Big Thinkers: John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge on Reinventing the State

This event provided the opportunity to explore questions of the future of government raised by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge’s recent book The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State. The question of what role the state should play, what size it should be and how it should behave is central to understanding what good government looks like.

Institute for Government Programme Director Jill Rutter introduced the event as the latest instalment of the Institute for Government’s ‘Big Thinkers’ series, in partnership with HP, in which leading global thinkers discuss how their work might apply to improving government in the UK.  Micklethwaite is Editor-in-Chief and Wooldridge is Management Editor and ‘Schumpeter’ columnist for The Economist.

John Micklethwait started off the discussion by referring to his book’s subtitle: The Global Race to Reinvent the State. The key to what’s been brewing in the global political pot of late is a kind of discordant apathy; neither leaders nor constituents believe that genuine change is possible. This has been reflected in the sharp drop in party membership across the UK.

However, Micklethwait argued that history indicates we have it all wrong; government does change, and change is more likely than stagnation. Those under Western governments may be failing to grasp this because they face unprecedented competition [from Eastern governments]. The worst competition is the one in which you do not realise you are taking part.  

Adrian Wooldridge provided a historical overview of three revolutions of the state, highlighting British leadership. The first was the rise of the nation state during the 16 and 17^th centuries, inspired by Thomas Hobbes’ concern with public order. At a time Europe had been losing the race to China and India, the advent of the nation state with an established legal and constitutional system changed the balance.

The second revolution of the 19^th century was marked most heavily by the liberal revolution in the UK, led by the writings of Mill and Bentham, symbolised by the creation of a merit-based, competitive civil service.

The third revolution of the welfare state is linked heavily with Beatrice and Sydney Webb’s arguments that the state could allocate resources more efficiently than free markets. This activist state model spurred similar reform in the United States, such as the post-depression New Deal and President Johnson’s Great Society.

However, this view of the state was tarnished during the 1960s and 70s with the rise of stagflation, crime (especially in the US), and high inflation throughout the west. A growing sense that the activist state was breeding poor results and general moral decline emerged.

Micklethwait reflected on his gap year experiences discussing the then-coming Thatcherite privatisation revolution in a San Francisco sauna with friends, including the young Milton Friedman, during this time. Looking back, Micklethwait believes that Thatcher’s vision has been halfway implemented. Privatisation has spanned the globe, but even under her watch, UK public spending declined only minutely and has proceeded to expand since. He said we have all asked for this growth: the right ask the prisons and the left asks the schools and hospitals to expand. We have lived in the age of more. It has been very easy to be a politician because you can always offer more services to people.

Wooldridge asserted that this is expansion is about to end for three reasons:

• The age of more is over.
• You can do things to improve the management of the state based on private sector learning and the benefits of the IT revolution.
• There is a rise in global competition in government, as stated at the beginning of the discussion.

As discussant, Peter Riddell challenged the authors on the timing of their views in a post-2008, post-economic crisis world. Big spending cuts in most countries have already been imposed since then.

Riddell went on to argue that there are limits to technocratic solutions, as illustrated by Italy, as well as to the international comparability of government case studies. Regarding this, he mentioned his experience with a Chinese delegation that had trouble conceiving of the IfG’s ability to work with all parties.

Finally, he said changes have been more rapid than the authors acknowledge, particularly highlighting reforms in Edinburgh with the creation of a unified government.

Micklethwait’s response was one of surprise. Most audiences, including British government officials, have tended to feel the book was too optimistic, rather than too pessimistic. He countered that the British electorate has not seemed to notice the rapidity of changes as suggested. Furthermore, what has been shocking about the UK cuts has been the relative lack of protest about them, but that outside of welfare, there have not been that big of changes.

Wooldridge responded to the concern about technocratic solutions that democracy must be saved from its worst instinct: to spend money it does not have, borrowing from the future to provide entitlements to today. Rules must be put in place to prevent today’s generation from robbing from tomorrow’s. He suggested Sweden’s decision during the 1990’s to balance their budget over a several year cycle exemplified this principle in practice and has effectively kept the entitlement system in balance in the long run, thereby stabilising Swedish democracy.

Questions from the audience included:

• How can someone, in the current political discourse, assert that something is the right thing for our children and figure out how to do it?
• What is the role of citizen voices in the role of the state?
• Contracting out services may reduce cost, but the state is still involved. Does your smaller view of the state involve the government actually withdrawing from some services? Can/should the state actually do less?
• If we win the race to reshape the state, who loses?
• Is the implication of your argument that the EU’s current culture and structure is a massive impediment and almost a cause for suicide?
• Where does the EU’s role as protector of peace in government fit into this role of the government framework?
• What is the example of your vision of the state in real life?
• When young people are hit by the government for more payment for their education and then have less opportunities at the end of their education, what are they to think?
• Are we moving toward a more thread bare version of an omni-competent universal provision or what?
• The quality of the debate has become very bad in the UK. How do we get a process of change that is politically legitimate?
• During the last 10-20 years, the distribution of corporate profits has caused a larger gap between the rich and the poor. Is that really what we want, when you promote the government incorporating free market principles?
• Can you talk more about the Chinese and Singaporean approach to innovation in government provision?

The authors closed the session by stating that they hoped that their book spurs useful debate. Politicians need to engage much more and examine the entire structure of government in order to hope to improve it.