THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY: REPORT ON THE GOVERNABILITY OF DEMO

Re: THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY: REPORT ON THE GOVERNABILITY OF

Postby admin » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:00 am

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION

1. THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT


If ever there was a democratic success story, it was written by the Trilateral societies during the quarter-century following World War II. The components of that success included: generally positive and broad-gauged political leadership within individual countries and by the United States for the community of democratic nations; sustained and, for some countries, spectacular economic growth; widespread social and economic amelioration, involving a lessening of class conflict and the assimilation of substantial portions of the population to middle-class values, attitudes, and consumption patterns; and successful resistance, on a collective and individual basis, to the challenges posed externally by Soviet military might and internally by communist party strength.

The communist parties have emerged more and more as the parties of order, whose leaders are the only ones able to make people work, and there has always been a very strong tendency to develop state socialism and public bureaucracy interference as the easy solution to manage the impossible, that is, to maintain order in the face of unmanageable conflicts....

The strength of the present communist parties of Western Europe does not lie, however, either in their revolutionary appeal or in their electoral capabilities. They must have enough of them certainly. But their unique superiority is their organizational one. They are the only institutions left in Western Europe where authority is not questioned, where a primitive but very efficient chain of command can manipulate a docile workforce, where there is a capacity to take hard decisions and adjust quickly, and where goods can be delivered and delays respected.

Authority may be heavy-handed in these parties and the close atmosphere they have maintained over their people has certainly been a brake to their development. Turnover has always been considerable. But granted these costs, their machine has remained extraordinarily efficient and its superiority has tremendously increased when other major institutions have begun to disintegrate. There is now no other institution in Europe, not even the state bureaucracies, that can match the communist parties' capabilities in this domain.

True enough, as long as the problem of order does not become central, they are out of the game; but if chaos should develop for a long enough time following a greater economic depression, they can provide the last solution....

For some of the Western countries the idea of nationalization, after years of oblivion and little ideological appeal, has become an issue again. In time of political chaos and economic depression it may appear as the last recourse to save employment and to equalize sacrifices. The communist parties are certainly better trained to administer the resulting confusion and to restore order to leaderless organizations. They will win then not because of their appeal but by default because the communists are the only ones capable of filling the void.

They have already shown proof of their capabilities. For instance they have shown remarkable efficiency in administering various cities in Italy and France; they have helped to restore order in Italian, French, and even German universities; and they have shown everywhere, even in Britain, how to influence key trade unions by using minority control devices. Their potential, therefore, is much higher at that level than it is at the electoral level or at the revolutionary level. And because of this potential they can attract experts and professionals of high caliber and also increase their capabilities on the technical side.

Nevertheless, the communists do have problems. The most pressing one is the danger of being contaminated by the general trends of the societies in which they have to operate, that is, to be unable to prevent the disintegration of their model of authority. This is why they take such great care to maintain their revolutionary identity. They have been protected by their minority ghetto-like status and as long as they can maintain it, their hard core membership has so deeply internalized their so far successful practices that they can stand the pressure of the environment for quite a long time.

They have a difficult game to play, nevertheless. They must be enough in to be present when high stakes are at issue, while remaining sufficiently out to maintain their organizational capacity. Their basic weakness lies in their difficulty in respecting the freedom-from belief and their incapacity to accept dualism. Can they govern and control societies whose core political beliefs are alien to them? Wouldn't they trigger an extremely strong backlash? It is a difficult question to answer because these societies are in the midst of a deep cultural transformation which affects, with the principles of rationality, the basis of their political strategy.

Let us just suggest that if the takeover would be sudden, an anticommunist backlash would be likely; but if the breakdown would be intensive and profound but also gradual, the communists coming to power could be very difficult to question.

-- Michel Crozier, "Are European Democracies Becoming Ungovernable?


During these years democratic institutions, mostly of a parliamentary nature, demonstrated their viability in all the Trilateral societies; liberal, conservative, social democratic, and Christian democratic parties competed with each other in regular elections and shared the responsibilities of government and the opportunities for opposition; individual citizens and organized groups participated more actively in the politics of their societies than they had previously; the rights of the citizen against the state became more firmly guaranteed and protected; and new institutions for international collaboration among democratic societies emerged in Europe for economic and political purposes, between North America and Europe for military purposes, and among Europe, North America, and Japan for economic purposes.

This happy congruence of circumstances for democracy has come to an end. The challenges which democratic governments now face are the products of these past successes as well as of the changes in past trends. The incorporation of substantial elements of the population into the middle classes has escalated their expectations and aspirations, thereby causing a more intense reaction if these are not met in reality. Broadened political participation has increased the demands on government. Widespread material well-being has caused a substantial portion of the population, particularly among the young and the "intellectual" professional classes, to adopt new life-styles and new social-political values. Internationally, confrontation has given way to detente, with a resultant relaxation of constraints within societies and of the impetus to collaborate among societies. There has been a substantial relative decline in American military and economic power, and a major absolute decline in American willingness to assume the burdens of leadership. And most recently, the temporary slowdown in economic growth has threatened the expectations created by previous growth, while still leaving existent the "post-bourgeois" values which it engendered among the youth and intellectuals.

2. CONSENSUS WITHOUT PURPOSE: THE RISE OF ANOMIC DEMOCRACY

Dissatisfaction with and lack of confidence in the functioning of the institutions of democratic government have thus now become widespread in Trilateral countries. Yet with all this dissatisfaction, no significant support has yet developed for any alternative image of how to organize the politics of a highly industrialized society. Before World War II both right-wing and left-wing movements set forth clear-cut political alternatives to the "decadent" institutions of "bourgeois" parliamentary democracy. Today those institutions are accepted even if they are not praised. The active proponents of a different vision of the political order are, by and large, limited to small bands of radical students and intellectuals whose capacity to attract attention through propaganda and terrorism is heavily outweighed by their incapacity to attract support from any significant social groups. In Japan, the 1947 "occupation" Constitution is now accepted as the way in which Japanese politics will be organized for the foreseeable future. In Europe, even the French and Italian communist parties have adapted themselves to the democratic game and at least assert that if admitted to power they will continue to play according to the rules of that game. No significant social or political group in a Trilateral society seriously proposes to replace existing democratic institutions with a nationalist autocracy, the corporate state, or even the dictatorship of the proletariat. The lack of confidence in democratic institutions is clearly exceeded by the lack of enthusiasm for any alternative set of institutions.

What is in short supply in democratic societies today is thus not consensus on the rules of the game but a sense of purpose as to what one should achieve by playing the game. In the past, people have found their purposes in religion, in nationalism, and in ideology. But neither church, nor state, nor class now commands people's loyalties. In some measure, democracy itself was inspired by and its institutions shaped by manifestations of each of these forces and commitments. Protestantism sanctified the individual conscience; nationalism postulated the equality of citizens; and liberalism provided the rationale for limited government based on consent. But now all three gods have failed. We have witnessed the dissipation of religion, the withering away of nationalism, the decline—if not the end—of class-based ideology.

In a nondemocratic political system, the top leadership can select a single purpose or closely related set of goals and, in some measure, induce or coerce political and social forces to shape their behavior in terms of the priorities dictated by these goals. Third World dictatorships can direct their societies towards the "overriding" goal of national development; communist states can mobilize their populace for the task of "building socialism." In a democracy, however, purpose cannot be imposed from on high by fiat; nor does it spring to life from the verbiage of party platforms, state of the union messages, or speeches from the throne. It must, instead, be the product of the collective perception by the significant groups in society of a major challenge to their well-being and the perception by them that this challenge threatens them all about equally. Hence, in wartime or periods of economic catastrophe, common purposes are easily defined. During World War II and then the cold war, there was a general acceptance in the United States of the overriding priority of national security as a goal. In Europe and Japan, after World War II, economic reconstruction and development were supported as goals by virtually all major groups in society. World war, economic reconstruction, and the cold war gave coherence to public purposes and imposed a set of priorities for ordering government policies and programs. Now, however, these purposes have lost their salience and even come under challenge; the imperatives of national security are no longer obvious, the desirability of economic growth is no longer unquestioned.

In this situation, the machinery of democracy continues to operate, but the ability of the individuals operating that machinery to make decisions tends to deteriorate. Without common purpose, there is no basis for common priorities, and without priorities, there are no grounds for distinguishing among competing private interests and claims. Conflicting goals and specialized interests crowd in one upon another, with executives, cabinets, parliaments, and bureaucrats lacking the criteria to discriminate among them. The system becomes one of anomic democracy, in which democratic politics becomes more an arena for the assertion of conflicting interests than a process for the building of common purposes.

3. THE DYSFUNCTIONS OF DEMOCRACY

Quite apart from the substantive policy issues confronting democratic government, many specific problems have arisen which seem to be an intrinsic part of the functioning of democracy itself. The successful operation of democratic government has given rise to tendencies which impede that functioning.

(1) The pursuit of the democratic virtues of equality and individualism has led to the delegitimation of authority generally and the loss of trust in leadership.

"In the representative system, the reason for everything must publicly appear. Every man is a proprietor in government, and considers it a necessary part of his business to understand. It concerns his interest, because it affects his property. He examines the cost, and compares it with the advantages; and above all, he does not adopt the slavish custom of following what in other governments are called Leaders."

-- Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man"


(2) The democratic expansion of political participation and involvement has created an "overload" on government and the imbalanced expansion of governmental activities, exacerbating inflationary tendencies in the economy.

(3) The political competition essential to democracy has intensified, leading to a disaggregation of interests and the decline and fragmentation of political parties.

(4) The responsiveness of democratic government to the electorate and to societal pressures encourages nationalistic parochialism in the way in which democratic societies conduct their foreign relations.

1. The Delegitimation of Authority

In most of the Trilateral countries in the past decade there has been a decline in the confidence and trust which the people have in government, in their leaders, and, less clearly but most importantly, in each other. Authority has been challenged not only in government, but in trade unions, business enterprises, schools and universities, professional associations, churches, and civic groups. In the past, those institutions which have played the major role in the indoctrination of the young in their rights and obligations as members of society have been the family, the church, the school, and the army. The effectiveness of all these institutions as a means of socialization has declined severely. The stress has been increasingly on individuals and their rights, interests, and needs, and not on the community and its rights, interests, and needs. These attitudes have been particularly prevalent in the young, but they have also appeared in other age groups, especially among those who have achieved professional, white-collar, and middle-class status. The success of the existing structures of authority in incorporating large elements of the population into the middle class, paradoxically, strengthens precisely those groups which are disposed to challenge the existing structures of authority.

The democratic spirit is egalitarian, individualistic, populist, and impatient with the distinctions of class and rank. The spread of that spirit weakens the traditional threats to democracy posed by such groups as the aristocracy, the church, and the military. At the same time, a pervasive spirit of democracy may pose an intrinsic threat and undermine all forms of association, weakening the social bonds which hold together family, enterprise, and community. Every social organization requires, in some measure, inequalities in authority and distinctions in function. To the extent that the spread of the democratic temper corrodes all of these, exercising a leveling and an homogenizing influence, it destroys the bases of trust and cooperation among citizens and creates obstacles to collaboration for any common purpose.

