The Joys of Inefficiency

Let's admit it: there's some snobbery among sciences. When talking candidly among themselves, for example, biologists sometimes speak of "physics envy." Mathematical, experimental, and elegant, physics seems to be more purely scientific than fields of study cluttered by the complications of life. In any measure of scientific hierarchy, physics comes out near the top of the scale.

On the same scale, political science comes near falling off the bottom.

This, I think, is unfair. The most single-minded physicist would have to admit that Charles Darwin was a pretty fair scientist, yet his procedures were those of a naturalist: Observe, record, cogitate. Like Darwin, political scientists are naturalists. They cannot manipulate people and political processes with the same impunity that a physicist has in manipulating inanimate objects and unemotional processes, but political scientists surely can observe, record their observations, and think about what they have observed.

Work by one political naturalist recently came to my attention. His conclusions run counter to popular wisdom.

Mark Ethridge is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but his observations were made in different corners of the country as well as in historical records. He describes his present work as seeking to answer one question: What is the effect of increased institutional responsiveness?

In this election year, the people seem to have answered that question emphatically. A more responsive government is a better government. Voters are fed up with elected officials who do not do what the people want them to do. (Capitalizing on that, you may recall, Ross Perot offered a kind of Town Meeting on the Air, in which people could direct him by casting votes on important questions via their television sets.)

Ethridge sees this belief as rooted in the view that the rich and powerful strive to keep the status quo while the poor and unempowered seek change. A responsive government, therefore, benefits ordinary folks simply by taking action. The more responsive the government, the better the job it does.

Not so, says Ethridge. Based on his observations, he thinks a more responsive government would be responding to the rich and powerful. The already well-off and well-organized move quickly to take advantage of governmental responsiveness. He cites as the classic example early actions of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was created in 1887 in response to the public demand for regulating the fares railroad companies charged passengers. Before the commission took over, well-travelled but comparatively long routes (such as the trip from Chicago to New York) cost less than shorter, less popular ones (such as Chicago to Springfield, Illinois). The situation seemed illogical, change seemed necessary---but the railroads carried the bigger stick. Instead of requiring the railroads to decrease fares on the shorter routes, the commission permitted them to increase fares on the longer routes.

Ethridge's hero is James Madison, who deserves credit for the checks and balances among the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in the American form of government. Madison, Ethridge believes, cherished the inefficiency of the system because its slowness to respond avoided significant dangers. No single group could easily take control; we the people lose some good laws because of that, but we're also spared many bad ones.

Is it science, or is it simply observation---unpopular observation at that? It would be entertaining at least to know Ethridge's views about the useful inefficiencies of the last legislative session in Alaska. Madison's views about some Alaska politicians can be easily guessed. Among papers found after his death in 1836 was a note titled "Advice to My Country." Among the bits of advice it contained: "The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the union of the states be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy of it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened, and the disguised one as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise."