This is one of those grab bag posts caused by a flurry of stories in today's press.
It starts with an item by Peter Costello in which he bells the cat on the "faceless" "powerbrokers", most notably those in the ALP. After an introduction about the influence of Deng Xiaoping after he formally "retired" (and one could add Lee Kwan Yu) he writes;
In Australia we have people who imagine themselves as latter day Dengs - who hold no office but boast that they can make and break party leaders and governments. These are the people the press describe as the ''faceless men'' [although we are getting heartily sick of seeing their faces these days], factional warlords, or ''party powerbrokers''.
The way to become a powerbroker is to spend an inordinate amount of time on internal party ballots. It doesn't matter that these ballots relate to non-positions of no influence. A powerbroker must engage in ceaseless activity. This shows everyone how important they are. It helps to have a union or followers who provide the factional boss with some bragging rights. But the most important skill of all is to cultivate good relations with the media.
...
It has always amazed me that the right wing operatives of the NSW branch of the Labor Party get such a soft run in the mainstream media. This is a group that brought the public the most incompetent state government in modern memory - from Carr to Iemma to Rees to Keneally. Outside their little fiefdom, where loyalty is rewarded with patronage, most of them would be unemployable. So what are they good at?
I would disagree with the assessment of the NSW Labor Government as "the most incompetent in modern memory", not least because of what it says of the Liberals that took so long to unseat it! I also think the accusation of being "unemployable" is odd - Karl Bitar has a nice little earner at Crown Casinos now, while I'm yet to hear of Costello having found a job.
But he absolutely nails the "modus operandi". After commenting on the stories about Sam Dastyari wavering in his support for Julia Gillard he writes;
There is nothing worse than being a powerbroker who has no power. So if Gillard is going down then the powerbrokers need to get off her bandwagon and take credit for her demise as much as they took credit for her ascension.
And there indeed is the rub, the ability of the faceless men or power-brokers to take the credit for events that have unfolded without their influence. The scribes who write about this no doubt also believe in the "great man" theory of history - events happen because of specific individuals, rather than (the more accurate) specific individuals fall into roles created by events.
Elsewhere the ever-impressive Jessica Irvine cautions about a completely different group of powerbrokers and influence peddlers, the business lobby groups. She writes;
Politicians and the media cop most of the blame these days for the dumbing down of the political debate. But let's not forget this entire industry of rent-seekers who are doing the best they can to muddy the waters of good public policy and confuse everyone.
Politicians need to wake up to the way they are being played. The public needs to switch on their rent-seeking bullshit-ometers when watching the next round of self-serving business advertising and learn to think: ''Well, they would say that, wouldn't they?'' And the media needs to rediscover its love of man bites dog tales and stop giving these guys a free kick.
Occupy Wall Street protesters in the United States are leading a global backlash against crony capitalism and special government favours for finance sector chief executives.
Australians have invented our unique brand of corporate rent-seekers, and far from standing up against them, we've often been complicit tools in their trade, shifting our opinion on public policies in response to their self-interested advertising campaigns.
When government thinks it's doing what the public wants, but what the public wants is in fact what big business wants it to want, we have a problem.
And that note to recognise the rent-seeking flavour of all the admonitions we hear from the corporate sector about public policy, provides a nice segue to the latest flurry of pieces on the Occupiers.
Shaun Carney rambles on a bit before noting that the Occupiers are going to have to get used to a bit of discomfort if they want to effect change. On the way through he notes the difference between Australia and the US that we actually have some elected representatives of a radical kind - the Greens. But he also notes the difference between the Greens trying to be an ordinary organised political movement, and the Occupiers who eschew such structures.
He also does a neat job of summarising the Occupiers;
The local version is a series of protest groups in the literal sense: they are protesting about just about anything you can name, from a left perspective. If interviews with members are any guide, they are variously against rising inequality, corporate and financial greed, our system of representative democracy, political parties and their leaders, failures of social justice and environmental degradation.
Sarah Caslan writing in The Conversation picked up the strand of the validity of protesting what is, without having to advocate for what you want. She wrote;
If you can’t validly protest the status quo without knowing exactly how to change it (particularly difficult for those without power who are most likely to be dissatisfied), that’s a playing field designed to entrench “the way it is” (whether one likes it or not).
Instead it is surely legitimate, as is happening with Occupy, to start conversations on change, whether they result in concrete steps or not. Part of the point of Occupy is to get people talking about political and economic systems and the possible need for change, and in that respect it is probably succeeding.
