Beyond Public Administration

Contemplating and Nudging Government-in-Context

David John Farmer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429575372
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Social Sciences

How can public administration (P.A.) nudge government to govern fundamentally better in terms of policy? How critical is P.A. contemplation and nudges – prods, shoves or hammer blows - to government-in-context?

In this book, David John Farmer argues that government-in-context refers to government-in-totality, to what governs even if not called government and to what constrains government action. Constricting contextual features are infiltration, exfiltration and post-truth, raising questions relating to democracy. Infiltration into government is the action of gaining access that benefits big corporations, their owners and billionaires; findings are that it also mal-nudges government action through such elements as big money, lobbying, tax breaks and embrace of the free market. Reacting to factors like growing income inequality, what is explained as exfiltration occurs for middle- and lower-income people. Post-truth is noted as the Oxford Dictionary's word of the year for 2016, describing people concerned less with truths than with opinions. The book analyzes three practical "hammer blow" and 18 "shove" nudges to contradict the mal-nudges.

Beyond Public Administration will be of interest to P.A. scholars and graduate students, more specifically those interested in critical, normative, or interpretive scholarship focused on various aspects of P.A. theory, governance, and practical management.

1 Introduction

This book begins by asking an important question. What should public administration (P.A.) do to provide leadership in helping government to govern fundamentally better in terms of policy? Borrowing Woodrow Wilson’s words from the first paragraph of his essay The Study of Administration (Wilson, 1887), it can discover and help to shape “what government can properly and successfully do.” Herbert Simon might be as good an example for such P.A. leadership. He was a distinguished theorist of administrative behavior. Later, he won the 1978 Nobel Prize in Economics, and he contributed to Behavioral Economics. Going beyond P.A. disciplinary limits is not inevitably foreign to those who value the importance of bureaucratic behavior.

Four tentative P.A. leadership stages (or steps) are proposed and described. The first stage is to contemplate and nudge (at conferences and in writings) on the nature, advantages and disadvantages of a “better marriage” of content and context within the concept of government-in-context. The second is to establish full-time P.A. government-in-context specialists, and to develop alliances with employees in other disciplines including Public Policy and then Economics and Political Science. The third would be macro government-in-context specialists (from P.A. and other disciplines), plus some elected officials. The fourth stage is to establish an Interdisciplinary (or Epistemic Pluralist) Team to Enhance Democracy – setting up the team at the university (maybe also at the governmental) level.

What is the meaning and nature of government-in-context? What is the nature and meaning of nudging and of nudging government-in-context? How should we understand the four-stage practical plan to facilitate and steer P.A. leadership toward fundamental upgrading of government-in-context? Addressing these questions, this introductory chapter begins the explanations of what it means to say that government-in-context can be used both as a nudge and as a concept that can be contemplated to facilitate greater understanding. Later chapters carry these concepts forward and focus on others. For instance, the second chapter shows that government is a social construction – illustrating this by contrasting Ayn Rand’s analysis of minimal government and Michel Foucault’s analysis of governmentality as what he called the “conduct of conduct.” The third chapter focuses mainly on the meaning of contemplation of government-in-context. It continues the claim that nudges to help government-in-context should be preceded by appropriate contemplation and recognition of the significance of post-traditional thinking and of practical insights – and of the limits of our own work and disciplinary limitations.

The Nature and Meaning of Government-in-Context

What does government-in-context mean? Government-in-context refers to government-in-totality, to what governs even if it is not called government and to what constrains and controls significant government action. Government-in-context is a term that can be used as a nudge. But just as important, it can be viewed as a concept developed to facilitate greater understanding.

To think about the nature and meaning of government-in-context, let’s reflect about the meaning of government – and then about the meaning of governmental contexts.

Reflecting about the Meaning of Government

What is a government? Consider that governments and governments-in-context are socially constructed – as will be asserted in Chapter 2. Consider what the philosopher Wittgenstein (1956, p. 9) meant when he wrote that the limits of our language mean the limits of our world. He could have added that our language limits refer to government-in-context; it also limits our understanding of government, of governmentality. If writing now, he could have added also that our language limits are shaped not only by what we learn in school but also by the limits of my TV, my movies, my newspaper, my radio, my cell phone, my big data, my Facebook, my tweeting, my cinema, my internet.

