Differences between What Governments Promise and Intend

Differences between What Governments Promise and Intend

The primary aim of governments is to offer support and provide services to citizens. For long, people have had trust in government, and their main intentions have always been to put the right people in the office. From Plato’s philosophy, intellectuals in the past were focused on ensuring that government officials did the right thing (Butler, 2013). Without faithful people in different governmental positions, it would be impossible for governments to offer services with public interests at hand. Early modern time’s philosophers started doubting civil servants and their ability to provide assistance fairly and objectively (Butler, 2013). Social thinkers mainly focused on the moral responsibility of people in the office. Significant distinctions arise between governments’ intentions and their promises, due to factors such as different political structures, conflicts of interest, government spending, limitation of resources, and lack of democracy within a country.

In current times, more people have questioned the credibility of government and the political system. In contemporary society, people have vested and divided self-interest in politics and governmental positions (Butler, 2013). Accordingly, some people indulge in politics with intentions to improve their social and financial gains. When such people gain positions in government offices, they sometimes disregarded their duty of serving the public by investing and amassing massive wealth for themselves. According to Butler (2013), analyzing the working of political processes is crucial in determining the actions of the government. The public choice theory suggests that people concerned about electing trustworthy people to represent them in government may fail due to different eventualities in elections and voting. Interested people have one vote, which is similar to unconcerned people. Therefore, it becomes difficult to put into power a government that would cater to people’s interests.

The ambition of political parties in a nation is to garner as many votes as possible in elections. Since several parties that participate in electionsconduct their campaigns in a similar manner, which is offering promises to citizens, people are left with a limited choice of selecting the right people into government.According to Butler (2013), voters have rational ignorance. It requires effort and time for voters to establish ideal candidates. However, one person’s vote in an election is microscopic, as it contributes insignificantly to an election win. Therefore, it is of little significance for a voter to become well informed because people vote based on party labels.

When getting into office, governments promise citizens that they would focus on people’s interests in their delegation of different governmental duties. However, after getting different positions, public officials maximize their budget by ensuring that they have more security, comfort, status, and power, among other benefits (Tanzi, 2017). Public officials have more advantages as compared to legislators because they better understand the functions of their legislators. When getting into office, leaders promise more than it can be able to deliver to its citizens. The promises are based on projections of the future. Once in the ruling government, leaders are faced with inevitable challenges that make it impossible for them to deliver what they promised. It is impossible or difficult to determine the limit of how much governments should spend. With changing economies, it necessitates that governments adjust their spending to accommodate several changes, such as technological advancements and inflation (Tanzi, 2017). For instance, a government may promise its citizens that it would facilitate the importation of cars with little taxation. Later, the same government would regulate imports if the number of vehicles imported becomes too large. In summary, change of circumstances makes governments change their intentions to adjust to changes.

When giving promises, governments do not say that they would introduce new regulations on different aspects of the economy. However, after getting into office, they introduce rules that lead to growing complaints from conservative politicians, libertarian economists, and enterprise representatives (Tanzi, 2017). Too many regulations in a country slow development, as they introduce a lot of limitations of conducting foreign trade, slows down investments, down-grades the economy. Citizens believe that too many regulations by the government is the abuse of power (Tanzi, 2017). Contrary, governments feel that too little rules would lead to exploitation of a country’s resources. Therefore, it is hard to establish the limit of a government’s power of exercising regulatory activities.

Market regulation, macroeconomic stabilization, and income redistribution are public intervention practices in the economy. Reallocation of resources entails the method of transferring funds from a country, group, or individuals to another group (Majone, 1997). Redistribution also focuses on the provision of healthcare, socials insurance, primary education, and other merit goods to citizens. Governments promise sufficient redistribution of resources to their citizens. However, it is challenging for governments to redistribute resources due to the high population and limitation of resources in different countries. Additionally, if government spending is high than revenue and tax collected from citizens, the likelihood of inability to supply resources among people becomes imminent (Majone, 1997). Macroeconomic stabilization focuses on sustaining and achieving satisfactory levels of employment and economic growth. The primary instruments of the stabilization are monetary and fiscal policies. Its principal aim in a country is regulating insufficiency of resources, incomplete information, negative externalities, monopoly power, and market failure (Majone, 1997). In general, governments promise on macroeconomic stabilization is not often delivered appropriately to external factors, such as trade regulations, natural disasters, and trade regulations between different countries.

People perceive governments’ quest to deliver promises to citizens as unsuccessfulbecause of different reasons. First, people regard the relationship between government and business as cozy. Government officials charged with the mandate to conduct business on behalf of the government are prone to granting monopolies to their favored manufacturers and courtiers (Majone, 1997). In some cases, officials have the private enterprises that they use to conduct government businesses. Tender processes are sometimes disregarded as government officials consider their preferred candidates or assign tenders to their own companies (Majone, 1997).Generally, people that are  denied government lenders consider the government as incompetent in delivering the promises that it promised.

