It was the COVID-19 Pandemic that ultimately demonstrated to the residents of the State of Israel just how dependent elected representatives are on the bureaucracy: The unelected ranks of government officials. The public presence of these officials in handling COVID-19 increased by leaps and bounds, and the government became almost entirely dependent on them to keep the country running. There were, however, a number of issues with this: the lack of transparency of the officials’ activity, the incompetency demonstrated when handling matters within their purview, and the political leadership’s divestment of authority to the bureaucrats. The bureaucracy in Israel has evolved into its own class, and has accumulated a great deal of political power beyond the public view. This power is dependent on various beliefs regarding the functioning, capabilities, and worldview of the bureaucracy. The time has come for these beliefs to be reexamined.

The Bureaucratic Ideal

In the Early Modern period, new ideas and models for the “ideal state” began to emerge – many of which included the position of civil servants. The most conducive starting point in exploring this position is in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, published in 1651. Hobbes was particularly interested in questions of sovereignty, authority, and obedience; in fact, he devotes an entire chapter to “The Public Ministers [Servants] Of Sovereign Power.” Bureaucrats, or “Public Ministers,” states the English philosopher, “resemble the Nerves, and Tendons that move the several limbs of a natural body.” In other words, they mediate between the sovereign and the public. Civil servants are specifically “servants,” for they “serve the Person Representative [the Sovereign Power], and can do nothing against his Commands, nor without his Authority.”

The idea of the bureaucracy as the exclusive executor of policy laid down by the sovereign is common and well-known. The period of the Enlightenment, however, led to the emergence of a new theory, which granted the bureaucracy a unique status. Two main ideas lie at the heart of this theory: first, a naïve faith in the power of the social sciences, enabling an echelon of “experts” and “professionals” to tout policy-making as a scientific endeavor to the same degree of accuracy and effectiveness as the natural sciences. The second concerns moral values and, specifically, absolute intuition regarding morality and justice; if applied and embodied by an enlightened sovereign establishment, this will ensure that Heaven reigns on Earth. The ideal bureaucratic type is, therefore, an expert in policy matters, and advances the general good based on a system of absolute and universal moral values.

These ideas were a central motif for one of the most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century: Friedrich Hegel. Hegel expanded on this in The Philosophy of Right, which was published in the 1820s. In his work, Hegel waxes poetic on the “universal class” of civil servants, who are responsible for “The task of upholding, […] the universal interest of the state.” This class is distinguished by significantly excelling in “impartiality, integrity, and generosity.” “The state official,” wrote the German philosopher, “turns his office into the primary interest of his spiritual and particular existence.” He demonstrates “the sacrifice of independent and capricious gratification of subjective purposes.” Importantly, the German philosopher added that the “objective factor in the appointment [of the civil servant] is the knowledge and proven existence of skill. These proofs ensure that the state will get what she asks for,” and finally, crucially, “Bearers of public positions are appointed to their specific positions not on the basis of their unmediated personality, but rather their general and objective talents.”

One hundred years later, the discussion of bureaucracy was continued by Max Weber, another German thinker who also heavily influenced the field of social science. His magnum opus, Economy and Society, devotes a whole chapter to “bureaucracy,” which he considered to be a uniquely western historical development.

Weber famously defined the state as, “A human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” This successful claim for the use of violence, he argues, derives from authority accepted by society. Weber recognized three types of relevant authorities: traditional, charismatic, and legal-rational; Bureaucracy belongs to the third.

Civil servants, whom Weber also describes according to an ideal model, fulfill a personal and public mission within a formal, legal, hierarchical, and well-defined framework. Bureaucrats are professionals, and the bureaucracy is meritocratic; civil servants are chosen based on their abilities and talents. According to Weber, the professional bureaucrat “does not deal in politics, but in ‘administration’,” and he calculates his actions, “without temper or partiality – without bias.”  Weber also believed in the value of expertise related to state management and social sciences, and he envisioned a bureaucracy composed of “experts on the matter, well-trained over years of study […] and with a highly developed professional-class honor, which drives them to act justly and honestly.”

It is worth noting that Hegel and Weber were not oblivious to the drawbacks of the bureaucratic class. They were aware that they were portraying a utopian ideal, and, in their works on the subject, considered various reservations. Hegel, for instance, acknowledged that “the shared interest of the bureaucrats in […] being a united backbone against those subordinate to them, and against their superiors” poses a potentially serious problem.  As such, he clarified that the aim “to remove such obstacles […] requires and justifies the intervention of the sovereign.”

Weber, who wrote when bureaucracy was more expansive, was even more aware of the disadvantages to empowering the bureaucracy. In the spirit of Hobbes, he clarified that the bureaucrat “obeys the order of the authority superior to him with dedication and precision […] even when he considers it a complete error.” He further expounds, “were it not for these clear virtues, the whole mechanism would fall apart.” Weber was troubled by the danger that could arise from these virtues not being observed. Since he recognized the interest of the bureaucracy in accumulating power resistant to the sovereign, he viewed the rise of the bureaucratic class as a danger to freedom; this is together with the many advantages of bureaucracy, and his belief that the bureaucratic class is a marker of western progress.

Weber also worried about the information gaps between professionals and public representatives; this became a central subject of study during the twentieth century. “Every bureaucracy,” he wrote, “is interested in increasing the superiority of the professionals by preserving their knowledge and intentions as secret.” He continued, “Bureaucratic institutions always tend to be establishments of ‘secret meetings’; the establishment hides its knowledge and actions from critique as much as possible.” Weber also stressed:

“The pure interest of the bureaucracy in securing power goes beyond those places where functional interests justify secrecy. The concept of an ‘official secret’ is a unique invention of the bureaucracy, and nothing is protected as fanatically by the bureaucracy like this approach, which cannot be justified […] In dealing with parliament, the bureaucracy, based on a clear instinct for power, fights every effort of the parliament to secure knowledge through its experts or interest groups […] The bureaucracy naturally welcomes a parliament which is poorly informed and therefore lacking in power – so long as this ignorance somehow serves the interests of the bureaucracy.”

The Duhl Doctrine

Unlike Hegel and Weber, today there is hindsight, and a great deal of experience and knowledge has been accumulated on how extensive modern bureaucracies actually work. This did not exist even in Weber’s time when governments were much more limited than they are today, with control over only a small percentage of the country’s GDP; in Hegel’s time, the subject was almost entirely theoretical. Today, we encounter a corrupt public administration, a dysfunctional bureaucracy, and many cases that confirm the philosophers’ initial fears on the subject.

Yet, despite our wisdom and experience, the praise sung to bureaucracy by Hegel and Weber is minor compared to the epic poetry composed by our modern bureaucrats. An example showcasing the nature of bureaucracy in Israel was written in the official report of the Civil Service Commission published in 2017, some two hundred years after Hegel, and a century after Weber. This is not a document necessarily defining the essence of the bureaucracy, but an accounting written up by Ron Duhl, legal advisor to the Commission; it addresses a local, albeit pressing, issue described in the report’s title: “Document on Tenure and Termination of Employment in the Civil Service.”

The statements in the document are considered dogma. It is seemingly fortuitous that they are presented as the natural consequence of tenure in civil service. According to Duhl, the bureaucracy is a “professional public service” with an “objective and stately character.” Our officials, who consider their service to be a “life career,” serving “various governments and passing ministers,” are therefore “politically neutral.” The bureaucracy makes “objective, topical decisions,” lacks “foreign and political considerations,” and always considers the “public interest of all the citizenry.” Bureaucrats enjoy “professional credit,” granted only to those who “work on behalf of a public body,” since “their behavior is seen by all as objective and professional conduct.” This is because the public official, as opposed to his counterpart in the private sector, “operates based on a long-term perspective.” Moreover, he “considers the good of the public,” “works for the public,” and “protects the interests of the public.”

Owing to these exalted traits of our bureaucrats, it is understandable why Duhl, a public official himself, concludes that the wonder of civil service also “leads to the recognition that a special treatment be given to public officials, different than that of workers in the private sector.” This includes, critically,  “protection from dismissal which their non-public counterparts do not have.”

There is no doubt that Hegel’s and Weber’s exemplar bureaucrat is but envious of the Israeli official as portrayed in the “Duhl Doctrine of Public Service.” Duhl goes further, stating that the official must know how to protect the good of the public from “the whim of a particular manager […] if this does not align with the instructions of their superiors.” Elsewhere he writes that the official “should place the good of the public before him, before the good of the government in power.” Duhl identifies a gap between the good of the public and the good of the government, believing that bureaucrats with tenure can stop the government in its tracks. Not only does he have no qualms about possible corruption of the bureaucracy, he places its value above that of the political leadership.

The Duhl Doctrine presents four central myths regarding the public sector. These myths are common, yet continue to act as religious dogma in bureaucratic propaganda since Hegel’s time. Two of these myths address the professionalism of the bureaucratic class, and two examine its lack of partiality:

• The Myth of Expertise: “Expertise” here means the intellectual aspect of the bureaucracy, primarily as it regards matters of policy reliant on disciplines from the fields of social sciences. The ostensibly deep intellectual understanding of bureaucrats in their field is what authorizes them to hand down binding instructions on matters of policy.
• The Myth of Professionalism: “Professionalism” here means the training and long service of the official which, per the “Duhl Doctrine”, means he is in possession of (a) excellent performative skills and (b) a professional judgment going beyond even that of his counterpart in the private sector.
• The Myth of Objectivity: The belief in the “objectivity” of the bureaucratic leadership refers to the claim that it is free from personal interests, and their recommendations therefore contain no suspicion of self-promotion. The greater good is their singular concern.
• The Myth of Neutrality: “Neutrality” refers to the belief in the bureaucratic leadership’s lack of political-ideological bias.

