Summary

Reasons why the time may be propitious to introduce the use of Panetic Analyses into some government decision-making. Examples of situations to which Panetics may be applied. Government institutions where the capability may exist to conduct such analyses. Arenas of decision-making in which Panetic Analysis, in its current state of development, might prove most practicable. A number of conundrums which must be answered through further research and development before Panetics can be applied broadly to government decision-making on a wider scale.

Introduction

Several conditions must be satisfied in order to apply Panetic Analysis to government decision-making on a continuous, practical basis:

i. The climate of public opinion must be supportive, or at least not antagonistic.

ii. The basic requirements of the process must be familiar enough that they are understandable and acceptable.

iii. Institutional capacity and purpose must exist somewhere within a government where Panetic Analysis can be applied.

iv. The methodologies of Panetic Analysis must be far enough along in their development to make their use convenient and practical.

1. Trends Favoring Application of Panetics to Political Decision-Making

Ralph Siu has already described some of the propitious trends that justify a belief that the climate of general opinion is supportive.

First--notwithstanding very painful and frequent reversals--the concept of "consent of the governed" is taking hold around the world. Far beyond the borders of the old western democracies, the imposition of arbitrarily-acquired, unaccountable political power faces growing opposition from the masses. Populations are less and less willing to accept arbitrary suffering at the hands of those in power.

Secondly, the use of brute force by those in power to impose their will is constrained more and more by the pressures of international opinion.

Thirdly, there is a growing willingness to use cooperative international intervention to counter the infliction of human suffering by those who exercise arbitrary power.

Finally, freedom from suffering inflicted through the exercise of arbitrary power has assumed pervasive standing within this emerging new "world order" as a "human right."

2. The Process of Measurement Is Familiar

The second pre-condition--that the requirements of the process be sufficiently familiar and understandable--is also satisfied in many societies. Many governments and populations are accustomed now to the use of regularly-employed indicators that measure various aspects of human well-being to help make governmental decisions.

Economic indicators have long provided the guideposts for public and private economic decision-making in developed countries and international institutions. Valiant efforts are made by such organizations as the World Bank to transform narrowly-defined economic measures into broader, more elastic, quality-of-life indicators that apply equally well as measures of human well-being in a highly industrialized country or a Third World village.

Each year, the US State Department issues its global report on human rights. Many non-governmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, provide additional reports and measurements on various aspects of human suffering, whether among children, or refugees, or women, or families. These indicators receive attention in the public press and in public forums and find their way into public debate, eventually influencing political behavior and government decision-making.

National and international agencies continually monitor and report on the rising or falling incidence of various threats to public health. When danger is identified, action usually follows.

Growing numbers of social indicators are used to monitor other aspects of human suffering or well-being. Although the US government has issued only one comprehensive social report as a companion to the President's Economic Report (Office of Management and Budget, 1976), every year US government and state government agencies regularly monitor and report on infant mortality, health, education, crime, poverty, housing, racial integration or separation, gender, etc. International organizations such as the United Nations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, and EUROSTAT, the statistical agency of the European Union, provide similar monitoring.

It can be argued, therefore, that the principal objective of Panetics, to develop, and see applied quantitative measures of human suffering that help guide decision-making toward alleviation of that suffering, is already satisfied to some degree. At least the measurement process itself is quite familiar to both government and the general public.

3. Linking Measurement to Decision-Making and Implementation

Which brings us then to the third necessary condition--that the requisite capacity exist at some place in government to apply Panetic Analysis in decision-making.

Clearly, in the United States, economic indicators are joined to government decision-making at many points: in Congress, in the Office of the President through the Council of Economic Advisors, in the Federal Reserve Board, in the Treasury Department, in the Departments of Labor and Commerce, etc. Similar ventures exist in other countries.

In the health field, national, state, and local agencies measure and monitor threats to human health, make decisions about how to protect the public against detected threats, and they have authority to enforce the actions they take.

Siu has provided an excellent summary of the issues involved in protecting the public from dangerous substances in its food and medicine. While this process is a matter of current political controversy, there can be little doubt that when the public perceives a direct connection between objective measurement of a threat to its physical and mental well-being and the need for government action, it will insist upon apolitical administration and enforcement based upon those measurements.

This joining of responsibility to measure, authority to decide and act, and the power to enforce is not restricted to health matters. Other aspects of human suffering or well-being are covered by similar government institutions. Law enforcement agencies have monitoring and reporting responsibilities, as well as authority to act. Such seemingly mundane local government functions as building code enforcement embody the same joining of measurement, decision-making, and enforcement functions. All of this is in the name of preventing suffering due to the collapse of unsafe buildings, from crime, from polluted food and water, or from unsafe substances.

Thus, the fundamental precepts of Panetics are already part of the cultural system of most highly developed, open political societies.

4. The Methodological Challenge

In matters of public health and safety, the connection between measurement and governmental action is straight-forward. The well-being of the whole population is at stake. The equation that connects the measurement of a threat to the need for government action to forestall it is quite direct and commands broad popular support.

