Random Variable

Brad Delong laments why can’t America be run by people like Gordon Brown. The PM announced a plan last Wednesday and started implementing it today, and is now being praised as the world’s saviour. A number of theories:

1. Ideology.
   • John Quiggin wonders if New Labour can at least remember their old-skool social democracy days. William Davies instead points out that New Labour has significant experience with PFI, which are like the proposed nationalisation plans in reverse. Also, the government is keen to point out that these are temporary measures, not a return to British socialism.
2. State institutional design
   • Executive branch is too weak, and the legislature, in the form of Congress is too strong. Even so, Congress gave Paulson the power to emulate Brown’s approach even when he didn’t ask for it.
   • The US state is simply too ineffectual at dealing with disaster in a timely fashion, alá Katrina. Krugman suggests that perhaps the government’s all FEMA’d out.
   • If William Davies is right, then perhaps the federal government is too abstracted away from being knowledgeable about US PFI equivalents.
3. No one had a solution any earlier
   • Unlikely, as Krugman, amongst others, had said that banks were undercapitalised at least as early as the third week of September.

The Register’s Andrew Orlowski tried to make the point that the initial failure of the Paulson Plan in Congress was a sign that democracy works, whilst also taking a snipe at the venerable OpenDemocracy. In retrospect, the article will be remembered for being typical of libertarian wingnuttery. However, there is something to be said about the way democracy worked in the US. In the UK, Brown didn’t need to pass emergency measures before parliament, but the US struggled to find a solution that would pass Congress. There was a wholesale failure of framing, and ideological blinkers clearly prevented the right plan coming about. How can we make democracy function better? In that it allows voters to account the government whilst also being informed about issues. Don’t think there’s an easy answer.

Finally, since the 42 days law was defeated in the House of Lords, there is hope about the health of the UK’s democracy.