Government Incapability

Aurelien has posted some interesting essays on Substack warning of modern governments lack of capability to deal with the multiple problems being faced. He warns that we should not expect governments to come up with solutions or implement them effectively.

The kind of crises that we can expect over the next few years will be beyond the ability of our enfeebled governments to tackle, and that in any case their room for manoeuvre to tackle them will be very limited.

In a culture where governments are expected to solve all problems, this is a disturbing suggestion.

For a number of reasons both individually and in combination, the challenges of the future are likely to exceed the capability of our weakened states to manage, and for that matter the capability of our increasingly-juvenile and performative ruling class even to understand. So, building on the argument above, the first thing you would expect to see is western states losing “power” in the sense of losing the genuine ability to affect things, and get things done that they wanted. And indeed this is what we see.

But the greatest weakness at all levels in modern political culture is one that I’ve touched on several times in these essays: the modern preference for performative acts and speech in place of actual practical activity, and the tendency to confuse the one with the other. Of course, this approach only succeeds as long as really critical problems don’t come along. He looks for alternative sources of hope, but does not find much.

But how would we prevent it, in a world where the State no longer has the capability to do things, but only perform? One way to approach the question is to ask what makes people band together for any purpose, develop common objectives and find and follow leaders.

Many states in Africa, indeed, have highly sophisticated social control mechanisms working alongside poorly-functioning formal western-style mechanisms, and to some extent substituting for them. So what would be the equivalent in the average western state? Well that’s an interesting question with a potentially very depressing answer. There may not be one, or at least not one we would like.

Collective action has to be based on some sense of shared identity and interest, but the only shared identity that Liberalism acknowledges is shared (and often transitory) economic interest. Unfortunately, that puts criminals, or those prepared to be most ruthless, in positions of “power,” as always happens in periods of crisis.

And in any case, what are the alternatives? How else would we organise ourselves in the effective absence of a state, if not by economic interest and the strong dominating the weak? In the West, we seem to be just incapable of spontaneous organisation of the type you find everywhere in Asia. His outlook is bleak.

The two actors who are likely to become most powerful in a crisis and the effective disappearance of the state are organised crime and, in Europe at least, extreme Islamist groups.

The one hope that Aurelien is missing is the church, and I don’t blame him because it is demonstrating the same incapability to achieve its goals and preference for “performance ministry” as the modern state. But that is not how it should be. Social collapse and chaos should be a great environment for the flourishing of the church, but the modern Sunday meeting professional-pastor approach will struggle to function if that is what emerges.

In this season of political and economic uncertainty, it is more urgent than ever for followers of Jesus to form kingdom communities that can provide support and strength during troubled times and open the way to transform society to release the kingdom of God. We must be prepared for distress and equipped for victory.