Population growth, division of labour, and market expansion increase the complexities of governance. Institutions emerge as efforts either to reduce complexity or to organise the complexity. Throughout economic history, institution-builders have struggled to keep pace with complexity-growth by simplifying processes of economic governance. Their task is ‘easier said than done’, as evidenced by the frequency of crises resulting from a mismatch between the speeds of economic change and institutional change.
We can scratch the surface of key early processes through which institution building did reduce complexity by looking at local governance in England during the 1600s and early 1700s. Social history contributes one strand in a fresh approach to the study of world-shaping institutional change which accompanied economic modernisation in the first territory to achieve the transition to capitalism -- England.
The variety of unpaid public offices referred to below include constables, sheriffs, jurors, justices, tax assessors, tithingmen, trustees, commissioners, mayors, aldermen, bailiffs, beadles, watchmen, wardens, and overseers of such services as street sweeping and lamp lighting. From the growing number of case studies in social history, Mark Goldie has singled out “six generalisations” and “four cautions”, summarised here as follows:
The generalisations:
1. In early-modern England “an astonishingly high proportion” of people held public office. In mid-seventeenth century London about one-tenth of householders performed a public governance role. In any ten-year period either side of 1700 about half the adult male population were likely to have been engaged in some form of public governance. People often held more than one office, and worked their ways up the hierarchy of offices.
2. The social stratum of people holding local public offices ranged from minor gentry to small freeholders, cottagers, shopkeepers, and artisans, regardless of religion and criminal record. Illiteracy was inconvenient for a parish constable, but did not prevent him doing his work. There was social mobility too -- even a yeoman or a tradesman might work his way up from being constable to becoming a justice of the peace.
3. Despite the many hours which duties of public administration could take up, the dignity and status of office was sought after. It was a way of establishing social credentials, satisfying moral obligations, and, sometimes, of boosting one’s income (by hook or by crook).
4. English seventeenth century national level governance depended on organised layers of formal local governance. Central government could only control the nation to the degree dictated by local tolerance, norms, and interests. There were many small commonwealths within the commonwealth of England.
5. Depending on the nature of the office, local public officials of all kinds were selected for limited periods by election, by appointment, by rotation, or random lot. These systems were evolving designs, and relied on such things as the keeping of population registers. In effect, they served also as local mechanisms of political consent and representation.
6. Politics and public service were not professions, but nor was office-holding wholly voluntary. Methods of compulsion developed -- fines for avoidance, defined exceptions, and disbarments -- to ensure posts were filled as an obligation of public service. In Goldie’s words, “officeholding was simply coextensive with being a citizen”.
The cautions:
7. There was often reluctance to undertake these public services if they were compulsory and costly, onerous, or unpleasant. Evasion and substitution were common.
8. There was a negative countertrend of polarisation, exclusion, and inequality in office holding. Some offices were monopolised or appropriated by categories of elites.
9. There was a countertrend of centralisation which curtailed local autonomy.
10. Appearances could be deceptive. Formal structures often disguised informal influence networking, rent seeking, and clientelism that undermined the intentions of public service.
Although seventeenth century England already displayed remarkable unity and standardisation in law, its rulers lacked uniform enforcement capacities. Territorial state jurisdiction was still rudimentary and severely handicapped. With growing complexity in activities like trade, taxation, price and quality regulation, and infrastructure provision, local governance had an important function in simplifying central governance.
It might also be expected that the broad experience of holding public office among such large numbers of the population (from top to bottom) created widespread awareness of the telltale indicators of good or bad governance. English political expectations were raised by the high rate of householder participation in public micro governing. Certainly it is the case that when the time came for macro institutions to mature in law, state administration, and parliamentary representation, the early-modern English ‘publick’ were vocal and demonstrative in monitoring and debating the quality of elite governance.
As they themselves had been solutions to complexity, so too local governance systems became the source of difficulty. It was partly for this reason that more sophisticated centralised institutions evolved at the London headquarters. Mid to late seventeenth century elite builders of core governance organisations took an increasing hand in complexity reduction. But they benefitted from the lessons and the innovations that fed through from parochial testing fields in thousands of English mini-commonwealths.
Credits:
Tim Harris ed., 2001, The Politics of The Excluded c.1500-1850, Palgrave
