Government Index

 

Introduction

 

As was pointed out in Chapter 2, the overall performance of the political economy has become critically dependent on the performance of a large government. To name just a few examples: economic performance depends on the performance of government monetary and fiscal policy, business invention and innovation performance depends on government promotion of research and development and education, and the status of the environment depends on the implementation of environment policy. Yet as was also pointed out in Chapter 2, government has developed serious problems in its ability to make a good estimate of the common weal and for the most part has not developed an strategy for implementing innovations appropriate for its expanded role.

The purpose of Chapter 8 and 9 is to propose fundamental changes in government in order to achieve a high performance government for the projected political economy of the mid 21st century. In this chapter changes in the system of checks and balances will be proposed in order to achieve a much better estimate  of the common weal. In the next chapter the implementation of much greater decentralization will be proposed in order to achieve a higher rate of learning. 

A starting point to propose changes in government which will result in a better estimate of the common weal is to review the defects discussed in Chapter 2. As the scope of government has expanded, increasingly specialized committees and subcommittees propose legislation. Moreover, because many government actions have an uneven distribution of costs and benefits, these committees have an intensity bias, that is, they tend to promote desires of groups who receive disproportionately large costs or benefits. The specialized legislature tends to estimate the common weal as a collection of goods for various constituencies. Considered individually many government actions lack general benefits, farm subsidies, for example, lack benefits for consumers. Also, the estimation of the common weal does not achieve even approximate consistency. One example here is the exclusion of the oil industry from the superfund cleanup. Finally, because there is no direct relationship between the costs and benefits of most government programs, voters do not have strong incentives to demand efficiency in government. In short, government actions frequently lack consistency, general benefits, and efficiency.

One possibility of reducing these shortcomings is to drastically curtail government to the idealized definitions of limited government of the 18th and 19th centuries. Such an effort would transfer much of the effort of estimating the common weal from the collective action of government to private action of individuals. The author assumes such an effort is not possible for the foreseeable future. While some concerns might decrease, for example the military if there is a relaxation of international tensions, the overall size of government is unlikely to decrease significantly as other concerns are likely to increase. For example, the concern for the local, national and international environment is bound to increase given current events such as the demise of forests due to acid rain, the collapse of whole ecosystems which has had the greatest loss of lifeforms since the demise of dinosaurs and the depletion of the ozone layer which has created an ultraviolet radiation hazard. Therefore, the author assumes the task of proposing changes to improve the estimate of the common weal of a government which has a large role in the political economy.

Given the vastly improved technology for communication, some idealists might wish to improve large government's estimate of the common weal by replacing representative government with a direct  democracy. As the capacity of the communication system expands, the feasibility of implementing a direct democracy increases. The real issue, however, is whether the implementation of a direct democracy would in fact improve government performance. Voters, after all, are bounded rational beings with limited resources to invest in deciding between political alternatives. And as government grows in complexity, the amount of resources voters must spend on making informed choices also grows. Even if databases were prepared with complete analysis to aid the voters' efforts, an increasing amount of time would be required for voters to understand the analysis. In as much as legislators currently rarely understand the details of legislation outside their specialty, it is unlikely that the average voter would trouble himself to be informed on issues other than those which directly affected him. Consequently, direct democracy is not likely to ameliorate the problems of intensity bias .

Hence, the subject of direct democracy will not be pursued in this book for two reasons. First, as has been pointed out, direct democracy is unlikely to improve the estimate of the common weal. Second, it is assumed that the more complex government becomes, the more the voters, in order to reduce their expenditures of resources in political decision-making, would prefer to delegate this task to specialists, namely their representatives.

Therefore, the agenda is to propose changes in the system of checks and balances of our representative government in order to promote an estimate of the common weal which has the properties of general benefits, consistency and efficiency. Originally, the founding fathers incorporated a system of checks and balances in the Constitution to promote an estimate of the common weal with the properties of maintaining a limited government and property rights. In this chapter the author will propose numerous institutional changes in order to create a new system of checks and balances which will result in an estimate of the common weal which has the new desired properties.  To motivate the proposed changes we need to reconsider why the current governmental design only weakly promotes the properties of general benefits, consistency and efficiency. These properties are best determined by teams of experts. For example, the general benefits and efficiency of a particular environmental policy is best determined by a team of economists, biologists, engineers, and other experts. It should be noted that the problem is not that teams of experts refuse to perform such analyzes. Over the past several decades there has been an increasing number of articles in professional journals analyzing all aspects of governmental policy.

The problem is that even when most experts agree that a particular governmental policy is seriously flawed, there is no current mechanism other than majority vote in the legislature to change a law. And the vested interest benefiting from a bad law can easily block change in the current specialized legislative committee system. Moreover, given the complexity of governmental issues voters are unlikely to demand action from their representatives unless the defect has precipitated a crisis or directly affects them Hence, serious flaws in governmental policy can take decades to correct.

In order to create a more rapid mechanism to correct serious flaws in governmental policies a professional check, which hereafter will be called a professional review  is proposed. This professional review would be a formal governmental activity integrated into the system of checks and balances in order to create powerful incentives for elected and appointed officials to incorporate general benefits, consistency and efficiency in all their acts without the need of constant professional reviews.

As modifying the system of checks and balances will require Constitutional amendments, the proposed design must consider keeping the proposed changes to a minimum to ease the problem of obtaining voter approval. To the extent that the proposed changes might find public favor, the assumption is that they would be implemented by constitutional changes over the course of the next half century. By this time the forecasted technological changes described earlier should be in existence. The discussion, moreover, will focus only on changes to the present government rather than providing a complete exposition. The order in which the three branches are discussed corresponds to the magnitude of the changes proposed for each. The order will be the judiciary, the legislature and he executive.

Judiciary

Index