Leadership is in disrepute in democratic societies. Without confidence in its leadership, no group functions effectively. When the fabric of leadership weakens among other groups in society, it is also weakened at the top political levels of government. The governability of a society at the national level depends upon the extent to which it is effectively governed at the subnational, regional, local, functional, and industrial levels. In the modern state, for instance, powerful trade union "bosses" are often viewed as a threat to the power of the state. In actuality, however, responsible union leaders with effective authority over their members are less of a challenge to the authority of the national political leaders than they are a prerequisite to the exercise of authority by those leaders. If the unions are disorganized, if the membership is rebellious, if extreme demands and wild-cat strikes are the order of the day, the formulation and implementation of a national wage policy become impossible. The weakening of authority throughout society thus contributes to the weakening of the authority of government.

2. The Overloading of Government

Recent years in the Trilateral countries have seen the expansion of the demands on government from individuals and groups. The expansion takes the form of: (1) the involvement of an increasing proportion of the population in political activity; (2) the development of new groups and of new consciousness on the part of old groups, including youth, regional groups, and ethnic minorities; (3) the diversification of the political means and tactics which groups use to secure their ends; (4) an increasing expectation on the part of groups that government has the responsibility to meet their needs; and (5) an escalation in what they conceive those needs to be.

The result is an "overload" on government and the expansion of the role of government in the economy and society. During the 1960s governmental expenditures, as a proportion of GNP, increased significantly in all the principal Trilateral countries, except for Japan. This expansion of governmental activity was attributed not so much to the strength of government as to its weakness and the inability and unwillingness of central political leaders to reject the demands made upon them by numerically and functionally important groups in their society. The impetus to respond to the demands which groups made on government is deeply rooted in both the attitudinal and structural features of a democratic society. The democratic idea that government should be responsive to the people creates the expectation that government should meet the needs and correct the evils affecting particular groups in society. Confronted with the structural imperative of competitive elections every few years, political leaders can hardly do anything else.

Inflation is obviously not a problem which is peculiar to democratic societies, and it may well be the result of causes quite extrinsic to the democratic process. It may, however, be exacerbated by a democratic politics and it is, without doubt, extremely difficult for democratic systems to deal with effectively. The natural tendency of the political demands permitted and encouraged by the dynamics of a democratic system helps governments to deal with the problems of economic recession, particularly unemployment, and it hampers them in dealing effectively with inflation. In the face of the claims of business groups, labor unions, and the beneficiaries of governmental largesse, it becomes difficult if not impossible for democratic governments to curtail spending, increase taxes, and control prices and wages. In this sense, inflation is the economic disease of democracies.

3. The Disaggregation of Interests

A primary function of politics is to aggregate the various interests in society so as to promote common purposes and to create coalitions behind policies and leaders. In a democratic society this process takes place through complicated processes of bargaining and compromise within government, within and between the political parties, and through electoral competition. The multiple sources of power in a democratic society insure that any policy decision, when it is made, usually has to have at least the tacit support of a majority of those affected by and concerned with it. In this sense, consensus-building is at the heart of democratic politics. At the same time, however, the opportunities which democratic politics offers to particular opinions, interests, and groups to be represented in the political process necessarily tend to stimulate the formulation and articulation of such opinions, interests, and groups. While the common interest is in compromise and consensus, it is often beneficial to the particular individual or group to differentiate its interest from other interests, to assert that interest vigorously, and at times to be intransigent in defending that interest against others. In a democracy, in short, the top political leaders work to aggregate interests; the political process often works to disaggregate them.

The most obvious political manifestation of the disaggregation of interests and the withering away of common purposes is in the decomposition which has affected the political party systems in Trilateral societies. In almost every country the support for the principal established political parties has declined, and new parties, small parties, and antiparty movements have gained in strength. At one time or another during 1974, no party had a majority in the legislatures of Great Britain, Canada, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. And the functional equivalent to the lack of a majority existed in the United States with different parties in control of the executive and legislative branches of the government. This failure of the party system to produce electoral and parliamentary majorities obviously had adverse effects on the ability of governments to govern.

A party system is a way of organizing the electorate, simplifying choice, selecting leaders, aggregating interests, and shaping policy choices and priorities. The development of political parties in the nineteenth century went hand-in-hand with the expansion of the suffrage and the increased responsibility of governments to their citizens. Parties made democratic government possible. Throughout the twentieth century, the strength of democracy has varied with the strength of the political parties committed to working within a democratic system. The decay of political party systems in the industrialized world poses the question: How viable is democratic government without parties or with greatly weakened and attenuated parties?

4. Parochialism in International Affairs

Just as the opportunities afforded by the democratic process tended to increase the strength and assertiveness of particularistic groups domestically, so they also tended to encourage a greater degree of parochialism in international affairs.

The seeming decline in the external military threat produced a general slackening of concern throughout the Trilateral countries with the problems of security. In the absence of a clear and present danger to security, it is very difficult to mobilize support within a democracy for measures which may be necessary to provide for security. In the European and North American countries, compulsory military service has been reduced or abandoned entirely; military expenditures have declined in real terms and relative to national product; antimilitarism has become the vogue in intellectual and political circles. Yet detente presumably rests upon the achievement of a rough military balance between the communist powers and the democracies. During the 1960s the military exertions of the communist powers brought such a balance into being and hence made detente feasible. During the 1970s military passivity on the part of the democracies could well undermine that balance and hence the basis for improved relations with the communist states.

By and large, the quarter-century after World War II saw a removal of restrictions on trade and investment, and a general opening up of the economies of the industrialized, capitalist countries. In times of economic scarcity, inflation, and possible long-term economic downturn, however, the pressures in favor of nationalism and neo-mercantilism mount and democratic political systems find themselves particularly vulnerable to such pressures from industry groups, localities, and labor organizations, which see themselves adversely affected by foreign competition. The ability of governments to deal with domestic social and economic problems is reduced, as well as the confidence people have that legislatures will be able to deal with those problems. As a result, the leaders of democratic governments turn increasingly to foreign policy as the one arena where they can achieve what appear to be significant successes. Diplomatic triumph becomes essential to the maintenance of domestic power; success abroad produces votes at home. Heath and the Common Market, Brandt and the Moscow treaties, Nixon in Peking and SALT I, and Pompidou in challenging American leadership may or may not have done the best in terms of securing the long-term interests of their countries, but their domestic political needs left them little leeway not to come up with something. At the same time, the impact of inflation and domestic special interests engenders economic nationalism increasing the difficulties of cooperative action among the democratic powers. Given these pressures, the extent to which the democratic societies have been able to avoid the worst forms of beggar-thy-neighbor policies and devise some common responses to the economic and energy crises is, in many respects, quite remarkable. Yet the impact of domestic politics still leads democratic leaders to display greater eagerness to compromise when negotiating with their enemies and to have greater difficulty in compromising when they negotiate with each other.

While the processes of democratic politics induce governmental leaders to look abroad for victories to sustain them at home, those same processes also tend to produce a tendency towards greater provincialism and nationalism in their outlook. The parochialization of leadership is surely one of the most striking trends of the past decade in the Trilateral democracies. Down through the early 1960s, leading statesmen in the democratic countries not only had (as was a prerequisite to statesmanship) a standing among their own people, but they also often had an appeal and a standing abroad among people in the other industrialized democracies. They were, in a sense, Trilateral statesmen as well as national statesmen. The resignation of Willy Brandt, however, removed from the scene the last of the democratic leaders who had a stature, a reputation, and a following that transcended his own society. This is not to say that the current leaders are necessarily narrowly nationalistic in their outlook and policies. It does mean, however, that they are the product of peculiarly national processes and that whatever their qualities as leaders, the names of Gerald Ford, Takeo Miki, Harold Wilson, Giscard d'Estaing, and Helmut Schmidt do not inspire enthusiasm and commitment outside their own societies.

4. VARIATIONS AMONG REGIONS

The features we have described above are found in all three Trilateral regions. The relative intensity of the different aspects of the problem varies, however, from country to country and from time to time within a country. The overall legitimacy of government is greater in Britain than in Italy. Confidence and trust in political institutions and leaders in the United States was much less during the 1960s and early 1970s than it was in the 1940s and 1950s and very probably considerably less than it will be during the coming years. The differing cultures and political traditions of the various countries means that each problem concerning the governability of democracy manifests itself in different ways and has to be dealt with by different means. Each country has its own peculiar strengths and weaknesses. In continental Europe and in Japan, for instance, there is a tradition of a strong and effective bureaucracy, in part because of the polarization and fragmentation among political parties. This bureaucracy furnishes continuity and stability to the system, functioning in some ways as both a gyroscope and an automatic pilot. In Britain and the United States, on the other hand, there are strong traditions of citizen participation in politics which insure the vitality of democracy at the same time that they may lower the competence and authority of government. If one were to generalize, one might say that the problem in the United States is more one of governability than of democracy, in Japan it is more one of democracy than of governability, while in Europe both problems are acute.

The demands on government and the needs for government have been increasing steadily in all the Trilateral societies. The cause of the current malaise is the decline in the material resources and political authority available to government to meet these demands and needs. These deficiencies vary significantly, however, from region to region. In the United States, the government is constrained more by the shortage of authority than by the shortage of resources. In Japan, the government has so far been favored with a huge increase in resources due to rapid economic growth, and it has been able to utilize the reservoir of traditional acquiescence among the people to support its authority. The growth in resources, however, is about to stop, and the reservoir of acquiescence is more and more draining down. In Europe, governments seem to be facing shortages of both authority and resources, which is the major reason why the problems concerning the governability of democracy are more urgent in Europe than in the other Trilateral regions.

At the moment the principal strains on the governability of democracy may be receding in the United States, cresting in Europe, and pending in the future for Japan. During the 1960s, the United States went through a period of creedal passion, of intense conflict over racial issues and the Indochina War, and of marked expansion in the extent and forms of political participation. In addition, in the 1970s the United States suffered a major constitutional crisis in the whole complex of issues involved in Watergate and the resignation of the President. At present, much of the passion and intensity has departed from American politics, leaving the political leadership and institutions with the problem of attempting to redefine their functions in altered circumstances, to restore the prestige and authority of central government institutions, and to grapple with the immediate economic challenges. Japan, on the other hand, appears to still have some time before the major challenges to democracy will come to a head, which they probably will in the early 1980s. Its organizational fabric and patterns of social control, moreover, provide advantages in giving control and direction to the new political forces and demands on government. This gain in time will give the existing democratic institutions in Japan opportunity to consolidate themselves further and will permit the party leaders in all the major parties to adapt to a situation in which the Liberal Democratic party no longer commands a secure majority.

Europe, in contrast, has to face current issues which make it the most vulnerable of the three regions at the present time. It must make long-term investments quickly inasmuch as it will not be able to handle its problems with the current resources it has available. In addition, it must maintain tight enough control over short-run issues since it has to face a crisis from within as well as a crisis from without.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY: REPORT ON THE GOVERNABILITY OF

Postby admin » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:06 am

PART 1 OF 3

APPENDIX

APPENDIX 1: DISCUSSION OF STUDY DURING PLENARY MEETING OF THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION


Kyoto, May 31, 1975

The study by Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington, and Joji Watanuki, prepared for the Trilateral Commission, was discussed during plenary meetings of the Commission in Kyoto, Japan in May 1975. This three-part appendix is aimed at advancing dialogue on the issues involved. The first part lists some "arenas for action" prepared as points of departure for the Kyoto discussion; the second provides remarks by Ralf Dahrendorf, who opened the discussion in Kyoto; and the third summarizes discussion of the report among members of the Commission.