However, these comprise only a fraction of the decisions politicians and governments must make. Most political decisions involve "trade-offs" between suffering for one group or another. The Panetic equation grows far more complex.

The Case of Environmental Impact Assessment

The Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process, adopted in the 1970s to help determine, in advance, the probable consequences of a decision for human health and the natural environment, provides an on-point example directly relevant to potential application of Panetic Analysis.

First, EIA involves measures and a process through which one can gauge environmental threats to human well-being and the planet's ecology. Secondly, a government institution (EPA) is accountable for developing decisions and regulations based upon those measurements. Thirdly, power has been granted to enforce the protections to human life and health that are decided upon.

Twenty years after its adoption, this process is very much a subject of controversy. It is complex and technically challenging. Unquestionably, it has slowed up decisions that, rashly made, might have adversely affected human health, or the integrity of vulnerable national environments. However, the evidence is not yet clear about just how much the EIA process has helped improve public and private decision-making to minimize human suffering and damage to vulnerable natural systems.

In a decision about whether to permit logging in a National Forest, the EIA must weigh, on the one hand, the suffering of loggers who may lose their jobs, together with that of people in the towns that may lose much business, and the saw mill and company owners who may lose income. On the other hand the process must weigh the suffering that harvesting timber may impose on the general public through lost recreation, increased soil erosion, deteriorated water supplies, etc. perhaps supplemented by the loss of rare and endangered flora and fauna.

The methodologies for weighing the trade-offs between these various degrees of suffering are as imperfect as the cost-benefit calculations used by the US Army Corps of Engineers to justify construction of a flood protection levee, dam, or waterway. Every calculation is viewed with suspicion by antagonists on either side of any decision.

We can all agree with Herbert Striner (1992) that the dukkha, Siu’s proposed measure of suffering, like all social measurements, can only be an approximation.

But it is totally insufficient for many political decision-making purposes to posit the Panetic equation as a one-sided correlation between a decision, or government action, and the human suffering it incurs.

The majority of government decisions involve trade-offs between the imposition of some degree of suffering–however small or large–for one or more groups on the one side while conferring benefits for one or more groups on the other. The late, great social scientist Harold Lasswell characterized politics as the art of deciding "who gets what, when, and how." The politician's role is to weigh trade-offs involving suffering among groups and then to decide.

Here we face the first of several conundrums as we attempt to apply Panetics to political decision-making. If the weight to be given to suffering is to be determined subjectively by the victim, as has been suggested, the method is at odds with how political decisions are actually made.

First, in our adversarial system of politics, politicians are elected by constituents. By definition, then, they give greater weight to the suffering of their supporters than they give to those who oppose them. On a global scale, decision-making is still guided by the "self-interest" of nation-states. Imagine the Panetic equation involved in a decision by a US President about whether to intervene in Bosnia to stop increasingly intolerable levels of human suffering. The weight he must assign to the loss of lives of his own citizenry on behalf of lives in an area where his own citizenry feels little real "geopolitical" stake is greater than the weight he assigns to one Bosnian human life. The Bosnian can not determine that weight for the purposes of an American governmental decision. Even if the day arises when all such decisions will be made at a "world community" level, it is doubtful that the weight to be assigned to the degree of suffering can, or will be, left to determination by the victim alone.

As currently formulated, the Panetic equation can lead to a second conundrum–inequitable results that run counter to the value systems of a fair and open society.

For example, let us say Congress is considering a major bill to provide financial assistance to poor and destitute families. The "suffering" imposed on the 114 million taxpayers by an increase in taxes is a "Barely Noticeable" 1 on the dukkha scale, giving us a value of 114,000,000 dukkhas. The "suffering" of the affected families is a "Quite a Lot" 6 on the Panetic scale for 13,600,000 families, giving us a total of 81,000,000 dukkhas. On our scale of human suffering, the poor and destitute lose out. Yet, in a society where the majority rules, an important constitutional principle has been to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

Thirdly, as currently formulated, the Dukkha Table measures suffering in terms of physical, and possibly mental, anguish. Yet, if Panetics is to find broad application, the table must contain equivalencies that reflect other forms of perceived suffering. James Davis (1992) has pressed us to recognize that the dukkha must be a measure sufficiently elastic to reflect differing levels of suffering between one society and another.

5. Next Steps in Panetic Development

Clearly, rigorous further research and development is essential in order to bring Panetics to a level sufficiently practical for it to be applied in government decision-making.

One major research thrust must develop a process through which more acceptable weights can be assigned to degrees of suffering. In a society -- and world -- in which diverse values and expectations operate, a carefully facilitated process that takes this diversity into account is essential. The process and systems developed by John N. Warfield, of George Mason University, offer the most promising avenues for this phase for Panetic development.

The same process can be used to identify equivalencies of suffering for use in the Dukkha table.

