20Discussion Papers, No. 20Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE

Wolfgang Drechsler

GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT

AMBROGIO LORENZETTI’S FRESCOES IN THE

SIENA TOWN HALL AS MISSION STATEMENT FOR

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION TODAY

Local Governmentand Public ServiceReform Initiative

Open Society

Institute

Discussion Papers, No. 20Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative

OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE

THE FIRST NISPACEE ALENA BRUNOVSKÁ LECTURE

Wolfgang Drechsler

Budapest · Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative / Open Society Institute2001

GOOD AND BAD GOVERNMENT

AMBROGIO LORENZETTI’S FRESCOES IN THE

SIENA TOWN HALL AS MISSION STATEMENT FOR

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION TODAY

Discussion Papers, No.20

Published in 2001 by the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative

Open Society Institute

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Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Allegory of Good Government” and

“The Effects of Good Government on the City” © Scala Group S.p.A., Florence, Italy

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INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES

The development of democratic and effective government at subnational

levels remains one of the central tasks of transition in Central and East-

ern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The sharing of expertise

between countries can contribute significantly to the reform process in

the region. Pursuing this goal, the Local Government and Public Ser-

vice Reform Initiative (LGI) has launched a series of discussion papers,

which will be distributed widely throughout Central and Eastern Europe.

The series will report the findings of projects supported by LGI and

will include papers written by authors who are not LGI grant recipients.

LGI offers assistance for the translation of the papers into the national

languages of the region. The opinions presented in the papers are those

of the authors and do not necessary represent the views of the Local

Government and Public Service Reform Initiative.

Wolfgang Drechsler is Professor and Chair of Public Administration andGovernment at the University of Tartu, Estonia. BA Bridgewater College,MA University of Virginia, PhD University of Marburg, Diploma GermanPost-Graduate School of Public Administration Speyer, Habilitation Uni-versity of Tartu. Professor Drechsler has served as Advisor to the Presi-dent of Estonia for Administrative Organization, as Executive Secretarywith the German Wissenschaftsrat during German Reunification, and asSenior Legislative Analyst in the United States Congress. He has taught atthe Universities of Marburg, Gießen and Frankfurt/Main, and as visitingprofessor in Lund. He received the 1997 Estonian National Science Award,Social Science category.

Professor Drechsler’s independent publications include: Die selbst-

verwaltete Gemeinde (1999, ed.), Paradiama – Festschrift Otto Kaiser 75

(1999, ed.), On the Eminence of the Social Sciences at the University of Dor-

pat (1998, also in Estonian), Foundations of Public Administration (1997,ed., in Estonian; some translations in preparation), Johann Ulrich v.

Cramer’s Opuscula (5 vols., 1996, ed.), Andrew D. White in Germany

(1989), and theme issues of World Affairs on Estonia in Transition (1995)and Reforming Higher Education and Research in Eastern Germany (1992).Three books are scheduled to appear in 2002: Friedrich Nietzsche: Eco-

nomy and Society (co-ed.), Der Estnische Staat, and Realist Economics and

Social Policy: Kathedersozialismus in Dorpat.

Wolfgang Drechsler can be contacted at:

Chair of Public Administration and Government, Faculty of SocialSciences, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, EE-50410 Tartu, Estonia website: http://www.ut.ee/SOAH; e-mail: wjmd@psych.ut.ee.

Opening Remarks

It is a great honor, pleasure and privilege to be the first recipient ofNISPAcee’s Alena Brunovská Award For Teaching Excellence in PublicAdministration. I am deeply grateful indeed for such an outstandingaward, and it is particularly touching that it is associated with the lateAlena Brunovská.

In the play A man for all seasons, fittingly enough dramatizing the lifeand death of the patron saint of Public Administration (PA), Thomas More,More suggests to a young man pondering his career, “Why not be a teacher?You’d be a fine teacher. Perhaps a great one.” To which the young mananswers, “And if I was, who would know it?” More’s reply was, “You, yourpupils, your friends, God. Not a bad public, that” (Bolt 1960, 4).

Admittedly, that is good enough, but it is something else to have theknowledge spread by a teaching award. As Dorothy Sayers says in per-haps the best novel on academe, Gaudy Night, “However loudly we mayassert our own unworthiness, few of us are really offended by hearingthe assertion contradicted by a disinterested party” (Sayers 1968, 209).

It is a truism that teaching is of crucial importance, indeed it is cen-tral, for higher education, as the latter term already indicates this(although at university level, it is of course only possible if based onserious scholarship). And thus, incentives are necessary if we want tohave the level of teaching we could and should have.

Why are teaching awards, then, so rare? The reason, I think, is thatteaching is much more difficult to evaluate than scholarship; in the end,only peers and students together can do that, as is done in the case of theAlena Brunovská Award. In that sense, NISPAcee deserves more to be con-gratulated on establishing it, than anyone on receiving it. For my part, Ican only hope that I have been and will be at least somewhat worthy of it.

Any such merits I may have, however, would only have been possi-ble due to a strongly conducive environment, as my department, theUniversity of Tartu PA department, surely has been. My thanks go to

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its outstanding students, whom it is a joy to teach; to my friends andcolleagues on the faculty and staff; and especially to my CEO, Dr.TiinaRandma, co-founder of the department and a former NISPAcee Steer-ing Committee member, without whom nothing would have been pos-sible at all.