A. ARENAS FOR ACTION

While there is much to praise in the performance of democratic government in the Trilateral societies, there are also areas of critical weakness and potential breakdown. The heart of the problem lies in the inherent contradictions involved in the very phrase "governability of democracy." For, in some measure, governability and democracy are warring concepts. An excess of democracy means a deficit in governability; easy governability suggests faulty democracy. At times in the history of democratic government the pendulum has swung too far in one direction or the other.

At the present time, it appears that the balance has tilted too far against governments in Western Europe and the United States; in Japan, as yet, this problem is not acute, although it may well become so. The United States and Western Europe consequently need to restore a more equitable relationship between governmental authority and popular control, and Japan may face this necessity in the not-too-distant future. The-steadily rising need for government to manage the interrelations of a complex society is likely to require an increase in the material resources and political authority available to government. In the United States and Western Europe, both have been in short supply already. Even in Japan, both will be in short supply in the future. There are at least seven areas in which these problems can be tackled, which are relevant immediately to Europe and the United States and in the not-too-remote future also to Japan.

1. Effective Planning for Economic and Social Development

The historical record indicates that democracy works best — indeed, that it may only work — when there is a gradual but relatively constant increase in the economic well-being of society. The record of the recent past suggests that in industrialized societies each additional increment in the rate of economic growth tends to be distributed in order to provide more benefits to the poor than the previous increment. Reasonable rates of economic growth and relatively stable prices are essential for the achievement of socioeconomic equity. The control of inflation and the promotion of economic growth, taking into careful consideration the effects of such growth on resource exhaustion and environmental pollution, consequently must have top priority on the agenda of democracy. In addition, poverty remains a problem in many parts of Europe and the United States, and governmental programs must give the highest priority to establishing a minimum floor of guaranteed subsistence for all citizens. The specific measures by which governments can promote these goals must be devised by economists and planners, but critical consideration should be given to proposals such as that recently advanced in the United States for a new economic planning agency attached to the White House. It is necessary here simply to underline the extent to which the governability of democracy seems dependent upon the sustained expansion of the economy. Political democracy requires economic growth; economic growth without inflation depends upon effective democratic planning. The opportunities for more effective planning are not, moreover, simply confined to issues of economic growth. The trilateral societies have an accumulation of social knowledge which could be used for solution of some social problems. The governments in Trilateral societies have the possibility of becoming "wiser" in allocating scarce resources in the most effective way, searching for alternatives, and assessing the effects of policies, through proper use of the social knowledge and skills which have been accumulated and may still be developed.

2. Strengthening the Institutions of Political Leadership

In recent years, the publics in the Trilateral societies have expected much of their political leaders. They have been expected to "deliver the goods" in terms of achieving policy outputs and outcomes to which they have committed themselves and their governments. In many instances, however, political leaders have been left deficient in the institutional resources and authority necessary to achieve these goals. A pervasive suspicion of the motives and power of political leaders on the part of the public has given rise to the imposition of legal and institutional barriers which serve to prevent them from achieving the goals which the public expects them accomplish. In the long run the leadership vacuum will be filled in one way or another, and strong institutionalized leadership is clearly preferable to personalized charismatic leadership.

In the United States, the strengthening of leadership institutions requires action with respect to both the Congress and the president. In Congress, for the past decade the trend has been toward a greater dispersion of power in both the House and Senate. Yet if Congress is to play an effective governing role as distinct from a critical and opposition role, it has to be able to formulate overall goals, determine priorities, and initiate programs. Inevitably this requires some centralization of power within Congress.

The imperial presidency is rapidly disappearing into history, and there is clearly no need to bring it back. There is a need, however, to insure that the pendulum does not swing too far in the other direction. Proposed legislative restrictions on presidential power should always be judged by the question: If the president does not exercise this power, who will? If Congress can exercise the power effectively, there may be good grounds for restricting the president. But every restriction of presidential power does not necessarily redound to the benefit of Congress. It may equally well increase the power of bureaucratic agencies or private interest groups.

In Japan, the prime minister's leadership has been restricted by the bureaucratic sectionalism of each ministry. Budget-making is done totally by the Budget Bureau in the Ministry of Finance. The prime minister has no staff, and there is no coordinating agency under his direct command. The institutional strengthening of the prime minister's leadership through the transfer of the Budget Bureau to the prime minister's office or the Cabinet Secretariat, the creation of positions for high-level aides to the prime minister, and the reorganization and development of policy research and coordinating functions in the Cabinet Secretariat and prime minister's office, including various "Deliberation Councils," should be considered seriously.

Under the LDP's single majority rule, the Diet has never exercised any leadership role. The budget presented by the government has been approved by the LDP majority without fail. Almost 100 percent of legislation has been presented by the government upon prior consultation with the governing party and been approved by the majority in the Diet. In light, however, of the possibility of the loss of a majority by the LDP, the Diet should be prepared to take more initiative in legislation and budget-making.

The European situation is extremely diverse and does not call for common or even convergent remedies. The French presidency for the time being is extremely strong, much stronger than the American. If there is a problem it is to reintroduce democratic checks. If the problem is difficult, it is because very little margin has ever existed in the French tradition between the predominance of the executive, which means too few checks, and the predominance of Parliament, which means a rather impotent regime d'assemblee. The Italian government presents almost exactly the other side of the coin. Its decision-making capacity has almost disintegrated and the problem is to restore conditions for developing a stronger, more stable, more active executive which can at the same time be accepted by the political class.

Even if one does not focus on these extreme examples, one discovers that each country has its own idiosyncratic problems to which there is no common solution. Two common problems nevertheless emerge on which more general recommendations could be made. First of all, there is almost everywhere a crisis of parliaments. It is due only partially to legal or constitutional evolution, since it develops equally within opposite setups. One could better hypothesize that the divergent structural evolutions are just different answers to the same problem. This crisis involves the problem of representation and the problem of expertise. Modern parliaments do not have the necessary expertise to maintain an effective check on the executive and their members cannot represent citizens adequately in policy-making debates since they have to rely on earlier, now meaningless cleavages to be elected.

The second common problem area is that of implementation and public administration. Everywhere one discovers a complete dissociation between the decision-making system, dominated by traditional and often quite rhetorical political debate, and the implementation system, which is the preserve of administrative systems quite often centralized and strong, but usually even more irresponsive when they are centralized and strong. This dissociation is the main cause of political alienation amongst citizens. It continually nourishes Utopian dreams and radical postures and reinforces opposition to the state. The main effort in Europe should be, therefore, to reinsert democratic debate in administrative procedure, to prevent the monopoly of expertise by public administration, and to restore functions to parliament, by giving parliament new expertise and thus the possibility to debate on an equal level with the civil servants. Finally, a general reform of public administration, and especially of local implementation systems should be a central practical concern that could be answered by European countries in a genuinely comparative and cooperative way.

3. Reinvigoration of Political Parties

Party loyalties, like loyalties to church, state, and class, have tended to weaken throughout much of the Trilateral area. A more highly educated, more affluent, and generally more sophisticated public is less willing to commit itself blindly and irrevocably to a particular party and its candidates. Yet partisan allegiances, along with party conflicts, have historically been the bedrock of democracy. Even today political parties remain indispensable to insure open debate over meaningful choices, to help aggregate interests, and to develop political leaders. To continue to perform these functions they will have to adapt themselves to the changed needs and interests of the electorate. If the "post-industrial world" is a world in which knowledge is king, the political parties must increasingly devote themselves to supplying this commodity, just as in an earlier — and poorer — age they focused on material benefits such as jobs, patronage, and social insurance.

To fulfill its political functions properly, a political party must, on the one hand, reflect the interests and needs of major social forces and interest groups and, on the other hand, it must also in some measure be independent of particular interests and capable of aggregating them and working out broader compromises among them. Changes in party structure, membership, leadership, and activities should be oriented towards increasing the ability of parties to perform these two conflicting but indispensable functions. In Europe, for instance, parties are still divided between parties of notables and mass membership parties. Mass parties emphasizing the defense of group interests and status positions prevent the aggregation of interests and the learning of compromise. Not only do they not train citizens for the difficulties of choice and the understanding of government, but they condition them to misunderstanding and to alienation. Nor do traditional parties of notables do a better job. They may emphasize aggregation much more in their action but keep themselves as narrow as possible and refuse to train citizens in real participation.

Nowhere are the horns of the dilemma of interest representation versus interest aggregation more painfully visible than in the difficult area of party finance. Historically, political parties have in large part been dependent on the dues and subscriptions of individual members and supporters on the one hand, and on substantial contributions from business corporations and labor unions on the other. But, in addition, a number of Trilateral societies (including the four Scandinavian countries, France, Italy, Germany, and Canada) now appropriate public monies to cover party expenses between and during elections. In Germany the government provides an estimated 35 percent of party funds.

The reinvigoration of political parties, needed for the effective working of democratic politics, seems to require a diversification of the sources from which parties raise their funds. Political parties should not be dependent exclusively upon either individual members or organized interests or the state for the resources needed to perform their functions. They should be able to draw support from all three sources.

The achievement of the appropriate balance among these sources requires different action in different societies. In the United States, for instance, recent legislation providing public monies for presidential candidates represents a step in the proper direction. So also is the movement during the past decade to broaden the base of party finance and to solicit small sums from a large number of contributors. On the other hand, the laws prohibiting political contributions by corporations serve little useful purpose and, as recent prosecutions make clear, have been regularly evaded. The desirability of repealing such restrictions should be carefully considered. The danger that political parties will become unduly dependent upon and responsive to a few corporate interests can best be countered by (a) requiring full publicity for all political contributions and (b) insuring the availability of public monies as an alternative and balance to funds from the private sector.

In Japan, the amount of money contributed by business corporations to the LDP has been disproportionally huge and has given rise to a sense of unfair competition and the suspicion of implicit corruption between the governing party and business. This unfairness might be attacked first of all by measures prohibiting all contributions by corporations, or at least setting strict upper limits on them and also requiring full publicity for the contributions made. The LDP needs to survive such a trial in order to consolidate the legitimacy of Japanese democracy itself. Even if such measures are destined to fail, by evasion and utilization of loopholes, they will still serve to create fairer competition between parties and stimulate individual contributions and involvement in party activities. Most difficult to achieve in Japan is an increase in individual contributions. Politicians and political parties should do their utmost to stimulate them. For instance, the personal sponsoring associations (koenkai) of individual politicians should undertake to finance themselves by contributions from their members.

4. Restoring a Balance between Government and Media

For well over 200 years in Western societies, a struggle has been underway to defend the freedom of the press to investigate, to criticize, to report, and to publish its findings and opinions against the efforts by government officials to curb that freedom. Freedom of the press is absolutely essential to the effective working of democratic government. Like any freedom, however, it is a freedom which can be abused. Recent years have seen an immense growth in the scope and power of the media. In many countries, in addition, either as a result of editorial direction or as a result of the increasing influence of the journalists vis-a-vis owners and editors, the press has taken an increasingly critical role towards government and public officials. In some countries, traditional norms of "objectivity" and "impartiality" have been brushed aside in favor of "advocatory journalism." The responsibility of the press should now be increased to be commensurate with its power; significant measures are required to restore an appropriate balance between the press, the government, and other institutions in society.

