Not all complex adaptive systems lead to system growth

This picture provides a stark reminder that complex adaptive systems sometimes exhibit behaviour that leads the whole system to termination rather than growth. As ever, the lesson for social systems is whether we can identify that the 'strange attractor' underlying the system's behaviour contains system termination points - and whether there is a lever available in our meta-planning toolkit either to eliminate such points from the set of possible options or to make them less likely as system destinations.

For the starfish, the answers to these two questions appear to have been 'Yes' and 'No' respectively. If our social systems are to avoid the same fate, it would be good for us to find the answers which apply to us. We still seem some way from this position.

Why the Times wouldn’t pass Politics 101 in its analysis of universities v. Sure Start

A strange and wildly misguided editorial in today’s Times (‘Politics ABC’ at http://bit.ly/cxhPsJ) argues that “In the context of a looming budget deficit, Sure Start expenditure of more than £1 billion a year is exactly the kind of line item that politicians should be scrutinising, not protecting”.

It is particularly risible that the Times leader suggests that “the regrettable reality of the public finances would make this necessary …even if some [children’s] centres had not morphed into middle-class crèches from the route out of poverty that they were originally supposed to be”. Given the stranglehold on university applications held by the middle classes, turning many parts of the university system into middle-class finishing schools, this is very rich indeed.

The Times recognises that “extensive research clearly indicates the importance of investment in the early years” but goes on to argue that “the prize of greater social mobility will not be won if investment in early years comes at the expense of opportunities later in life”. Is this seriously meant to suggest that the UK university system is major vehicle of social mobility’? Clearly, the idea of ‘extensive research’ by Times leader writers doesn’t include most of the current public policy literature on higher education.

For example, in the UK, the recent Milburn report on access to the professions (http://bit.ly/a1Daun), drawing on the current academic research (nationally and internationally) concludes that social class has been, and remains, “a strong determinant of participation in higher education, and this gap has not closed substantially in the last half century”. It reports that the participation rates by higher social groups (III, IV and V) have risen over 1960 – 2000 from under 30% to about 50%, while for social groups I and II the rise has been from around 5% to about 20%. The Sutton Trust report in 2007 found that 44 percent of those from the richest 20 percent of households attained a university degree compared to just 10 percent from the poorest 20 percent of homes (http://bit.ly/cZT9OZ).

In a direct test of social mobility, the OECD found that, in the UK, 50% of the economic advantage that high-earning fathers have over low-earning fathers is passed on to their sons - in Australia, Canada and the Nordic countries, by contrast, less than 20% of the wage advantage was passed on( http://bit.ly/c9jOUI). It concluded that the chances of a young person from a less well-off family enjoying higher wages or getting a higher level of education than their parents was "relatively low".

In the US, the picture is little different – Robert Haveman and Timothy Smeeding (http://bit.ly/9447FU) have concluded “The US system of higher education reinforces generational patterns of income inequality and is far less oriented towards social mobility than it should be. If university education is to improve the chances for low- and middle-income children to succeed, the current system must be radically redirected”.

And what are we to make of the figures cited by the Times leader, that “Britain is now at or above the OECD average for spending on pre-school and school-age children, but below the OECD average for spending on tertiary education”. Given that higher education mainly provides the finishing touches to a cruelly skewed system, ensuring the reinforcement of the advantages already conferred upon children by accidents of birth into the right income and social class, why should public spending on the tertiary education of well-off young people be regarded as a priority? This would only make sense, if the argument were that we should expand public spending in order to give zero and low university tuition fees to a wider group of young people from families with low incomes, along with significant subsistence grants to compensate them for not earning for three years (never mind not contributing wages to families that badly need it).

However, even this argument, while at least logical, is questionable. Surely it is the continuing system of low tuition fees to young people who come from better-off families (i.e. the majority of university students) which “is exactly the kind of line item that politicians should be scrutinising, not protecting”, to use the Times leader’s own phrase? Up to recently, there has been a lot of mumbling that the tuition fees being charged by universities, and the consequent debts being amassed by students, would eventually choke off the demand for higher education. This argument is certainly not open to the writers of the Times leader, given that they are starting from the ‘shocking’ premise that more than a quarter of a million university applicants may be denied a place this year. It seems that young people (or, more accurately, their parents) see the long term economic and social payoffs from a university education as well worth the (relatively minor) investment they have to make.