Finally, I thank the NISPAcee Steering Committee, not only for theaward itself, but also for suggesting the lecture topic which I will nowpursue. I am very happy it was suggested because it nicely fits the con-ference theme, and because, visually based as it is, it fights the glotto-centricity of PA. In our day and age, it is often easier to reach an audi-ence by means of visual aids — but there are other reasons, about whichmore later, why images are used in this case. Mode and topic them-selves, I hope, should also be interesting in their own right.

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I. Siena, the Campo and the Palazzo Pubblico

The Italian city republics, especially the Tuscan cities of Florence, Sienaand Lucca, as well as Venice, particularly during their peak betweenabout 1200 and 1400 AD, have rightly been called “a singular experi-ence, without parallel since antiquity, without sequel until the modernage” (Jones 1997, 1). At least since the 19th century, intellectuals andscholars have had a fascination for these city-states because they seemedfairly democratic, fairly non-religious and fairly civilized. Their aestheticsare very close to ours, and their climate, cuisine and atmosphere makethe region the “Chiantishire” of an ultimate arcadia. Venice’s romanticallure, only enhanced by her atmosphere of decay and decline since the1800s, needs hardly be mentioned.

Figure 1. Siena Cityscape

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In this lecture, we will deal with Siena, the most Gothic, still the mostmedieval of the four. This is because Siena had already ceased to be acenter of power and wealth around 1400, remaining prominent in sev-eral fields, but declining completely after 1555. For centuries, it formed,until the rediscovery by Romantic tourists, a veritable backwater.

Therefore, if, coming from the right direction, we approach Siena, acity set on top of a hill, our first impression is that she hardly seems tohave changed over a very long period of time.

Second, we observe that Siena is a very small city, surrounded by coun-tryside — and indeed, it has been said that it was possible, from any spotin Siena, to reach the fields within less than ten minutes. Third, we see aharmony of colors and shapes, while two towers dominate — one of them,the Cathedral’s campanile. The Cathedral is built on top of the main hill; itbears the characteristic horizontal black and white stripes of Sienese archi-tecture so often imitated. But there is a spire that actually exceeds, or at

Figure 2. Siena Campo and City Hall

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least seems to exceed, the campanile in height, and this is the tower of theCity Hall, the Palazzo Pubblico, called il torre di Mangia. In this Maryola-trous city, it shows very clearly where the center of the polis lies.

Making our way to this center, we arrive at the campo, the famousscallop-shaped, amphitheater-like market square — which is neither amarket place nor a square at all. During the summer, it is here that themost famous public event in Tuscany is held, the Palio, a horse racebetween the different quarters of the city, the contrade. Right now, how-ever, our attention fully focuses on the very impressive City Hall.

II.The Sala dei Nove and Lorenzetti’s Frescoes

Between 1287 and 1355, Siena was governed by a college of patricianscalled “the Nine,” le Nove. The nine members of this college rotatedextremely frequently so as to ensure maximum protection against tyran-ny and takeover by one person or family, a constant worry of the cityrepublics.

If one looks at the City Hall, on the right side on the second floor,there is a hall at the back where the last two most rightward windowsare, and this is the council chamber of the Nine, thus called the Sala deiNove. It was here that the Nine met both in public and in closed ses-sion to administer and govern the City of Siena.

Towards the end of their power, the Nine had the room decorated byone of Siena’s greatest painters, Magister Ambrogio Lorenzetti, famous alsofor his Madonnas. Lorenzetti’s fresco-cycle spans over three of the fourwalls (the window wall is not used) of the room. It forms one general idea,or makes one overall point, but it has various titles; scholars, of course,debate which one is appropriate. Often, the room has been and is referredto as the “Hall of Peace” or “Hall of Good Government,” but this is takingpars pro toto. What we have here are the Allegories of Good and Bad Gov-ernment and their respective Effects on the City and on the Country.

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Figure 3. Sala dei Nove

Of these six sets, if we stand with our back to the windows, we seein front of us, and thus dominating the room, the Allegory of Good Gov-ernment — plate 1 in the middle of this booklet. To its right, on thelong wall, we see the Effects of this Good Government, first on the City— plate 2 in the middle of this booklet — and then, as the picture flowsalong and is separated by the city walls, on the Country. On the left longwall (not seen in figure 3, but see figure 5 below), we are shown, fromthe right, the Allegory of Bad Government, its Effects on the City andits Effects on the Country in one long picture.

Most of us will have seen, in reproduction, at least parts of the Alle-gory of Good Government — such as the seated center figure and thePeace figure — and of the Effects on the City. But if one stands in frontof the frescoes for the first time, one is simply overwhelmed by theirimmense scale, their wealth of scenes, forms, figures and landscapes,and by the astounding colors, which cannot satisfactorily be reproduced.

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This is a work of art that speaks to us directly and immediately, that hassomething to say to us, if we “listen” — but in any case, it is somethingthat most of us will call beautiful, although or because this is early art,not quite the stylish, finished work we associate with the term Renais-sance. Indeed, this is the first large-scale secular fresco, even the firstlarge-scale piece of secular art in the West at all since the decline ofAncient Rome.1 For program and imagery, there are precedents, butnot really on this scale, nor really in substance — although naturallyscholarship, as scholarship must, tries to trace them. This fresco cycleis also, or so it has been argued, the work of art that is, of late, the mostdiscussed in political philosophy.

III. The Effects of Good Government on the City

For our topic, I want particularly to single out the Effects of Good Gov-ernment on the City. It is this painting, from the corner of the roomtowards the city walls, that seems to me to have the most unambiguousmeaning today; indeed, that has a clear lesson to teach even more than650 years after its creation.

