Government By Panic

I have a pet theory which leads me to, despite being a member of the public, be less than enthusiastic about 'greater public accountability'. This is because I strongly suspect that said public accountability is in fact one of the major reasons for poor government in the present day.

To explain: In the past, I'm sure politicians made as many stupid mistakes and embarrassing gaffes as they do now. (Gladstone apparently had a habit of inviting prostitutes back to Downing Street, for instance...) However, in those days before the Information Superhighway, there was time available to correct these mistakes meaning that, yes, maybe a few heads didn't roll which should have done, about which no doubt the press will eternally grieve, but also that the great mistakes, eventually, got fixed. Now though, in an era of instant communication, they don't. Because the public will find out and be giving feedback on a government or business initiative in some cases seconds after it's been launched, everything has to be an immediate success, to show instant results, or else be scrapped and hastily apologised for because the next crisis is coming up and they don't believe they have time to fix the last one.

For example: "Oh dear, we'll sort out the health service later... the transport system's in a mess now... no, hang on, put that off for another day because the student population's up in arms over top-up fees. We can't deal with that now because of all the wrangling over Iraq... we can't..."

And so on. It seems to be a state of near hysteria which not only leads to Inadequate Investment (re: transport, 'rebranding' and renaming produces instant results which are easy to publicise and say "Look, we're doing something", whilst actually solving the problem would take, from their perspective, far too long to show results, but also (bringing in the SF references here) is partly responsible for the decline in quantity and often quality in British TVSF. If everything has to be an overnight hit, then there's not much time allowed for a show to build up audience figures by word of mouth, public consciousness etc, and those two are the life-blood of shows like Doctor Who, amongst others. In order to make something an overnight hit, it has to be tailored to a 'winning formula'... and that, in these days of PANIC, seems to be a 'tried and tested' formula, and that, although it doesn't necessarily have to, leads to clone after clone after clone.

What are the odds that, sometime in the next century we'll see the then equivalents of ER and Holby City both running identical-with-the-names-changed storylines about someone having a cloned baby? How meta can you get-a indeed.

To round off, there are of course numerous examples of Government By Panic in SF itself, ranging from Steven Baxter's Voyage- we can't design a complicated new efficient system of spacecraft... we'll have to go with what we've got because we want to do it now! to the Time Lords of Doctor Who- quick, let's execute this person before we find out all the facts because otherwise it might give us bad PR during the election, and Babylon 5- again, never mind that the galaxy's breaking down into chaos, we've got an election in less than forty-eight hours.

As Sir Arnold Robinson explained to Sir Humphrey Appleby: "Open government is a contradiction in terms. You can be open, or you can have government". Sir Humphrey Appleby also observed that "Politicians like to panic, they need activity. It's their substitute for achievement."

"In these days of PANIC, seems to be a 'tried and tested' formula, and that, although it doesn't necessarily have to, leads to clone after clone after clone." - ironically, pretty much a description of PANIC in it's second sense. Except for the guy playing Wagner.

A short addition: GovernmentByPanic and blogging - <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2992587.stm>

Could the results of the 2004 U.S. presidential election be a variant on Government by Panic?