For contemplative and practical analyses, it is not at all unusual for “real” words (like “the people,” “market economy” “the world” and “time”) to be examined, while their meanings might seem falsely to be overwhelmingly obvious. The book What is a People? (Badiou & Butler, 2015, p. 107) points out that collectivities like “the people” – with a complex aura of meanings – have a significance not shared by other collectivities. Herbert Simon asked – as late as 1991 – how surprised a visitor from Mars would be if he were told that this world has market economies, with market transactions. Simon thought that – and he explained why – the Martian would believe that “organizational economy” would be a more appropriate term, and it would have significant implications (along with his concepts of bounded rationality and satisficing). One of the points he makes is that,

Large organizations, especially governmental ones, are often caricatured as ‘bureaucracies,’ but they are often highly effective systems, despite the fact that the profit motive can penetrate these vast structures only by indirect means. The theory of organizations calls for re-examining some of the classical questions of political economy.

(Simon, 1991, p. 43)

Physics and other disciplines have also exploded the meaning of terms. Recall how Albert Einstein revolutionized the description of time, for instance, in his theorizing about special relativity (1907) and general relativity (1915). Time is not what the dictionary proclaimed. Spacetime moves mass, and mass curves spacetime. He described time in relationship to space and gravity, his mathematical description being preceded by his contemplation starting as a teenager. For Isaac Newton, time and space had been absolute; for Einstein, time was relative. Time dilations occur, as clocks on an airplane or on a mountain are slightly slower than those on the ground. Even more staggering is the Twin Paradox. Imagine that there are 25-year-old twins, Derek and Gordon. On their 25th birthday, Derek takes off on a spaceship into space, travelling at almost the speed of light. He returns to Earth after five years of space travelling, when he is 30 years old. He finds out that Gordon, who stayed on Earth, is 100 years old.

Described in such terms as the Twin Paradox, the Einsteinian view of time suggests that our understanding of the world goes beyond misleading “common” sense. This is often underscored in physics as well as in philosophy – and in other disciplines. As 1965 Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman observed, “The theory of quantum electrodynamics describes Nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense . . . I hope you can accept Nature as She is – absurd” (Richard Feynman, 1985, p. 10). Einstein’s view of time and of the twins Derek and Gordon also seem at first sight as absurd from a “common sense” viewpoint.

Dear reader, do you see the similarity between questioning our understandings of time and of government? Isn’t time (apparently) obvious and commonsensical? Look at your watch, glance at the nearest clock, check the time on your cell phone; we expect that all three will give you the same number. Any teenager or old person believes that there are 24 hours in a day: there is no point – except for people like physicist Einstein and philosopher Aristotle – in asking whether “now” is real. Isn’t government (apparently) obvious and commonsensical? Look at city hall out of your window, see the White House on your television; there is no point in asking whether there is a real government – and that nothing un-governmental governs? But, why would it be really inappropriate to ask whether non-governmental contexts are being added (or left out) – and whether the democracy is real or constrained?

Reflecting about the Meaning of Governmental Context

What does a governmental context mean? Infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth, explained in Chapters 4, 5, and 6, are parts of the context of our government. Infiltration is the action of entering or gaining access to an organization or place surreptitiously. Such infiltration, using other words such as masters of the government, has been described by practitioners and others. For example, President Wilson wrote that the

masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States. It is written over every intimate page of the record of Congress, it is written all through the history of conferences at the White House . . .

(Woodrow Wilson, 1913, p. 48)

Infiltration of government refers to the bringing in of big money and corporate activity that not only controls government policies and actions but also enriches the rich. The infiltration, as will be discussed later, is also now aided by free market theorizing and beliefs. Chapter 4 also explains defects that include the undermining of democratic government (e.g., control of the political output and inputs by business money and distorted rules and practices, ranging from gerrymandering to lobbying and buying and controlling, etc.). It will also include such devastating power infiltration into governmentality as was created by Citizens United. It also extends to unhelpful political rules, like allowing elected officials to retire to lobbying jobs. The defects also are of an economic/business character that makes the rich richer through tax and other “reforms.”

Exfiltration refers to removing something or someone from a situation. Exfiltration of government refers to the diminishing condition of middle-income and lower-income people – the relative decline of real income since the 1980s, the tendency toward a two-tier economy, the meaning of poverty and the meaning of cultural inequality. This leaves the increasingly poor much poorer than they need be. It also extends to non-activities like not developing adequate health insurance (including pharmaceutical coverage).

Post-truth is noted as the Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year for 2016. It describes people as concerned less with truths than with opinions, and it considers such opinions as appealing to our emotions, prejudices and personal beliefs. There is a neuroscience literature, not surprisingly, on decision-making and the brain. Certainty and similar states of “knowing what we know” arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms, functioning independently of reason. Certainty is biologically problematic. Post-truth includes a culture where opinion is more significant than truth, and where talking points and emotions are dominant. So much for your (and my) more than a hundred billion brain cells.

