A Dialectics for Administrative Supervision and a Semiotics of Bureaucratic Populism: "Transatlantic Civil Servants’ Statement on Gaza and Declaration" of 2 February 2024

 

Pix Credit Legion (Scott Steward (dir) Sony Pictures 2010)

 It is always fascinating to live in a moment when one can witness the manifestation of democratic populism within the structures of mass public institutional organs. It is even more interesting to parse the discursive trajectories of that manifestation when undertaken by the leading forces (vanguard) of the public administrative apparatus of national political collectives. And fascinating as well is the projection of those internal engagements outward into the masses and their organizational ecologies in an effort to construct a united front of vanguard forces that might then realize a goal through the mobilization of mass politics in liberal democracy when the strategies of the internal cultures of administrative organs appear indifferent to vanguard objectives.  

All of this is fair--though risky for the public vanguard collectives engaging in these strategies. Administrative organs tend to find the organization of informal subcollectives--of political mass collectives informally organized autonomous organs of leading forces--within their apparatus with a measure of distrust. Chief among the elements of distrust is the matter of institutional solidarity and the structures of the exercise of authority within these organs, including the structures of internal discipline and complaint. Administrative organs might also be challenged when these informal autonomous sub-organs of vanguard forces undertake to project themselves beyond the borders of their administrative institutional structures. In effect, administrative organizations might have a very different answer to the question--who do you serve?--then the leading elements of these leading forces collectives.  

Nonethess, while these questions may produce a measure of interest, the semiotics of the discursive elements of the politics projected beyond the administrative structures within which officials operate officially--and related to those functions--suggest even more potentially profound issues that might be worth unpacking. More specifically, they suggest a semiotics of meaning making in which revolutionary phenomenological praxis  might be deployed to both undermine a formal apparatus through the constitution of a revolutionary structure that might take for itself the authority and guiding force  against which their discursive projections are aimed.

These thoughts came to mind as I read through the quite interesting Transatlantic Civil Servants’ Statement on Gaza: It Is Our Duty To Speak Out When Our Governments’ Policies Are Wrong, which was released February 2, 2024 and included a "Declaration of civil servants regarding Gaza." As reported by the BBC:

More than 800 serving officials in the US and Europe have signed a statement warning that their own governments' policies on the Israel-Gaza war could amount to "grave violations of international law". * * * It is the latest sign of significant levels of dissent within the governments of some of Israel's key Western allies. One signatory to the statement, a US government official with more than 25 years' national security experience, told the BBC of the "continued dismissal" of their concerns. * * * What's really different here is we're not failing to prevent something, we're actively complicit. That is fundamentally different from any other situation I can recall," added the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The statement is signed by civil servants from the US, the EU and 11 European countries including the UK, France and Germany. (here)

The statement raises a number of issues, none of them related, directly or indirectly, to the situation in Gaza and or to the optimal rationing of culpability between the Hamas organs and their facilitators/sympathizers (including elements of the UN system itself it seems) and those of the Republic of Israel and its allied forces. Though it is the substance that captures attention (here), its discursive and performative elements bear far more consideration. The underlying political issue. of course, serves as the precipitating cause--but the underlying trajectories have been there, growing, and waiting for the mix combustible mixture. Gaza and the Jews appears to have served this purpose better than the situation in Myanmar, Ukraine, and a number of other places in the world that just did not produce the right mixture of ingredients. 

It is those underlying issues that are worth describing here, and observing as their repercussions are manifested in nationally contextual ways. 

