The cult of incompetence

by Émile Faguet

First, then, we see how most of the candidates chosen by the mandatories of the people are incapable; others who are chosen in spite of their capacity are men of indifferent character; and character, we must admit, in all or nearly all public careers is a necessary part of efficiency.

There remains a small number of meritorious persons who have never identified themselves with current political opinions, and who have slipped into public employment, thanks to some brief moment of inattention on the part of the politicians. These intruders sometimes get on by the mere force of circumstances, but they never reach the highest posts which are always reserved, as indeed is proper and fitting, for those in whom the people has put its trust.

This is how the people administers as well as governs through the intervention of the representative system, dictating to ministers the policy and the details of government.

—I realise, some one here will object, that administrators are nominated by the people, but I do not see how the affairs of the country are actually administered by the people.—

Well, I will tell you. In the first place, by nominating officials it is already far on the road to controlling them, for it infuses into the body of the permanent civil service the spirit of the people to the exclusion of every other source of inspiration, and effectually prevents the civil service from becoming an aristocracy as otherwise it has always a tendency to do. Next, the people does not confine itself to electing its administrators, it watches and spies on them, keeps them in leading strings, and just as the popular representatives dictate to ministers the details of government, so also they dictate to administrators the details of administration.

A préfet, a procureur-général, an engineer-in-chief under democratic rule is a much harassed man. He has to play his own hand against his ministerial chief and the deputies of his district. He ought to obey the minister, but he has also to obey the deputies of the district which he administers. In this connection curious points arise and situations not a little complicated. The préfet owes obedience to the deputies and to the minister, and the minister obeys the deputies, and it might therefore have been supposed that there was only one will, the will which the préfet obeyed. But what the minister has to obey is the general will of the popular representatives, and it is this will that he transmits for the allegiance of the préfet; but then the préfet finds himself colliding against the individual wills of the deputies of his district. The result is what we may call conflicts of obedience which have extraordinary interest for the psychologist, but which are less agreeable for the préfet, the engineer-in-chief, or the procureur-général.

We note then, in the first place, how everything concurs to make the representative of the popular will as incompetent as he is omnipotent. Incompetent he undoubtedly is, as we have already seen, to start with, and if he were not so already, he would certainly become so by reason of the trade or rather of the miscellaneous assortment of trades which are thrust upon him. The surest way of making a man incompetent is to make him Jack-of-all-trades, for then he will be master of none. In the next place, the representative of the popular will and spirit, besides his trade of legislator, has to cross-examine ministers and to dictate to them the details of their duty, that is to say, he has to busy himself in all home and foreign politics. He has also to administer, by choosing and watching administrators and by controlling and inspiring their actions. Without saying anything of the small individual services which it is his interest to render to his constituents and which his constituents are by no means backward in demanding, he looks on himself as responsible for the conduct of things in general. He becomes a sort of universal foreman, not a man, but a man-orchestra, a busybody, so busy that he can apply himself to nothing. He cannot study, or think, or investigate, or, to speak accurately, acquire any sense at all.

If he be efficient in some particular subject, when he enters on his public career, he becomes hopelessly inefficient in all subjects after a few years of public life, and then, void of all individuality, he remains nothing but a public man, that is, a man representing the popular will and never thinking, or able to think, of anything but how to make that will prevail.

And, to press the point again, this is all that is wanted of him; for can you conceive a representative of the popular will, who had somehow preserved a measure of competence in financial or judicial administration, who would prefer, before other candidates, not a political partisan but a man of merit, knowledge and aptitude, and who would even approve in an administrator not acts of political partiality but acts that are just and in conformity with the interests of the state? Why! Such a man would be a detestable servant in the eyes of democracy.

Yes, and I have known such a man. He was not wanting in intelligence or wit and he was honest. A lawyer, he was naturally interested in politics. For local reasons he had failed to be elected as deputy or as senator. Tired of fighting, he obtained a judicial appointment by the influence of his political friends. He became president of court. A case was brought before him where the accused, a person not perhaps of altogether blameless life, was clearly not guilty of any indictable offence. The accused, however, a former préfet, appointed by a government now become very unpopular, and known as a reactionary and an aristocrat, was pursued by the animosity of the whole democratic population of the town and province. The president, in the face of openly expressed hostility in court, acquitted him. In the evening the president remarked, not without a touch of humour: "There, that serves them right for not making me a senator!" In other words: "If they had accepted me as a politician, they would have made me a fool, or at least paralysed my efficiency. But they would not have it; so here I am, a man who knows the law and applies it. So much the worse for them!"