These recent changes in the press-government relationship are perhaps most clearly marked in the United States. The increase in media power is not unlike the rise of the industrial corporations to national power at the end of the nineteenth century. Just as the corporations enveloped themselves in the constitutional protection of the due process clause, the media now defend themselves in terms of the First Amendment. [i] In both cases, there obviously are important rights to be protected, but broader interests of society and government are also at stake. In due course, beginning with the Interstate Commerce Act and the Sherman Antitrust Act, [ii] measures had to be taken to regulate the new industrial centers of power and to define their relations to the rest of society. Something comparable appears to be now needed with respect to the media. Specifically, there is a need to insure to the press its right to print what it wants without prior restraint except in most unusual circumstances. But there is also the need to assure to the government the right and the ability to withhold information at the source. In addition, there is no reason for denying to public officials equal protection of the laws against libel, and the courts should consider moving promptly to reinstate the law of libel as a necessary and appropriate check upon the abuses of power by the press. Journalists should develop their own standards of professionalism and create mechanisms, such as press councils, for enforcing those standards on themselves. The alternative could well be regulation by the government.

The Japanese press, especially the five nationwide newspapers with several millions circulation each and the commercial TV networks closely associated with each of them, have somewhat different traditions and problems from their counterparts in the United States or in Western Europe. Nonpartisanship and an opposition attitude towards the government have been the traditions of the Japanese press. The results are a policy of equal distance from all political parties, and a high sensitivity to the mood of the mass public. The functioning of Japanese democracy would be improved if the individual newspapers took clearer stands in support of or opposition to the government.

In Europe, the more traditional and numerous press has given way to fewer, stronger and less committed oligopolistic papers. This change, which was viewed at first as a trend toward depoliticization, in the end increased the political power of the press as an independent institution, thus bringing it closer to the American and Japanese situations. The same dangers therefore seem to appear with the need for the same kind of difficult but essential counterbalance.

5. Reexamination of the Cost and the Functions of Higher Education

The 1960s saw a tremendous expansion in higher education throughout the Trilateral societies. This expansion was the product of increasing affluence, a demographic bulge in the college-age group, and the increasingly widespread assumption that the types of higher education open formerly in most societies (with the notable exception of the United States) only to a small elite group should "by right" be made available generally. The result of this expansion, however, can be the overproduction of people with university education in relation to the jobs available for them, the expenditure of substantial sums of scarce public monies and the imposition on the lower classes of taxes to pay for the free public education of the children of the middle and upper classes. The expansion of higher education can create frustrations and psychological hardships among university graduates who are unable to secure the types of jobs to which they believe their education entitles them, and it can also create frustrations and material hardships for nongraduates who are unable to secure jobs which were previously open to them.

In the United States, some retrenchment in higher education is already underway as a result of slower growth in enrollments and new ceilings on resources. What seems needed, however, is to relate educational planning to economic and political goals. Should a college education be provided generally because of its contribution to the overall cultural level of the populace and its possible relation to the constructive discharge of the responsibilities of citizenship? If this question is answered in the affirmative, a program is then necessary to lower the job expectations of those who receive a college education. If the question is answered in the negative, then higher educational institutions should be induced to redesign their programs so as to be geared to the patterns of economic development and future job opportunities.

In Japan, the expansion of higher education in the 1960s was achieved mainly through low-cost education by private universities without much money from the government. Financially, however, the private universities are now approaching bankruptcy, and low-cost education has created doubts about the quality of university education. An increase in public financial support to private universities is now under way. As for the employment of university graduates, at least so far, because of rapid expansion of the tertiary service sector, there has as yet been no problem of overproduction and unemployment. Major uncertainties, however, exist concerning the future of Japanese higher education. With the stagnation of the governmental budget, the increase of public funds for higher education will face a ceiling, and the choice as to whether Japan should have "low-quality and high-quantity" higher education or "high-quality and limited-quantity" higher education will become serious. In addition, both employment and mobility of university graduates depend on the expansion of the tertiary sector, which is not unlimited. In this respect, also, Japan is now rapidly approaching the point where some "retrenchment" in higher education will be necessary.

European higher education, in contrast, needs consolidation and rejuvenation more than retrenchment. Here again, it differs widely from country to country in its structure, modes of operation, and place in society. But everywhere it is parochial, conservative, and compartmentalized. With a few exceptions in sectors such as the professional schools and in countries such as Britain, it is chaotic, inefficient, operates extremely poorly, and develops opposition and alienation among the students. One cannot overemphasize the significance of such a state of affairs. By now higher education is the most important value-producing system in society. That it works either poorly or at cross-purposes with society should be a matter of great concern. Such opposition may be good and creative up to a point, but it has become more and more sterile since it is now depriving society of the necessary stimulus of the younger generation's creativity.

6. More Active Innovation in the Area of Work

A long tradition exists in the West and in Japan of governmental involvement in the broad area of labor and social policies. Such policies may be considered as one of the greatest achievements of Trilateral democracies. Health, hazard and security coverage, freedom of association, bargaining rights, the right to strike, and workers councils all provide broad protection and broad possibilities for corrective action.

Two basic new problems have arisen, however, which take on more and more prominence as older ones recede. They are the problems of, first, the working structure of the enterprise, and, second, of the content of the job itself. Both of these problems call for a new kind of active intervention which is of great importance for each society's internal equilibrium and governability. These problems unfortunately are not amenable to easy legislative fiat or executive intervention. They require a painful transformation of social relations, of cultural and authority patterns, and even of modes of reasoning.

Up to now the dominant social democratic or even liberal schools of thought have focused on proposals for industrial democracy modeled on patterns of political democracy. They have rarely succeeded, and when they did the proposals did not appear very effective, basically because they were running against the industrial culture and the constraints of business organization. This movement has found a new impetus, especially in Western Europe, with strong popular pressure for self- management and the rediscovery by the left of nationalization as a key argument in the political arena.

Many people advocate the more moderate course of participation by labor in crucial decisions affecting output, productivity, and working conditions, such as developed in Germany under the name of codetermination. This would, they think, provide a strong incentive for unions to act responsibly. In some circumstances this could indeed be the result. On the other hand, however, codetermination has been only partially successful in Germany, and it would raise impossible problems in many Western democracies, either because leftist trade unionists would oppose it and utilize it without becoming any more moderate, or because employers would manage to defeat its purposes.

A quite different, more promising, and more fundamental strategy is to focus on the second set of problems, those of the job, working conditions, and work organization. This is a much more concrete field where deep resentment and frustrations have developed, feeding back into the more conventional aspects of labor-management bargaining. This is a problem area where basic change is becoming possible. New thinking and experimentation has occurred, which should be widely encouraged and subsidized. Industry should be given all possible incentives to move ahead and implement gradually new modes of organization. This is the only way now to alleviate the new tensions that tend to mark post-industrial society in this area and which otherwise nourish irresponsible blackmailing tactics and new inflationary pressures. At the same time this is a necessary step to restore the status and dignity of manual work and therefore help solve the more and more acute problem of the immigrant workers in Western Europe, which might otherwise become equivalent to the racial problems of the United States.

7. Creation of New Institutions for the Cooperative Promotion of Democracy

The effective working of democratic government in the Trilateral societies can now no longer be taken for granted. The increasing demands and pressures on democratic government and the crisis in governmental resources and public authority require more explicit collaboration. One might consider, therefore, means of securing support and resources from foundations, business corporations, labor unions, political parties, civic associations, and, where possible and appropriate, governmental agencies for the creation of an institute for the strengthening of democratic institutions. The purpose of such an institute would be to stimulate collaborative studies of common problems involved in the operations of democracy in the Trilateral societies, to promote cooperation among institutions and groups with common concerns in this area among the Trilateral regions, and to encourage the Trilateral societies to learn from each other's experience how to make democracy function more effectively in their societies. There is much which each society can learn from the others. Such mutual learning experiences are familiar phenomena in the economic and military fields; they must also be encouraged in the political field. Such an institute could also serve a useful function in calling attention to questions of special urgency, as, for instance, the critical nature of the problems currently confronting democracy in Europe.

B. EXCERPTS OF REMARKS BY RALF DAHRENDORF ON THE GOVERNABILITY STUDY

1

Governability presumably refers to the ability of governments to give direction to the economies, societies, and political communities in which they govern, and to do so effectively. Could it not be argued that one of the traditional characteristics of democracies is that we do not ask governments to give direction to the economies, societies, and political communities, at least not to the extent to which nondemocratic societies are doing this? Might it not be argued, therefore, that by raising the question of governability in relation to democracies, one is in fact raising the question of whether the power of government should be increased rather than the question of whether the power of government should be restored? Is it not misleading to imply that governments in democracies had all those powers in the past which are now demanded for them? Should we not perhaps check ourselves every now and then and remember that one of the things democracy is about is to enable people and groups to operate in what might be called a market environment rather than an environment which is largely determined by directives issuing from government and political institutions?

2

In the "arenas for action" [iii], you find a number of remarkable statements about the relationship between democracy and economic growth. "The promotion of economic growth, taking into careful consideration the effects of such growth on resource exhaustion and environmental pollution, consequently must have top priority on the agenda of democracy.... Political democracy requires economic growth; economic growth ... depends upon effective democratic planning." Important, and, as you will admit, far-reaching statements. It is clearly desirable, at least that is my view, that economic growth should continue. Yet there may be a point in asking a number of questions in relation to these statements. And there may be a point in discussing them at some length. Why should it be so that democracy is to some extent dependent on economic growth? Is there anything in the concept of democracy that relates it to economic growth? Is democracy unthinkable without it? Is it actually true that those countries in which economic growth was least effective were also the countries in which democratic institutions were least effective? Could it not be said that it is the one-party socialist states above all which are in trouble without economic growth. Is not the link between the assumption of economic growth and political organization in fact much closer in the communist countries, and is that not one of the reasons why they are worried at a time when, for them, too, economic growth is by no means a certainty? Does not perhaps Mr. Brezhnev have much more reason to worry about the future of economic growth than Mr. Ford? I should have thought that it would be useful to examine these questions in the study, although I am not at all sure that I would be able to give a proper answer to them. If I were to try to give an answer, I would like to add another question which I believe is and should be of major concern for anybody who is thinking about the future of industrial societies under liberal conditions. Is growth presumably growth of a gross national product? Is this the only kind of expansion of human life chances which we can think of in free societies? Are there not perhaps other forms of growth and improvement of human lives? Is it really necessary to assume that we have to continue along the lines which have been characteristic for the last twenty-five years in order to maintain democratic institutions? The important and prima facie plausible statements about democracy and economic growth would warrant and perhaps require a rather more elaborate reasoning.

3

My next point relates to governability more or less directly. The paper for discussion here is in my view an important and in many ways convincing analysis of a difficult and changing political, social, and economic situation. I would like to underline an aspect of the problem which I believe is of overriding importance.

I start with three simple things—simple to put in words but much less simple to cope with in fact. First, there is a growing desire for more immediate participation on the part of many citizens in the developed countries, which confronts national governments with unfamiliar but extremely serious problems and makes it more difficult for them to give direction to developments in their countries. This is, of course, what Mr. Huntington in his chapter calls the democratic challenge to authority. It is a development which may be regarded as a natural consequence of the development of citizenship over the last century or two. This development of citizenship has led more and more people in local communities and industrial enterprises and other institutions to express a desire to be a part of the machinery of decision-making to a much greater extent than may have been the case in the past. And governments have in fact found it difficult to make decisions, even apparently simple decisions such as those about the sites of nuclear power stations. Participation is not merely the taking of responsibility but is very often an attempt to check government action or object to it.

