Whether we get a speeding ticket or a tax assessment notice does not customarily depend on the government we have just elected. Institutions like the police, law courts, or health services are in place to govern continuously ‒ irrespective of who is prime minister at any moment.
They continue with the state’s day-to-day business, loyal to the res publica, covering even for governments in absence. Strictly speaking, the rule of law, equality before the law, the impartiality of institutions, the expertise of their agents and their incorruptibility has nothing to do with democracy.
At least in theory, these essential governance ingredients could be provided by theocracies or dictatorships too. If the latter’s rule is broadly welcomed we speak of legitimacy – acceptance as opposed to choice. Democracy is merely a mechanism to pass on political power in fixed intervals without upheavals. It does not safeguard liberal values.
To guarantee checks and balances, French 18th century philosopher Montesquieu came up with the idea to separate legislative, judicative and administrative powers. It was a novel, and very influential idea. Most constitutions these days are making it their bedrock.
It proved not sufficient. If the same guys are sitting in parliament, in the ministries and the courts of law, the formal separation of powers comes to naught. We talk of managed democracies, and think of Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin and how their stronghold over mass media is skewing public opinion.
Yet the priority of party politics over honest administration of public goods has crept into western democracies too. The US, a bulwark of democracy, is already visibly dysfunctional. And the residual purpose of Europe’s political parties is to manage their fate, not their country.
We have seen this on our island too, on all levels of governance. Who pays taxes for what and how much, who is prosecuted or who walks free and whose business is considered congruent with public interest or not is too often not decided by independent, trustworthy institutions, but by their political masters.
At fault, ever so often, is not only the government, which vengefully hires and fires according to loyalty expectations, but civil servants and judges too who refuse to take personal responsibility. Like most Russians, we accept their malfunctioning as a fact of life.
Public servants need to be protected from political meddling- Andreas Weitzer
The perception that democracies are immune to large-scale abuses of power is so widespread that we even hoped to impose them as a panacea on other countries, ignoring the importance of professional administrators.
To strike a balance between democratic legitimacy, someone having been elected to her job by the public, and professional legitimacy, grounded in expertise, impartiality and loyalty to the state rather than to an elected prime minister or president is fiendishly difficult.
Central banks decide about the well-being of their citizens with unprecedented power. They can save companies, or let them go bust, they can plunge households in utter poverty or make them richer, they can foster employment or make large swathes of the workforce redundant and they can make their elected government be voted out at the next elections.
Yet who has voted for them? The Bank of England is not even a governmental department. They are independent and organised as a ‘quango’, a quasi governmental organisation.
Yet nobody doubts that the collective expertise of bank governors and their impressive staff of professional economists and statisticians. The Federal Reserve, for instance, has 400 economists on its payroll. It is doing a better job in steering the economy through financial upheavals than say, Liz Truss, the 45-day prime minister of the UK who doubted the Bank of England’s mandate while bringing the British pound close to collapse.
Her predecessor, Boris Johnson, had his own go on the civil service, sacking anyone who dared say that exiting all trade agreements with the EU could have negative side effects. For good measure, he sacked 20 MPs too. Rex Tillerson, US Secretary of State for Donald Trump, executed his boss’s dislike of professional diplomats so effectively that a third of the ambassadorial personnel resigned.
The United States is a case in point. Every incoming administration will have to reappoint tens of thousands new judges and civil servants in every branch of government, making sure that any new president will oversee a vast desert of collective amnesia.
When George Bush Jr started his first term, he thought Vladimir Putin was the prime minister of Canada. Every eight years the United States has to learn all the old tricks all over again, in the meantime giving free reign to lobbying interest groups.
The ancient Greek philosopher Plato, living in the swamp of Athenian democracy, did not have much admiration for it. He asked for leaders to be intelligent, rational and self-controlled, in love with wisdom and well suited to make decisions for the community.
Philosophers like him should rule as kings, “those who love the sight of truth”. Looking at democratically elected leaders like Trump, Bolsonaro or Boris Johnson we all happily agree, but what to do about Xi Jinping, the social philosopher who has just orchestrated his own kingly rule for life?
The thing with philosopher kings, or dictators, is that it does not matter how benevolent or philosophical their approach to wielding power. Their structure of command must be hierarchical. No teamwork, no protest. Why, they know better. They will commit stupidities on a higher level of intelligence.
They will be unadvisable, soon surrounded by yes-men, while their pyramid of power creates little dictators on every level. Every council member in every village will be a plenipotentiary of Him. Hence Putin’s struggle to make any sense of the war he has masterminded.
Churchill famously said “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried”. This is, of course, not entirely true. The Catholic Church is still doing fine after 2,000 years, for instance, despite its shaky democratic records.
There’s the odd king or queen who did an honest job for their country. There’s Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, or Kemal Ataturk, who looks like a beacon of liberal values when compared to democrat Recep Erdogan.
Yet overall, the chances for outright oafishness are lessened when leaders have a predetermined, unavoidable day of reckoning. But I keep falling into the trap of democracy. I have to remind myself that fair and unadulterated elections are just a technicality.
As if by casting our vote, or even by abstaining, all will fall into place. We vote for a party, and once the ballot is counted they get to decide what is good for us. This is not good enough. We need to be served well, and that implicates that we have a voice beyond election day, being explained the issues and how they can be dealt with. We have to be consulted. Fair elections alone have brought all these guys into power we later learn to despise.
This is where public servants come into play and why they need to be protected from political meddling. They need to know that their job is protected for honest decision making, not for political obedience.
Andreas Weitzer is an independent journalist based in Malta.
The purpose of this column is to broaden readers’ general financial knowledge and it should not be interpreted as presenting investment advice, or advice on the buying and selling of financial products.
andreas.weitzer@timesofmalta.com