Physician, public health specialist. Former CEO at University Hospital Trust, Udine; Provincial Healthcare Trust, Trento; Local Healthcare Trust No. 19 of the Veneto Region, Adria (Italy)
Come governare il mondo al tempo della devolution. Questo è il sottotitolo di un aureo libretto di Parag Khanna sulla democrazia e sulla governance delle società complesse quali quelle attuali e future.
“La democrazia non è un fine in sé: i veri obiettivi sono una governance efficace e il miglioramento del benessere della nazione”.
Sotto questa luce, la celebre battura di Churchill “L a democrazia è la peggior forma di governo eccezion fatta per tutte le altre” va ripensata secondo l’Autore.
Khanna è a favore di una democrazia guidata collettivamente (l’esempio della Svizzera è continuamente richiamato) e di una governance tecnocratica (come a Singapore). La critica del sistema USA, così caro a Tocqueville, è feroce.
La classica democrazia rappresentativa è inefficace e inefficiente: finisce per cristallizzare il dibattito nelle “posizioni” (destra, sinistra, conservatori, liberali, ecc.). La politics intralcia la policy perché la policy ha a che fare con le decisioni non con le posizioni. Il discorso sulle posizioni politiche, rispetto alle decisioni, è così vero oggi che J.C. Junker dice: “Sappiamo tutti che cosa fare, ma non sappiamo come essere rieletti dopo che l’abbiamo fatto”.
Khanna, del sistema americano, apprezza l’efficacia ed efficienza della tecnocrazia che gestisce le grandi città americane che misurano i risultati amministrativi attraverso la definizione e il monitoraggio pubblico di una serie di KPI (key performance indicators) e cita la frase dell’ex Sindaco di New York, Bloomberg, “Quello che non sai misurare non sai governare”! Estendere questi metodi al sistema federale implicherebbe che “Una tecnocrazia al governo degli Stati Uniti non parlerebbe certo la lingua della centralizzazione, ma, al contrario, quella del decentramento dei poteri”.
Una lettura, come quella del precedente Connectography, obbligata!
Seconda “puntata” dell’interessante analisi di Vitalba Azzolini: la tecnica e la politica non si incrociano e la misurazione è un’opinione … tutto conduce alla creazione all’italiana del suddito inconsapevole.
In una “puntata” precedente (https://carlofavaretti.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/fatto-analisi-impatto-di-vitalbaa-su-newslist-it-di-masechi-da-leggere/) qui su List ho provato a spiegare la “cultura” degli impatti: vale a dire quel metodo di regolamentazione che impone al governo e ad altre autorità di definire con trasparenza gli obiettivi perseguiti, di valutare ex ante comparativamente gli effetti di diverse opzioni normative (inclusa quella di non intervento), di fissare indicatori di risultato per vagliare ex post se quella prescelta è stata efficace, nonché di redigere un’apposita relazione con tali contenuti. Non è solo un metodo di better regulation, ma anche il modo per inchiodare i governanti alle responsabilità conseguenti ai propri annunci, vincolandoli a rendicontarne i risultati. Sarà per questo che AIR e VIR (analisi e verifica di impatto della regolamentazione) piacciono poco a politici e supporter, nonostante siano obbligatorie ex lege da anni. Detto ciò, può essere utile esporre i settori in cui l’analisi va fatta, verificando se e come “funzioni”: insomma, una verifica di impatto sull’analisi di impatto, e non è un gioco di parole.
Ai sensi di legge, la valutazione ex ante degli impatti va svolta secondo direttrici ben precise: se la futura normativa ha fra i suoi destinatari piccole e medie imprese, ne vanno analizzati gli eventuali effetti distorsivi o sproporzionati rispetto alle imprese di più grandi dimensioni; inoltre, devono essere misurati eventuali nuovi adempimenti a carico di cittadini e imprese; serve altresì stimare l’incidenza delle diverse opzioni di regolazione sulle dinamiche concorrenziali del mercato, scegliendo quella che le sacrifica meno; in caso di recepimento di normative comunitarie, occorre verificare che non siano introdotti obblighi superiori a quelli richiesti da tali normative (c.d. gold-plating). E’ importante poi valutare preventivamente anche le modalità attuative – strumenti, risorse e mezzi – dell’intervento di regolamentazione. Questo è quanto espressamente (e teoricamente) prescritto. Ma i legislatori ne tengono realmente conto?