And what do we see? What strikes us immediately is that this is ahappy scene. Happy is not a scholarly concept, often not even an intel-lectual one, which is why it is so important that it is visualized here.We see a beautiful city, prosperous, in which well-fed, well-clad peo-ple are living happily. As we see in the upper left corner, from the Cathe-dral campanile, this is — albeit in idealized form — Siena. The housesare pleasantly ordered and, their individuality non-withstanding, nice-ly fitting — the result of regulation, of course, as in all beautiful cities.There is dancing in the street; a bride is riding to her wedding; farmersare bringing supplies to the city; there are goods aplenty in the shops,and people have money enough to purchase what they wish; there isleisure enough, and people are sitting in café-like bars. Someone is

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watering her window-ledge flowers, and a bird is singing in a cage inan open window.

Particularly noteworthy is the building-scene in the upper center-right. Not only is it shown here how these towers or town-houses werebuilt (walled up from the outside) and why there are holes in these brickbuildings (for the scaffolding); we are also able to recognize a con-struction site, a work scene, as something good and indeed vital. A cityin which houses are built is a good city. What makes Lorenzetti specialis that most political utopias then and now — and at least partially, thisis one — are anti-business, but Lorenzetti’s is not.

We also notice, quite at the center, a school scene — this is a learn-ing society at work. It has been quipped that this scene proves that wehave a utopia here: most students actually seem to be listening.

In sum, people are living a good life in what — if this is the effect ofgood government — must be a good state.

IV. The Good Life in the Good State

As Aristotle says in the Politika, “a state comes into existence for the pur-pose of ensuring life, and it continues to exist for the purpose of thegood life” (I 1252b). And as Marsilius of Padua — arguably the mostimportant political philosopher of about Lorenzetti’s time — commentsupon this passage, the good life “is the perfect final cause of the state”(Defensor pacis I. iv.1). I would argue, programmatically, that this isclearly what this specific set of the fresco (but also the fresco as a whole)visualizes, thus presenting it to us with full immediacy. State, I hastento say, is — as opposed to any legal(istic) or other more narrow defin-ition — widely understood here as polis, or better even as structuredhuman living-together, usually in a designated space. And so, the fres-co can directly address us because the Good Life in the Good State,which are mutually dependent on each other, is still the only way to

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guarantee happiness for the polis and — and thus! — for the individ-ual, which means: for all of us.

V. But Can We Use This Today?

But can we really use a work that is so old, so distant, from such a hid-den past, depicting a life that is so clearly not ours? Can we even knowwhat Lorenzetti wants to tell us? This is the question behind all histo-ry of thought and/or of political philosophy that is supposedly relevantfor the present. The popular scholarly answer, more often than not, is:No, we cannot use such works today.

Most famously in our context, this position is taken today in politi-cal philosophy by Quentin Skinner, professor of political science at Cam-bridge. “Skinnerism” means that all thought relates to its own time andits own time only, that there are no perennial problems, let aloneanswers, and that we should deal with the great thinkers of the past inan, if you will, antiquarian manner, reconstructing their world of thoughtas well as we can. This is completely in line with the received hermeneu-tical wisdom (or so it seems) that, in order to find out what an authorof a text intended, we need to reconstruct the author’s horizon.

Now, this is not true anyway — Hermeneutics, and today this meansGadamerian Hermeneutics, is based precisely on the insight that we cannot reconstruct any historical horizon, that an author always says moreas well as less than intended, and that communication happens at themoment of reading, or perceiving, the formulated message. But in ourcase, in the case of Lorenzetti, this is especially not true.

The reason is that what we have here is a work of art, a visual workof art at that, and in this case the normal questions of text, context andtime thus do not apply. This is superbly explained by none other thanHans-Georg Gadamer, in my opinion the most eminent philosopheralive today, whose 101st birthday we celebrated in 2001.

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As Gadamer says, “art is the overcoming of the past. All is presencein art. It becomes presence” (Gadamer 1997, 25). This is so because artis only “there” during “the act” — interpretation, in the sense of engage-ment, is what makes the work of art. This is a-temporal; if we look seri-ously at, and engage with, Lorenzetti’s fresco — I called it “listening”earlier on — it becomes alive at that moment, and on a level that is nei-ther merely aesthetic nor purely intellectual or historical.

The “magic” effect here is that through art-specific access, we over-come the problems of Hermeneutics and of historicism. We can, mayand indeed should look at this fresco, “listen” to it, and “get” all the mes-sages we can get and that we want to get. Context, as well as Lorenzetti’s— or his sponsors’ — intentions, may be interesting and helpful toaccess the fresco, but they are not decisive. As Gadamer says for poet-

Figure 4. “3 May 1808” by Francisco de Goya

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ry, but which is even more valid for visual art, “What does the readerneed to know? ... He must know as much as he needs and as much ashe can cope with. He must know as much as he really can and has to bringthis into his reading ..., into his listening” (1986, 155). Thus, through theartistic medium, something perennial or general makes itself apparent,although the painter’s intentions may have been quite different.2

Why do we — or most of us — still find an Aristophanes comedy sofunny that we laugh? And why does a Goya painting still shock us? I amthinking, for instance, of “3 May 1808” (1814), depicted in figure 4.

This famous painting is highly context-specific, referring to a par-ticular event in history: the Napoleonic invasion of Spain between 1808and 1814. On the “journalistic” level, Goya is condemning the invasion— more specifically, the executions depicted here and named in thetitle just by date, emphasizing the specificity. On a broader level, thisis a condemnation of war or of such executions generally (for which wewould no longer need to know the date of the title). On a third, aes-thetic, level, this is a grand painting with artistic and aesthetic valuescompletely separate from any statementship.

