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Exploring the major influences on government behaviour and achievements
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Exploring the major influences on government behaviour and achievements
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Exploring the major influences on government behaviour and achievements:By Saghaar Wright
Introduction:
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good
government” (Jefferson, 1809:1). The critical analysis of the degree, characteristics, and sustainability of
countries’ achievements or ‘objects’, has been the subject of political academia for many years, with several
pieces of scholarship being written on the concept. Less discussed in political circles, but just as imperative to
realising political scholarship’s aim to specify and expand upon “legitimate object(s) of good government,”
(Jefferson, 1809:1), are the influences on government behaviour, and to what extent they inform and determine
a government’s achievements. The most prolific of these ‘influences’ are the goals a government pursues, the
structure of the state, and the power of organised interests within the country, and this essay will aim to analyse
which of these influences is more imperative/important in determining what governments achieve. The context
through which these concepts will be assessed and compared, is that of the present South African government
and state. This stylistic choice was made in order to provide a case study with which to observe the real life
application of these concepts, so as to provide a deeper understanding of the degree of their effect on
governments, as well as to offer more literature in areas where this essay’s analysis of the government
influences seemed academically lacking (for example, the ‘goals’ a government pursues is entirely dependent
on the government itself, so there appears to be a shortage of academia that provide specific parameters for this
concept). Before delving into the main argument, it is important to note that the frequently used term
‘government achievements’ will for the purposes of this essay, broadly be defined as ‘all behaviour of
government, as well as all its interactions with the political environment it exists in’; policy making,
government programmes, strategy implementation, to name but a few examples.
The goals a government pursues:
To clarify exactly what the ‘goals a government pursues’ makes reference to, it can be classified as any
situation, state, or statistic a country aims to achieve or obtain. As stated above, the goals a country’s
government pursues is dictated by the specific political characteristics of the country and government itself. It is
reasonable to assume that there might be general goals that all governments should strive towards, for example
a developing country might aim to achieve goals in the field of economic growth, redistribution of income, and
employment rates (Chand, 2018:1), but not the existence of strict codes or guidelines.
Ideally, the goals a government sets should be the ultamite dictator of what they achieve, as the former sets the
theoretical parameters with which the latter is measured against. In practice though, governments’ goals act
, only as a façade of capability and competence, and often offer little to no guarantee of delivering progress or
development in any of the aspects of society adressed. There exists several exemperlary futile illlustrations of
these goal strategies in South Africa, the outcomes approach for example, the government’s plan to address five
priorty areas identified in the socio-economic landscape of South Africa, “decent work and sustainable
livelihoods, education, health, rural development, food security and land reform and the fight against crime and
corruption,” (South African Government, 2019:1), within the period of 2014 to 2019. From the time of writing,
all five areas of need identified within this framework, have seen little to no improvement, with food security
substantially decreasing to the lowest it has been since the birth of the South African democracy (IPC, 2020:1).
Similar examples are present in more times, perhaps the most prevalent of them being the National
Development Plan 2030. Implemented in 2013, it details a step-by-step approach to the grandiose goal of
completely “eliminating poverty and reducing inequality” (South African Government , 2013:1) by the year
2030. Eight years after the NDP’s initial formation, South Africa’s former stastician-general Dr Pali Lehohla is
quoted as having said “The NDP was never implemented; it was left on the shelves” (Sibanyoni, 2021:5). This
serves to prove that goal setting, in a South African context, has no affect on what the government achieves, and
rather acts as a projection of the potential intentions of government, as opposed to committed promises and
gaurantees.
The Structure of the state:
State structure can be defined as “the organizational form of the state, i.e. the distribution of power among
agencies, the working of these agencies, and the underlying self-perception influencing the exchange between
these agencies as well as between the government and society at large” (Cante, 2016:43). The formation of the
state directly informs the power dynamic between state agencies, the processes of accountability state agencies
are liable to, and finally the relationship between state agencies themselves (Cante, 2016:29). The government,
being one of the aforementioned ‘state players’ is therefore directly affected the state structure.
There are different types of state structures, that each inform the dynamic between the state agencies in their
own unique manner. The United States of America, for example, employs federalism, a state structure that
dictates the national government and the state government be two individual sovereign powers, for the
purposing of creating a distinct separation of powers (Norton, 2020: 4). Similarly, South Africa organises its
state into the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and the executive branch, also to broaden the spread of
power (South African Government , 2021:3). The legislative authority controls the creation of legislation, and
is presented as the South African parliament system, the exectuive authority, who are in charge of
implementation of legislation and governance and who are represented as the President, his Deputy and
Minisiters, and finally the judicial authority, who enforce the compliance with the country’s laws both on am
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