The Concentration of Power and the Loss of Accountability

There was an interesting article on The Moscow Times English language website this past weekend.

At a forum or discussion of some type, an individual asked President Medvedev about when the tariff on the personal possessions of foreign nationals would be removed. The removal of this tariff was agreed to by Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus as part of their formation of a customs union two years ago. Mr. Medvedev angrily responded to the effect that he could not say when it would be removed because it was supposed to be removed a long time ago.

This tariff has been the subject of decrees by both Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin that it should be removed immediately. Yet, the bureaucracy still has not managed to accomplish this simple task.

What I find so interesting about this situation is that the perception in the western democracies is that the government of Russia is at best a pseudo-democracy, and perhaps just a dictatorship masquerading as a democracy.

Most people would believe that in a dictatorship the head of state would be able to get whatever needs to be done quickly. Most people also have a very low opinion of the honesty of politicians and therefore would choose to believe that Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin are merely putting on a show for the benefit of the public and not actually trying to solve the problem. I do not believe this to be the case. I believe that Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev are reaping the rewards of collecting all of the democratic power in Russia into just a very few hands.

The same problem has evolved within Canada over the past half century.

In a vain effort to gain control of the government bureaucracies, Prime Minister's and Premier's have increasingly removed authority from the legislative branch and concentrated it within the executive branch. This was always viewed as necessary so as to stop the bureaucrats from undermining or embarrassing the government on policy issues. It was also a way of allowing weak cabinet minister's to appear competent by removing any scrutiny by the legislators.

The bureaucracy has tremendous power to embarrass the government. The anonymous brown envelope containing documents showing a minister over ruling the professionals within a department has always been a favourite way of dealing with a minister who does not show sufficient respect to his/her bureaucrats.

My point being that the elected government has always had legitimate reasons for wishing to gain tighter control over the professional bureaucrats.

The problem is that the technique that has been chosen does not work. It does not work because it does not provide the government with better control over the bureaucrats, but rather it works by reaching an understanding with the bureaucrats that in exchange for the bureaucracy not embarrassing the government, the government will remove most scrutiny and accountability.

The cabinet minister's that I know will vehemently disagree that any such arrangement of this type has been made and they are technically correct. That being said, the effect is the same.

It is simply illogical to believe that you can concentrate authority in the hands of fewer and fewer elected individuals without some parts of the bureaucracy being freed from oversight. You simply can not add authority, responsibility or power to an individual and expect that individual to maintain the same level of scrutiny over the people they are over seeing. They will have to delegate, and the people they delegate to are the same bureaucrats that they are supposedly scrutinizing.

A person's IQ does not go up by 40 points because you add responsibility to their plate. They don't suddenly gain the ability to put in 48 hrs of work in every 24 hr day. The human limitations of the individual remains the same. On top of that, when you add responsibility to an individual cabinet minister, the number of people who want to meet with that minister will increase proportionately. When you consider the time they must allocate to constituency work, when do they have time to scrutinize the employee's working under them?

Added responsibility means, that much of that responsibility must be delegated to deputy minister's and directors: the very people the minister is supposed to be scrutinizing most closely. You can not give people responsibility and then micro-manage their work, so to a large extent as the work of the minister increases, the more reliant they become on the bureaucracy that they are expected to scrutinize.

This is the error that every government in Canada has made and has done so with the aid of every opposition party. There is no opposition party which can honestly claim that they are in favour of democratic reform and will therefore change this system, because there is not one opposition party that is outraged that a bureaucrat would have the nerve to undermine a government duly elected by the voters.

The opposition party's should be appalled when they receive an anonymous brown envelope containing sensitive or embarrassing government documents. Instead, the opposition party's gleefully jump all over the information and use it to try to gain a political advantage. Whether they think that somehow the bureaucrats will be more loyal to their party, that they will be more effective in controlling the bureaucrats, or more likely they are just mindless twits caught up in the thrill of hunt. Whatever the reason, it contributes to the decline in the effectiveness of government and the functioning of the democratic system.

The effects of the little brown envelopes parallels the effect Louis XIV created amongst the French nobility at Versailles. By engaging the nobility in pointless trivial intrigues, Louis XIV was able to keep them from interfering in the affairs of state or fomenting rebellions that had plagued his ancestors. By getting the elected politicians to focus an embarrassing situation, the bureaucrats ensure that the politicians have no time to scrutinize the performance of the bureaucracy.

Ultimately the solution to bringing the bureaucracy under control is to enhance the power of the committees of the legislative branch of government. Providing back bench MP's and MLA's with meaningful and important work in scrutinizing the performance and budget requirements of the bureaucracy is the only way the bureaucracy will be controlled.

Far too many departments have their budgets padded at levels far too low to ever be scrutinized by a single minister and far too many bureaucrats make decisions that affect the lives of people and the blame is ascribed to the political level which knows nothing about what is going on at the front lines of service. The public blames the elected officials and perhaps they should. It is up to the elected officials to ensure a system is in place to provide scrutiny to all ranks of the bureaucracy.

Do I think the system will change?

No, I do not see anyone with the ability to change things expressing any interest in doing so. For far too many politicians the arrangement with the bureaucracy has become comfortable and convenient. For many of the rest, they are simply incapable of understanding what is going on in front of their eyes. And the public doesn't really care, as long as the government cheques are getting mailed on time and the lines in the hospitals aren't too long.

In the end, government has become far too big and too complex for the political system we use in Canada to effectively manage the bureaucratic machinery; to hold it accountable and transparent. The solution is to delegate power to the legislative branch, not to the bureaucracy. To do this though would require that opposition party's put the well being of the country ahead of their own political ambition, and how many politicians would actually do that?