The French occupation of Spain can be quite differently interpretedas well — Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), one of hismost famous short stories, clearly makes the opposite point; here, theFrench victory is one of Enlightenment over the horrors of the Inquisi-tion and indeed torture. But by means of Goya’s aesthetic immediacy, the“third level,” a non-context-specific yet socially relevant and not at all aes-thetic message, the “second level,” is transmitted as well. In the case ofthis painting, it says that war is generally bad, evil and senseless, no mat-ter what. In Lorenzetti’s case, it is that of the Good Life in the Good City.

And this is an accomplishment that visual art — not only, but par-ticularly — can achieve without becoming too contextual, or vague, orabstract. Hence the great value of visual artistic sources in such com-plex fields as PA. To verbalize this message, we would need dozens ofpages, if we could cope at all. This is not to argue, of course, for any

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reduction of PA to images, but for consideration of the use of visualcommunication where feasible.

VI. Myth or Reality? The Venetian Answer

But how seriously can such a message as Lorenzetti’s be taken? Againstthe above-mentioned Tuscany-as-Arcadia, 20th century historians haveasserted that the world of 14th century Tuscany was not half so nice.Indeed, it was an oligarchy, there was discrimination, war, and insecu-rity of the highest order, and the rationalization, propaganda, and utopi-anism of either artistic or literary-philosophical treatises on Good Gov-ernment are thus taken as not so interesting by some recent scholars.However, this latter approach reveals a naive view of utopias (as well asof history and philosophy). Suffice it here to say that, normatively,utopias are both crucial in human development and necessary for theformulation of any kind of policy at all.

In Lorenzetti, we certainly find, as has been said, a mixture of instruc-tion, utopia and description. Also, the government of the Nove was rel-atively short-lived, and indeed the problem of the city republics wasthat they were quite unstable. It seems the time was “not ready” (yet)for such a form of government.

True enough, Siena perished as a form of consociation as depictedby Lorenzetti. Yet, one city republic proved, or so I would argue, thatit was not the principle but extraneous circumstances that were the prob-lem. This republic turned out to be the most stable and most success-ful structured form of living-together in the history of humankind, orat least of the West: Venice. In view of this, we shall take a look at Venicenow to dispel the myth of the impossibility, or lack of viability, of a polisorganized along Lorenzettian lines.

Venice has been a highly successful promoter of her own myth —she was usually very good at sales — and studies of the “Myth of Venice”

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actually form the historiography of Venice for at least a century. How-ever, what must be admitted is that much of it was real — of which themyth itself surely is a part, within as well as without Venice herself.

Venice’s situation was and is highly specific, not least because of herphysical location. The lagoon made successful defense, thanks to thefleet, quite easily possible. And yet, one would think that in a host ofother respects, Venice was more comparable than not to her Tuscan sis-ters.

In Venice, we see a polis that was not conquered for 1,000 years. Thismust be an absolute record, and for those who do not realize what thismeans for the life of all citizens, indeed of all people living in Venice,some pause for thought is suggested. Inner strife was also minimal —there were attempts at takeovers, there were revolts and revolutions,but amazingly few, and with very minor side-effects. In the end, it isarguable that there was no real revolution, but just adaptation and reform— compare that with any other city over that period of time!

One should also not forget that the franchise in Venice was proba-bly larger than anywhere else at the time. There is also a functional rea-son for the oligarchic or aristocratic limitation of the electorate. In Venice(and Siena), one thus had a large pool of qualified people who couldtake over political, administrative or judicial functions at a moment’snotice — because they were up-to-date on the state’s business, the rulesand regulations, and the policies, in that they were voting on them everyweek. Only such a large viable recruitment pool makes rapid turnoverin appointments possible.

In Venice, there was very little public corruption, due partially to a high-ly intrinsic costing, accounting and auditing system; the system of checksand balances, so disabling in other city republics, worked very well.3

Economically, the same was true. The Venetian system of econom-ic, trade and industrial policy was stupendous; it appears to have comestraight out of a Schumpeterian analysis. It is no surprise, then, that thefirst book that theorizes this, Antonio Serra’s Breve trattato of 1613, was

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called “the first ... scientific treatise ... on Economic Principles and Pol-icy” by Schumpeter himself (1954, 195).4

What this Venice excursus was about was to demonstrate that themodel of a city run on the lines of Siena, and as depicted in the fresco,was indeed possible; that it was not a utopia at all — only that it wasrealized in Venice, rather than Tuscany, where certain extraneous cir-cumstances were better. This is not to argue, I hasten to say, that sucha system would be transferable, let alone to today. If anything, its valuefor us is heuristic. However, in all of Venice, this treasure-house of art,perhaps the most astounding place of political iconography, we do notfind a work of art that demonstrates directly and immediately why Veniceworked as well as Lorenzetti’s fresco cycle in Siena.

VII. The State and the Market

All this, of course, goes heavily against the currently prevailing socio-economic framework within which we all, like it or not, think today,and which Jürgen Habermas, in his recent programmatic speech on theEuropean Constitution, has summed up as being defined

· “by the anthropological image of the human person as a ratio-nally deciding entrepeneur who exploits his or her own powerof labor;

· by the socio-moral image of a post-egalitarian society which hasbecome resigned to marginalizations, warpings and exclusions;

· by the economic image of a democracy which reduces its citizensto the status of members of a market society and which redefinesthe state as a service company for clients and customers;

· finally by the strategic notion that there is no better politics/pol-icy than that which makes itself obsolete” (2001).

