Government as Law or Listening to People?

The recent strikes in France against Macron’s perfectly reasonable plan to raise the retirement pension age, again pose the question of how good Continental ‘governance by rational law’ really is. The alternative is expressed by the English-speaking countries that operate by business style contracts, a reduced kind of law, and by listening to complaints that are based in actual lifestyle. Brexit and the recent battles, with Macron and Barnier, over how the UK should continue to interact with continental Europe, illustrate all the mutual incomprehension that arises from having two different systems behind the activities of government.

Recent strikes across France show what goes wrong when governments use a political approach based on law. The policy behind it appears absolutely clear; and to its fans, this looks a very rational way of proceeding. But Hugh Schofield (BBC News 7^th March 2023) reveals the ugly underside of this. All political gains from government policy are seen by their beneficiaries as eternal political rights, which need to be defended forever by violence if necessary. Schofield refers to the French Revolution as a foundation of this. Flexibility, compromise, and updating, because times and conditions have changed, all become impossible. What first appeared as rational turns into street battles between right and wrong.

English speaking countries, correctly see the advantages of their approach. Compromise and adaptation help things to move along more smoothly. They can change with the times in small, aggregating steps. There does exist, of course, an inherent disadvantage to this unwritten process. It is, definitely, less rational in that, at no point, is it necessary to put in writing, or to conceptualize in any broader way, what is going on. The English-speaking countries are notoriously bad at explaining themselves, to their own people and to outsiders. While explanations won’t stop the on-going, low level Mandevillean grumbling and complaining, serious minded audiences could usefully be told the underlying purposes and success rates of the various projects going on in the English-speaking system. A prime example comes from the advocates of Brexit who seem unable to explain its potential usefulness. Brexit may add resilience to the economy, diversity in industries, and robustness in employment, all of these being gains from avoiding the Continent’s legal absolutism.

So do we prefer the rigidity of everything signed as an international treaty (Macron, Merkel)? Or do we like inattention to detail (Johnson), or lost in detail (May)? Viewed within the current political scene, there appears to be no good choice. Fortunately, modern countries don’t rely only on the political sphere. Lots help comes from other sources – the economy and, even more, from a country’s sociology.

All three social science systems work by listening to people. Each has its own method for doing this. What picture and results they give us depends on how much time and effort society has put into the different zones of politics, economics, and sociology. Which best expresses the material reality of how people are living? Which of these should we be listening to most? These are big, yet to be decided, questions of social science that take us beyond particular politicians and specific moments in history.