2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
2023 FUTURE OBSERVATORY
For many years Western governments, at least, have seemed to spend more and more of their time creating ever more detailed regulation - to further constrain the behaviour of their subjects. This rule by a thousand laws is certainly preferable to that of previous ages, which instead saw the population terrorised into submission by the indiscriminate application of brute force. It is, though, still constricting of freedom; perversely so where the same governments have more recently proclaimed their determination to de-regulate - to free their citizens from such irksome constraints!
The problem is that, in the post-modern absence of any broad agreement on an overall framework for individual behaviour - in other words for a universally agreed set of ethics (to replace, say, the religious certainties of much earlier times) - in most spheres of human activity, there is no alternative to spelling out the detailed behaviour to be required in each specific situation. Where once it was sufficient to know that God had commanded that you should not covet your neighbour's ox, now there have to be rules about property rights - covering every possible eventuality from deliberate theft to the animal accidentally straying onto your property and causing damage - with the addition of those laws which protect the animal's rights as well as its owner's; and criminal laws which deter you from putting your covetousness into practice.
Even worse, hidden at the centre of this paper blizzard of regulation, the rulers - more cynically - seek to regulate those who might challenge their right to power. Local government is emasculated, unions are legislated almost out of existence. The only element of society which typically is blatantly allowed to remain above the law is central government itself. Its members, alone, are deemed to possess the ethical purity that enables them to set their own rules - which allow them, even, to flout the ethical standards demanded of everyone else. The wonder is that corruption is not more widespread!
In the context of legitimation this is palpable nonsense. If government wants to be seen to be acting ethically, then it must set itself rules by which it should act and by which its actions may then be judged. Instead governments too often act and then legislate to cover their failings. These rules are not the manifesto promises, which everyone - including the politicians who make them - know will probably be broken. They are the basic ethical values by which governments claim to stand. The fact that very few governments now even see the need for such values - except as short-term smoke-screens ('back to basics' or the 'silent majority') behind which they once more attempt to hide their mistakes - is well recognised by the great majority of the electorate. Indeed, with such governments often viewing any belief in societal values as a sign of weakness, politics deserves its growing reputation for sleaze; and politicians equally deserve their abysmally low opinion ratings.
Rules of political behaviour are, therefore, needed if politicians are to regain their legitimacy. Such values need not be difficult to formulate. A good start might be made if politicians forswore lying as the basic tool of their trade! It would even be an advance if they simply recognised that political lies were just as damaging as any other form of falsehood.
Political legitimation will be aided, or hindered, by the degree to which the rules of political behaviour are made apparent; and acted upon.
21 April 2003
Other pages you might like to consider are:
5036 EUROPEAN UNION, 5023 EMBRYONIC GLOBAL GOVERNMENT, 5066 KEYNESIANISM AND BRETTON WOODS, 5228 US ECONOMIC POWER, 5218 THE UNITED NATIONS
hits
Copyright © 2005 Future Observatory