The second aspect is that for many important problems the national political space has become evidently and largely insufficient, although at the same time we do not have satisfactory institutions, let alone democratic ones, to cope with new problems as they arise in new, international political spaces.

The third aspect is new for governments. Democratic governments find it difficult to cope with the power of extraparliamentary institutions which determine by their decisions the life chances of as many (or in some cases more) people as the decisions of governments can possibly determine in many of our countries. Indeed, these extraparliamentary institutions often make governmental power look ridiculous. When I talk about extraparliamentary institutions, I am essentially thinking of two powerful economic institutions—giant companies and large and powerful trade unions.

All three of these developments have a common denominator. The greater demand for participation, the removal of effective political spaces from the national to the international level, and the removal of the power to determine people's life chances from political institutions to other institutions are all signs of what might be called the dissolution, perhaps the dilution of the general political public which we assumed was the real basis of democratic institutions in the past. Instead of there being an effective political public in democratic countries from which representative institutions emerge and to which representatives are answerable, there is a fragmented public, in part a nonexistent public. There is a rather chaotic picture in the political communities of many democratic countries. A public of citizens who cast their votes from individual interests and thereby influence the choice of representatives who in turn feel their responsibility to an identified public has to some considerable extent disappeared. To that extent, representative government has become very different indeed from the sort of creature that was described in The Federalist papers, or by John Stuart Mill, or by many others before and after.

I would argue that the main thing to think about is what we can do to reestablish an effective general political public under the changed conditions in which we are living today. One would have to discuss the ways in which the legitimate demand for immediate individual participation can be linked to national and international decisions. One would have to discuss what in this Commission has been called the renovation of the international system, not only in terms of the effectiveness of new international institutions but also in terms of their democratic quality. This would raise familiar and yet new problems of the relation between representation and expertise, between democratic election and knowledge of those standing for election.

I am quite certain that a number of things must not happen if we want to reestablish an effective political public (or perhaps establish an effective political public for a very large number of citizens for the first time in the history of democratic countries). I for one believe that one of the things that must not happen under any condition is a deliberate policy of educational retrenchment—a policy in which educational institutions are once again linked to economic output and economic performance rather than to the need to give every individual a chance to take part in the political process. I also believe that one of the things that must not happen is that we establish any greater dependence of the media on governments. On the contrary, I believe that the media in most of our democratic societies are in need of protection. They are endangered by a number of processes, some of them economic. At the same time I believe they are some of the main media of expression for what is left of a general political public, and we should keep them that way.

My main point here is that as we think about a political public in our day, we cannot simply think of a political public of individual citizens exercising their common sense interests on the marketplace, as it were. In rethinking the notion of the political public, we have to accept the fact that most human beings today are both individual citizens and members of large organizations. We have to accept the fact that most individuals see their interests cared for not only by an immediate expression of their citizenship rights (or even by political parties which organize groups of interests) but also by organizations which at this moment act outside the immediate political framework and which will continue to act whether governments like it or not. And I believe, therefore, somewhat reluctantly, that in thinking about the political public of tomorrow we shall have to think of a public in which representative parliamentary institutions are somehow linked with institutions which in themselves are neither representative nor parliamentary. I think it is useful to discuss the exact meaning of something like an effective social contract, or perhaps a "Concerted Action," or "Conseil Economique et Social" for the political institutions of advanced democracies. I do not believe that free collective bargaining is an indispensable element of a free and democratic society. I do believe, however, that we have to recognize that people are organized in trade unions, that there are large enterprises, that economic interests have to be discussed somewhere, and that there has got to be a negotiation about some of the guidelines by which our economies are functioning. This discussion should be related to representative institutions. There may be a need for reconsidering some of our institutions in this light, not to convert our countries into corporate states, certainly not, but to convert them into countries which in a democratic fashion recognize some of the new developments which have made the effective political public so much less effective in recent years.

4

I am not, contrary to many others today, pessimistic about the future of democracy. Indeed, it seems to me that a number of recent social developments are likely to make life much more difficult for the dictatorships of this world. Like many of you, however, I notice with dismay that it seems to be difficult, perhaps even impossible, to liberalize a dictatorship within a short period of time and convert it into a free and democratic country. There is a sad dialectic of dictatorships in which any attempt to liberalize them rapidly seems to lead to another kind of authoritarianism.

I do think that in order for democracies to cope with the new types of problems with which they are faced, they have to avoid a number of mistakes. They must avoid the belief that the very progress which they made possible for a large number of citizens must now be undone because it feels uncomfortable for some. They have to avoid the belief that a little more unemployment, a little less education, a little more deliberate discipline, and a little less freedom of expression would make the world a better place, in which it is possible to govern effectively. Indeed, I think, this attempt to turn back the wheels of history to try to recreate the state which we have fortunately and deliberately left is in many ways as uncivilized, indeed primitive, as the belief that all we need is nationalized ownership, public planning, and worker control. Either of these mistakes must be avoided if we hope to manage to create democratic conditions and maintain them, conditions which offer the largest number the largest chance for their lives.

In my view, what we have to do above all is to maintain that flexibility of democratic institutions which is in some ways their greatest virtue: the ability of democratic institutions to implement and effect change without revolution—the ability to rethink assumptions—the ability to react to new problems in new ways—the ability to develop institutions rather than change them all the time—the ability to keep the lines of communication open between the leaders and the led -- the ability to make individuals count above all.

We talk about the Trilateral societies, and certainly they have a lot in common, but there are many differences between them also, and some have so far managed better than others to cope with the problems which I have indicated. I have to confess that at this time, at this time in particular, I belong to those who believe that it is the North American societies above all which have managed to maintain the kind of flexibility which holds out hope for democracy everywhere.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY: REPORT ON THE GOVERNABILITY OF

Postby admin » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:06 am

PART 2 OF 3

C. DISCUSSION OF STUDY

Discussion of the governability study in Kyoto opened with the above-printed comments of Ralf Dahrendorf, now Director of the London School of Economics. These comments were followed by remarks from each of the three authors. Michel Crozier reviewed the thrust of his chapter on Western Europe, including the judgment that democratic political systems in Europe are now the most vulnerable of those in the Trilateral regions. The West European democracies have to carry through "a basic mutation in their model of government and their mode of social control while facing at the same time a crisis from within and a crisis from without." Samuel P. Huntington responded to some of Dahrendorf s comments. Dahrendorf had raised the issue of somehow linking to parliamentary institutions such major extraparliamentary institutions as large labor unions and business organizations. Huntington expressed surprise that there was no mention in this analysis of political parties as aggregators of the interests of extraparliamentary organizations. On the matter of democracy and economic growth, Huntington noted that the rather steady growth of the last twenty-five years has created expectations of continuing growth, a growth which cannot now be assumed. This is likely to create problems. As for the effects of international developments, Huntington stressed that detente has had negative implications for the cohesion of Trilateral societies. He argued that the growing importance and visibility on the foreign policy agenda of international economic issues and interdependence has involved problems for democratic governments, sensitive to domestic interests. Reaching for an overall formulation of the governability question, Huntington asked if there are inherently destabilizing forces at work in democratic political systems or whether self-stabilizing, "gyroscope" effects predominate. One could elaborate an "optimistic scenario" based on the flexibility and openness of democratic systems, but one could also elaborate a "pessimistic scenario" of self-destructive tendencies and a mounting accumulation of demands. We need to take advantage of the self-correcting opportunities that do exist. In his introductory remarks, Joji Watanuki noted that rapid growth in Japan has brought automatic large increases in government revenues. This has greatly helped the government meet rising demands. If there is a revenue shrinkage, a "higher degree of governability" would be required to see the society through the necessary adaptations.

In the discussion which followed the introductory remarks of Dahrendorf and the three authors, the United States chapter aroused particularly lively discussion. The Founding Fathers of the United States, one North American Commissioner stated, did not see their first problem as that of creating a governable democracy. At least as important in their minds was the guaranteeing of the rights of citizens against the possible excesses of their governors. This Commissioner is particularly impressed after the Watergate episode with the wisdom of an emphasis on the protection of rights. The study should emphasize the vitality of American democratic institutions, particularly the press, the Congress, and the courts. The authors, he stated, need to balance their focus on governability with an equal concern for protection of the rights of citizens. Another Commissioner concurred, suggesting it might be more appropriate to examine the "excesses" of the "governors" than those of the governed. Another participant traced problems in the United States more to the failure of leadership than a "democratic surge." He argued that the decline of political parties is related to the growth of government bureaucracies, which are to some extent substituting for parties. More attention should be given to the problems of big bureaucracy for democracy. This Commissioner stated that it is "simply not true" that the press is automatically in opposition to the government in the United States. Congress is not always in opposition either, even though in the last eight years Congress has been under control of the other party, with no obligation to back the President. Some of the remedies outlined in the "arenas for action," this member concluded, would be "wrong, self-defeating, deadly." According to another North American Commissioner, who disagreed that the need is for "less democracy," the current relative deadlock in U.S. politics is not unique. Contrary to the pessimists, he feels recent developments indicate "triumph" and a "finest hour" for American democracy. The disenchantment of the American public comes from the poor performance of the government, lurching from crisis to crisis. The country needs more appropriate planning, carried on in such a way that the people are involved in helping to set goals. This is a preferred alternative to some kind of technocratic elite model for progress. A number of other Commissioners also associated themselves in general with the above points, arguing for "more democracy, not less" and expressing particular concern for maintenance of "absolutely free new media." One participant saw the Constitution and system of law in the United States as the principal "self-correcting" mechanism there.

A Canadian Commissioner argued the unhealthiness for Canada of a recommendation for reinvigoration of political parties. Parties are ways to control members, he stated. They alienate more capable young politicians and favor conformists. Issues are considered less on their merits than they should be. In Canada, this Commissioner stressed, we need institutions to "blue" and "mute" parties. Parliamentary committees are important here and should be strengthened. The reinvigoration we should seek is of parliamentary institutions, with decision-making done publicly to the greatest extent possible. This Commissioner was also troubled by the recommendations on the media in the "arenas for action." The press needs strengthening and protection. In Canada, it has been more effective in opposing the government than the Opposition party. The Opposition gathers information from the press and uses the press to make its views known. These are very valuable functions.

Later in the discussion, Huntington responded to critics of the chapter on the United States. As for the views of the Founding Fathers, Huntington quoted from a well-known contribution of James Madison to The Federalist. Madison states that the "first" problem is to "enable the government to control the governed," and then to "oblige it to control itself." Comments in the discussion had suggested, Huntington stated, that this "balance" is now tilted toward government and not the citizens; but never before in American history, he argued, have citizens and citizen organizations been more assertive and effective. Huntington put much emphasis on the "balance" idea, and argued there had been a shift against government authority which should not be allowed to go too far. On the media, he stressed that their power has undeniably increased, and that this must be taken into account in our analysis. The comments made on the press in Canada, he added, also applied in the United States and indicate the power of the media. In conclusion, Huntington asked the two questions he thought most essential. First, where is the proper place to draw the balance? Second, what is the state of the balance in the United States now? Huntington sees overwhelming evidence that the balance has shifted away from government.

