We've said that if we're going to act effectively to meet our fiduciary responsibility, we'll need first to define it. And we've said further that, because there's so much that must be considered, it's only large institutions that could provide the resources necessary for working out a responsible definition. We need to decide, first, what our moral obligation is: How much of the store of natural resources that came with the planet we're obligated to make last, and for how long. We also need a very thoroughgoing and continuing investigation to determine just which resources are being threatened under existing policies and what possible courses of action are available that might reduce the threat. It's only on the basis of such determinations that our fiduciary responsibility can be adequately defined and policies for meeting it designed. And once the policies are designed, it's again only large institutions that could provide the resources necessary for overseeing their implementation.

But here a serious problem arises. There are pressures on all of the institutions to avoid confronting the fiduciary responsibility--to avoid even acknowledging its existence insofar as that's possible, and in any case, to avoid acknowledging its gravity. These pressures favor those institutions that make the minimal acknowledgement that can be gotten away with. Likewise, the same selective pressures tend--other things being equal--to select for leadership positions in these institutions those candidates who most successfully play down the responsibility. In short, our institutions as they exist are simply not suited to the task.

Which institutions should we consider? We hear frequent claims that as many responsibilities (of all kinds) as possible should be assigned to "the private sector". However, it's important to keep in mind that the vaunted efficiency of private sector institutions (to the extent that it actually exists) results primarily from the narrowness of their responsibilities--the narrowness of the performance on which they are ultimately judged.

It's also important to keep in mind that all institutions, and the behavior of those individuals within them who make the actual decisions, give the orders, etc. are subject to a Darwinian kind of selection. All businesses are subject to what has been called "the discipline of the market". Thus in the case of corporations--the largest private-sector institutions--those that best satisfy their investors are selectively favored over any competitors that satisfy them less well. And generally, the corporations that best satisfy their investors (and thus win out over their less-satisfying rivals) are those that are currently producing the largest profits. By the same token, the selection of the individual executives who manage the corporation is based on their performance--or expected performance--in improving the corporate bottom line.

Two points need to be made here. First, the "tragedy of the commons" applies to corporations just as it does to individuals. Restraint in the exploitation of common resources is punished (by the forces of the market), while unrestrained exploitation is rewarded. That is, unrestrained exploitation by corporations, as by individuals, confers a selective advantage. Second, the selective factors that affect corporations (and their individual executives) are focused on very short-term results (often as short as the next quarterly report). [Neither an oil company nor its individual executives are likely to be rewarded for holding back (what's euphemistically called) "production" from their wells in order to conserve some of their reserves--even in the interest of enhancing future profits for the company]. Consequently, any depletion of resources or degradation of the environment whose results won't be felt in the quite near future is not punished.

It isn't punished, that is, unless it leads to unfavorable regulatory action by government (which, of course, would be a negative selective factor). In fact, governments are, in principle, the ultimate arbiters that determine the rights and responsibilities of the corporations (and all other businesses) and govern their behavior. Consequently, corporations must be concerned with the decisions made by governments at various levels, and must be willing to devote considerable resources to influencing them in various ways. Their success in doing this will therefore be an important factor in their overall success.

Thus, governments technically have the responsibility both for deciding what actions are needed, and when, and for seeing that they're carried out. Accordingly, they would seem to be the obvious institutions to design and enforce a strategy for slowing the drain on resources. However, they themselves suffer serious limitations in undertaking this task.

First of all, the capacity of any single government to coordinate human activities is severely limited by the fact that none has jurisdiction over more than a small fraction of the earth. Of course, there are international organizations; some of which--such as the United Nations and some of the more specialized organizations associated with it--have worldwide scope. However, these organizations have no effective jurisdiction; they are effectively nothing more than convenient venues where member states can come together to investigate, discuss, and undertake joint action on matters of their choosing. The effective power is located in the national governments of the member states. In fact, the organization can only continue in existence as long as it can convince enough of the member states that it is useful to them, individually. (By the same token, the individuals who administer the organization are obliged to seek the continued approval of the member states in order to be able to maintain their positions).

We come, then, to the national governments. But they, themselves, suffer limitations even within their own jurisdictions. First of all, they vary widely in the size of their territories, their constituent populations, and their economic resources. The economic resources of many of them are dwarfed, not only by those of other national governments, but even by those of giant corporations. Consequently, the poorer states are very dependent on the good will of the more powerful ones and even that of powerful corporations, so that the necessity for maintaining this good will may severely limit their freedom of action even within their own territories. Realistically, then, a large majority of the national governments wouldn't have the scope, the resources, or the freedom of action to make a significant contribution to solving the problem (i.e., of defining our fiduciary responsibility, designing policies for meeting it, and executing them).

