Knowledge And Decisions

The particular era of machine politics domination, and the social classes and ethnic groups to whom they appealed, all highlight the high knowledge cost of its alternative — “rational” or bureaucratic “good government.” Political machines were at their peak from about the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century — at a time when ethnic (including religious) divisiveness among voters made public trust difficult, when few of the ethnic minorities had the leisure, the education, or sometimes even the knowledge of English to cope with the organs of government that vitally affected their daily lives. Police protection, garbage collection, schooling for their children, and many other governmental responsibilities were in the hands of people and organizations that were incomprehensible, uncontrollable, and often openly contemptuous of the unwashed, polyglot populations of many large cities. The cost of transmitting these latter groups’ knowledge of consequences effectively to decision-making points through the formal political and bureaucratic maze was far higher than the cost of centering attention and loyalty on some political “boss” who could override, circumvent, or otherwise “corrupt” the formal processes to get done what had to be done. Very often these political bosses literally spoke their language, and made it their business to understand intimately their constituents’ lives, and the things that were important and unimportant to them. By contrast, reform or “good government” political leaders were usually distant, aloof, prosperous Anglo-Saxons who knew little about the cultural mosaic of the big city slums except that it was foreign and therefore “wrong.” In short, reform or “good government” politicians were largely ineffective as conduits for the knowledge of governmental impact on the lives of the kind of people who turned to political machines. It was not simply that the masses were “ignorant” and “misled” as the reformers tended to view it. Being ignorant and therefore subject to misleading might imply much random political behavior, but not the overwhelming loyalty to one political machine that characterized immigrant ghettos. The value of these political machines to culturally bewildered and economically desperate people is only underscored by the financial corruption of machine politicians, who were re-elected by voters generally well aware of these illegalities.

The social composition of the supporters and opponents of political machines suggests another important trade-off: between the comprehensiveness of the law and its comprehensibility to the public. The more thoroughly and specifically law attempts to cover contingencies, the more complex the law becomes and the less understood it is. Since law is intended not merely to retrospectively judge behavior but to prospectively guide it, it fails in this latter — and larger — function to the extent that the public cannot figure out what the law expects or requires of them.

The optimal mixture of comprehensiveness and comprehensibility for the more affluent and more educated classes obviously involves more complexity than the optimal mixture from the standpoint of those with simpler financial arrangements and less training in verbal complexities of the sort found in laws and legal documents. The trade-off tends to be biased toward complexity, not only by the greater influence of the affluent, but also by the rationalistic assumption that more (or more precise) articulation is “a good thing” — without regard to diminishing and negative returns. But the failure of the law to explicitly cover contingencies does not imply greater uncertainty, chaos, or litigation. Those with more complex affairs can produce their own contractual complexities within the framework of simple general law. There is a social trade-off between legal complexities produced at public expense and those produced at private expense.

BUREAUCRACIES