The new government model that has emerged in the current times focuses on deregulation, privatization, welfare reform, and liberalization. Deregulation and privatization are the most common characteristics of modern governments’ operations. Traditional methods of control and regulation have ceased due to ideological, economic, and technological forces prevalent in contemporary society. Modern governments of European and American nations have started privatizing public institutions and firms. Consequently, such firms become prone to European and national competition law.Privatization is followed by regulation of prices. The relationship between regulation and privatization lies on the principle that public ownership was European’s historical method of regulating the economy (Majone, 1997). Federal control and public ownership of resources are two distinct phenomena. The quests by governments to impose general control over nationalized resources have been intractable because public interest is disregarded. Thus, the power of public industries and utilities is assigned to private hands due to the failure of public ownership to perform regulatory activities.

Governments face challenges delivering their promises to people due to rivalry between different officials in government, conflict of interest, and criticism from opposition leaders. First, the government is made up of people from different cultural backgrounds, social classes, from different religions, and personalities who hold different opinions (Wilson, 2019). Therefore, if one official, such as a senator, intends to start a particular project that would be beneficial to citizens, another official may oppose the plans as they would have divergent opinions regarding the idea. Similarly, a government official may have some conflicts of interest and only work on a project that benefits them either directly or indirectly. Lastly, opposition leaders may oppose some government projects that may seem to them a waste of government resources or overspending (Wilson, 2019).Overall, opposition leaders may fight governments’ intentions to make people perceive the government as incompetent and irrelevant in their actions.

Different agencies in the government have diverse interests. If two agencies charged with doing a particular task have different experiences, then those that have different political environments and statutory origins have more different skills (Wilson, 2019). External interests shape agencies and tasks performed by those agencies. Since a government uses various agencies and organizations to conduct its activities, it becomes prone to executing functions that differ from what it initially promised its citizens. An agency’s environment influences its outside interests. Examples of political situations that agencies are susceptible to include dominant groups that are either hostile to their goals, favor their goals, conflict top their goals, or no interest groups at all (Wilson, 2019).

Governments’ intentions differ from their promises because of the structure of government. First, the government has three arms that are the legislature, judiciary, and executive. The three arms of government are independent of each other. The fact that the three sections work independently may slow down development (Wilson, 2019). For instance, the legislature may make laws concerning particular regulations. After the enactment of the rule, a citizen may move to court challenging that specific policy and offer evidence on how the law is discriminatory or unfit to be followed in the country. Accordingly, the judiciary may provide a judgment that the law is subject to change or amendment. The executive may also come in and oppose or allow the evolution of law. In such a case, rivalry and misunderstanding among the three arms of government may slow growth and development within a country or hinder the delivery of government promises (Wilson, 2019). Similarly, members of parliament, who are part of the legislature, may have divided interests and pass bills that promote their well-being, such as their salary increment. Overall, conflict of interest and rivalry within the government system hinders the delivery of promises to citizens.

Lack of sufficient resources in a country and misappropriation of funds renders a government incapacity to fulfill its promises. For instance, during the electioneering period, a presidential candidate may promise people that they would improve the healthcare sector and implement an affordable housing system in the country. After winning the elections and forming a government, the president may realize that there are insufficient resources with which to deliver what they promised. Consequently, the president may result in seeking foreign aid and acquire foreign loans. Loans may negatively affect a nation’s economy and thus leading to loss of employment and poor living standards within the country.In summary, governments’ intentions and promises differ as a result of certain factors, such as the insufficiency of adequate capital and resources in a country.

According to Wilson (2019), lack of democracy within a nation affects government operations. It is hard to direct and organize citizens who are not stakeholders of public policy formulation. When the per-capita value of a program is deficient, people do not feel the impact, and therefore, are less concerned about the program. In a democratic nation, power belongs to the people, and they dare to say how they would like the government to carry out its activities of governing them. With democracy, people pressure the government to fulfill its promises. Similarly, governments enquire from citizens regarding how they would like a particular project done. Imposing heavy taxes on citizens for the sake of national development is not ideal in a democratic nation (Wilson, 2019). For a country’s economy to thrive and continually improve, people should have money in their pockets to make investments and to conduct private businesses. Accordingly, for a growing nation, the private sector should contribute more to the GDP of a country as compared to the public sector due to the considerable population gap.

Conclusively, people in the high political class in a country are more privileged, as they receive a more significant share of government resources. Politicians and political elites are responsible for sharing resources to citizens of a country. In most cases, governments do not offer what they promise to people due to a variety of factors, some of which are inevitable. The most common primary factor that renders governments incapability of fulfilling its promises is the conflict of interest among different stakeholders in government. Governments operate with the help of agencies that have different experiences gotten from their environments. The divergence of experiences among various organizations and the three arms of governments leads to differences between government intentions and promises.

References

Butler, E. (2013). Public choice – a primer. London: The Institute of Economic Affairs.

Majone, G. (1997). From the Positive to the Regulatory State: Causes and Consequences of Changes in the Mode of Governance. Journal of Public Policy, 17(2), 139-167. doi: 10.1017/s0143814x00003524

Tanzi, V. (2017). Termites of the State: Why Complexity Leads to Inequality [EBook] (pp. 123-131). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/kcl/detail.action?docID=5212885

Wilson, J. (2019). Bureaucracy. New York: Basic Books.