Here I am back now with a hypothetical situation bringing in several of the issues that have been brought up in the discussion, including the challenge to find a balance between on the one hand over-regulation and on the other hand human failings. Here are two options to choose between for maintaining the roads in an island. Option 1: Anyone in the island who notices a pothole tells the MARS representative on the Community Council (Municipal and Roads Service). The Mars representative brings it up at the Community Council meeting. The Community Council Clerk writes to the Community Council Liaison Officer in Kirkwall who forwards the details to the Roads Department, who send someone out to look at it, and then give the local road workers the go-ahead to repair it. Option 2: The community receive an annual sum to spend on the roads and the local road workers prioritise the problem areas, tasking in account their own first-hand experience.. Now we might say that Option 2 is clearly simpler and cheaper and more efficioent than Option 1, and ideally a lot of us would probably opt for it. A problem comes when we bring in the human dimension. Who for instance would the island roads staff work for? Would it be the Community Council? How experienced are Community Council members in employment legislation? What if one of the Community Council dislikes one of the roads workers and causes problems for them? Or what if on the other hand, they like them and protect their work from fair criticism? For that reason, communities could well prefer the management of their roads to come from outside, as at present. The distance of the management keeps the situation neutral and objective and protects the roads staff from situations of possible unfair pressure and protects the Community Council members from getting into a management role with people who are their friends and neighbours. So the question is - in a situation like this (and this is just one example, chosen for simplicity), could we as constitution designers, devise an alternative structure of protection for people that did not entail the administrative complexity of Option 1? In other words, is it possible to find some simple elements that could be added to Option 2 to give it the same neutrality for those involved as Option 1 does? Thats the challenge - over to you!
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 21:21:37 +0000
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