Partiamo dal primo punto. È’ necessario esaminare che nuove disposizioni non impongano pesi burocratici gravanti in misura maggiore sulle piccole e medie imprese, poiché “l’evidenza empirica mostra in modo inequivocabile come gli oneri (…) legati all’adempimento di una norma siano, in proporzione, molto più elevati per le PMI rispetto alle imprese di taglia media e grande” (Formez PA). Al riguardo, l’Autorità Garante della Concorrenza e del Mercato osserva che “il cammino intrapreso verso l’adozione di regolazioni che ‘pensano in piccolo’ potrà produrre risultati positivi per (…) le piccole e medie imprese, a condizione che i modelli di analisi d’impatto vengano attuati in modo concreto e sostanziale”. E, infatti, l’UE ha predisposto da tempo un test (c.d. test PMI) utile a stimare gli impatti – appunto – degli adempimenti amministrativi sulle imprese di dimensioni minori. Ma di questo test non sembra esservi traccia nelle relazioni AIR nazionali. Le conseguenze sono palesi: un recente studio di Assolombarda in tema di oneri amministrativi nei settori ambiente, edilizia, fisco ecc. dimostra che i costi delle relative procedure (in termini di percentuale sul fatturato e di ore per addetto) continuano a incidere più sulle PMI che sulle grandi imprese. E di studi che attestano queste evidenze ve ne sono comunque molti altri.
Circa il secondo punto, cioè la stima – in sede di elaborazione di nuove normative – degli oneri burocratici gravanti su cittadini e imprese (con quantificazione dei relativi costi), essa è funzionale al c.d. budget regolatorio, previsto ex lege dal 2012. Si tratta di un meccanismo di compensazione c.d. one-in-one-out, per cui non possono essere introdotti nuovi oneri amministrativi senza contestualmente ridurne o eliminarne altri. Questo principio viene osservato? La risposta la fornisce il Consiglio di Stato, il quale pochi mesi fa ha rilevato che, mentre in altri Paesi si stanno sfoltendo molti pesi, elaborando sistemi one-in-two-out o addirittura one-in-three-out, la regola in Italia è pressoché ignorata. Rimando a quanto ho scritto altrove, aggiungendo che, nonostante recenti misure tese a semplificazioni varie, permane “una grave incertezza sul regime amministrativo delle singole attività, sulla stabilità dei titoli abilitativi (impliciti o presunti), sui tempi di definizione delle procedure” (C. Deodato), nonché su molto altro.
Il terzo punto è il full competition assessment, cioè la quantificazione degli impatti concorrenziali, utile a evitare ostacoli ingiustificati all’esercizio delle attività economiche: ma chi l’ha visto? E’ lo stesso Nucleo AIR presso la presidenza del Consiglio ad attestarlo: in sede di elaborazione di nuove regolamentazioni, ci si limita a svolgere “considerazioni apodittiche sull’intervento come ausilio alla competitività e nessuna considerazione specifica laddove l’intervento limiti o distorca il mercato”. Serve altro per dimostrare il senso (mancante) dei regolatori nazionali per la competizione fra privati? Forse sì: ad esempio, ricordare il non lusinghiero 54° posto che l’Italia occupa attualmente nell’Indice Libertà Economiche elaborato dal Fraser Institute (era al 24° posto nel 2000); o la circostanza che per partorire la prima (rachitica) normativa sulla concorrenza sono serviti 8 anni dalla legge istitutiva e circa 900 giorni di discussione.
Per quanto poi attiene al divieto di gold-plating, nelle relazioni AIR i regolatori dovrebbero dare conto del fatto che, nella trasposizione di discipline comunitarie nell’ordinamento interno, non hanno immotivatamente previsto oneri, requisiti, procedure ecc. più gravosi di quelli contenuti nelle discipline medesime. Questo limite viene rispettato? I dati empirici sono chiari: “il 32% (o 3,5% del PIL) dei costi amministrativi di provenienza europea a carico di un’impresa sono da ascriversi, per la stessa Commissione, all’inefficace recepimento del diritto europeo negli Stati membri, e il 4% di essi al solo gold-plating” (E. Ojetti). Inoltre, basta leggere qualche relazione di analisi di impatto nazionale per accertare che non viene fatto un esame attento e puntuale sul gold-plating e che, pertanto, il rischio di violazione è molto alto.