Below, each of these beliefs will be discussed, with reference to several case studies regarding the Israeli bureaucracy. As previously mentioned, the Duhl Doctrine concerns the justification of the institution of tenure and the pay slips enjoyed by civil servants. The forthcoming discussion will therefore focus wholly on these myths as they relate to these issues.

The Myth of Expertise

“None of the social scientists can predict something that’s worth a buck. It’s not just in economics but also in political science, in sociology. We tried to provide forecasts, and it didn’t work,” said Seymour Martin Lipset, a well-known professor of political science and sociology at Stanford, and President of the American Association of Political Science.

The social science departments established in the nineteenth century were based, among other things, on the assumption that they were training people for positions in government bureaucracy, thus bringing benefit to the states funding them. Studying societal matters “scientifically,” the founders of these disciplines believed, brings about the formation of advanced knowledge of a high scholarly caliber, especially relevant to fields of interest to the state. Academia creates bureaucrats who occupy the status of “expert,” and who would help the state form policy.

Indeed, every academic and bureaucrat is an expert in their field to a degree; this is true of every profession. English professors are also experts, as are government drivers, accountants, and economists. Expertise is a complex business, and having expertise in one field does not qualify you as an expert in all fields; it contains technical aspects, experiential aspects, disciplinary aspects (the literature professor quotes Shakespeare, the accountant knows how to provide a balanced budget), and adept skills. Nevertheless, the reason the social sciences are convinced they are particularly relevant in anything and everything regarding policy recommendation is not just due to this, but a very specific knowledge they claim to possess: knowledge with scientific validity.

The social sciences were founded under the influence of the success of the natural sciences during a time when many believed it would be possible to achieve scientific knowledge of culture and society. It is, supposedly, a simple question of “scientific method.” As such, the social sciences behave and pose as though they are the natural sciences. Their academic prestige relies on their being like a science: they gather observations, use mathematical tools and formulas, build complex models, publish in peer-reviewed journals, and even, in some cases, conduct experiments. Therefore, they claim, their work provides a better, more precise, and more scientific understanding of social processes in a variety of fields.

The problem is that these are but protocols. Astrologists and tea leaf readers can also fit this model, if they are sophisticated enough. There is not much to building a sophisticated statistical model examining the tea leaves left in the cup and connecting it to various forecasts regarding the future. What then is the test that distinguishes between the protocol of the astrologist and the physicist, or the charlatan and the scientist?

The answer is that a series of predictions, tested in a controlled environment, can be made based on a scientific theory. It is clear to all that contrary to a successful scientific hypothesis, the mathematical model of the astrologist will fail (or succeed only through coincidence). Natural scientists formulate protocols from which predictions can be derived regarding a phenomenon which has not yet been tested, and whose correctness is subject to empirical examination, usually in a properly controlled environment. Thus, the expertise of the natural sciences is ultimately determined by nature, or the existence of the phenomenon itself, not by the peers reviewing the material.

Essentially, the natural sciences are necessarily dependent on their ability to provide predictions and test them. It is for that reason scientific hypotheses receive their unique value. This is why, despite other fields containing a great deal of knowledge, insights, and fascinating theories which enrich us, our understanding, and our thought, they are not considered scientific.

Whilst elaborately addressing but the tip of the iceberg when discussing science and the philosophy of science, it brings us to the most basic question one could ask of any discipline with scientific pretensions: Do the social sciences really pass the prediction test?

The Arab Spring

In 2011, the Middle East was swept up in a series of fierce and violent political struggles which came to be known as the “Arab Spring.” Riots began at the end of 2010 in Tunisia, where a vendor named Mohammad Bouazizi burned himself to death after being abused by the government. The question we must ask is: How many “experts” on the Middle East, who study the region and all its phenomena, particularly from the social sciences, even partially predicted this chain of revolutions?

At least in real-time, no-one claimed such credit. Jeff Goodwin, a sociologist and scholar of revolutions from the University of New York, wrote about the Peace Foundation, as it had employed the best contemporary minds of social science to build a complex and advanced index of “failed states.” The aim of the index was to examine instability in 177 countries, to provide “policy-shapers and the public […] [with] an early warning of conflict,” and advance peace around the world. In 2011, of the countries which experienced the Arab Spring, only Yemen was on the list of worrying countries in 15^th place. Egypt and Syria were ranked 50^th (with scores similar to Columbia and the Philippines) and Tunisia, Libya, and Bahrain, central focal points of the Arab Spring, received good marks and were ranked among “stable” and “promising” states on the positive half of the index.

Goodwin summarized his conclusion: “Social scientists can speak fairly elegantly of the path of certain societies. But the very contingent nature of human behavior makes precise forecasting of the actual or even the likely path of societies impossible.” Indeed, following every crisis, after thousands of experts around the world fail to predict an enormous event, apologetic articles flood in, like those of Goodwin, explaining retrospectively why they cannot predict dramatic events. They usually come with a long and varied list of reasons and explanations.

The truth is even more serious. Even Goodwin, with his self-criticism and methodological soul-searching, cuts himself a lot of slack. The social sciences do not only fail to “precisely” predict the social and political processes; even casting broad brushstrokes, their average in terms of forecasts is not close to “actual” or “reasonable” by any metric relevant for shaping policy.

The Soviet Unions

This is not exclusive to the Middle East. The collapse of the Soviet Union took everyone by surprise. Its effects reverberate until today as the world shifts from a bipolar world, where two nuclear empires fought each other for global hegemony, into a unipolar one, where the United States stands supreme. In the era of the Cold War, central intelligence agencies and communities focused intently on the Soviet Union. Alongside them stood innumerable “experts” on international relations, political scientists, economists, sociologists, anthropologists, Sovietologists, and so on. The resources invested in them were astronomical.

Still, almost no-one predicted the deafening collapse of the failed superpower. All “experts” were captives of academic, political, and intellectual preconceptions yet they failed to anticipate the reckoning just around the corner. Unsurprisingly, most academics brushed this monumental failure aside and continued, in the manner of tenured employees, to explain in hindsight why the collapse was, in fact, entirely predictable.

This is true for most academics – but not all of them. Professor Richard Pipes, a Sovietologist from Harvard, who also served as an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, attempted to earnestly explain the failure of the “experts”:

“I invested a great deal of thought in trying to understand this professional obtuseness, and I could not arrive at an exact answer. It seems likely that in the end, the failure of the professionals to understand the Soviet troubles lay in their indifference to the human factor. Due to their desire to mimic the success of natural scientists, whose judgments are “value free,” the politics and sociology became more and more mechanical, they built models and relied on statistics (many of which were forged), and in the process, lost contact with the subject of their studies – the messy homo sapiens, who contradicts himself and who is unpredictable. Anyone who spent an hour walking the streets of Moscow, the richest city in the Soviet Union, with their eyes wide open, would toss out the absurd statistics of the CIA, which presented the growth of the Soviet GDP and the standard of living in the Soviet Union as almost half that of Americans. An open-minded conversation with Soviet citizens would reveal that the appearance of broad support for the regime was false. But such testimonies were generally rejected as “anecdotal”, and therefore unworthy of serious attention.”

Another comment by Pipes is worth considering: “The few who did predict the fall of communism were, without exception, amateurs, usually from the conservative side. They examined the situation without any pretense to being ‘scientific,’ applied common sense and addressed the moral issues which the experts diligently avoided.”

Pipes summarized his important article thus:

“Regarding the professions of political science and sociology, if they demand to be considered scientific disciplines, as their names imply, they certainly must employ energetic self-criticism to figure out what went wrong. So far, they have failed at this. Such a methodological autopsy is vital, otherwise they make similar mistakes in the future. The national intelligence community is very much dependent on academia for analytical methodology and tends to duplicate its conclusions. Therefore, academic mistakes might, indirectly, have a very harmful influence on the advice given to decision makers and, consequently, also the policy they enact.”

It must once again be stressed that this was the most important historical event since WWII, an event which shook the world. The resources invested in understanding, studying, and modeling processes in the Soviet Union were extortionate, and as advanced as they could possibly be. Those considered to be the greatest experts in the world, at the forefront of “science,” were assigned to the task. Unfortunately, in spite of that, just as the investment and pretense was great so was the failure.

Deluded Forecasts

So, what is going on with the social sciences? Are there really “experts” out there who can produce reasonable forecasts and predictions within their field of expertise? Or, is it all just one big intellectual con job, with disciplines whose knowledge is equivalent to history departments – for which I have endless respect but which has no claims to be scientific according to our definition – whose models and theories are equivalent to phrenology?

Very rarely does it happen that a social scientist directs a critical spotlight on the social sciences themselves using the field’s own critical and methodological tools. Professor Philip Tetlock, a political scientist from the University of Pennsylvania, did exactly that; he is credited with the most thorough examination of whether those who claim expertise actually have the ability to predict future events.

