Government by Consensus DISCUSSION AS WELL AS DECISION NEEDED

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31045, 28 April 1966, Page 16

Government by Consensus DISCUSSION AS WELL AS DECISION NEEDED

i By

MICHAEL GARDNER

of the "Economist

London, April 13.—Going on for three years ago, in Washington, a lot of scorn was being poured on the faithful spokesmen of the State Department who were being pressed to show reason why the best way to better democracy in a number of Latin-American countries was to back coups there by soldiers. Some British voices off were characteristically sardonic.

Now still more British and other European voices, without having anything at all to do either with international communism, or stiH less with Buddhism, are pointing almost with satisfaction to the mounting demonstrations in South Vietnam against the present military rule. The most quoted American these days is not Walter Lippmann but James Reston for saying, in his own honest way, that in Vietnam the American Administration is stuck with defending, on the scale of real war, a “government” and a “nation” neither of which in fact exists. Yet critics should by now think twice before being censorious. Many of the same sardonic or querulous voices would argue that in West Africa, for instance, democracy may be in process of being saved by the take-overs by soldiers first in Nigeria and then in Ghana. All of us are very much where the State Department’s spokesmen on Latin America were in the autumn of 1963. Saved from what? There are two answers: international communism, whatever that may mean at any particular time in any particular national place; and dictatorship, whatever that may mean, from Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin to Nkrumah, the Sardauna of Sokoto. Castro or the Latin-American generals, and Marshal Ky. Being “With It” Saved for what? That is really the crucial question. All of us see the world through our own spectacles. In the 1960 s so far, all the talk and thought in , the countries that call themselves democracies, from de Gaulle and Kennedy to Johnson and Wilson, has been about decision-making. Only so could they hold their own against totalitarian bosses: only so could they get their economies to grow by choosing and pursuing the right options: only so, by singleparty planning, could the newly independent underdeveloped countries make their way in the world. To be “with it” in the twentieth century was to be, above all, a decisive (the "in” word was “purposive”) manager. Now there is much rethinking going on, though it may be as cloudily as before. Of course any country, whether labelled a democracy or dictatorship, has to be capable of deciding what to do to be saved, whether economically or militarily. That is what

John Kennedy knew, and applied so well, potentially at any rate. But can a country be capable of these life-saving decisions without the broad processes of discussion as well? Super-politicians like President Johnson or Prime Minister Wilson during elections, anyhow, can fluff this question by taking about, and indeed establishing for a time, what is called a consensus. But the truth is that fearsome and altogether academic radical, Harold Laski, whose revolutionary ardours frightened Winston Churchill so much in 1945, was right in one thing at least: all authority is federal and capable of being efficiently exercised only by discussion and accommodation among the persons and interests concerned. Test For The Military A Mussolini can make the trains run to time (did he?), but look what happened to him and Italy in the end! A Hitler can get a consensus (he did), but to query his decisions was to be put into a concentration camp or hung on a meat hook, and look what happened to him and to Germany! A Nkrumah can get a consensus (he did, too) but he was cut down when the discussion had to start again. The test now of the soldiers the West likes so well in West Africa (as of the Latin-Ameri-can generals) is whether to

decision they can really add discussion. And even in France, where de Gaulle has restored self-respect by pcstoring the power of decision, the political process will have to start flowing again soon There may, indeed, be good hard reasons for defending South-east Asia against hostile erosion, and for saying, with Luther or Foster Dulles, “Here I stand" in South Viet nam, because there on that spot the predicament is actual. But as a community and a system to be defended. South Vietnam will remain a figment of Washingtons imagination until all the groups and interests there, if inot all people, are positively involved. Not The Key The moral for what is flatteringly called the mature democracies may be less urgent and is certainly less apocalyptic. But it is as significant. To be durable, the power of decision, which a modern State has to have must be able to bear the pres isures of discussion. I This is true whether the American President is trying to turn a predicament into a foreign policy or a policy for wealth into a policy for wcl fare. It is true whether the British Prime Minister is try ing to balance the nation s books, or to shape a right role in the world. Consensus is not the key.