From Pine View Farm

Giving the Polity the Business 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Professors James Bailey and D. Christopher Keys explore why the idea of “running the government like a business” so regularly fails, often spectacularly. They cite three reasons; here’s one:

Second, unlike running a business, a model of leadership based on meeting the interests of a small list of stakeholders, policy leadership involves building a coalition of often competing interests while serving the needs of a large number of constituents.

We are watching today what happens when a President decides to appeal to just one group of stakeholders, the Red Hats, and it’s not pretty.

Afterthought:

The overriding factor that unites the reasons the authors cite is one often ignored by those who would “run the government like a business” and is quite simple. Government is not a business.

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