[Guest Post] Technopols
[Guest Post] Technopols
This is a guest post by a friend of 1914 Reader. From time to time we will publish guest posts along with our comments if needed.
Tobi Lawson recently penned a thought-provoking series on institutions, people, and state capacity. State Capacity is a nebulous concept that is difficult to measure or explain how it is essential to development. What level is enough? What should a low-income country aspire to? There are some non-negotiable things such as the monopoly of violence, the ability to collect taxes, property rights or protection against expropriation, and the delivery of essential public services.
Here is one of my favourite sections from the book Structural Change, Fundamentals, and Growth: A Framework and Case Studies (Dani Rodrik et al):
Viet Nam was ranked 99th out of 185 countries in 2013 in the World Bank’s “Doing Business” indicators, “slightly behind China, ranked 91st, and ahead of such countries as Indonesia and Bangladesh.” Yet Ghana ranks 27 countries ahead of Viet Nam, in 64th place. According to the indicators, it was considerably easier to get credit in Ghana than in Viet Nam paying taxes was less of a hassle, insolvency was much more quickly resolved, and access to electricity was less problematic. In terms of how well investors are protected, there is a whopping 40-point difference between the two countries in favour of Ghana. Other cross-national indexes tell a similar story. The Cato Institute’s Index of Economic Freedom, which attempts to quantify the extent to which economies are free of government encumbrance, ranks Viet Nam in 96th place, compared with 71st place for Ghana (Gwartney, Lawson, and Hall 2012).
How did Ghana and Vietnam pan out? It seems like Ghana had better State Capacity than Vietnam looking at those indexes on the surface.
Some have attempted to eliminate the need for a Government that knows how to deliver through privatisation. Still, Nigeria and many other African countries have found out that this is just not possible. Containers still spend weeks in African ports even though the private sector now operates container terminals. Despite the wave of privatisations and concessions in the electricity sector, we still cannot deliver quality electricity or connect people to the grid.
As Tobi said, ideas are essential, and in the absence of “state capacity”, this is the only way to get going and deliver things. So who should be at the forefront of the development bargain needed to generate and implement the required ideas? Nigeria is at a critical moment, and very soon, we will start analysing the cabinet and looking for the technocrats versus the politicians. This dichotomy is a mistake.
Introducing “Technopols”
This was something coined by Jorge Dominguez and Richard Feinberg but popularised by John Williamson. Who is a Technopol? According to Williamson, Technopols are those technocrats who have taken the risk of accepting political appointments with the responsibility that entails. But how are they different from Technocrats? A Technopol combines the ability to judge what institutions and policies are needed to further reform objectives and the ability to persuade others to accept those policies. In essence, a Technopol is a Technocrat with deft political skills.
For example, your finance minister should ideally be a Technopol and your Chief Economic Adviser a Technocrat. Manmohan Singh of India and the lesser-known Yin Chung-Jung of Taiwan are famous examples of Technopols.
Once the new government announces its cabinet, this might be a useful framework to analyse the choices: who are the Technopols?
How can Technopols succeed?
Borrowing heavily from José Piñera Echenique — a Chilean economist and one of the famous Chicago Boys — the following conditions are necessary for Technopols to succeed in Nigeria:
The Federal Executive Cabinet must consist of a team with a coherent view of what needs to be done.
The President must have a vision of history and be able to lift his sight beyond the next election.
That big idea must drive the entire reform agenda. You don’t need to implement it all at once, but the plan must be comprehensive, and every single department in Government should be driving it.
The ability to appeal directly to the public and mobilise public support is critical, particularly in a democracy. For example, fuel subsidy removal is going to be painful, but you can roll it out with maybe a kerosene-to-LPG conversion program targeted to ramp up public support.
What will make Technopols’ job difficult?
Nigeria is not experiencing the type of economic crisis that typically creates conditions under which it is possible to roll out extensive reforms. Furthermore, the incoming government did not campaign on a program of difficult reforms, so there is no public mandate yet to execute those reforms, especially with a mandate won with less than 40 percent of the votes cast in a very low turnout election.
The new government will have no honeymoon period given that it is the same party as that of the outgoing government while the opposition remains highly motivated and is not yet fragmented.
So to recap, we need an urgent elite/development bargain to arrive at the big idea(s) for Nigeria. This bargain might help us to start delivering in the absence of significant state capacity. We need “Technopols” to be at the forefront of the design and implementation of that big idea.
Here is a question to close this short piece: going by the above definition, can you name 2 Technopols in Nigerian governments since the return of democracy in 1999?
This piece was inspired by The Political Economy of Policy Reform, edited by John Williamson
I really liked the example used in the piece where the finance minister is a Technopol while the Chief Economic Adviser is a technocrat. The minister’s job description, in such a scenario, will include providing political cover for the technocrat to do their job without fear or worry. All sounds intuitive but Nigeria presents some unique challenges. By definition, the Technopol needs to be equally skilled in politics and have an understanding of how the machinery of government works.
The issue, for me, is that politics is an all-consuming affair in Nigeria. In practical terms, what a Technopol means is someone who attends a late-night political meeting and then gets back home in the morning to read policy papers in detail. It doesn’t sound easy and most Nigerian officials will specialise in one or the other (usually politics).
But the idea is the correct one and serves to illustrate just how difficult the task of changing Nigeria’s trajectory is. And who said anything good comes easy? (Feyi)
Technopol is a brilliant idea and an imminently useful one. It is essential for technocrats to be politically informed and sensitive. I could not have said it better than economist Alan Blinder (you can read the whole essay here);
I think of real-world economic policy as being made in a circus with four rings: substance, politics, message, and process.
As I have already suggested, economists often confine themselves to the first ring, substance — what’s really in a policy, and what are its likely effects? Now, I’m an economist, so I naturally think that the economist’s way of thinking about various social and economic problems is more or less the right way, one that will lead you to good policy most of the time. So my criticism is not that we do a bad job in the substance ring, but that we ignore all the other rings and consequently have precious little influence on the policies that emerge.
I do not completely agree that the technocrat vs politician discourse on the cabinet is a distraction. I do think that technical competence in their portfolio and policy experience should be prioritised in appointing people to some cabinet positions. I do not wish to make this a hard rule, but I am biased toward this position because we generally do not have the staffingculture of supporting appointees with a broad set of technical people.
One of the major errors of the outgoing government is the reduction of the finance minister’s role to a budget and accounting position while major fiscal policies are being made at the central bank. And with all due respect, I do not think Madam Minister fully grasped that she is in an important economic policy role. (Tobi)