There is no answer to this question.  Corrupt institutions corrupt all but the most saintly, and wicked people can find opportunities even in the best institutions to do their wicked things.   And virtuous people can struggle even against the worst institutions.

Thank you Philip for the insightful answer; at least you have provided an answer which suggests there is an answer to the question. Much appreciated, thank you sir.

To streamline the discussion, i hope this paper will be of much relevance.

‘Strong Personalities’ and ‘Strong Institutions’ Mediated by a ‘Strong Third Force’: Thinking ‘Systems’ in Corruption Control." Public Organization Review (2016): 1-18.

A first step is to have not only "strong men" but also "strong women".  Gender equality and active policies to promote it are also the basics of ethics.  Strong institutions to achieve greater equality will also achieve greater ethics.  Existing knowledge from the managerial suggest that women may be somewhat less prone to corruption, but there is need for research about women in politics, not only in egalitarian Norway, which is low corruption from the start, but also in countries with high corruption rates. 

WEBER! Institutions/norms/

You need strong leaders to make strong institutions that limit the power of strong leaders ;-). Education and training are also extremely important, as is a strong code of ethics. Intrinsic motivation is as important as external control. These are, in very simple form, the lessons I learned when studying anti-corruption in Taiwan by interviewing officials, investigators, and, well, the other side (just published an article in the Journal of Democracy that sums up some of these insights).

Strong institutions are needed to a large extent because strong men may come and go but institutions will remain. strong men also have a tendency to derailbut instititions cannot derail once firmly established.

Thank you senior colleagues for the inisightful comments given, from what i am gathering so far, it means countries need both strong men and strong institutions where strong men is conceptualized to mean publc officials with integrity. In order for public officials and institutions to work satisfactorily, there is a need for 'a third force' which will catalyze the action. In the paper below, the author develops a "corruption control tripod", a framework which hinges on three main legs [ strong men, strong institutions and strong third force} . It is an approach to corruption control which discusses these three with empirical examples and indicators. please see the paper below

Yeboah-Assiamah, E. (2016). ‘Strong Personalities’ and ‘Strong Institutions’ Mediated by a ‘Strong Third Force’: Thinking ‘Systems’ in Corruption Control. Public Organization Review, 1-18.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11115-016-0351-5

Both. We need strong and complementary institutions (checks and balances) - legitimate and with the support of the people - but ultimately, our institutions are only as strong as those we entrust to serve them. Edited to add: Brexit is a contemporary study in institutions, democracy, and the public interest. My conception of institutions is also broader than public (or private) organizations.

Emmanuel,  I appreciate the semantic difficulties that this discussion faces and I need to address this before saying any more.... The word  'institutions' in the context of your question would appear to refer to quite specifically to organisational administrative and governing structures in the public domain.  If you are in agreement then what I now say is relevant to this.

The 'strength' or rather efficacy, resilience and durability of any of these public organs of service delivery is  itself a function of the strength and presence of many other institutions of a completely different nature.  In fact institutions of many different natures.  These institutions extend right back into the 'factors' which other commentators here have identified.  These include the norms and values which are prevalent within the society, as well as the mechanisms for monitoring, calling to account, sanctioning and the inherent recognition of responsibility and 'honour'as personal qualities to be admired.  All of these contribute , for each society - defined at whatever granularity you s=choose, their 'institutional landscape'.

Like the human body, no part is greater or less than any other.  All are required for proper functioning at the expected level of efficacy, durability and resilience.  A society cannot accept local cheating, nepotism, favouritism and exploitation and demand saintly conduct at higher levels without accepting one's own individual hypocrisy and its consequences.... in a properly functioning democracy.  Of which I know not of any..

The reason is that the day-to-day imposition, sanctioning or acceptance, of these societal institutions, which I have extended the discussion to include, is arbitrated by the position an individual sits in in relationship to local administrative power structures - both formal and informal. These relationships are essentially reflections of the circumstances and nature of the economic relationships which exist within the local society, or community.  In aggregation at higher domains of societal grouping the effect of consistency in the institutional landscapes across the local levels upon which they stand is to amplify and strengthen their chief characteristics.   If local institutions are instrumental in imposing and maintaining exploitative economic relationships, irresponsible office bearers and  a lack of fear of accountability for injustices committed then these will be amplified as they are aggregated.

This does not need peer reviewed papers to know the truth of.  Consider your own experiences and conscience.  Similarly, it is almost self-evident  - though some factuals would be good to see -  that this argument suggests that those institutions of society which arbitrate the allocation and holding of private property, and which arbitrate the access that each individual has to those opportunities he needs to apply and benefit from the whole of his own efforts, skills and knowledge  - on any equal footing with every other member of that society, are key in determining the relationships of power which are inevitably the causal root, in almost every case, of the the institutional failings of which we speak.

It is equally clear, therefore, that the correction of such wide ranging and axiomatic failings in the components of our 'institutional landscapes' address failings in elements which are foundational to the social paradigm, or cultural hegemonies, within which we have our existence and in which we live our lives, dream our dreams and build our hopes and expectations for the future.