A European Commissioner underlined the weakness of constitutional systems in some European countries, particularly those whose electoral systems encourage a multiplicity of parties without this being counter-balanced by a strong executive. He mentioned Denmark, Holland, and Belgium. These countries might usefully learn from or perhaps adapt constitutional features of other states like France, Western Germany or Britain, particularly for restoring executive power and gaining "a new lease on life" for their democratic systems without loss of liberties. This Commissioner realized that systems for constitutional amendment were very difficult in the countries requiring change, but the effort should be made. In closing, he expressed "anguish" and "despair" that European unification has not made more progress, progress essential for democracy's future in Europe. Another European Commissioner recalled Dahrendorfs comments about the insufficiency of national political space. Among the Trilateral regions, this is more true in Europe and Japan than in North America, he stated. In Europe in particular the adequacy of national political space is very much in question.

Another European Commissioner noted that in most Western European countries there is not a chance that communist parties will come to power. France and Italy are important exceptions. Change there would "create waves." It would erode the Community and Atlantic Alliance. On Britain, this Commissioner emphasized its remarkable democratic resilience and political resources. Another Commissioner concurred, terming comments about the "ungovernability" of Britain "completely nonsense." He noted that Britain had been an industrial society much longer than other states and was thus far ahead of the others in the problems it now faces.

The future of the Communist party in Italy was raised by another European Commissioner later in the discussion. This was already the largest Communist party in Europe in the years just after the war. Its election advances since then have actually been quite limited, this Commissioner stated. When the Communist party moves toward power in Italy, there is an "allergic reaction" from the others which keeps the party out of power. This Commissioner noted the municipal and regional elections coming up in Italy on June 15. He thought the events in Portugal would help the democratic parties. Further European integration would also help keep the Communist party in check.

One Commissioner noted that he found Dahrendorfs comments "heartening," though they presented him with the "eternal liberal dilemma"—protection of rights is not possible without effective government. He noted the success of "codetermination" in Germany as an effective way to stabilize a system under stress. Another Commissioner added two points related to governability concerns. For one, democratic governments are run by politicians who make decisions for political reasons. This is a fact of life. Second, governments have assumed they could do the politically attractive thing for the majority and the minority would pay. Another European Commissioner cautioned that there be "clear-cut responsibility" in any arrangements that would link powerful extraparliamentary institutions to parliaments, an issue raised by Dahrendorf.

The chapter on Japan is the most optimistic of the regional chapters, one North American Commissioner noted. Japan has not lost the ability to achieve a consensus and act on it, he stated. This may be attributable to a real difference in values, including greater identification with the group. The drive for individual satisfaction must be balanced with such concern for the group.

One Japanese Commissioner related the cohesive strength of the Japanese political system to the high quality of middle-level leadership in the country, those in contact with the people. This appears to be somewhat in decline, however. With the growth of the mass media, people have less need for these middle-level leaders in interpreting events and making their views known. This also hurts the organization of political parties. As the middle level has less political responsibility, its quality will decline.

This Commissioner sees some of the recent social problems of the Trilateral regions related to a temporary shift in the population structure, with an extraordinarily large number of younger people, with different values. As this bulge in the population structure moves on, problems will become less severe.

Another Japanese Commissioner recalled a statement of Lenin's that a revolution cannot be initiated by demands from below, but only when the governing classes are divided and dissatisfied. One might argue that governing classes are now in this condition. This Commissioner pointed to three weaknesses of democracy. For one, human beings are weak. In a monopoly position they will wield excessive power. He mentioned the press in Japan, whose decisions are sometimes more important than the government's, and also associations like the medical association, which is in a monopoly position, with the tax system rigged in its favor. The Diet is not doing much about these powerful organizations. Second, Japanese intellectuals and students are being attracted by radicalism. If these fill the middle level of leadership later, Japan may be turning a corner toward a worse situation. Third, it seems that opportunists are the ones who gain and hold political power. Tolerant individuals generally do not.

Another Japanese Commissioner emphasized that democracy in Japan is working rather well. He noted that at all levels there are about 80,000 elected political leaders throughout the country. Certainly there are some governability problems. This Commissioner mentioned the controversy over the Japanese nuclear ship which drifted in the Pacific for some fifty days in August and September of 1974, having been refused port facilities by local communities. He mentioned the railway unions, which must be confronted. He noted the current dispute about the Constitution centering on Minister Inaba, which held up Diet deliberations on other matters for a week. He mentioned uncertainties about the U.S. commitment in Korea after recent events in Indochina, and uncertainty about whether the Japan Communist party could be excluded from a coalition formed when the LDP majority disappears. These matters add elements of pessimism.

Another Japanese Commissioner also related international issues to governability concerns. The world is searching for a new system, he stated, and needs strong leadership in various countries. Governability, however, is in decline. Even in Japan, the government does not have much room to maneuver. In the long term this Commissioner was optimistic about Japanese democracy, but can we wait for its problems to be solved? On the U.S.-Japanese relationship after the Indochina war, Japan is not apprehensive about the administration, but rather about Congress. Is the President in control? Is there a trend in the United States toward isolationism?

Looking over the whole discussion, one North American Commissioner related it to discussion the previous day of resources and global redistribution of power. He put it all in the framework of "the central issue for the industrial democracies," namely the "apparent conflict between equity and effectiveness." With regard to developing countries, the main issue is that of equity, but "one can have no more equity than one can afford." And the wealth of the developed world, he argued, should not be too narrowly construed. It is "not especially physical resources but rather the complex of spiritual, governmental, and political (capabilities), the way in which (the people) manage to attack and solve their problems." We see this most clearly in the case of Japan, this Commissioner argued, which is relatively "resource-less" in a physical sense. What could one take away from Japan? What is its wealth? What is it except a complex of going institutions?

Another participant returned to the issue raised by Dahrendorf of somehow associating nonparliamentary groups with the parliamentary process. It was suggested this might be seen in relation to international institutions, not just national political systems. This participant sees underway a "partial domestication of international society," with many domestic problems of the nineteenth century finding their analogs in international problems of the twentieth century. "Partly civilianized international relations" must not become so turbulent that we lose societal openness and freedom while trying to achieve the equity that is necessary. The Trilateral region, he argued, is a "vital core" in this effort.

A number of Commissioners emphasized the importance of the issues being raised in the study and discussion and hoped the Commission would continue work in this general area. One Commissioner expressed his support "very concretely" for the proposed institute for the strengthening of democratic institutions.

APPENDIX 2: CANADIAN PERSPECTIVES ON THE GOVERNABILITY OF DEMOCRACIES

Discussion in Montreal, May 16, 1975


The rapporteurs of the Trilateral Commission Task Force on the Governability of Democracies identified common "governability" problems in the three regions. These have been viewed as stemming from such factors as the "changing democratic context," the rise of "anomic democracy," various democratic "dysfunctions," the "delegitimization" of authority, "system overload," the "disaggregation" of interests, and an increasing parochialism in international affairs.

Detailed background papers underlined the problems peculiar to Europe, Japan, and the United States in the area of governability. To explore the Canadian scene, a colloquium sponsored by the Canadian Group of the Trilateral Commission brought together in May 1975 approximately thirty Canadians involved in both the analysis and the practice of government. Several of the Commission's Task Force members were on hand.

The participants identified particular Canadian perspectives on governability and, in dialogue with the Trilateral Task Force members, drew out significant comparisons and contrasts in the experiences of Canada, the United States, and to some extent the other Trilateral regions.

Discussion was conducted around four major issue-areas: the problem of governability; social, economic and cultural causes; components of stability; and domestic and foreign implications. Several major themes emerged from the discussion, treated in the following short report on the proceedings.

A. The Canadian Governability "Challenge"

Despite the numerous problems and strains that were identified with regard to Canadian institutions and values, a general consensus emerged that Canada's governability problems were not insoluble and that, indeed, "governability" itself may be less of a problem than the "reality of participation," the "accountability of governors," or as one participant put it, "the democratizability of governments."

Some felt that accountability was the real issue, both in the context of governmental decision-making and from the point of view of expanding participation in decision-making by such groups as organized labour.

While Canada shares with the United States some major governability "challenges" (rather than necessarily "problems"), that is, an overload of demands on the political system, a decline in traditional attitudes to authority, changing social values, increasing "dehumanization" of society, and labour/management conflicts, to name a few, these challenges do not appear to have attained the serious proportions they are said to have reached in the United States. A few of the differentiating factors mentioned were the racial problem in the United States, more extensive urban problems, and domestic disillusionment engendered by the decline of the leadership role of the United States in world affairs. Such phenomena as Vietnam and Watergate could be seen as special focal points of long-term trends.

There remained a rather clear division of opinion among the participants as to whether or not there was evidence of "ungovernability" or a trend toward it in Canada.

B. System Overload

It was argued by some that the growing tendencies of students and workers to challenge authority and the new vigour of union demands may even be seen as healthy democratic phenomena and may be heralding the end of a period of "pseudo democracy," providing the first real attempt at genuine and comprehensive democracy. However, some of those who tended to regard Canadian democracy as becoming increasingly ungovernable viewed these trends as increasing the overload of demands on decision-making institutions, thereby decreasing their capacity to sort out priorities, and as a part of the general decline of a coherent "public philosophy." One of the roots of disturbing trends on the labour front in Canada was identified as the fact that unions have generally not been brought in a real way into the decision-making process and are often treated implicitly as "outlaws." Such an attitude can only influence relations between organized labour and the broader society in a negative way.

Another speaker asserted that "system overload" in Canada is a "fantasy," that the functioning of the system had not changed and the structure was basically intact, for better or for worse. Others expressed sympathy for the conditions in which contemporary politicians operate and claimed that there was strong evidence for the case that too much was asked of them. A major criticism of the operation of democratic governments was their inability to sort out priorities in the face of increasing demands and their consequent resort to incrementalism (extension of existing programs) rather than creative policy-making.

One or two participants suggested that the whole discussion of governability distorted the real problems and was of concern only to an elite uneasy about its declining position in society! They maintained that factors such as rising inflation and the growth of public expenditure as a percentage of GNP (which were seen by some as causes or effects of governability problems) had nothing to do with governability and may, in fact, have produced more "positive" benefits by forcing better income distribution, via the "catch up" of wages and social welfare benefits.

C. Institutions

Canadian institutions (federalism, the parliamentary system, the public service, the media) were identified as distinctive and received particular attention by the participants. Were they a protection against or a cause of greater governability problems?

It was pointed out that the expansion and proliferation of bureaucracy at the federal, provincial, and municipal levels has contributed to the strains on the Canadian political system because of diminishing clarity of direction and accountability. There is a growing tendency, it was said, for the bureaucracy to take over roles which were traditionally the essential domain of the politicians—such as defining the "public good." This could be regarded as a dangerous development, particularly in light of the tendency of the federal bureaucracy to become "Ottawa-centered" and not properly representative of the regions of Canada.

There was a general consensus that more emphasis should be placed on the democratically-derived institutions. It was recommended that the House of Commons be enlarged to provide better constituency representation and that its procedures be modernized to facilitate the handling of public business. The so-called "decline of Parliament" was seen as due, in part, to the growing importance of federal-provincial relations in the face of the increasing power of the provinces. Effective opposition comes from the provinces rather than the federal opposition parties, possibly attributable to the situation of one-party dominance in Ottawa.

American participants concluded from the discussion that the Canadian brand of federalism—in its maintenance of a relative greater degree of decentralization—was a "highly desirable situation." Despite equally impenetrable provincial bureaucracies and the bargaining problems engendered by the equality ascribed to federal and provincial governments, it was convincingly argued by Canadians that governability problems were reduced by the flexibility built into the Canadian style of federal structure and parliamentary system.

