The Problem with Personification in Politics

12 comments on “The Problem with Personification in Politics ”

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1. Pat 1

   19 April 2021 at 7:56 am

   Personification or revolving door?

   https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/18/nhs-england-chair-lord-prior-of-brampton-faces-demands-to-explain-greensills-lobbying-of-nhs-bosses

   Ministries may indeed be disinterested of us as individuals but the leaders are not necessarily disinterested in themselves as individuals.

   Cartels are made up of individuals.
2. Rosemary McDonald 2

   19 April 2021 at 8:24 am

   These Ministries are run by real people, persons, personalities.

   In the case of the ministries of Health and Social Development the attitudes and actions of these persons can have a profound impact on the citizens whose existence is dependent on the service they receive from these ministries.

   These public servants have a choice. They can act as if their clients are fellow human beings and citizens who deserve respect and compassion (as it would be reasonable to expect from both Health and Social Development ) or they can behave like heartless arseholes.

   Monthly quotas were imposed at the Ministry of Social Development to prosecute beneficiaries, an inquest into the death of a woman accused of benefit fraud has heard.

   "We had to get one prosecution per month. We had to get $30,000 of debt to be recovered per month," a former MSD investigator told the inquest into the death of Wendy Shoebridge. "Four cases had to be cleared per month."

   Shoebridge, a 41-year-old mother, was found dead in Lower Hutt on April 3, 2011.

   The day before, she opened a letter saying she was to be referred for prosecution over an alleged $22,000 benefit fraud. After her death, that amount fell to about $5500.

   It shouldn't make any difference which flag flies over the Beehive…the persons working for these particular Ministries should always do their work with a profound understanding of the power they wield over those most vulnerable.

   On further consideration, and in my experience, perhaps they do.
   • Chris 2.1

     20 April 2021 at 10:17 am

     We used to have a public service. Now we have a ministers' service.
3. Stuart Munro 3

   19 April 2021 at 10:37 am

   One of the features of neoliberalism, has been a move within the civil service, and its privatized former services, away from public service, and towards bureaucratic and quasi-corporate convenience.

   Thus we have a state housing entity that doesn't seem very keen on housing people, health services that are scandal ridden and have uneven performances, an MPI that maintains a defunct fisheries quota model and whatever noxious entity is responsible for mass low-quality migration is conducting mass exploitable low-quality migration, and a "conservation" department whose version of conservation is mass poisoning campaigns, to name a few.

   As the recipients of these uniformly poor and overbearing and ineffectual services, I'm not sure why the public should not characterize them as self-serving vermin, and satirize them at every opportunity. There is certainly no pressure for reform to be had from pretending that they are either adequate or motivated by the public interest.
   • greywarshark 3.1

     19 April 2021 at 11:48 am

     And further on Stuart Munro's points, there is recognition by academics and those studying politics and its policies, that politicians can draw up laws but the way that bureaucrats interpret them, deliver them, subvert them, even dismiss or defy them, can have a diminishing effect on benefits they were supposed to deliver.

     A culture can grow in a department or agency that exerts a greater power amongst its denizens, than attempts by politicians to rectify or progress better, a situation that needs change. There is a rationale for bad performance in functionaries of some department used by politicians, that it is an 'operational matter not governance' as an excuse for them to withdraw from overview or attempt to direct, and call civil servants to account.

     It can be argued that there is a 'personality' behind those handling operational matters, also politicians. The matter could be related to the idea of the 'shadow' personality of individuals, and also to multiple individuals. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(psychology).

     Another thing, passing a law will register as a conclusion or solution to a problem in people's minds. They will consider a matter to be dealt with expecting actions that follow its principles as well as 'the letter of the law'. But the actions of functionaries can for a while continue as before and become more unsatisfactory or extreme as a loophole is found or some wording is deliberately misunderstood. This continues until some swingeing behaviour occurs and someone calls authority to account and shows a pattern of bad faith and bad behaviour, and that each case can't be dismissed as a one-off, an anomaly. So a bad-faith 'personality' could be said to have hegemonic power in that department or agency.
4. Anne 4

   19 April 2021 at 11:18 am

   The following is not strictly speaking on the subject matter but I think is a good corollary to it. I refer to the existence of psychopathological individuals in high places within society:

   In his 2011 Great British Psychopath Survey he concluded that the ten professions that have the highest proportion of psychopaths are:

   1. CEOs
   2. Lawyers
   3. Media people (TV and radio)
   4. Sales people
   5. Surgeons
   6. Journalists
   7. Police officers
   8. Clergy
   9. Chefs
   10. Civil servants

   Examples of detrimental effects of a psychopathic boss is increased bullying, conflict, stress, staff turnover, absenteeism and reduction in productivity and in social responsibility.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_in_the_workplace

   All of them play a significant role in the way the above institutions and entities are viewed and many of us have had first hand experience often with highly distressing consequences.

