notes-politics-governanceSystems-govsChOfficials

Table of Contents for Governance Systems Design

also called 'officers'

note: election procedures are discussed in Voting and elections.

High officials vs bureaucrats

These terms are used in different ways by different people. Here is how we'll use them here.

todo High officials are those in positions that are sufficiently powerful such that there is some concern that perhaps one or more people in such positions could somehow 'seize power' and 'take over' the organization as a whole, forcing it to do undesirable things; here we include members of the legislature. Bureaucrats are other officials within the executive branch.

'high official' is not always the same as 'executive officer'.

High officials

the less instances there are of some office, the more prestigious it is

term limits eg even Sparta had 'em

independence criteria

names of things president consul magistrate judge ceo, prime minister, minister etc

e has power who:

• holds de juris authority
• is seen to drive execution
• control publication of decisions or facts
• are seen to be temporally successful
• are not seen to be corrupt
• holds a position which has few duplicates (eg if there is only one instance of a position, that position is more powerful than if there are lots of them)
• has many (direct and indirect) subordinates
• is paid a lot
• holds a position that is thought to be only given to the best
• has money, or some other resource that can be traded to others
• has connections
  • eg "...were removed from the PSC...largely by fiat of Deng and the elders rather than institutional procedure..." -- [1]; " Deng Xiaoping was never the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China or President, Premier of China, yet he was the leader of China for a decade" -- [2] "The "paramount leader" is not a formal position nor an office unto itself. The term gained prominence during the era of Deng Xiaoping, who was able to wield power without necessarily holding any official or formally significant party or government positions (head of state, head of government or General Secretary)." -- [3]
• has held power for a long time (i bet this one is actually just a result of their connections)
• has 'name recognition' among others
• is thought to keep their word
• whose needs/weaknesses cannot be predicted by others e has power over another position who:

he has power over a person who:

• appoints the person to their position
• can fire the person from their position
• knows personal secrets about the person
• can control whether the person and those close to them get perks
• can control whether the person and those close to them are appear to be loyal and effective
• can threaten a person's life outside of the confines of their work

Bureaucrats

civil service civil service exams?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau-shaping_model

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget-maximizing_model

possible example of the above affecting policy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Her_Majesty%27s_Civil_Service#Margaret_Thatcher.27s_government

todo

pattern seen often in history: a powerful official has a set of officials who are in theory their delegates and advisors; however there is also another group of informal advisors

• motivations:
  • in theory the official delegates are delegates but in fact the official doesn't have complete freedom to select them, either because (a) de facto they need someone else's permission to hire/fire them, (b) it would look bad if they put people who are seen as inexperienced or untalented in these positions
  • the official has a negotiated agreement with the official delegates; they in effect get something from these people in exchange for them being delegates
  • the informal delegates don't want the accountability that would come with a formal role
  • the informal delegates don't want to waste time on the formalities/ceremony that would come with a formal role
  • there are only so many formal roles to go around, and the official wants to get wider input
  • the official role is execution-based, but the official also wants strategic advice from others

the informal advisor group can consist of:

• old trusted friends/associates ('cronies') of the official
• random people who have impressed the official

examples:

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camarilla
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Cabinet

i have no evidence for this, but it's possible that sometimes this pattern even repeats; perhaps the informal advisory positions are formalized into eg a Privy Council, and then perhaps later officials feel a need to go outside of the Privy Council for truly informal advisors again.

another pattern seen often: a Court, where the companions in an official's household substantially overlaps with bureaucrats of their adminstration: "the court is an extension of the great individual's household; wherever members of the household and bureaucrats of the administration overlap in personnel, it is sensible to speak of a "court"" [4].

todo:

• it's crucial to look at the incentives given to individuals.
  • you tend to optimize what you measure
• if it is formally stated that an individual's job is to do X well, but they are actually evaluated based on how well they do Y, and doing Y well can imply doing X less well, then don't assume that individuals will choose to do X over Y
  • example: a teacher who is told to do whatever is needed to optimally develop students' minds including creativity, but who is evaluated based on student test scores
  • example: if an individual regulator is told to allow or disallow novel proposals based on the good for society, but if, in the case of a novel proposal that is accepted and does good, not much happens to the individual regulator, but, in the case of a novel proposal that is accepted and causes trouble, the individual regulator is punished or at least threatened; then the regulator may tend to be conservative even if that is not optimal to society
  • example: if an individual regulator is told to allow or disallow novel proposals based on the good for society, but if the rewards they get in their job as a regulator are dwarfed by the potential compensation from a future job at the companys they are regulating, but this future job is more likely to be offered to them if they approve proposals as much as possible, then the regulator may tend to approve proposals even if that is not optimal to society
• Assume that at least a substantial minority of individuals are 'evil' in the sense of being willing to break any particular rule for selfish gain (in reality, most individuals will 'draw the line' and not break some rules if they feel that doing so would be 'too evil'; but different individuals have different ideas about which rules these are).
• Don't assume that even 'good' people will follow rules that they consider to be useless or counterproductive
  • an important special case is that most people are not honest if honest is defined in a strict manner; eg most consumers sign 'boilerplate' contracts without reading them, even when those contracts clearly state 'I have read this contract' next to the signature
• assume that people will pay more attention to how the people they personally interact with judge the ethics of some choice, than to formally prescribed ethics, or to how distant 'wider society' would judge the same choice
• many members of the public will not tend to spend time investigating the details of a situation that they hear about. So, if some official's future prospects depend on the public's opinion of them, they will tend to concentrate on avoiding situations which, superficilly, make the official looks bad, but upon closer inspection, make the official look good. (the same goes if 'public opinion' is substitued by some other entity who will tend to not spend the time to get the details; 'management', the board of a company, etc)
• to the extent that officials' future prospects depend on public opinion, the official will typically tend to spend resources to make it clear to the public that at least they tried, even if spending these resources is a waste of the public's money or even counterproductive