The technical man and the policy maker

Title

Creator

Miller, William D.

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XIV (No.9) September 1962

Year

1962

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

The technical man or the economist fails because he overlooks cards and value

Fulltext

# Th® technical man or the economist fails because he overlooks cards and value?. THE TECHNICAL MAN AND THE POLICY MAKER Technical competence in government, as elsewhere, is naturally desirable. But is it desirable that it be the chief end of government? The technical man isolates one particular field or acti vity, in order to concentrate upon the procedure within it. In order for his work to pro ceed, he must assume the worth of the end to which his work is addressed; in or der to get on to his own ques tion, “How?,” he must as sume that the end he is serv ing has an assured place in a hierarchy of values that he does not himself examine. As a cobbler cannot con tinually be asking himself whether shoes as such are a good, so an economist can not continually ask himself whether "productivity” or “satisfaction” or "economic growth” is a good; he must take that for granted and get on with his job. Where the end is simple and noncontroversial, such a technical approach Taises no problems. But in social po licy the ends to be served ad mit of no such description; it is of the essence of politics that their meanings shift, that values conflict, and that men differ about them. The ends of politics, moreover, are not neatly separable from the “means” the technical man thinks he deals with ex clusively; usually he bootlegs in some assumptions about ends in his work on the means. One might argue that political leadership, which must interpret the situation and fit together these several and conflicting ends, is pre eminently the activity that cannot properly be reduced to sheer technique. But the technical man will tend to regard all "general ities,” good ones and bad ones, as airy, empty, and mis leading; he will tend to think that the "declaration” of the "objective” is "easy,” while only the attainment is really 29 Panorama difficult, requiring "hard thought.” He characteris tically will want to deal with problems only case by case, to treat each case "on its own merits,” without much regard for — indeed with some re sistance to — a general con cept. Most of all, the techni cian will dismiss considera tion of ends, principles, and purposes. These are already agreed upon, or are impossi ble to deal with, or are some body else’s job, or anyway something not to talk about; let’s talk instead, he will say, about "ways and means,” about how to do it, about "sophisticated solutions.” Policy on taxes and spend ing and interest rates in volves, along with much eco nomic fact, a whole nest of inexact judgments — really, ethical judgments — about values and interests. Though these judgments may be com plicated and require advanced economic knowledge and do not sort out neatly under existing political labels, still they are not merely "techni cal”; they are not just "admi nistrative” or “executive.” If we could just get enough moral juice back into the word, we could say that they are, exactly, "political.” "Po litics,” or "policy,” would appear to be the point at which technical considera tions (how does the thing work) and ethical considera tions (what is good) meet, and neither part of the mix should be left unexamined. The political leader’s job is to articulate an interpre tation of these larger than technical choices. — William D. Miller from The Reporter. September 1962 23

pages

22+

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