The following observation is distinct from Expert Government but fundamentally informs its design. That observation concerns perhaps the most influential trend in civilisation. As such it should influence the design of all forms of government.
Civilisation is increasing in sophistication and therefore complexity. This is because it has an increasing number of specialists that collectively enable an increasing diversity of ideas, behaviour, services, and goods. At some point in this progression civilisation becomes too complex to be governed effectively by non-specialists. Only specialists, or ideally experts, can make informed and therefore effective decisions on matters within their specialism.
Expert Government prioritises effective governance above all else. So Expert Government is designed to manage complexity by placing authority with specialists. Other ideological objectives, such as egalitarianism, are compatible with this view. Those that are not are those that undermine placing authority with specialists, such as hierarchical authority which moves authority away from those most specialised to less specialised people. Hierarchical authority also creates opportunity for corruption. So any use of hierarchical authority must be very strongly limited to special cases.
Expert Government is a new form of government designed with the overriding objective of providing effective government. It was initiated due to the perception that UK government is not as effective as it should and could be. Its details are still being developed.
Whatever policies are devised, however they are prioritised, whoever creates and implements them, and whichever scheme is used to achieve approbation, it is most important that the design of government provides the best chance that all that activity is as successful as possible, in short - that government is effective.
Expert Government was not designed as a variation on some other form of government. It was devised from the ground up to provide effective government. In development it evolved to be quite different from other forms of government. Consequently its similarities to other forms of government are less significant than its differences, but the closest existing form of government is technocracy. That similarity is due to only one feature, the belief that government is important and so should be in the hands of highly qualified people. Otherwise technocracy is very different from Expert Government.
Civilisation continually increases in complexity, so for government to be effective it must become more sophisticated. Necessarily then government itself also becomes more complex. Eventually the complexity of civilisation and government becomes so significant that for government to be as effective as possible it must be designed around the best scheme available to manage complexity.
There are frequent failures to effectively manage UK society and government. As UK government typically employs highly educated people that failure must be due to a systemic design feature that is preventing them from being effective. The fundamental design feature of the UK government is hierarchical authority granted by popular approbation of the citizenry. Unfortunately that is not congruent with the best complexity management available.
A system of many self-organising independent specialisms employing many collaborating specialists, or ideally experts, all with equal authority limited to their specialism.
A very important feature of this form of government is no authority hierarchy. This helps reduce corruption but requires that inter-discipline especialists and groups exist to ensure the oversight function found in hierarchical authority systems still exists.
The name Expert Government reflects an aspiration to employ skilful specialists in government. It could also accurately be called Specialism Government to reflect the most important design principle of devolving authority to those with the best understanding.
The principal objective of Expert Government is to improve the effectiveness of government. It also aims to reduce corruption and ensure government is adaptable to changing needs, circumstances, and understanding.
The principal objective for a form of government must be to achieve effective governance. In a representative democracy ‘the vote’ is the main means to achieve that objective. From the many governance issues we currently have it is evident that representative democracy is not delivering effective governance. We need a new means to obtain effective government.
Democracy has improved the lives of ordinary people by progressing away from authoritarianism, but it needs further improvement. A continuous stream of problems highlight ineffective government as the main problem with democracy. As the world becomes increasingly sophisticated, so it becomes more complex. The old forms of government developed for a simpler world are becoming progressively less appropriate. They will fail increasingly often, and the consequences of those failures will become worse.
The three main problems with any government are ineffectiveness, corruption, and inadaptability.
These problems are not simply due to poor politicians and policies, they have deeper causes:
Expert Government uses three techniques to minimise these three problems:
All government positions are advertised. The most suitable applicants are appointed.
A citizen can only take a position in government once and for a limited term. This allows more citizens the opportunity to enter government and reduces the opportunity for corruption.
Three features of how citizens are employed in government advance the principal concept of democracy:
A problem free transition is essential. In a representative democracy with political parties two steps are needed:
UK politicians influence government policy based a number of concerns, particularly issues local to their voters.
Specialists are not constrained by narrow concerns, and by definition have a deeper understanding to make better informed decisions.
The UK's old form of government is increasingly inappropriate and will not be our last.
The sooner the UK embraces the need for the change to Expert Government, the sooner our future will improve.
It is time for a rational form of government designed to accommodate advancing civilisation. Please endorse Expert Government.