Thus, the only institutions that seriously come into consideration are the governments of large, wealthy nations. The question that concerns us here is how well designed these governments are for the task. We must recognize that all national governments face some internal constraints. Individuals and businesses usually possess rights that must be recognized by their government, and the executive power of the government may be subject to other practical limitations. There are potential limits to its enforcement instruments (especially police and military)--the instruments may be insufficient to overcome popular resistance beyond a certain limit, the control of the government over the instruments themselves may have limits. In fact, the implementation of the policies of even the most authoritarian régimes is dependent on the cooperation of underlings--for example, of bureaucrats to work out detailed plans for the implementation and law enforcement officers to enforce it when necessary. In many cases, these implementers can have considerable power in determining who occupies the leadership positions because they are capable of rendering the leadership ineffective or even of overthrowing it.

However, most of the national governments that do have the scope, resources, and independence to be capable (in this respect at least) of making a significant contribution to solving the problem are ones whose officials are chosen by popular vote. In such states, power is much less concentrated. Furthermore, the effects of the electoral institution reach far beyond what's thought of as the election process itself. Since the criterion by which the governing officials are selected is the ability to get elected, maintaining that ability must be a constant concern for all elected officials who want to continue in office. Officeholders who permit other concerns to distract them from the pursuit of re-election can be expected gradually to be weeded out (deselected). Therefore, the concern for re-electability necessarily affects the behavior of the office-holders in a very pervasive way. In other words, institutional requirements--in this example the requirements of electoral institutions--select for certain kinds of behavior on the part of the individuals involved (and select for the individuals whose behavior best conforms).

In sum, the voters in such states are the ultimate determiners of government policy. This is "government by the people". The voters govern in the sense that the officials are selected for their ability to get elected, and their policies in office are generally informed by the necessity of satisfying the voters--of maintaining their re-electability. On what basis, then, do voters select their officials? In particular, what prospects for our being able to meet our fiduciary responsibility can be found in the voters' criteria for candidate selection?

Electoral processes differ in different countries, but I'll limit this discussion to the process in the USA. A main reason is that it's the only one that I'm reasonably familiar with. However, another argument for this focus would be that the USA is the largest and most influential of all of these countries. A still further one is that its campaign strategies seem to represent the "state of the art". Although the strategies and tactics used here aren't fully representative of those of electoral democracies in general, the differences are in large part in complexity and sophistication--in the degree of professionalization. If, as it appears, this professionalization offers a selective advantage to a candidate, it seems only a matter of time before it spreads more widely.(1)

When we look at the period leading up to an American election--the period in which voters are presumably making or firming up their choices--we find that the primary initiative comes from the candidates. That is, most voters (not all, ofcourse) don't make much effort to collect their own independent information, but rely mainly on information presented by the candidates (or their supporters). This "information" is largely about what "issues" the candidate could be expected to deal with differently from his/her opponent(s) and how. In fact, the candidates themselves (or more precisely, the teams that constitute their "campaigns") seek to "define" the issues (to tell the voters what should be seen as issues that distinguish the candidates).

Increasingly throughout the period leading up to an election the voters (and, incidentally, everybody else as well) are bombarded with "messages"from the candidates and their supporters.

Any discussion of elections for higher office in the USA must take into account how highly professionalized campaigning has become. Professional political consultants are indispensable. Expertise is required to design the campaign--to test various messages and issues (and positionings on them) on focus groups, to conduct and interpret polls, to attempt to "define" the candidate and his/her opponent (in the minds of the voters), to find means to "target" particular groups with specially tailored messages, to determine the best response to the opponent's message and campaign tactics in general, to design and time the use of negative campaigning(2).

All of this is very expensive, as is the purchase of media time to "get the message out". Therefore, fund raising must be a major concern for the candidate and his/her campaign. The campaign must identify potential contributors and convince them that it would be a worthwhile investment for them. Thus, it shouldn't be surprising to anyone if the concerns of major campaign contributors have some influence on the way the candidate seeks to "position him/herself" on particular issues or indeed to define him/herself more generally. Nor should it be surprising if contributor concerns continue having a considerable influence on the policies of elected officials once they're in office. Indeed, the influence of such contributors may intervene at a still earlier point, it may have a lot to say about who becomes a candidate in the first place.

In sum, the question of what criteria guide the voters in their selection of government officials has no simple answer. First of all, the initiative has already been seized by the candidates and their supporters (or should I even have put it "the supporters and their candidates"?). From the time that the voters come into the picture they've been left with only the few already-selected candidates to choose among. Furthermore, a large part of the information available to them comes from the candidates and their supporters, and has been very professionally selected and "spun".