Over the course of almost twenty years, between 1984 and 2003, Tetlock conducted extensive forecasting competitions: he gathered almost 300 experts from various fields, including academics, government officials, and journalists, and asked them to provide general forecasts for a range of political and economic scenarios, including those falling within their respective specialties. For instance, Tetlock asked experts to choose amongst three possible outcomes regarding a particular future scenario within an economy of a given country: Do they predict growth, status quo, or decline?

Overall, Tetlock examined more than 80,000 forecasts, and the results were grim: The forecasts that fell within a specified range of years of the real outcome were almost certainly down to luck. In other words, they were a result of no apparent expertise or professionalism, even accounting for the (ostensible) field of expertise of those making the forecast. Better results could have been achieved had they stated that the three results encompassing the range of options are equally likely.

Tetlock writes: “The predictions of experts in their field of knowledge were no less directed and distinct than those of amateur trespassers […] as far as knowledge is concerned, we are reaching the point of lowering marginal returns for forecasts in a terrifying way.” Moreover, somewhat dishearteningly, Tetlock found that the more high profile a subject was, the more the accuracy of their forecasts tended fall below average.

A further fascinating finding of Tetlock’s delved into the self-confidence gap of “experts.” Although almost none predicted events more correctly than amateurs, the (self-defined) “experts” enjoyed a great deal of self-confidence. When Tetlock asked them to explain their choices, the “experts” had extensive and much more complex explanations than the amateurs. Meanwhile, when examining the results in practice, it turns out their elaborate rationales were simply biases, or pretenses of vast knowledge – perhaps even self-deception.

Thus, the “experts” in social science are good at sounding good. They have jargon, theories, statistics and models, and a lot of knowledge in their field. Nevertheless, in reality, they have no advantage in making predictions over the “non-experts”.

Tetlock’s conclusions should be earth-shattering:

“In an age of academic hyper-specialization, there is no reason to assume that authors in prestigious journals – respected political scientists, experts in the field of research, economists, and so on – are better than journalists or attentive readers of the New York Times in interpreting developing situations […] The analytical skills underlying academic fame have not been translated into an advantage in predicting and in updating beliefs […] If these results represent the real situation, it should be no surprise that there is not much revulsion among senior academics towards prediction exercises (the opposite approach of what I would expect if they believed they had an advantage in these).”

Expertise in the field of social sciences, to the extent that it is supposed to be scientific, is therefore a fiction.

Social science faculties often say that they have no claim to predict events. We should not take this argument seriously: This is false modesty. Those same individuals who claim modesty in the face of empirical examination of their understanding of the field have never hesitated to recommend policy to decision makers; they even go beyond this. Every such recommendation assumes that their field of expertise includes unique and advanced knowledge which allows them to assess whether a particular policy can produce particular results or, in essence, to provide a forecast. This is the basis of their academic prestige yet turns out to be charlatanry;  although, as opposed to those who read crystal balls, it comes with a comfortable salary, and tenure.

Economics

Despite the evidence accumulated by Tetlock, social sciences continue to claim they are scientific. That being said, within the social sciences, most economists actually avoid providing real-time predictions. There is, however, one exception where providing forecasts requires professional academic expertise: the stock market.

Professor Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, details a study conducted at Duke University: The predictions of experts at major companies, regarding the famous Standard & Poors (S&P) stock index, were put to the test. The scholars studied 11,600 forecasts and found there was a slight negative correlation between the forecasts and the actual performance. In effect, they were wrong more than right. A coin toss would have been more effective.

The study also tested the self-confidence of those experts, also discovering no real relation between their actual skills and their faith in said skills. In fact, says Kahneman, the excessive self-confidence, resulting from baseless pretensions turned out to be a dangerous business: “The study showed that those with the most confidence and optimism regarding the S&P were also the most excessively confident and optimistic regarding the odds of their own company, which took more risks than others.” Noting that, as Tetlock also demonstrated, this self-confidence led to the prominence of, and excessive reliance on, the “expert” on the part of government ministries, the risk of the pretenses of social “scientists” is revealed as a matter of national concern.

This “expert problem” was stressed most by Nissim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan. Taleb is a mathematician with a broad education who, in addition to serving as a part-time academic, deals in risk management in the stock market. In his works, he repeatedly emphasizes how the academics who call themselves “experts” are, effectively, clueless. They are “expert” in creating mathematical models that do not necessarily work, and could only be successful in providing forecasts when compared to the average individual or even just dumb luck.

In 2007, with the early signs of the collapse of the housing market, Taleb wrote about a common model developed in the field of finance called “Modern Portfolio Theory,” or “MPT”; the developer of this model won a Nobel Prize. Regardless, Talen says, “We learn from crisis to crisis that the MPT has the scientific and empirical validity of astrology (sans the aesthetics), and these lessons are still ignored when teaching 150,000 business school students around the world.”

Taleb describes how when he met the President of the International Monetary Fund at a conference in Korea in 2009, the latter presented the IMF’s forecasts for the next five years to the audience. Taleb, though nervous, could not help himself, and shouted that the next time someone from the IMF shows them a forecast, they should also demand to see the forecasts they presented for the period between 2004 and 2007/8, during which occurred the great crisis they failed to predict. One can, as such, deduce that those in the IMF “serve as experts at a time when they offer the scientific validity of astrologers.” To substantiate his argument, Taleb presents considerable data, all of which prove the same point: Contrary to what is fundamentally required from every science, academic economists refuse to accept the results of the models and theories they developed against reality. Thus, he stated, “they are like medieval doctors.”

Indeed, a Greek scholar named Professor Spyros Makridakis, who specializes in forecast assessment, proved a long time ago that many well-regarded and complex models in this field do not predict matters any better than simple ones. This discovery, which was rejected at first, repeated itself over and over at greater levels of magnitude, until they were forced to publish and admit the fact. Makridakis discovered what all the other critics of social sciences discovered: The connection to reality was of no account. Developers of complex models continue to develop them and they become ever more complex, even though this does not improve them. The reason is that complexity has become a marker of expertise and academic skill in itself and, just like the artificial jargon and absurd self-confidence, it serves as a substitute for the real test of a scientific model in the social sciences: successful predictions.

It is interesting that the few who dare criticize the validity of mathematical models developed by academics focusing on stock markets, even if their criticism is tame compared to Taleb and others like him, tend to hail originally from the natural sciences. Professor Riccardo Rebonato comes from a background in nuclear engineering and materials engineering; Dr. Emanuel Derman originally studied theoretical physics; Dr. Paul Wilmott began in the field of fluid mechanics. In 2009, Derman and Wilmott published “The Financial Modelers’ Manifesto,” an amusing but serious document, which begins as follows: “A specter is haunting Markets – the specter of illiquidity, frozen credit, and the failure of financial models.” In this manifesto, they distinguish between physics and financial theory which tried to “emulate the style and elegance” of the former and seek to be “humble in applying mathematics to markets, and to be extremely wary of ambitious theories.”

Hayek’s Prediction

There is at least one famous economist and thinker who would not be surprised at these findings: Friedrich Hayek, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, warned decades ago of the pretense of knowledge in economics. Already in 1945, Hayek complained, “Many of the debates taking place now in the fields of economic theory and economic policy both derive from a mistaken understanding of the essence of the economic problem of society.” He expounded on this further, “I fear the improvements done recently in economic theory, especially those involving mathematics, have not contributed to the clarification of this fundamental problem.”

A significant portion of Hayek’s intellectual work was devoted to proving that, rationally speaking, the knowledge an economist would need to make rational policy decisions cannot be accessible to him. In a deliberately humorous manner, he dedicated his Nobel acceptance speech to the “pretense of knowledge” in economics. There, he mentioned his distinction between science, as is expressed in the natural sciences, and the “scientism” of economics and the other social sciences mimicking them which are “absolutely not scientific in the true sense of the term, as they include a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to areas different than those in which they were formed.”

Hayek’s principle argument is: the object of the human study of social sciences in general, and the economy in particular, is too complex and complicated, containing central components which are simply not measurable; today, we would add that it is inherently too complex for any magnitude of computing power we could create. As such, theories which contradict each other exist side by side without a problem in the social sciences.

There are many additional reasons to be explored, as to why the pretenses of the social sciences are baseless. Here, the focus is on the practical and bureaucratic aspect of the problem: The prestige of the “expert” translates into the status of a dictator of policy. Failed theories turn into the foundations of state planning. Graduates of the social sciences, with their false beliefs that they can use their academic training to plan “correct” policy, fill the ranks of the civil service. The bureaucratic offices of the various ministries are full of such graduates, returning to academia for brief stints to receive increasingly more advanced degrees. These “political scientists” cost many millions in academic positions and many more billions in policy recommendations that avail nothing, and which are usually even less effective than policy based on acquaintance with the field and plain common sense.

The diploma granted to graduates of social sciences departments grants them the prestigious rank of “expert,” with special knowledge enabling them to determine policy, reforms, regulations, and budgets. The “expertise” attributed to the social sciences translates into a great deal of power awarded to “expert” bureaucrats which many politicians believe have special knowledge which can transfer to policy recommendations. Vive la ignorance.

The Myth of Professionalism

So far, professionalism has been defined according to two qualities: performance capability and judgment. Accordingly, the discussion of the professionalism of the bureaucracy will be divided into two parts: (a) efficiency and (b) professional level or quality demonstrated in judgment.

I shall begin with a personal anecdote: In 2016, I directed Prime Minister Netanyahu’s public diplomacy for one year. Upon entering the position, I met with the department managers and tried to understand the system’s organizational structure. My questions were simple, in organizational terms: What departments and units did it contain, what functions did they serve, and who occupied the various positions?

