||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GETTING LIBERALS & PROGRESSIVES TO THINK SMALL
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1993 - A couple of summers ago at the
annual convention of the longtime liberal group, Americans for
Democratic Action, I proposed a resolution on the decentralization of
power. Permit me to recycle a portion:
|||| There is growing evidence that old ideological conflicts such as
between left and right, and between capitalism and communism, are
becoming far less important as the world confronts the social and
economic results of a century marked by increasing concentration of
power in countries of widely varying political persuasion. A new
ideology is rising, the ideology of devolution -- the decentralization
of power. Already it has swept through the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe.
Its voice is heard in Spain, in Quebec and in Northern Ireland. It is
the voice of people attempting to regain control over societies that
have become increasingly authoritarian, unresponsive, and insensitive, a
revolt of ordinary humans against the excesses of the state. . .
All around us is evidence of the disintegration of effective government
and a growing alienation of the people from that government as a result.
Our systems of governance have become too big, too corrupt, too
inflexible and too remote from democratic concerns to respond equitably
and rationally to the changing needs of the people. Government has many
beneficial functions it can perform, but these can only be achieved when
the government itself is structured so as to reflect -- and not thwart
-- the will of the people.
Therefore we embrace the devolutionary spirit of the times and,
recognizing that the ideology of scale must now be considered as
carefully as the ideology of liberal and conservative, we urge that this
nation begin devolving power back to the people -- that we correct a
decades-long course which has too often led to increasingly centralized
power with increasingly ineffective and undemocratic results. To this
end, we propose the following critical issues to fellow liberals and
progressives to consider, debate and act upon while there is still time
to reverse the authoritarian course of the American government:
- How do we end the growing concentration of power in the presidency and
return to the tripartite system of government intended by the
Constitution? How can Congress reassert its constitutional role in the
federal government?
- How do we prevent federal government green-mail of the states -- the
granting or withholding of federal funds to force state legislation --
from being used as a way around the powers constitutionally granted the
states?
- How can we decentralize federal agencies to the state and local level?
- How do we create a new respect for state and local rights? The bitter
struggle to establish the federal government's primacy in the protection
of civil rights of all its citizens has been used far too long as an
excuse to concentrate all forms of power in Washington. That legal
battle has been won. We must now recognize the importance of state and
local government in creative, responsive governance and not continue to
assume that good government can only come from within the Beltway.
- How do we reduce restrictions on federal funds granted states and
localities in order to foster imaginative local application of those
funds and to prevent the sort of federal abuse apparent, for example, in
restrictions on family planning advice?
- How do we encourage -- including funding -- neighborhood government in
our cities so that the people most affected by the American urban
disaster can try their own hand at rebuilding their communities?
The principle that all government should be devolved to the lowest
practical level should be raised to its proper primacy in the
progressive agenda. We cannot overstate the peril involved in continuing
to concentrate governmental power in the federal executive.|||||
The resolution proved too much for the traditional liberals of ADA and
the resolution was roundly defeated in committee. Many voters, however,
have divined the problem of excessive scale while remaining,
unsurprisingly, confused as to what to do about it. False prophets on
the right tout a phony "empowerment," The media muddles the matter with
its usual in-depth cliches. What is lacking is not devolutionary theory,
nor grand schemes, nor useful experiments, but rather a practical
progressive politics of devolution. We need to apply our theories and
our experience to the every day politics of ordinary citizens. If we do,
I think we will surprise ourselves and others in a discovery of where
the American mainstream really flows.
Here, for starters, are a few suggestions of devolutionary issues
progressives could press:
- Public schools: In the sixties there was a strong movement for
community control of the schools. Because it came largely from minority
communities and because the majority was not adequately distressed about
public education it faltered.
- Neighborhood government: Real neighborhood government would not be
merely advisory as is the case with Washington DC's neighborhood
commissions. It would include the power to sue the city government, to
incorporate, to run its own programs, to contract to provide those of
city hall, and to have some measure of budgetary authority over city
expenditures within its boundaries. Not the least among its powers
should be a role in the justice system, since it is impossible to
recreate order in our communities while denying communities any place in
maintaining order.
We should create the "small republics," that Jefferson dreamed of,
autonomous communities where every citizen became "an acting member of
the common government, transacting in person a great portion of its
rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely
within his own competence."
- States' rights: While maintaining federal preeminence in fields such
as civil rights, progressives should be strong advocates of states'
rights on issues not properly the federal government's business such as
raising the drinking age or the 55 mph speed limit. Such advocacy would
help to form new coalitions and stir up the ideological pot. In
particular, progressives should oppose the use of federal green-mail --
forcing states and localities to take measures at the risk of losing
federal funding -- as a clear end run around the 10th amendment of the
Bill of Rights. As the Supreme Court noted in Kansas v. Colorado, this
amendment "discloses the widespread fear that the national government
might, under the pressure of supposed general welfare, attempt to
exercise powers which had not been granted."