1. Revolutionary resistance among officials. Resistance among the officials populating an administrative apparatus is as old as the constitution of the apparatus itself. Traditionally there has existed a fairly broad palette of behaviors that have been tolerated and are sometimes necessary when the hothouse of administrative operations may present issues of illegality, abuse, or error. Among them are leaks to the press, shirking, working to rules, internal coalitions to discredit superior managers or target political officials, forming coalitions with other officials in brother/sister agencies, invocation of internal measures or processes, and end running a boss. Where the problem comes from the political authorities, that is from the holders of authority by reason of their connection to the foundations of democratic legitimacy (as we have come to embrace it now) through elections, good practice sometimes requires a resignation. Resignations can be quiet or noisy--and liberal democracies have seen more than their share of both this century, followed by various forms of advocacy or "tell-all" exposes, usually in league with like minded collectives outside the state apparatus. . . What is revolutionary in this case--in the sense of a direct challenge to the authority of political actors (democratically seized with authority)--is the political organization of resistance with the object not merely of intervening in decision making but of usurping the political role delegated under law to certain officials and ultimately exercised by political actors directly responsible to the people. It is revolutionary because at its heart it is both anti-democratic (exalting a techno-bureaucracy as a politically privileged vanguard of leading forces above elected officials) and populist (in the sense of end running elected officials by appealing directly to the people and in that way to pressure elected officials. Where officials become a political class within the administrative apparatus, acting collectively and autonomously, the effect is a revolutionary transformation of the democratic premises on which the techno-administrative liberal democratic state is grounded.

2. The signification of meaning and its application are the central responsibilities of a techno-administrative vanguard. A techno-administrative vanguard is hired, it seems, to provide expertise--including opinions, views, etc. to those charged with evaluating those contributions as part of political decision making within the scope of the duties and prerogatives of the decision makers. That might be inferred as the generative kernel within the "recollection" section of the "Statement." That is all true and strongly aligns with the cultures of governance that have given legitimacy (in the U.S. in a more fragile manner since the Supreme Court's decisions of the 1930s) the the techno-bureaucracies of contemporary liberal democratic governmental apparatus. Yet there is a difference between being hired to provide input and expertise, and being elected to make decisions. In a military context, for example, one expects much by way of expertise from the generals who are appointed to the highest levels of command.  BUt it is to the civilian leaders to whom ultimate decision making authority is assigned--to demand otherwise is to invert the fundamental premise of democratic governmental organization. Here, the signatories take the position that, in the last analysis--it is to them that the ultimate authority must rest (given their expertise) with respect to matters over which they have been hired or to which they believe they have a functionally related opinion, where they disagree with the decisions taken by the people who received their views, advise, technical expertise, etc. The justification for this is both simple, and one the legitimacy of which remains untested in contemporary space: That where advice is given and rejected, and the rejection touches on a matter of fundamental importance to the state, or which, in their opinion, imperils the ability of the state to comply with their international legal obligations, then they ought to have the authority to intervene. And perhaps they ought to have that right by reason of their position as advice givers and participants in formal and binding meaning making (respecting rules, interpretations, positions, and choices); something like a duty to disobey, the conception of which has become more popular as democratically elected leaders have become less aligned with their techno-bureaucracies. The idea may be at, at some limit, everyone is a guardian of the constitutional order and bound to resist decisions that we believe exceed authority.  

Yet that sounds improbable within the context of a rules based legal order. First it suggests that meaning making (the authoritative interpretation of text, and policy, and the even more authoritative judgment about the legitimacy of decisions respecting that taken by others). First it suggests that employed functionaries have, by reason of their employment relationship, may develop and impose their own signification of critical rules, law, norms, practices, and text. Second, it suggests that on the basis of their superior authority to impose meaning, they may also impose judgment, or at least a judgment of the boundaries of discretionary decision making by those to which a constitutional order vests decision making authority. Third, it also suggests that the techno-administrators also have the authority to determine how such authority may be projected--in this case by collective action against decision makers in an effort to force them, indirectly to change their political decisions on the basis of the4 signification that they believe suggests a better course. Fourth, it also suggests that the process techno-bureaucracy can exercise a state of exception within a rules based system that effectively waives the rules in favor of the imperatives of their own guidance and the force of their signification and framing of those decision points at the center of their political action. Fifth, it begs the question of rules.  During the course of the last several American administrations, there was move toward routinizing judicial resolution of contests over the exercise of administrative authority by the executive.   Generally, the techno-administrative apparatus might, to those ends, rely on civil society to undertake this function.

