The Capacity to Act

Abstract

My theme is the capacity to act of governments in democratic political systems. Governmental capabilities face two challenges according to recent analyses. The first, the socioeconomic and political integration of OECD countries, entails a loss of autonomy and efficacy in domestic policymaking. ‘The times have passed by in which national economies could be steered by national economic policy’ (Scharpf, 1994a: 60). Michael Zürn holds that ‘the national state has lost its efficacy in the domains of security, culture, communication and welfare’ (Zürn, n.d.: 233–7). Another author argues that ‘the nation-state has become an unnatural, even dysfunctional, unit for organising human activity and managing economic endeavour in a borderless world’ (Ohmae, 1994: 78). The second challenge varies between countries and concerns the dominant modes of political decision-making. In some countries most decisions are taken in the course of bargaining, leading to grand coalitions and compromise; in other countries the dominant mode is majority decision-making within a competitive party system (cf. Lehmbruch, 1976: 12). In those countries where bargaining rather than majority decision prevails, decision quality is not necessarily worse, but the system of decision-making is cumbersome and there is some danger that it may be easily paralysed by conflicts which arise in the bargaining process (Scharpf, 1992: 25). Particularly in times of rapid social and economic change — and this applies to the last two decades — this inertia and susceptibility to bargaining breakdown might have fatal consequences for crisis management and policy reform.