Managerial Politics
Published on 16 October 2024
Politics reflects the biases and defects of the dominant class. Just as the commercialism of Gilded Age politics was downstream of the power of industrial magnates, or the militarism of Prussia due to Junkers, so too do the traits of the managerial class determine the nature of contemporary politics.
As in previous essays, the best way to delineate the most distinctive features of the managerial elites is to distinguish them from the professionals with whom they’re so often conflated. The state dominated by professionals is essentially technocratic. Voters decide the overarching priorities of the government through voting, and then a professionalized civil service serve those preferences as ably as possible. Where a policy question is a value-laden one, more deference is given to popular opinion, where it is a technical question power is wielded more by unelected experts on the basis that the average voter could not fully understand the problem. Politicians are expected to serve a two-fold purpose of being able administrators while also ensuring the bureaucrats don’t wield too much power independently of the voters.
The growing hegemony of the managerial class has created a very different system of politics. Because this class is only capable of thinking ideologically, politics descends into a perpetual culture war. No-one nowadays runs on being a competent executive, or an able legislator, instead they run only on ideology and the assertion that they’re a nice guy to be around (a virtue much more important for a manager than a head of state). The archetype of the politically-engaged professional, i.e. the policy wonk, has been totally marginalised by this culture war.
The relationship between the electorate and government is also subtly transformed. Managerial elites, as in the workplace, decide what should be done. For instance, they might decide it’s a moral imperative to have as much immigration as possible. As a consequence there is no meaningful role for voters to play whatsoever. Whereas technocratic experts might complement voters by possessing techne that the voters lack, the managerial elites can only supplant them. This change in power-relations is cloaked by standard manager-speak (e.g. ‘the need to consult with all stakeholders’), but is perceived clearly by the electorate nonetheless. It’s key to note that the issue here isn’t that the managerial class are especially imperious or domineering. The problem is that the only role they can perform is the one traditionally performed by voters.
If anything, their style of government is curiously passive. In organisations decisions flow up to managers who choose between the options given to them (this often allows them to get away with being outrageously incompetent – they’re only presented options which are somewhat reasonable). The managerial class have reproduced that dynamic when governing. This largely explains why the managerial class in power do not feel any real sense of control, they’re entirely reactive. If the standard of living in a nation falls, managerial elites do not feel accountable whatsoever, after all they’re in favour of a high standard of living.
Because managerial elites lack technical competence, they avoid the affairs of state which require it, such as economic management. Their ideology is thus chiefly expressed through tokenistic measures. Of course within the managerial class signalling is of incredible importance, careers are built or ruined based off whether the appropriate signals are given off at the appropriate time. So they are flummoxed when, after years of earnest virtue-signalling, the electorate accuses them of being all talk and no action.
On the other hand one advantage the managerial class has over former technocrats is that they’re naturally obsessed with the media cycle. A leader of yesteryear might worry about how their government is performing in terms of concrete measures like the homelessness rate, managerial elites only care what other people are saying about them. Their careers from first-to-last depend upon perception-management which is a great asset for any political leader.
Many of the personality traits alluded to in the earlier essay find political expression one way or another. For example, because the hall-monitors self-select into the managerial class, their politics are similarly officious. It is a familiar scene where a leader of a great power bizarrely decides to spend their time and political capital implementing some petty rule barely befitting a low-ranking functionary. Their illiberalism and censorial nature also frequently flows into governmental decision making.
The deficiencies of managerial elites have resulted in a slow-burning crisis in Western democracies. Because they are first and foremost moralists whose role is to tell voters what society should do, they inevitably find themselves in the position of pursuing unpopular culture war projects. The centre-left establishment will push a policy, say trans-rights, and then when there’s invariably a populist backlash the establishment portrays them as far-right extremists who threaten liberalism and democracy itself. There is a symbiotic relationship occurring here, insofar as the managerial elites need to legitimate themselves on ideological grounds (because they lack technical competence), they require an internal enemy who is evil to rally against. The populists serve as this internal enemy, all the while populism is being strengthened by the establishment’s headstrong insistence on various unpopular social policies.
The populists though pose no real threat of managerial dominance. They themselves have no positive vision for society and they almost exclusively draw from the least-able segments of society (uneducated non-urbanites) who have no power outside the ballot box. Whenever populists do win, they’ve repeatedly demonstrated their inability to contend with the convoluted apparatuses full of apparatchiks which constitute the modern state.
The only genuine threat to the managerial elites comes from would-be technocrats. This is subconsciously or otherwise apprehended by the managerial elites. An illustration here is a recent Jon Stewart segment. Conceding that the Moscow subway was superior to the New York subway, Stewart then argued that this was, in fact, evidence of the benevolence of American elites. This is making a virtue out of necessity, to fix the subway would require ceding power to technical experts such as engineers, transport planners, economists, etc. The managerial class is hardly going to surrender its power willingly, so it must insist that anyone who wants to make the trains run on time is secretly a fascist.
When a would-be technocrat does ascend to an importance office, the managerial elites unite to expel them as an immune system might do after recognising a foreign element. Dominic Cummings is a case in point. Many of his pet projects were fundamentally technocratic in nature, e.g. procurement reform. The managerial elites could not even understand why anyone would be interested in procurement reform. Who is the evil party when it comes to procurement? Procurement reform is non-ideological, and as such current elites are constitutionally incapable of engaging with the topic at all.
So the managerial class are constantly fighting a two-front war, one against populists who point out that they’re acting undemocratically, the other against would-be technocrats who point out that they’re utterly incompetent. Managerial elites can distract from the latter by doubling-down on the culture war, but in so doing they strengthen the populists. While I expect this dynamic has decades to play out, I think it will ultimately collapse under the weight of its own contradictions.
Over this period managerial elites will increasingly rely on their moral legitimacy (they will likely ban far-right parties which will end their democratic legitimacy). If democracy is the government of populists, and technocracy the government of highly-skilled professionals, then what the managerial class seeks to produce is something akin to a secular theocracy. Imagine Iran but instead of clerics interpreting holy law it will have judges interpreting human rights law.