Democracy vs Technocracy: Which way are we headed?
Strong forces are pulling in different directions
The public sector has rarely been more into the idea of asking people what they think.
‘Coproduction’ has become such a powerful buzzword that in certain sectors, notably health and local government, it is basically now impossible not to at least nod to it whenever you want to do anything. ‘Community power’ is a campaigning agenda that continues to gather steam, and advocates involving people throughout the design and delivery of public services. Deliberative approaches remain popular, having been made fashionable by a mixture of Extinction Rebellion and Remainer ultras at the end of the last decade.
We can think of all of these things as, essentially, the same laudable instinct. Post 2008, post austerity, post Brexit, post a whole lot shit hitting a whole lot of fans… a substantial number of erstwhile technocrats are starting to realise that they don’t have all the answers. The penny is dropping that not only do people have a right to decide what happens in their own lives, they also - who’d have thought it - have insights that mean that their engagement actually improves things.
Commitment to this way of doing things varies. Clearly, a lot of what gets put under these labels by public bodies is tokenistic, patronising and/or pointless. However, the very fact that people feel the need to pretend - that they feel like they need to be seen to be doing something outward looking – can be considered a sign of real progress. The desire to share power and do things different isn’t universal, but it is sincerely felt by enough people of influence that it has to be taken seriously.
So that’s the good news. But unfortunately, this increasing enthusiasm for democracy in the public sector is not the end of the story.
Because at the very same time as we are seeing this enthusiasm for letting the unwashed masses in on power in the policy sphere– we are seeing an almost equal and opposite reaction in the political sphere.
In the formal world of Westminster politics – ordinary members of the public are increasingly seen as being a cause of many of our problems. They join political parties and appoint the wrong people to lead them. They vote the wrong way in referendums. They’re selfishly look to negotiate pay-rises during periods of inflation.
Since the 2019 general election, we have seen a range of attempts to shrink the scope for public engagement in politics. Both parties, cheered on by much of the press, are stamping down on internal party democracy with force - minimising the potential for ordinary people to actually get involved in choosing their representatives. Local government continues to be hollowed out by Westminster, with the centre gradually sucking away more and more money and power from our ‘other’ representatives. Political protest is increasingly criminalised, with the madder sections of the press barely stopping short of calling for violence against those (to use Keir Starmer’s phrase) ‘arrogant’ enough to believe that they should get to play an active role in politics, beyond ticking a box twice a decade.
The tension between this impulse among our politicians and the pro-democracy movement in policy is what’s causing some of the more frustrating things that are happening around coproduction and deliberation. When citizens’ assemblies are convened by public sector bodies who’s leaderships aren’t prepared to listen to them or to actually hand over any decision making control… that’s an example of these two forces meeting.
However, overall, the contradictions between these currents aren’t yet too obvious. But that looks set to change. If the thinktank output of the left and centre at the moment is any kind of guide, the next Labour manifesto is almost certain to be stuffed full of promises to democratise and open up public services.
And yet this manifesto will then be delivered by a political faction that has shown its actual managerial instincts to be incredibly centralising, and opposed to ordinary people getting involved in things via democratic channels.
How will this actually work? What kind of a system might it produce?
One outcome is that neither of these agendas really wins out, and we instead develop a bizarre hybrid form. A highly managed, insulated and undemocratic political centre administers a relatively porous and responsive state apparatus. You can get involved in answering questions about you, your community and your local area - but you can never be involved in posing the questions in the first place. You can pick between options, but those options will always have been drawn up elsewhere.
The other outcome, perhaps more plausible, is that the democratic wave going through the public sector simply hits a brick wall. Promises are not fulfilled and progress is not made. And at that point, other ideas might start to enter the fray – ones that are comfortable with jettisoning democratic forces and secure in the belief that elites do, actually, know best.
The best place to see such an agenda coming together in the policy world are ‘rationalist’ groupings, and the various thinktank manifestations of behavioural science. These are approaches to public policy that are naturally skeptical of qualitative data and its associated approaches – also known as talking to people and listening to what they say. They are much more comfortable with graphs and numbers, which they imagine to be somehow ‘neutral’ and free from value judgments.
They believe that in ‘nudging’ people to change their behaviour, because they believe they do actually know better what’s good for them. They basically see politics as a game of management, of technical competence and quantitative problem solving. Whatever fancy new names they give themselves – rationalist, effective altruist, long-termist - they are really a force that has always existed. They are technocrats. And in their new formations, they are interested in party politics. Just look at the recent launch of Labour for the Long Term…
In the end then, our political class is going to have to choose. Do they want to subject themselves to increased levels democratic accountability – or would they rather return to the comforting fantasies of technocracy?
Left to their own devices, I think it’s quite clear which way they’ll go. So… if you’re a democrat… you better keep the pressure on.
I think there is a third axis here, which is (very roughly) markets vs planning. It's much more the markets pole that turned out not to have all the answers; pre 2008 government was not marked by its enthusiasm for great infrastructure projects, now was it.
In fact, the Thatcherite era 1979-2008 showed that the markets pole and the community pole were quite capable of coexisting. You could have really complex consultations and a myriad of veto points precisely because the public was being told it couldn't expect the state to actually do anything and privatisation would somehow sort it out. So one end point here is basically Thames Water - build nothing, ever, anywhere, thus avoiding fighting with the nimbys and pay yourself by living off the existing capital stock.
Markets and planning feel like they're basically antithetical. What about planning and community? That feels like it could have possibilities, but unfortunately in practice community engagement, deliberation, etc tend to have a very powerful bias to inaction and the status quo even if the community doesn't want the status quo (it being quite possible and indeed emotionally satisfying to both hate the status quo and veto all the other options out of spite).
I suppose you can try to reconcile markets and planning by asking the business lobby what it wants and then using planning to ram it through, which is your "technocratic" end point. But it strikes me that we've got three potential end points and two of them end up being just stasis (in the true meaning of the word - not just inaction, but inaction with constant drama)