The validity of those concerns has been well detailed by James Arvanitakis in The Punch. He goes into detail about the problem of the distribution of wealth, putting profits before well-being, and finally the problem of "corporate power". (The first of these was Irvine's subject in her weekend column, and the latter of course today's). He concludes;
The Occupy Movement may not have a catchy slogan like “save the whale”. What they have done, however, is identify a sense of unease that the economic system is letting down a majority of the world’s population: and the evidence is there to support them.
Meanwhile The Conversation also reports on an ANU poll that shows a dramatic lift in the proportion of people "disastisfied with democracy" from 14% in 2007 to 27% now.
The utem tries to place the "blame" for this with the Government of Julia Gillard. What the Occupiers are trying to highlight is that the problem is much, much bigger than that.
The thesis as it is unfolding to me is that the initial "impetus" to democracy can be described as an approach to limiting power of one group over society (or citizens) as a whole. The motivation in the UK model built in the 17th century was about limitation of the arbitrary power of the monarch and aristocracy. The history of that evolution goes back further to the empowerment of the aristocracy over the monarch in the Magna Carta.
Before all of these the real "authority of the state" comes from the way it protects citizens from the exercise of power by force, be that defence against external aggressors, or the protection of life and property from local aggressors.
Ever since "corporations" were imbued with the "rights" of a natural person - including in the US the political right to campaign - there has grown a new unchecked power, the power of the corporation. The power of these corporations does not rest with their shareholders generally, but with the executives of the corporations and with the executives of the financial corporations (investment banks and pension funds) that can and do exercise shareholder control.
And in this mix elected representative politicians are seen increasingly as part of the power mix, not part of the restraint of power.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label democracy. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
The ever delightful Chris Wallace on breakfastpolitics today gave the title In which I underestimate Occupy Wall Street to Sophie Mirabella's column in The Punch which was really title Protestors occupied with glib, childish, pointless fantasy.
I think Chris is more on the money.
Mirabella is absolutely right that the movement that is "Occupy Wall Street" is just a lot of un-happy campers. It isn't a movement driven by a specific agenda for reform. Mirabella writes;
Protest against a policy, protest against a corrupt Government if you want – but protesting against democracy and capitalism just seems so… well… laughable, pointless and politically adolescent.
In that she shows she is missing the point. These aren't people protesting about democracy or about capitalism - but about the way democracy and capitalism are practised today. She is right they don't know what they want - but they do know they don't want "more of the same." No amount of Mirabella ranting about the current Government not being a "good government" in Australia rebuts the revulsion the public is now displaying for the way politics is conducted.
As my first criticism I'll choose the much vaunted claim that an opposition doesn't need to reveal its policies until an election. That is inconsistent with the idea that it is a representative democracy - I want to know how the candidates will react to the unknown events in the future, not what their manifesto of things to be delivered is. Whitlam failed (in part) by not adjusting the manifesto to the economic circumstance; Howard learnt early the idea of "core" and "non-core" promises.
It is by the party and candidates core beliefs that I would like to judges them as my representatives.
The USA has it far far worse with a Congress determined to spend its life in posturing rather than action. There was a great episode of the West Wing in which Josh stated that he didn't want success in social welfare reform because it was too useful as a campaign tool.
More reasoned commentators note that "Historians like to collect things, to study them later, because to be a historian is to know that no one can understand the present until it’s past." They note with Mirabella that there is no agenda, but they reflect that earlier movements started the same way.
Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible. Then, the rhetoric of revolution created energy for reform. Whether that will happen here remains to be seen. So far, no one is proposing a set of reforms; there’s nothing akin to the early-twentieth-century reformers who were part of the good-government movement.
A more detailed chronology of the protest concludes;
And not posting clear demands, while essentially a failing, has unintended virtue. Anyone who is at all frustrated with the economy--perhaps even 99% of Americans--can feel that this protest is their own.
That's actually a really good way to plan change - spend the time to understand the problem before leaping to solutions.
To understand the public frustration, understand the failings of the sector that are the centre of the protest - the finance sector. That's why the movement started at Wall Street.
In a recent Washington Post column titled There are no rogue traders, only rogue banks Barry Ritholtz noted;
Banks are supposed to have expertise in preserving capital and managing risk. If they cannot discharge those simple duties, then perhaps they should not be in the business of finance. Most of all, they should not be engaging in behavior that puts taxpayer money at risk.