A small amount of further examination suggests that since we widely identify and express a dissatisfaction with the endemic existing of these ills with which the question is concerned then perhaps a fundamental disconnect exists between our prevailing 'norms' and 'values', and hence our expectations, and those which are intrinsic to the characteristics of those more formal and less dynamically responsive elements of the 'institutional landscapes' within which live our lives.

This 'institutional lag' is inevitable unless there is within our 'institutional' paradigm a requirement for those institutions by which the dynamism of the whole landscape is facilitated in a way which, whilst being considerate of the passing wisdoms of the past is still enabled to embrace the future...  as we as individuals and our societies evolve under the influence of our developing technologies, knowledge, metaphysical qualities, local and planetary environments and cosmological neighbourhood.

We do not yet have this, in the public domain.  Asking your question... again and again... will help to bring that new paradigm forth from the nooks and crannies of the socio-economic heterodoxy.  At present there is a well recognised void... a vacuum of reason and principles.  It must be filled.

Robin

Strong men initially conceptualize strong institutions and then these institutions carry forward the thinking of such people. 

ISRO - Indian Space Research Organisation, established by a visionary Dr. Vikram Sarabhai in the sixties has borne fruits over the years. Recently - a few days back - ISRO launched 20 satellites in the space - 17 belonging to other countries and the rest Indian. 

It was visualized at a time when India was facing many other problems as well but Dr. Sarabhai's vision ensured that in this age of communication India did not fall behind.

So today not only we are building satellites but also putting not only our but other countries' satellites in space as well. 

Vibha,  ISRO is a good example of an 'institutional organisation' and is something which has a expression in some physical way but many 'strong institutions' are much more subtle.  Those that are of this second less physical form are often behavioural and to the extent that they are not the product of a social consensus but of the philosophy of one strong man, or of a 'strong' group -- i.e. social minority elements with disproportionate social power to influence or even coerce - then those institutions have very great power to influence the perceptions of well-being across very large populations and even globally.  As an example of such an institution, and one which continues to undergo institutional change at this moment - one hopes, is the 'caste' system in India.  Another would be the institution of the 'universal dignity and rights of every human individual' formalised for the first time in the 'teachings' of the nascent United Nations Organisation’s Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.  The one is causing change, one might argue, in the other. 

Other examples are the anti-Semitism of the 'strong man' Adolf Hitler, institutionalised within the National Socialist policies of 1930's Germany, and the institutionalised marginalisation of and the land expropriations from the Palestinian peoples by the Jewish settlers in Palestine which reflected were introduced largely by the actions of the Polish settler and 'strong man' David Grun following the 1948 Arab-Isreali War in Arab Palestine. (ref: David Grun took the Zionist name.. David Ben-Gurion).

So one can see that history suggests it is neither strong organisational institutions nor 'strong men', causing the  institutionalising of certain behaviours into the norms and values of societies, which are necessary in promoting 'public sector' ethics.

I would argue that what is required is an institutional structure that divorces all ethics, private or public, from the influence of any 'strong man' in which specific institutions are dedicated, resourced and ring-fenced from all interference within a strong and clearly worded, unambiguous, fully encompassing constitution which itself is the supreme authority and whose contents are arbitrated by and protected by a Constitutional Court, sitting above all, subject only to change by an authentically self-evident 80% majority of individuals constituting that society.

Subsidiary institutions in protection of the constitution would include, absolute allegiance of all military and civilian personnel and their structures to the constitution itself and not to the government which is an institutional service provider.  As are the courts and local government, electoral management, education, welfare, health, fiscal and economic management other institutions of societal monitoring and control.  A global community of societies, with such institutional structures, who actively engage in and express allegiance to a global meta-constitution, endorsed in the constitution of each society, and which expresses the 'meta-norms' and 'meta-values'  of humanity as a whole, and is confined to their monitoring the implementations of, defending against abrogations of and protecting populations from local abuses of these globally endorsed behavioural principles through its own institutions -similar in type and structure,  'mutatis mutandis', to those supportive structures and missions of those 'higher' institutions which protect societies within their own regional domains... and with similar and protected empowered powers of monitoring, censure and defence of populations whose regional societal institutions and 'strong men' or groups act in ways, or cause populations to act in ways, which are not consistent with those global behavioural  'meta-institutions'. As illustration, one might imagine the UN Security Council being replaced 'in toto' by a 'Constitutional Court of Humanity' - with judges elected by and from amongst the constitutional judiciaries of all of the regions containing the human population

There is much work to do in defining goals, methodologies, institutions and processes which may be consistent with the meta- norms and meta-values which our international fora are even now struggling towards --- against the stultifying weight and often viciously reactive actions of interests vested in the powers bequeathed to me by our less than admirable pasts.  This narrative is very slowly self-assembling but until it becomes self-aware as a intellectual  'movement' there will not sufficient cohesiveness and focus for sufficient coherence to develop amongst them to accelerate the slow pace of the present evolution.  Until that requirement is pro-actively addressed by 'our' inter-communication and exchanges ad collaborations, at more than a polemic or career-protecting level, then this 'diaspora of the future' will remain vulnerable to sudden assassination by the institutions of the status quo.