Nobody was able to provide me with a satisfactory answer to these questions. They were able to explain, on the other hand, how they bypassed all sorts of bureaucratic limitations and procedures to fill certain positions. Accordingly, the communications department, by its very nature, has many positions; people who are needed in other departments are defined as being part of the communications department, though they are actually busy with different things. The problem is that, by working officially within communications, there are worse working conditions, and personnel are embittered. Conversely, there were several workers, including those working full-time, whose purpose and productivity, and how these are measured, could not be defined by anyone; they could not explain why their work was necessary in the first place.

I quickly understood that it was impossible to manage affairs in the midst of such disorder. I went to the human resources department, with the hope that maybe salvation would come from there. They did have an organizational flowchart but it was a few years old, completely outdated, and impractical for real application. It was inapplicable in structure, in its definitions of the functions needed, and even in the most trivial fact of manpower management: The actual positions occupied. When I suggested that maybe the Civil Service Commissioner had a more updated chart, I was almost drowned out by the laughter.

I therefore set about redefining the function and structure of the system so it would better meet our needs and the reality. I ensured that the new structure would be based on existing manpower and on a theoretically similar budget. My naivete gave them a good laugh; I could not do anything without updating the Commissioner and securing their formal agreement to the changes. This, they promised me, would take at least a year, and likely much more. Before that, they cannot move an inch. Based on their extensive experience, it was better to try and manage with what there is and build bypasses where possible.

The bureaucracy in the most senior ministry in the country made it clear to me that the best thing to do to get managerial results was to bypass the Commissioner, the rules, and the procedures. If I were to try work with them, results would have to wait for officials whose pace is slower than the laziest of individuals.

During that year of senior public service, I encountered good, talented, and diligent public administrators, who ranged from the most senior managers to the most junior employees. All of them, without exception, were forced to waste time on petty and extraneous issues; those who did this long enough had reached a point where they failed to understand the pettiness and extraneousness of these issues. Everyone knew that some of their workers or counterparts were superfluous in any mission requiring real output and felt that there was no need to change this. The veterans, who had spent most of their lives in the civil service, believed this is how it must be in any large workplace: Innumerable procedures, a terrifyingly slow pace, an inability to effect change, and sour-faced workers who need to be haggled over every assignment since they are tenured, unionized, and can enact revenge on their managers.

Napoleon, in his first years as Emperor, dealt with a French tax system with a sizeable bureaucracy. It was obviously corrupt but it was also bloated and inefficient. 200,000 tax collectors worked to fill the crown, and, afterwards, revolutionary state coffers. Napoleon, in his direct manner, sharply reduced the number of bureaucrats. He dismissed 194,000 collectors, leaving just 6,000; no modern state would dare do this with the civil service.

How did this affect state revenue, one might ask? Income doubled.

Efficiency is one key aspect of what we call “professionalism.” A more “professional” person is one who completes the same task in less time, or achieves improved quality in the same time. Every organization needs a level of administration that deals not in the final product, or outcome, but rather the structure of the organization itself. This requires accountants, manpower managers, acquisition people, service providers, and others. Administration, and provision of services, does not necessarily contribute directly to productivity, but their indirect influence is great. Proper administration enables high productivity. Bad administration, meaning convoluted and slow acquisition, financial reports written incorrectly or not written at all, poor planning, bad manpower management, and the like, can dramatically harm productivity.

Why is the functioning of the public sectors much less efficient than their counterparts in the private sector? This question, which has provided a livelihood to many satirists, has multiple answers. One of the most famous answers is found in The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong, published by Laurence J. Peter of the University of South Carolina. Peter states in his analysis that “In a hierarchy, everyone rises to their level of incompetence.” As a result, “Over time, every position tends to be filled by a worker who cannot carry out the tasks involved.”

Peter’s amusing, but distressing, principle centers on the following: in a system where successful work is rewarded with promotions, a worker will continue to do well until he reaches a position where he is incompetent, and he will become stagnant. This logic applies in many frameworks, but its influence is far more profound in bureaucratic governmental systems, as they have no real way of protecting against it.

In 1944, Ludwig von Mises wrote an important work entitled Bureaucracy, where he presented the main issue in trying to compare the efficiency of government bureaucracies to the private sector. To that end, he used breakthrough insights of the Austrian school of economic theory: particularly, in price theory.

Businesses are directed by measurable profits which provide them with a metric for performance, hence guiding their management. They constantly compare spending to revenue, and so constantly examine their efficiency. If they do not, they will lose money until they go bankrupt. What about in a government bureaucracy? What efficiency metric can it possibly use? A fundamental problem arises: “In public administration, there is no connection between profit and spending,” Mises writes, “We cannot dedicate any arithmetic value to a system of government and administration.”

The inability to dedicate real metrics of efficiency, Mises explains, creates an entire system of entirely different incentives, and a fundamentally different work environment. It is not a problem of management, but of a closed system which has no real metric which incentivizes it to become more efficient. “In vain will you propose a bureaucratic reform by appointing businessmen as heads of various departments,” Mises argued, “The work environment of the activity of the department is determined by laws and instructions which are beyond its authority.” Mises examines various proposals for measuring the efficiency of bureaucracy and shows how they all miss the mark: There is no objective method of assessment which can replace the market’s price system.

This problem is deep, and cuts across the civil administration. Employees search for “advanced management tools” to become more efficient, but this is an inside game yielding no real results. One example is writing a report for the civil service. One may try and calculate inputs in quantitative terms – the resources, manpower, and financial cost involved in writing it. But what value does the report itself have? That, we cannot know. A metric could only invent values that would be relative to internal bureaucratic activity, meaning they would lack any external criterion, and therefore would have no real value.

This point by Mises is of particular importance. The civil service attempts to be quantitative and provide numbers and metrics, and even sets goals in the realm of the real and measurable, such as decreasing road accidents, improving education, or helping the homeless. However, as it lacks a market mechanism, and given that the civil service is a monopoly, this measurement does not shape organizational culture and is insufficient to make it effective. In the private sector, value is determined by the consumer, not the factory. A factory can be efficient by its own internal criteria, but if its goods have no buyers, it will close and be considered a failure. The metrics of bureaucracy, even if they function reasonably, unlike in Israel, are internal and relative to themselves. Bureaucracy has no external criteria, like the free choice of consumers in competitive market conditions, which would grant these metrics real significance.

This is precisely the reason it is understood that, when bureaucracy actually functions with energetic officials at the helm, it produces more inefficiency. One might compare an official who filed 200 documents, produced 30 reports, submitted 100 requests and hosted 500 meetings, with an official who filed only 100 documents, produced just 15 reports, submitted but 20 requests and hosted a measly 100 meetings. Was the former official more effective and efficient? In terms of administrative output, by which he is measured, certainly. But does he produce systemic efficiency? The opposite is likely the case, since the system is mostly harmed by such “efficiency.” In a private system, measured by profit, there is an actual test: The behavior of the consumer. What public administration considers efficient would be considered convoluted unless it adds to the balance sheet, and this, in turn, is dependent on the satisfaction of the consumers.

The paradox of efficiency is inherent to public administration. This is why many managers in a bureaucracy are satisfied when their employees skate by on the bare minimum: otherwise life is made more difficult for their colleagues as they produce needless work. When the product lacks external value, idleness becomes a bureaucratic blessing, enabling “slowing down” as a way of life. Every government ministry consists of many such workers, and there is no real difference between their showing up at the office and opting to go to the beach – and they believe it is better that way.

The lack of an external criterion is the chief cause of the great emphasis on inputs in bureaucratic systems. Many inputs are measurable and can provide nice numbers. Unfortunately, nobody outside of the bureaucracy really cares about them. When was the last time you recall taking an interest in the effort that hard workers made in producing a product you bought? Did they spend “days and nights”? Did they “conduct extensive and prolonged discussions? Did they “examine the issue in depth”? Did they “read hundreds of reports”? Did they host “dozens of meetings”? The answer is probably never. What you buy has value for you, and if its cost is justified in this sense, the process by which both producer and consumer benefit from the deal is simply of no interest. Consumers are interested in the final product and its price, and the business is interested in its balance sheet – the result of considering both is efficiency. But the bureaucracy has no equivalent of this. In most cases, what it has is “processes” and inputs, which leads to effort being praised. “Input in itself” is what matters. Therefore, unlike the private market, the bureaucracy cannot fail, departments are almost never shut down, and neither managers nor workers are fired. According to the internal logic of the bureaucracy, this is understandable.

There are many factors that obstruct a state functioning: Aggressive unions, excessive tenure, lack of responsibility, lack of sanctions, difficulty in defining assignments, amateur managers whose primary training and experience comes from civil service, and so on and so forth. Mises’ conclusion provides clearer insight by explaining the origin of these obstructions: They derive from the fundamental problem involved in measuring the bureaucracy’s efficiency. Only in such a gated environment can such phenomena develop on a large scale. In a business environment, they would lead to its collapse, and therefore are far less prevalent.

Professional Level

Bureaucracies tend to praise and exalt their employees, and there are certainly many talented officials working in government offices. Since this, however, is an examination of an organization that is hierarchical by nature, the most important issue regarding the quality of its manpower is the criteria for promotion. In other words, how can it be ensured that the right people become managers?

