than morality.
As always, debate and disagreement about the content of this blog is encouraged. All constructive comments welcomed.
Thursday 26 May 2011
Sunday 8 May 2011
2020UK - A question of governance
Greetings all. I am writing this blog as part of the 2020UK club, as imagined by Rodney Willett. It's an online club, or community, devoted to examining the issues surrounding Governance in the United Kingdom.
The idea was spawned during the debates around the recent referendum on the Alternative Vote (A.V.) in the U.K. While both sides in aforementioned debate presented reasonable arguments, and some not so reasonable ones, what became apparent is that, even if A.V. was rejected by the popular vote (as turned out to be the case) the issues surrounding governance in the U.K. were not going to go away. In fact, in some ways, it made them all the more pressing, and not just in relation to national elections. All forms of governance, at all levels, are in some way dysfunctional. As Rodney put it in the inaugural discussion of 2020UK;
"The form of representative democracy that we have in this country no longer works in the best interests of the people as it fails to meet the needs of many members of the electorate -
From this idea, that representative democracy in it's current form is becoming decreasingly relevant to modern society, the immediate and obvious question is what should replace it? How can we progress forward and build something better?
These are weighty issues indeed. I encourage anyone reading this to think beyond the traditional lines, as was envisaged when 2020UK was created. Party political tribalism, short termism and spin are intended to be left at the proverbial door on this blog and I hope you will help me keep it that way. This issues discussed are not for politicians, they are for societies. They are for all of us, and more importantly, for the generations that follow us.
Now in the spirit of this I intend to post a non-partisan blog aimed at analysing the issues involved with the purpose of encouraging others to post conclusions in relation to the questions raised. While I will post my personal conclusions, I intend to argue several possible points of view before reaching a conclusion.
So, to begin, I will examine the issue of justice and representative democracy. Specifically, should local police chiefs be elected?
Yes, they should
The principle behind this argument is a fairly straightforward one, and that is, irrelevant of realpolitik, we, the society, should have a democratic right to express our opinions on how the law is enforced as well as how it is made.
Moreover, it would add an additional layer of accountability to a legal system which sometimes seems sorely out of step with the will of the people. Judges, in traditional jurisprudence cannot be held to account, but the police are in fact accountable directly to their electorate in the United States and doubtless elsewhere in the world. The principle stands that if we have a right to say how our laws are made, then we should help decide how they are enforced.
Police officers should be able to be removed if their performance is judged unsatisfactory by their ultimate employers, the society in which they operate. Moreover, if one officer is elected and particularly effective, s/he should be able to remain in his post as long as the public and s/he is comfortable.
Electability is a brilliantly effective tool for incentivising the police to not just represent the Government of the day, but also to represent the people it polices.
Consider the recent issue of "kettling" at protests. I am not going to pass judgement but it is a controversial tactic. If the chief who issued the orders were to be massively rejected at his next election, then his successor would do well to reconsider his/her attitude to the matter, lest they meet the same fate.
In fact, many potentially controversial policing topics could be succinctly and definitely decided by elected police officials.
As stated here the intention of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill as currently being considered in the House of Lords is to create elected police positions.
No, they should not
The difficulty with the principles expressed above is that it ignores the reality of the nature of human politics. From my point of view, human beings have basically three modes of political behaviour; higher principle behaviour, emotive behaviour and tribal behaviour. To sway someones opinions on any given subject there are three basis of appeal.
The first is the higher principle, and above is a great example of a higher principle argument. Higher principle arguments usually ignore the nature of human politics and consider the philosophical issues involved. Having the vote, and democracy, while considered utterly common now, was once spawned from this from of rationale. In fact many of the greatest political achievements have been made in contradiction of the commonly accepted values of the time because of higher principle arguments. Owning another human being is wrong, we should all get a say in how we are governed, and taxed, we should be free to express ourselves. In fact the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is basically the go-to document for higher principle reasoning. It lays out basic political "rights" that all human beings should have.
The second appeal is to the emotive. A brilliant demonstration of emotive appeal is presented here and here. It is an appeal to our emotional responses, and is a common approach in modern politics. I will not pass judgement on the morality of appealing to human emotions in the political process, because whilst the above two examples may be particularly inflammatory, there are times when appealing to emotion is the only way. When providing the justification for the NHS, or rape counselling services, how can we not mention the emotional impact these two great services provide? We would be negligent if we did not make complete and well rounded arguments in politics, and that, whether the political classes like it or not, includes how people feel, as well as how they philosophise.
Thirdly, and perhaps most disturbingly, there is tribalism. This is basically the "us vs. them" factor. We are biologically programmed to respond to threats that come from outside our sense of community. Be that direct family, friends or entire nations, when another human being feels as though they belong and have loyalty to a particular cause, idea, name, or other label, they will rally behind it. Even sometimes when it is against their better judgement. Worse, when another group is labelled the enemy, things can become ugly. A psychologist called Sherif did a brilliant study of the psychology of the "us vs. them" mentality.
It is this behaviour, in particular causes the greatest problem with the election of police especially. When those who enforce the law are splitting the populace, creating an "us vs. them" mentality, i.e. those who did and did not vote for the winning candidate, those who are the "out group," that is, the losers, become utterly disenfranchised.