Infine, non mi dilungherò sulla valutazione di strumenti e modalità di implementazione di nuove discipline, rimandando a quanto scritto altrove: in sintesi, come può pensarsi che qualcuno la svolga ex ante, se in Italia non esiste un’autorità preposta a verificare ex post l’effettiva attuazione di “politiche” e relative normative? Né mi dilungherò su analisi di impatto riguardanti profili quali il genere, la salute ecc., svolte in altri Paesi: a cosa servirebbe, se nel nostro le AIR non affrontano neanche quei pochi profili già previsti? A questo punto concludo. Le domande retoriche stanno diventando un po’ troppe.
Interessante articolo di Travis Bradberry su Inc. Author, Emotional Intelligence 2.0 @talentsmarteq
What makes someone a leader anyway?
Such a simple question, and yet it continues to vex some of the best thinkers in business. I’ve written books on leadership, and yet it’s a rare thing to actually pause to define leadership.
Let’s start with what leadership is not …
Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or one’s position in the hierarchy of a company. Too many consider a company’s leadership to refer to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that, senior executives. Leadership doesn’t automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.
Leadership has nothing to do with titles. Similar to the previous point, having a C-level title doesn’t automatically make you a leader. You don’t need a title to lead. You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.
Leadership has nothing to do with personal attributes. Say the word leader and most people think of a domineering, take-charge, charismatic individual. People often think of icons from history such as George S. Patton or Abraham Lincoln. But leadership isn’t an adjective. We don’t need to be extroverted or charismatic to practice leadership. And those with charisma don’t automatically lead.
Leadership isn’t management. This is the big one. Leadership and management are not synonymous. You have 15 people in your downline and P&L responsibility? Good for you; hopefully, you are a good manager. Good management is needed. Managers need to plan, measure, monitor, coordinate, solve, hire, fire, and so many other things. Managers spend most of their time managing things. Leaders lead people.
So, again, what makes a leader?
Let’s see how some of the most respected business thinkers of our time define leadership, and let’s consider what’s wrong with their definitions.
Peter Drucker: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.”
Really? This instance of tautology is so simplistic as to be dangerous. A new Army captain is put in the command of 200 soldiers. He never leaves his room or utters a word to the men and women in his unit. Perhaps routine orders are given through a subordinate. By default, his troops have to follow orders. Is the captain really a leader? Commander, yes; leader, no. Drucker is of course a brilliant thinker, but his definition is too simple.
Warren Bennis: “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.”
Every spring you have a vision for a garden, and with lots of work carrots and tomatoes become a reality. Are you a leader? No, you’re a gardener. Bennis’s definition seems to have forgotten “others.”
Bill Gates: “As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.”
This definition includes “others,” and empowerment is a good thing. But to what end? We’ve seen many empowered “others” in life, from rioting hooligans to Google workers who were so misaligned with the rest of the company they found themselves unemployed. Gates’s definition lacks goals and vision.
John Maxwell: “Leadership is influence–nothing more, nothing less.”
I like minimalism, but this reduction is too much. A robber with a gun has influence over his victim. A manager has the power to fire team members, which provides a lot of influence. But does this influence make a robber or a manager a leader? Maxwell’s definition omits the source of influence.
So what is leadership?
Definition: Leadership is a process of social influence that maximizes the efforts of others toward the achievement of a greater good.
Notice the key elements of this definition:
Leadership stems from social influence, not authority or power.
Leadership requires others, and that implies they don’t need to be “direct reports.”
No mention of personality traits, attributes, or even a title; there are many styles, many paths to effective leadership.
It includes a greater good, not influence with no intended outcome.
Leadership is a mindset in action. So don’t wait for the title. Leadership isn’t something that anyone can give you–you have to earn it and claim it for yourself.
So what do you think of my definition of leadership? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
Special thanks to Kevin Kruse for help with this post.
“Io non perdo mai. Certe volte vinco, altre volte imparo.” Questa frase di Nelson Mandela è riportata nella quarta di copertina di un aureo libretto di Charles Pépin: Il potere magico del fallimento: perché la sconfitta ci rende liberi edito da Garzanti.
La vera crescita è sempre costruita attraverso errori, sconfitte e delusioni.
Il messaggio dell’autore è profondo: per diventare quelli che siamo ed esprimere il nostro potenziale dobbiamo accettare l’esperienza del rischio e non limitarci a scegliere tra alternative note e rassicuranti.
Molto interessante è l’analisi che egli fa sulla cultura francese (molto simile a quella italiana secondo me) rispetto a quella anglosassone, in particolare, americana. Per francesi (e italiani) il fallimento è una colpa di cui vergognarsi. Per gli americani è un’esperienza e un’opportunità.