The supposed ideal of every organization is to be, at least in appearance, meritocratic: promotion of workers should be based on value, talent, and achievement. How does one advance in a government bureaucracy? Mises’ problem is relevant in addressing this question: As it lacks an external criterion for quality and there is no competition determined by objective and impartial judges, like customers in the free market, how are employees promoted in the bureaucracy? What ensures their quality and level of work?

The bureaucratic closed circle, in which input is primary and output is secondary, creates an inherent fallacy of quality. It is not that bureaucracy lacks for talented people, but the system of promotion in a bureaucracy do not allow for distinguishing them from the less talented. There are only internal criteria. This problem is outlined by Peter in his book, “The talent of a worker is not determined by people on the outside, but by his superior in the hierarchy.” The man on the outside, who needs real service, “prefers output.” The official, by contrast, “values input.” This is a complete reversal of “the relationship between means and ends,” according to Peter.

Mises also contemplated the issue of bureaucratic promotion, arriving at disturbing conclusions. The promotion of the official is dependent on two central factors: Personal relations with those doing the promoting and meeting formal requirements. Mises says, “The subordinate is dependent on the judgment of his superior regarding his character, not his work,” and, regarding formal requirements, adds that “In the civil service, promotion is based first and foremost on seniority […] all the requirements (for promotion) refer to more or less superficial matters [… ] This tool of choice sometimes blocks the most appropriate people for the job, and does not always prevent the appointment of a man lacking in any talent. The worst result created is that the central interest of the officials is focused on adapting themselves to the formal requirements.”

The argument is not that there are no talented bureaucrats, but that bureaucracy has no real metrics for recognizing them, making formal requirements and personal relations the main factors. “The failure of the European bureaucracy,” Mises stressed, “certainly does not lie in the incapacity of its manpower. It is a result of the inevitable weakness of any administration for public affairs. The lack of criteria which could, safely, confirm or not confirm success in the official’s carrying out of his duties, creates insoluble problems.”

The COVID-19 crisis clearly exposed the State of Israel relative to the quality deficit of its “professional” civil service. The crisis required public health experts and epidemiologists to step up and perform. Even those with the title of Professor, with files full of input and rich resumes of senior bureaucratic positions, had difficulty functioning during the apex of crisis. The civil service’s senior epidemiologists, chosen through bureaucratic tests and considered to be “professional experts,” had their professional capacities put to the test externally. The results were dismal.

There were epidemiologists in the administration with senior titles who did not know how to build a model to measure the spread of the disease, nor to differentiate between different existing models. Their statements, the first time the public were truly guided on a fateful issue by the bureaucracy, were outrageous and unprofessional; the only consistency the public came to expect was absolute inconsistency. When asked to provide assessments and forecasts, they waved their hands and failed to explain the evidence-based foundation of their claims. They leapt from highs to lows, between euphoria and hysteria, and at a pace which was not correlated with the actual epidemiological data.

Moreover, their opinions, which were expressed with the confidence and arrogance of one who draws on the bureaucracy for their senior position and prestige, endangered the public health in a manner which would have led to their immediate dismissal in any reasonable organization; this includes in states where the civil service is effective. Israel unfortunately is not one of these states. These bureaucratically deemed “experts” continually engaged in shameful organizational politics during a national crisis, both within and between government offices. They consistently failed to build any relevant tool for dealing with the outbreak. Whenever they displayed unprofessionalism, they simply waved their hands, like good bureaucrats, with their impressive input record and the titles they held in the civil service. Coronavirus or no coronavirus, the metric of internal criteria of the public administration was not questioned for even a moment.

Sanctifying Tenure

Whilst this subject could be examined at length, the moment it is understood just how significantly the lack of external criteria effects efficiency and quality in the civil service, the negative results are unsurprising. Instead of continuing to discuss theory, the work of the Israeli bureaucracy will now be examined specifically through a policy paper introduced earlier written by senior members of the Civil Service Commission: the body responsible for managing and ensuring the quality of manpower in the public administration. This document, referred to earlier as the “Duhl Doctrine,” written by Ron Duhl, focuses on the institution of tenure, perhaps the most significant factor in work relations in the civil service, as well as its quality and efficiency.

In June 2013, the Civil Service Commission published the “Report of the Reform Committee to Improve Human Resources in the State Service.” Only after the government approved the main points of the report did the Commission recall that tenure is perhaps the main mechanism influencing the management of the civil service; in order to carry out an “organizational assessment,” enabling the implementation of the report they themselves wrote, “the need arises to examine the subject of tenure and the termination of employment of state workers in depth and completely.”

It took over a year, but the day ultimately came in August 2014 when “The Civil Service Commissioner appointed a working team to form a policy document to examine the subject of tenure.” The management of the team was assigned to the Commission’s legal adviser, one Adv. Ron Duhl. In April 2015, the findings were presented to the Civil Service Commissioner, Adv. Moshe Dayan. Two years passed from the time the government approved the original report which the Commission itself submitted without properly examining the institution of tenure. Furthermore, the final document of the team came out in May 2017, three years after the team was formed, to examine the original issue. One might criticize their conclusions, but there is no doubt that it provided an excellent example of the quality of management in the civil service in general, and particularly within the Civil Service Commission.

The main piece of information provided in the document is a survey conducted among the “senior staff of the civil service” about tenure. Exhibiting an impressive lack of professionalism, the document does not disclose how many managers took part in the survey, all they were asked, how they were asked, how many refused to respond, and the list goes on. It does, at least, summarize its findings.

Amazingly, only one statement received a majority agreement: 60% of senior officials agreed that they “think tenure needs to be narrowed or restricted in state service.” Only 39%, “think tenure in state service maintains the public interest and ensures proper public treatment,” and just 33%, “agree that tenure contributes to the professionalism, expertise, and objectivity of state workers.”

43% of the managers “believe tenure is an incentive for inefficient workers,” and the two other statements which received the highest percentage, of 49%, were that “Workers with tenure are a ‘nail without a head,’ as they cannot be fired,” and that “Tenure rules allow the Histadrut a veto on dismissal in the civil service.” 39% agreed that “Tenure harms the management of the civil service,” as opposed to 35% who, “think that the conduct of the worker in his position is not influenced by his method of employment.” Despite all of this, just 15% believe that “tenure in civil service needs to be abolished entirely,” even though, as seen, the majority does want some reform of tenure.

In summary, even this survey paints a clear picture in which most managers in the public service, senior bureaucrats themselves, some of whom with tenure, view this central institution characterizing the state service as a problem, and almost half of them see it as a serious problem.

Principally, the Commission, as a professional and quality body, in light of such findings, should have understood: to “improve the mechanisms of human resource management in civil service,” based on the “in-depth and complete” perspective of the civil service’s senior officials, they must think of ways to reduce what most senior managers consider an obstacle in managing workers.

This is not what happened in practice. “In our view,” the Duhl Doctrine states, “It is not tenure which harms the functioning and productivity of the state workers, but deficient management […] The main problem in this field is the lack of managerial management tools and information, and there are also deficiencies in the collection and effective use of information on workers.” The Commission claims that tenure is not the problem, but rather it is the very managers who consider tenure a problem, as they lack the appropriate tools for management and knowledge.

The Commission’s actions ultimately supported this statement, which directly contradicted the views of the majority of senior managers it polled in the first place. The only relevant statistic the report presents is the number of tenured employees dismissed for professional unsuitability, according to which there was not one year between 2006 and 2014 in which more than 95 workers were fired on those grounds, out of a total of 70,000. The Commission admits that this is “an undoubtedly negligible number.”

Beyond those numbers, which prove tenure to be a major obstacle to efficiency, the Duhl Doctrine hardly addresses the issue of efficiency at all, or the influence of tenure on the ability to manage state workers. Duhl refers to the “frustration” of managers in the civil service “at the difficulty of motivating and incentivizing workers who enjoy the protection of tenure,” yet refuses to address how tenure disrupts the work environment and creates a problematic dynamic, leading most managers to complain.

The civil service employment model in Israel, according to the Duhl Doctrine, ranks alongside countries like France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, and Greece, and far below countries like the United States, England, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. He does not, unfortunately, provide any informed comparison of the public services provided by these countries. There is no attempt to support the argument that it is better to be like France or Greece, rather than Canada or New Zealand.

Therefore, the report is redundant and incomplete. Instead of actually discussing the effectiveness of tenure, it diverts attention to workers’ evaluations. The Commission does identify a lack of “processes” of “measurement” and “worker evaluation,” yet states that this deficiency, not tenure, is the reason managers have difficulty managing. The report ignores the difficulties presented by tenure, as managers struggle seeking to provide real assessments of workers who cannot be fired. Instead, the Committee proposes, as bureaucratic committees do, establishing more Commission bodies and departments to be charged with another range of bureaucratic processes, documents, metrics, and “experts”; they will be designed, of course, to help civil service managers assess their workers.

Whenever the document does bother with tenure, it claims that no such thing exists; the problem is that senior managers do not understand this. Tenure is a “myth,” as is the belief that “a state worker cannot be fired.” These arguments may technically be correct, but are at odds with the Duhl Doctrine itself: It is clear to a manager reading the report that civil servants effectively enjoy something similar to tenure, as far as the Commission is concerned. There are statements like “Tenure has no existence except in civil service,” and, “There is a similarity between the origins of tenure in the state service and tenure rules observed […] for instance, in academia.” Furthermore: “When it comes to the institution of tenure in civil service, we are dealing with an essential right and not just a deliberative one.”

