The cult of incompetence

by Émile Faguet

Here then we have the people interfering influentially in the appointment of the civil service. It continues "to do everything itself." Complaints are raised on all sides of this confusion of politics with the business of administration, and indeed we hear continually that politics pervade everything. But what is the reason of this? It is the principle of the national sovereignty asserting itself. Politics, political power, means the will of the majority of the nation, and is it not fitting that the will of the majority should make itself felt—indeed need we be surprised that it insists on making itself felt—in the details of public business, as administered by the permanent staff, as well as elsewhere? The ideal of democracy is that the people should elect its own rulers, or, if this is not its ideal, it is its idea, and this is what it does under a parliamentary democracy through the intervention of its representatives.

This is all very well, but efficiency has been dealt another blow. For how is a candidate to recommend himself for an office to which appointment is made by the people and its representatives? By his merit? His chiefs and his fellow civil servants might be good judges of that; but the people or its representatives are much less capable of judging.

"The people is admirably fitted to choose those to whom it has to entrust some part of its authority"; so Montesquieu; we must now examine this saying a little more closely. What reasons does the philosopher give? "The people can only be guided by things of which it cannot be ignorant, and which fall, so to speak, within its own observation. It knows very well that a man has experience in war, and that he has had such and such successes; it is therefore quite capable of electing a general. It knows that a judge is industrious, that many of those who are litigants in his court go away satisfied, and that he has never been convicted of bribery, and this is enough to warrant it in appointing to any judicial office. It has been impressed by the magnificence or riches of some citizen, and this fits it for appointing an ædile. All these things are matters of fact about which the man in the street has better knowledge than the king in his palace."

This passage, I confess, does not appear to be convincing. Why should not a king in his palace know of the riches of a financier, the reputation of a judge or the success of a colonel just as well as the man in the street? There is no difficulty in getting information about such things. The people knows that such an one was always a good judge and such another always an excellent officer. Therefore it is qualified to appoint a general or a high-court judge or other officer of the law. So be it, but for the selection of a young judge or a young and untried officer what special source of information has the people? I cannot find that it has any. In this very argument, Montesquieu limits the competence of the people to the election of the great chiefs, and of the most exalted magistrates, and indeed further confines the popular prerogative in this matter to assigning an office and career to one who has already given proof of his capacity. But for putting the competent man for the first time in the place where he is wanted, how has the people any special instinct or information? Montesquieu shows that the people can recognise ability when it has been proved, but he says nothing to show that it recognises readily nascent, unproved talent. The argument of Montesquieu is not here conclusive.

He has been led astray, it seems to me, by his desire to present his argument antithetically (using the term in its logical sense). What he really wished to prove was not so much the truth of the proposition that he was then advancing, but the falsity of quite another proposition. The question for him, the question which he had in his mind, was as follows: Is the people capable of governing the state, of taking measures beforehand, and of understanding and solving the difficulties of home and foreign affairs? By no means. Then is it fit to elect its own magistrates? Well, it might do that. Thus he had been led away by this antithesis so far as to say: Able to govern?—Certainly not! Able to elect its own magistrates? Admirably! The explanation of the whole paragraph which I have just quoted lies in the conclusion, which runs as follows: "All these things are matters of fact about which the man in the street has better knowledge than the king in his palace. But can the people pursue a policy and know how to avail itself of the places, occasions, and times when action will be profitable? No! certainly not."

The truth is that the people is a little better fitted to choose a magistrate than to undertake a policy for the gradual humbling of the House of Austria. But not very much so, as it is only a little more difficult to humble the House of Austria, than it is to discover the man who is able to do it.

The masses are particularly incapable of making initial appointments and of giving promotion in the early stages of a career to those who deserve it. Yet in a democracy this is what they are constantly doing.

Again, by what means has the candidate for civil service employment, who is favoured by the people and its representatives, earned their approval? By his merit, of which the people and its representatives are very bad judges? No! By what then? By his conformity to the general views of the people; that is, by the subserviency of his political opinions. The political opinions of a candidate for civil service employment are the only things which mark him out to the popular choice because they are the only subjects on which the people is a good judge.

Yes, but the subserviency of his political opinions may be combined with real merit. True, but this is a mere matter of chance. The people is not, perhaps, in this particular matter consciously hostile to efficiency, rather it is indifferent, or ignores the qualification altogether. Indeed, there is no great compliment paid to efficiency in such transactions.

Here is what inevitably happens. The candidate for a permanent appointment who is not conscious of possessing any particular merit is not slow to realise that it is by his political opinions that he will succeed, and he naturally professes those which are wanted. The candidate who is conscious of merit, very often knowing very well what less meritorious competitors are about, and not wishing to be beaten, also professes the same useful opinions. There we have that "infection of evil," which M. Renouvier has explained so admirably in his Science de la Morale.