Robin

Read the book Why Nations Fail.

I will argue from a political will perspective that institutions without the will of  top elites to champion the course of ethics  or public sector integrity will always remain a mirage. I will suggest you read something about Lee Kuan Yew, the man behind Singapore's meritocracy and public integrity/ethics outcomes 

To what extent is one right to say that a country does not need strong men but strong institutions in promoting public sector ethics?

I would like to register wonderful contributions of all members. My answer certainly is just a short one. In governance human resources precede institutions as per institutions definitions, which of course are not contested. There may prevail many definitions but the generality is that we talk of organizations/government structures/ corporations. Weak men (human resource) can jeopardize the entire country even if the institutions are are well designed and created. Equally good laws administered by weak men(human resources), will the country into chaotic situation. Hence, even the creation of good institutions depends on strong men. Therefore competence based recruitment, promotion and appointment is the answer to realizing strong men in our institutions.

a country needs strong institutions allright but institutions mean also strong men, that is people that have incorporate the rules that go with imodern nstitutions (decentration, indifference, procedural objectivity, self-constraint...all stuff that you find in the litterature and history about how modernity has been build up).

J.P Jacob clarifies well the issue we have in the present, as opposed to the hoped for Utopia I described in which the behavioural institutions which inform our individual actions are evolved sufficiently.   JP summarises, to a great degree, the main contribution of Norman, Samuel and Miguel (Miguel; Why Nations Fail sits on my desk as I write).  Here we have limited our interpretation of a 'strong man' to one who is willing and able to lead people into personal commitment to and the application of ethical standards which reflect the norms and values that society in general aspires to. We can then appreciate that such a strong man is needed in situations where individual behaviour of the operatives of organisational institutions do not currently reflect a commitment to those behavioural institutions.  He will  facilitate the proper functioning of of those organisational institutions whose design was to make that society successful and the people in it.  In addition such strength can cause position holders in institutional organisations whose design is not fully appropriate to societal needs to adapt them and also the institutional behaviours adopted by themselves as they continue to work within them.  At the same time one would expect the individuals within society itself to transform their own commitment to the shaping of their own actions according to the behavioural institutions they aspire to and which are being promoted by the 'strong man'. 

But 'strength' can also be negative and too often we see behavioural institutions of a society being overridden by negative personal attributes of individuals who are strong in terms of their power to influence and coerce the institutional organisations of power and coercion and require them to engage in behaviour towards society in general, and their adherence to the behavioural institutions of that society, in ways which are in effect  anti-social behaviours and illegitimate in terms of established norms and values that are institutionalised.  This type of 'strong man' is not a requirement for development of the sort which is measured by the rising experience of a holistic well-being across all individuals in that society.

Public sector, just like private sector ethics, can only be assured by successive generational cohorts of individuals enthused with and committed to the aspirational behavioural institutions in which the norms and values of that society are formalised and codified as ethical standards, etiquettes and demonstrations of relationship and of responsibility and accountability.  A strongly ethical leader can kick-off a move onto such a path but individually cannot assure it will be followed.  That requires an assured succession of such leaders which in turn requires an institution of society (behavioural and organisational perhaps) which is able to assure the supply of that stream of 'goodliness'.

Dynastic tyranny, political dynasticism, monarchy, military junta, self-perpetuation of politico-economic elites are all institutions which to some extent deliver an assured supply of strong men as leaders.   To a greater, and mostly lesser, degree they attempt to extend that supply of such strong men, sufficient to populate the critical institutional organisations of society, but necessarily require of them also to adopt behavioural norms which will assure the organisational institutions which maintain the supply of more of their kind and hence of the status quo into the future.  The 'voluntary behavioural gap' is then typically filled by institutional or overt forms of coercion.  As behaviours and needs change in society the gaps become greater due to the lack of adaptive capacity in an institutional landscape whose structure coherence over time requires institutional forms of coercion.  Consequently institutionalised behavioural drifts away from ethically acceptable norms and values in society as a whole.  More coercion is required and hence more stasis is generated and stronger 'strong men' appear to defend it.  But these actions. once perhaps seen as 'good' when the institutional behaviours they were defending actually represented the people's norms and values, are know seen as 'evil' and to negatively impact the actual aims of individuals in society, as opposed to those in the self-perpetuating politico-economic class.   The evolution of these behavioural gaps between sectors of society as they evolve and the relative stability of those sectors defended by institutional elements leads to their increasingly illegitimate claim to continue in the functions which hitherto they may have served well.  This legitimisation reflects upon behavioural institutions and their legitimacy and individuals within society increasingly feel alienated and justified in taking a pragmatic, rather than a principles, approach to the business of living and relating to other members within society.  Society becomes increasingly dysfunctional.  It becomes its own worst enemy.  Strong men come and go, as individuals.  Some try to 'whip' society into helping themselves despite themselves and use overt coercion until new constructive and sociable behavioural institutions can be established and functional and successful society appears.  Others use only the whip to advance their own socio-pathic needs.  In these conditions 'weak men' tend to be short lived in their leadership positions, however well-meaning they may be.  Unless they are backed by 'invisible' cohorts of institutional operatives to man the societal landscape's key institutions, and are able to eliminate the negative and inappropriate within them adapting them to the current requirement so that trust is restored and their lead is followed by wider society.  But those cohorts themselves may also have selfish-intentions and be simply using a 'weak man' as leader and as a camouflage device for their own rape of the society.