And therein lies the nub of the issue - no one has confidence any longer than the financial system actually works. And fiddling with Basel III regulation is only part of the issue. At the heart of this lies the very culture of capitalism.
And that is nowhere better represented than in the obscenity that is CEO and senior executive compensation. Writing in the SMH today Michael West challenges the "labour market" view of executive salaries and wonders why when company performance declines executive salary stays high. Actually, the problem is the way the market is structured. The executives are all effectively in higher demand when life is tough - it is harder to manage a firm in bad times than good.
The real issue is how firms have dealt with the conundrum identified by Berle and Means that senior executives manage companies for their benefit, not the shareholders. CEOs like growth because it makes their job bigger, even if the capital being reinvested in the company could get better returns for shareholders if distributed as dividends.
The "solution" to the conundrum, to align the CEO incentive to the investors, fails because of the erroneous assumptions of efficient market theory. As discussed here yesterday there are problems with using market prices of assets as real measures.
But the biggest issue of all is that the bulk of money invested in equities comes from investors seeking long term, not short term, returns. The solution to that is to structure truly long-term bonuses - that is the bonus payments are only calculated and paid five years after the relevant period - including after termination, resignation or retirement. They should be calculated on the basis of total return (dividends + capital growth) over the period relative to either the overall market or a sectoral market.
Government can influence this outcome through the taxation system, by dramatically increasing tax on income paid as salary and reducing it on income paid as long term bonus.
An interestingly different view of the relationship between pay and performance was advanced in On Line Opinion today on politicians salaries. Under the heading "pay peanuts get monkeys" the author states that;
When the ceiling of your earnings is in the mid 300′s (notwithstanding the perks) the appeal of going into public office for this calibre of person is reduced, considering their earning potential in the private sector. Particularly when you consider the impact on their personal life: politicians are away from their family for significant periods of time, missing birthdays, anniversaries and pet funerals in the backyard.
I tend to think the issue is more the overpayment elsewhere rather than the under-payment here. But I also think we erred in the Latham inspired decision to change superannuation entitlements. I certainly didn't like well superannuated pollies going out to make second careers as consultants, but what we need is more a scheme that reduces that tendency. There is nothing more obscene than the current model that sees a political career as merely the pathway to the "higher" career of consultant. Just more salary doesn't solve this - a good superannuation scheme that is diminished by post political earnings is better.
To return to my first target. Sophie Mirabella needs to realise that the protesters are justifiably angry at both the way capitalism is conducted and the operation of our democracy.
It is inadequate of her to respond like Marie Anionette of being informed the peasants had no bread to eat and saying they should eat cake.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
I think Chris is more on the money.
Mirabella is absolutely right that the movement that is "Occupy Wall Street" is just a lot of un-happy campers. It isn't a movement driven by a specific agenda for reform. Mirabella writes;
Protest against a policy, protest against a corrupt Government if you want – but protesting against democracy and capitalism just seems so… well… laughable, pointless and politically adolescent.
In that she shows she is missing the point. These aren't people protesting about democracy or about capitalism - but about the way democracy and capitalism are practised today. She is right they don't know what they want - but they do know they don't want "more of the same." No amount of Mirabella ranting about the current Government not being a "good government" in Australia rebuts the revulsion the public is now displaying for the way politics is conducted.
As my first criticism I'll choose the much vaunted claim that an opposition doesn't need to reveal its policies until an election. That is inconsistent with the idea that it is a representative democracy - I want to know how the candidates will react to the unknown events in the future, not what their manifesto of things to be delivered is. Whitlam failed (in part) by not adjusting the manifesto to the economic circumstance; Howard learnt early the idea of "core" and "non-core" promises.
It is by the party and candidates core beliefs that I would like to judges them as my representatives.
The USA has it far far worse with a Congress determined to spend its life in posturing rather than action. There was a great episode of the West Wing in which Josh stated that he didn't want success in social welfare reform because it was too useful as a campaign tool.
More reasoned commentators note that "Historians like to collect things, to study them later, because to be a historian is to know that no one can understand the present until it’s past." They note with Mirabella that there is no agenda, but they reflect that earlier movements started the same way.
Nineteenth-century grass-roots populism made twentieth-century progressivism possible. Then, the rhetoric of revolution created energy for reform. Whether that will happen here remains to be seen. So far, no one is proposing a set of reforms; there’s nothing akin to the early-twentieth-century reformers who were part of the good-government movement.