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So, regarding Lorenzetti, Siena and Venice, what about the free mar-ket? Is there not far too much state in such a model? What with glob-alization, isn’t the time of the state, even if widely understood, anywaynumbered? Is it not a concept of the past, a dinosaur, not hip, not withit, dull at best?

I would at this point introduce one of the “acknowledged enemies”of the open society, G.W.F. Hegel. As Rüdiger Bubner, who now holdsGadamer’s chair at Heidelberg, has recently elucidated so very nicely(2000), Hegel claims that it is the state that is the sphere of genuineFreedom, including individual Freedom. The market is precisely not asphere of Freedom; rather, it is an area of drivenness, where the motivefor individual action is either greed or need (or at least desire). In thestate, however, the negotiation of the citizens with each other abouttheir status, duties and rights, and their priorities, make the person real,genuine and whole — certainly in the sense of the Greek polis. This goesto some extent against the Venetian model, but of course one cannotforce people to participate in the policy process, and agreement by tacitconsent is a strong Kantian possibility as well. One need not push theHegel point too far; it is a perspective, however, that should not be for-gotten.

After all, the need for the state arises from the fact, and the insight,as Hannah Arendt puts it, that “Man is not God and lives in this worldtogether with his like” (as quoted in Safranski 1994, 428). In a polis,things do not just “happen.” Some structure is necessary, and if there isno planning, regulation, supply of public goods, etc., we cannot livetogether, at least not close by, yet that is the situation almost all of usare “thrown into.” If this living-together is not organized and adminis-tered well, not only will the polis die, but so will we. The need for thestate as we have defined it will thus never cease.

Furthermore, if the 1990s have shown anything, it is the remarkableresilience of the state, even if we define the state more narrowly. Indeed,since 1989, we have more states than ever. The breakup of the Soviet

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Union and Yugoslavia, as well as of Czechoslovakia, are local examples.What we have seen is the re-emergence not only of statehood, but evenof the nation-state. The various detractors of the (nation) state oftenseem like four-year-olds jumping up and down and protesting againsta reality they don’t like, shouting that they don’t want it — but this isnot an appropriate attitude for relevant science that, in addition to nor-mative precepts, also needs to face the facts and deal with them.

In addition, it has long been almost universal that whenever one usedto say “states,” even if narrowly understood, one now says, “states andinternational organizations.” This leads to the realization: What is theEuropean Union, in this context, if not a state? Of course, there is a com-plex discussion about the “stateness” of the EU, but it certainly is a stateas we have defined it here in the wider sense. What is more — the EUis a Continental “state,” organized and working along Continental, viz.French and/or German, lines. It is not an Anglo-American structure, notleast as regards its most powerful feature, the civil service. Thus, for theforeseeable future, the framework of life in Europe, its most importantfeature, will be a state one, and thus it will explicitly, and perhaps evenmore than ever, become that of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) aswell.5

In PA itself, it appears to me that anti-statism and the narrow focusof an ill-understood concept of (business) efficiency are clearly on thedefensive by now, although this took a while to set in, and since para-digms do not only shift but also overlap, there are still many placeswhere the news has not yet arrived. But that economics and businessadministration have successfully invaded PA, and that the public sec-tor has been, and is being, told to shape up in accordance with busi-ness principles, is, as an overall paradigm, a thing of the 1980s, still aninteresting and powerful ideology, but one that has not come to much.

As important as many such-inspired reforms of the public sectorwere and are, the fact remains that what one notices first when lookingat the public and at the private sector is the difference, not the similar-

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ity.6 The New Public Management (NPM) has failed miserably every-where, and if not in every case, then certainly overall. The use of busi-ness techniques within the state mistakes the most basic requirements,particularly those of a democracy — such as greater attention to open-ness, regularity and due process, rather than to (business) efficiency andspeed — for a liability.

VIII. The Role of the State in Economic Growth

A further question is whether 18th century social and economic phi-losophy is really such an ideal answer to the problems of the 21st, orwhether Early Modern theory is not suited much better, since the par-allelism with our problems is simply closer. What are the problems oftoday? Economic growth, dynamics, innovation, technology — EarlyModern issues, as Erik Reinert has so masterfully displayed (1999).

Fortunately, we seem to be at the beginning of a paradigm shift with-in economics itself so far as the recognition of this is concerned. As exam-ples in economic scholarship, I will only mention the work of scholarsassociated with The Other Canon group, e.g., Peter Evans’ research on theneed for a well-working bureaucracy for economic growth (Evans andRauch 1999); Ha-Joon Chang’s book on Industrial Policy (1994); the com-prehensive Brazilian compilation, Institutions and the Role of the State (Cas-tro, Burlamaqui and Chang 2000); and, most recently, Ronald Dore’s bril-liant defense of the Japanese and German economic system (2000).

And indeed, especially in CEE, the Neo-Liberals can no longer dis-credit the role of the state in economic growth simply by pointingtowards the Socialist decades; abuse is hardly an argument against aprinciple. The CEE lesson of the last decade is precisely the necessityfor the state’s role in economic and social affairs, not for the necessityto stay out and let well alone. Incidentally, this role of the state in eco-nomic growth is not, of course, all that the state is for, but it is an impor-

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tant point. It is also, in light of all the questions of innovation and tech-nology, a “seller” for PA for those who are sceptical about the entirenotion — and one can still find them, especially in CEE.

