The relationship between politicians and technicians
THE ART OF GOVERNING
In the most difficult moments and when the political class and in particular the governmental class demonstrate uncertainty and disorientation, the request that the country be governed by technicians reappears in large sections of public opinion. Perhaps it is worth dwelling on this subject once more. In fact, it is not enough to observe that that request only expresses a naive, uncritical and indifferent intolerance towards politics, and that when technicians accept certain responsibilities and take certain decisions, they become politicians. Nor is it enough to say that the request often derives from the refusal of the method of freedom and from nostalgia or aspirations towards authoritarian decisions, above all towards those decisions which for each individual would best correspond to one's desires and sometimes to one's interests. Instead, we need to ask ourselves how much of the request to be governed by technicians, and how much of the widespread disesteem towards the politicians from which it arises, derive from the responsibility of the politicians themselves, or of a part of them, and from the conception that many politicians, in the way in which they operate, demonstrate that they have a political function and themselves.
Anatole France said that the French Revolution appeared to him similar to certain Shakespearean compositions where glimpses of vulgarity and buffoonery are suddenly introduced into the most strongly dramatic and most poetic scenes. So it is always in politics. Politics takes place always and everywhere in the mingling, overlapping and clash between noble men and petty people, between moral commitment and intrigue, between coherence and opportunism, between disinterest and selfishness. This derives from the creative function that is proper to politics, which does not allow instruments for measuring results but refers to the judgment that can only be given in the often distant future; and derives from the way men choose, a choice which in liberal regimes is entrusted to the success of universal suffrage, and therefore sometimes to improvisation and often to action within parties, in authoritarian regimes to the co-option of leaders, and therefore often to opportunism and intrigue against the powerful, and in feudal regimes to the genetic virtues and educational capacities of families and communities. Only the democracies with the longest and strongest tradition manage to accompany the choice of directions by universal suffrage with more effective forms of experimentation and selection of men. What matters in every situation is that the negative elements do not prevail; that they are not considered as a normal expression of politics, but are instead condemned and constitute marginal and limited phenomena. Politics is the determination of one's future. Under freedom, every citizen participates in it: with his actions or omissions, in a significant or minimal way, knowingly or unknowingly. Although – unlike what tends to happen in all authoritarian regimes, and more integrally in those with a centralized and bureaucratized economy – in regimes of freedom politics cannot be the only dimension of man and instead a large space must be respected (in the intellectual, cultural, religious, economic, family fields) for the explication of individual choices and wills, where politics must have no entry, the duty on the part of each citizen to appreciate politics and participate in some way it is an essential element of the system.
The politician assumes the function of assisting and guiding other men, soliciting and accepting their mandate, in that difficult work which is the daily creation of its own history for every community. In doing this, the politician does not need to be professionally a technician of any subject and much less (and it would obviously be impossible) of all the sectors that political action includes. Instead, he needs to be an honest and serious politician. This means, above all, in the most elementary terms, that the politician cannot exhaust his action in the mere acquisition of a mandate and power, as an end or as an instrument of self-perpetuation, nor can he make his activity consist in the expression of ideologies or generic aspirations or in the solicitation of ever new needs, but must work to translate the needs of evolution and improvement of the society in which it operates into concrete actions. It also follows, in equally elementary terms, that the politician must be aware of the problems he deals with, precisely in order to be able to understand and evaluate, as is his duty and his function, the human and social relevance of the matter on which he affects, and the possible effects of its action.
The extension and depth of knowledge necessary for the politician to operate well evidently have different accentuations and characteristics according to the sectors, the positions held and the different legislative or administrative phases. Anyone who works with a reforming will in a phase of legislative and administrative renewal must be aware of the very close ties that the technical aspects and political aims assume, especially in certain sectors: otherwise, instead of reforming and renewing, he destroys. And this awareness should engage politicians all the more on a technical and administrative level, in Italy, where there is a lack of valid public administrative structures, the prerequisite and limit of any true reform action, and where the first task is to create a new administration. It is part of the intelligence and art of the politician to know how to make use of technicians, in a valid, correct, non-clientitarian and non-partisan relationship. In any case, and I would say before anything else, whoever is at the head of a ministry, and above all of certain ministries, must realize that he is not the pompous dignitary of a chivalric order, but the head of a large administrative management . Finally, it is necessary in politics, and above all in those who hold the highest political responsibilities, a sense of the dimensions of things: that is, an understanding of the extent of each problem and of the priorities among the various problems. Herein lies the supreme art of the politician.
But for all that has been said, the function and art of politics cannot be replaced by the simple fulfillment of technical functions. Political action is projected towards the future, with evaluations of value and with functions of choices consistent with global and synthesis guidelines. The technician, on the other hand, is inevitably and dutifully linked to the analytical particularism of his competence, with the risk - as those who have technical professionalism and commitment and pleasure in it are well aware - of being induced to attribute a finality to the technical fact and of considering exhausted in it's his commitment. This has led some illustrious technicians - in years now distant and in internationally sensational cases - to oscillate between pro-Nazi enthusiasm and pro-communist adhesions, due to the fascination of the technical or scientific solutions that one or the other identified. If bad politicians could be replaced by technicians, the problem would, in a sense, be less difficult. The real difficulty lies in the fact that incapable politicians need to be able to replace capable politicians. While a large part of public opinion has the impression - which it naively expresses with the invocation of the technicians - that for some years now a sort of Gresham's law has been valid in Italian politics, which taught that in a system of coins bad money drives out good money.
THE ART OF GOVERNANCE AND THE DIFFICULT RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TECHNICIANS AND POLITICIANS
Corriere della Sera, 28 July 1974
BRUNO VISENTINI
Attachments: Seminar on Technical Governances.pdf