A more detailed chronology of the protest concludes;
And not posting clear demands, while essentially a failing, has unintended virtue. Anyone who is at all frustrated with the economy--perhaps even 99% of Americans--can feel that this protest is their own.
That's actually a really good way to plan change - spend the time to understand the problem before leaping to solutions.
To understand the public frustration, understand the failings of the sector that are the centre of the protest - the finance sector. That's why the movement started at Wall Street.
In a recent Washington Post column titled There are no rogue traders, only rogue banks Barry Ritholtz noted;
Banks are supposed to have expertise in preserving capital and managing risk. If they cannot discharge those simple duties, then perhaps they should not be in the business of finance. Most of all, they should not be engaging in behavior that puts taxpayer money at risk.
And therein lies the nub of the issue - no one has confidence any longer than the financial system actually works. And fiddling with Basel III regulation is only part of the issue. At the heart of this lies the very culture of capitalism.
And that is nowhere better represented than in the obscenity that is CEO and senior executive compensation. Writing in the SMH today Michael West challenges the "labour market" view of executive salaries and wonders why when company performance declines executive salary stays high. Actually, the problem is the way the market is structured. The executives are all effectively in higher demand when life is tough - it is harder to manage a firm in bad times than good.
The real issue is how firms have dealt with the conundrum identified by Berle and Means that senior executives manage companies for their benefit, not the shareholders. CEOs like growth because it makes their job bigger, even if the capital being reinvested in the company could get better returns for shareholders if distributed as dividends.
The "solution" to the conundrum, to align the CEO incentive to the investors, fails because of the erroneous assumptions of efficient market theory. As discussed here yesterday there are problems with using market prices of assets as real measures.
But the biggest issue of all is that the bulk of money invested in equities comes from investors seeking long term, not short term, returns. The solution to that is to structure truly long-term bonuses - that is the bonus payments are only calculated and paid five years after the relevant period - including after termination, resignation or retirement. They should be calculated on the basis of total return (dividends + capital growth) over the period relative to either the overall market or a sectoral market.
Government can influence this outcome through the taxation system, by dramatically increasing tax on income paid as salary and reducing it on income paid as long term bonus.
An interestingly different view of the relationship between pay and performance was advanced in On Line Opinion today on politicians salaries. Under the heading "pay peanuts get monkeys" the author states that;
When the ceiling of your earnings is in the mid 300′s (notwithstanding the perks) the appeal of going into public office for this calibre of person is reduced, considering their earning potential in the private sector. Particularly when you consider the impact on their personal life: politicians are away from their family for significant periods of time, missing birthdays, anniversaries and pet funerals in the backyard.
I tend to think the issue is more the overpayment elsewhere rather than the under-payment here. But I also think we erred in the Latham inspired decision to change superannuation entitlements. I certainly didn't like well superannuated pollies going out to make second careers as consultants, but what we need is more a scheme that reduces that tendency. There is nothing more obscene than the current model that sees a political career as merely the pathway to the "higher" career of consultant. Just more salary doesn't solve this - a good superannuation scheme that is diminished by post political earnings is better.
To return to my first target. Sophie Mirabella needs to realise that the protesters are justifiably angry at both the way capitalism is conducted and the operation of our democracy.
It is inadequate of her to respond like Marie Anionette of being informed the peasants had no bread to eat and saying they should eat cake.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Friday, June 03, 2011
On Democracy
I'll admit to having bought but not yet read Lindsay Tanner's Sideshow. I am however in violent agreement with him on the fact of the dumbing down of politics.
I contend, however, that this is a global phenomenon, not one that is uniquely Australian. I further contend that the culprit is not, primarily, the Media (meaning traditional big media) but is instead social media and communications technology.
I take as a starting point an observation I made as a school boy, that Robespierre instigated the Terror after the French Revolution as an expression of direct democracy - what he was doing was expressing the "will of the people" as discerned by understanding "the mob" that filled Parisian streets (one day I'll re-write and post that essay).
Today's politicians find themselves equally distracted by the mob, that has new forms of organisation.
Take the reaction this week to the 4 Corners report on live cattle exports to Indonesia. I've already mentioned the fact that the Australian designed box is more humane than the traditional method. To ban Australian live exports doesn't mean any cattle will not die inhumanely, only that Australian cattle won't die inhumanely.