But not only there. The overall point is made in an exemplary wayin Ha-Joon Chang’s newest book, Pulling Up the Ladder?, in which hecarefully surveys policies and data, coming to the conclusion that

The plain fact is that the Neo-Liberal “policy reforms” have notbeen able to deliver their central promise — namely, economicgrowth. ... All countries, but especially the developing countries,grew much faster when they used [by the standards of the “Wash-ington Consensus”] “bad” policies during 1960-1980 than whenthey used “good” (at least “better”) policies during the followingtwo decades (2002).7

So, we have here an Umkehrschluß: the conceptualization of the roleof the state in economic growth shows precisely the validity of Loren-zetti, just as Lorenzetti validates the conceptualization. Indeed, nowhereis the union of state and economy better presented than here: state andeconomy go together, they are integrated and they are not hostile to oneanother.

IX. The State of Law

I have been told once, however, that no state is visible in this picture — itcould almost be called a Neo-Liberal fantasy. This criticism, too, can bequite easily met within Lorenzetti’s frescoes — we just need to swing oureyes 90 degrees to the left. Then we face the even more famous part of thefresco, the Allegory of Good Government. We need to decontextualize herea bit, and many open questions present themselves. Nonetheless, I thinkwe can see here a clear depiction of some sense of “open society” in the best

17

sense. (Sienese) (Good) Government is enthroned at the center, encircledby the six key virtues, of which the one immediately to the right (from ourperspective left) is the most important. This is Aristotle’s phronesis, appro-priateness, the main insight into any public policy and order. What is impor-tant for the current point is the fact that the Government’s scepter-hand istied by a rope that runs from Justice’s scales (Justice under Wisdom; notthe “simple” Justice to the very right from our perspective). Concordia, unity,links the two ropes together, and it is the citizens, or at least their repre-sentatives, who pass the rope on to Government. Never is such Good Gov-ernment absolute; not only is it subject to negotiation and discourse, rather,it is tied to Justice; and without unity and participation of the citizens, it allcomes to nothing. In other words, it needs to be a Rechtsstaat, a state of law.

Now, the concept of the state of law might have evolved in juxta-position to the welfare state, i.e., it might have stood for a state that doesnot become involved in any affairs of the citizens, assuming — withwhatever justification — that all individuals are not only of equal worth,but also under all circumstances capable of the same; forbidding, as itwere, “the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges,” in AnatoleFrance’s famous phrase. Yet in historical development, it is the combi-nation of both welfare state and state of law that has been successful inthe “West” — and as Jeane J. Kirkpatrick points out, “Every modern de-mocracy is a welfare state in the sense that it seeks to provide basic mi-nimum standards of well-being to its citizens” (1988, 2).

But as I have argued here, it is not the minimum that matters, it isthe maximum. The problems that are inherent in this approach, suchas the tendency to tell people how they should be happy, can — andmust — be kept in check precisely by the Rechtsstaat, by institutionsand process, and by the retaining of the individualist-collectivist bal-ance, or better: necessary tension, that describes any structured humanliving-together. Again, this is by no means sufficient, as we can see inthe Effects fresco — but a conditio sine qua non of Good Life in the GoodState it certainly is.

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X. The Effects of Bad Government

And finally, for those still not convinced, on moving our eyes a further90 degrees to the left, we see in a single sweeping and — appropriate-ly enough — heavily damaged fresco the Allegory and Effects of BadGovernment on City and Country. A detail with the, for us, vital scenesis shown below.

Figure 5. “Allegory and Effects of Bad Government”

Here, it is made clear what we do not want: ruined houses, no com-merce except the arms industry, a deserted landscape, ever-apparentviolence, and marauding foreign, or even local, soldatesca, plundering,dressing fancily and molesting, raping and killing women on the street.It is these rape scenes, indirectly but very hauntingly depicted (in the

19

lower left corner of the above figure), that are among the strongest andmost innovative figurines of Lorenzetti.

Being subjected to such violence, often fatal, was precisely the lot ofso many civilians, men, women and children, in medieval, earlier andlater Italy, Europe and the world. The original purpose of the state, asalready mentioned, is survival; it is, as Kant would strongly agree with,peace within and without: no crime and no war. Any form of discus-sion of liberty can come only later; it is only at the point of peace thatwe can start discussing other things. The denial of such peace is some-thing that is almost always made from a secure home, but somethingthat does not take into account the citizens’ most basic rights, and theseare no crime and no war. It once again brings to mind the amazing suc-cess of Venice, which might have been in some sense a police state(although with very few police), but one in which violence was, andincidentally is, less likely than in almost any other city of that size.

Finally, for theory’s sake, one might glance briefly at the Allegory ofBad Government. The monster in the middle, Tyranny, encircled byvainglory, pride, and avarice or greed, and betwixt fraud and blind fury,is a perfect allegory of bad PA. I hope I am not pushing things too far,and I know I am taking the risk to kick a dead horse, when I say thatthis could be an allegory of NPM. Avarice, the confusion of “efficient”with “cheap” and vainglory and pride, the pseudo-scientific so-surenessof being absolutely right, while ignoring all relevant circumstances, seemto make this interpretation easily possible, though.

This train of thought allows me to finish the present narration withone of my favorite Aristotelian sentences, which also expresses very wellone of the key insights of Lorenzetti. This is a fragment which serves toemphasize what is wrong with reductionist PA, as well as with reduc-tionism anywhere in the social sciences, because we have a yardstickthat is much more important than any self-referential numbers andamounts: viz., that “the good is the most accurate measure of every-thing” (Politikos, fragm. 79 Rose1870).

