SPEAKING FREELY
What China shouldn't learn from the US
By James V DeLong
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say.
Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
Americans like to lecture China about concepts of government and political
participation. Usually, these lectures assume that China should copy the United
States, with particular attention to making the government more responsive to
pressure from citizens and groups.
This is dubious advice, because the US itself is in a crisis over its political
institutions, a crisis centered precisely on the ability of groups to pressure
the government. This crisis is hobbling the
ability of the US to deal with its long-term economic and social problems.
From a Chinese perspective, the details of US politics are of little interest,
of course, but the US experience provides useful material for China's own
political thinking and development, and the underlying issues are of great
interest. The problem of ensuring that a government has adequate power to serve
the welfare of the people while at the same time preventing its capture and
exploitation by particular groups recurs through history. So the question is,
where, when, and how did the US drift into error, and how does China avoid
comparable problems?
As the adage says, the fish is the last to learn of the water, so the existence
of this crisis is not seriously discussed in the US itself, and it has no name.
This article calls it "the crisis of the special-interest state".
Textbooks on US government describe its various branches, such as legislatures,
executive agencies, and courts. These are usually depicted as composed of
disinterested public servants who are diligently trying to do their best for
the nation. To some degree, this picture is true, as many officials are
competent, dedicated, and fair. In the past, US governments and their officials
have been capable of great things.
But US government has another side. Legislatures and agencies must be divided
into smaller units and the power to act must be delegated to these subunits. As
the number of areas in which the US government is involved has expanded, the
number of subunits has grown as well, with each exercising substantial power
over some part of the economy or society. As a result, much of US politics now
consists of efforts by private interests to capture these subunits and exercise
their power.
These efforts are highly successful, and the result is the "special-interest
state". In this model, various subunits of government are "owned" by particular
interests. The Department of Labor serves labor union officials, not productive
industry as a whole, or all workers, or even union members in general. The
Commerce Department is devoted to business, and mostly to big rather than small
business. Educational institutions dominate the Department of Education, which
fosters a model of education based on 19th-century principles that serves
teachers and administrators, not students or society. Environmental advocates
control the Environmental Protection Agency, ratcheting up the stringency of
environmental rules without regard to overall costs and benefits.
In Congress, dozens of separate committees guard their jurisdiction fiercely,
collecting campaign contributions from people in the private sector who are
under their jurisdiction and creating winners and losers in the economy.
Nothing is too large for their control: the housing industry and its recent
disasters were the result of a generation of economically unsound government
policies adopted at the behest of special-interests. And nothing is too small:
it is common for a law to require the federal government to pay for some minor
facility, such as a bridge or a roller skating park, in a village thousands of
miles from Washington.
Even the courts are subject to special-interest capture, as judges are
appointed because of their membership in some particular group or interest, and
are expected to decide cases in accord with its views.
These captured agencies do not simply channel money to their constituencies.
They have great power to issue regulations that enrich their supporters at the
expense of the public, or to transfer resources from one group of people to
another, and they make wide use of this power.
Many American political scientists glorify the special-interest state,
sometimes calling it "interest group liberalism". They urge it on other nations
as a model.
Whatever its merits in the past, when the number of interest groups was small,
the US special-interest state has become dysfunctional. Over the past
half-century, thousands of groups have been organized. They represent
industries, and sub-industries, and sub-sub-industries. They represent a
multitude of social causes, every possible variety of environmental protection,
religious views, ethnic groups, and any other category that one can think of.
They have succeeded too well, and almost every area of US government policy has
become a maze of incoherent and conflicting policies and rules. The old
interests will ensure that no program can ever be abolished, and no old rule
repealed, so new interests must continually find new areas of the private
economy to take over, which leads to the formation of yet more new groups that
must defend themselves and so on in an endless chain. The special-interest
state is continually expanding its control.
This expansion cannot continue forever, so it must eventually stop. How and
when this will happen is uncertain, though. The American people know that
something has gone awry and grow angry, but the political class - public
officials, lawyers, lobbyists, journalists - do well out of the current
arrangements and resist change. Change will require a crisis, perhaps the
current one, perhaps a future one.
In the meantime, Chinese analysts have a rare opportunity for study. Learning
from one's mistakes is a good thing, but learning from the mistakes of others
is even better.
James V DeLong is VP and Senior Analyst, Convergence Law Institute, USA.
jdelong@convergencelaw.com, For more information, see
The Coming of the Fourth American Republic, The American (April 21,
2009).
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say.
Please click hereif you are interested in contributing.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