I could go on with detail but that is not the message, nor is it the good answer to Emmanuel's question.  He knows what I write of only too well, I am sure.  Stellenbosch provides a very unique socio-politico-economic perspective for researchers trying to tease out of a messy world a clear path to peace and normality.  The South African history and today's reality has been a veritable observational laboratory for the behavioural sciences. Sadly it continues to be so, pouring out new data almost daily.  My own amateur insights derive from 40 years of being there.

Emmanuel asks "To what extent is one right to say that a country does not need strong men but strong institutions in promoting public sector ethics?"  The answer is, to my mind, that what is needed is a strong institutional landscape of organisational, behavioural and conceptual institutions which embody, as guardians and active participants in, an evolving truth about the norms, values, needs and aspirations of its society and takes real cognisance of its wider external societal contexts, from the regional to global, from the ethical to the technological.  But it is also required that its norms, values, ethics and aspirations are not only always reflected in its evolving existential reality as individual people and in the very fabric and principles by which they conduct their social and economic relations amongst themselves, their responsibilities and their accountabilities.   Above all you do actually need a strong plan, a Utopian ideal if you will.. a credible aspiration.  One that is consistent with an expectation of it being able to deliver on societies present and inevitably evolving aspirations.  This is assuming society knows what they want and are agreed upon it.  It is here that you need a succession of strong principled and capable men.  People who are able to sacrifice themselves to service of society and to their own ego and to keep focussed on their vocation.   One man may start it, but the succession cannot be drawn from an operationally decaying dynasty increasingly alienated from its founding purpose however well it sticks to a pious or well-meaning rhetoric.  The institutions of succession that ensure a vibrant, vocational, relevant and empowered series of cohorts of societal servants occupying the public and economic-commercial institutions and organisations which are our societal fabric are the only means of breaking away from the undirected largely repeating cycles of the past.  A procession of repeated attempts to survive while maintaining peace and order and to achieve assured well-being.  Probably all of them failing by falling into some dead-end through reliance upon the brilliance of a 'strong man' and the eventual failure of the institutions of succession they left behind them.

This ongoing experiment in people's lives, over the past 15,000 years, has resulted in the evolution of ethical, behavioural and conceptual institutions upon which the institutional landscapes of our societies today are based.  Today, Representative Democracy is probably the most popular institution of succession, by aspiration if not in fact.  It provides for the relatively stable handover of institutional powers of governance through bringing forth cohorts of incumbents over time and through whose changing patronage, and generally high social approval, is intended to ensure the orderly replacement of the key operatives of power and influence within the institutions of the civil services, law and order, judiciary and military.  It developed, largely in the UK, as economic sources of power moved away from agricultural production in to that of trade and industrial activity.  This broadened the number of people with economic power beyond the limited ranks of the land-owning class.  Aristocracy and monarchy did not provide a the political and governing functionality in its institutions to adequately support the flexibility of negotiation, the protection of sectoral interests and rapid exploitation of the ever-changing opportunities provided by rapidly developing technologies across many areas of economic activity.   Aristocratic parliamentary representation had been slowly diluting, since 1215 AD, to include civil and religious economic interests that were largely also interests vested in the aristocracy themselves.  As the major owners of land the aristocracy’s interests were served by expanding parliamentary representation to wool and wine traders and others active in the trade and conversion of agricultural goods  This motivation did not change as the industrial era was entered.  Minerals were on their lands, urban populations around factories no longer had land on which they could subsist but needed and could pay for food produced for them by the land-owning class.  They also owned many of the factories and transportation innovations... across their land.  Slowly as economic interests broadened so too did the composition of the governing institutions under the influence of the necessity of broadening Parliaments membership.  This continued expansion of society's institutions to accommodate the expanding requirements of economic power to be represented politically and in the governing structures of the society in which it was developing was driven to encompass ever more economically powerful sectors of society.  The technological revolution in the early 20th century gave way to the electronic in the mid-20th century, to the consumer revolution in the late 20th century and the information revolution as we enter the 21st century.   Democracy evolved over this period from representing the just the monopolist owners of land, transferred through inheritance and war, to the owners of economic organisations with locally oligopolistic powers within the geographically defined constituent areas of all those communities subject to Parliament's powers.    The conceptual economic institutions, that is the theory, policy devices and goals were put in place in the late 18th century.  Inevitably they were informed and validated by the ethical institutions of the day and these were embedded in the normative procedures of inference employed in interpreting economic activity against reality, the development of policy and in the judgement of its success and reasons for its failures. Unlike the rapidly changing and evolving society of whose institutional landscape these were a continuing part they had not so quickly or easily changed.  New aspects and mechanisms were institutionalised in the economic sphere but almost nothing changed as regards the cadestral and ethical concepts embedded in its foundational institutions.  These have continued to be consistent with and supportive of the established pattern of ownership throughout the period.  Representative democracy continues to allow for the orderly handling of succession within those few sectors of society in which economic, political and governmental power is wielded and through whom it is to large extent operationalised.  Albeit it on a much greater scale and with some expansion of its scope. 

