Anti-corruption

I found this report very interesting, it touches upon many of the subjects we are discussing here; deteriorating welfare and privatisation for instance, http://www.qog.pol.gu.se/publications/Anti...hed_version.pdf

(To be found on www.qog.pol.gu.se/ which often offers interesting reading.)

A very interesting paper. What struck me most was the similarity between what happened in Sweden and what happened in the UK. The roots of the problem are similar: the solutions are similar: and the timing is similar too. The British Civil service was, up till the mid 1800's quite a corrupt institution and this can also be attributed in part to the existence of monarchy and feudal institutions, just as described in Sweden. Senior positions were pretty much reserved for the sons of the aristocracy and wages were either low or non-existent for the lower tiers, which virtually guaranteed corruption. A number of things came together to change this situation, and as with Sweden, per the linked article, one of those was problems associatedwith war: in the UK case, the crimean war.

In 1854 the Northcote-Trevelayan report was submitted to parliament and although it was not debated, many of its recommendations were implemented through orders in council As with Sweden, the establishment of a "meritocratic" system of recruitment and promotion through exams was crucial. In this connection it should be noted that Queen Victoria was uneasy about it because she feared that it would lead to people of "low breeding" infesting the higher echelons of court and government. Wages scales which were the same across the country were established, and provisions which prevented the civil servant from taking employment or enaging in business outside the service while in post were strictly enforced as a concomitant.

At the same time the new institution consciously and determinedly promoted a "public service" ethos, such that integrity was valued very highly within the organisation. Strict rules were put in place regarding the acceptance of gifts and the centrality of universal and impartial application of the law withrespect to decision making was supported by quite a large body of what is sneeringly called "red tape" - the policy and procedures manuals which detailed what should be done in a wide variety of circumstances.

Decision making was overseen, with detailed rules about the level at which decisions could be taken: this is now characterised as overly bureaucratic, but it is important that a single individual cannot take a decision which has potential for bribery and corruption all by him or herself. In order for corruption to take place a conspiracy is required, because the decision must be endorsed by another person, who usually has no direct contact with the applicant.

A firm separation between those who implement the routine functions of a department and those who are involved in making policy was established: and again promotion into the ranks of policy makers was dependent on exams, very largely.

This system was extremely successful and it was largely unchanged for 100 years. Trust in it was widespread and this acted as an informal safeguard, which I think is very important: The civil servant did not have to be a saint: widespread belief in the integrity of the institution meant that bribes were seldom offered: and that certainly helps if your aim is to strip out corruption

What surprises me about the article is the evidence that academics and international bodies appear to be struggling to understand what is required. Given that the example of Sweden and of the UK (and I have no doubt other industrialised countries at the same period) is before us and, in the scheme of things, not buried in ancient history, but reasonably well known, what is the problem? All this talk of "game theory" and "agent-principal" and "incremental change" should be off the table: we know what works. While it might be fascinating to study why it works, that has very little to do with the price of fish.

To me, once again, it seems that the problem is the ideological hegemony. Why give up a good theory just because the facts are at odds with its analysis? As the article notes, these bodies and academics have a theory: big government is the problem. Well that is always their theory, no matter what the issue. The theory is wrong. It is quite unarguably wrong. If one is wedded to "evidence based decision making" there is no question about what the evidence shows, and you have to do a lot of fancy dancing to even suggest that there is doubt.

But it is inconvenient to the neo liberal mindset, and they have never been detained by facts: that is why I say that that outlook is woo, of the clearest and most unambiguous sort.

In this country the "reform" of the civil service has been moving forward sincethe hard right took power: that has been justified in the usual ways. The state is bloated: the system inefficient: the staff self serving; we cannot afford it; business values and energy will do a better job: and on and on. The fact that the systems are in place to address problems of corruption (amongst other things but quite centrally) is ignored: and this is a relatively easy sell at the outset: because the trust is there, people forget that an impartial system is not inevitable: they take those hard-won benefits for granted. It is understandable, for reasons mentioned in the article: most individuals are indeed personally honest and ethical. The fact that they are supported to be so by a whole lot of institutional and social mechanisms does not impinge on them much. So it is relatively easy to get them to believe that they can break one side of a social contract without adverse consequence. And for a time that is true: as with other examples, there is a long lag before the ill effects are seen: the existing staff do have a "public sector ethos" strongly ingrained, and they will hold to it for years after the changes which threaten it are made. But not forever. As with other bodies, the institutional corruption of the public service will ultimately lead to personal corruption: and this is in line with all the recent scandals about politicians' expenses and the phone hacking etc. I do not think there is any doubt whatsoever that the undermining of the strict (if somewhat cumbersome) rules and attitudes which have gifted us trusted public service will ultimately destroy that which it seeks to "improve". The neoliberals have no idea what they do: but don't ask me to forgive them, for I am not the son of god, and my heart is not big enough for that. Such stupidity is culpable.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19797736