I do not want to argue that those who can’t get a university place this year are not being disadvantaged – in public policy, any initiative which is promoted for good reasons (like Sure Start) crowds out other initiatives which could have significant net advantages, as some forms of university expansion in the UK would surely have. It’s a matter of priorities, as all politics must be.

However, I do want to argue that our concern for those not getting a university place this year should lead us to different conclusion from those reached by the Times leader writers. From the point of view of the applicants themselves, we should recognise that most of them, if they have the required grades, will get into university a year or two later – this is the normal pattern every year. Nor is it an unambiguously bad thing that they have to wait a year longer – indeed, there are good arguments that we are allowing far too many young people into university at too young an age, without the experience or maturity to make best use of their university experience. It is also interesting that many young people in Europe now choose to study in other countries, either because they want the international experience (and we should seriously ask why such a low proportion of British students takes this route) or because they cannot pursue their chosen course in a university in their own country. (It is now common, for example, for young German students who want to study medicine but cannot get a place in a German university to enrol in courses in Hungary or elsewhere – and those who do well can then transfer later back into the German system to take the places of those who fall by the wayside in those courses). Of course, it may cost more to study abroad (although this is often not the case, given the relatively high cost of living in the UK) – but for the majority of this ‘blocked’ quarter of a million, their application to universities across the UK already suggests they are willing to pay the necessary costs. The Times leader writers seem to see this quarter of a million students as locked into the UK university system. This is a symptom of how narrow and restricted is the conventional view of the role and potential of higher education in this country.

For policy makers, the implications of this argument are quite radical. The current university funding system is failing dramatically to achieve the social mobility which is often claimed to be one of its most important purposes. It is time to institute a serious of policies which will actually make it more likely that this key purpose is achieved in the future (see bit.ly/8LaBn4), including:

• no more tax breaks for private universities (or the private schools which dominate admissions to the UK’s top universities);
• free choice of state universities for all students with the right entry qualifications, with lotteries where universities are oversubscribed;
• attractive bursaries for all students whose parental income means they do not have to pay student fees, so that more low income students are attracted to university;
• an end to the wholly artificial division between full-time and part-time higher education, particularly in relation to its funding and student support mechanisms;
• a radical extension of degree study opportunities within further education, so that talented individuals have access to degree qualifications, where their study programmes merit it;
• two-year exemption from national insurance contributions (by both employers and employees) for the top 10% of every degree class in the UK, whatever sector they are employed in
• a guarantee for the top 5% of performers in every degree class in the UK that they can enter a two-year training programme in the public sector, so that entry into the public sector is on merit.


In passing, I do not want to argue that Sure Start has had an unambiguously ‘green light’ from its various evaluations – although they have highlighted a mainly favourable picture. Nor am I arguing that it is enough, by itself, to focus on children at the start of their lives - the Sutton Trust report in 2007 ((http://bit.ly/cZT9OZ) pointed out that children from poor households who are in the brightest group at the age of three slip back in developmental tests by the age of five, and are likely to be overtaken by those from affluent backgrounds by seven. However, this is an argument for continuing to experiment and improve Sure Start, and other early years programmes, not cut them back.

In sum, the argument in the Times leader today that funding of the university system should be increased at the expense of Sure Start in order to promote social mobility is not only logical nonsense, it is arrant hypocrisy – it betrays an underlying desire for Middle (and Rich) England to continue to hijack public expenditure for its own purposes, under the guise of ‘making the most of the younger generation’. Perhaps we should not be surprised to see such arguments in a Times leader?

I think it is safe to assume that the wholly unconvincing Politics ABC which appeals to Times leader writers will be seen through by those who have done Politics 101 at the universities they seek to advantage. Let us hope it also seen through by the majority voters (voters whose children and grandchildren have gone to or are likely to go university still make up well under a half of the population) and by politicians. For the moment, let us be thankful for small mercies – it would have been worse if these fatuous arguments had appeared in the Daily Mail, a newspaper to which politicians actually pay some attention.

Raising the Elite of Tomorrow

Originally published in hardback in 2008 but now high on the Christmas 2009 bestseller charts in Germany (a ‘Spiegel bestseller’), Julia Friedrich's book Gestatten: Elite is essentially one journalist’s inquiry into how the young in Germany are being groomed to form the next generation of leaders of the economy and, perhaps, politics.

