Editorial

Labour complains that the Tories want a nightwatchman state; the Tories respond by saying Labour wants the state to run everything—such are the moronic exchanges we will wake up to each morning during the forthcoming election. But beneath such dreary accusations a more interesting argument about the nature of the modern state has developed in recent years. Labour’s “enabling state” is pitted against the Tories’ “post-bureaucratic state.” Both accept that in a modern liberal democracy, where the goal of politics is to maximise the welfare of the average citizen, the state will remain quite large. They also both acknowledge that the state often fails. Our cover story—on Tim Berners-Lee’s mission to release as much public data as possible—describes a new front in this more subtle dialogue about how to make states function better in complex societies, with more demanding citizens. In fact it even holds the promise of a new form of political interaction between citizens and the state, mediated by a class of internet whizz-kids who take that raw data and reveal to us how resources are used and power is exercised, at least in the public sector. It won’t abolish conflicts of interest or poverty or greed, and is less concerned with the private sector. But just as the old era of mass politics is running out of puff, a new computer-based forum is emerging, especially for the educated, numerate members of the generation that has grown up with the internet.



Britain is, happily, a country where the state is neither too strong nor too weak. The history that gave rise to that balance between freedom and order hasn’t happened in many other places—and not just in obvious failed states like the one the people of Haiti have to endure. Development economists have for years grappled with the problem of how to provide a historical short cut for poor countries to acquire the rules and institutions that make rich countries function better. Paul Romer, the American economist, has come up with a new twist on this theme that he calls “charter cities”. Poor countries would set aside an area of land and invite a rich country to build a new city and set the rules—allowing the rule of law to take root where corruption and patronage usually prevail. It’s not clear why corrupt leaders would agree to such cities or who would be ultimately responsible for enforcing the rich country rules, but given the failures of conventional development over recent years it seems an idea worth trying—if any takers can be found.