An article about the civil service following criticism by a government minister. It seems to me that this illustrates exactly what is wrong with the government's notion of what a civil service is for and how it should operate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/oc...omment-18627533

Once again a monumental cock up: and once again it is the fault of the Civil Service: no politician was harmed in the making of this mess ...

I wanted to come back to the two previous posts because it occurs to me that they have wider importance.

In the first place Mr Maude made a statement saying civil servants should do what Ministers tell them, and that the failure to do that is a problem. Well that would be a defensible position if all policies were fully analysed and their consequences known, so far as that is possible. This has traditionally been the role of senior civil servants. In principle they learn what the minister wants to do: and they then go and look at the ways it might be done,laying out all the information about costs and problems which might follow, as well as the time it might take etc. This system served us well for many years and a case can readily be made in defense of it.

Ministers do not spend much time in any given department: they might be responsible for culture and art one day: and the health service the next. It is obvious to all that it is not possible to understand complex institutions and how they work, in a very short time. We have all had the experience of being frustrated by something apparently inefficient and easily improved: only to find when we learn a little more that it is not so simple, and there are reasons that the thing is done the way it is. That is not to say nothing can ever be improved. But it is to say that before one can improve it one must understand it.

There has always been a tension between civil servants and politicians, for this reason. On the political side there is both the aim, and there is a research function within the party which should have plans which are properly researched and which address implementation. Nonetheless these people always wish to push an agenda: in the current situation that agenda is very largely predicated on the assumptions coming from what I have been calling the neoliberal wing: and supported by the models and assumptions of neoclassical economics.

There is nothing wrong with politicians having an agenda: that is what they are supposed to do. They should make that agenda clear in their manifesto: get a mandate for it: and then set about doing it.

A properly constituted Civil Service is there to provide in depth knowledge of the sort that ministers cannot have, because there is continuity within that service. That is not to say that the staff always stay in the same department (though that has been very largely true in the past): but there is a wealth of history within those departments and a wealth of experience too. The slow working of the civil service machine is much criticised and it is contrasted unfavourably with the rapid action of private sector companies, very often. I do not propose to challenge that characterisation (though I do not think it is true) for the purpose of this post: rather I accept it for the sake of argument but suggest that this is a function of the different roles. In another part of the forest that very rapidity in the private sector has adverse consequences which we call "short termism" when we happen to be discussing the faults of that sector. The private sector pursues whatever will increase profit. In a properly functioning private sector that may, indeed should, take account of long term impact on the company: but we know that the focus on short term results which is a feature of what has been called casino capitalism does not do that Their aim and responsibility is to increase shareholder value. A rose tinted view of how that works is not sustainable when one realises that a shareholder today typically holds shares in a company for 7 months. In those circumstances it is not possible for long term consequences to factor in: and we see the asset stripping and the financial crises which follow, in our daily experience

The Civil Service cannot and should not act in that way: it is their role to resist short term thinking of that sort. We are told that the banks, which have behaved in that way with disastrous results, cannot be allowed to fail. For me that is also true of our health care, and of our transport, and indeed of all the major areas where the government and civil service operate. It was quite a surprise to find that the private banks were like that: because if they are they should be under public control, to my way of thinking. If they cannot fail there is no "discipline of the market" and in the absence of public control there is no discipline at all. It is not true that there is no other form of discipline: there is certainly an alternative: but a neoliberal cannot see that, for their ideology prevents them seeing it.

If that is correct then the slow and apparently cumbersome processes of the civil service can be seen in quite another light. Many people are involved in drafting advice etc: it may be that quite lowly people in the hierarchy write the first paper: and it is then passed up through many layers and amended/altered at each stage. Hopefully by the time it is finished all the problems and implications have been seen (so far as that is humanly possible) and the final document will lay them out and propose solutions: perhaps more than one solution. This is the merest common sense: everything from folk wisdom (two heads are better than one) to psychology tell us that one person is not capable of efficiently producing the best analysis and solutions to a complex problem: for we all have blind spots. Input from several people is better. That benefit is reduced if all those people share unexamined assumptions and in any organisation that will be true to some extent: but it will be less true in an independent civil service than it will in a political party, for obvious reasons.