Why has it been so successful? The tale it tells is not encouraging – but perhaps Germany , like so many other countries, is now ready in the middle of the financial and economic crisis to reappraise the social and economic policies of the boom period.

The basic story of the book is that Germany is now raising new elites – in private universities, in private business schools, in private boarding schools, even in private kindergardens – who are being given enormously expensive education in the expectation that they will eventually take over at the helm of the German economy – its biggest firms, its investment banks and its consulting firms. However, they are not an ‘elite’ in the traditional sense of being particularly gifted – indeed, many if not most of the beneficiaries of this elite education are at or even below average achievement level in educational terms. Their advantage is not their ability, nor even particularly their dedication to hard work or their special ability to work with and lead other people – no, it consists essentially of the wealth of their parents, combined with their parents’ determination that these children will inherit power as well as wealth.

Worse, the book retails how the state is encouraging this new elitism in a variety of ways. At one level, it is importing these ideas of elitism into secondary and higher education in the public sector, in ways which are allowing rich parents to commandeer a disproportionate share of public resources for their own, not particularly gifted, children. For example, it is now common in Germany, as it has been for generations in the UK, for well-off parents to move into areas where the state schools have a reputation for being particularly good – something which Germany has largely avoided until relatively recently. Moreover, the private education sector is benefiting in tax terms from charitable status, just as in the UK, although the effects of this system are far from being ‘charitable’, being to the major disadvantage of the ‘losers’ who are not able to claw their way into this ‘elite’ class of students.

I guess that most UK readers of this book will feel a degree of Schadenfreude . After all, the ills which it documents have already been a central reality in our society and a matter for political disagreement for many decades. It is, naturally, a little comforting to find that others, particularly those who have long enjoyed enviable social and economic circumstances, now share some of the same plight as ourselves. The book provides a journalistic ‘human touch’ to put flesh on the bones of recent academic research, such as the recent book by Charles Harvey and Mairi MacClean into business elites in the UK and France, which demonstrates that the main factors which influence business success in both countries are family and education (along with professional bodies). Nevertheless, it is rather surprising to find that the Germans, who have for so long prided themselves on having transcended the ‘class society’ traditionally associated with the UK and the ‘two class’ society which scars the USA, have recently allowed and even encouraged the incursion of similar perversions of justice, with the economic inefficiencies which they bring in their wake.

However, my main reaction to the book was a reinforced horror of the way in which we in the UK have not only failed to tackle these issues – which are both more longstanding and more serious in the UK than in Germany – but have actually proposed in recent years to make things worse. We now have private universities, privately-funded and -controlled secondary ‘academies’, and are proposing to introduce a new generation of US-like ‘foundation’ schools, where the wishes of parents will override the social values which should be at the heart of any publicly-funded school system.

It is not as if we are unaware of the divisiveness and the mediocrity which ensue from an education system dominated by the decisions and expenditures of rich parents. Research has long charted the damaging effect on the UK economy of inherited positions and the promotion of those young people whose parents have bought their entry into the right schools and universities, irrespective of their abilities. However, this revealing book , which shows us how the same damaging tendencies have now surfaced and become strong in one of our closest neighbours, should remind us that we have been quiet for too long about the nonsense of current government policy, allowing the moneyed ‘elite’ to suffocate the meritocratic society which we once hoped to build in the last half of the twentieth century.

The book does not look beyond the education of the ‘new elite’ – it doesn’t attempt to map out for Germany the damage done to major private firms through MBA-itis, in the way Mintzberg has done for North America. It doesn’t attempt to highlight the demoralising effects on staff which nepotism has had in UK firms. And it doesn’t attempt to quantify the effects of lower innovation in companies due to favouritism towards less capable managers and staff, who happen to have come from the ‘right’ schools and universities. However, it holds up a mirror in which we can see our own faults more clearly.

At a time of New Year resolutions, it would be good if this book encouraged more readers to take a stand against the untalented and damaging ‘elites’ in our country, just as the author encourages her readers to do in Germany.