Tenure is praised with a wealth of superlatives, and is treated as sacred. This is a necessary and irreplaceable institution for Duhl, founded on absolute principles. “Tenure,” he states with the appropriate pathos, “is meant to protect supreme democratic principles,” and, “It is the basis of a true public and professional civil service.” Thanks to tenure, civil service is “objective.” Without it, there would be no “free use of discretion and expression of a professional, independent, and public view of things.” Tenure also ensures “skill and expertise,” and, “continuity and stability.” The Duhl Doctrine, it would seem, depends on tenure.

Duhl goes so far in praising tenure that he claims it is the only way an official can serve “different governments and changing ministers,” as it produces “political neutrality.” This point will be assessed in due course; here, notice that in practice, it is clear tenure achieves the exact opposite: The non-tenured worker will serve all governments equally, or will leave and be dismissed; The tenured worker, in contrast, can endlessly manipulate bureaucratic processes to sabotage the policy of elected leadership, all whilst singing praises to “professionalism,” “neutrality,” and “supreme democratic principles.”

The Duhl Doctrine is not just amateurish, unprofessional, and unconvincing; it does not even examine the subject it was appointed to investigate. Duhl should have examined the harm caused by tenure, assuming it does cause harm, and offer a solution. Instead, he spent years writing a document on a subject he was never questioned on, relying on the unsubstantiated premise that tenure is a necessary institution in a democracy. He also demonstrates a formidable degree of managerial misunderstanding, as well as misleading and contradictory reasoning. Upon these grounds, he argues that though there is no tenure, tenure is a “supreme democratic value,” aims to increase efficiency by making the civil service more convoluted, and improve mismanagement by making it more complex. Duhl’s Committee, the body within the government responsible for increasing efficiency, models the civil service at its worst.

To conclude this point, it is worth considering perhaps the most serious harm caused by the institution of tenure, though difficult to assess, which eludes all government documents. Despite tenure, as many senior managers feel, undoubtedly harming the civil service, its primary damage extends beyond the institution itself: It creates a significant employment incentive for talented Israelis to join the government instead of working and creating in the private market. Those talented Israelis could spearhead entrepreneurial, managerial, technological, industrial, scientific, and more innovation, hereby contributing to the economy, the public, and the state. Instead, they are tempted to pursue the career of the unionized official: attending meetings, sitting on committees, and writing reports. This indirect cost which, as mentioned, is difficult to evaluate, could be enormously substantial. It is potentially already causing serious harm to the State of Israel’s capabilities, and its potential to flourish and develop in a large range of fields.

The Duhl Doctrine is a physical proof of the central arguments here, specifically regarding the professionalism and quality of the bureaucracy. The conclusion of the Duhl Doctrine, that the solution is not reducing tenure but empowering the Commission, leads straight to the third myth: objectivity.

The Myth of Objectivity

“Objectivity” here is referred to as being free of personal interests, as opposed to neutrality, discussed below, which means lacking political bias. The “objective” person considers issues solely on their merits in a detached and distant manner, and their recommendations contain no fear of personal interest or self-promotion. They are impartial, lack bias, and only consider the good of the general public. According to an ideal model, which also appears in the Duhl Doctrine, the government bureaucrat seeks to “make topical decisions, lacking in foreign considerations […] in favor of the public interest of all the citizens.”

The “Myth of Objectivity,” which stands at the heart of the legal debate permeating Israeli discourse, is that the bureaucracy is preferable to elected leadership regarding policy recommendation; whilst elected ministers are interested parties and thus biased and immediately suspect of corruption and vice, the “professional bureaucracy” are an objective entity. It follows that we are better off placing the “public interest” in the hands of the objective party.

This raises a glaring question: Is the bureaucratic leadership truly impartial?

In 1957, Professor Northcote Parkinson, a British historian and officer, published his book: Parkinson’s Law. In the book, he presents the following statistics: Between 1914 and 1928, the number of large ships in the British Navy was reduced by 68%, and the number of officers and sailors went down by 31.5%. As the Navy was experiencing cuts, the number of officials and secretaries for the shipyards went up by more than 40%, and the number of Naval clerks went up by 78.5%. This created, what Parkinson called, a “marvelous fleet on land.” Similarly, the number of officials in the British Colonial Office, an administrative office, increased from 372 in 1935 to 1,661 in 1954, even though the actual number of colonies had substantially decreased.

Parkinson, in attempting to explain how the bureaucracy rose when it should have actually been diminishing, humorously provides a real formula for this: Parkinson’s Law. The law states that “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion,”; this means that there is no correlation, in a bureaucracy, between the volume of work and the time that passes until it is completed. To this law, Parkinson added two bureaucratic motives: “(1) An official wants to multiply subordinates, not rivals,” and “(2) Officials make work for each other.” This is how the bureaucracy increases, regardless of the actual scope of work required of it.

The irrational growth of bureaucratic institutions, in terms of the number of workers, budgets, and other metrics, is well known to anyone who deals in bureaucracy. Exactly how, and why, does this occur? One possible answer is provided by what is known as “public choice theory.” This is a theory of political science based primarily on using tools from the field of economics to study political institutions. Like other social scientific theories, it is obviously not “scientific”; however, like others, perhaps even more so, it provides an interesting perspective and a thought-provoking angle on the issue.

One of the most important foundations of public choice theory was laid in 1962, when economists James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock published a groundbreaking book in which they rejected the naïve political belief that “Political actors are driven primarily by the desire to advance the public good.” They provided a more realistic and sober perspective, opting not to ask what the government should do, but questioning instead which laws, pressures, and interests operating on a political actor ultimately determine the government’s actions. Tullock and Buchanan, with Buchanan winning a Nobel Prize for his contribution to the field, shifted the emphasis from generally referencing the “government” and the “regime” to individual actors, who, like every individual, have a system of interests influencing their decisions. Like actors in the field of economics, their working assumption regarding the public sector is that man is an egoist, a rational, and a maximizer of benefit.

Three years later, Tullock published another book devoted entirely to analyzing how these principles are expressed in a bureaucracy: particularly in the mammoth world of administration which developed in western countries post-WWII. This was then further developed by other scholars like Niskanen, Dunleavy, Wintrobe, and others, who examined the ways in which bureaucracy works to constantly enlarge its budgets, exploits its information advantage over the political leadership, and creates a network of personal ties where interest in promotion and power balances shape policy.

Public choice theory is not one-sided: it does not aim exclusively to criticize bureaucracy. Whilst demonstrating indirectly how personal interests drive officials, researchers have often focused on the options available to political leadership who provide resources to make bureaucracy more efficient and improve administration. Unfortunately, this effort came to nothing, as the literature generally reveals how expensive these tools are, and how they require a high degree of skill and expertise among decision makers. They end up clarifying why many decision makers prefer to simply “go with the bureaucratic flow.”

One could elaborate further on this theory and its arguments, but the central point is clear; Public choice theory enriches, sharpens and verifies our experience-based intuitions: bureaucracy is not a mechanism staffed by experts using their moral and professional insights to serve the public interest, but rather plain human beings with personal and institutional interests. Senior officials in the civil service are people who make decisions that are good for them and the institutions they lead (thus further indirectly benefiting themselves). Anthony Downs, in describing the development of bureaucratic institutions, writes, “The aims of senior members of the organization tend to become preserving and expanding the organization in itself, moving away from achieving the original formal vials of the organization.”

There is no doubt that there are many good and worthy civil servants. Just the same, they all live in a bureaucratic world in which interpersonal connections are required. They deal with complex hierarchies, interests, and work relations. They compete with other bodies and people; all the actors have selfish motivations both personally and, when they are decision-making senior officials, institutionally.

Though these flaws are not unique to government ministries, the unique problem of bureaucracy is that when given a weak political leadership uninterested in dispute, it has no real supervision or oversight. Bureaucracy faces the greatest danger: self-harm as a result not managing its substantial flaws. In other words, bureaucracy is entirely exposed to corruption, since bureaucratic agents are the ones who supervise the administrative core. Thus, unfortunately, those who need the most oversight receive the least.

Upon examining the bureaucracy’s conduct from an economic perspective, Duhl’s lively defense of officials and of institutions like tenure naturally becomes clear: This is a self-service, camouflaged in verbiage like “expertise,” professionalism,” “objectivity,” and even “democratic values.” To stress this point, there is another poignant Israeli example which clarifies which theory better aligns with reality, the Duhl Doctrine or public choice theory.

Public Sector Pay

Any analysis of government spending and revenue must begin with the following acknowledgement: Ultimately, the private sector funds the public sector. State revenue comes primarily from taxes on consumption and labor. These taxes also come from state workers, but the taxes “brought in” from state workers are in fact part of state spending, as they are deducted from pay the state already pays them. In other words, most money comes in from the private, productive sector. The true economic units of the state are its businesses. Public spending is primarily dependent on the ability of businesses to produce value on the free market.

Given the dependence of the public sector on the private sector, the cost of the public sector, as well as its salaries, can and should be connected to the economic characteristics of the private sector. If the one who is supported takes too much, there will not be much left for either supporter or supported. Morally, it is not fair to force the payer to give the payee more than the former makes.

What goes on in the State of Israel, as far as this is concerned? Let us turn now to examine public sector pay.