20

XI. Coda

Good PA has a telos, a goal: The Good Life and/in the Good State. Onlythe discourse of the stakeholders brings out what these are at a givenpoint and place in time. As Lorenz v. Stein makes the point in his Ver-waltungslehre (1958), good PA is only good as long as one remembersthis insight, in practice as a civil servant, as well as in theory and teach-ing. But precisely for that purpose, an obsolete legalistic state focus isnot enough; indeed, it obscures the importance and resilience of thestate. Economic growth, security and other public goods, general hap-piness and high-quality PA all need to be seen together, in the 21st cen-tury more than ever. The interaction of the state, the economy and thethird sector is what needs to be discussed in order to get anywhere. Ithink with NISPAcee we are precisely in this business, and, after all, thisyear’s conference focuses exactly on this topic.

It is perhaps not very profound to say that good PA is in the end abouthuman happiness. But a reminder is often necessary, particularly for allof us as we deal with PA every day. The best, most direct and most aptreminder of this goal, as I hope to have shown, is Ambrogio Lorenzetti’sfresco — and also, yet not coincidentally, the most beautiful.

21

Acknowledgments

This is the first NISPAcee Alena Brunovská Award Plenary Lecture, deliv-ered on 10 May 2001 at NISPAcee’s 9th Annual Conference, in Riga,Latvia. To be more precise, this is the text on which the lecture wasbased; it is, thus, more extensive and includes additional points, espe-cially concerning the scholarly debate, of which a few less pertinent oneswere relegated to endnotes. In addition, chapters VII to IX were sub-stantially enlarged, and made more explicit as regards the connectionto the current debate. Nonetheless, the lecture style was retainedthroughout; only verbatim quotes and specific references directly men-tioned in the text are annotated. I am hoping to elaborate on the sub-ject in a larger context some time soon.

The lecture is somewhat unusual because it makes extensive use ofvisual imagery, displaying thirteen color overheads, which are not illus-trative but form the core to the argument. It was possible to reproducemost of them, though in a reduced format, and I am very grateful, espe-cially to Violetta Zentai, that publication in the LGI Discussion Papersseries made it possible to include full color reproductions of the twomost important images.

Earlier versions of this lecture were given, first, as the 1st AnnualEMPA Lecture (EMPA being the European Master of Public Adminis-tration Consortium, the first pan-European integrated graduate programin our field), which I had the honor to deliver, as outgoing EMPA Pres-ident, on 1 December 2000 at the Budapest University of Economic Sci-ences and Public Administration. Second, the paper was presented, withthe focus on economics, as the keynote lecture at the 5th meeting ofThe Other Canon group on 11 January 2001 in Venice.

I am particularly indebted to Erik S. Reinert, the convenor of TheOther Canon and the first to conceive of the relevance of Lorenzetti inthe present context (see Reinert 1999); to my revered teacher Hans-Georg Gadamer, with whom I discussed the validity of the argument

22

on 16 November 2000 in Heidelberg-Ziegelhausen; and to Rainer Kat-tel for his, as always, crucial feedback and critical comments, especial-ly during a research excursion to Siena in June 2000. For comments,criticism and improvement, I should like to thank György Jenei, San-jaya Lall, Tiina Laats, Tom Bass, and again Violetta Zentai, as well as allthree audiences generally. Funding support for some of the research bythe Estonian National Research Scheme, especially in the framework ofmy own 1998-2002 large-scale grant, is gratefully acknowledged.

23

Notes

1. The Effects of Good Government on the Country is also said to form what

can be called the first landscape painting in Western art, i.e., the first dis-

play of a landscape for its own sake.

2. In that sense, Skinner’s thesis is proven wrong by his own brilliant Hobbes

book (1996), surely his most important work. Skinner’s contextualism is

ultimately not a good philosophical way to approach Hobbes, but what

makes Reason and Rhetoric such a milestone and masterpiece of political

philosophy is precisely that the meticulous placing of Hobbes into his intel-

lectual context allows us to come closer to him and (especially by means

of the development of the idea of paradiastole) to understand him, and —

indeed against Skinner’s own theoretical framework — his perennial mes-

sage, significantly better.

3. This was not accidental and was very well analyzed by the greatest of Venet-

ian constitutional theorists, Cardinal Gaspare Contarini, in his The Com-

monwealth and Gouernment of Venice (1551; English 1599). Precisely this

analysis served later as the basis for one of the most important utopias in

Anglo-American political philosophy, Thomas Harrington’s Oceana (1867

[1656]).

4. But the ultimate success of Venice is to have solved one of the oldest and

most serious problems of political philosophy — together with the rule of

the best — and that is the “Who watches the watchman?” problem. Plato

solves it theoretically in the Politeia: The rulers must be those who would

rather do something else. In Plato’s world, these are people who would

rather think, i.e., who do not crave for power because they are philoso-

phers: the philosopher kings. Naturally, this is a model that works, but only

within the larger model. Equally, the Politeia is a heuristic utopia, i.e., not

a genuine utopia that is supposed to be pursued, but an image in the sky

that should be looked at so as to lead to the realization of truth; of how

things are connected. In reality, it is not supposed to work and would be

a nightmarish system indeed.

24

In Venice, therefore, something had to be substituted for the “some-

thing” the rulers would rather do. And this was business. Venetian aristo-

crats would rather not rule, because what would happen to their business

interests? The unique identity of aristocracy (not patriciate) and business

elite, and a system that made civil service not lucrative, but tardy, dull, as

well as difficult and dangerous, make one really envision a world in which

a riddle was solved that we have not solved today.