The troubles we see today around the globe, in new democracies and in the old ones, is caused by the necessary consequence of human individual self-interest identified hundred of words earlier in this argument.   Institutions of governance have evolved more slowly than have the aspirations and needs of the societies they continue to try to govern.  A behavioural gap has developed.  In practice the governing class protects those institutions from which it derives its position and seeks to preserve their legitimacy and ethical force.  But these are based upon societal norms and philosophical positions of 250 years ago in which the primacy of the well-being of the resource owning class was a given.  The well-being of others in society was of concern only to the extent that deficiencies might threaten or destabilise that primacy.  That view continues to be reflected today. 

Meanwhile, each expansion of productive capacity and technological capacity has exposed the truth that it is people who do the work that keeps the asset value of resources, material and property real.  This lead to extension of the vote, though not in any practical sense the extension of general access to political power, to every adult member of society in the UK.  Since the middle of the 20th century a further dependency of industrial activity, and hence of the economic power of its owners and ultimately their access to political influence and power, has been clearly revealed.  That vulnerability lies in the willingness of consumers to consume and to continue consuming product of types and in volumes beyond that which is needed for well-being.  This comes about because it is not the goods alone and their sale which creates the value, which the institution of the actively operating markets convert to wealth and maintain as wealth, it is rather the continual effort of human work being performed and the opportunity to appropriate from it a portion of its ability to produce value which wealth accumulation is reliant upon.

Individuals globally have become aware that they and their ability to do work is and always has been the engine of every economy and importantly ownership of resources is merely the mechanism by which access s prevented unless licensed or in the course of fulfilling a contract of employment.  By this individuals have seen that they have intrinsic value that is critical, even now with robots (better tools) on the horizon, to all economic activity and hence wealth creation and preservation.   The world wars affirmed this and the UN Declaration of Human Rights institutionalised recognition of this equally held source of value across all people. It has led to the internalising of associated norms and values by billions of people worldwide and their adoption of aspirations.  These have become their aspirational ethical institution and the concept of universal well-being through their lifetimes for their children is their aspirant behavioural institution that embodies the legitimate and validated goal of every governing institution and the economic institutions by which the businesses of daily life, living and survival are accomplished. This is our behavioural gap.  We have seen it in the past... time and time again. We have seen the consequences in the past and have explained them.   We are seeing them now, globally, and have explained them.  I have just brought together here the threads of what thousands of other academics and thinkers and many others have seen and spoken of over the past 100 years and more, separated and divided and suppressed, as they may have been, by anachronistic un-evolved institutions seeking to preserve their ancient validations and expired legitimacy so as to continue with their prestige, status and influence and living on their ownership of sources of rentier income every minute of everyday that has other people working so that they might work.. but always at a level of insecurity that never changes.

Emmanuel, you need to seek new stronger and enduring institutions attuned to today's norms and values.  Institutions able to deliver through strong principles reflective of those of the entire society, and globe, against those goals we all share.  To produce, and continue to do so, society's vocational servants and operatives of governance who are as much a part of society as any other operating within it.

Machiavelli said "those who would be leaders must first know how to command". There lies the dilemma for real democracy.  Leadership exercised in society's interests is empowering both in peaceful progress and in crisis.  How to build a flow of that capability without creating a self-perpetuating elite, as we still have in the UK and in South Africa under different forms of representative democracy but similar cadestral systems, is the challenge for mankind if it hopes to create assurance of universal and durable progress to well-being for all.

Strong institutions which can control and deliver streams of strong men, into eternity, each generation of which are dedicated to service to society and who claim no special status or rights for themselves or their family and who simply operationalise the norms values and aspirations of their societies is what is most important.  You cannot choose between them... just seek to keep them amongst you and not above you.

Totsiens,  Robin

There are already some very good answers, so I will try to keep this short.  Good governance involves "strong" commitment, but more "moderate" personal ambitions.  Problems arise when leader begin to assume that their personal agenda coincides with the "social good" to such an extent that the pursuit of their personal agenda "is" for the public good!  However, there is no "arithmetic" to decide these issued - we have to develop and continually use "good judgment."