- Federal spending: In an important and necessary break with liberal
thinking, progressives should become advocates of a much smaller federal
government by pressing for the direct distribution of funds to the state
and local level. Whatever problems of malfeasance or nonfeasance may
result, they are almost guaranteed to be less than the misuse of these
funds at the federal level. As Congress' own auditor, Comptroller
General Charles Bowsher, recently told a hearing that "there are hardly
any [federal] agencies that are well managed." The flaw in liberal
thinking is that federal housing funds are used for housing, agriculture
funds for farmers and so forth. In fact, an extraordinary percentage of
these moneys are used to maintain a superstructure to carry out poor
housing policy or bad farm policy. The basic principle should be to get
the money to the streets or the farms as quickly -- and with as few
intermediaries -- as possible.
Further, progressives should challenge the presumption that the feds
know best. At the present time, much of the best government is at the
state and local level. It could do even better without the paperwork and
the restrictions dreamed up in Washington to fill the working day. And
even when that doesn't prove true, you don't have to drive as far to
make your political anger known.
- Small business: Many progressives act as though an economy isn't
necessary. It would pay great dividends if the progressive agenda
included support for small businesses. Small businesses generate an
extraordinary number of new jobs. Further, small business is where many
of the values of the progressive movement can be best expressed in an
economic context. While ideally many of these businesses should be
cooperatives, even within the strictures of conventional capitalism they
offer significant advantages over the mega-corporation. Writing in the
New York Times, brokerage firm president Muriel Siebert said recently:
Unlike monolithic Fortune 500 companies, small businesses behave like
families. [A study] indicated that one reason for the durability of
businesses owned by women is the value they place on their workers. It
showed that small businesses hold on to workers through periods when
revenues decline. Rather than eliminate workers, they tend to cut other
expenses, including their own salaries... Nearly half of the workers
laid off by large companies have to swallow pay reductions when they
find new full-time work; two out of three work for at least 20 percent
less money than before."
As Jon Rowe says of Korean family-run groceries, "a family operates on
loyalty and trust, the market operates on contract and law."
- Decentralizing the federal government: There are a number of federal
agencies that are already quite decentralized. Interestingly, these
agencies are among those most often praised. The National Park Service,
the Peace Corps, the Coast Guard, and US Attorneys all have dispersed
units with a relatively high degree of autonomy and a strong sense of
turf responsibility by their employees. A further example can be found
within the postal service. While many complain about mail service, you
rarely hear them gripe about their own mail carrier, who is given a
finite task in a finite geographical area. I stumbled across this
phenomenon while serving in the Coast Guard. At the time, the Guard had
about 1800 units worldwide but only 3000 officers, with many of the
officers concentrated on larger ships and in headquarters units. Thus
there were scores of units run by enlisted personnel who rarely saw an
officer. The system worked extremely well. It worked because, once
training and adequate equipment had been provided, there was relatively
little a bureaucratic superstructure could do to improve the operations
of a lifeboat or loran station. As with education, a bureaucracy in such
circumstances can do itself far more good than it can do anyone in the
field.
Similarly, a former Peace Corps regional director told me that in his
agency's far-flung and decentralized system, there was no way he could
control activities in the two dozen countries under his purview, yet the
Peace Corps became one of the most popular federal programs in recent
times. Can the success of these decentralized agencies be replicated,
say, in housing or urban development? Why not give it a try? If federal
housing moneys were distributed by 50 state directors who were given
considerable leeway in the mix of policies they could fund and approve,
we would, for starters, begin to have a better idea of which programs
work and which don't.
- Raising the issue: Every policy and piece of legislation should be
subjected to evaluation not only according to the old rules of right and
left but according to the ideology of scale. We must constantly be
asking not only whether what is proposed is right, but whether it is
being done at the right level of society's organization.
These are just a few examples of how a politics of devolution might
begin to develop. It is needed if for no other reason than it is our
best defense against the increasing authoritarianism of the federal
government and the monopolization of economic activity. It is also
needed because, without it, democracy becomes little more than a choice
between alternative propaganda machines. In the 1960s, Robert McNamara
declared, "Running any large organization is the same, whether it's the
Ford Motor Company, the Catholic Church or the Department of Defense.
Once you get the certain scale, they're all the same." And so,
increasingly to our detriment, they are. We must learn and teach, and
make a central part of our politics, that while small is not always
beautiful, it has -- for our ecology, our liberties, and our souls --
become absolutely essential.