5. Thus, important as it is, globalization may easily be a less important fea-

ture in Euroland than the EU. Conversely, as Habermas has pointed out in

the aforementioned speech,

the more the Europeans want to balance the undesirable social conse-

quences of growing distributive inequalities and to push for a certain

regulation of the global economy, the more they must also take an inter-

est in the capability to shape things that an EU which would be politi-

cally capable to act would gain among the global players. (2001)

It would be interesting, at this point, to look at the role of municipalities

in this context, especially as both globalization and the EU — not least through

their weakening of the nation-state — will increase the importance, in almost

any respect, of local government. In addition, this would nicely address the

possible criticism against the present thesis that Renaissance city states, just

like the Greek ones, are also in size too dissimilar from today’s nation-states

to offer any sort of lesson for us. A possible reply to such a claim would be

to point at the tendency of municipalities — in times of crises of any sort of

the nation-state — to turn, or to revert, to some extent into poleis. For an

introductory discussion of these matters, see Drechsler 1999.

6. On the difference between the two spheres, the problem of transfer and the

use of badly understood or obsolete economic models, see — because this

may be the most controversial point in the present context — the mid-

1990s classics, Mintzberg 1996; Wilson 1994; König 1996; and now also

Edeling, Jann and Wagner 1998.

25

7. Some readers will notice that I have not used the concept of “governance,”

but have rather stuck to the “old” term of “government.” This could have

been done otherwise, but because of the line of argument, to discuss the

concept would either risk begging the question or necessitate a duplication

of the argument. For an excellent, unusually comprehensive analysis of the

concept of governance, see König and Markus 2001.

27

Bibliography

Note: As hints for initial further reading, I have added a few books here: On

Sienese history of the respective time, Bowsky 1981; on Venice, Chambers

1970 and Rösch 2000; on a comparable fresco and the fresco as such, Cole

1993; and on the political philosophy of the Lorenzetti fresco, Riklin 1996.

The most comprehensive picture-book on the latter is Castelnuovo 1995; a

good and more easily accessible one with very good color values is Starn 1994.

The best general introduction to Lorenzetti is still Rowley 1958. All links are

valid as of 1 October 2001.

Bolt, Robert (1960). A man for all seasons. A play of Sir Thomas More. 13th repr.

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Bowsky, William M. (1981): A Medieval Italian Commune. Siena under the Nine,

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Castro, Ana Celia, Leonardo Burlamaqui and Ha-Joon Chang, (2000), eds. Insti-

tutions and the Role of the State. Cheltenham — Northampton, MA: Edward

Elgar.

Chambers, D.S. (1970). The Imperial Age of Venice, 1380-1580. London: Thames

and Hudson.

Chang, Ha-Joon (2002). Pulling Up the Ladder? Policies and Institutions for Devel-

opment in Historical Perspective. London: Anthem, forthcoming.

Chang, Ha-Joon (1994). The Political Economy of Industrial Policy. London:

Macmillan.

Cole, Bruce (1993). Giotto — The Scrovegni Chapel, Padua. New York: George

Braziller.

28

Contarini, Gasparo (1599 [1551]). The Commonwealth and Gouernment of Venice.

Lewes Lewkenor, tr. London: “Imprinted by I. Windet for E. Mattes.”

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Drechsler, Wolfgang (1999). “Kommunale Selbstverwaltung und Gemein-

degebietsreform: Deutsche Erfahrungen, generelle Erwägungen, estnische

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Universität Jena. Klaus Manger, ed. Jenaer Universitätsreden, vol. 7, pp. 9-

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Paul Celans Gedichtfolge ‘Atemkristall’. 2nd edn. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp.

Habermas, Jürgen (2001). “Warum braucht Europa eine Verfassung?” 8th

“Hamburg Lecture,” 26 June.

Full version at:

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Harrington, James (1887 [1656]). The Commonwealth of Oceana. London: Rout-

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Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. (1988). “Welfare State Conservatism” (interview). Policy

Review, no. 44 (Spring), pp. 2-6.

König, Klaus (1996). On the Critique of the New Public Management. Speyer:

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König, Klaus and Adam Markus (2001), eds. Governance als entwicklungspoli-

tischer Ansatz. Speyer: Forschungsinstitut für óffentliche Verwaltung.

Mintzberg, Henry (1996). “Managing Government — Governing Management.”

Harvard Business Review, May-June, pp. 75-83.

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Reinert, Erik S. (1999). “The Role of the State in Economic Growth.” Journal

of Economic Studies, vol. 26, nos. 4/5, pp. 268-326.

Riklin, Alois (1996). Ambrogio Lorenzettis politische Summe. Bern/Wien:

Stämpfli/Manzsche Verlags- und Universitätsbuchhandlung.

Rösch, Gerhard (2000). Venedig. Geschichte einer Seerepublik. Stuttgart etc.:

Kohlhammer.

Rowley, George (1958). Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 2 vols. Princeton: Princeton Uni-

versity Press.

Safranski, Rüdiger (1994). Ein Meister aus Deutschland. Heidegger und seine Zeit.

München — Wien: Hanser.

Sayers, Dorothy L. (1968 [1936]). Gaudy Night. 16th repr. 1984. New York:

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Serra, Antonio (1613). Breve trattato delle cause che possono far abbondare li regni

d’oro e argento dove non sono miniere. Napoli: Lazzaro Scoriggio.

Skinner, Quentin (1996). Reason and Rhetoric in the Work of Thomas Hobbes.

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Starn, Randolph (1994). Ambrogio Lorenzetti — The Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

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Stein, Lorenz v. (1958 [1887]). Verwaltungslehre und Verwaltungsrecht. 2nd edn.

Frankfurt/Main: Klostermann.

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ence & Politics, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 667-673.

The following Discussion Papers are available from the Local Government and

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