Now, in the rest of politics that is sad, and is a serious consequence. But in policing it becomes a whole other issue. When a populace becomes disenfranchised with it's legal system they will do one of two things; ignore it, or worse, usurp it. Jurisprudence is only relevant if it has the broad support of it's populace. Dividing the populace on whom they are policed by, even if party politics were strictly banned, will create the psychological illusion of division.
Consider this hypothetical scenario; in a culturally diverse community, with approximately 51% "tribe A" and 49% "tribe B", a police leader from the former community is elected. [In this hypothetical scenario we have 100% turnout, of course, and 100% tribal voting.] That police chief is a firm believer in cracking down hard on crimes that are statistically more common in "tribe B," which for the sake of this argument let's just assume it's something relatively small, like owning a T.V. without a license. [Yes, that is a civil issue but this is a hypothetical argument.]
In this scenario, "tribe B" suddenly find themselves losing their T.V.s and getting fines in much greater numbers. They, rightly or wrongly, begin to feel as though they are being targeted because they are "tribe B," and not because they have actually committed a crime. Incensed, "tribe A" starts attacking "tribe B"'s profligate use of television sets without the appropriate documentation in the local media.
"Tribe B," even those not engaged in illegal activity see this as an attack on them, not on the illegal use of television sets. They feel they are being persecuted by their tribal association, and not by any actual illegality on their part. At this point the conflict begins to spiral, and the police have to step in. Difficulty is, no matter what the police chief does in this scenario that police chief as already lost the confidence of the public. If they acquiesce and rescind the order to crack down on illegal televisions, tribe A will be outraged at aforementioned officer's going back on their manifesto pledges. If this officer does not, tribe B will assume it's because the officer is tribe A and therefore doesn't care about their plight.
Conclusion
Both arguments are in some small part over simplifications of the truth. Both fail to consider certain possible outcomes, as all arguments of this nature may.
I, however, feel that the danger of dividing communities is far greater a loss than any accountability gained in the process. It is worth remembering that while, even if the police of today are brilliant, and utterly unbiased in their enforcement of the law that doesn't mean we should assume that tomorrow's police will be similarly inclined.
The possibility of division creeping even further into an already badly divided society is too great a risk, in my opinion. That said, it is purely my opinion.
I encourage all my fellow 2020UK club members, as well as anyone else who is so inclined, to reply and pass comment. I cannot stress enough that no one voice alone can make a case for change, or for the status quo. Comment, or write your own 2020UK blog. Inspired to join the debate? Contact Rodney Willett to see how you can get involved.
Democracy, from demos, the people, and kratos, power. It's about people power. Let's use it.
The idea was spawned during the debates around the recent referendum on the Alternative Vote (A.V.) in the U.K. While both sides in aforementioned debate presented reasonable arguments, and some not so reasonable ones, what became apparent is that, even if A.V. was rejected by the popular vote (as turned out to be the case) the issues surrounding governance in the U.K. were not going to go away. In fact, in some ways, it made them all the more pressing, and not just in relation to national elections. All forms of governance, at all levels, are in some way dysfunctional. As Rodney put it in the inaugural discussion of 2020UK;
"The form of representative democracy that we have in this country no longer works in the best interests of the people as it fails to meet the needs of many members of the electorate -
From this idea, that representative democracy in it's current form is becoming decreasingly relevant to modern society, the immediate and obvious question is what should replace it? How can we progress forward and build something better?
These are weighty issues indeed. I encourage anyone reading this to think beyond the traditional lines, as was envisaged when 2020UK was created. Party political tribalism, short termism and spin are intended to be left at the proverbial door on this blog and I hope you will help me keep it that way. This issues discussed are not for politicians, they are for societies. They are for all of us, and more importantly, for the generations that follow us.
Now in the spirit of this I intend to post a non-partisan blog aimed at analysing the issues involved with the purpose of encouraging others to post conclusions in relation to the questions raised. While I will post my personal conclusions, I intend to argue several possible points of view before reaching a conclusion.
So, to begin, I will examine the issue of justice and representative democracy. Specifically, should local police chiefs be elected?
Yes, they should
The principle behind this argument is a fairly straightforward one, and that is, irrelevant of realpolitik, we, the society, should have a democratic right to express our opinions on how the law is enforced as well as how it is made.
Moreover, it would add an additional layer of accountability to a legal system which sometimes seems sorely out of step with the will of the people. Judges, in traditional jurisprudence cannot be held to account, but the police are in fact accountable directly to their electorate in the United States and doubtless elsewhere in the world. The principle stands that if we have a right to say how our laws are made, then we should help decide how they are enforced.
Police officers should be able to be removed if their performance is judged unsatisfactory by their ultimate employers, the society in which they operate. Moreover, if one officer is elected and particularly effective, s/he should be able to remain in his post as long as the public and s/he is comfortable.
Electability is a brilliantly effective tool for incentivising the police to not just represent the Government of the day, but also to represent the people it polices.
