The Economics of Enough_ How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters - Diane Coyle [85]
However, the sense of failure is widespread too in the context of the rich economies. The financial crisis has reinforced the lack of trust, verging on contempt, for the political elite, the financial elite, and almost all forms of authority. The opinion poll evidence for this loss of deference in the Western democracies is startling. Moreover, the level of engagement with democratic institutions is diminishing almost everywhere. Over the last forty years, voter turnout has been steadily declining in established democracies, including the United States, Western Europe, Japan, and Latin America. In the United States, turnout has declined from 1960. In Europe, voter turnouts peaked in the mid to late 1960s, with declines since then. Globally, voter turnout has decreased by about 5 percentage points over the last four decades.
There is in many countries, as reflected in such polls, a disappointment in government. Many citizens believe their governments are failing them in important ways. Many of us have had to make big adjustments in our working lives. Old certainties known to our parents have gone. A lifelong career in one organization is unlikely. Companies have reorganized and downsized frequently. None provide a secure pension any longer. Big corporate names vanish overnight. Businesses are outsourced overseas, all too frequently it seems from the headlines. The fact that many of these changes affect a minority of the workforce is not relevant to their emotional impact. A great many people feel that they are on their own in a completely changed environment for work; and in that, they’re correct. Individual capabilities and adaptability have become important.
This matters to government as well as private businesses because many government functions build around the private sector—employers collect income taxes, for example, and in many countries are involved in providing pensions or administering various benefits. Much of the welfare system is built on the assumption that people will stay with one employer, in full-time work, for long periods. The system of social support, which is one of the main functions of government in a modern economy, is built to a blueprint that has become obsolete. And the wide-spread sentiment that government is failing in its fundamental task of enhancing citizens’ security in the widest sense is well-founded. So paradoxically, the cut and thrust private sector has done better than the public sector at increasing the levels of trust needed in the changed economy. The polls do suggest that people have greater trust in some private sector organizations than in the institutions of government.
It is not only at the level of national economies that governance has become a hot topic though. Corporate governance has been studied extensively for the past decade or so, and in a number of countries the law has been changed to try to improve corporate governance. Companies are urged to be transparent and accountable, and to take seriously a wider set of responsibilities than making a profit. Many commentators seem to believe companies have some quasi-governmental roles. Big corporations are certainly important social institutions.
At the same time, as described above, the spread of modern information and communication technologies has changed the structure of companies, making it harder for them to fill a social role in the way increasingly expected of them. Instead of the hub-and-spoke hierarchies, the structure best suited to an age when communication was costly, modern companies are much flatter and organized in a complex matrix