Here’s how we can end weak, sluggish government
POLICING. Housing. Health. Water. There are very serious problems in relation to each of these matters. What is the root cause of these problems and what can be done to change fundamentally how they are addressed?
First, though, some perspective. If the Irish health system was as bad as is often claimed, health outcomes would be well below peer countries. That is not the case. But outcomes are not among the best in the world, despite per-person public spending on health being among the highest in the world. Something is not as it should be.
How policing is done needs a radical change because too many members of the Garda do things they should not do and get away with doing things they should not do. But, again, some perspective is needed. If matters were as bad as they are sometimes portrayed, public trust levels in gardaí would not be as high as surveys show them to be and one would hear more stories of people who have suffered as a result of gardaí abusing their powers.
Those caveats need to be made in order to avoid descending into Ireland-is-the-worst-place-in-theworld-for-everything parochialism. There is much that is done well here. If the place was a failed state, large numbers of people from other countries wouldn’t come to live here. Moreover, the far-off hills are not always greener. Utopia is not to be found anywhere. Nordic countries’ newspapers are not filled with good news stories from one end of the week to the other.
All that said, our system of government has weaknesses that are more pronounced than our peers in north west Europe. Two weaknesses stand out. First, the political system is sluggish: it is rarely proactive, poor at anticipating problems, and often slow to act even when faced with crisis. Second, there is a greater reluctance than in neighbouring countries to take on powerful interest groups.
These weaknesses have manifested in health, housing and water, but it is in policing that they are perhaps best illustrated.
In the 1990s, Irish governments developed deep expertise in policing. They did so because reforming Northern Ireland’s broken and de-legitimised force was an essential part of addressing that place’s problems. An understanding of international best practice in policing was gleaned. That understanding informed a welldesigned plan for reform. That plan was successfully implemented. Today, the police service north of the Border is an effective and legitimate organisation.
If justice ministers in Dublin had been proactive, they would have applied those lessons to modernise the Garda. Instead, little happened. The result today is a leaderless and crisis-wracked force.
The second weakness – an unwillingness to stand up to interest groups – has no better illustration than what happened last November. Despite being the highest-earning group in the public sector, gardaí threatened a mutiny. Despite a no-strike clause in their contracts, they came to the brink of leaving the weakest in society prey to the most vicious. The Government caved and gave them a large pay increase.
The unwillingness to face down interest groups and to take on reform pro-actively is best explained by the incentives faced by individual politicians and political parties.
A government is more likely to lose the votes of those negatively affected by reform than gain votes from those who benefit because the losses are concentrated and the gains are often spread thinly, and are only felt slowly, if they are perceived at all. A shake-up of work practices in the health system, for instance, would discommode those who work in it as soon as it happened, but generate better services only in future years.
The anti-reform incentives for individual politicians are even stronger. At election time, a world-class parliamentarian is no match for a TD who sorts out problems for individual constituents, of a kind that would more normally be done by an ombudsman, such as interfacing with the social welfare system.
While politicians in all democracies have reason to avoid decisions that will be unpopular with interest groups, the incentives faced by our political class are different from other countries because our electoral system is so unusual. The system whereby we number our preferred candidates down the ballot paper may strengthen the link between politicians and voters, but it infamously fosters localism and distracts from national and international issues.
Adopting a more normal voting system would change the incentives the political class faces – both to drive reform pro-actively and to face down interest groups when that is needed.
A good model is Germany, a country that is generally recognised to be well governed. When Germans go to the polls in 10 days for their general election, they will receive two ballot papers. With one, they will vote for individual politicians in their own constituencies; with the other they will vote for a party. Roughly half of German MPs are elected from the first ballot and half from the second.
A version of this would work well in Ireland. The first ballot could be exactly as under the current system, but only half of TDs would be elected this way. The second ballot paper would be for a political party. Half of TDs would come from the party list.
If voters had the choice of party, there can be little doubt but that their calculation for their second ballot would be different from the first. They would focus on who they wanted in government when they chose a party rather than only choosing which individuals they want to represent them in Leinster House, as is the case now.
The incentives for the party list politicians would be different from those of their constituency colleagues. They would have every interest to impress on issues that could get them attention nationally. Without a local constituency to service, they would have time to develop their own expertise and think about pro-actively addressing the issues that affect all citizens’ lives.
The way we elect TDs currently is almost unique internationally. There is a reason why the system is so little used. Changing it would offer the hope of more effective government.
Our election system infamously fosters localism and distracts from national and international issues