THE THIRD WAVE
At the corporate level, we not only see efforts at internal decentralization (witness a recent meeting of 280 of General Motors’ top executives who spent two days talking about how to break up bureaucratic patterns and move more decisions out from the center), but also an actual geographical decentralization as well. Business Week reports a “geographical tilt of the U.S. economy, as more companies build plants and move offices to less readily accessible parts of the country.”
All this reflects, in part, a gigantic shift of information flows in society. We are, as noted earlier, undergoing a fundamental decentralization of communications, as the power of the central networks wanes. We are seeing a stunning proliferation of cable, cassette, computers, and private electronic mail systems, all pushing in the same decentralist direction.
It is not possible for a society to decentralize economic activity, communications, and many other crucial processes without also, sooner or later, being compelled to decentralize government decision- making as well.
All this demands more than cosmetic changes in existing political institutions. It implies massive battles over control of budgets, taxes, land, energy, and other resources. Decision division will not come easily—but it is absolutely unavoidable in country after overcentralized country.
So far we have looked at decision division as a way to break the bottleneck, to unfreeze the political system so it can function again. But there is far more here than greets the eye. For application of this principle does more than reduce the decision load of national governments. In a fundamental way, it changes the very structure of elites, bringing them into conformity with the needs of the emerging civilization.
THE EXPANDING ELITES
The concept of “decision load” is crucial to any understanding of democracy. All societies require a certain quantity and quality of political decisions in order to function. Indeed, each society has its own unique decision structure The more numerous, varied, frequent, and complex the decisions required to run it, the heavier its political “decision load.” And the way this load is shared fundamentally influences the level of democracy in society.
In preindustrial societies, where the division of labor was rudimentary and change was slow, the number of political oj administrative decisions actually required to keep things running was minimal. The decision load was small. A tiny, semi-educated,unspecialized ruling elite could more or less run things without help from below, carrying the entire decision load by itself.
435
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430