n this article, the second of a series, I discuss another myth of democratic government (as presently understood): that civil servants are and ought to be no more than obedient instruments of their political masters.
The factual part of this assertion is simply false. As much as public service "functionaries" may pretend to their superiors, to their publics and even to themselves that they are just following the rules, just obeying orders, this front need not be taken seriously.
They may be cogs in a vast machine but they remain human cogs, capable of all the motives and maneuvers that humans display. They bend or stretch their orders when it suits them (as we all do). They drag their feet, work to rule, follow the rule or sometimes the direct order that gives them their preference in a given situation, overlook the one that strictly forbids it.
Civil servants are known to do all these things, and no amount of auditing can prevent it altogether, though it can and does make self-interested behavior more subtle, more difficult and correspondingly, harder to detect.
It is the second, evaluative part of the assertion that is interesting, and I want to argue here that it is wrong of us to expect or hope that civil servants will be passive instruments of political and judicial power that lies elsewhere.
The idea of democracy requires that civil servants be held accountable rather than strictly submissive to law and to the public will and interest. On no account do we want an autonomous civil service holding supreme power as happened, for example, in the former Soviet Union. (Russian communism was more the sovereignty of a bureaucracy than the dictatorship of a proletariat.)
Still, we might be better and more democratically governed if our civil servants were constrained and held accountable more firmly, but also more loosely and flexibly than they are at present. This, is the possibility I would like to consider.
Whether explicitly, as in the American system, or implicitly, as here in Canada, today we recognize government as having three distinct functional components: legislative, judicial and executive. Elected representatives make law; judges interpret law when disputes arise as to its meaning; the executive (whether directly elected or formed by the majority party in the elected legislature) implements the law or, in a more realistic view, acts as it sees fit within the limits of effective legal control.
Experience has taught us that the accountability thus achieved, much better than nothing, although, to be sure, very limited. There is still a deep unwillingness to contemplate alternatives, the 20th century having taught the lesson that, no matter how bad they may seem to be, governments can easily get worse.
And yet, it is obvious to everyone that "democratic" government as we know it is more the servant of great vested interests than of the public interest; and, withal, is incapable of contemplating seriously, (let alone grappling with and successfully resolving), the great issues of a global society that is increasingly unstable.
For this reason, it is becoming necessary to think beyond democracy as we have known it, toward a model of government that would be more accountable both to public necessity and to the public will.
One step in this direction might be to recognize that what we think of as the executive function of government, that of the civil servants (originally, the literal servants if not the castrated slaves of a sovereign) really consists of at least two separate functions, neither of which could be performed by volitional eunuchs.
There is an executive function properly so-called: the execution (implementation) of the public will, expressed as the outcome of some political process. Before it can be executed, the public will requires to be specified in detail (as it is today, through departmental regulations). But it also requires to be honestly consulted, educated and guided, through what I will call a conciliar function that is still poorly understood.
The periodically staged popularity contests do not serve this function. Neither do the departmental "communications" shops, nor the focus groups nor the interminable stream of consultant reports. Neither do the media, as one might hope, promote a genuine dialogue between the government and the governed, nor between the latter's diverse interest groups and factions.
The Auditor General and the ombudsman (if there is one) exist, ostensibly, to serve the cause of integrity in government; yet neither has the clout to be effective in the role. Accordingly, we might do well to divide the cadre of "civil servants" into separate branches: one tasked with detailing and implementing the law, as at present, the other tasked with organizing and presiding over a political dialogue, a public conversation of integrity and reciprocated understanding.
Dialogue and intelligent negotiation among the contending factions of a society is indeed a public good. It might thrive better than at present if recognized and deliberately cultivated as such by yet another self-serving government organization that does nothing else, and that is itself kept honest by the private media and the other branches of government. At any rate, the experiment would be worth trying.
The basic idea is to divide what is now thought of as the executive function into two parts, neither political in nature, but neither thought nor desired to be mere instruments of a sovereign will in the articulation of which they have no stake or share. Some way or other we must resolve this dilemma: our need for public officials who are both strong and weak effective and dependent at the same time.
For us, as for the Turkish sultans, it is a mortal danger when civil servants can pursue their own interests unsupervised and unchecked. Yet neither cutting off their balls, nor treating them as mere tools of their political masters solves the problem of domesticating their power.
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