From Consultative Stand-Off to Slush Funded Grants of Bureaucratic Authority: Modern Legislatures
dennisbouvard.substack.com
There’s an anomaly in the canonical three branches of government of the modern liberal constitutional order. The executive and the juridical descend rather directly, and in still recognizable form, from ancient pre-modern predecessors. The language in which the modern executive is described, such as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” recalls the role of the monarch and reflects an understanding of the need for an occupant of the center—even if the modern liberal is far more interested in telling you what the executive can’t and shouldn’t do, certainly not without the approval of the media and intelligence community. Judges, meanwhile, still hear cases within a quasi-ritualized setting, with highly formalized procedural rules, relying upon precedent and constrained by an appeal process. But the modern legislature bears no resemblance at all to its medieval predecessors, parliaments which were called by the king when he needed money, usually for a war. These parliaments didn’t create laws and only controlled budgets in the sense that they could refuse the king’s request for funding. (There is a slight trace of this role in the American senate, with its right to “advise and consent” regarding presidential appointees.) And, in fact, what the modern legislature creates is not really “law,” which can only be “created” in the context of some judgment, or by a decree from the executive. That is, only someone with a responsibility to see through the decision-making process to its conclusion can “make law.” What modern legislatures do is create grants of authority to bureaucratic agencies along with money to service those agencies without the possibility of the “oversight” which is so often demanded. (If genuine oversight comes along, it’s because the political winds have shifted and a new faction in power wants the funds directed elsewhere.) From and through this activity flows the management of political campaigns and control of candidates and officeholders, the penetration of business and interest groups of various kinds into governance, the freedom of action of the intelligence agencies and the government by leak in which the media plays a crucial role. And the distortions and corruptions of the executive and judicial branches are greatly aggravated by their obligation to adhere to “laws” that emerge from this process. Somewhere along the way the potential of the medieval parliament to check and counter the king got transformed by the revolutionary process of modernity into a circular, self-dealing, self-perpetuating and self-aggrandizing institution by which all the specifically modern disciplines and institutions collaborate not so much to govern, as to ensure that what governance will be done will not interfere with this process itself. This is really the only mode of governance consistent with “popular rule,” and the legislature is, of course, the most democratic branch of government, the most “legitimate” because most directly elected by and accountable to the voters—this makes the occasional “accidental” candidate possible (but also irrelevant), but mostly ensures that the control of and investment in election process will be a central concern of all institutions. Like all parasitical entities, this liberal democratic model will presumably not survive its host, but there may be sufficient countertendencies absolutely dependent upon some modicum of reliable governance that are able to operate counter-entropically within these same institutions with sufficient power to stave off collapse indefinitely. I have never seen anyone focus on the modern legislature as the locus of political transformation and disorder, but it’s certainly a promising line of inquiry.
From Consultative Stand-Off to Slush Funded Grants of Bureaucratic Authority: Modern Legislatures
From Consultative Stand-Off to Slush Funded…
From Consultative Stand-Off to Slush Funded Grants of Bureaucratic Authority: Modern Legislatures
There’s an anomaly in the canonical three branches of government of the modern liberal constitutional order. The executive and the juridical descend rather directly, and in still recognizable form, from ancient pre-modern predecessors. The language in which the modern executive is described, such as “commander-in-chief of the armed forces” recalls the role of the monarch and reflects an understanding of the need for an occupant of the center—even if the modern liberal is far more interested in telling you what the executive can’t and shouldn’t do, certainly not without the approval of the media and intelligence community. Judges, meanwhile, still hear cases within a quasi-ritualized setting, with highly formalized procedural rules, relying upon precedent and constrained by an appeal process. But the modern legislature bears no resemblance at all to its medieval predecessors, parliaments which were called by the king when he needed money, usually for a war. These parliaments didn’t create laws and only controlled budgets in the sense that they could refuse the king’s request for funding. (There is a slight trace of this role in the American senate, with its right to “advise and consent” regarding presidential appointees.) And, in fact, what the modern legislature creates is not really “law,” which can only be “created” in the context of some judgment, or by a decree from the executive. That is, only someone with a responsibility to see through the decision-making process to its conclusion can “make law.” What modern legislatures do is create grants of authority to bureaucratic agencies along with money to service those agencies without the possibility of the “oversight” which is so often demanded. (If genuine oversight comes along, it’s because the political winds have shifted and a new faction in power wants the funds directed elsewhere.) From and through this activity flows the management of political campaigns and control of candidates and officeholders, the penetration of business and interest groups of various kinds into governance, the freedom of action of the intelligence agencies and the government by leak in which the media plays a crucial role. And the distortions and corruptions of the executive and judicial branches are greatly aggravated by their obligation to adhere to “laws” that emerge from this process. Somewhere along the way the potential of the medieval parliament to check and counter the king got transformed by the revolutionary process of modernity into a circular, self-dealing, self-perpetuating and self-aggrandizing institution by which all the specifically modern disciplines and institutions collaborate not so much to govern, as to ensure that what governance will be done will not interfere with this process itself. This is really the only mode of governance consistent with “popular rule,” and the legislature is, of course, the most democratic branch of government, the most “legitimate” because most directly elected by and accountable to the voters—this makes the occasional “accidental” candidate possible (but also irrelevant), but mostly ensures that the control of and investment in election process will be a central concern of all institutions. Like all parasitical entities, this liberal democratic model will presumably not survive its host, but there may be sufficient countertendencies absolutely dependent upon some modicum of reliable governance that are able to operate counter-entropically within these same institutions with sufficient power to stave off collapse indefinitely. I have never seen anyone focus on the modern legislature as the locus of political transformation and disorder, but it’s certainly a promising line of inquiry.