The Autarky of Public Administration

From international corporations (analyzed in Chapter 1) to monopolies (dealt with in Chapter 12) was a difficult step, since the names are no longer familiar. International companies are easy to talk about: everybody knows them, everybody thinks they know them, a great deal is said about them. Monopolies were more difficult to deal with: the names are no longer familiar; they are often local companies; everybody tends to think they have their own predicament which is different from that of others. Nobody is interested in Lilco (the Long Island Lighting Company, in New York), and speaking of Electricité de France (EDF) might be regarded as an exquisitely European matter, even though Lilco and EDF are very similar to any large power company, like tens — if not hundreds, perhaps — of other power companies around the world. The non-profit world can be somewhat similar to international corporations as there are world class non-profit organizations but, when we come to public administration or government bureaucracies, when we come to politics and political systems, everybody is on his own. It is the war of all against all — notwithstanding the well-known and primary impact of government on development (Perkins in Perkins et al., 2006; Draghi, 2010; Tabellini, 2010).