MORE ON DEVOLUTION
http://prorev.com/devoution.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
GETTING LIBERALS & PROGRESSIVES TO THINK SMALL
SAM SMITH, PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1993 - A couple of summers ago at the
annual convention of the longtime liberal group, Americans for
Democratic Action, I proposed a resolution on the decentralization of
power. Permit me to recycle a portion:
|||| There is growing evidence that old ideological conflicts such as
between left and right, and between capitalism and communism, are
becoming far less important as the world confronts the social and
economic results of a century marked by increasing concentration of
power in countries of widely varying political persuasion. A new
ideology is rising, the ideology of devolution -- the decentralization
of power. Already it has swept through the Soviet Union and Eastern
Europe.
Its voice is heard in Spain, in Quebec and in Northern Ireland. It is
the voice of people attempting to regain control over societies that
have become increasingly authoritarian, unresponsive, and insensitive, a
revolt of ordinary humans against the excesses of the state. . .
All around us is evidence of the disintegration of effective government
and a growing alienation of the people from that government as a result.
Our systems of governance have become too big, too corrupt, too
inflexible and too remote from democratic concerns to respond equitably
and rationally to the changing needs of the people. Government has many
beneficial functions it can perform, but these can only be achieved when
the government itself is structured so as to reflect -- and not thwart
-- the will of the people.
Therefore we embrace the devolutionary spirit of the times and,
recognizing that the ideology of scale must now be considered as
carefully as the ideology of liberal and conservative, we urge that this
nation begin devolving power back to the people -- that we correct a
decades-long course which has too often led to increasingly centralized
power with increasingly ineffective and undemocratic results. To this
end, we propose the following critical issues to fellow liberals and
progressives to consider, debate and act upon while there is still time
to reverse the authoritarian course of the American government:
- How do we end the growing concentration of power in the presidency and
return to the tripartite system of government intended by the
Constitution? How can Congress reassert its constitutional role in the
federal government?
- How do we prevent federal government green-mail of the states -- the
granting or withholding of federal funds to force state legislation --
from being used as a way around the powers constitutionally granted the
states?
- How can we decentralize federal agencies to the state and local level?
- How do we create a new respect for state and local rights? The bitter
struggle to establish the federal government's primacy in the protection
of civil rights of all its citizens has been used far too long as an
excuse to concentrate all forms of power in Washington. That legal
battle has been won. We must now recognize the importance of state and
local government in creative, responsive governance and not continue to
assume that good government can only come from within the Beltway.
- How do we reduce restrictions on federal funds granted states and
localities in order to foster imaginative local application of those
funds and to prevent the sort of federal abuse apparent, for example, in
restrictions on family planning advice?
- How do we encourage -- including funding -- neighborhood government in
our cities so that the people most affected by the American urban
disaster can try their own hand at rebuilding their communities?
The principle that all government should be devolved to the lowest
practical level should be raised to its proper primacy in the
progressive agenda. We cannot overstate the peril involved in continuing
to concentrate governmental power in the federal executive.|||||
The resolution proved too much for the traditional liberals of ADA and
the resolution was roundly defeated in committee. Many voters, however,
have divined the problem of excessive scale while remaining,
unsurprisingly, confused as to what to do about it. False prophets on
the right tout a phony "empowerment," The media muddles the matter with
its usual in-depth cliches. What is lacking is not devolutionary theory,
nor grand schemes, nor useful experiments, but rather a practical
progressive politics of devolution. We need to apply our theories and
our experience to the every day politics of ordinary citizens. If we do,
I think we will surprise ourselves and others in a discovery of where
the American mainstream really flows.
Here, for starters, are a few suggestions of devolutionary issues
progressives could press:
- Public schools: In the sixties there was a strong movement for
community control of the schools. Because it came largely from minority
communities and because the majority was not adequately distressed about
public education it faltered.
- Neighborhood government: Real neighborhood government would not be
merely advisory as is the case with Washington DC's neighborhood
commissions. It would include the power to sue the city government, to
incorporate, to run its own programs, to contract to provide those of
city hall, and to have some measure of budgetary authority over city
expenditures within its boundaries. Not the least among its powers
should be a role in the justice system, since it is impossible to
recreate order in our communities while denying communities any place in
maintaining order.
We should create the "small republics," that Jefferson dreamed of,
autonomous communities where every citizen became "an acting member of
the common government, transacting in person a great portion of its
rights and duties, subordinate indeed, yet important, and entirely
within his own competence."
- States' rights: While maintaining federal preeminence in fields such
as civil rights, progressives should be strong advocates of states'
rights on issues not properly the federal government's business such as
raising the drinking age or the 55 mph speed limit. Such advocacy would
help to form new coalitions and stir up the ideological pot. In
particular, progressives should oppose the use of federal green-mail --
forcing states and localities to take measures at the risk of losing
federal funding -- as a clear end run around the 10th amendment of the
Bill of Rights. As the Supreme Court noted in Kansas v. Colorado, this
amendment "discloses the widespread fear that the national government
might, under the pressure of supposed general welfare, attempt to
exercise powers which had not been granted."