Such a platform needs to be debated and widely promoted. For starters, I suggest:
• no more tax breaks for private schools and universities;
• free choice of local schools for all parents, with lotteries where schools are oversubscribed;
• free choice of state universities for all students with the right entry qualifications, with lotteries where universities are oversubscribed;
• attractive bursaries for all students whose parental income means they do not have to pay student fees, so that more low income students are attracted to university;
• two-year exemption from national insurance contributions (by both employers and employees) for the top 10% of every degree class in the UK, whatever sector they are employed in
• a guarantee for the top 5% of performers in every degree class in the UK that they can enter a two-year training programme in the public sector, so that entry into the public sector is on merit;
• a proper wealth tax which ensures that people can spend the money they earn but not the money which they have inherited, through no skill or contribution of their own.

An elite based on merit has many drawbacks – but far fewer than an elite based on family income. It’s time to tackle the deep injustice and inefficiency of our current system. Your suggestions are welcomed.

Reference

Gestatten: Elite - Auf der Spuren der Mächtigen von Morgen, Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, München, 2009 (by Julia Friedrichs).

Public influence outside political parties is not an illusion!

This is a response to a post by Andrea DiMaio headed ‘Why Citizen Participation May Be An Illusion’ on December 5th, 2009 at http://bit.ly/5hmCkL in which he argues that “It is all fair and good to say that politicians and government officials will carefully listen to what virtual communities say, but until when those communities can sit at a table and have a voting right, they won’t be able to make much difference”. He illustrates his point with reference to recent experiences in his original home town, near Milan, where a ‘city league’, i.e. a group of citizens not associated with any political party, decided to self-organize as an alternative to traditional politics, achieved a high profile and significant support, but didn’t have a single member elected as a councillor. Now they are considering forming as a more traditional political party, paradoxically in order to combat traditional party politics. He argues that this suggests that unorganized citizen involvement, e.g. through e-government and e-governance, will never have as much influence as organized involvement, which means getting ‘a vote at the table’.
Normally I enjoy the posts by Andrea DiMaio very much but this one had me shaking my head with dismay. I think he’s almost entirely missed the point here. Yes, many community groups and social movements will ‘go formal’ from time to time – they have that right. And, yes, many will become indistinguishable from the parties they originally formed to combat. (Of course, a few of them will go on to take over from those very parties – he has some good examples in Italy!). But this is NOT the way in which most citizens, even activists, have an influence.

We need to make a very clear distinction between ‘activists’ and ‘general citizens’. Most ‘general citizens’ are reluctant to spend much of their time making any positive contribution to civic debate or action, as Nick Jones points out very well in his comments above. However, they also resent being kept out of the debate, so they expect clear and visible invitations to participate, if only ‘arms-length’, on a reasonably frequent basis, though they will not generally take up those invitations. So it’s essential that they receive these invitations and feel included, if only at this very peripheral level. Occasionally, on issues which really switch them on, a proportion of general citizens (although usually only a quite small proportion) will become ‘activists’ for a while – not necessarily for long but it is likely that for a long time afterwards they will judge the responsiveness and the quality of the public sector by the experience they have in these periods of intense engagement.

Activists are different, of course – they know about and they care about the issues. But they often DON’T believe that they need a vote at the table. They do generally believe that they need a PLACE around the table. However, becoming formally enmeshed in ‘the system’ often seems to them to be counter-productive. We recently did a survey of a large number of high profile national and local activists in the UK on behalf of Communities and Local Government, our government department responsible for community empowerment. The majority had little involvement with MPs or local councillors, who of course DO have ‘a vote at the table’ but, as activists see it, almost no influence. Our activists had, however, huge involvement with the people they see as shaping the decisions made by public bodies – many of whom hold relatively low posts in public agencies and ministries, but write the reports which are rubber-stamped further up the decision-making chain. And our activists were VERY media-savvy. Almost NONE saw any circumstances in which they would be prepared to become MPs or local councillors, believing it would be of no value in furthering the causes and issues on which they were campaigning. (This is reminiscent of Tony Benn’s statement, when he announced that he would not stand as an MP again, that he was ‘leaving Parliament in order to be able to spend more time in politics’!) Yet these people generally have a very much higher profile than most national or local politicians and are believed by top decision makers to have an important influence on decisions which are made in government.

So, I would argue that the experience in Andrea DiMaio’s town in Italy is common but not a good guide to how the public can influence decision-making. In particular, we should recognize that both the public and activists can exert important influence on those with ‘a vote at the table’ and do not necessarily have to have a vote themselves. Moreover, those with ‘a vote at the table’ may have little real influence on the debate shaping decisions. Let’s not confuse having a vote with real influence over the debate, or authority with influence!

