State Power and Private Interests

Core Argument

• Contemporary critics rightly point out that a centralized bureaucracy, while powerful, can be dangerous when removed from popular oversight
• Bagg argues it is equally dangerous to vest too little power in a centralized state, allowing dominant groups to exploit decentralized systems
• State capture is the underlying risk that synthesizes both concerns
• Public and administrative institutions will be presented as heuristics to minimize risks of capture from public and private sources
• The administrative state can be a tool against concentrated private power by following these heuristics, rather than serving dominant groups

Introduction

• The state's relationship with concentrated private power is a complex dilemma in modern politics
• While states can challenge social, political, and economic hierarchies, state policy can also maintain dominance for dominant groups
• The aim is to explore the idea of transforming the state from a tool to a weapon against private power and outlining a framework to answer it

Centralized State

• Opponents of a powerful administrative state may overlook the dangers of a weak centralized state

Modern Society

• Retreating into the background will exacerbate the problem, hence dominant groups will expand their advantages using decentralized approaches

Framework

• A framework is presented to highlight threats of both public and private power, relating to state capture, such that minimization of capture can effectively answer 3 crucial questions:
• The general approach states should take regarding private power in each area of policy
• The substantive policy tools that are most resistant to capture
• The procedural reforms which can further insulate states from capture
• This does not defend abstract normative foundations, or propose a policy platform
• Rather mid-range heuristics for public and administrative institutions are provided, compatible with different foundational assumptions

Opposition

• Opponents of the administrative state are wrong as its projects must not be abandoned as a solution to its possible issues
• Public power imperatives must prevent the state being captured by private interests, hence requiring an active and capable administrative state
• A way is demonstrated to transform the state into a reliable weapon against concentrated private power in order to be both necessary and achievable

Central Concepts

• Task is to explain the state's need in engaging in fighting concentrated private power, starting with the concept definitions
• Power enables agents to achieve desired results
• Not all power is intentional however, so wealth, social and cultural capital and persuasive capacity are power resources
• Held by actors such as non-state agents with great power counts as concentrated private power
• Groups like corporations/unions are private actors, but concentrated private power is assigned to groups sharing common interest

Power Status

• Classifying power as public or private can have grey areas where state services have been contracted to private firms
• Public power includes legislative, judicial, administrative, and military institutions, where private power includes wealth, corporations, and interest groups

Summary of View

• Concentrated private power is useful to balance concentrated public power of the state
• Private power can be used to capture public power which is troubling in definition
• State capture occurs when public power is used to benefit a faction or private actor at the expense of the public

State Capture resistance

• Any cases of state capture is worthy of censure and resistance
• Complete prevention of capture can never happen and is expected to be widespread in any society
• Capture extends throughout different arms of the state, undermining or only mildly threatening the public interest, whether initiated intentionally or unintentionally
• Tyranny and apartheid are state capture examples where everything is organized around serving some interests at the expense of others
• Corruption and regulatory agency capture is a concept also covered, where an office or agency is diverted from it's purpose and made to serve a private or factional interest
• Phenomenon advantages is from use of this concept, we can also see the commonalities in form among other disparate cases

Normative Role

• The concept of interest plays a normative role where the idea of public interest serves as the focus concerning the existence and relative severity of capture
• Capture status and problem depend on if the public interest has been violated and to what extent
• Views on this question have different theoretical framework as to what the public interest actually is, but should still oppose tyranny, apartheid, corruption
• The general definition on public interest is left unspecified in order to be able to identify particular instances of capture

Normative Guidance

• Clear breaches of public interest can be confidently identified, but as citizens, there is the ability to agree on concrete instances/definitions of capture
• Precision and disagreement show real uncertainty in the political world, enabling reflection into the limits of political knowledge

Key Answer

• States must fight concentrated private power
• The reason is that concentrated private power is dangerous and can be used to capture the state in a way that those with the highest power are the largest threat
• Capture of the state has been the normal state throughout recorded human history, so restraints should be given on the accumulation of private power in order to oppose abuse

Concentrated Private Power

• Check abuse of state power through a flourishing ecology of diverse private organizations
• Balance is required as overwhelmed entities create impossibility of coordinating abuse capture resistance, where certain factions instead become more powerful
• A balancing act is adopted regarding power, but before proceeding, focus is brought onto a salient alternative

Concentrate Private Power

• The threat of concentrated private power is mitigated by centralizing functions performed by potentially dangerous non-state actors, subjecting them to collective control
• Instead, is it about making private power public? Socialistic traditions have many accounts, as do theories about accounts of labor
• In the Marxist account, citizens are barred from changing capitalistic power relations and must be subjected through means of production towards collective decision-making

Individual Autonomy

• Traditional liberal replies suggest coercion represents a categorically different threat to individual autonomy than other forms of power
• Centralizing economics rests on collective control to legitimize concentrated power, but this is too slippery to trust
• Most people know little about politics such that even those with substantial knowledge affirm group identity, and better minded people still can't take in all knowledge to eliminate bias
• An issue with preference cycles within a dimension, prevent incoherent formation when in reality, power relations will shape agendas

State Power

• Many theorists understand application of these issues towards election, and recognize that electing top leaders isn't enough to achieve control, but they often leave certain areas for individual discretion with minimalist conceptions
• Variations on idea suffer flaws as commonsense views grounded in elections introduce new problems, as efforts are used instead to determine which decisions must be centralized assuming power isn't legitimate
• The question is then asked in pragmatic terms to find dangers of centralization in relation to decentralization, making our reasons for socializing economic & social power clarified

Base of Electoral Democracy

• Electoral democracy lacks secure empowerment, so incumbency is leveraged towards not using coercive state power
• Elected leaders are far safer than actors independently, but electoral democracy isn't genuine self-rule, as collectivized processes can't eliminate ownership/control danger without giving power to leaders

Individual Discretion

• The state relinquishes individual control to empower people to contest incumbent action, only threatening equilibrium
• Private actors accumulate in dangerous amounts relinquishing all control
• Some areas could make the safest option to be decentralized competition with minimal state involvement or a safer approach with active involvement
• Determining state involvement helps resist or at least minimize capture