It was noted that in Canada, as in the United States, a certain trend toward fragmentation and regionalization of political parties could be observed, but there was no indication that there is anything in Canada approaching what had been called by American analysts "the decline of the party system" in the United States. It was held, however, by some participant noted that the governing Liberal caucus, dominated by "ministerialists," is consequently not sufficiently co-representation in all major areas of the country. This tendency toward decentralization was seen by others not only as inevitable but as desirable, as parties would presumably become more constituency- and region-oriented which would offset bureaucratization among elected representatives. One participant noted that the governing Liberal caucus, dominated by "ministerialists," is consequently not sufficiently constituency-oriented. Another suggested that existing Canadian political parties fulfilled an important role by effecting trade-offs in nonideological terms.

D. Rhetoric/Performance Gap

Another major theme emerging from the discussion was the problem of the gap between rhetoric and performance in government. Two views, whose consequences are perhaps equally damaging if true, emerged on this issue: (1) that people tend to ignore or disbelieve the rhetoric and consequently lose their faith in the system and refuse to participate (identified as an "apathy of despair"); and (2) that, as a result of government rhetoric, expectations are raised to a point of no possible return or satisfaction, especially in regard to the allocation of benefits among individuals and groups.

E. Decline of a "Public Philosophy"

Labour groups are not impeded, it was said, from making outrageous demands due to the absence of a strong public philosophy and to prevalent doubt as to whether fairness underlies the general allocation of influence and resources. The decline in "community" and a dehumanization of society result in the aggressive self-assertion of the individual or groups. In the absence of a national ethos, governments are hamstrung in their efforts to cope with such prevalent difficulties as inflation and labour/management disputes. This phenomenon of declining cohesive values appears to be common to both Canada and the United States.



F. Communications and Governability

Finally, the theme of communications was identified as both a cause and a result of the problems of governability. It was noted, even by journalists, that the press tends to provide short-term, personalized, sensationalist pictures of political events, thereby widening the rhetoric/performance gap. It was suggested that a strengthened periodical press is needed to give more long-term perspective on events, trends, and institutions.

Poverty of communication both within governments and between governments and other sectors was also identified as a governability problem. This was seen as resulting in a serious lack of knowledge as to how "the other side" takes decisions, which tends to hamper desirable constructive bargaining within the industry-government-labour triangle. It was also suggested that parliament's capacity to achieve a mediating function has decreased due to partisan factionalism and its diminishing power over the bureaucracy.

G. Possible Conclusions

As identified by this colloquium, Canada's foremost governability problems can be regarded as falling within four major areas: the questionable ability of the evolving political institutions to aggregate an increasing volume of demands efficiently and at the same time to retain their accountability to the public; the increasing rhetoric/performance gap; the decline of a "public philosophy"; and the problem of communications. Several characteristics of the Canadian system were found actually to enhance Canada's governability, that is, its parliamentary and federal structures of government, a reasonable degree of decentralization of authority and the absence of class-based political parties. However, a general consensus emerged that Canada's governability problems (as redefined) while not insoluble are real and deserve urgent attention and remedial action.

CANADIAN GROUP COLLOQUIUM

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS


Doris Anderson, Editor, Chatelaine Magazine

Frances Bairstow, Director, Industrial Relations Center, McGill University

Carl Beigie, Executive Director, C. D. Howe Research Institute

Pierre Benoit, Journalist, Broadcaster, Former Mayor of Ottawa

Marvin Blauer, Special Assistant to the Premier of Manitoba

Robert Bowie, Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Director, The Trilateral Commission

Stephen Clarkson, Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto

Tim Creery, Editor, The Gazette, Montreal

Peter Dobell, Director, Parliamentary Centre for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade

Gordon Fairweather, Member of Parliament

Francis Fox, Member of Parliament

Donald Fraser, United States Congress

Richard Gwyn, Ottawa Correspondent, Toronto Star

Reeves Haggan, Assistant Deputy Minister, Solicitor General Department

Samuel P. Huntington, Professor of Government, Harvard University

Robert Jackson, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University

Pierre Juneau, Chairman, Canadian Radio-Television Commission

Michael Kirby, Assistant Principal Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister

Gilles Lalande, Professor of Political Science, University of Montreal

Claude Lemelin, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for External Affairs

Vincent Lemieux, Professor of Political Science, Laval University

Claude Masson, Vice-Dean of Research, Laval University

John Meisel, Professor of Political Science, Queen's University

Geoffrey Pearson, Chairman, Policy Analysis Group, Department of External Affairs

Jean-Luc Pepin, Co-ordinator, Canadian Group, the Trilateral Commission; President, Interimco Limited

Simon Reisman, Chairman, Reisman and Grandy Limited

Donald Rickerd, President, The Donner Canadian Foundation

Claude Ryan, Editor, Le Devoir, Montreal

Garth Steyenson, Professor of Political Science, Carleton University

Dale Thomson, Vice-Principal (Planning), McGill University

A. The Triangle Papers

REPORTS OF TASK FORCES OF THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION


The Crisis of Democracy is one of a series of reports of task forces of the Trilateral Commission. The preceding reports, all published by the Commission itself, are listed below.

1. Towards a Renovated World Monetary System (1973)
Trilateral Monetary Task Force
Rapporteurs:Richard N. Cooper, Motoo Kaji, Claudio Segre

2. The Crisis of International Cooperation (1973)
Trilateral Political Task Force
Rapporteurs: Francois Duchene, Kinhide Mushakoji, Henry
D. Owen

3. A Turning Point in North-South Economic Relations (1974)
Trilateral Task Force on Relations with Developing Countries
Rapporteurs: Richard N. Gardner, Saburo Okita, B. J. Udink

4. Directions for World Trade in the Nineteen-Seventies (1974)
Trilateral Task Force on Trade
Rapporteurs: Guido Colonna di Paliano, Philip H. Trezise,
Nobuhiko Ushiba

5. Energy: The Imperative for a Trilateral Approach (1974)
Trilateral Task Force on the Political and International
Implications of the Energy Crisis
Rapporteurs: John C. Campbell, Guy de Carmoy, Shinichi
Kondo

6. Energy: A Strategy for International Action (1974)
Trilateral Task Force on the Political and International
Implications of the Energy Crisis
Rapporteurs: John C. Campbell, Guy de Carmoy, Shinichi
Kondo

7. OPEC, the Trilateral World, and the Developing Countries: New
Arrangements for Cooperation, 1976-1980 (1975)
Trilateral Task Force on Relations with Developing Countries
Rapporteurs: Richard N. Gardner, Saburo Okita, B.J. Udink

(As of August 15, 1975)
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY: REPORT ON THE GOVERNABILITY OF

Postby admin » Mon Jul 27, 2015 8:07 am

PART 3 OF 3

THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION

GERARD C. SMITH
North American Chairman

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSK1
Director

CHRISTOPHER J. MAKINS
Deputy Director

MAX KOHNSTAMM
European Chairman

FRANCOIS DUCHENE
European Deputy Chairman

TAKESHI WATANABE
Japanese Chairman

GEORGE S. FRANKLIN
North American Secretary

TADASHI YAMAMOTO
Japanese Secretary

North American Members

*I. W. Abel, President, United Steelworkers of America

David M. Abshire, Chairman, Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies

Graham Allison, Professor of Politics, Harvard University

Doris Anderson, Editor, Chatelaine Magazine

John B. Anderson, House of Representatives

Ernest C. Arbuckle, Chairman, Wells Fargo Bank

J. Paul Austin, Chairman, The Coca-Cola Company

George W. Ball, Senior Partner, Lehman Brothers

Russell Bell, Research Director, Canadian Labour Congress

Lucy Wilson Benson, Former President, League of Women Voters of the United States

W. Michael Blumenthal, Chairman, Bendix Corporation

Robert W. Bonner, Q.C., Bonner & Fouks, Vancouver

Robert R. Bowie, Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs, Harvard University

John Brademas, House of Representatives

Harold Brown, President, California Institute of Technology

James E. Carter, Jr., Former Governor of Georgia

Lawton Chiles, United States Senate

Warren Christopher, Partner, O 'Melveny & Myers

Alden W. Clausen, President, Bank of America

William T. Coleman, Jr., Secretary, Department of Transportation

Barber B. Conable, Jr., House of Representatives

Richard N. Cooper, Frank Altschul Professor of International Economics, Yale University

John C. Culver, United States Senate

Gerald L. Curtis, Director, East Asian Institute, Columbia University

Lloyd N. Cutler, Partner, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering

Archibald K. Davis, Chairman, Wachovia Bank & Trust Company

Emmett Dedmon, Vice President and Editorial Director, Field Enterprises, Inc.

Louis A. Desrochers, Partner, McCuaig and Desrochers

Peter Dobell, Director, Parliamentary Center for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade

Hedley Donovan, Editor-in-Chief, Time, Inc.

Daniel J. Evans, Governor of Washington

Gordon Fairweather, Member of Parliament

Donald M. Fraser, House of Representatives

Richard N. Gardner, Henry L. Moses Professor of Law and International Organization, Columbia University

*Patrick E. Haggerty, Chairman, Texas Instruments

William A. Hewitt, Chairman, Deere & Company

Alan Hockin, Executive Vice President, Toronto-Dominion Bank

Richard Holbrooke, Managing Editor, Foreign Policy Magazine

Thomas L. Hughes, President, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

J. K. Jamieson, Chairman, Exxon Corporation

Lane Kirkland, Secretary-Treasurer, AFL-CIO

Sol M. Linowitz, Senior Partner, Coudert Brothers

Bruce K. MacLaury, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis

Claude Masson, Professor of Economics, Laval University

Paul W. McCracken, Edmund Ezra Day Professor of Business Administration, University of Michigan

Walter F. Mondale, United States Senate

Lee L. Morgan, President, Caterpillar Tractor Company

Kenneth D. Naden, President, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives

Henry D. Owen, Director, Foreign Policy Studies Program, The Brookings Institution

David Packard, Chairman, Hewlett-Packard Company

*Jean-Luc Pepin, President, Interimco, Ltd.

John H. Perkins, President, Continental Illinois National Bank & Trust Company

Peter G. Peterson, Chairman, Lehman Brothers

*Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor, Harvard University; former U.S. Ambassador to Japan

Elliot L. Richardson, United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom

*David Rockefeller, Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank

Robert V. Roosa, Partner, Brown Bros., Harriman & Company

William M. Roth, Roth Properties

William V. Roth, Jr., United States Senate

Carl T. Rowan, Columnist

*William W. Scranton, Former Governor of Pennsylvania

*Gerard C. Smith, Counsel, Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering

Anthony Solomon, Consultant

Robert Taft, Jr., United States Senate

Arthur R. Taylor, President, Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc.

Cyrus R. Vance, Partner, Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett

*Paul C. Warnke, Partner, Clifford, Warnke, Glass, McIlwain & Finney

Marina von N. Whitman, Distinguished Public Service Professor of Economics, University of Pittsburgh

Carroll L. Wilson, Professor of Management, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, MIT

Arthur M. Wood, Chairman, Sears, Roebuck & Company

Leonard Woodcock, President, United Automobile Workers

Executive Committee

Currently in Government Service

European Members


*Giovanni Agnelli, President, FIAT, Ltd.

