Power and patronage

Elang Adhyaksa, in a letter to the editor of the 'Economist' was writing about one particular country but, in truth, this could apply almost everywhere:

In such a fractured country as [*see end of this post], leaders must contend with entrenched power bases, then cultivate patronage networks of their own if they are to govern at all. Elang Adhyaksa, the 'Economist', 31 October

That's how things work. The power bases could be corporations or they could lie within government or the public service. I don't actually think things are drastically worse today in that respect than any other time. I do think, though, that we can do better. Power bases don't always share the same goals as ordinary people. The gap between power bases and the public may be widening. Often, the goals of the elite that constitute the power base (or are the people the power base has to listen to) and ordinary people are in conflict. Overall, trust in government is declining; it's not a hopeful trend.

 There might have been good reasons for why the our current political systems are weighted in favor of interest groups. Reasons to do with an uneducated population with not much free time to spend considering policy issues; the logistical difficulties of informing many people, and finding out what they think. The result is that government's goals depend on the bargaining power of special interests, whose influence is largely a function of how wealthy they are, but also such attributes as the personality of their spokespeople, and the emotions that can be generated from selective video footage. 

I think we need policymaking systems now that prioritise the goals of ordinary citizens. These goals would be based not on emotion, but on the actual wishes and needs of the public. 

Social Policy Bonds could be the way forward. They target outcomes that are  meaningful to ordinary people; outcomes such as better health, reduced crime rates, a cleaner environment and, at a global level, absence of war. There is more agreement about such outcomes than there is about how they shall be achieved, and which political party is best placed to achieve them. As well, these goals are more stable over time, so it is realistic to target them. A bond regime is well placed to target long-term goals, especially those that require research, experimentation, and refinement before they can be implemented. It would reward those who best advance these goals. Instead of self-entrenching power bases whose time, I believe, has passed, we'd have coalitions of bondholders; coalitions whose composition and structure would be subject to change, but that would always have as their goal, the maximising of their wealth. In that one respect, they would be similar to existing power bases. The crucial difference is that, under a Social Policy Bond regime, these new types of organisation would become wealthy only by achieving society's goals as efficiently as possible. Their goals, in short, would be exactly the same as those of ordinary citizens. 

*Which country was Elang Adhyaksa writing about? Indonesia.