A REFLECTION ON PUBLIC SERVICE –

Before during and after the elections.

I would like to thank Pierre for putting on paper his reflections on the French presidential election. His reflections prompt me to share my own views on the challenge posed to us, as we observe the current state of political development in each of our countries, in Europe generally and in our increasingly interdependent world.

As a political event the French election has certainly been dramatic both in terms of the sheer numbers participating and in the clear choice of contrasting ideologies. By contrast, the Irish elections have already been upstaged, even before they happen, because 2007 will go down in history as the year in which the shadow of the gun, after almost a century, was eliminated from Irish politics.

This is a truly inspiring moment in Ireland and yet the gun is probably more evident than ever in Irish society, certainly in the south. Organised crime, of course, tends to be confined to certain areas and this, in turn, reflects a reality shared by Ireland and France and the entire western world. The gravitation – not to say collapse – of political discourse towards the centre has the effect of neutralising the voice of those on the margins, with potentially dire consequences. Both politically motivated terrorism and ‘plain ordinary’ organised crime feed of the desperation marginalised people.

Pierre speaks about the left having a long way to go before it can engage in a true dialogue. Historically, left wing politics have addressed the interests of the marginalised and the Jesuit tradition of social reflection shares that traditional focus of the left. The challenge we face is to make a contribution which does more than merely add our weight – such as it is – to the volume of protest. We are at our best when we are in a position to challenge people to rethink accepted patterns of behaviour.

The current political situation in the western world is a variation on the one which faced the founders of the United States. They saw the problems caused by self-interested factions seizing power through the electoral process in thirteen small parochially minded states. Their solution was to bring these states together in a much bigger political entity in a way which ensured that no one faction could dominate. In our time no one faction can be said to dominate the electoral process, but certain groups are effectively excluded participation in public decision making. Both then and now the underlying problem was one of exclusion from power.

There can be no remedy to this situation without a theory of democratic government which challenges the self-understanding of those in positions of power. They all know that legitimacy is part of the political reality in which they work and that they must above all strive to present themselves, and to understand their work, in terms of service. The use of that word in the realm of politics will always be ambivalent. The cynical will always be inclined to use it in a lavish way to further their own hypocrisy. By contrast, those who genuinely seek to serve will always look beyond self-justification to the realities of power, because service is focused not on moral integrity per se but on effective action.

That’s why I’m drawn to Pierre’s comment on the nature of politics: ‘la politique est avant tout un service, parfois lourd et ingrat, souvent exigeant mais toujours susceptible d’une belle gratification.’ The calling of the politician – in the broadest sense of that term – is to engage with that interaction of ethics and power which is encompassed by the word ‘service.’ This engagement is not easy, precisely because it must deal with all that is dubious in human nature. The ‘gratification’ – the joy – of public service lies partly in the satisfaction of active engagement in public affairs with people of similar motivation. This engagement, however, makes no sense except as a means of accomplishing of something real. I am reminded of a comment made to me by an Irish public servant observing the opening of a town centre in one of Dublin’s more desolate suburbs – ‘It does the soul good.’

One interpretation of what is happening in France is that we are witnessing a further chapter in the Thatcher-Reagan realignment of politics, with its celebration of profit as a vital motivation in human affairs. What this free-market narrative overlooks is that financial credit, on which the market depends, can only be sustained by trustworthy political structures and those who serve them. The free marker narrative is suspicious of the modern administrative state but has had surprisingly little impact on its activities. The contrasting narrative of marginalisation [and rights] shares this suspicion, but whereas the free marketers see the state’s non-profitability as deplorable, the rights narrative deplores what it sees as the state’s craven attitude to big business.

Neither of the prevailing political narratives address the underlying problem which has been described in a joint statement by five Irish party political leaders, including the Taoiseach and the leader of the opposition, as follows: ‘The elaborate bureaucracy of the modern state has become a barrier between elected leaders and ordinary citizens...’ There is no denying that the very structures of the state have themselves become problematic. It is worth remembering, however, that the state employs a sizable proportion of the workforce in the developed world, that they command a formidable array of expertise and have an unparalleled network of interaction with society. Our globalised interdependent world could not survive without this interaction and its various forms of regulation and feedback. This reality is implicitly acknowledged in the second part of the above quoted sentence which reads as follows: ‘… yet within that perceived barrier lie the means of restoring popular trust in public life.’

This sentence is taken from the Preface to my forthcoming book – ‘Democracy and Public Happiness’ - which will be launched on 28 June at Dublin’s City Hall by Dermot McCarthy the Secretary General to the Government of Ireland – the country’s top civil servant. This gesture in itself reflects another comment in the Preface, which notes that the book ‘invites us to reflect on employment in the public service of the state as an expression of citizenship and as a form of participation in the political process.’ Public service is a dimension of all citizenship but the professional public servant has a unique responsibility for – and interest in – highlighting that dimension of service. Marginalised groups, rightly and necessarily, are concerned with promoting their own interests. The problem is that there is no room in the political forum, as currently designed, for their voice to be heard.

To suggest that it should be up to the public servant to create that room is not as guileless as it might seem. The political power of conscientious public service is remarked on by the political leaders of Ireland, in their Preface: ‘The achievements of parliamentary democracy would never have been possible without the effective implementation of decisions by the bureaucratic process. It would never have commanded the trust of the people, if that same bureaucratic process was not sustained by the honourable tradition of conscientious service to the state.’

Any reflection on ‘this honourable tradition,’ which reaches far beyond employment by the modern state both in time and in scope, opens up the issue of spirituality. My book concludes with an appendix entitled ‘Spirituality and Warfare’ which considers that question in the light of the Meditation on the Two Standards. What follows is taken from this appendix.

All the great spiritual traditions of the world use the symbol of warfare as a way of motivating the individual in their search for wisdom and self-discipline. The spiritual person is presented as being in a paradoxical state of unrelenting, growthful and life-giving warfare. The theatre of this spiritual warfare is the conscience. The focus, in this book, on the conscience of the governing elite is an attempt to bring into the realm of public affairs this universal and ancient use of warfare as a spiritual symbol. The defining struggle of the democratic process, between government and opposition, reflects that creative inner struggle of conscience.

The emphasis in the text on the role of greed, vanity and pride, in the interaction of government and opposition, owes much to one particular spiritual heritage and its use of the symbol of warfare. The ‘Meditation on the Two Standards’ in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola presents the primordial struggle between good and evil in terms of – a warfare between two armies – one demonic, the other human. The focus of this meditation is, emphatically, on the conscience of the one who meditates – not on any external enemy……

The spiritual exercises are not explicitly concerned with political power, but the insights of the ‘Meditation on the Two Standards’ do play a central role in the analysis of democratic government as presented in this book. The global discourse on human rights, which has been such a powerful feature of the democratic process in the past fifty years, needs to be complemented by a process of reflection on the role of power – and conscience - in public affairs. Without the discerning conscience, alert to its own tendencies towards greed, vanity and pride, democratic government cannot respond to the relentlessly changing and conflictual nature of human society.