@William: For the present I agree, however it is the function of institutional elements to formalise and embed our norms and values into the fabric of our societies such that they are no longer at the whim of the judgement of those with influence who necessarily represent that part of societies from which the people tend to arise who present the very problem you so cogently identify.  That is exactly the weakness of 'representative' democracy, within its current institutional contexts, which has brought it into such disrepute that is no longer able to command respect amongst the larger part of almost every nation on earth, and which is the root cause of the widespread extremist unrest that we now face.   Power, of any sort, if it is to endure through time within stable structures within society through time must be legitimate in the perception of the absolute majority of those who are governed through it.  Illegitimate power can neither expect nor demand legitimation and hence respect and will only be obeyed by those threatened by it.  Any such state of affairs is antithetical to any claim to be working for the universal good of society and msiguide attempts to act otherwise will just reinforce the disrepute within which those who do are held.  there are no divine rights, and one cannot rely upon the good judgement of those few drawn from a small self-perpetuating elite who consider themselves to be 'born to the task'.  Legitimate power in the end must be institutionally established at a level consistent with a society's democratic ideals, at a low locally pluralistic level, seprate and distinct from a servant governing professional calling of citizens in their middle and later years who are able to lead in crisis after having learned to command in business and military as professional managers before entering the vocation of governance and leadership according to the mandate of the people to whom they remain forever contracted as mere recallable, 'dismissable' professional individuals fulfilling their appointed job descriptions... and no more.  Robin

"Robust institutions that guarantee our freedoms" is a wonderful ideal, but in practice it is largely wishful thinking. It was earlier phrased as "a government of laws, not of men."  Clever and ambitious people will always find ways to circumvent or undermine such "rules of the game," and ONLY pragmatic monitoring and enforced accountability have much of a chance of keeping us on "the straight and narrow."  Subsequent to every institutional innovation, there are a plethora of attempts to find loop-holes, legal or illegal, by way of which nefarious intentions can continue to operate.  Some of those work-arounds do succeed in enabling non-compliance.  These, in turn, must be identified, analyzed, diagnosed, and rectified with further innovations - and so on, ad infinitum. THAT is the human condition; what we need is the wisdom to recognize it, and the commitment to continuously deal with it.

No  wealth of monitoring and accountability procedures will do the trick unless something changes within the people themselves,. As Dominique Darbon says, the state doesn't have to be present in each african village if people have incorporated the state within themselves (i.e the place and the interest of "others", remember G.H Mead definition of consciousness: "to see oneself as another and to incorporate the other in oneself".

So many of the recent contributions to this discussion have each dealt with a facet of our reality that we must all deal with in the very fabric of each of our societies.  Societies which we collectively inhabit, as an increasingly cooperative species, around our planet and through which we are driven to survive and attempt to preserve that which we see as our most redeeming qualities, namely those that we term as being 'our Humanity'.

The proposals and observations that have been made converge upon the recognition that to consistently pursue and hold firm to the principles by which we have found our mutual co-operations to have the greatest chance of success we must at the same time continually and self-consciously adjust the methods by which we do so.  This is essential so that those methods can remain continually best-, or at least well-,  adapted to achieving those fixed goals we aspire to.  Aspirations which we hold on to with some persistence in the face of: our ever changing social circumstances; of our developing technologies; of our expanding understanding of ourselves; and of the always varying beneficence and the difficulties constantly delivered to us by the physical world.

We are in effect asserting the dynamic evolutionary essence of the Political Economies that drive our societies, and at the same time identifying the stabilising role, in that process of continual evolutionary adaptation, that is played by our institutions of behaviour, by our organisational institutions and by our institutional constructs which are no more than conceptualisations of the mind.  Institutions are the mechanisms by which we embed the consensus 'norms' and 'values' of society such that they can be utilised in the present operation of a society and can also be transmitted as learned wisdom into its future operations.

The problem for us comes when we cease to understand that these institutions must also continually evolve and adapt, if they are to be continually effective in their function.   A Political Economy is not governed by a set of physical laws, immutable and eternal. Those institutions form sets of human behaviours by which we cooperate together to create a supply of those things which enable us to live and survive individually.  As such they are themselves institutions within their respective societies and form just one 'class' of codified 'norms' and 'values' within them.  All human behaviours form a web in which changes to one behaviour, or institution,  affects the requirements demanded of every other to a greater or a lesser degree. 

Marx saw this evolutionary nature, in the class of Political Economy, as being subject to natural laws of historical development that are independent of individual human actions... a process which he explored with a methodological approach he described as the dialectic method ( ..as I read his explanation and not being an expert in interpreting his 'deeper' meanings behind what he said). He described that approach as being one of looking at the real world of fact and deducing from it what was taking place and by what laws.  His application of the dialectic method necessarily relied upon the' facts' then available within the world view of the time.  It was very much taken with the idea of a mechanically deterministic universe and that history was therefore necessarily an expression and record of that mechanism in action. In so doing he both proposed what we would call an Evolutionary Economics and also closed off the possibility that man's behaviours, our norms and values and hence our very societies and their collections of institutions which at any point in time give them substance could themselves be subject to evolutionary change in response to our locally specific interactions with the seemingly random challenges delivered to us by our environments.