What independent sources of information are available to the voters (aside from those few who have the time, dedication, and skills to undertake serious research), and how effective are they? (Of course, what we're specifically concerned with here is what information is being provided through the media that might help the voters to comprehend their fiduciary responsibility and guide them in meeting it). The main sources of such information are the news media--newspapers and magazines, radio and television news.

However, the position of the media is difficult in several ways. There is much demand for news on the progress of the election contest--on who seems to be winning--and a particularly large share of the media's news gathering effort is devoted to following the campaigns, analyzing strategies, conducting polls, etc. This has led to complaints that they give overly much attention to the "horse race" aspects of the election campaigns--that is, to who's ahead. However, a better metaphor than horse race might be a chess game, with the media conceiving of the campaign as a game of skill and becoming fascinated by the strategy of move and countermove. (In this fascination they sometimes seem to suggest that the candidate whose team of consultants proves most skillful is ipso facto determined to be the best choice for the office).

The media do make some efforts to provide facts about some of the candidates' "issues" and even to point out and correct the campaigns' misrepresentations of facts. However, to attempt to do so can be a somewhat delicate business, as the campaigns are very ready to make accusations of bias. The media also sometimes point to issues that the candidates are ignoring--but rarely with notable effect.

Other than the "messages" deriving from the candidates' campaigns, there is one other prominent message that is constantly being disseminated during the pre-election period. It is that all eligible voters should vote. The media, the politicians, and the voices of authority and responsibility in general encourage everyone to vote.(3) Interestingly, people are constantly admonished that they have a responsibility to vote, but never (or hardly ever?) that they have a responsibility to vote responsibly. That is, there's generally no suggestion that in voting one is accepting a (minute, it's true) share of responsibility for one's government. Generally nothing is said about any kind of responsibility of individual citizens for the well being of all, or for the future--nothing is said about their responsibilities as the ultimate source of governing power.(4)

To sum up, we have a national government whose officials were selected on the basis of electability. These officials determine the policies of the government, but these policies in turn are in large part selected on the basis of their anticipated effect on the officials' re-electability.

Electability, in turn, is determined in large part by the attractiveness of the candidate's "message" and his/her success in "getting it out". The attractiveness of the message and the success in getting it out depend largely on the quality of the professional staff--the staff who fine-tune the message and plan its dissemination--and on the financial resources available to them. Furthermore, the quality of the staff in its turn depends in considerable part on financing. In sum, electability depends pretty substantially on the ability to attract financial contributions, and that depends on the ability to gain the favor of those who have or control funds.(5)

That, then, is my simplified(6) account of the basis on which policies are determined in one elected government. While, admittedly, it applies to the government of only one nation, it is one whose policies are likely to have particular impact in matters of global concern--such as, precisely, our common fiduciary responsibility. Furthermore, I think that on the whole this account is not totally unrepresentative of the way policies are formed in most of the more influential national governments.(7)

All of this brings us to the conclusion that there are no existing institutions that are at all suited for dealing with our fiduciary responsibility. One reason, of course, was that no one institution would have sufficient authority and resources to produce a fully informed determination of what that responsibility requires of us. Nor, if a plan adequate to meet that responsibility could somehow be contrived, would any institution have the authority to enforce its implementation.

However this obstacle, serious as it is, could theoretically be overcome if multiple institutions (say, national governments) could decide to work together. The more serious problem is the other limitations that these governments are subject to. As I've been trying to show, the institutions we've discussed here, private and public, are all effectively subject to their own natural laws. Their policies are subject to their own selective forces.

Nations are in effective competition with other nations, and some might be expected to make significant economic or political gains at the expense of others if, for example, the latter adopted policies that inhibited exploitative economic activities in the interest of preventing environmental degradation.

However, the effective selection of policies begins with the process by which the officials of the government are chosen. That is, certain kinds of policies are favored or disfavored (effectively selected for or against) in the selection of those who will spell them out and those who will administer them. For example, in a national government where the officials are determined in regularly recurring elections, each election will tend to return the incumbents who have supported favored policies and to reduce the number of incumbents whose policies are disfavored--replacing them with newcomers who promise policies that are favored.

Then, why must the policies that are selected for by voters necessarily not include policies designed to face our fiduciary responsibility? Well, for one thing, the voters aren't the ones who propose the policies--who define the policy options. The candidates (or their campaigns) essentially define the "issues"--tell the voters what choices are available to them. But why might not one of the candidates raise the issue of fiduciary responsibility and propose that we directly confront it? The reason, in a nutshell, is that that would almost surely be a losing strategy because any policies designed to face up to the fiduciary responsibility would necessarily involve--or at least suggest the threat of--some sacrifice in living standards.

