Filippo Cavazzuti was already a respected economist at the University of Bologna when his teacher, Nino Andreatta, became Minister of the Treasury in the early 80s and called him to join his collaborators, despite the different political orientation. It was there that he began to get to know the high bureaucracy which he then saw at work during his long parliamentary mandate and which he met again at the Treasury when, in the 90s, he became undersecretary and right-hand man of minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. Not everyone happens to work close to two great Treasury ministers like Andreatta and Ciampi. For this reason, listening to Cavazzuti's considerations on the relationship between politics and bureaucracy is of great interest and the result of a unique experience. Here is the interview he gave to FIRSTonline.
FIRSTonline – Professor Cavazzuti, in the last few days significant news has arrived in the relationship between the government and high bureaucracy: the new Minister of Economy, Fabrizio Saccomanni, first replaced the old head of the cabinet - that Vincenzo Fortunato who everyone had known since Tremonti's time as "Mr. No" - with the young secretary of the Budget Commission of the Chamber, Daniele Cabras and then he even liquidated the General State Accountant, the controversial Mario Canzio, with a senior manager of the Bank of Italy like Daniele Franco: yes Did you expect such revolutionary appointments?
CAVAZZUTI – I partly expected it because it would have surprised me that Minister Saccomanni, who comes from the Bank of Italy school, hadn't treasured the lessons of two of his great predecessors like Nino Andreatta first and Carlo Azeglio Ciampi by acting accordingly and renewing the posts of real command to the ministry with external and completely new men, above all on the cultural and professional level.
FIRSTonline – What exactly did Andreatta and Ciampi do when they were Treasury ministers?
CAVAZZUTI – Andreatta, in the early 80s, chose as director general of the Treasury a character, a former Bank of Italy, of the caliber of Mario Sarcinelli and as head of the Cabinet he brought a splendid "alien" of the level of Sergio Ristuccia. In turn, Ciampi kept Mario Draghi and Vittorio Grilli at the general directorate of the Treasury, chose De Joanna, a great public finance expert and secretary of the Senate Budget Commission, as his head of cabinet and brought in a new director from the Bank of Italy in Fabrizio Boat. In both cases, a mix of expertise and fresh energy from outside that brought new cultures into the rooms of the Ministry of the Treasury..
FIRSTonline – With the appointment of Minister Saccomanni, will the monopoly of data on public accounts and the self-referentiality with which the General Accounting Office has in recent years exercised abnormal power over governments and politics and created a sort of state within a state end?
CAVAZZUTI – Self-referentiality and undue knowledge monopoly of public finance data in the hands of the State General Accounting Office must end. As the economist Amilcare Puviani already denounced in 1903 (after 34 years of activity in the General Accounting Office of the State) in his memorable essay on the “Theory of financial illusion” “the balance sheet says much more or much less as one wishes. It remains an impenetrable sphinx… the true situation of the accounts is hidden in a recondite ciborium”. Saccomanni's appointments are the premise for all this to finally change and for the unbearable ciborium governed by bureaucrats to go to the attic. But there's another anomaly that needs to be filed.
FIRSTonline – What?
CAVAZZUTI – The lack of any budgeting activity, necessary for strategic decisions, in favor of pure and simple State accounting: it is not enough to make the accounting data of the public budget transparent but it is also necessary to make the qualitative and quantitative information clear (number and mobility of employees , kilometers of roads to be built, volume of public purchases, etc.) which underlie those accounting data, without which it becomes difficult to really control the public budget and implement a real economic policy. The final balance of the State budget is only an accounting representation detached from any consideration on the degree of achievement of the objectives. The culture of evaluating the microeconomic effects of public spending is still completely absent in the high bureaucracy.
FIRSTonline – Naturally Accounting is the tip of the iceberg, but he does not believe that there is much to innovate in the field of bureaucracy also in relation to its training, its recruitment, its salary, its immovability and, sometimes, even the temptations of corruption ?
CAVAZZUTI – Certainly we need to intervene as soon as possible on all the critical aspects of the bureaucracy but an often overlooked but essential point is also and above all that of avoiding the so-called revolving doors between state councilors and high bureaucracy which determine a conflict of interest in favor of the bureaucracies and to the detriment of the efficiency of the public administration: a disruptive conflict with enormous repercussions on politics because, when the state councilors slip into key positions in the ministries, they are primarily concerned with preparing laws that defend the role (and salary) of the high bureaucracy.
FIRSTonline – However, there are also other critical aspects to face and resolve in the relationship between politics and high bureaucracy. What are his suggestions?
CAVAZZUTI – For the formation of the high bureaucracy, in fact, a kind of Italian Ena would be needed because the Higher School of Public Administration was a great disappointment that produced mostly yesmen rather than modern public managers. The rule according to which high bureaucrats are served by the state rather than servants of the state must end on the transparency and control of compensation. As for the fight against corruption, the road is essentially that of raising the levels of transparency and making the public administration a true glass house rather than the refuge of the sphinx.
FIRSTonline – Professor, you were lucky enough to work alongside two great ministers of the Treasury such as Andreatta and Ciampi, of whom you mentioned earlier how they handled the high offices that depended on them but, in addition to the appointments, what was the style with which did they regulate relations with the high bureaucracy?
CAVAZZUTI – Their real strength in relations with the high bureaucracy was their clear intellectual and cultural supremacy: they knew too well the problems they faced for any high bureaucrat to think of telling them lies or try to trip them up, and when there was a unrealistic attempt in this sense was immediately circumscribed and neutralized. It was impossible for Andreatta and Ciampi to end up in the hands of the bureaucracy but this tells us that the preparation and quality of the ministers remains a crucial point. Secondly, Andreatta and Ciampi were attentive not only to general political guidelines and parliamentary activity, but they devoted energy to the specific problems of their administration which they tackled using a lot of fresh energy from outside. This is the lesson they have bequeathed in the relationship between government and bureaucracy.
FIRSTonline – What do you particularly remember about Andreatta's action?
CAVAZZUTI – First of all, a fact that made a great impression: as they said at the time, he went to open all the drawers of the most important offices of the Treasury Ministry. Then the Report on the reorganization of the financial statistics of the Public Administration (which remained a dead letter after him) and finally the establishment of the Technical Commission on public expenditure to study and closely examine the spending activity of the ministries.
FIRSTonline – And from Ciampi to the Treasury?
CAVAZZUTI – The task entrusted to the head of cabinet De Joanna of reviewing the accounting and classification criteria for the construction of the public budget in order to make the discussion in Parliament more evident and more constructive and the consequent subtraction from Finsiel's monopoly of the information system of the state budget . Like Andreatta, Ciampi was also very attentive to the functioning of the public administration machine, even at the cost of arousing some distrust in the high bureaucracy. And the fruits have been seen.
Su POLITICS and BUREAUCRACY recently spoke on FIRSTonline:
Giulio SAPELLI (8 May), Frank LOCATELLI (9 May), Bruno TABACCI (11 May) e Linda LANZILLOTTA (14 May).