- Federal spending: In an important and necessary break with liberal
thinking, progressives should become advocates of a much smaller federal
government by pressing for the direct distribution of funds to the state
and local level. Whatever problems of malfeasance or nonfeasance may
result, they are almost guaranteed to be less than the misuse of these
funds at the federal level. As Congress' own auditor, Comptroller
General Charles Bowsher, recently told a hearing that "there are hardly
any [federal] agencies that are well managed." The flaw in liberal
thinking is that federal housing funds are used for housing, agriculture
funds for farmers and so forth. In fact, an extraordinary percentage of
these moneys are used to maintain a superstructure to carry out poor
housing policy or bad farm policy. The basic principle should be to get
the money to the streets or the farms as quickly -- and with as few
intermediaries -- as possible.
Further, progressives should challenge the presumption that the feds
know best. At the present time, much of the best government is at the
state and local level. It could do even better without the paperwork and
the restrictions dreamed up in Washington to fill the working day. And
even when that doesn't prove true, you don't have to drive as far to
make your political anger known.
- Small business: Many progressives act as though an economy isn't
necessary. It would pay great dividends if the progressive agenda
included support for small businesses. Small businesses generate an
extraordinary number of new jobs. Further, small business is where many
of the values of the progressive movement can be best expressed in an
economic context. While ideally many of these businesses should be
cooperatives, even within the strictures of conventional capitalism they
offer significant advantages over the mega-corporation. Writing in the
New York Times, brokerage firm president Muriel Siebert said recently:
Unlike monolithic Fortune 500 companies, small businesses behave like
families. [A study] indicated that one reason for the durability of
businesses owned by women is the value they place on their workers. It
showed that small businesses hold on to workers through periods when
revenues decline. Rather than eliminate workers, they tend to cut other
expenses, including their own salaries... Nearly half of the workers
laid off by large companies have to swallow pay reductions when they
find new full-time work; two out of three work for at least 20 percent
less money than before."
As Jon Rowe says of Korean family-run groceries, "a family operates on
loyalty and trust, the market operates on contract and law."
- Decentralizing the federal government: There are a number of federal
agencies that are already quite decentralized. Interestingly, these
agencies are among those most often praised. The National Park Service,
the Peace Corps, the Coast Guard, and US Attorneys all have dispersed
units with a relatively high degree of autonomy and a strong sense of
turf responsibility by their employees. A further example can be found
within the postal service. While many complain about mail service, you
rarely hear them gripe about their own mail carrier, who is given a
finite task in a finite geographical area. I stumbled across this
phenomenon while serving in the Coast Guard. At the time, the Guard had
about 1800 units worldwide but only 3000 officers, with many of the
officers concentrated on larger ships and in headquarters units. Thus
there were scores of units run by enlisted personnel who rarely saw an
officer. The system worked extremely well. It worked because, once
training and adequate equipment had been provided, there was relatively
little a bureaucratic superstructure could do to improve the operations
of a lifeboat or loran station. As with education, a bureaucracy in such
circumstances can do itself far more good than it can do anyone in the
field.
Similarly, a former Peace Corps regional director told me that in his
agency's far-flung and decentralized system, there was no way he could
control activities in the two dozen countries under his purview, yet the
Peace Corps became one of the most popular federal programs in recent
times. Can the success of these decentralized agencies be replicated,
say, in housing or urban development? Why not give it a try? If federal
housing moneys were distributed by 50 state directors who were given
considerable leeway in the mix of policies they could fund and approve,
we would, for starters, begin to have a better idea of which programs
work and which don't.
- Raising the issue: Every policy and piece of legislation should be
subjected to evaluation not only according to the old rules of right and
left but according to the ideology of scale. We must constantly be
asking not only whether what is proposed is right, but whether it is
being done at the right level of society's organization.
These are just a few examples of how a politics of devolution might
begin to develop. It is needed if for no other reason than it is our
best defense against the increasing authoritarianism of the federal
government and the monopolization of economic activity. It is also
needed because, without it, democracy becomes little more than a choice
between alternative propaganda machines. In the 1960s, Robert McNamara
declared, "Running any large organization is the same, whether it's the
Ford Motor Company, the Catholic Church or the Department of Defense.
Once you get the certain scale, they're all the same." And so,
increasingly to our detriment, they are. We must learn and teach, and
make a central part of our politics, that while small is not always
beautiful, it has -- for our ecology, our liberties, and our souls --
become absolutely essential.
MORE ON DEVOLUTION
http://prorev.com/devoution.htm
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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