Our own world view now includes facts about ourselves and our environment which Marx did not have access to. But nobody has as yet published any similar dialectic exploration of the human condition in terms of its approaches to Political Economy and suggested how we might therefore best organise ourselves going forward into the future such that our universally held aspirations of goodness and well-being might be realised.

Because of this failure, now and back into deep time, we have had to rely upon the occasional insight by individuals,  that have identified the failure of certain critical institutions to adapt to changed circumstances, to be sufficiently well-placed, empowered and motivated to enforce the necessary institutional changes, as they saw them.  These are the 'strong men' of the past and present.  Some were and are correct in their insights.  Some have been horribly wrong.  All were 'strong'.  So were many of the institutions that they gave rise to.  Some were forces for good in their respective societies.  Some were catastrophically bad for them.

'Strong institutions' or 'Strong men'?  Take your pick.  The point is neither is to be preferred.  If our institutions were self-consciously institutionally pliant and responsive to the changes required of them from time to time in adapting to the societal developments and to the environmental changes which they arbitrate between, and were responsive to the stages of their own life cycles, stages in which they move from developing to fulfil a need, maturing fulfilment, declining relevance and eventual obsolescence and obliteration, then 'strong men' to periodically set them right when they have failed to change would not be needed. 

An Institutional class missioned to ensure the evolution of all institutions, including itself, is the change that is to be preferred. 

Strong men able to lead and motivate our cooperative actions in times of rapidly developing and imminent crises will also be needed.  But such exercises in periodic 'generalship' in no way justifies, nor does it require, those individuals to assume 'all power and authority' nor any similarly empowered group of individuals with 'leader' skills.  They are no more than just another example of a necessary specialisation of labour in a complex web of societal relationships and nor more or less subject to the rewards and benefits that come from being a member of society.  They will learn their leadership through positions in society in which they first learn to command, and to well understand and internalise their servanthood to their society and to its authority and to its universal goals and aspirations.  'Political' leadership should in essence and in practice attract no more rights to autonomous decision making and direction setting than does any military commander in any Constitutional Democracy.

Representative Democracy breaks down these bonds of true servanthood in those who aspire to command and lead civil society.  It both creates the need for 'strong men' to be thrown up amongst them to right the mistakes of others of their ilk who made those mistakes because of the strength that that institution naively endows them with.  Those representatives are nominated, selected and appointed by society to do a job.  If we refuse to use the facts we now have about ourselves in rebuilding our conceptual understanding of the requirements for our Political Economies we will need strong men to periodically fix our 'strong' institutions as they become weak because they fail to adapt to the requirements placed upon them by the passage of time and hence by our own evolution and that of our environment.

Or we can use what we now know and continue that evolution... consciously and with deliberation.  Only then will we become strong enough to include in our societies institutions that are truly strong and possess strong men who are truly public servants.

Dear Robin,

Thank you for the contribution.

I have enjoyed reading your response. 

Regards,

Norman King 

Dear Norman,

Thank you for your appreciation.  I see that you are significantly concerned with matters of governance and the interaction of its demands with the need for certain skills and personality traits with which the roles that are required by such institutions (behavioural and organisational).  Also the role of political parties.

I will have much to say on this and related topics as I further develop and write down my thoughts.  You will see from my profile and timeline that I have spent over 40 years in Africa though am now in the UK.  It remains a place of great promise for being the arena in which the shifts will most easily happen (though probably not in any absolute sense.. sadly) in behaviours and other social institutions that will be needed to achieve the requirements that you are already beginning to identify.

One thought that I would like to give out for people to chew upon relates to the issue of political parties and why they exist.  This is ofcourse also related to the question of 'strong men' and 'strong institutions'. 

Consider.  If you were building a complex engineering project, despite there being thousands of engineers available to design, build and operate it you would not look be looking for those whose basic concepts of physics follow the 'beliefs' of a particular school of engineering philosophy.  The reason for this being that there are very few engineers who do not agree with the laws of physics.  The only question is which of the many solutions using that known Body of Knowledge (BoK) do you judge to be the most appropriate to the capabilities, needs and available resources in Tanzania now and through the operational life of the installations created by the project.  Engineers do not band together around beliefs in different BoK's.  There is one BoK, and that is well validated and tried and tested - in general and in most detail.  The only question is what arrangement of of those facts to apply in this case.  So engineers have no need to band together to be believed... even just one.. though very hard worked... could do the whole job and it would work.