This is the text of a lecture delivered at the Lowy Institute Media Award dinner in Sydney, Australia, on Saturday, Sept. 23. The award recognizes excellence in Australian foreign affairs journalism.
Let me begin with thanks to the Lowy Institute for bringing me all the way to Sydney and doing me the honor of hosting me here this evening.
I’m aware of the controversy that has gone with my selection as your speaker. I respect the wishes of the Colvin family and join in honoring Mark Colvin’s memory as a courageous foreign correspondent and an extraordinary writer and broadcaster. And I’d particularly like to thank Michael Fullilove for not rescinding the invitation.
This has become the depressing trend on American university campuses, where the roster of disinvited speakers and forced cancellations includes former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and Condoleezza Rice, former Harvard University President Larry Summers, actor Alec Baldwin, human-rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, DNA co-discoverer James Watson, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, filmmaker Michael Moore, conservative Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will and liberal Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Anna Quindlen, to name just a few.
So illustrious is the list that, on second thought, I’m beginning to regret that you didn’t disinvite me after all.
The title of my talk tonight is “The Dying Art of Disagreement.” This is a subject that is dear to me — literally dear — since disagreement is the way in which I have always earned a living. Disagreement is dear to me, too, because it is the most vital ingredient of any decent society.
To say the words, “I agree” — whether it’s agreeing to join an organization, or submit to a political authority, or subscribe to a religious faith — may be the basis of every community.
But to say, I disagree; I refuse; you’re wrong; etiam si omnes — ego non — these are the words that define our individuality, give us our freedom, enjoin our tolerance, enlarge our perspectives, seize our attention, energize our progress, make our democracies real, and give hope and courage to oppressed people everywhere. Galileo and Darwin; Mandela, Havel, and Liu Xiaobo; Rosa Parks and Natan Sharansky — such are the ranks of those who disagree.
And the problem, as I see it, is that we’re failing at the task.
This is a puzzle. At least as far as far as the United States is concerned, Americans have rarely disagreed more in recent decades.
We disagree about racial issues, bathroom policies, health care laws, and, of course, the 45th president. We express our disagreements in radio and cable TV rants in ways that are increasingly virulent; street and campus protests that are increasingly violent; and personal conversations that are increasingly embittering.
This is yet another age in which we judge one another morally depending on where we stand politically.
Nor is this just an impression of the moment. Extensive survey data show that Republicans are much more right-leaning than they were twenty years ago, Democrats much more left-leaning, and both sides much more likely to see the other as a mortal threat to the nation’s welfare.
The polarization is geographic, as more people live in states and communities where their neighbors are much likelier to share their politics.
The polarization is personal: Fully 50 percent of Republicans would not want their child to marry a Democrat, and nearly a third of Democrats return the sentiment. Interparty marriage has taken the place of interracial marriage as a family taboo.
Finally the polarization is electronic and digital, as Americans increasingly inhabit the filter bubbles of news and social media that correspond to their ideological affinities. We no longer just have our own opinions. We also have our separate “facts,” often the result of what different media outlets consider newsworthy. In the last election, fully 40 percent of Trump voters named Fox News as their chief source of news.
Thanks a bunch for that one, Australia.
It’s usually the case that the more we do something, the better we are at it. Instead, we’re like Casanovas in reverse: the more we do it, the worse we’re at it. Our disagreements may frequently hoarsen our voices, but they rarely sharpen our thinking, much less change our minds.
It behooves us to wonder why.
* * *
Thirty years ago, in 1987, a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago named Allan Bloom — at the time best known for his graceful translations of Plato’s “Republic” and Rousseau’s “Emile” — published a learned polemic about the state of higher education in the United States. It was called “The Closing of the American Mind.”
The book appeared when I was in high school, and I struggled to make my way through a text thick with references to Plato, Weber, Heidegger and Strauss. But I got the gist — and the gist was that I’d better enroll in the University of Chicago and read the great books. That is what I did.
What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not “conservatism” in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called “the Gods of the Market Place.” We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I’m not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn’t a “teaching” with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.
To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.
It’s what used to be called a liberal education.
The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.
Socrates quarrels with Homer. Aristotle quarrels with Plato. Locke quarrels with Hobbes and Rousseau quarrels with them both. Nietzsche quarrels with everyone. Wittgenstein quarrels with himself.
