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Government, Public Policy and Elections
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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Government, Public Policy and Elections ‘‘Politics and Public Administration’’ The essay ‘‘Politics and Public Administration’’ was never published and was perhaps never intended to be. In excellent, amusing Nightingale style, it contains an odd assortment of points, including substantive comments on Army reorganization, colonial policy and disparities in wealth by social class, and such matters of political process as the management of Cabinet and the role of the Opposition. At the beginning we see Nightingale looking back as an old hand to the good old days when we got things done, in contrast with the talkers and slackers of today who do not (see p 282 below). This was a point she made in a number of places, including in a published article in 1873 in Fraser’s Magazine (in Theology 3:42-44). Sidney Herbert’s admirable vision, and his more enlightened views about Cabinet responsibility, are given for comparison. In this essay Nightingale asked some cogent questions about the role of models in the formulation of public policy. Elsewhere she used the sociological term ideal type, here the more common type. Can we move forward without a model of what we are aiming at? What model does the prime minister, war minister, colonial minister have? The model, of course, should come from God in Nightingale’s understanding. Alas, political leaders seemed rather to think of God like a charitable society, ‘‘doing a little good to this individual and to that and not a little harm,’’ yet without ‘‘bringing people out of pauperism and dependence into independence and self-support’’ (see p 284 below). The colonial minister saw himself merely as the member whose job it was ‘‘to grease the Cabinet’s measures’’ through the House of Commons or Lords (see p 289 below). Ministers generally seemed to be concerned more with how long they would stay in government and how they would / 279 manage the press than of ‘‘what England may become’’ (see p 283 below). ‘‘The real question is whether ministers are not now completely losing sight of the idea that they are to have any policy at all ‘as one great whole to be submitted to the country and accepted or rejected by the country,’ ’’ as Sidney Herbert had put it (see p 288 below). Nightingale urged that ministers be left in place long enough to acquire expertise and then make use of it in their field. She decried the practice of moving a minister for doing well, as a promotion, just when he was doing good work that should be furthered. This is consistent with her view that persons in responsible positions should have sufficient authority to carry out whatever their program was, whether as commander-in-chief, war minister or matron of a hospital. She was never keen on the role of the Opposition in Parliament, so keen was she to get things done. In the example with which she was dealing here, Army reorganization legislation, she thought the Opposition’s position was worse than the government’s, which was itself sadly misguided (see p 285 below). She was confident that expertise counted: ‘‘the paramount authority will always be the authority who knows most of the business’’ (see p 288 below), not the person who had the title, so that commanders-in-chief ran ministers of war who were technically their subordinates. Nightingale dealt briefly with Britain’s lack of colonial policy. There is very little anywhere in her writing about what would be desirable colonial policy, for India, the dominions or colonies. Here at least we see her argument that the colonies should be put on their feet before being cast adrift (see p 288 below). As to whether or not Britain should ever have become an imperial power in the first place there is not a word here or anywhere else. The essay contains a succinct statement of the laws of political economy being as immutable as the laws of [physical] nature, that is, ‘‘if really discovered’’ (see p 284 below). Nightingale then went through key items of social policy based on the teachings of the political economy school: the workhouse test, which ‘‘probably has made more paupers than anything else,’’ instead of deterring pauperism, and the theory that supply and demand match each other, ‘‘which made the Orissa famine possible’’ in India. She also criticized the prevailing theories on emigration and habitual criminals. The Orissa famine, in India, she noted had happened ‘‘under our ‘enlightened’ rule’’ (see p 284 below). The...