The physicist Max Planck once wrote that “science advances one funeral at a time.” His point, he went on to explain in Scientific Autobiography, is that “a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Sadly, I agree with Mr. Planck. Worse, I think his logic applies to many realms beyond science. In governance, for example, I’m not aware of any corrupt politician who has been persuaded by logic and reason to stop being corrupt. Rather, he is eventually voted out of office, or he dies, and is replaced by the next generation of elites. Fortunately, each progressive generation of elites tends to be less corrupt and more democratic than the previous.
The above pattern underlies a fascinating debate between economists Mushtaq Khan and Daniel Kaufmann that is skillfully moderated by Owen Barder on the Development Drums podcast. (Hat tip to my colleague Martin Tisne.)
Barder begins the discussion with this question: Does corruption impede economic development, as Kaufmann has argued, or does a lack of economic development lead to greater levels of corruption, as Khan argues? Each man has a compelling thesis.
According to Khan, good governance doesn’t come about simply because there are international calls for greater transparency and civil society monitoring. Rather, governance improves when a new generation of politicians takes power and implements important structural changes that empower the middle class, such as property rights, greater regulation of monopolies, the formalization of the labor market, fair procurement, and entrepreneurial competitiveness. Once those structural issues are resolved, argues Khan, using Taiwan and South Korea as examples, corruption naturally diminishes and governance improves. In other words, to quote Wikipedia, “good governance is the outcome, rather than the cause, of economic growth.”
The listener perceives that Khan convinces Kaufmann of his arguments much more than vise-versa. Still, Kaufmann protests: If economic growth is the cause rather than consequence of good governance, why then is Botswana such a success story while the United States suffers increasing corruption and clientelism in the financial sector? Kaufmann agrees with Khan that strong, enlightened leadership by new generations of elites is key to a country’s development, but he is wary of the “Singapore model of development,” which focuses on structural changes to improve the market economy and strengthen the middle class without any focus on political accountability or civic participation.
Monitoring and Strengthening New Governments
If, to misquote Max Planck, “governance advances one funeral at a time,” then we’re at an interesting point of transition here in Mexico. After 12 years of conservative PAN party rule, the PRI is back at the helm. Mexico City and its 16 boroughs also have new administrations that are just starting to find their feet after taking power at the end of last year. At both the federal and local levels of government I have friends and acquaintances who are entering public administration for the first time. They are the new generation of progressive, forward-looking elites that must now adapt to a structure and culture of government that is still closed and influenced by powerful lobbying interests. It has been fascinating for me to sit back and observe their transition.
One of the subtle tensions in the open government community is whether the movement seeks to limit or strengthen the capabilities of government. Peter Spink has clearly articulated the historical context that explains why Latin American civil society has developed as a counter-weight to restrain the powers of state, which has been responsible for perpetuating human rights abuses, patronage, and economic inequality. Unlike their counterparts in the US and Western Europe, many Latin American NGOs view their governments as enemies to be restrained. As a result, they have been less effective at supporting the new generation of progressive elites that enter government with plenty of idealism but little political capital to implement the kind of structural changes that Khan insists are necessary to improve governance.
I find myself more persuaded by Khan’s arguments than Kaufmann’s. I have spent my entire adult life trying to convince an older generation in power within academia, civil society, philanthropy and government to become more open, transparent and accountable. I have had no luck. Unfortunately for the impatient, progress awaits its funerals.
My Upcoming Events
- March 11 – 12 — Right to Information and Transparency in the Digital Age: Policy, Tools and Practices, Palo Alto, California
- April 19 – 21 — International Symposium of Online Journalism, Austin Texas
- May 14 – 16 — LLGA|Cities Summit, San Francisco, California
Papers I Plan on Reading This Week
- Making the Administrative State “Safe for Democracy”: A Theoretical and Practical Analysis of Citizen Participation in Agency Decisionmaking by Reeve T. Bull
- Virtual Geographies and Urban Environments: Big data and the ephemeral, augmented city by Mark Graham
David, this post is very similar to an article I read today by Merilee Grindle called “Good Enough Governance”. You should have a look. I’m teaching a class on Governance at FGV this semester, and one of the questions is precisely this: “is good governance cause of effect of economic growth?” If you’d like, I’ll send you a link so you can check out the syllabus. Some good reading for you. Best wishes from Rio, oh, open government do-gooder.
The Estonian example is interesting here (and somewhat gives the lie to Khan’s claim that there’s “no historical evidence of a country which first reduced corruption and then developed”). It arose very much out of a new generation of post-Soviet politicians, but where anti-corruption was an explicit part of the economic model, particularly for rebuilding historic trading relationships with Finland/Sweden/Norway/Denmark/Germany/etc. (And, in turn, led to Estonia’s radical transparency approach, as it’s not enough simply _becoming_ not-corrupt if everyone will assume you still really are anyway.) Similarly, one of the first orders of business for a newly-ex-communist country is the great selling off that arises from the state no longer wanting to own absolutely everything. Here, Estonia was one of the only post-Soviet countries who realised that doing this as a properly open, transparent, fair auction, rather than just doing the oh-so-common deals with friends to give people key infrastructure at very low cost, wasn’t just an abstract concept of good governance, but would actually bring significantly more income into the fledgling coffers, giving a better base from which to move forward. Obviously these things are massively overdetermined — they certainly weren’t done _solely_ for economic reasons, but the immediate financial rewards (and not just a more abstract long term dividend) was certainly a key consideration.
This example is very much a product of a very specific environment, and a lot of examples of other countries trying to copy bits of the wider Estonian model have failed — partially because the system is much too inter-connected to just lift random parts in isolation, particularly as each country’s network of problems is also going to be unique; and partially because a lot of the changes were just too radical to be able to implement except at a point of extreme chaos. But I have a lot of sympathy for Milton Friedman’s meta-idea that the basic approach should be keep ideas alive and available so that at a point of crisis they’re lying around to be picked up. And, in the meantime, we inch forward day by day with lots of simple, tangible, practical improvements.