Creativity: three reasons why organisations have less than we would like

First, because we know better how to put down creativity than to create it – see Haefele’s suggestions, but no doubt you can add some corkers of your own:

 “We tried something like that years ago”
 “That’s ridiculous/ too radical”
 “Let’s form a committee to consider it”
 “That’s against policy”
 “Has it been tried elsewhere?”
 “It won’t work”
 “That’s too obvious/ superficial”
 “We could never market that”
 “That’s interesting but … we don’t have the time … the staff …”
 “That ‘s not the kind of idea we expect from you”

Source: Haefele, J. (1962) Creativity and innovation. New York: Reinhold Publishing Company.

Secondly, because we don’t employ the sort of people who are especially likely to be creative. Remember Tom Peters’ slogan: “Crazy times need crazy people”, followed by his warning about that department in your organization, one of whose key tasks is to make sure that any job applicant whose CV shows even a nano-second gap between the moment they left university and the moment they applied for this job, then THEY ARE NOT TO BE SHORT-LISTED!

Actually, even these potential creatives are short-listed, what chance do they have of getting the job? Remember Anthony Storr’s summary of the research into the characteristics of creative people (below) and ask yourself “How many people like this will get through our tests and interview panels?”

Characteristics of creative people:

- Independence
- Influenced by inner rather than outer standards
- Likely to belong to fewer organisations & social groups
- Sceptical, reluctant to acquiesce in the findings of authority
- Aesthetic Sensitivity
- Concern with form & elegance of design
- Preference for Complexity, Asymmetry & Incompleteness
- High level of tolerance of tension & anxiety
- 'Incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge' (Keats)
- High Intelligence
- Level of intellectual ability (but not necessarily IQ scores)
- (For males) High Scores on Scales Measuring ‘Feminity’
- Openness to own feelings and emotions
- Understanding self-awareness
- More than average share of vanity, narcissism

Source: Anthony Storr (1976), The dynamics of creation. London: Penguin Books.

And, anyway, apart from you and me, how many such people ARE there around, nowadays?!!!

Unacceptable behaviour – Ministerial sackings

The rules in the UK which govern how and when Ministers can sack officials and advisors need to be changed. Two dreadful decisions have been made in recent times which undermine the credibility of government and Parliament – the sacking of a local authority Director of Children’s Services by Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and the sacking yesterday of Prof. David Nutt, Chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, by Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary.

Of course, Ministers should have the right, in the appropriate circumstances, to sack the people they have appointed. This is not in question. It is the criteria for deciding when the circumstances are appropriate that we need to get right – and they are clearly not right at the moment.

Let us take the two cases in turn. The sacking of a top local government officer by a Secretary of State, for behaviour in office in that local authority, should not be acceptable. If the behaviour of that officer had serious consequences in other agencies, in other areas or for the country as a whole, then there is indeed a case for a Secretary of State to step in. However, this was not the case. Their mistakes, if indeed they are properly found to have made mistakes, should have been dealt with by their own agency. If that agency is generically mismanaged, then there are indeed powers for the Secretary of State to step in and arrange for the management of such an agency to be supplemented or even replaced. But picking on one Director, on the grounds that the Secretary of State can tell more appropriately than the local politicians who should be employed and who shouldn’t, is patent nonsense. That way, madness lies. It is necessary to change the rules so that Ministers cannot again intervene in this way in the affairs of a local authority.

Turning to David Nutt and the Home Secretary, it is NOT in question that Ministers have the right to disagree with the advice given to them by scientists and other expert advisors – and indeed, sometimes it is essential for them to do so. Scientists and experts don’t know everything. Politicians bring different expertise to the decision making process – in particular, they bring a value system which has been legitimated by their election to Parliament and their appointment to Ministerial posts. However, we need to be clearer as to when it is appropriate for Ministers to exercise these powers to countermand expert advice. When it is in the public interest, and Ministers clearly have an understanding of certain public interests to a greater degree than their expert advisors, we should celebrate that we have a system which protects us from the narrow perspectives of ‘experts’. This particularly applies when there is a moral dimension to a decision or when choices have to be made between the interests of different groups in society which are in fundamental conflict. No way do I want ‘experts’ to get their way on such decisions – here, all politicians, but especially Ministers, must be up front and brave in challenging the ‘expert’ advice they get and making sure the policies recommended to Parliament take into account the public interest.

