Civil Service: a Victim or a Villain?
29[anonymous]
7dr_s
5Douglas_Knight
2[anonymous]
3Douglas_Knight
2[anonymous]
2Ben
1Foyle
2Martin Sustrik
6[anonymous]
20Viliam
7dr_s
4Oliver Sourbut
2WalterL
2Oliver Sourbut
2cata
1Samuel Hapák
12[anonymous]
3Martin Sustrik
3[anonymous]
4Martin Sustrik
3Samuel Hapák
3Gavin Runeblade
2Samuel Hapák
2Martin Sustrik
1Samuel Hapák
2Hastings
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I appreciate the post, it raises an interesting and important question. Long story short, I am significantly more sympathetic to Jennifer's position than to Dominic's. In the interest of saving some time, I'll focus primarily on the US here, and write out a couple of bullet points explaining my current beliefs:
- Dominic believes that bureaucrats being appointed instead of elected and not having "skin in the game" is a big problem because it prevents genuine accountability for their actions. In general, I think feedback loops are absolutely critical, and accountability of those in power is indeed one of the critical benefits of democracy over an authoritarian system. But I think there are well-established instances of when governmental institutions not being accountable to politicians is an absolutely critical aspect of why they function well. The standard example of this is the central bank (in the US case, the Federal Reserve). Central bank independence is almost universally considered by economists as having resulted in much more stable unemployment and inflation numbers, because politicians no longer have the ability to force the bank to stimulate the economy now and thus create inflation later.[1] I think something similar, although less clear, is also true in the case of governmental bureaucracies. Do you really want RFK Jr. to staff the entire FDA, CDC, etc. with sycophants and anti-vaxxers? More broadly, do you really want elected officials to control what kind of science and analysis is being done?
- Something along the lines of When money is abundant, knowledge is the real wealth. Say a politician wants bureaucrats that will accomplish something (the "what"), not follow a set of rules (the "how"). So... how exactly does he do that? How does he even find these workers? And, as an aside, how does he convince them to join in the first place? The way private industry does it is by offering a ton of money and great compensation packages to the most productive and knowledgeable workers. Governments... don't do that. People already (unfortunately and wrongly, IMO) think governmental workers get too much money; lowering compensation is one of the most popular proposals floated in public discourse. If you take away job security as a perk, what precise reason would anyone have to work for the government? All you'll get are those who are either so rich they don't need any compensation (but then why not do something more fun like starting a business?), or the actual True Believers who are so radical and extremist that they will sacrifice their own material well-being at the altar of the True Ideological Goal. Is that really who you want in power?
- My reading of history, confirmed by experts in the relevant areas, is that Civil Service Reform in the late 19th century was an absolutely critical step on the path to increasing state capacity, reducing quid-pro-quo corruption, and preventing tragedies and strife. To the extent Dominic wants to reverse this and make apolitical bureaucratic workers fire-able by politicians simply due to the politician disagreeing with what the bureaucrats are doing,[2] that seems terrible for the same reasons things were terrible prior to the Pendleton Act.
- Dominic believes that bureaucrats are "focused on self-preservation rather than on solving real problems." This seems true. What's less clear is how making the political branches more involved in this would make things better. If you want an example of powerful people focused on self-preservation instead of solving real problems, it's hard to pick a better example than the political class. To the extent they are incentivized to focus on solving "real problems," those are typically the Current Thing, or in any case something that will become irrelevant past the date of the politicians re-election to office.
- I think Dominic's overall analysis underrates the extent to which having the system be focused on procedure and not outcomes was an intentional design choice by progressives starting around the 1970's. This is an important but slightly tangential point, so I'll stop here (for now, at least).
- I think it also underrates how much structural changes in the relative powers of the three branches have resulted in the outsized influence and power of the executive bureaucracy. As per Secret Congress, the filibuster and other structural background components (such as the rise of social media, increased polarization, and the unintended consequences of sunshine laws and the banning of pork spending) have changed the incentive structure for elected officials in the legislative branch. No longer are they rewarded for making compromises; instead, quite the opposite: they get acclaim and support and likes on social media for opposing anything but the most radical plans. This has made getting important, non-budgetary bills through Congress basically impossible. So now all major policy changes happen inside the Executive (where the party not in power has ~ no control) or by the Judiciary. This has empowered bureaucracies more than anything else, in my view.
- ^
In general, politicians have significantly greater discount rates than experts or even regular citizens because their terms in office are very short. This is a principal-agent problem: politicians are incentivized to sacrifice the future at the altar of the present, while politically unaccountable bureaucrats generally are not.
- ^
Which, in practice, will mean the bureaucrats don't agree entirely with the political views of the elected official, as opposed to there being any objective dereliction of duty.