Raymond Barre, Former Vice President of the Commission of the European Community

Piero Bassetti, President of the Regional Government of Lombardy

Georges Berthoin, Former Chief Representative of the Commission of the European Community to the U.K.

Kurt Birrenbach, Member of the Bundestag; President, Thyssen Vermogensverwaltung

Franco Bobba, Company Director, Turin

Frederick Boland, Chancellor, Dublin University; former President of the United Nations General Assembly

Rene Bonety, Representant de la CFDT

Jean-Claude Casanova, Director of Studies, Foundation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Paris

Umberto Colombo, Director of the. Committee for Scientific Policy, OECD

Guido Colonna di Paliano, President, La Rinascente; former member of the Commission of the European Community

Francesco Compagna, Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of the Mezzogiorno

The Earl of Cromer, Former British Ambassador to the United States; Partner, Baring Bros, and Co., Ltd.

Michel Debatisse, President de la F.N.S.E.A.

Paul Delouvrier, Chairman, French Electricity Board

Barry Desmond, Member of the Lower House of the Irish Republic

Fritz Dietz, President, German Association for Wholesale and Foreign Trade

Werner Dollinger, Member of the Bundestag

Herbert Ehrenberg, Member of the Bundestag

Pierre Esteva, Directeur General de l'U.A.P.

*Marc Eyskens, Commissary General of the Catholic University of Louvain

M. H. Fisher, Editor, Financial Times

Francesco Forte, Professor of Financial Sciences, University of Turin

Jacques de Fouchier, President, Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bos

Michel Gaudet, President de la Federation Francaise des Assurances

Sir Reay Geddes, Chairman, Dunlop Holdings, Ltd.

Giuseppe Glisenti, Director of General Affairs, La Rinascente

Lord Harlech, Former British Ambassador to the United States; Chairman, Harlech Television

Karl Hauenschild, President, German Chemical-Paper-Ceramics Workers' Union

Jozef P. Houthuys, President, Belgian Confederation of Christian Trade Unions

Daniel E. Janssen, Deputy Director General, Belgian Chemical Union, Ltd.

Pierre Jouven, President de Pechiney Ugine Kuhlmann

Karl Kaiser, Director of the Research Institute of the German Society for Foreign Policy

Michael Killeen, Managing Director, Industrial Development Authority, Irish Republic

Andre Kloos, Chairman of the Socialist radio and television network "V.A.R.A.;" former chairman of the Dutch Trade Union Federation

Max Kohnstamm, President, European Community Institute for University Studies

Baron Leon Lambert, President, Banque Lambert, Brussels

Count Otto Lambsdorff, Member of the Bundestag

Arrigo Levi, Director, La Stampa, Turin

Eugen Loderer, President, German Metal Workers' Union

*John Loudon, Chairman, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company

Evan Luard, Member of Parliament

Robert Marjolin, Former Vice President of the Commission of the European Community

Roger Martin, President de la Ciee Saint-Gobain-Pont-a-Mousson

Reginald Maudling, Member of Parliament; former Cabinet Minister

F. S. McFadzean, Managing Director, Royal Dutch Shell Group

Cesare Merlini, Director, Italian Institute for International Affairs

Alwin Munchmeyer, President, German Banking Federation

Ivar Norgaard, Minister of Foreign Economic Affairs and Nordic Affairs, Denmark

Michael O'Kennedy, Shadow Minister of Foreign Affairs, Irish Republic; former Cabinet Minister

Bernard Pagezy, President Directeur General de la Patemelle-Vie

Pierre Pescatore, Luxembourg; Member of the European Court of Justice

Sir John Pilcher, Former British Ambassador to Japan

Jean Rey, Former President of the Commission of the European Community

Julian Ridsdale, Member of Parliament; Chairman of the Anglo-Japanese Parliament Group

Sir Frank K. Roberts, Advisory Director of Unilever, Ltd.; Advisor on International Affairs to Lloyds of London

*Mary T. W. Robinson, Member of the Senate of the Irish Republic

Sir Eric Roll, Executive Director, S. G. Warburg and Company

Edmond de Rothschild, President de la Compagnie Financiere Holding

John Christian Sannes, Director, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs

Gerhard Schroder, Member of the Bundestag; former Foreign Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany

Roger Seydoux, Ambassador of France

Andrew Shonfield, Director, The Royal Institute of International Affairs

Hans-Gunther Sohl, President, Federal Union of German Industry; President of the Board of Directors of August Thyssen Hutte A.G.

Theo Sommer, Editor-in-Chief, Die Zeit

Myles Staunton, Member of the Lower House of the Irish Republic Thorvald Stoltenberg, International Affairs Secretary, Norwegian Trade Union Council

G. R. Storry, St. Antony s College, Oxford (Far East Centre)

J. A. Swire, Chairman, John Swire and Sons, Ltd.

*Otto Grieg Tidemand, Shipowner; former Norwegian Minister of Defense and Minister of Economic Affairs

A. F. Tuke, Chairman, Barclays Bank International

Heinz-Oskar Vetter, Chairman, German Federation of Trade Unions

Luc Vfauten, President, Kredietbank, Brussels

Otto Wolff von Amerongen, President, Otto Wolff A.G.; President, German Chamber of Commerce

*Sir Kenneth Younger, Former Director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs; former Minister of State for Foreign Affairs

*Sir Philip de Zulueta, Chief Executive, Antony Gibbs Holdings, Ltd.; former Chief Assistant to the British Prime Minister

Executive Committee

Currently in Government Service

Japanese Members


Isao Amagi, Director, Japan Scholarship Foundation; former Vice Minister of Education

Yoshiya Ariyoshi, Chairman, Nippon Yusen Kaisha

Yoshishige Ashihara, Chairman, Kansai Electric Power Company, Inc.

Toshio Doko, President, Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren)

Jun Eto, Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Shinkichi Eto, Professor of International Relations, Tokyo University

*Chujiro Fujino, Chairman, Mitsubishi Corporation

Shihtaro Fukushima, President, Kyodo News Service

Noboru Gotoh, President, TOKYU Corporation

Toru Hagiwara, Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Affairs; former Ambassador to France

Sumio Hara, Chairman, Bank of Tokyo, Ltd.

*Yukitaka Haraguchi, Chairman, All Japan Federation of Metal and Mining Industries Labor Unions

Norishige Hasegawa, President, Sumitomo Chemical Company, Ltd.

*Yoshio Hayashi, Member of the Diet

Teru Hidaka, Chairman, Yamaichi Securities Company, Ltd.

*Kazushige Hirasawa, Radio-TV news commentator, Japan Broadcasting Inc.

Hideo Hori, President, Employment Promotion Project Corporation

Shozo Hotta, Chairman, Sumitomo Bank, Ltd.

Shinichi Ichimura, Professor of Economics, Kyoto University

Hiroki Imazato, President, Nippon Seiko K.K.

Yoshihiro Inayama, Chairman, Nippon Steel Corporation

Kaoru Inoue, Chairman, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank, Ltd.

Rokuro Ishikawa, Executive Vice President, Kajima Corporation

Tadao Ishikawa, Professor, Department of Political Science, Keio University

Yoshizane Iwasa, Chairman of the Advisory Committee, Fuji Bank, Ltd.

Motoo Kaji, Professor of Economics, Tokyo University

Fuji Kamiya, Professor, Keio University

*Yusuke Kashiwagi, Deputy President, Bank of Tokyo, Ltd.; former Special Advisor to the Minister of Finance

Ryoichi Kawai, President, Komatsu Seisakusho, Ltd.

Katsuji Kawamata, Chairman, Nissan Motor Company, Ltd.

Kazutaka Kikawada, Chairman, Tokyo Electric Power Company, Inc.

Kiichiro Kitaura, President, Nomura Securities Company, Ltd.

Koji Kobayashi, President, Nippon Electric Company, Ltd.

Kenichiro Komai, Chairman, Hitachi, Ltd.

Fumihiko Kono, Counselor, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

Masataka Kosaka, Professor, Faculty of Law, Kyoto University

Fumihiko Maki, Principal Partner, Maki and Associates, Design, Planning and Development

Shigeharu Matsumoto, Chairman, International House of Japan, Inc.

Masaharu Matsushita, President, Matsushita Electric Company, Ltd.

Kiichi Miyazawa, Minister of Foreign Affairs

Akio Morita, President, SONY Corporation

Takashi Mukaibo, Professor, Faculty of Engineering, Tokyo University

*Kinhide Mushakoji, Director, Institute of International Relations, Sophia University

Yonosuke Nagai, Professor of Political Science, Tokyo Institute of Technology

Shigeo Nagano, President, Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry

Eiichi Nagasue, Member of the Diet

Toshio Nakamura, President, Mitsubishi Bank, Ltd.

Ichiro Nakayama, President, Japan Institute of Labor

Sohei Nakayama, President, Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency

Yoshihisa Ohjimi, Advisor, Arabian Oil Company, Ltd.; former Administrative Vice Minister of International Trade and Industry

*Saburo Okita, President, Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund

Kiichi Saeki, Director, Nomura Research Institute of Technology and Economics

Kunihiko Sasaki, Chairman, Fuji Bank, Ltd

*Ryuji Tzkeuchi, Advisor to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; former Ambassador to the United States

Eiji Toyoda, President, Toyota Motor Company, Ltd.

Seiji Tsutsumi, President, Seibu Department Store, Inc.

Kogoro Uemura, Honorary President, Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren)

Tadao Umezao, Professor of Ethnology, Kyoto University

*Nobuhiko Ushiba, Former Ambassador of Japan to the United States

Jiro Ushio, President, Ushio Electric Inc.

Shogo Watanabe, President, Nikko Securities Company, Ltd.

*Takeshi Watanabe; Chairman, Trident International Finance, Ltd., Hong Kong; former President, the Asian Development Bank

Kizo Yasui, Chairman, Toray Industries, Inc.

Executive Committee

Currently in Government Service


Michel J. Crozier is the founder and director of the Centre de Sociologie des Organisations in Paris, France as well as Senior Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is a regular consultant to the French government on matters of economic planning, education and public administration and has, since 1964, spent several semesters as a visiting Professor at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous important works in sociology his "La Societe Bloquee" having been translated as "The Stalled Society" by Viking Press in 1973. Prof. Crozier was President of the Societe Francaise de Sociologie in 1970-72.

Samuel P. Huntington is Frank G. Thomson Professor of Government at Harvard University and Associate Director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard, as well as editor of the quarterly journal, Foreign Policy. He is a Fellow on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. He was a member of the Council of the American Political Science Association (1969-1971) and a member of the Presidential Task Force on International Development (1969-1970), among many other high level posts. Another of his books appearing this year is "No Easy Choice: Political Participation in Developing Countries," co-authored with Joan M. Nelson.

Joji Watanuki is Professor of Sociology at Sophia University in Tokyo, Japan. Positions he has held include: Senior Scholar, Communication Institute, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii; Professor, Institute of International Relations, Sophia University, Tokyo; Rockefeller Foundation Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Princeton University; and Research Associate at the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of numerous studies in political sociology, published in Japan.

Jacket design by Paul Agule & Cato Johnson Associates

_______________

Notes:

i. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States declares that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." The due process clause is from the Fourteenth Amendment — "nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."

ii. The Interstate Commerce Act, passed by Congress in 1887, was aimed particularly at the major railroad companies. The Sherman Antitrust Act, passed in 1890, was aimed more generally.

iii. See Part A of this appendix.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Previous

Return to Reports

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

cron