”America In Decay”

Francis Fukuyama har en läsvärd essä i nya Foreign Affairs om USAs kris. Han inleder med en analys av US Forest Service och leder därefter i bevis att dess administrativa inkompetens är representativ för den sjunkande kvalitet på amerikanska regeringsorgan som pågått under lång tid.

Han pekar på två problem. Det ena är politiken. Intressegrupper har makten över politiken och politikerna vill inte skära av penningströmmen från dessa. Det krävs en i dag osannolik reformallians för att få bukt med detta problem.

Det andra är att det saknas goda idéer. Hittills har man sökt komma tillrätta med problemen (som ju alla ser) genom att öka transparens och demokratiskt deltagande.

 This happened at a national level in the 1970s, for example, as reformers pushed for more open primaries, greater citizen access to the courts, and round-the-clock media coverage of Congress, even as states such as California expanded their use of ballot initiatives to get around unresponsive government. But as the political scientist Bruce Cain has pointed out, most citizens have neither the time, nor the background, nor the inclination to grapple with complex public policy issues; expanding participation has simply paved the way for well-organized groups of activists to gain more power. The obvious solution to this problem would be to roll back some of the would-be democratizing reforms, but no one dares suggest that what the country needs is a bit less participation and transparency.

The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are, the decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action.