The way private industry does it is by offering a ton of money and great compensation packages to the most productive and knowledgeable workers
And then often suffer from the same problems anyway because in many places management keeps simply pursuing goals based on "what the investors need to hear" or "what I think is good for business" rather than a synthesis with what their hired experts think is feasible to do in time and with good quality.
2Focusing on the US seems like a mistake, since Dominic Cummings worked in the UK, yet the situation seems to be substantially worse, despite, eg, there being no separation of powers.
How to find workers that will do with Dominic Cummings wants? He found it quite easy to recruit from people already employed by the Department. He didn't need a lot. He couldn't manage a lot. If the masses had ignored him, it would have been fine, but they actively sabotaged. And lots of people he found productive left because it was too difficult.
Maybe. I know relatively little about the functioning of the UK government, so I focused on areas where I thought I had some useful contributions to share.
I will note Jennifer Palkha has primarily been involved with the US government and bureaucracy, and in any case Martin has talked about bureaucracy topics in the context of the US before here on LW. So there is still some value in figuring out what is going on in America.
There is value figuring out what is going on in America. But since the same thing is going on elsewhere, answers unique to America are incorrect.
Is the same thing going on elsewhere?
- You say he "found it quite easy to recruit from people already employed by the Department." That doesn't seem do have been true for Musk when he tried to get DOGE to work in the US, in my understanding (he brought in young workers and programmers from the private sector).
- Britain seems to be suffering from serious economic sclerosis in a way similar to most of Europe (though perhaps more intense), while the complete opposite seems to be true for the US. Nevertheless, bureaucracy, inefficiency, and red tape are still critical constraints on abundance, infrastructure building, state capacity, renewable energy acquisition, etc. This signals the fundamental nature of the problem may be very different across the Atlantic.
- As per the discussion in Martin's previous post, much of bureaucratic inefficiency in other countries is direct corruption and flows from it, to a significant extent. This does not appear to be the case in the US.
There are many other points to be raised. And I certainly do believe that what I mentioned with respect to the US has wide applicability and reflects important arguments that need to be kept in mind regardless of where the country we're discussing is located. But I think the fundamental nature of the problems is quite different in different states, and we need to be cognizant of that instead of painting with too broad a brushstroke. Answers unique to America may (and, I claim, do) well explain why the situation in America is as it is, and why it differs from what goes on in other places.
I don't know how the US system works at all, and have only a shallow understanding of the UK one (mostly from watching Yes Minister), but I think in the US a lot of posts that in the UK would be civil service are instead political posts. For example, I think US politicians directly pick which ambassadors to send, which is not the UK system.
They are probably very different systems.
As a New Zealander we see the same general problems, unaccountable and sclerotic bureaucracy that politicians are finding that they have less and less actual executive control over due to all sorts of inserted regulatory and other mechanisms to restrict govt ability to control them, as well as internal cultures that venerate the in-group bureaucrats consensus on How Things Should Be™ and practice subtle and unsubtle methods of resistance against any outside agency that seeks to change that policy. What Cummings et al call 'the blob', the US call 'deep state'.
NZ public sector has increased in size by 100% in last 25 years, with population growth of 50% and typical white collar productivity increases around 50% it would be reasonable to expect that same level of government function could be accomplished with around half the current numbers. Most private sector people I associate with would not say that governance has improved in last 25 years, in fact in many easily viewable metrics it has clearly deteriorated with worse performance in health and education, higher regulatory burdens etc. The cost and lost-productivity costs on NZ (and lost revenue that would arise from those workers paying tax in productive jobs rather than spending it as civil servants) amount to a few % of GDP, and would probably be the difference between the deficits we currently run and having no deficits - a big drain on our future prosperity.
It's not a new problem, having been an issue ever since the city-state came into being, bureaucrats and people in positions of power will almost always care more about maintaining and growing their power than about providing any utility to others. UK "Yes Minister" comedy series lampooned it in the 1980's, Parkinson wrote a best selling book on in the 1950's: Parkinson's Law And Other Studies in Administration and Parkinson's Law: Or The Pursuit of Progress, and we even have the term 'Byzantian' to describe excessive bureaucracy from an empire dead for 1000 years.
I would concur that it is absolutely a function of lack of accountability and inability to effectively censure poor performance or subtle intransigence/sabotage of political masters in the public service, and has grown worse with the growth of a distinct self-reinforcing in-group civil service tribalistic identity, perhaps stoked by the homogeneity of elitist educational backgrounds of those that seek government jobs with beliefs that don't mirror or even respect those of the general public they effectively rule over. And it is creating an extreme crisis in governance in democracies around the world, potentially to the point of violence in Europe as populations get incensed at their electorally signaled preferences being ignored by civil servants with growing social problems that seems to be rising as a result.
"You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing" - Thomas Sowell
A thoughtful reply. Just to fuel the discussion, here's John Cochrane on ECB overstepping it's mandate: https://www.grumpy-economist.com/p/central-bankers-can-be-too-independent
I'm a bit confused (more than a bit, actually). I read Cochrane's post and the linked ECB blogpost written by the president of the ECB. The latter is a bit disappointing to look at, partly for reasons Cochrane mentioned.[1]
But I don't really understand what (if anything) the ECB has done to overstep its mandate. As far as I can tell, the linked writing is a blog post written by the president of the ECB. In so far as it reveals poor and biased thinking on an important policy matter, it's disappointing. But "the ECB has a mandate to make decisions on the basis of [X]" does not mean "the ECB cannot or even should not express opinions about [Y, which is different from X]" or "the ECB should not lobby governments to provide specific forms of [in this case climate-focused] fiscal stimulus."[2]
Are there specific actions that reveal the way the ECB's thinking has changed its behavior?
- ^
It's O'Sullivan's law at play, really: any organization not explicitly designed to be right-wing will eventually trend left-wing over time. When you overlay on top of this the crank realignment and its associated degradation of left-of-center epistemology, I guess this is what you get.
- ^
Perhaps as an illustrative example, the Federal Reserve also publishes research and opinion notes (and has for decades). Looking at some topics they've covered, I see foreign direct investment, analyses of China's economic potential and output, the costs of compliance with legal barriers to trade in countries other than the US, etc.
I think this pattern exists in many places (civil service, companies, schools). The generalized form goes like this:
There are two ways to manage people. You can assume that they are aligned, motivated, and competent. In that case, tell them the goal, and give them freedom to do it as they choose to. Even if they mess something up, remain calm, show them the problem, and let them fix it. The advantage is that you can get their best effort and skill; and they will be happy and motivated to work in such environment. The disadvantage is that if you were wrong about "aligned, motivated, and competent", the results will be poor.
The second way is to assume that they are unaligned, unmotivated, and incompetent. In that case, you need to micromanage them. The advantage is that you get some steady guaranteed minimum productivity. The disadvantage is that the productivity is very low, and all competent people will burn out and/or quit.
The problem is, if you try a middle way, you are likely to get the worst of both worlds. Enough annoyance so that the competent people get frustrated and quit, but not enough oversight to prevent problems.
So when the companies get to the "micromanagement" equilibrium, they are likely to stay there. And even the companies that start in the "trust the team" equilibrium are often one disaster or one mistrusting manager away from switching to the opposite.
Also, a large enough company will statistically have both competent and incompetent teams. And the management will probably feel the urge to treat all of them the same way.
Worse, when politics and public money are involved there is a fixation with "accountability" that often leads to micromanagement simply because it feels like it's the responsible thing to do, the one you can defend best with the voters. "Look, we gave them money and didn't much check what they were doing with it because we trust them and think that this is the best way to get bang for our buck in terms of productivity" can be sound thinking, but it's still terrible messaging.
One fundamental problem with public finances is that many voters have what I can only term as "poor mindset". Pinch pennies, account for every expense, don't risk waste, bets don't pay off. Which is fine and often wise when you do in fact have barely enough income to live. But as a voter, you are a tiny fractional manager for an entity that has literally more money than you are capable of imagining. And you can't manage it like you would your home. But very often that is exactly what politicians and media encourage you to do, and how they present the problem.
Anecdata: I quit the UK civil service (AISI, quite atypical) in small part due to feeling micromanagement creeping in, but also I mostly experienced a good amount of trust and autonomy. People sometimes said 'startup in government', perhaps to convey this (among other features). I don't know how long that's sustainable.
I tend to think their viewpoints are coherent. Both observe that the civil service is an unaccountable nightmare. Dom imagines that making them obey the elected officials would improve things, Jen imagines that severing them from the electoral interference would improve things. Both would plausibly be an improvement. The common factor is imagining a civil service that worked like everything else.
I don't think either can be implemented. Dom's desire is romantic, but runs against human nature (why would whitehall take on responsibility when it can just destroy him and his political masters, as it obviously did). Jen's desire is fanciful, the ossification that she rails against is exactly part of the accountability sink.
If you had a genie, you'd grant Dom's wish before Jen's, but neither is actionable.
It's strange... I have a sense that civil services used to be enviable, admirable places to work. Elite selection and talented operators getting impressive things done. At least in the UK and China, and also in the US (presumably also other places but I'm less familiar). What went wrong?
