{"id":94317,"date":"2025-02-24T05:00:58","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T10:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=94317"},"modified":"2025-02-24T10:16:36","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T15:16:36","slug":"rule-by-bureaucrat-believe-it-or-not-was-once-considered-a-better-form-of-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/02\/24\/rule-by-bureaucrat-believe-it-or-not-was-once-considered-a-better-form-of-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Rule by bureaucrat, believe it or not, was once considered a better form of government"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 19th century, the Americans switched from a system where one of the major outcomes of a presidential election was the wholesale replacement of government employees to one where the civil service was “professionalized” to the point that only the very top levels were subject to presidential replacement (Trump 2.0 may mark a significant change in this). Fans of the professional bureaucracy would sometimes gesture toward the venerable Chinese model, which had been run in this way for a very long time until the 20th century. Lorenzo Warby<\/a> considers the actual performance of these kinds of systems:<\/p>\n

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Excerpt from the handscroll Viewing the Pass List<\/em>. Imperial examination candidates gather around the wall where results had been posted. Traditionally attributed to Qiu Ying, but now suspected to be the work of a late-Ming painter with Qiu Ling’s name added.
National Palace Museum via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

Over the course of the C19th, Western states adopted the Chinese notion of appointment by examination for their government bureaucracies. Such appointment-by-merit did have the effect \u2014 for about a century and a half \u2014 of creating effective and responsive bureaucracies. So much so, that Western democracies gave more and more tasks to such bureaucracies.<\/p>\n

This replicates the early stage of the Chinese dynastic cycle \u2014 the actual one (see below), rather than the traditional version<\/a> \u2014 where, early in a Dynasty, rule through the bureaucracy is quite effective, even efficient. In modern Western democracies, the legitimacy of democratic action \u2014 the demon-in-democracy<\/em> problem, where the all-trumping legitimacy of the democratic principle tends to overwhelm other ways of doing things \u2014 aided the massive expansion in government action, and so in the ambit of government bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

The trouble with adopting the Chinese model of appointment-by-merit bureaucracy \u2014 including selection-by-examinations \u2014 is that folk failed to take a good hard look at the patterns<\/em> of Chinese government. This despite the fact that the keju<\/em>, the imperial examination<\/a>, was introduced under Emperor Wen<\/a> of Sui (r.581-604) and was not abolished until 1905, so there was quite a lot of history to consider.<\/p>\n

The patterns of Chinese government are much less encouraging, because the quite effective, quite efficient, stage of bureaucratic administration does not last. The problem with appointment-by-merit is that it selects for capacity, but not character. Confucianism tries to encourage good character, but it repeatedly turned out to be a weak reed compared to incentive structures. (Almost everything is a weak reed, compared to incentive structures.)<\/p>\n

The actual dynastic cycle was:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Population expands due to peace and prosperity in a unified China. This pushes against resources \u2014 mainly arable land \u2014 creating mass immiseration, an expanding underclass with no marriage prospects, peasant revolts and falling state revenues.<\/li>\n
  2. The number of elite aspirants expand \u2014 a process aggravated by elite polygyny \u2014 but elite positions do not, leading to disgruntled would-be elites who provide organising capacity for peasant revolts (including through sects and cults).1<\/sup><\/li>\n
  3. Bureaucratic pathologies<\/a> multiply, leading to a more corrupt, less responsive, less functional state apparatus, eroding state capacity and increasing pathocracy (rule by the morally disordered). Late-dynasty imperial bureaucracies could be astonishingly corrupt and dysfunctional.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In contemporary Western societies, mass migration interacting with restrictive land use, and other regulation (e.g. “net zero”), so that:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. housing supply is blocked from fully responding to demand for housing\u2014thereby driving up rents and house prices; while also<\/li>\n
    2. inhibiting infrastructure supply from responding to demand\u2014increasing congestion and other (notably energy) costs<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      is creating immiseration pressures. Figures about the “macro” health of the US economy, for instance, are misleading as much of the growth is either not reaching people further down the income scale or is failing to compensate for<\/a> rising rents.<\/p>\n

      Western commercial societies are sufficiently dynamic that elite over-supply is much less of a problem<\/a> than in pre-industrial societies. There is, however, very much a problem of toxic parasitism \u2014 the entire (Diversity Equity Inclusion) DEI\/EDI apparatus to start with<\/a>. What we might call malign elite employment<\/em> or bureaucratic parasitism<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n