The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of Government.

Roy, Jeffrey

The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of Government

By ALASDAIR ROBERTS. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp. 207, bibliographical references, index.

Alasdair Roberts provides both an insightful and timely examination of the global political economy and its increasingly unstable institutional architecture. The book is insightful in its dissection of what he views as the institutional malaise that has now been only all-too-well exposed by recent and ongoing crises. It is thus timely in terms of its applicability to such crises and the potential consequences and choices that fie ahead for policy makers and citizenries.

Roberts begins by sketching out the basis for what he terms "the logic of discipline," which is essentially an overriding political philosophy, highly technocratic in nature, and deeply sceptical of the capacity of democratic processes and politics to provide stable conditions for both economic growth and fiscal and monetary rigour. At the heart of the matter is a shared belief among what may be regarded as an elite class in the necessity to constrain action via formalized legal means, on the one hand, and to limit it, on the other hand, via a complementary set of autonomous actors who are more or less free from direct political intervention and control.

The conceptual roots for such thinking are twofold. First, Roberts invokes a more classic political science orientation and the "Crisis of Democracy," presented in 1975 by Samuel Huntington, Michel Crozier, and Joji Watanuki as an excess of political faith and participation (leading to excessive demands and unavoidable disappointment in results). Second, from a more economic orientation, compounding and complementing such scepticism of active and open politics, is the theory of public choice, casting politicians and bureaucrats as self-serving and thus in need of competitive and market-oriented constraints. He then traces the evolution of this paradigm over a thirty-year time span, 1978-2008, which was abruptly (though possibly temporarily) shattered by the onset of the global financial crisis and the ensuing contagion that now embroils much of Europe.

Following his presentation of the theoretical underpinnings of the underlying discipline at play--underpinnings framed as a set of tensions playing out globally between democratization and discipline--a number of chapter-based case studies illustrate the logic at work. Picking up on the invocation of this central topic in the introduction, the author continues in the first chapter with an examination of central banks and their shift away from political control toward operational autonomy (a move designed to facilitate a narrow and unrelenting pursuit of price stability, a form of discipline viewed as necessary in the aftermath of the economic and inflationary turmoil of the 1970s). The status and role of central banks have, of course, become topical almost everywhere and nowhere more so than in Europe where the European Central Bank is at the heart of debates surrounding the savaging or salvaging (depending on one's perspective) of the Euro. Alas, more on Europe later.

Other case studies in the chapters that follow continue through the realms of treasury, taxation, transportation, regulatory and judicial review, and new infrastructure development, and provide further credence, according to Roberts, of an over-riding agenda to remove the politics from public authorities in the name of economic and fiscal discipline and the efficiency gains that result both for the public sector authorities and societies as a whole. Importantly, however, the rising power and stature of the Treasury, or Finance Department (the Canadian example of Paul Martin is invoked), reflect the imposition of this discipline within the state, thereby reversing Wildavsky's alternative logic of the invariable trumping of spenders over guardians that is said to occur typically through openly contested democratic venues.

Thus, Roberts' logic of discipline must be viewed in the context of changes both within and outside formal state confines. In one sense, this illustrates a limitation of the book: namely, its partial exploration of governance dynamics within government without much acknowledgement or examination of the parallel pursuit of new public management as an internal application of the logic he applies primarily to a wider and more global institutional order. Despite this latter focus, the case studies are largely of national bodies and their governing apparatuses. Given Roberts' own background, it is unfortunate that more attention is not devoted to the inner workings of government in response to the widening acceptance of a political economic order that, while stressing market liberalization and state limitations, also espouses public sector reforms to, in essence, run government more like private industry.

Indeed, these tensions are at the forefront of Roberts' chapter on infrastructure and public-private partnerships--a tool of choice for proponents of the logic of discipline. While Roberts is quite correct to lament the excessive secrecy of such dealings (i.e., attempts to mitigate if not block political oversight and democratic accountability via contractual means), much has changed in recent years since the creation of such vehicles (known as private finance initiatives) in the UK thirty years ago. Certainly, any objective review of this burgeoning literature from which Roberts draws quite selectively--leads to some recognition that public-private collaboration and models of shared and open governance have at least come to rival the methodology espoused initially by those seeking to constrain and circumvent democracy.

Much as it was politicians who chose to render central banks independent, elected officials have been responsible for the advent of public-private partnerships and, as Roberts acknowledges, their pursuit has long since transcended partisan boundaries. While my point is that they have become more nuanced (and thus perhaps more balanced and effective--witness the relative success of such models in underpinning the Vancouver-Whistler 2010 Olympics, albeit not without controversy and contestation), Roberts' main interest remains at a higher order. His view, by contrast, is that the expansion of the use of such vehicles reflects a widespread adaptation of his logic of discipline.

De-politicization is thus one of Roberts' "three ill-chosen words," along with autonomy and discipline (leading to the shortcomings of the logic presented and its resulting institutional order). As the aforementioned discussion illustrates, the nexus between de-politicization and autonomy is well examined by Roberts, even if the dynamics and relative power of the state may be underplayed somewhat (a charge admittedly much easier to make today than even a few short years ago when this book was written, as Roberts acknowledges in his Afterword).

Yet this third and perhaps most central word--discipline--highlights the crux of the matter for Roberts in terms of institutional arrangements and policy prescriptions. Here, too, I wished the author had pushed further his own conclusions and consequences for reform. Roberts rightly distinguishes between discipline and legitimacy, pointing out that building the latter is "slow and complex." For example, in Russia, Putin may have succeeded, at least partially, in imposing discipline (distinct from but not unrelated to Roberts' worldview), whereas his legitimacy is altogether a different matter.

A bit further west, the turmoil in Europe's financial system is the most powerful laboratory of Roberts' analysis. The author underscores Germany's inflationary scars from the 1920s as a factor that cannot be ignored in understanding the country's stance at present. Indeed a thoughtful November 2011 profile of German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine supports this view: it explains her resistance to expanding the policy repertoire of the European Central Bank to provide greater stimulus and debt relief as a German variant of Roberts' logic of discipline rooted deeply within German political culture. The proposed response--to create an even tighter fiscal union backed by formalized treaties lends further credence to Roberts' assertions regarding his logic of discipline, as does Italy's 2011 government of technocrats, who completely displaced elected officials, at least temporarily, as well as parallel proposals to create a European Department of Finance (to whom national budgetary authorities would cede at least some power).

While some Euro-enthusiasts would counter that such proposals for more European governance are precisely meant to counteract the logic of which Roberts speaks, time will tell. The French presidential and parliamentary elections in the spring of 2012 will be an important test case of both political leaders and citizenries in terms of proposals for reform and the limits (or not) of Roberts' logic of discipline. Whether the European project supports or refutes Roberts' hypothesized political-economic order is an open question, bur the broad and most central lesson of European integration since the Second World War seems intact: closer economic ties require political architectures to guide them forward (perhaps only a temporary though immensely consequential flaw of the single currency project that encapsulates much of Roberts' critique).

Roberts' Afterword to the book, written in the midst of unfolding European drama, proceeds with caution. He acknowledges not only that the taste for order and discipline has been destabilized (which may or may not be a bad thing, since European integration is now hotly and openly debated), but also that any world dictated by economic liberalization and financial integration is bound to pursue the logic of discipline with vigour. And herein lies the centrality of the European experiment for Roberts' broader claims and the implications for the wider world as this century unfolds: can democracy find ways to exist transnationally and co-exist with market liberalization, an increasingly technological project that has sought to impose the order so well described and dissected by Roberts in his book? Stay tuned ...

Jeffrey Roy is Professor, School of Public Administration, Dalhousie University.