Government, governance and private sector…

In a way the contribution that has remained with me the most from my very limited attendance at the Desmond Greaves school was WIlliam Kingston. Kingston, who is Professor and Research Associate at the School of Business Studies in TCD and has specialised on issues of public policy and administration, set out his stall as one who agreed entirely with Marx’s analysis in terms of overview, but not at all with his proscriptions, provided a thoughtful critique of aspects of the civil service.

A number of points he made were actually pretty good. For a start he dismissed the notion that you could bring private enterprise-like structures into the civil or public service. He saw that as fundamentally incorrect. Nor did he seem to cleave to the idea that our public sector was inefficient or poor at its tasks. He was more than agnostic on agencies, arguing that they should be folded into departments in order that political control and responsibility could be exercised. I’m sorry now I didn’t ask a question about that because while I’m not hugely concerned as to whether an agency is inside or outside a Department – except where such agencies have a clear regulatory or other role that necessitates distance (one thinks of financial regulation, or the Equality Agency) I think there are good reasons to give them distinct identities…one thinks of some of the instruments of foreign aid such as Irish Aid itself which sits within the DFA (on a side note Kingston in another context, perhaps deliberately, perhaps not, referred to the DFA as the Department of External Affairs).

And political control and responsibility is where it is at, one way or another. The current anger directed towards quango’s (most recently expressed on the front page of the Sunday Times) seems somewhat odd given that the reason for the proliferation of many of them (and Blair Horan and Marie Sherlock both echoed this point) was to diminish political responsibility. They’re not creations of the centre left, not at all. The great blooming of agencies in recent times occurred during the FF/PD administrations, not during the previous FG/LP/DL administration.

Another point he made that is of considerable value was that early retirement for senior civil servants, thus allowing them a further career in the private sector, led to egregious conflicts of interest in terms of their ability to conduct their jobs in the civil service competently. This is something that is little remarked upon given the previous enthusiasm to map private sector dynamics and processes onto the public sector, and calls to have easier recruitment of private sector expertise into the public sector (as if the latter had no expertise of its own). But there are significant problems as regards policy formulation and implementation that arise in a situation where there is too close a relationship between different sectors, and Kingston is right to warn of this. Indeed it is arguable that it is precisely this area which allowed for the ultimate fracture of sense as regards the financial, construction and housing industries, albeit that the closeness occurred in the main at executive level rather than below it.

So Kingston on many of these thoughts, and in his call for strong mechanisms for whistleblowers inside the public services – he name-checked Donegal and the blood scandal as necessitating same, is clearly worth listening to carefully.

It was however his proscriptions more broadly at the conclusion of the talk which some might find more difficult to agree with. He sought a replacement of PRSTV with the alternative vote and the cutting of half of the number of T.D.’s in the Dáíl. He felt that PRSTV had engendered a ‘tribal’ political environment where localism and local concerns trumped national ones – he gave examples of decentralisation as evidence of that. I’m not entirely convinced that localism was behind the concept of decentralisation, as much perhaps as its implementation. I mean by that that it seemed to me that decentralisation was an idea born of a sort of ‘modernisation’ gone awry. And not entirely awry. This is a small country, albeit improved transportation has lessened journey times significantly over the past decade or so. But there is an issue of an over concentration on Dublin as the central hub around which all else radiates. Whether though, as Kingston noted, it made much sense to decentralise elements of our civil service to smaller towns is another question again.

But decentralisation, as such, seems more driven by a wish to emulate processes found internationally, without due regard for their implementation, rather than tribalism as such. And it is difficult to see how the replacement of PRSTV with the alternative vote, or any other voting system, would substantially alter that. Indeed were it a case that the Dáil was filled, or half-filled – if we take his proscription literally, with the fearsome technocrats that such approaches often seem to have as their logical end point, there’s always the danger that we might see policies as bad or worse introduced. But it was Patricia McKenna, speaking from the floor, who made the most sensible point as regards that. Given that this would presumably confer even greater power on political parties in terms of candidate selection, their track record in government gives little reason for optimism that that would result in better outcomes.

Indeed Kingston seemed on much stronger ground when he called for better legislation (perhaps he sees that as a function of a streamlined Dáil), and expressed a far from unreasonable scepticism as to the state as the sole provider of expertise. Now, here I think it’s worth parsing out his thoughts a bit further, because they seemed to me to be a little contradictory. He gave an example of how intellectual property rights legislation which had been ruled upon by the courts, but was amended on behalf of an IDA client who took umbrage at that legislation by the government of the day. Rather than this being a crushing indictment of government or the state, although neither comes out of it well, it seemed to me that this spoke of yet again a cosy and compliant relationship between private enterprise and government. That, as has been seen all too often in recent times, sees the state acting as the supplicant doing the bidding of private enterprise. Of course, it’s not a single undifferentiated ‘private enterprise’ either, but rather the parts of which have or can acquire the greatest influence.

And while it’s difficult to disagree with his scepticism as regards the state, this doesn’t mean that the state cannot and will not be key in any future dispensation as an element of a broader mix.

So does his critique rest within currently modish attitudes towards government and governance? Absolutely, would seem to be the answer. But if one can park those and consider his thoughts on more fundamental relationships they’re of considerable utility for shaping a left approach to the state in transition.