Almost a
quarter of a century ago I published my first ever academic journal paper, an
analysis of the career projects of accounting professionals (Grey, 1994). It enjoyed
a brief degree of popularity - these terms are relative, but within a context
of the miniscule citation counts of most papers in the organization studies
field I think that can be said – possibly because it exemplified the then still
emergent Foucauldian tendency in British organization theory.
Because I
was a young, bumptious fellow, and unused to seeing my work discussed in print
by others, I was chagrined when another paper appeared in which my article was
pulled apart (Newton, 1996). I would not nowadays be so disconcerted, partly
because my work has now been pulled apart so often, partly because I now
recognize that it is impossible to control how one’s work is received, but
mainly because I now think it’s something to be thankful for if my work is read
and engaged with at all. All publicity is good publicity.
But I’m
thinking of Newton’s critique of my paper now because one part of it was to
re-interpret my analysis of the accounting firm via Norbert Elias’s (1983)
discussion of how courtly societies operate with, for example, complex codes of
courtly behaviour, courtiers jostling for position, and the ability of the
monarch to dispense or withhold patronage.
That does
capture something (though by no means all) of the firm I studied, but I’m
reminded of it now because it most certainly captures the ever more bizarre
ways that Trump administration is conducting itself. Presumably following the
same practices as he used to run his business Trump does indeed seek to govern
like a mediaeval monarch. So we have a nepotistic intermingling of family and
government (exemplified by Ivanka
Trump briefly taking her father’s seat at the Hamburg G20 meeting and by
the roles in his administration played by his son and son-in-law); fighting
amongst courtiers (currently exemplified by Anthony Scaramucci’s
attack on Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon); demands for personal fealty from
public officials (exemplified by Trump
asking James Comey for a promise of loyalty); and sudden falls from grace (exemplified
by the subsequent sacking
of James Comey, the recent resignation of Sean
Spicer and the current spat between Trump and Jeff
Sessions).
There’s
probably something of a royal court in any political (or big business) administration, but the
way in which Trump’s resembles such a court is unprecedented in the modern
history of liberal democracies. The reason for that is that liberal democracies
emerged at least in part because of the manifold deficiencies and dysfunctions of
courtly governance; deficiencies and dysfunctions that the Trump administration
exhibits only too clearly. At the most basic level, such governance doesn’t get
much done, and tends towards corruption at best and evil at worst. In fact one
could say that the crucial achievement of rational-legal organization of the
state – as analysed in Weber’s bedrock work in organization studies – is the
displacement of personalised forms of rule based on nepotism and patronage by
due process and rule through public office.
That this is
so is illustrated by the fact that although the White House may operate in ways
that look like a mediaeval royal court, the US polity is not in general describable
in that way. That is to say, the systems of political and legal due process are
– just about – holding Trump in check. It’s worth making the comparison with
Hitler’s administration. That is not to make a lazy accusation of fascism –
Trump and Hitler are very different people, with different politics, in
different situations – but just to make the point that Hitler also presided
over an administrative chaos of warring factions competing for patronage
(Kershaw, 2008) at least at the level of the state. But the Hitler regime had
also swept away or suborned all of the structures of civil society and due
process that might otherwise have contained it. We can be grateful that the
United States is proving more robust.
As for the
accounting firm I studied, it has long since disappeared, mired in scandal,
something in part attributable to the fact that for all that it may have in
some ways resembled as court it was also subject to and ultimately subservient
to the rule of law.
References
Grey, C. (1994) ‘Career as a Project of the Self and Labour
Process Discipline’ Sociology 28, 2:
479-497.
Elias, N. (1983) The
Court Society. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kershaw, I. (2008) Hitler.
New York: W.W. Norton & Co
Newton, T. (1996) ‘Resocialising the subject: A re-reading
of Grey’s ‘Career as a Project of the Self’, Sociology 30, 1: 137-144
A remarkable
victory appears to have been won by anti-corruption demonstrators in Romania. The
largest street protests – involving a reported
half a million people, that in a country with a total population
of 20 million - since the fall of Ceausescu have forced the government to
abandon a policy to decriminalise corruption by public officials if the sums
involved are less than US$ 48,500. By way of context, average GDP per
capita in Romania is about US$ 9,500 (2015 figure, a record high). This
policy, derived from a government decree, rather than from parliament, would
have had the effect not just of stopping investigations of corruption below the
specified level but also releasing from prison thousands of officials already
found guilty of such corruption.
Corruption
in Romania, as in many other countries, has a long and complex history, and it
long predates both the communist and post-communist eras. However, in recent
times there have been significant attempts through the National Anti-Corruption
Directorate (DNA) to tackle the problem, resulting in hundreds of prosecutions
and convictions, including that of former Prime Minister Adrian Năstase. Even so, Transparency
International’s corruption index rates Romania 57 out of 176 countries (Denmark
and New Zealand are joint first in the list, Somalia is at the bottom), making
it one of the most corrupt countries in the EU. Unsurprisingly, then, the EU
Commission was also strongly opposed to the proposed decree.
Corruption
is not just a crime like any other. As its name suggests, it corrodes, deforms
and ultimately destroys the moral and legal fabric of civilized society,
whether within politics or business organizations (see Burke & Cooper,
2009). Within organization studies, the foundational work of Max Weber shows
how one of the distinctive advantages of the rational-legal bureaucracy is to
both render illegitimate and to monitor and control corruption. This, indeed,
is one of the ethically distinctive features of such bureaucracies (see du Gay,
2000). The Romanian protestors are absolutely right to see corruption as a foundational,
fundamental issue.
At a time
when so much is happening in the world that seems to be beyond our control, it
is heartening to see that peaceful protest can influence political decisions.
People can, still, make a difference. In particular, the success of these
protests gives hope to the beleaguered cosmopolitans in what I have described elsewhere
as the
new politics of cosmopolitans and locals. In the UK, with Brexit, the US,
with Trump, and in many other countries such as France, Germany and Hungary
populist localism is in the ascendant. But the Romanian protests can be
understood as a revolt of the cosmopolitans. According
to Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Professor of Democracy Studies
at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin and the former leader of Romania’s anticorruption Coalition for a Clean Parliament: “… the people of deep, poor, dependent Romania nevertheless returned the
families of their corrupt patron politicians to parliament, as they hope for
more redistributive policies in return. In contrast, the crowds in the big
cities are made of English-speaking Romanians working in multinationals and NGOs”.
The
conjunction of cosmopolitan Romanians and the EU Commission is a reminder that,
whatever populist rhetoric suggests, these are not some out of touch establishment
bent on doing down the people. On the contrary, populist localism benefits not
the poor and marginalised but corrupt political elites (in the genuine sense of
the term). The most important guarantor of universal well-being is the rule of
law, which is why the independent judiciary are under such attack
in Brexit Britain and in Trump’s
America for insisting that governments remain within the law. The successful
demand by the Romanian protestors that their officials must be subject to the
rule of law is a remarkable and timely inspiration to countries around the
world and, especially, to the cosmopolitans currently at the lash end of
populist localism.
References
Burke, R.J.
& Cooper, C.L. (eds.) Research
Companion to Corruption in Organizations. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar,
2009.
Du Gay, P. In Praise of Bureaucracy. Weber,
Organization and Ethics. London: Sage, 2000.