Inserting a moral dimension? Resolving fundamental conflicts between groups in society? Were these the grounds on which Jacqui Smith, the then Home Secretary, intervened to regrade cannabis as a drug more harmful than alcohol and tobacco, when her advisors have unambiguously told her the opposite? No, it does not seem so. Sheer party political interest, driven by ill-informed and hysterical commentary in the national media, appeared to drive her decision. Not acceptable grounds for overturning scientific advice.

And Alan Johnson’s decision now to sack the Chair of his Advisory Council? He writes in his letter of dismissal: “When you wrote previously around the relative harms of drugs comparing ecstasy to horse riding my predecessor made it clear that it is not the job of the chair of the government’s Advisory Council to comment or initiate a public debate on the policy framework for drugs”. Yet, actually, it is precisely the job of that Advisory Council to advise on the evidence for the relative harms of drugs. To do so in a way which makes the issues clear to the public (albeit embarrassing to the government) would seem especially praiseworthy (and, of course, particularly unusual).

Then Alan Johnson goes on to write: “It is important that the government’s messages on drugs are clear and as an advisor you do nothing to undermine public understanding of them.” Well, I think we would all drink to that. (Sorry, ‘agree’ to that).

So, have David Nutt’s recent statements in the press “undermined public understanding” of the government’s messages on drugs? In no way. In fact, quite the opposite – they have significantly increased the public’s understanding that the government has acted to regrade cannabis, not because of its likely harms to the public, but for party political advantage. Here, it is clearly the government which is behaving unacceptably, not its advisor.

And can we justify Alan Johnson’s decision by using the general principles of public interest? For example, has he injected moral values into the debate, on behalf of those who have elected him? No, the government claims it is simply reacting to the evidence given to it on relative ‘harms’. Or is Alan Johnson claiming that his intervention is to resolve fundamental conflicts between the interests of different groups in society? No, the government claims that there is a general public interest in reducing the harms from drugs – so that both those groups who argue for utterly draconian penalties on drug takers and dealers, and those who argue for complete legalisation of (unadulterated non-lethally-poisonous) substances have got it wrong – both groups will have their interests best served if the government acts to reduce the harms arising from drug misuse.

Conclusion? Ministers are currently taking significant decisions on the appointments of public figures without any reference to the public interest and with clear intention to secure party political advantage. This may not be surprising. It may not be unprecedented. It may not be easy to eradicate. But it IS unacceptable. We should launch a search for new rules which make it harder and less likely in the future. Parliament should debate this immediately and set this search for new rules in motion.

'Opinion' elevated over 'expertise' in government 2.0?

In a recent blog, Will Davies (following Mirowski) has argued that 'government 2.0' is the final realisation of the neo-liberal state. “No auditors, no experts, no objective knowledge, no sense of the common good, just maximum freedom for individuals to form opinions and privately process information.” He goes on to argue that siding with perspective over expertise cannot be the basis for legitimacy (potlatch.typepad.com/weblog/2009/10/what-is-the-postbureaucratic-state.html).

While these concerns are understandable, Will Davies in this post does a disservice to the government 2.0 debate. He is actually talking about ‘non-government 2.0’ and sets up a straw-man-opponent in which hardly anyone could possibly believe, then demonstrates convincingly how to knock this opponent over. Most of those involved in the government 2.0 debate want much richer interactions between citizens, service users, professionals, managers and politicians. Few want the views of citizens and service users to trump the views of the others. They just want those views to have much greater weight in the future - not a lot to ask, given how little weight they have had up to now.

A long way down the line, we are going to have to face up to the issues which Will Davies raises here, deciding where the proper balance lies between expertise and 'perspective' (better characterised as 'formally-validated expertise' and 'experience-based experience'). And we will certainly wish to ensure that BOTH play major roles in decision making on public services and issues. But it is wholly implausible for Will Davies to suggest that we are now reaching the point where 'expertise' is being swamped, so that the legitimacy of current governmental decision making structures and systems is threatened by ill-informed, non-expert 'opinion'-peddlars.