Roblog

Dan Davies has written about how many systems (including the British constitution) use what he terms a “good chap” regulatory system: i.e. they rely on the system being mostly populated by decent people who obey the rules, even though they don’t technically have to.

That has obvious flaws, like when someone (Boris Johnson, say, or more disastrously Donald Trump) comes along who decides not to be a good chap. But, Dan argues, there’s a certain advantage to the naïveté:

“It is always possible to break norms, if you’re really determined to. Everything does, in fact, depend on having people in positions of power who respect the rules of the game. The British ‘good chap’ system is just much more blatantly in your face about it.

“Which might account for the longevity of the Westminster system. It is incredibly fragile, but it’s obviously fragile, and in this way achieves a sort of paradoxical antifragility. In a ‘good chap’ system, when a bad chap shows up, all the good chaps know that they have to band together and oppose or get rid of them, because they know that there are no systemic constraints on badchappery. In a system that’s meant to be full of checks and balances, it is much easier for a kind of bystander effect to develop, where everyone waits for the system to protect itself without understanding that the system is just them.”

The contrast with the US in its current mode is striking; I definitely see that bystander effect, where people continually expect some kind of check or balance to take effect. It certainly hasn’t yet.