I get that it’s because you need to be elected etc, but why isn’t this a common practise for experts to run and be put in these positions? For example the minister of health should be something along the lines of a doctor or many years of experience in the business of the relevant health service
In: Economics
Guess it depends where you live. In the United States, this is fairly common for the non-cabinet related positions.
While Secretary’s of departments tend to be more political savvy leaders, the heads of individual agencies, such as the Food and Drug Administration, or say, the Bureau of Land Management, tend to be civil servants, or people with particular expertise in their field.
These are the people who actually matter in the sake of these agencies, and the political heads at the top are more so the go-between between the President and the agency itself
There’s a big difference between being an expert in a subject matter and being qualified to manage a large government agency.
As an example, the Secretary of Transportation is responsible for overseeing the entire US Department of Transportation, including the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, and several other agencies. Their job is to develop and coordinate government policy.
The DOT has a lot of people with expertise in transportation and civil engineering on staff, and a good but even the most skilled air traffic controller or highway engineer isn’t necessarily qualified to be the administrator in charge of the department. That’s a completely separate set of skills.
Similarly, the US Surgeon General is typically a doctor, but they report to administrative positions above them like the Secretary of Health and Human Services.
That being said, a good administrator will typically take the advice of subject matter experts when they have relevant expertise on an issue.
A doctor knows medicine and is good at healing peoples. However a minister or secretary, etc. dont do that. They need to coordinate their department, finding majorities and compromised, defend decisions in the public, doing public communications, etc. Normally doctors dont have experience with this stuff, but you need somebody who knows politics.
For the expert works, a ministry should have internal experts and external consultants, which do the expert work. A minister should be able to take their advises, and make a good decision based on that and defend it in the public.
Bascially thats the same reason why the CEO of big companies often have “just” an MBA and not something related to what the company does. A manager with an MBA dont know how to build a car at a factory and the car builder guy dont jnow how to lead a company.
First of all because most experts dont have an interest in going for a political carrer and just want to do work in the field they are an expert in. Second of all those positions are usually paid less than experts get anyway and I dont know anyone that would want to pay politicians even more, so there is little incetive to switch into such a position. Thirdly while it might be beneficial to know how working as a doctor is, working as a doctor and working as minister of health require two diffrent skill sets that arent realy overlaping. So just because someone is a great doctor doesnt mean they would be a greath minister of health. You knowing how to treat someone having the flu doesnt make you an expert in the logistics of distributing flu shots or how to finance flu shots for people that cant afford them or even how to get national attention to the problem. It is literaly impossible to be an expert in every field that a minister has to cover, thats why they use consultants (inhouse and external) that are experts in their specific topics and after bringing them all together for a relevant topic they develope a policy/law that fits the direction the minister wants the policy/law to have.
And in the end its people that vote for those people if people would refuse to vote for someone that isnt an expert/only vote the expert than only experts would get elected.
Maybe not exactly what you mean, but maybe an interesting read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technocracy
Depending on your country, it’s actually quite common for there to be senior advisers with at least some subject matter expertise. You’re correct that the ministers often are not.
Not to be too cynical here, but the simple answer in most democracies is that most people just don’t seem to think it’s that important. Otherwise, politicians would make it a big part of their platform that they would only appoint qualified subject matter experts to their cabinet, in the same way that they talk about being good at managing the economy, budget responsibility, etc.
That said, it is not always obvious what subject matter expertise the person in charge should have. For instance, doctors know a great deal about treating patients, but not necessarily about high-level health policy issues. At least in theory, if you appoint an outsider at the top, they could be more objective. (Whereas, if you hire an oncologist to decide where the resources should be invested in medicine, they’re naturally going to be a bit biased towards funding oncology, even if they don’t really mean to be.)
In most countries there is a professional civil service who “run” the government departments who are experts in the particular field. Their boss is likely to be an elected person who is often appointed by the President / Prime minister etc. sometimes these appointments are made on the interests or specialise knowledge of the elected person, but often not their job isn’t to second guess the civil servants on the technicalities, but to implement the government policy on the issue and the civil servant comes up with a program which meets both the political and practical needs of the department. The elected official is much like a CEO of a company, they don’t need to have worked in the business they are running (though that often helps) they are making more big brush general policy than getting stuck on small details.
Government department leaders are managers. Being an expert in something doesn’t mean you are good at managing other people especially with many layers of separation.
So the people with relevant experience would actually be executives in those fields not the field workers.
But here comes the issue. These people make way more money in the private sector than they would as government employees. Department secretaries make just under 250k. That’s the highest level of government. C-suite position in a major company, which is the closest equivalent, will easily give you 30-40x that compensation.
So you now have to be suspicious of anyone who chooses to go for this lower paying job. Are they trying to help using their expertise, not good enough to get a good job, or are they going to use their position to earn favors from industry and get compensation later.
* The politicians often, or are at least expected to, consult with experts in their fields.
* Being good at your job and knowing a lot about your subject don’t always align. Leading a department involves leadership, management, and a dozen other skills before your competence with the subject comes in.
* Experts frequently disagree. It would be nice to live in a world where we understand stuff perfectly, but we don’t. Sometimes experts in the same field disagree, it happens, so someone needs to make the final choice. Sometimes, even if a consensus within a field is reached, different fields clash. For example, covid19, most reputable medical professionals were calling for lockdowns, isolation etc. However, at the same time, experts in economics and business were saying such things would have devastating consequences on much of the economy. So, who gets to choose which side gets their expertise made into policy?
* As a small extra point. Much of a health service is not run by Doctors. This is so Doctors can actually focus on being doctors and the massive backroom administrative side can handle everything else. So which of those actually understands what is going on within the hospital? The doctor might be the expert on health, but the lead admin probably is the expert on hospitals. Which would make a better Minister for Health?
they usually are. the relevant expertise is administration and management.
a great healer isnt necessarily good at strategy, communication and managing people and resources
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