   I concur with Stuart Munro that the advent of neoliberalism has had a detrimental effect on our Public Services and their SOE counterparts in particular.

   A lack of understanding how ministries operate is only part of the problem – albeit and important part.
   • Descendant Of Smith 4.1

     19 April 2021 at 10:18 pm

     I tend to disagree a little with the premise that Ministers aren't accountable/responsible for their direct involvement in a department or ministry.

     Ministers put things in Chief Executive contracts which then drive particular focuses in departments. Whether this be a positive or negative measure is a moot point. These things will drive certain approaches and behaviours which may or may not be public. This may be targets, this may be the type of people recruited/promoted/demoted, this may be the "we can do more" attitude by CE's wanting to impress the Minister.

     As management theory is essentially built on distrust of the level below you then the aspects in the contract can escalate as they go down the chain as over arching requirements.

     This has been so since the CE's moved from the SSC to the Minister. There is some good research and evaluation around of the reforms both here and overseas – Management by Objectives and so on. I'm starting to study this more as part of my advocacy work to try and understand why we end up with an end point of public servants doing bad things – remember it wasn't Trump separating the children, nor Hitler rounding up people for the gas chamber. It was public servants.

     https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Public_Management
     • Anne 4.1.1

       20 April 2021 at 5:59 pm

       I'm starting to study this more as part of my advocacy work to try and understand why we end up with an end point of public servants doing bad things – …

       I was a public servant for 24 years in a small government department whose impact on every aspect of a person's life was near total. We lived and worked by the Public Service manual of regulations… everyone knew what was expected of them and by and large our work places were harmonious places.

       It all came to a sudden end and without warning in the late 1980s and early 1990s with the advent of the neoliberal market-place political philosophy. The department was taken over by a bunch of out-of-town cowboys who had little to no knowledge of the specialised work that we did. Rules which had previously governed the smooth running of the department were abandoned. Field offices were closed and more than half the staff lost their jobs.

       We're cutting staff numbers and slimming down in the interest of efficiency – they said. It was rubbish. They were building a little fiefdom for themselves where they had all encompassing power and control over everyone else.

       It didn't last. Within five years the department nearly sank between the waves, but was fortunately resurrected in the form of an SOE and placed in the management of people with a proper understanding of the department's role and responsibilities.

       That public entity had a happy ending but others were not so lucky.

       I hope that at least in part helps to answer your question DOS.
5. greywarshark 5

   19 April 2021 at 11:56 am

   Was Mao suggesting that a hegemonic personality was growing amongst government personnel when he said this?

   A dangerous tendency has shown itself of late among many of our personnel – an unwillingness to share the joys and hardships of the masses, a concern for personal fame and gain. This is very bad. One way of overcoming it is to simplify our organisations in the course of our campaign to increase production and practise economy, and to transfer cadres to lower levels so that a considerable number will return to productive work.
   (On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People – February 27, 1967 – 1st pocket ed., p.71)

   We seem to have some similar problems to those he posited.
   • Tiger Mountain 5.1

     19 April 2021 at 3:41 pm

     to paraphrase Mao “Revolutionaries should move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea”…

     Note; Mao did not say petit bourgeois, right opportunists and neo liberal Labour MPs should do that…
6. AB 6

   19 April 2021 at 4:00 pm

   The tendency to personify arises at least in part from the impoverishment of our notion of 'responsibility'. Three and a bit decades of the neolib project have left us with the idea that all responsibility is personal – other types (collective, moral) have sort of evaporated. This simplification has served the neolib project well – if things are going badly for you, it's because you have shown deficient levels of personal responsibility.

   This soon metastasises into an ingrained belief that if anything goes a bit awry anywhere – someone has stuffed up. You can hear it in Suzuie Ferguson's tone on RNZ, as she fearlessly (in her own mind) questions her guests, digging deep to expose the trangressor somewhere in the hierarchy who must be sacked forthwith. It's all sort of dumb and unreal. We need to be re-grounded in the idea that there is an agreed collective intent of the systems we create – and that everything is (or should be) a sort of movement in the direction of that intent, like a river with fast and slow currents, frustrating back eddies and dead-end backwaters.
7. roblogic 7

   20 April 2021 at 8:52 am

   MSD, MBIE, etc are very complex *systems* maintained by public service minions.

   https://how.complexsystems.fail/

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