3. Modern liberal democracy itself requires administrative supervision by a techno-bureaucracy of experts hired into the apparatus for that purpose.The Statement, then, reveals an interesting semiotics of its object--techno-bureaucracy.  It suggests that liberal democracy must itself be grounded in a compliance framework. That compliance framework--that it must adhere to its own rules, must be undertaken by a technically capacited elite; and that this technically capacited elite must itself form a part of the apparatus which must be protected against itself. That produces a signification of the techno-bureaucracy that places it as a mediating force between the elected representatives of the people, the people themselves, and the rules that have been legitimated through the apparatus by which popular power has been delegated to elected representatives. The techno-bureaucracy exists as a result of this interaction; it is constituted by and through law, and is legitimated precisely because the law itself expresses the will of the people as manifested by their representatives through the institutional organs constituted for that purpose. But the techno-bureaucracy exists beyond this organizational relationship. The system must be overseen. And the people require a delegated collective to those ends. That is the extra-legal but fundamental signification of a techno-bureaucracy. Their imposition of meaning, and of the boundaries of legitimate political decision making serve as an accountability mechanism in which, by reason of their capacity, must be delegated to these leading forces. As in all systems in which the lines between the people and popular control become more attenuated--the forms of popular authority as the foundation remains scrupulously respected--and thus the Statement's appeal to the people. But the people must be managed into the sort fo right thinking necessary for them to authoritatively affirm the guidance of administrative supervision. This provides the germ of a notion about the reshaping of the fundamentals of liberal democracy within techno-bureaucratic compliance cultures ad the basis for rules based liberal democracy in the new era. The Statement provides a very tentative window of what may be emerging in complex systems driven by a will to govern as a function of objectives the existence of which are for the people but not necessarily a manifestation of popular desire.

The issues highlighted are important; they are critical to the shaping of liberal democratic rules going forward. That is especially the case with respect to the division of political authority within the organs of states where the administrative and supervisory role, once a methodology of operationalization, itself becomes an autonomous repository of democratic authority, an authority that may be connected directly to the people.  The Statement does an excellent job of tracing trajectory of administrative supervision that means to escape its home base in exogenous dialectics (the intersubjectivity of public supervisory apparatus and private objects of supervision). That projection of supervision now means to become an element  of endogenous supervision--that is of the critical role of a techno-bureaucracy (vested with authority by reason of its technical mastery, itself a transformation of the old Nietzschean priestly function) that now supervises those whom they serve--higher level bureaucrats, and the elected officials that vested them with position and institutional authority. The effect is to end run the chain of command; and it expands the endogenous supervisory toolkit. No longer limited to internal strategies, the techno-bureaucracy, when crossed, may appeal directly to the masses. They become, by operation of their technical authority, a political body that exists both within and outside the apparatus from which their authority flows. In the process, the old externalizing processes--and especially the courts--may be displaced.  Techno-bureaucracy, then, in its revolutionary possibilities, may supplant or supplement the trajectories of judicialization that had been the leading forces of evolutionary liberal democracy since the middle of the last century. And in the process, the rise of the authority of the techno-bureaucracy may pave the way for a more robust governance role for big data, its analytics and automated decision making overseen by organs of administrative supervision, bent to the realization of objectives that emerge from their role in the constitution of social meaning in political collectives. But this, of course, is at best a fantastical speculation--yet the possibility of populism in administrative supervision may be inevitable as liberal democratic collectives embrace  more passionately administrative supervision sensibilities..

