Role of Government

Who is in Control?

Having emphasized that institutions cannot be controlled in the sense of formally managed, the question remains as to where responsibility to remedy dysfunction lies.

The citizenry and the government are the two social entities who ultimately determine the meeting of needs within institutions through realizing values PsH6.

The government is itself a societal institution, and needs to take an active continuing interest in all other societal institutions if they are to thrive. Where government is absent (e.g Haiti at present) or devalued (e.g. USA), institutions fail to thrive.

However, the citizenry is not itself an institution. Its emergence depends on an expansion of loyalty beyond the family or wider kin-group to the State as embodied by the government. The functioning of a citizenry depends partly on an effective government and an acquiescent State Strong States keep society weak. Strong societies can impede State functioning..

In monitoring events and pushing for developments in institutions, including the government, the citizenry requires the aid of the media. (In authoritarian states, government strictly controls the media.)

Government and politics are two closely related societal institutions. The political system, if functioning constructively, leads to a government that is broadly supported by all in society, despite their differences and how each may have voted.

But government-as-an-institution is more than the President or those elected, because it must be seen to include many components,
including but not limited to:

• parliament or legislatures
• politicians, political advisors and consultants
• political parties
• official/select committees
• the executive arm
• upper echelons of the judiciary
• numerous administrative departments
• federal, state, local bodies
• government advisors and out-sourced services
• quasi-autonomous regulatory authorities
• training services

Note on regulatory authorities:

Limits to Quality

As emphasized earlier, the maturity of the political-governmental institution largely determines the quality of the other societal institutions.

However, even a relatively mature liberal-democratic government can seriously fail in its responsibility to citizens if it is captured by an ideology that denies the need for government or the existence of society (c. Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister who famously stated: "There's no such thing as society.").

A government, like Scott Morrison's in Australia 2018-2022, that lacked any vision for how to improve the well-being of society ended up presiding over a failing educational system, failing housing provision, inadequate migrant systems, tolerance of corruption, ineffective security arrangements especially in regard to natural disasters—and then was surprised at being decimated at the election.

Limits to Responsibility

Even if social needs are a concern for government, they cannot be envisaged as its sole responsibility. For a start, government itself is a societal institution, as noted above. While we expect an institution to meet a class of need, government cannot be "held responsible" because institutions are decentralized and unmanageable.

In practice, even limited responsibility is difficult.
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References to government responsibility should become far more specific: is it the Prime Minister, or the Cabinet, or the civil service, or a Select Committee, or Parliament, or a Political Party or a regulatory body or something else? And what particular sort of responsibility is of concern:  is it for regulation? is it for enforcement? is for coordination? is it for transparency? is it for implementing recommendations of a public inquiry? Because governments are currently secretive and violate their own freedom-of-information laws with spurious claims of national security, commerciality &c, answers are usually hard to come by.

Good government calls for a proper oversight and coordination of a mosaic of institutions in response to a well-functioning citizenry. While government is not "the" solution, it is a vital mechanism for enabling institutional development. That is why Governments typically organize their bureaucracy to mirror institutions: Treasury aligns with the economy, Health Department aligns with health care, Social Security aligns with welfare, Defence aligns with military, Education with education, and so on.
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The current problem, in even the most advanced societies, is a limited understanding of how government and other institutions should be operated, and the still weak internal restraint on the misuse of power and privilege.

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Members of the public currently struggle to accept responsibility for government because of the opacity, complexity and sheer incomprehensibility of institutions. That means the attraction of a traditional unified centralized authority remains, despite its dangers.

How can the citizenry resist this attraction and bring pressure to bear on the government to use its extensive powers wisely? To be able to do anything significant, we depend on a special institution: the media.

• Role of the media.

Originally posted: 18-Nov-2022. Last updated 30-Apr-2023.