Practical plans are suggested for P.A. leadership to assist in impacting the mal-trinity of infiltration, exfiltration, and post-truth. These are in terms of 18 sets of aims or nudges, and they are explained in Chapter 7. Such plans for resolving sets of policy nudges offered in this book are open to some re-drafting and re-re-drafting. The landscape is subject to political storms and moves, and excellent arguments sometimes can be less “important” (“less sellable”) on some dates because of political considerations. Meanwhile, only six examples of the 18 sets of aims or nudges are noted here: the rest are in the later chapter. Re infiltration, two examples are Resolve lobbying and election money nudges; and Resolve income tax and subsidies nudges. Re exfiltration, two examples are Resolve the living wage, as well as minimum wage, nudges; and Explore the future of BNR: biotechnology, nanotechnology, and robotics – in a future when robots are expected to become more intelligent than humans. Re post-truth, two examples are Correct post-truth economics nudges; and Correct post-truth about democracy nudges.

Nature and Meaning of Nudging Government-in-Context

What is the nature and meaning of nudging? Nudging – a mild pressure or prod toward a choice – is indeed a term now associated with Nobel Prize winner Richard Thaler and Behavioral Economics. Thaler and Sunstein (2009) wrote about nudging under the subtitle Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness. For them, a nudge is any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behavior in a predictable way. Nudge understandings have also been researched by some in political science, psychology, and behavioral science; they are also available under such headings as framing, social engineering, outline of thoughts, media manipulation, half-truths, appeals to emotions, cognitive biases, etc.

To think about the nature and meaning of nudging government-in-context, let’s reflect about the meaning of nudging – and then let’s reflect on the nature of nudging about government-in-context.

Reflecting about the Meaning of Nudging

It was appropriate in the Preface to begin with Richard Thaler and Behavioral Economics. And I recommend that you make use of the nudging with some of the understandings that Thaler and others have developed. But that doesn’t mean that the reader should necessarily buy into all that is written – or fail to develop your own supplementary ideas. This is an opportunity for P.A. to achieve the government-in-context results it should want. To help, let us discuss additional thoughts about the usage of nudging. First, let’s reflect on the extensive uses that humans make of nudging, e.g., making friends, calming enemies and bosses, encouraging subordinates to do this or that, making children behave. Second, it is explained that – consistent with the contrast explained later between truth and post-truth – there is a difference between the languages of contemplation and of politics. Let’s reflect about the advantages and disadvantages of reducing the problems of government-in-context to a re-description of part of the context (e.g., calling the economy democratic socialism, progressive capitalism, etc.), including the fact that such re-description is (to put it mildly) unlikely to succeed in the middle-run or the long-run.

Practical use of nudges have been made by several governments, including the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST) chaired by the White House (2015–2017) and by the Behavioral Insights Team (known unofficially in the U.K. as the Nudge Unit) set up in 2010 until its ownership was split in 2013 between the U.K. government and a charity Nesta. The aim of SBST was to utilize insights from social and behavioral science for governmental policy.

Further significant use of nudging is also made by the private corporate sector. Silicon Valley was a significant forerunner in the use of nudges in dealing with employees. And there has been, of course, substantial use in influencing customers – as well as influencing politicians. And use of nudging is clearly widespread for impacting media, advertising, the internet, etc.

Humans have always made extensive use of nudges, typically without use of the title, to get others to think or to do this or that. The usage can be conscious or unconscious. Think of the ways during the past week that you chose to say or to act in order to influence someone else to say or act in the way you want. Have you ever wanted a parent or a boss or a date to think well of you; have you ever wanted a police officer not to give you a ticket; have you ever wanted your professor (or your students) to think well of you; and are there not zillions of other examples? Groups of humans make extensive use of nudges; for example, countries use flags to nudge loyalty; they plant stories and even lies on television, in newspapers and on social media; they have their military dress in good-looking uniforms; and so on. Even animals can use nudges to influence others.

One nudge on which Richard Thaler worked was a variant of the Save More Tomorrow Plan, encouraging saving a part of future salary increases to augment employee retirement savings. Another example is having an organ donation “opt out” option, rather than an “opt in” option, on a driver’s license application, when donor organs become more available because applicants do not bother to check “out.” At first sight, that seems to present no problem. But whether that achieved what Thaler wanted – libertarian paternalism – is another issue. He thought that it is legitimate and possible for all institutions to nudge behavior while also respecting complete freedom of choice, as...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Public Administration in Governmentality: A Bigger Helper
• 3. Contemplation and Beyond: The Bigger Picture
• 4. Context: Infiltration
• 5. Context: Exfiltration
• 6. Context: Post-Truth
• 7. Government-in-Context: Practical Nudges
• 8. Epilogue
• Index