Consider the recent issue of "kettling" at protests. I am not going to pass judgement but it is a controversial tactic. If the chief who issued the orders were to be massively rejected at his next election, then his successor would do well to reconsider his/her attitude to the matter, lest they meet the same fate.
In fact, many potentially controversial policing topics could be succinctly and definitely decided by elected police officials.
As stated here the intention of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill as currently being considered in the House of Lords is to create elected police positions.
No, they should not
The difficulty with the principles expressed above is that it ignores the reality of the nature of human politics. From my point of view, human beings have basically three modes of political behaviour; higher principle behaviour, emotive behaviour and tribal behaviour. To sway someones opinions on any given subject there are three basis of appeal.
The first is the higher principle, and above is a great example of a higher principle argument. Higher principle arguments usually ignore the nature of human politics and consider the philosophical issues involved. Having the vote, and democracy, while considered utterly common now, was once spawned from this from of rationale. In fact many of the greatest political achievements have been made in contradiction of the commonly accepted values of the time because of higher principle arguments. Owning another human being is wrong, we should all get a say in how we are governed, and taxed, we should be free to express ourselves. In fact the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is basically the go-to document for higher principle reasoning. It lays out basic political "rights" that all human beings should have.
The second appeal is to the emotive. A brilliant demonstration of emotive appeal is presented here and here. It is an appeal to our emotional responses, and is a common approach in modern politics. I will not pass judgement on the morality of appealing to human emotions in the political process, because whilst the above two examples may be particularly inflammatory, there are times when appealing to emotion is the only way. When providing the justification for the NHS, or rape counselling services, how can we not mention the emotional impact these two great services provide? We would be negligent if we did not make complete and well rounded arguments in politics, and that, whether the political classes like it or not, includes how people feel, as well as how they philosophise.
Thirdly, and perhaps most disturbingly, there is tribalism. This is basically the "us vs. them" factor. We are biologically programmed to respond to threats that come from outside our sense of community. Be that direct family, friends or entire nations, when another human being feels as though they belong and have loyalty to a particular cause, idea, name, or other label, they will rally behind it. Even sometimes when it is against their better judgement. Worse, when another group is labelled the enemy, things can become ugly. A psychologist called Sherif did a brilliant study of the psychology of the "us vs. them" mentality.
It is this behaviour, in particular causes the greatest problem with the election of police especially. When those who enforce the law are splitting the populace, creating an "us vs. them" mentality, i.e. those who did and did not vote for the winning candidate, those who are the "out group," that is, the losers, become utterly disenfranchised.
Now, in the rest of politics that is sad, and is a serious consequence. But in policing it becomes a whole other issue. When a populace becomes disenfranchised with it's legal system they will do one of two things; ignore it, or worse, usurp it. Jurisprudence is only relevant if it has the broad support of it's populace. Dividing the populace on whom they are policed by, even if party politics were strictly banned, will create the psychological illusion of division.
Consider this hypothetical scenario; in a culturally diverse community, with approximately 51% "tribe A" and 49% "tribe B", a police leader from the former community is elected. [In this hypothetical scenario we have 100% turnout, of course, and 100% tribal voting.] That police chief is a firm believer in cracking down hard on crimes that are statistically more common in "tribe B," which for the sake of this argument let's just assume it's something relatively small, like owning a T.V. without a license. [Yes, that is a civil issue but this is a hypothetical argument.]
In this scenario, "tribe B" suddenly find themselves losing their T.V.s and getting fines in much greater numbers. They, rightly or wrongly, begin to feel as though they are being targeted because they are "tribe B," and not because they have actually committed a crime. Incensed, "tribe A" starts attacking "tribe B"'s profligate use of television sets without the appropriate documentation in the local media.
"Tribe B," even those not engaged in illegal activity see this as an attack on them, not on the illegal use of television sets. They feel they are being persecuted by their tribal association, and not by any actual illegality on their part. At this point the conflict begins to spiral, and the police have to step in. Difficulty is, no matter what the police chief does in this scenario that police chief as already lost the confidence of the public. If they acquiesce and rescind the order to crack down on illegal televisions, tribe A will be outraged at aforementioned officer's going back on their manifesto pledges. If this officer does not, tribe B will assume it's because the officer is tribe A and therefore doesn't care about their plight.
Conclusion
Both arguments are in some small part over simplifications of the truth. Both fail to consider certain possible outcomes, as all arguments of this nature may.
I, however, feel that the danger of dividing communities is far greater a loss than any accountability gained in the process. It is worth remembering that while, even if the police of today are brilliant, and utterly unbiased in their enforcement of the law that doesn't mean we should assume that tomorrow's police will be similarly inclined.
The possibility of division creeping even further into an already badly divided society is too great a risk, in my opinion. That said, it is purely my opinion.
I encourage all my fellow 2020UK club members, as well as anyone else who is so inclined, to reply and pass comment. I cannot stress enough that no one voice alone can make a case for change, or for the status quo. Comment, or write your own 2020UK blog. Inspired to join the debate? Contact Rodney Willett to see how you can get involved.
Democracy, from demos, the people, and kratos, power. It's about people power. Let's use it.
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