It is certainly plausible, given the discursive trajectories of administrative supervision principles to re-make 18th century based liberal democracy into a form more compatible with the contemporary taste for the exercise of collective authority through bureaucracies that oversee both the law (the political element) on the one side and its social manifestations (economics, culture) on the other. Compliance based cultures that seek to bend the entirety of the the human collective towards collective ends developed through and overseen by the apparatus of a political collective is not merely the realization of a sort of textbook illustration of semiotic relationships (where the object, the techno-bureaucracy) is signified by its own structures that then produce the foundation from which it can  impose meaning on itself and the rules that signify its own authority and capacity. That is the political discussion that those who drive liberal democracy have yet to have. It may be time. Or all of this will go away as the weakness of the effort may, for practical purposes, doom the transformative potential of this revolutionary moment for the leading forces of the techno-bureaucracy.

 

Transatlantic Civil Servants’ Statement on Gaza: It Is Our Duty To Speak Out When Our Governments’ Policies Are Wrong

Released February 2, 2024 

Declaration of civil servants regarding Gaza:

Recalling that:

• We have the duty to respect, protect and uphold our constitutions and international and national legal obligations which our democratically elected executives have committed us to;
• We are expected as civil servants to respect, serve and uphold the law while implementing policies, regardless of the political parties in power; that we have done so for our entire careers;
• We have been hired to serve, inform and advise our governments/institutions and we have demonstrated professionalism, expertise, and experience that our governments have relied on over the past decades of our service;
• We have internally expressed our concerns that the policies of our governments/institutions do not serve our interests and called for alternatives that would better serve national and international security, democracy and freedom; reflect the core principles of western foreign policy; and incorporate lessons learned;
• Our professional concerns were overruled by political and ideological considerations;
• We are obliged to do everything in our power on behalf of our countries and ourselves to not be complicit in one of the worst human catastrophes of this century; and
• We are obliged to warn the publics of our countries, whom we serve, and to act in concert with transnational colleagues.   

We publicly reiterate our concerns that:

• Israel has shown no boundaries in its military operations in Gaza which has resulted in tens of thousands of preventable civilian deaths; and that the deliberate blocking of aid by Israel has led to a humanitarian catastrophe, putting thousands of civilians at risk of starvation and slow death;
• Israel's military operations have not contributed to its goal of releasing all hostages and is putting their well-being, lives and release at risk;
• Israel's military operations have disregarded all important counterterrorism expertise gained since 9/11; and that the operation has not contributed to Israel’s goal of defeating Hamas and instead has strengthened the appeal of Hamas, Hezbollah and other negative actors;
• The ongoing military operation will be detrimental not just for Israel’s own security but also regional stability; the risk of wider wars is also negatively impacting stated security objectives of our governments;
• Our governments have provided the Israeli military operation with public, diplomatic and military support; that this support has been given without real conditions or accountability; and that when faced with humanitarian catastrophe, our governments have failed to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to blockages of necessary food/water/medicine in Gaza;
• Our governments’ current policies weaken their moral standing and undermine their ability to stand up for freedom, justice, and human rights globally and weaken our efforts to rally international support for Ukraine and to counter malign actions by Russia, China and Iran; and
• There is a plausible risk that our governments’ policies are contributing to grave violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and even ethnic cleansing or genocide. 

We therefore call on our governments/institutions to:

• Stop asserting to the public that there is a strategic and defensible rationale behind the Israeli operation and that supporting it is in our countries’ interests;
• Hold Israel, like all actors, accountable to international humanitarian and human rights standards applied elsewhere and to forcefully respond to attacks against civilians, as we are doing in our support to the Ukrainian people; this includes demanding immediate and full implementation of the recent order of the International Court of Justice;
• Use all leverage available - including a halt to military support -  to secure a lasting ceasefire and full humanitarian access in Gaza and a safe release of all hostages; and
• Develop a strategy for lasting peace that includes a secure Palestinian state and guarantees for Israel’s security, so that an attack like 7 October and an offensive on Gaza never happen again.

Coordinated by civil servants in:  

• European Union institutions and bodies
• The Netherlands
• United States

Also endorsed by civil servants in:

• Belgium
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom