May 2009

It is important not to let a scandal go to waste. If you follow world politics, then you must know about the recent events in Great Britain. According to the Financial Times, 'For the past two weeks, Britain has been in a state of stupefied anger at the ingenious ways in which elected politicians have used their expenses system to milk the taxpayer'. As a result, says the same report, 'public fury over scandalous expenses claims has pushed lawmakers, in fear of losing their jobs and their reputations, towards constitutional reform'. (Financial Times, May 23/May 24 2009.)

Now, I am a student of the constitutional thought of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), the British utilitarian philosopher and jurist. Thus, as I have followed the scandal  Bentham's words have been ringing in my ears. For, one of the great battles of Bentham's long life was the reform of parliament. But Bentham was a universalist. He was confident that his ideas for constructing a form of government that would provide 'securities against misrule' were universally applicable. Bentham believed that government should be as open and as transparent as possible. This is his Panopticon principle, all round transparency with very few exceptions. Note that a request under the Freedom of Information Act got the scandal under discussion going.

One of the most difficult barriers in the field of communication and development is the lack of quantitative empirical evidence that demonstrates the effect of communication on development. When we argue that communication is central to development and increases development effectiveness, economists often raise an eyebrow and ask "Where's the data?" It's a legitimate question. And it's a question we don't have an answer to - yet.

"And it should be realized that taking the initiative in introducing a new form of government is very difficult and dangerous, and unlikely to succeed. The reason is that all those who profit from the old order will be opposed to the innovator, whereas all those who might benefit from the new order are, at best, tepid supporters of him. This lukewarmness arises partly … from the skeptical temper of men, who do not really believe in new things unless they have been seen to work well. The result is that whenever those who are opposed to change have the chance to attack the innovator, they do it with much vigour, whereas his supporters act only half-heartedly; so that the innovator and his supporters find themselves in great danger."

- Niccolo Machiavelli (1532), The Prince

There are a lot of highly interesting talks and events on governance at the World Bank these days, often we discuss them here in our blog. The other week we had a guest from the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF), Roland Rich, who is the Fund's Executive Head. He gave a remarkable presentation, full of memorable propositions that would all merit a blog post or two. From "We're all footnotes to Plato" to "An idea is not responsible for the people who support it" there was a lot of food for thought. For this post, I'll pick only one of his many inspiring ideas: the role of social capital in development.

"A new situation has arisen throughout the world, created by the spread of literacy among the people and the miraculous improvement of the means of communication. Always the  opinions of relatively small publics have been a prime force in political life, but now, for the first time in history, we are confronted nearly everywhere by mass opinion as the final terminant of political, and economic, action."

The Founding Editors of the Academic Journal Public Opinion Quarterly in 1937

On the occasion of the publication of the first issue of Public Opinion Quarterly

Regarding my recent post on 'The Collective Action Problem: The Case of America's Uninsured' here is a little nugget from William A. Galston:

While I have stressed the significance of changes in structures of power and interests in the United States, there is as well an enduring political reality stressed by analysts from Machiavelli to Dahl: the forces of the status quo enjoy a systemic advantage over the forces of change. Those who benefit from the status quo know who they are, can calculate what they have to lose, and have strong incentives to organize to protect themselves against losses. By contrast, the beneficiaries of broad change are a diffuse group. They can only project or imagine (not experience) the impact of the proposed change on their lives, and many will be disposed to doubt that the promised benefits will reach them at all. For these reasons, among others, they are harder to organize than are those who seek to protect what they already have. (The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, p. 554)