Naturally ministers do not like it when they are confronted with objections to their deeply held prejudices. Nobody likes that. But grown ups do not refuse such information even when it is disappointing: that is what children and ideologues do. The problem is always going to produce tension: but if there is trust the advice will be properly considered. Unfortunately if there is no trust each instance become more evidence that the incompetent and self serving other is not offering impartial advice but rather thwarting one's legitimate and mandated aims for his own ends: and that is confirmation bias. It is built in to the neoliberal ideology which posits that public sector aims and skills are useless at best, more likely harmful. If you start there you tend to refuse other power bases as illegitimate, as was discussed in the "accountability" thread. Ministers are, in the end, sovereign over their departments: but centralising power does not confer accountability: quite the opposite. Of course that is masked by the shift in the meaning of the word: but it is the foundation for the notion that the minister is ultimately responsible, and it is interesting to see that there is a double process now at work: ministers demand civil servants do not undertake that traditional role but rather do what the minister wants without challenge: and at the same time free that same minister from the responsibility which is a natural outcome of his sovereign position. If it is true that the process of advice has been properly conducted and civil servants then deliberately thwart what has been agreed, that is reasonable: but there is little evidence that is happening, at least in this latest example of the rail fiasco.

I think that the fact that Mr Maude made his statement so recently: and the action of the minister for transport in suspending civil servants and blaming them for the problems in the bidding process, is probably coincidence: but I think both are related in this way: there is to be a further assault on the nature of the relationship between ministers and public servants and this time it is to be more overt than what has been done to date. I find it interesting that many immediately accepted the ministers statement that this is entirely the civil servants fault before we have much in the way of facts: it is more confirmation bias so far as I can see. I have been trying to understand what is supposed to have happened for a couple of days now: there has been a dearth of facts but it has not stopped people condemning the public sector and making this an argument for more privatisation and against nationalisation of the railways. People who purport not to trust politicians take the minister's word that it is not politicians' fault at all: curious that, for he does have some interest in conveying that idea, and his power to suspend those civil servants makes it quite easy for him to do it. Well, he would, wouldn't he?

But here is another curious thing about this. In the past civil servants were just that: they entered public service and they stayed there. They worked under a public service ethos and they did so for less pay than they could command in the private sector, because they held other values. That is not fanciful: I know it to be true because I have friends who are like that. Anecdote is not evidence, but it is not nothing either. However, increasingly there is a "revolving door", and that has corrupted that ethos to some extent, I would argue. And it is funny to watch how that plays out. In order to bring in the "talent" from the private sector wages at the very top of the civil service rose a lot: and that is now used as a stick to beat the civil servants as they are criticised on grounds that their wages are higher than those of the politicians they serve: and their pensions are better than average. Those people from the private sector are perhaps discovering that this whole narrative is a bit silly: they are the same people, but now they are in the public sector they have become uniquely incompetent and untrustworthy. Meantime a former top banana is proposing to deal with the "problem" by raising their wages yet again, so we can be sure to attract the "talent" we have failed to get in thirty years of trying.

One thing which I do think illustrates the changes I am pointing out: one of those suspended civil servants had spoken out. That is significant because in this country public servants do NOT defend themselves. That is part of the public service ideal, and it is very strong here. It means they could easily be pilloried by a right wing with an agenda of undermining trust, but it is seldom breached. And ministers benefit from that tradition quite a lot, though they may not have the wit to see it.

I first noticed that was changing when Mr Brodie Clarke was scapegoated by name in the row over immigration control some months ago: he resigned and then spoke out in his own defence. It was quite startling. It all died down, but it is telling that the government preferred to make a settlement of his unfair dismissal claim rather than face a tribunal: the settlement is reported to have been £225,000 with no admission of wrong doing on either side. Today I noticed that one of the civil servants suspended in the rail row has chosen to identify herself and to argue about her role as scapegoat: and she has not even resigned!. It may not be a coincidence that the report notes that she is a cambridge trained economist who formerly worked for goldman sachs. Ministers may find that, in the absence of a public service ethos, their attempts to shift responsibility will not be so readily accepted; and this, more than the freedom of information legislation, might let us know more of what actually happens, in the future

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19854459

Edited by FionaK - 6/10/2012, 17:23