Decentralisation lies not in politics

Kelvin Teo

Meaningful decentralisation empowers stakeholders.

Meaningful decentralisation empowers stakeholders.

Everywhere and anywhere in any part of the developed or close-to-developed world, if we were to carefully analyse the manifesto of any political party contesting an election, the inevitable conclusion is that what is offered on the platter is no different from financial planning, albeit on a larger scale; planning done by a planner, and it covers all aspects of our lives too, from our healthcare, education, homeland security to the dreaded topic of how much tax we should pay.

In certain circumstances, some electoral manifestoes are designed to play on popular sentiments; for instance, a current regime is performing poorly during a pre-electoral poll, and thus rival parties from other segments of the political spectrum (think left and right wings) will attempt to campaign that their proposed policies or put bluntly, centralised planning, will put the system back into recovery mode.

Other circumstances are damage-control when the previous regime screwed it up so badly that the electorate kicked out the former and installed an alternative as the government to perform one job – to prevent further fallout, and cleaning up the screw-ups, or put more academically, reversing certain policies. What do the above two circumstances have in common?

Centralised planning within the system either from a different political ideology (or philosophy) as compared with the former regime or as a reversal to previous policies to prevent further fallout are both still centralised planning.

It is equally rational for political parties to formulate policies and place themselves in the central planning hotseat; there is a need to sell their relevance to the voters. Such is basically a spin to the voters on why the latter should vote for the party, and to convince them that the message is always what the party can do for the them.

The field that studies voter behaviour during an election is an interesting one. There is a certain viewpoint held by scholars of American politics that economic distress does increases the propensity for political participation. Those who were on the receiving end of economic difficulties as a result of current government policies have a higher tendency to “politically punish” the incumbent government rather than to go for more “economically-rewarding” policies offered by rival parties.

More interesting, is another study of voting behaviour especially under crisis. It was generally found that voters tended to favour candidates capable of charismatic leadership. A possible explanation is that in any crisis, we more often than not tended to look for a shepherd to lead us out.

Thus, what happens when an economic crisis hits? An incumbent government or a contesting political party who for instance, happens to subscribe to the Keynesian school of economics may propose an interventionist approach by the government through reduction of interest rate and increased government investment, which generates spending and income. The Austrian School of Economics is considered an anti-thesis to the Keynesian school.

The latter is opposed to the centralised planning approach. The Austrian School argues that initially temporary government fixes for the economy will become permanent, and will have damaging effects later on. If the central bank has lowered interest rate for a long time, it would stimulate borrowing from the banking system, which expands the money supply and leads to a credit-based boom that remains unsustainable, i.e. increased and unrestrained borrowing resulting in decreased investment opportunities. What subsequently follows is a bust phase of the cycle in which exponentially increasing credit creation cannot be sustained, and the money supply contracts.

Thus, we have seen an example of how two schools of economic thoughts clash with regards to the interventionist approach. The pertinent question is whether decentralisation, the process of transferring the power of decision-making governance is politically feasible. Chances are it is not. Political parties have it in their interest to sell their planning abilities to the electorate to firstly justify their existence, and secondly, the need to vote them. Hence, the solution is beyond the realm of politics.

Citizen-based initiatives play an important role in the decentralisation process. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) must step up to the hot seat, and be able to perform certain functions in a similar capacity as the government organisations. When I was at a medical conference hearing presentations on how different healthcare systems play their roles in screening patients with kidney diseases, what caught my attention was a presentation by a Taiwanese colleague who related how non-governmental-based medical organisations take on the responsibility of screening certain segments of the population for kidney diseases. That being said, performing in place of the government is not exactly an easy gap to fill; the staff of such NGOs have to be savvy in areas of public administration and to a certain extent, planning.

Another citizen-based initiative is the establishment of think-tank groups for advocacy or policy research purposes. Such groups can be independent of the government, and are usually established by individuals interested in policy-making encompassing both analysis and research. They may be supported financially by commercial entities or advocacy groups.

The other crucial step towards decentralisation lies within the public administrators themselves. The public administrators have to actively signal overtures of engagement with NGOs, think-tanks or other citizenship-based initiatives. Such engagements could involve delegation of certain operations or decision-making to the non-government actors, or consultation with think-tanks on certain policies. The government-citizen ties in such a decentralisation process can be further strengthened when the government transfers its expertise of public administration and planning to the citizens, or share information with the non-government actors.

Thus, the road to decentralisation is beyond the realm of politics. Active engagement of citizens by the government aside, the other quintessential element towards decentralisation can be summarised in three words – the people’s action party (note the lower-case spelling). This is not in reference to any political entity but rather the day when the people take it upon themselves to take individual action as a single or collective party for self-rule (s).