These quarrels are never personal. Nor are they particularly political, at least in the ordinary sense of politics. Sometimes they take place over the distance of decades, even centuries.
Most importantly, they are never based on a misunderstanding. On the contrary, the disagreements arise from perfect comprehension; from having chewed over the ideas of your intellectual opponent so thoroughly that you can properly spit them out.
In other words, to disagree well you must first understand well. You have to read deeply, listen carefully, watch closely. You need to grant your adversary moral respect; give him the intellectual benefit of doubt; have sympathy for his motives and participate empathically with his line of reasoning. And you need to allow for the possibility that you might yet be persuaded of what he has to say.
“The Closing of the American Mind” took its place in the tradition of these quarrels. Since the 1960s it had been the vogue in American universities to treat the so-called “Dead White European Males” of the Western canon as agents of social and political oppression. Allan Bloom insisted that, to the contrary, they were the best possible instruments of spiritual liberation.
He also insisted that to sustain liberal democracy you needed liberally educated people. This, at least, should not have been controversial. For free societies to function, the idea of open-mindedness can’t simply be a catchphrase or a dogma. It needs to be a personal habit, most of all when it comes to preserving an open mind toward those with whom we disagree.
* * *
That habit was no longer being exercised much 30 years ago. And if you’ve followed the news from American campuses in recent years, things have become a lot worse.
According to a new survey from the Brookings Institution, a plurality of college students today — fully 44 percent — do not believe the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects so-called “hate speech,” when of course it absolutely does. More shockingly, a narrow majority of students — 51 percent — think it is “acceptable” for a student group to shout down a speaker with whom they disagree. An astonishing 20 percent also agree that it’s acceptable to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking.
These attitudes are being made plain nearly every week on one college campus or another.
There are speakers being shouted down by organized claques of hecklers — such was the experience of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California, Irvine. Or speakers who require hundreds of thousands of dollars of security measures in order to appear on campus — such was the experience of conservative pundit Ben Shapiro earlier this month at Berkeley. Or speakers who are physically barred from reaching the auditorium — that’s what happened to Heather MacDonald at Claremont McKenna College in April. Or teachers who are humiliated by their students and hounded from their positions for allegedly hurting students’ feelings — that’s what happened to Erika and Nicholas Christakis of Yale.
And there is violence. Listen to a description from Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger of what happened when she invited the libertarian scholar Charles Murray to her school to give a talk in March:
The protesters succeeded in shutting down the lecture. We were forced to move to another site and broadcast our discussion via live stream, while activists who had figured out where we were banged on the windows and set off fire alarms. Afterward, as Dr. Murray and I left the building . . . a mob charged us.
Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash.
Middlebury is one of the most prestigious liberal-arts colleges in the United States, with an acceptance rate of just 16 percent and tuition fees of nearly $50,000 a year. How does an elite institution become a factory for junior totalitarians, so full of their own certitudes that they could indulge their taste for bullying and violence?
There’s no one answer. What’s clear is that the mis-education begins early. I was raised on the old-fashioned view that sticks and stones could break my bones but words would never hurt me. But today there’s a belief that since words can cause stress, and stress can have physiological effects, stressful words are tantamount to a form of violence. This is the age of protected feelings purchased at the cost of permanent infantilization.
The mis-education continues in grade school. As the Brookings findings indicate, younger Americans seem to have no grasp of what our First Amendment says, much less of the kind of speech it protects. This is a testimony to the collapse of civics education in the United States, creating the conditions that make young people uniquely susceptible to demagogy of the left- or right-wing varieties.
Then we get to college, where the dominant mode of politics is identity politics, and in which the primary test of an argument isn’t the quality of the thinking but the cultural, racial, or sexual standing of the person making it. As a woman of color I thinkX. As a gay man I think Y. As a person of privilege I apologize for Z. This is the baroque way Americans often speak these days. It is a way of replacing individual thought — with all the effort that actual thinking requires — with social identification — with all the attitude that attitudinizing requires.
In recent years, identity politics have become the moated castles from which we safeguard our feelings from hurt and our opinions from challenge. It is our “safe space.” But it is a safe space of a uniquely pernicious kind — a safe space fromthought, rather than a safe space for thought, to borrow a line I recently heard from Salman Rushdie.
Another consequence of identity politics is that it has made the distance between making an argument and causing offense terrifyingly short. Any argument that can be cast as insensitive or offensive to a given group of people isn’t treated as being merely wrong. Instead it is seen as immoral, and therefore unworthy of discussion or rebuttal.
