6.6.4.1 The Internal Role of National Politicians

(This is an archived extract from the book Patterns of Power: Edition 2)

National politicians have internal roles in all five dimensions (6.1.3), exerting more power over people’s lives on a daily basis than any other level of political subsidiarity. This section examines why this is so and some resulting problems.

National politicians have acquired their domination of internal powers for several reasons:

· They have more scope to influence public opinion than lower levels of subsidiarity because national media, particularly newspapers and television, focus more on national than local issues.

· Within the hierarchical organisation of political parties, national politicians outrank those at lower levels of subsidiarity; they have been able to seize powers that could have remained local.

· Most political systems require a large part of the national budget to be centrally controlled:

‒ Benefits are the largest portion of most national budgets, and most countries prefer to pay benefits at similar levels throughout the country as a matter of principle.

‒ Defence has to be controlled on a national basis.

‒ It is more efficient to collect most types of tax revenue centrally.

· Political control over law and order is hierarchically controlled (5.3.2), to ensure that all parts of the country are effectively covered and that a coherent service can be delivered.

· There are reasons for centralising some quality monitoring, for example on education.

· There are practical benefits in providing diplomatic services to protect the interests of citizens and nationally-based organisations in their dealings with other countries.

Despite the inevitable dominance of national politicians, though, the acceptability of governance would be increased if more power were localised – as described previously (6.6.2).