Spending on wages is obscenely high in the State of Israel’s public sector. In 2018, state spending on civil service wages amounted to 184 billion NIS, which is half of the state’s budget. More importantly, the data clearly shows that in Israel, pay in the public sector goes far beyond the private sector.

The average pay in the public sector is 14,200 NIS, whereas it is only 10,500 NIS in the private sector. These wage gaps point to, among other things, a disproportionate increase in pay enjoyed by public sector workers compared to the private sector. In the last decade, the average increase in public sector pay was twice that of private sector counterparts: some 20% as opposed to just 10%. The private sector is funding a much bigger benefits increase for the public sector than it enjoys itself.

In the past it has been argued that pay in state service is lower than in the private market, but that tenure, the “democratic foundation” granting job security, compensates for this gap. No longer: Today, wages for most positions in the civil service, including “jurists, social sciences and humanities graduates, and workers without a higher education degree” are significantly higher than their counterparts in the private market; civil servants can also add tenure. This is not just a case of economic irrationality, but also a serious injustice and real moral problem.

Work conditions include more than just salary; the benefits of public sector workers go far beyond. A state worker enjoys a regular rise in their pay based solely on seniority, and regardless of performance. In the final years of a career, when the pay of private sector workers declines with their productivity, this is an enormous advantage. Workers who endure in the civil service have seen their pay increase by 50% in the last decade, while academics and lawyers in the civil service enjoyed an enormous increase of more than 100% in pay. This is all before considering pensions, where some sectors in the civil service enjoy extravagant conditions worth tens of billions of shekels.

Workers in the public sector not only make more money, but they also work less. Full time workers in civil service work, on average, 150 hours less per year than their counterparts in the private sector; there are also additional reduced hours for certain workers, such as education workers, social workers, and parental workers. State workers are entitled to 30 sick days (labor laws applicable to the rest of the economy only allow for 18), to pay from day one, and two “declared days,” outside the quota of sick days. They are also entitled, regardless of seniority, to 22 vacation days a year (in the rest of the economy, with minimal seniority, that number is just 12), more days for continuing education and training, vacation for parents during the whole of August, and even more. The Wages Commissioner found that workers in civil service effectively work four days a week on average, rather than five.

In my view, this all borders on corruption: a bender, one might call it, at the private sector’s expense. Yet despite all the benefits involved with less work and more pay plus tenure, some 67% of those employed in the public sector unionized in collective agreement amid a labor dispute with the state, with 67 such declared disputes.

Coronavirus brought these gaps between the private and public sector to the surface, in a painful way. Many in the private sector lost their livelihoods. Wage-earners were fired, businesses collapsed, and one million people became unemployed. In the public sector, meanwhile, coronavirus was hardly felt. The State of Israel took out enormous loans and committed to a large deficit, funded by the private sector while the public sector continued to receive most of its excessive benefits, as though there was no crisis.

Those expecting the public sector to bear some of the burdens of the crisis were taught a basic lesson in public choice theory; those who understand the negative incentives created by the Israeli government by subordinating the public interest to that of the public sector, cannot help but view this as administrative and political recklessness, more serious and more expensive than any criminal corruption suspected of Israel’s politicians.

The Public Sector Interest and Oversight

The public sector is not inherently an enemy: It provides important services for the state and does have quality individuals as employees. We simply must not forget that it is competing for the resources produced by the private sector. Its proximity to political power, and the dynamics of Israeli politics, grants it a great deal of unjustifiable power. The public sector, as an actor with clear self-interest, enlists the coercive power of the state and defeats the private sector in a landslide victory.

Two central examples of how the public sector looks after its own interests at the expense of the public good have been contended with: tenure and pay. The Duhl Doctrine, accordingly, is utterly unconvincing in arguing that politicians must adopt the stances of the bureaucracy, and that it is “expert,” “professional,” and “objective,” resulting in its policy recommendations being beyond all suspicion. The evidence has shown there is much room for doubting these arguments. The public sector itself works as a pressure group of frightening power. In a wide range of fields, a large portion of the decisions originating in the bureaucracy serve its interests.

It is not necessarily bad that a group has interests; The problem is that there is nobody to keep the interests of state service in check through oversight. Those meant to supervise the state service, in theory, are elected representatives. In practice, they disavow that responsibility and delegate it to the bureaucracy itself. Israel is witnessing a long process in which the bureaucracy is avoiding review of the bureaucracy managers, and  instead is devoting energy to investigating politicians. If a “conflict of interest” is defined not as the receipt of a personal gratuity, but rather as the use of public resources for aims other than the public good, any person in the civil service, in all its departments and offices, can tell you of innumerable conflicts of interest and significant waste. Senior officials view the public institutions they are charged with as their private property and can do what they want with them. Nobody inspects and nobody gets investigated, let alone punished.

Recently, senior members of the public sector have been calling themselves “gatekeepers,” attempting to convince us that one of their duties is to prevent politicians displaying bias towards various pressure groups. This claim relies on the “Myth of Objectivity,” according to which, impartial bureaucrats must save the public from its corrupt representatives. This is a complete upheaval and reversal of normal democratic theory. Elected representatives answer to the public, who are given the power to operate the state institutions – including the managing and oversight of the bureaucracy. The exact opposite happens here: The unelected critique and depose those who are elected, inventing powers never granted to them by political leadership.

Without noticing, even the term “stately” has become subordinate to the bureaucracy. The way politicians use it today denotes “institutional” or “systemic.” This is most evident when politicians who “dare” to criticize one of the state institutions are criticized as not being “stately.” Essentially, stateliness is no longer a public concern or an expression of good for the sake of the general good; it is a concern for the state institutions themselves. Of course, the logic of this equation has been presented many times: in their own eyes, as in the Duhl Doctrine, the good of bureaucratic institutions is the good of the state.

This brings us to the myth of neutrality.

The Myth of Neutrality

When previously scrutinizing the institution of tenure in civil service, it was concluded that tenure, in actual fact, contributes to the politicization of public administration; it allows bureaucrats to not do their job properly when they do not identify with those running the country. Indeed every bureaucracy, as such, does have a truly professional expertise: developing methods to lessen achievement.

In truth, the situation is actually worse than this. In recent years, the bureaucracy has come to see itself as an alternate source of political power to the elected leadership. They are, to be precise, not just alternate: the bureaucracy is outright superior. Today, an ideology is developing which proposes handing over the sovereign power of the people to a new and superior class: The unelected bureaucracy. This idea continues to be justified and strengthened. Not only is the bureaucracy not elected, it is not even appointed. In practice, among other reasons considering the politicians’ retreat from their duties, it primarily appoints itself.

Since the refutation of the “Myth of Neutrality” is more complex than its predecessors, it will only be discussed in brief here. The ideology of the bureaucracy is not outspoken; it relies instead on changing the content of existing concepts, a challenge known in the literature as “essentially contested concepts.” Critical thinking is required here to trace the historic change in the meaning of various concepts, a study which cannot be presented fully here.

Despite this, the issue cannot be entirely avoided. For the bureaucracy to claim neutrality, the claim must be based on two main foundations. The first is identifying “political” with “partisan”: The claim that the bureaucracy is not “political” means it is not “partisan,” and they do not openly identify with a particular party or candidate. This is also explicitly prohibited by civil service regulations. The second is the belief that politics need to reduce themselves to areas where bureaucrats lack “expertise,” “professionalism,” and “objectivity.” Effectively, a policy area where bureaucrats believe they understand matters cannot be “political.”

At the heart of all of this is the assumption is that there is one “correct” public policy, in the practical or moral sense, and that the role of the bureaucrat is to shape and implement it. This is why the bureaucrat, and not the politician, is the main party responsible for preserving and advancing the public good. Since the bureaucrat assumes there are only two paths, the correct and the illegitimate, he is “neutral.”

As already noted, this is baseless arrogance and conceit, but we are usually quick to become convinced that what is good for us must be good for everyone. This brings us to a more rudimentary matter: Every policy is based on a philosophy. Policy goals anywhere are always connected to political, governmental, and social ideologies. Every policy is a complex issue, which depends on the weight we grant different components based on different values. The means, the ends, the weight we assign, and these values are all part of our political worldviews, and our ideological preferences. These are enriched by history, nationality, religion, culture, and a host of other factors.

Though this may sound obvious, it is clear this is not accepted by senior members in the civil service, who believe that their expertise and training allow them to neutralize the political-ideological component in determining policy. The source of this confusion is most certainly intellectual; the most confusing institution of them all, enforcing this idea, is academia.

The Academic Fallacy

Academia’s influence on the shaping of the bureaucracy’s self-conception is growing around the world, including in Israel. Every mid-level worker and above has an academic degree, often an advanced one, and usually in the social sciences or humanities. Their main understandings and tools for their respective fields are acquired in university.

In theory, this should not be a problem. Academia should be the place where one is exposed to a diversity of opinions. The social sciences or humanities student should come out with a rich understanding of policy differences between the different sides of the political spectrum, and an understanding of theoretical moral and ideological components. Understanding the clashing of these positions should enrich the mind, make us better and wiser citizens, and make it clear to us that policy decisions are largely a matter of political questions of preferences and values, with even more complex factors.

As a matter of fact, higher education has undergone a sharp revision since the nineties, and it is as far as could be from this ideal. If there is something that characterizes academia in our day, it is the massive and unprecedented bias towards the progressive left.