The result is that the disagreements we need to have — and to have vigorously — are banished from the public square before they’re settled. People who might otherwise join a conversation to see where it might lead them choose instead to shrink from it, lest they say the “wrong” thing and be accused of some kind of political -ism or -phobia. For fear of causing offense, they forego the opportunity to be persuaded.
Take the arguments over same-sex marriage, which you are now debating in Australia. My own views in favor of same-sex marriage are well known, and I hope the Yes’s wins by a convincing margin.
But if I had to guess, I suspect the No’s will exceed whatever they are currently polling. That’s because the case for same-sex marriage is too often advanced not by reason, but merely by branding every opponent of it as a “bigot” — just because they are sticking to an opinion that was shared across the entire political spectrum only a few years ago. Few people like outing themselves as someone’s idea of a bigot, so they keep their opinions to themselves even when speaking to pollsters. That’s just what happened last year in the Brexit vote and the U.S. presidential election, and look where we are now.
If you want to make a winning argument for same-sex marriage, particularly against conservative opponents, make it on a conservative foundation: As a matter of individual freedom, and as an avenue toward moral responsibility and social respectability. The No’s will have a hard time arguing with that. But if you call them morons and Neanderthals, all you’ll get in return is their middle finger or their clenched fist.
One final point about identity politics: It’s a game at which two can play. In the United States, the so-called “alt-right” justifies its white-identity politics in terms that are coyly borrowed from the progressive left. One of the more dismaying features of last year’s election was the extent to which “white working class” became a catchall identity for people whose travails we were supposed to pity but whose habits or beliefs we were not supposed to criticize. The result was to give the Trump base a moral pass it did little to earn.
* * *
So here’s where we stand: Intelligent disagreement is the lifeblood of any thriving society. Yet we in the United States are raising a younger generation who have never been taught either the how or the why of disagreement, and who seem to think that free speech is a one-way right: Namely, their right to disinvite, shout down or abuse anyone they dislike, lest they run the risk of listening to that person — or even allowing someone else to listen. The results are evident in the parlous state of our universities, and the frayed edges of our democracies.
Can we do better?
This is supposed to be a lecture on the media, and I’d like to conclude this talk with a word about the role that editors and especially publishers can play in ways that might improve the state of public discussion rather than just reflect and accelerate its decline.
I began this talk by noting that Americans have rarely disagreed so vehemently about so much. On second thought, this isn’t the whole truth.
Yes, we disagree constantly. But what makes our disagreements so toxic is that we refuse to make eye contact with our opponents, or try to see things as they might, or find some middle ground.
Instead, we fight each other from the safe distance of our separate islands of ideology and identity and listen intently to echoes of ourselves. We take exaggerated and histrionic offense to whatever is said about us. We banish entire lines of thought and attempt to excommunicate all manner of people — your humble speaker included — without giving them so much as a cursory hearing.
The crucial prerequisite of intelligent disagreement — namely: shut up; listen up; pause and reconsider; and only then speak — is absent.
Perhaps the reason for this is that we have few obvious models for disagreeing well, and those we do have — such as the Intelligence Squared debates in New York and London or Fareed Zakaria’s show on CNN — cater to a sliver of elite tastes, like classical music.
Fox News and other partisan networks have demonstrated that the quickest route to huge profitability is to serve up a steady diet of high-carb, low-protein populist pap. Reasoned disagreement of the kind that could serve democracy well fails the market test. Those of us who otherwise believe in the virtues of unfettered capitalism should bear that fact in mind.
I do not believe the answer, at least in the U.S., lies in heavier investment in publicly sponsored television along the lines of the BBC. It too, suffers, from its own form of ideological conformism and journalistic groupthink, immunized from criticism due to its indifference to competition.
Nor do I believe the answer lies in a return to what in America used to be called the “Fairness Doctrine,” mandating equal time for different points of view. Free speech must ultimately be free, whether or not it’s fair.
But I do think there’s such a thing as private ownership in the public interest, and of fiduciary duties not only to shareholders but also to citizens. Journalism is not just any other business, like trucking or food services. Nations can have lousy food and exemplary government, as Great Britain demonstrated for most of the last century. They can also have great food and lousy government, as France has always demonstrated.
But no country can have good government, or a healthy public square, without high-quality journalism — journalism that can distinguish a fact from a belief and again from an opinion; that understands that the purpose of opinion isn’t to depart from facts but to use them as a bridge to a larger idea called “truth”; and that appreciates that truth is a large enough destination that, like Manhattan, it can be reached by many bridges of radically different designs. In other words, journalism that is grounded in facts while abounding in disagreements.