But the reaction of politicians has been swift spurred by the intense interest created through Facebook. The call has been merely for an end to the export trade. Reaction has been swifter than it has been to the "greatest moral issue of our time", that is climate change.
What we see is the critical weakness of direct versus representative democracy, the opportunity to plump for all the individual preferences you might make without reconciling across issues. Its extreme is seen in the model of California where direct democracy demands more services and lower taxes.
Unfortunately I'm still short on solutions to the scourge of "the mob". I don't favour a return to "elites" as espoused by some (be that Plato or Pareto). But I sure as heck don't agree with Ordan ANdreevski who wrote in Online Opinion;
Australians are increasingly becoming dissatisfied with the dumbing of democracy. The nation is ready for a transformation of civic and political culture. Australians are poised to embrace a smarter democracy that is fit for purpose.
Australia needs a new, vibrant, well informed and vigorous political culture, practices and performance to upgrade the dynamism of society and economy and increase our image, relevance and ability to attract and persuade others on a world stage. The dumbing down of politics can be curtailed though social innovation and collective impact involving all relevant stakeholders including parliamentarians, the media, research and education institutes, communities, civil society and progressive diasporas.
Unlike Lindsay Tanner, I am optimistic about the future of Australian politics. Australian democracy has the ability to change and improve for the better as new voices, new practices and talent enters the Australian Parliament, the media, research institutes and universities and contribute to national, parliamentary and policy debates and actions.
Indeed this is written in MBAese (The Urban Word of Today).
What is the actual "social innovation and collective impact"? How will "stakeholders" progress it.
I actually think the solution relies on some structural constitutional reform that does a few things;
Properly construct a "Washminster" system. Have a bicameral parliament in which one house is elected by national proportional representation and the Prime Minister and Ministers are exclusively drawn from this house. This house behaves a little like the US electoral college for President but the PR process results in the whole potential Ministry being on the ballot.
The other house continues to be drawn from separate electorates with either one or two members per electorate. But we do a better job of one-vote one-value than we do now by giving each MP the number of votes as they were elected by (in a one-member electorate that is the total of all formal votes cast, in a two-member structure it is their final votes after the elimination of all but the last candidate). Actual votes in the House require computer tabulation (can anyone explain why we still have tellers and headcounts for divisions), things won't be decided "on the voices" but by the button - press Yes or No. Even show the result on a screen. You can't use "pairs" to get around unavoidable absence - but proxies would work fine (simple rule though, a member can have a proxy for only one other member - the Whip can't control all the votes).
This at least provides some logic to the system and addresses the public concern about thinking they "vote" for the PM of their choice under the existing system. You get to vote for the PM you want and the person to represent your local needs. he local rep really stays local by not faxing redistributions every six or so years.
Does this make an improvement?
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
I contend, however, that this is a global phenomenon, not one that is uniquely Australian. I further contend that the culprit is not, primarily, the Media (meaning traditional big media) but is instead social media and communications technology.
I take as a starting point an observation I made as a school boy, that Robespierre instigated the Terror after the French Revolution as an expression of direct democracy - what he was doing was expressing the "will of the people" as discerned by understanding "the mob" that filled Parisian streets (one day I'll re-write and post that essay).
Today's politicians find themselves equally distracted by the mob, that has new forms of organisation.
Take the reaction this week to the 4 Corners report on live cattle exports to Indonesia. I've already mentioned the fact that the Australian designed box is more humane than the traditional method. To ban Australian live exports doesn't mean any cattle will not die inhumanely, only that Australian cattle won't die inhumanely.
But the reaction of politicians has been swift spurred by the intense interest created through Facebook. The call has been merely for an end to the export trade. Reaction has been swifter than it has been to the "greatest moral issue of our time", that is climate change.
What we see is the critical weakness of direct versus representative democracy, the opportunity to plump for all the individual preferences you might make without reconciling across issues. Its extreme is seen in the model of California where direct democracy demands more services and lower taxes.
Unfortunately I'm still short on solutions to the scourge of "the mob". I don't favour a return to "elites" as espoused by some (be that Plato or Pareto). But I sure as heck don't agree with Ordan ANdreevski who wrote in Online Opinion;
Australians are increasingly becoming dissatisfied with the dumbing of democracy. The nation is ready for a transformation of civic and political culture. Australians are poised to embrace a smarter democracy that is fit for purpose.
