BUREAUCRACY AND LEADERSHIP

Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery.

What the government wants to do, and has the power to do, it will try to do – law, ethics, and common sense notwithstanding. Officials may pause at the outset of an undertaking for a nominal weighing of the pros and cons. This can involve elaborate cost-benefit analysis, preparing records, legal briefs, committee reports, environmental impact statements, and the like. Still it will be the enthusiasm of the proponent’s political power, rather than the merits of the case, that usually prove decisive. Once a major project begun, moreover, it will grow and create a life of its own. If it’s rationale is disproven or forgotten, if it produces unwanted side effects, or even if it fails utterly, the momentum it achieves – it’s weed-like vitality – will often be enough to sustain the program past the point where it should be curtailed or abandoned. Curiously, the more that is at stake the more this appears to be the case.

Given my role in local government I must admit that there are frequent times that leadership and authority is granted to those who are appointed rather than elected. It is the hired help that can provide a continued momentum rationale to ill-conceived ideas that no longer have public support. The public did not elect these administrators or managers. They do not expect them to lead but support the efforts of whom they elected. However, when an elected representative attempts to determine exactly what the voters want at any particular moment, they become troubled by the fact that what the voters want is to be told what they want. They also fall prey to these thoughts looking toward their staff (bureaucrats) to advise them what to do. Hence the delegation. Thomas Sowell, an economist, and social theorist opines. “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions then like putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” Therefore, it is the public that pays the price of inauthentic leadership. A voter is free to choose, but it must accept the consequences of that choice.