I believe it is still possible — and all the more necessary — for journalism to perform these functions, especially as the other institutions that were meant to do so have fallen short. But that requires proprietors and publishers who understand that their role ought not to be to push a party line, or be a slave to Google hits and Facebook ads, or provide a titillating kind of news entertainment, or help out a president or prime minister who they favor or who’s in trouble.
Their role is to clarify the terms of debate by championing aggressive and objective news reporting, and improve the quality of debate with commentary that opens minds and challenges assumptions rather than merely confirming them.
Come si dovrebbe legiferare e regolamentare in un paese civile, applicando continuamente AIR (analisi di impatto della regolamentazione) e VIR (verifica di impatto della regolamentazione) prima e dopo il processo decisionale.
L’articolo è l’ulteriore dimostrazione dell’interesse della newslist.it del grande Mario Sechi
Una vita sregolata
di Vitalba Azzollini
Il sottotitolo di questa newsletter – “Fatto. Analisi. Impatto” (ma anche “Agenda”, come dirò) – è un invito a nozze per chi si occupa di regolamentazione. Quelle tre parole sono, al contempo, presupposto e spinta per l’evoluzione dell’ordinamento. Mi spiego meglio. Il mutamento della realtà è costante, il diritto deve tenere lo stesso ritmo: l’analisi dei fatti, quindi del contesto, così come quella degli impatti delle norme che intervengono sui fatti, è imprescindibile per ogni buon regolatore. Può aggiungersi anche altro. La regolamentazione è un costo, poiché impone oneri e limiti ai soggetti privati, spese di elaborazione ed attuazione a quelli pubblici. Un rule maker realmente accountable deve essere in grado di giustificare in modo trasparente che, tra le diverse opzioni normative a sua disposizione, ha scelto quella più efficace in termini di costi e benefici, dati i fini perseguiti. La scarsa attenzione a questo processo di valutazione ponderata ha determinato nel tempo discipline sovrabbondanti, inutili o poco coerenti. E i conseguenti effetti negativi su produttività, concorrenza, competitività del sistema economico nazionale sono evidenti (e attestati da studi sull’attrattività di diversi Paesi).
Dunque, “Fatto. Analisi. Impatto” è, in sintesi, il metodo che i regolatori nazionali – specificamente governo e autorità “tecniche” – dovrebbero seguire (il condizionale è d’obbligo, come spiegherò oltre), non foss’altro perché è da anni un obbligo di legge. Come si attua in concreto questo metodo? Si attua, da un lato, mediante l’analisi di impatto della regolamentazione (AIR), strumento che serve a definire esattamente il problema da risolvere; individuare gli obiettivi perseguiti e costruire indicatori di carattere quantitativo che consentano di verificarne il grado di raggiungimento; consultare gli stakeholder; esaminare le varie opzioni di intervento (inclusa la cd. “opzione zero”, ossia il non intervento); comparare i vantaggi e gli svantaggi di ognuna di tali opzioni, considerandone gli effetti concorrenziali sul mercato e quantificandone il “prezzo” per cittadini e imprese; delineare un attendibile scenario del futuro funzionamento dell’opzione selezionata, soprattutto dei suoi possibili effetti inattesi o indesiderati, sulla base dei dati disponibili al momento della sua scelta. Dall’altro lato, il metodo citato si attua mediante la verifica di impatto della regolamentazione (VIR), che serve per vagliare il reale grado di raggiungimento degli obiettivi prefissati, misurato sulla base degli indicatori predefiniti; “manutenere” le leggi vigenti, onde permetterne nel tempo la correzione a seguito di eventuali disfunzioni o l’aggiornamento in relazione a sopravvenuti mutamenti fattuali e giuridici; abrogare le norme non più necessarie.