Australia needs a new, vibrant, well informed and vigorous political culture, practices and performance to upgrade the dynamism of society and economy and increase our image, relevance and ability to attract and persuade others on a world stage. The dumbing down of politics can be curtailed though social innovation and collective impact involving all relevant stakeholders including parliamentarians, the media, research and education institutes, communities, civil society and progressive diasporas.
Unlike Lindsay Tanner, I am optimistic about the future of Australian politics. Australian democracy has the ability to change and improve for the better as new voices, new practices and talent enters the Australian Parliament, the media, research institutes and universities and contribute to national, parliamentary and policy debates and actions.
Indeed this is written in MBAese (The Urban Word of Today).
What is the actual "social innovation and collective impact"? How will "stakeholders" progress it.
I actually think the solution relies on some structural constitutional reform that does a few things;
Properly construct a "Washminster" system. Have a bicameral parliament in which one house is elected by national proportional representation and the Prime Minister and Ministers are exclusively drawn from this house. This house behaves a little like the US electoral college for President but the PR process results in the whole potential Ministry being on the ballot.
The other house continues to be drawn from separate electorates with either one or two members per electorate. But we do a better job of one-vote one-value than we do now by giving each MP the number of votes as they were elected by (in a one-member electorate that is the total of all formal votes cast, in a two-member structure it is their final votes after the elimination of all but the last candidate). Actual votes in the House require computer tabulation (can anyone explain why we still have tellers and headcounts for divisions), things won't be decided "on the voices" but by the button - press Yes or No. Even show the result on a screen. You can't use "pairs" to get around unavoidable absence - but proxies would work fine (simple rule though, a member can have a proxy for only one other member - the Whip can't control all the votes).
This at least provides some logic to the system and addresses the public concern about thinking they "vote" for the PM of their choice under the existing system. You get to vote for the PM you want and the person to represent your local needs. he local rep really stays local by not faxing redistributions every six or so years.
Does this make an improvement?
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Lobbyists
Great item in Crikey today on lobbying taken from DragOnista's blog.
There are two important themes in the item, the first is that lobbying is strategic (meaning long term) and that it is both good for democracy and poorly understood.
On the strategic nature, it highlights that lobbying is multi-faceted.
Effective lobbying is based on an exceptionally good working knowledge of three things: politics, policy and business. That’s why most lobby groups have experts in each of these areas.
Even more important for effective lobbying is an understanding of how these three elements can align, interact or conflict.
Lobbyists use knowledge of this dynamic to ply their trade. In an ideal world, the policy they are lobbying for should satisfy the minister’s need for smart politics, the department’s need for sound policy, and their own members’ need for a continued license to operate.
Getting all three to align, good politics, good policy and good for business is often hard. It is made harder when the sponsor of the lobbying can only think of their own interest - like the old GM line "what's good for my company is good for the country". Telling politicians and officials that a certain line is important for your ability to make a profit is not usually a winning strategy.
That said both the politics and the policy credentials of a position can be fashioned over time. The frustration most lobbyists suffer from is clients or employers whose request begins "I need this now", but have no answer when you seek their view on how they want the external environment structured in three years time.
And lobbying isn't just by business - it comes from many sources.
The profession of lobbying is certainly not rocket science, but it’s a nuanced practice nonetheless. It’s an activity that admittedly occurs under the radar, but which bears little resemblance to the media depictions of shiny suits trailing into ministers’ offices threatening ad campaigns if they don’t get their wicked way.
A final important point to remember is that lobbyists represent a much broader range of interests than just big business. Equally large and influential lobby groups also represent pharmacists, teachers, independent shop owners, superannuants, and the environment movement for example.
Lobbyists have a legitimate part to play in a vibrant democracy such as ours. This would be better accepted if the media made a greater effort to understand it.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
There are two important themes in the item, the first is that lobbying is strategic (meaning long term) and that it is both good for democracy and poorly understood.
On the strategic nature, it highlights that lobbying is multi-faceted.
Effective lobbying is based on an exceptionally good working knowledge of three things: politics, policy and business. That’s why most lobby groups have experts in each of these areas.
Even more important for effective lobbying is an understanding of how these three elements can align, interact or conflict.
Lobbyists use knowledge of this dynamic to ply their trade. In an ideal world, the policy they are lobbying for should satisfy the minister’s need for smart politics, the department’s need for sound policy, and their own members’ need for a continued license to operate.