Politicians on the other hand want to be entrusted with the project of bringing well-being to everyone in their country and to create the conditions in which that can develop further and dos o universally, equitably, durably, resiliently and in a way that can be sustained far in to the future.  For that their is no BoK.  There are only belief systems.  Neoliberalism is one such.  It is dominant, but throughut academia it is well understood that it is based on invalid axioms and that its predictive powers are at best very very weak, not to mention the fact that the social outcomes it was conceived to be consistent with were those of nascent empire prevailing in 18th century Georgian Britain.  Not a fine example of any of the norms and values embodied in the goals I have mentioned above.

When people have to depend upon guesswork when confronting problems which they have failed to understand, groups each tend to gravitate around a local consensus of 'belief' in what to do.  If an individual, 'a strong man', is prepared to assert loudly and firmly a particular belief many less self-confident, or perhaps less arrogant, will cluster around and necessarily reject other groups with other beliefs. Political parties are born.  The more arrogant the strong man is the more well defined the future paths can be foreseen.  If there is no other forceful character in another group, whether by chance or through some less than gentle nudging of opponents into oblivion, then 'law and order' and peace can be expected on society.  Whether or not it turns out according to the aspirations of the people is a matter of pure chance and the luck of the 'strong man' at the top... and his supporters.  If there are more than one group endowed with strong men and hence with strongly held socio-economic beliefs about how to approach the country's needs then there is likely to be considerable unrest and dislocation until on of two outcomes develops.

Either one strong man will chase all others from the field, or else all parties will 'lose' their 'strong men' through a process of replacing hubris with humility amongst all the groups and their members as they gain a realistic appreciation of the enormity of nurturing any society successfully into a future which suits everybody within it and also has a credible future to look forward to on an indefinite time-scale.  Momentarily this latter is what happened in 1990 through 1994 in South Africa.

So my thought is this... when we have evolved our understanding of socio-economic factors to the point where we can credibly claim to have a significant BoK to guide all practitioners of governance will not political parties and strong men not become anachronisms, obsolete institutions consigned to the pages of history books?  And at that point we will also see the conditions in which democracy will be possible since if society is fair it will be fair economically too and hence economic power will be dispersed and not concentrated and consequently so too will be political power.  Those who work at governing, according to the BoK for social and governance engineering, will be true servants of the people, a people and their institutions who employ them as 'delegates' and by whose active oversight the powers of those 'social engineers' are monitored and constrained and to whom they are tightly accountable... as any engineer would be.

Until then the political party process requires of democracy to grant a blank check regarding the actions of those elected so that they can 'represent' according to the beliefs to which they claim to hold in the guessing game currently required of them.  hence we are stuck with 'representative democracy' where we have any at all... in Africa or in the 'old world'... although it is in fact the 'new world' by comparison!

A BoK of Political Economy which recognises and builds upon the dynamic and evolutionary nature of nature, and hence of human society as a whole and the smaller local societies of which it is always comprised, is in the making.  Much of it is 'hidden' across a myriad of supposedly different 'schools' which are in fact simply focussed on different facets of a problem set vastly greater than anything envisaged by Smith, Ricardo or even their 20th century protagonists.  This is not a new 'movement'.  Its most visible roots also lie in the 19th century.  It recognises that economic activities occur over time and through processes of learning and the application of Rules of Thumb derived from that learning and which are constantly subject to adaptation themselves according to time, place, history and need. Hence economic activity 'evolves' rather than bounces along from one 'rational equilibrium' to the next.  The institutions which embody and transmit our norms and values, amongst them our socio-economic Rules of Thumb and our BoK's, appropriate to their societal and ecological contexts, across the regenerations of the individuals making up our societies must therefore also be expected to evolve.  Rather than stay static in the vain hope of time standing still... along with the universe perhaps?  Thus we will see an "Evolutionary Economics" become the mainstream of our Philosophy of Political Economy.  One which self-consciously seeks to take account of how real human behaviours take place, and are institutionalised as behaviours and embodied in organisations where necessary and as social concepts and constructs where appropriate.  Through such evolving institutional landscapes, supporting and guiding and reacting to the normal evolutionary flow of economic activity we will perhaps then create and develop the capacity to achieve those conditions amongst us that we universally aspire to, including our aspirations 'to be different' and to be independent but also to be interconnected and to treat and be treated fairly, with dignity and with surety regarding our current and future perceptions of well-being.

The 'old world' has a huge baggage of personal interests and power concentrated in few hands through the plethora of social institutions which preserve them and which have built up to create them over, especially, the last two hundred years and more.  Any evolution away from that is going to be very painful.  It will only come about by dint of the necessity brought about by many others, less chained into their histories, showing a better way and advancing faster and ahead of them along the path which their own populations, as individuals, also aspire to and which their current neoclassical belief system does does allow them to follow.   Africa has been prevented, by chains of other sorts, from being caught in the same trap.  It has been held back.  Perhaps, even though tragically so on the one hand, this will turn out to be its salvation and not only its salvation but, by way of being an example, also the salvation of the rest of the world and of humankind.  Humankind once again emerging from its ancient cradle.

Robin

Dear Robin,

Great response. Thank you very much. Norman

Dear Norman,

"

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"