Ricapitolando, il metodo riassunto in “Fatto. Analisi. Impatto” – valutazione ex ante dell’adeguatezza della regolamentazione ed ex postdella sua concreta e perdurante efficacia – serve non solo a tenere l’ordinamento al passo di una realtà in costante trasformazione e a imporre ai regolatori di giustificare le proprie scelte in maniera trasparente, ma a garantire il buon funzionamento delle leggi. Quindi, è un metodo idoneo ad assicurare una regolamentazione di qualità. Come il Consiglio di Stato ha evidenziato in un recente parere – ove riassume i numerosi interventi in tema di better regulation da parte del legislatore nazionale, nonché dell’Unione Europea e dell’OCSE – “una norma ‘scritta bene’, che rispetti i requisiti di ‘qualità’ (…) in termini di consapevolezza dell’impatto su cittadini e imprese, reca un beneficio ulteriore – e costi sociali minori – rispetto ai benefici che il suo contenuto ‘di merito’ già prevede”. In altre parole, la valutazione degli impatti, garantendo la qualità delle regole, offre un “valore aggiunto” economicamente stimabile in termini di “maggiore efficacia, efficienza, sostenibilità e ‘durabilità’ delle normative”.
“Fatto. Analisi. Impatto” è il metodo che i regolatori nazionali dovrebbero seguire, dicevo usando scientemente il condizionale. Ne spiego la ragione. Come rilevato sempre dal Consiglio di Stato – e come si legge puntualmente nella Relazione sullo stato di attuazione della analisi di impatto della regolamentazione, presentata ogni anno dal Governo al Parlamento – le relazioni AIR sono il più delle volte poco approfondite, prive degli indicatori quantitativi utili a consentire la verifica dell’effettivo impatto delle norme; mancanti dell’analisi economica delle opzioni alternative di regolamentazione e lacunose riguardo all’opzione prescelta; carenti nell’analisi di “fattibilità”, cioè incuranti della successiva fase di attuazione, anche in termini di stima delle risorse – finanziarie e umane – necessarie. Quanto alle VIR, affermare che non ve ne sono molti esempi sarebbe un eufemismo. Questa è la foto del “metodo” – anche per i fallimenti serve metodo – con cui i regolatori nazionali hanno nel tempo affossato ogni italica aspirazione di better regulation. Peraltro, svuotando di significato AIR e VIR, hanno costantemente disatteso anche il c.d. regulatory budget (che impone di non introdurre nuovi oneri amministrativi senza averne prima eliminati altri), reso le consultazioni pubbliche dei meri pro-forma, ossia atti di politica fittizia, e molto altro. Ma qui mi fermo.
“Fatto. Analisi. Impatto” è il metodo con cui, in questa newsletter, partendo dai fatti esaminati, vengono tratte conclusioni, fondandole su analisi di dati e impatti svolte trasparentemente. E trasparenza è la caratteristica ineludibile di ognuno degli strumenti di better regulationsopra citati, nonché la chiave di volta per comprendere il loro insufficiente utilizzo, di AIR e VIR soprattutto. La trasparenza delle decisioni di regolazione – cioè la trasparenza delle valutazioni degli impatti, anche attraverso la loro pubblicazione su siti istituzionali – metterebbe i governanti nella condizione di dover rendere conto del proprio operato, consentendo all’elettorato di giudicarli con dati di fatto. Detto in termini più banali, ne disvelerebbe i poco realistici annunci di riforme mirabolanti, così come il mancato ottenimento di effetti previsti con noncurante leggerezza. Dunque, gli strumenti che garantiscono la qualità della regolazione, nonché la trasparenza del processo di rule making, contribuirebbero alla responsabilizzazione democratica dei rule makers stessi, date le conseguenze reputazionali (e soprattutto elettorali) cui potrebbero dar luogo. E’ più chiaro ora il perché in Italia tali strumenti non vengono usati – anzi, sono spesso demonizzati da politici e supporter – con la conseguenza che le leggi sono fatte male e operano ancora peggio?
Dimenticavo: nel sottotitolo di questa newslettervi è anche la parola “Agenda”, cioè il “da farsi”, e ai fini di quanto detto sopra conta anche quella. La trasparente programmazione dell’attività normativa e, quindi, l’elenco delle iniziative di regolamentazione previste in un arco temporale preciso – con pubblicazione sui siti web istituzionali anche dei motivi per cui il programma non viene eventualmente rispettato – rappresenterebbe un impegno, la cui violazione nuocerebbe alla credibilità di chi l’ha assunto.
“Fatto. Analisi. Impatto. Agenda”. Così si chiude il cerchio.
Chi è l’autore. Vitalba Azzollini, giurista. Lavora presso un’Autorità di vigilanza. Scrive in tema di diritto su riviste on line (tra le altre, La Voce e Noise fron Amerika), blog (Phastidio e Istituto Bruno Leoni) e giornali. Autrice di paper per l’Istituto Bruno Leoni.
Carlo Favaretti 