Getting all three to align, good politics, good policy and good for business is often hard. It is made harder when the sponsor of the lobbying can only think of their own interest - like the old GM line "what's good for my company is good for the country". Telling politicians and officials that a certain line is important for your ability to make a profit is not usually a winning strategy.
That said both the politics and the policy credentials of a position can be fashioned over time. The frustration most lobbyists suffer from is clients or employers whose request begins "I need this now", but have no answer when you seek their view on how they want the external environment structured in three years time.
And lobbying isn't just by business - it comes from many sources.
The profession of lobbying is certainly not rocket science, but it’s a nuanced practice nonetheless. It’s an activity that admittedly occurs under the radar, but which bears little resemblance to the media depictions of shiny suits trailing into ministers’ offices threatening ad campaigns if they don’t get their wicked way.
A final important point to remember is that lobbyists represent a much broader range of interests than just big business. Equally large and influential lobby groups also represent pharmacists, teachers, independent shop owners, superannuants, and the environment movement for example.
Lobbyists have a legitimate part to play in a vibrant democracy such as ours. This would be better accepted if the media made a greater effort to understand it.
Novae Meridianae Demetae Dexter delenda est
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Sport and Democracy
It is easy to confuse the coexistence with causation.
In his SMH column last Saturday Michael Duffy advanced the view that investing in sports and sports infrastucture might help develop democratic institutions in the nation states now struggling - notably in the Pacific.
Duffy points to the high correlation between participation in team sports and thriving democracies. He considers for a moment that both might have a common cause in the British Empire, but then identifies European democracies with the same feature.
There is a sense in which Duffy is right. In most team sports people volunarily "play by the rules", which is ultimately what you need to make democracy work. You need the (up to) 49% of people who didn't win to respect the decision, largely get on with life, protest occassionally and plan for the next occassion (or at least some of them). You don't need them rioting.
But it is my contention that both behaviours are ultimately driven by a value, one that is sometimes called the Golden Rule (also known as the principle of reciprocity) that says treat others as you would like to be treated. This rule is actually essential to get economies/societies to develop the "rule of law" seen as a precondition to the operation of capitalism. Yet your average "economic libertarian" will sign up to the "objectivist" ethos espoused by Ayn Rand that an individual should only act in the individual's own interest.
To make these states thrive they need to first be able to consistently meet the economic needs of their people. The creation of individual rather than collective rights in land may be an essential, though unpalatable, solution.
But also let us not forget that the trigger point in the Solomons was an accusation of corruption. As Wolfgang Kasper discusses in his January paper for CIS corruption is at the core of much misery in the developing world. One of the greatest outrages in the whole sorry tale of AWB has been the near universal "nod and wink" in Australia that paying bribes is OK to make exports happen. They never are, they should be outlawed.
The fight against corruption is far more important than developing sports - and we can begin at home.
In his SMH column last Saturday Michael Duffy advanced the view that investing in sports and sports infrastucture might help develop democratic institutions in the nation states now struggling - notably in the Pacific.
Duffy points to the high correlation between participation in team sports and thriving democracies. He considers for a moment that both might have a common cause in the British Empire, but then identifies European democracies with the same feature.
There is a sense in which Duffy is right. In most team sports people volunarily "play by the rules", which is ultimately what you need to make democracy work. You need the (up to) 49% of people who didn't win to respect the decision, largely get on with life, protest occassionally and plan for the next occassion (or at least some of them). You don't need them rioting.
But it is my contention that both behaviours are ultimately driven by a value, one that is sometimes called the Golden Rule (also known as the principle of reciprocity) that says treat others as you would like to be treated. This rule is actually essential to get economies/societies to develop the "rule of law" seen as a precondition to the operation of capitalism. Yet your average "economic libertarian" will sign up to the "objectivist" ethos espoused by Ayn Rand that an individual should only act in the individual's own interest.
To make these states thrive they need to first be able to consistently meet the economic needs of their people. The creation of individual rather than collective rights in land may be an essential, though unpalatable, solution.
But also let us not forget that the trigger point in the Solomons was an accusation of corruption. As Wolfgang Kasper discusses in his January paper for CIS corruption is at the core of much misery in the developing world. One of the greatest outrages in the whole sorry tale of AWB has been the near universal "nod and wink" in Australia that paying bribes is OK to make exports happen. They never are, they should be outlawed.
The fight against corruption is far more important than developing sports - and we can begin at home.
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