But are people that unwilling to make sacrifices for a worthy cause? Maybe not. But consider the campaign strategy available to our candidate's opponent. It would be very easy for this opponent to claim that our candidate's proposals would entail sacrifices of all sorts, and that these sacrifices were in fact unnecessary--that they weren't based on sound scientific judgment and, indeed, were suggestive of a tendency to panic. And it would surely not be too difficult for the opponent's campaign to find credentialed experts to provide assurances that our candidate's perception of the situation was inaccurate, and that no harm would be done if we simply continued as before.

Faced with two such competing assessments of the situation, each supported by plausible experts, but one proposing sacrifices while the other offers reassurance that the sacrifices are unnecessary, what would voters be expected to choose?

I've tried to explain what I mean by saying that our existing institutions are insufficient for the task of coping with a fiduciary responsibility. Their structures and the environment in which they operate (most especially the power entrusted by many of them to "the market") put enormous pressure on them to avoid confronting our fiduciary responsibility--indeed insofar as possible, to avoid even acknowledging its existence. In actuality, nobody who aspires to attain or to continue in a position of power can really afford to tell us the truth--in fact, they can't really afford to admit it to themselves. (As Salmon Rushdie has said, "... there are things that cannot be said. No, it's more than that: there are things that cannot be permitted to be true."(Rushdie 1983: 80).

I know this is a pretty Cassandra-sounding conclusion. I've heard it said that one doesn't have a right to criticize existing institutions without proposing an alternative. However, I can't offer a solution because I have none. Still, I have some confidence in the ingenuity of our species. I prefer to think that it's better to acknowledge the problem than to pretend it doesn't exist or to rely on supernatural intervention to save us. (In fact, it's not only our species that will be in need of saving, but possibly all other forms of life on earth as well.)

1. In looking at the American political system it's interesting to bear in mind how much respect is expressed by American leaders for "market forces"--for " letting the market decide" various matters (as many as possible, some would say)--and to note the extent to which market forces govern our political institutions. For example, political candidates are "marketed" in a very professional way. There is, in fact, a widely accepted belief that we should constantly work to expand what is sometimes called "market democracy" to the rest of the world (for its own good). (Back up)

2. "Negative campaigning" involves devising and implementing strategies to increase the opponent's "negatives"-- unfavorable beliefs and opinions of him/her among potential voters. (Back up)

3. That every eligible person should vote is so undisputedly the socially "correct" view (part of what privately I think of as our "rightthink") that even the candidates proclaim it, and the campaigns make particular efforts to "get out the vote". In practice, however, campaigns are very aware that they are likely to benefit from a high turnout in certain districts and a low turnout in certain others. Not surprisingly, their efforts to get out the vote don't include the latter. (Backup)

4. Why should individuals vote? No "responsible"person would question that they should. But why? This is really two questions: why (according to the authorities) should the individual want to vote? and why should the authorities want to persuade them to vote?

Apparently, the authorities want them to vote as an act of self-implication. In participating in the election, they implicate themselves in the process--in effect, they ratify it. Thus, the voter participation validates the elected government.

What motive has the individual for voting? Well, we're told that voter indifference is a bad thing, but otherwise the motives suggested are almost all entirely selfish. We're exhorted to exercise our rights, our power. They try to make a convincing case that each single vote counts (somewhat harder after the 2000 presidential election, when it became clear how far from exact the tabulation of votes really is). (Back up)

5. In Grace 1997 I proposed a (fortunately not very practical) solution to the problem of money in the electoral process. (Back up)

6. One simplification is the omission of any mention of competition among different incumbent officials and between the interests of political parties. An example might be found in a piece of proposed legislation, the essence of which is favored by both political parties as well as by the general public but where some details are in dispute. In some such cases officials have been known to maneuver--e.g., by refusing to compromise on one or another detail--to bring about its defeat but to do so in a way that made their opponents appear to be responsible. The objective of such a maneuver would, of course, be to create a campaign issue for the next election. (Backup)

7. I shouldn't neglect to point out that the picture I have given of the way the American system of government works doesn't agree with everything one might hear about it. Certainly, there are quite different pictures that can be constructed out of the clichés in the ambient propaganda. There is, for example, a picture of elections as tapping a kind of collective wisdom of the people--of thoughtful, responsible voters who struggle (particularly, "in the privacy of the voting booth") to bring their best judgment to bear. In this picture the combined knowledge and judgment of the voters sometimes seems to be transmuted into a kind of cumulative wisdom. The electorate is even represented as possessing a mystical-sounding kind of collective mind capable of devising and executing plans (for example, I saw it suggested, after one election, that the people had "decided" that the legislative and executive branches shouldn't both be in the hands of the same political party). (Back up)

Grace, George W. 1997. A proposal for reforming the way we fill elective offices. On the web at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~grace/modest.html. (Back up)

Rushdie, Salman. 1983. Shame. Owl books. New York: Henry Holt and Company. (Back up)

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