Three American scholars, Langbert, Quain, and Klein, published a study in September 2016 which examined the political breakdown of faculties in five departments in each one of the forty leading universities in the United States. They found the best ratio in favor of the Republicans in the Economics departments, with 4.5 Democrats for every Republican. In Law departments, the ratio was 8.6:1, in Psychology 17.4:1, in Communications 20:1, and in History 33:1.

The general average that the researchers found was 11.5 Democrats for every Republican, meaning that more than 91% of faculty were on the left. In almost 40% of the departments checked, not one Republican could be found. The worst news is still ahead: This was the average across all ages; the younger the faculty, the worse the numbers became. This indicates that the worst is still to come. Other studies have found similar findings, and many studies have shown similar bias in Israel.

Jonathan Haidt, a professor of social psychology and ethics at the University of New York (and a Democrat) summarized this by arguing that universities have turned from being “truth-seeking” into institutions of “social justice.” He states accordingly, “In the beginning of the nineties, the overall ratio of left-right in academia, regarding all departments, was two to one […] by 2005, the ratio had changed to five to one […] if you look at the core – the humanities and social sciences, aside from economics – it’s closer to 10 to 1 or 20 to 1. In other words, the rightwing, libertarian, and social conservative voice has thoroughly disappeared between 1995 and 2005.”

Every senior official, in Israel as in any public administration in the western world, undergoes serious political indoctrination, and progressivism is wrapped in the garb of “expertise,” “professionalism,” and “objectivity.” Students today live in an institution where progressive positions are considered “neutral,” wise,” and “just.” It is true in Israel, and it is true of the Policy School in Harvard, where Israel’s senior bureaucrats are sent with the funding of the Wexner Foundation. This is a scandal itself, which will not be expanded upon here.

Progressivism is considered the cornerstone of wisdom among educated people teaching policy in university. Basic concepts subject to fierce and deep political controversy are not taught as such, or as “equally contested” as the professional terminology puts it, but rather with simply the amazingly rational and progressive solution. With just one position being advocated, left-wing policy is justified as successful, moral, rational, obvious, professional, expert-based, and therefore, neutral. If policy supported by the right is even discussed, it is condemned as a failure, and even cruel.

In addition, at the heart of this new ideology, at least in schools dealing in policy, is an underlying assumption that policy matters should be managed by, unsurprisingly, “experts,” “professionals,” the “objective,” and now, the “neutral.” This is a political philosophy which justifies bureaucracy by interpreting it literally as the rule of the bureaucrats.

An indoctrination’s success is measured by it not being considered indoctrination; those who examine the senior representatives of the Israeli bureaucracy will discover that academia’s biggest trick works well. Those affecting this indoctrination into the wider world do not just operate as agents of ignorance, but become the most senior officials in civil service.

It is so successful that even bureaucrats who might vote for the right believe that they must advance a fundamentally progressive policy, in their capacity as professionals. After all, they learned this was neutral. Bureaucrats, both present and future, are products of a system of higher education with a set of political and moral beliefs, policy tools, and jargon that helps them be considered “experts,” “professionals,” and “objective” officials who only advance “correct” policy. They have no interest in criticizing this policy, or in trying to educate themselves beyond their academic diplomas.

Thus, left-wing ideology takes intellectual root in western state governments, Israel included. Academia produces an empowered bureaucratic caste, biased to the left even if unconsciously, which applies its values and dominates central nodes of national policy making at the expense of elected representatives and the public’s choice.

“Essential Bureaucracy”

In a functional democratic world, policy is proposed as part of a party platform, so the voter may agree to its implementation at polls. In Israel, where judicial activism is called “essential democracy,” it is no wonder there is a similar philosophy of “essential bureaucracy.” Accordingly, based on the core ideology of public administrators, “formal bureaucracy” is an outdated concept, according to which bureaucrats need to apply the policy laid down by elected representatives. We have, therefore, moved to “essential bureaucracy,” which provides the moral, professional, objective, and neutral authority to state officials to determine and advance policy. If a minister opposes them, their life becomes miserable at best, in an even better case they are replaced, and if necessary, they are taken to court to receive an “essential” ruling.

We are usually made aware of this bureaucratic activism in the legal sphere, but it is prevalent throughout all government bodies and offices. The bureaucrats there simply benefit from a public lack of attention combined with a veil of administrative secrecy which Max Weber could not even dream of. Unfortunately, they also enjoy ministerial protection.

The Elected Leadership

To summarize, the ideology of the civil service includes four central components, or myths. This discussion first dealt with expertise in the field of political science: Any person with common sense and acquaintance with the data reached conclusions and policy recommendations which were just as good, and often better, than “experts” in the fields of social science. Second, the professionalism of the civil service was examined, finding that government bureaucracy suffers from essential problems which necessarily harm its professionalism, both in terms of practical functioning and quality. Third, the objectivity of the state service was examined, raising serious suspicions that the new bureaucratic class not only has its own interests and is an active player in the public arena, but that it also unhesitatingly realizes those interests at the expense of the public at large. Lastly, we examined the political neutrality which the bureaucracy claims of itself, demonstrating that due to the “betrayal of the intellectuals” in academia, progressive and left-wing views are taught and absorbed as unbiased and permeate the senior and policy-making ranks of public administration as the only “correct” policy.

Modern states are the richest, strongest, and most complex political entities in history. They extract enormous percentages from the GDP, more than ever before. Public administrations have responsibilities which are unprecedented in scope, and vast sums pass through their hands, a large portion of which they keep for themselves. Public bureaucrats handle budgets of grotesque size which citizens are forced to provide when the results demanded of them are unclear, there is a plethora of authority without responsibility, the rules defining their success are arbitrary, and they manage themselves without any real oversight.

This is a series of constraints leading to the direct conclusion that, assuming the ultimate goal is the good of the public, there is no way to run a modern bureaucracy in a rational manner. The global plenty and the rise of the modern welfare state have effectively created a powerful and independent class. Anyone with a liberal education understands that there is a real danger here: those who are supposed to be the public’s servants may well become its masters.

It is worth noting at this point that Israel, relative to most OECD countries, suffers from a particularly bad civil service. For various historical reasons, and due to a political leadership crisis, our professional leadership is functioning worse than its counterparts, while enjoying greater strength and authority.

Israel is still a democracy, and elected representatives are the responsible parties. Coronavirus, on the other hand, provided us with a golden opportunity to see ministers flee responsibility and be replaced by the bureaucracy. This process has been going on for decades, largely outside of the public eye. The elected political leadership has, in practice, delegated more and more of its powers, disavowed its responsibilities, and become the servant of the bureaucracy. The ministers hardly function as setters of policy and they function in a role somewhere between the ministry’s spokesperson and its union leader.

In my lectures, I tend to discuss the difference between the professional ministers in the United States and the political ministers here. In the US, the minister convenes the senior officials and says: “I was appointed to be able to advance a particular policy. These are the ministry’s aims for the coming years. Those who wish to contribute, I would be happy that they stay and help. Those who are not interested, let us depart as friends.” In Israel, the minister enters the ministry, convenes the senior officials and says two things: “First, in the coming months, I am going to ‘study the ministry.’ Second, I promise there will be no revolutions or earthquakes in the coming months.”

The bureaucracy, entirely justifiably, hears: “Dear friends, you have the keys. Do as you see fit, I will protect you and praise you. I only ask that you not harm me.” Ministers make it clear to the ministry officials that they not only see them as the final authority, but also entirely adopt the best possible ideology for the public administration: “What is good for the civil service is good for the country.”

Oftentimes people who work for various ministries come to me at the end of the lecture and tell me that my description is exactly right. Many ministers, some of them quite senior, have explained to me in private that the most important thing for them is to “get along” with the administrative ranks. If the reader needs yet another proof, notice the amount of flattery being poured onto state workers by the political leadership, and try and think when the last time was that a minister called for administrative reforms which restored authorities or responsibilities for him or who admitted that there were serious problems and inefficiency in his ministry; in private, I assure you, everyone knows how to admit that there are innumerable essential problems, including the bureaucrats themselves.

The Israeli system, in which ministers lack the understanding or interest in advancing policy and whose role is a mere stopover in their political life, leads to a fear of the bureaucracy becoming a central factor in ministers’ tenure. Since they do not have national agendas to advance from the outset, and since the public has naively adopted the “Duhl Doctrine,” which the ministers themselves spread, the ministers can only lose in a struggle with their subordinates. This is before noting how officials enlist the media, academia, the legal system, and the political opposition to its side. Weakened ministers, as a result, prefer to transfer more and more of their power to the bureaucrats and lawyers, further increasing the necessity of those who come after them to “get along” with the ministries.

The sad conclusion is that when it comes to determining policy, Israel is far from being a proper democracy. A solution for a problem of this magnitude must be comprehensive and address its roots. Under the cover of an absurd bureaucratic ideology, members of the civil service have become a worryingly powerful super-class, harming the very core of the principle of democratic representation. The Israeli public administration needs a thorough reform, along the lines of being dismantled and remade. Of course, such a reform cannot be done by the officials themselves. Such a move requires a brave and responsible political leadership, willing to enlist in a difficult but necessary struggle.

In truth, I do not presently see any candidates. But as noted, there is no room for scientific pretensions in politics and any forecast is a gamble. I am therefore always prepared to be surprised.

Main image: Ministry of Education building in Jerusalem, courtesy of Wikimedia Hoshvilim / CC 4.0