My limited experience (c. 14 months as a 'civil servant' in the UK AISI, really more like an imported technical expert pretending to be a civil servant) was that I encountered a predominance of very driven, intelligent, and well-motivated people in my immediate vicinity (including, perhaps especially, the 'real' civil servants who'd pre-existed AISI). I expect there may have been substantial selection effects. I heard complaints about interfacing with other parts of govt, and certain kinds of moves (like publication or sending messages 'up the chain' to MPs) were highly bureaucratised and a bit Procrustean in ways that sometimes limited our autonomy and ability to achieve the mission.
I don't think there's a conflict between the two views. They can both be true simultaneously. Since both sides can produce compelling examples, they both probably are true simultaneously.
Neither is there an obvious conflict between Cummings' and Pahlka's solutions. It's easy to imagine a civil service that is both more accountable to politicians, and also has a better feedback loop to those politicians. In fact, the solutions seem synergistic, because if the civil servants may be fired for under-delivering, they should be more motivated to get problems fixed via the feedback loop.
(Of course there is still a question as to which is the "bigger problem".)
Nah. Good organizations impose both what and how. Look at Bezos imposing how meetings should be run.
Entirely disanalogous situations. "Good organizations" of the kind you're describing (private, for-profit, somewhat narrow-in-scope corporations), unlike governments, generally:
- do not have to listen to, or pay, or politically empower those who fundamentally disagree with the corporation's goals to the point where they take over and steer the corporation in a different direction.[1]
- do not have to deal with racial, cultural, religious, ideological, etc. tensions that can boil over into outright rebellion or civil war if unresolved.
- function within the sphere of a comprehensive legal framework designed by someone else (a government), which streamlines processes and coordination, ensures property and contractual rights, and peacefully resolves civil disputes through litigation instead of war. Note that when this is missing (i.e., in undeveloped or underdeveloped nations), the kinds of "good organizations" we're considering don't exist either.
- do not have to organize extremely large-scale coordination across tens of millions of people and use scientific knowledge, economic thinking, compromise and persuasion and so many other things all at once to create comprehensive frameworks for education, drug approval, environmental protection, immigration, trade, etc.
"Good organizations" are playing on easy mode. A software engineer disagrees with the scope of your project and tries to sabotage it? Fire them![2]
Governments are playing on hard mode. A citizen disagrees with a policy enacted by the executive and organizes protests against it? Deport them! Oh, wait... you can't deport them, because they have rights,[3] and it's actually good they have rights and you can't deport them because otherwise the entire enterprise falls apart and you get an authoritarian hell-on-Earth.
"If men were angels, there would be no need for government."[4] The existence of strife and disagreement is the reason why government and bureaucracy require intelligent mechanism design and game theory ideas to function properly. In economic terms, exit costs are extremely high for individuals in their dealings with governments.[5] It's why the Archipelago doesn't work.
Mind you, this isn't an argument that bureaucracies, as currently enacted, are good. But it does serve to explain why they face radically different challenges. Challenges that need to be considered individually to figure out ways of overcoming them.
- ^
And when they do, the end results aren't pretty and don't follow a thoughtful "what + how" framework. See the OpenAI saga as an illustration.
- ^
Even better, such a person is unlikely to apply to a job for your corporation in the first place!
- ^
At least in the Western world
- ^
Well, there might be... as a means of large-group coordination and to create public knowledge of important facts, at the very least. But it would be much more minarchist in nature.
- ^
Unlike in the case of the fired software engineer, who can usually find a job for another company rather quickly, setting up roots in a different country entirely can be a ridiculously daunting task.
The question is what happens when HOW contradicts WHAT. Would WHAT be prioritized or HOW or the other way round? In extremely volatile environments (war) there's a reasonable argument that HOW should not even be specified, because it's going to get obsolete, or even counterproductive, immediately (Moltke: "No plan survises the first contact with the enemy.") but at the same time it will tempt the subordinates to follow it nonetheless.
Well, of course, WHAT takes priority. And you need subordinates who have guts to do the right thing even if it contradicts the stated HOW.
I like the “learn the rules before you break them” approach.
In my organization, I tell people that they can break any rule / best practice they truly understand and truly mastered.
In government HOW always wins. That's why the famous joke that the most frightening words in the English language are "Hi I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
I think the manual just acknowledges the phenomenon and gives advice to the saboteurs to take advantage of it. I does not imply that it does not exist in the real world.
Sure. What I was trying to point at was that the manual acknowledges that this is actually bad and that things could be done differently. That’s a surprising level of lucidity that I wouldn’t expect to see these days in any government force.
Bezos is bezos forever. Democracy has to function with a different angry baby at the helm every 4 years (and the alternative where the populace isn’t allowed to install their gibbering id is worse.)
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