It is a sham really. The whole thing is so polarised these days that the party/s that lose an election often spend the next 5 years doing nothing but undermine the winning party. It's no surprise that nothing really gets done. There was a feeling a few years ago that the Washington Consensus was triumphing as the preferred means of government around the world, but the reality has turned out rather differently.
The leading lights in governance nowadays are certainly not coming from big, western countries. Singapore have been hugely influential for instance, and have played a big role in how China have tried to do things. Within Europe, Sweden and Norway have both innovated successfully.
I'm reading an interesting book at the moment that compares the way governments do things around the world, and they highlight four main issues with the way the western democracies operate:
- They have a belief that everything should be done in-house. The comparison is with the old days of Ford and GM in the 30s, where they would be hugely vertically integrated, and run everything from the logging firms that gave them wood to the sheep farms that gave them the wool for their seats. This belief that the state should both pay for and provide everything is not how the modern world works.
- Decision making is too centralized. You'd like to think that the Scottish referendum has opened up the debate on this and that a whole lot of power will be given to local authorities. With an election looming however, there's a risk it will be put onto the pending pile to gather dust. The world as a whole requires adaptability, as change is happening so fast. The best way to be adaptable is to make decisions nearest to the information that underpins them.
- A fixation with uniformity of supply. We've seen this in various threads here on GOT. There must be equality, with everyone given the same thing. It's mass production thinking in a world that is uniformly customized. We're living in an age now of flexible production and consumer choice.
- An aversion to change. The whole Yes Minister thing writ large, that too much effort is put into maintaining the status quo. Indeed, one of the few things that is likely to get you the sack is trying to upset the apple cart. It suggests this is a big reason why there is so much variance within public service. Why a hospital in one part of the country is so very different to one in another part, both in terms of its costs and the quality of service. For instance, if you reduced the spending of the most expensive hospitals down to the mean from across the country, that alone would save £15 billion. In other words, much more needs to be done to ensure best practice spreads, and spreads rapidly.