To provide a framework within which further research and development might be pursued to make applications of Panetics to government decision-making more practicable, we can use the best expression of political values available -- the Preamble to the US Constitution.

i. Establish Justice and Insure Domestic Tranquility

Because the impacts on human suffering that arise from crime, threats to public safety, and riots lend themselves readily to measurement at the current state of development of Panetics, a conceptual first step has been taken that should lead to the development of some Dukkha Tables applicable to law enforcement, the administration of justice, and the preservation of order.

Siu (1993, 1994) has advanced several ways in which Panetic Analysis could have been used in a number of critical court decisions, as well as by New York City's Mayor. Davis (1993) has hazarded an estimate of the dukkhas involved in dealing with the Waco incident. At its October, 1993 meeting, The International Society for Panetics reviewed nine riots, and the Los Angles riot of 1992, in particular. While there was no definitive estimate of the dukkhas incurred, it is clear that the next step is to develop a Dukkha Table for Justice and Law Enforcement.

ii. Provide for the Common Defense

This function of government also lends itself readily to Panetic Analysis in its current state of development. This is a major topic to be covered during the same meeting of the Society at which this paper is presented. For that reason, the subject will not be pursued here except to suggest that a second development challenge is to develop a Dukkha Table that can be applied to Defense and Foreign Policy interventions.

iii. Promote the General Welfare

As we come to the functions of government intended to promote the general welfare, we begin with functions that lend themselves readily to Panetic Analysis and then shade off into the less and less tractable for Panetic Analysis at its current stage of development.

A good start has been made in health and medicine by Glenn Geelhoed and Ralph Siu .

In the fields of education and welfare, however, much work remains to be done to deal with the conundrum outlined in the section above concerning the consequences that would flow from a too-literal application of the Panetics equation to minority vs. majority suffering.

iv. Secure the Blessings of Liberty

Similarly, much rigorous work must be done to reconcile the emphasis in Panetics on alleviating human suffering with some of the values that drive society which accept some degree of suffering as the necessary price of progress and involve hard, but essential choices, i. e. "constructive destruction" as an element of creative capitalism. The current political discussion about widespread anxiety in the face of corporate down-sizing in order to meet the challenges of global competition is a case in point.

6. Laboratories for Further Panetic Development

Obviously, much of this work can be carried forward most ideally in a university environment with faculty and students dedicated to the advancement of Panetics as a new discipline. However, for such research and development to produce the most relevant results, it should occur in an environment closely associated with the realities of government decision-making itself.

One potential "laboratory" which might have served the purpose well was the late Office of Technology Assessment in Congress.

Technology Assessment, like the Environmental Impact Assessment process, was formulated as a new discipline over a quarter century ago. Its challenge was to estimate the probable consequences for human well-being that might arise as a result of the introduction of new technologies. While such analysis had been conducted for many years within the US Defense Establishment in connection with military technologies employed by unfriendly states, as well as our own military, the notion of a formal Technology Assessment capability linked to the policy making powers of the US Congress seemed attractive two decades ago.

The introduction of new technologies seemed to be altering the society so rapidly and radically with unforeseen, inadvertent and harmful consequences for some, that Congress believed it needed some "foresight" in order to regulate the process. Whether OTA provided, or was permitted to provide, such foresight is dubious.

The Netherlands as a Panetics Laboratory

Given the current political climate in the United States, it may prove best to look elsewhere for a government and university in which the development of Panetics can be advanced.

One possibility might be The Netherlands.

For many decades, the Dutch have had a unique set of institutions–the Council of State and the Council of Science and Technology–to assess, in advance, the possible consequences of major decisions before they are adopted and implemented. The Council of State evaluates economic and social policy decisions. The Council of Science and Technology evaluates decisions with a scientific or technical component. Both bodies consist of highly-respected, professionally qualified citizens appointed to fixed terms. The Councils possess competent staffs to carry out the evaluations. While their findings and recommendations are not binding on political decision-makers, they carry great weight. More often than not, when their recommendations have not been followed, the Councils later have been proven right.

The Councils provide the ideal institutional environment in which to test the workability of Panetic Analysis in government decision-making.

State and Local Governments in the United States

Several similar opportunities may exist at the state and municipal level in the United States. For a time, Connecticut's legislature possessed an office comparable in function to the Office of Technology Assessment in Congress, but addressed more directly to urban issues in the state. While it could have been useful as a Panetic Laboratory, the office has since gone out of existence.

Conclusion

In sum, the times and trends are propitious for the application of Panetics to government decision-making. However, the discipline is not far enough along in its development to expect application except in a research and development mode. Ideally, that should be carried out within appropriate government environments, but led by university-based research teams.

Bibliography

Davis, James N., "Measurement of Suffering: Elasticity and Urgency," Panetics, v.1, no. 1, January 1992.

Geelhoed, Glen W. & Siu, Ralph G. H., "Formulating and Selecting Humanely Cost-Effective Medical Treatment Options and National Health Care Plans," Panetics, v. 2, no. 4, pp. 1-11, October, 1993; and v. 2, no. 3, April, 1994.

Siu, Ralph G. H., Panetics Trilogy, Vol. I: Less Suffering for Everybody, and Vol II. Panetics and Dukkha, The International Society for Panetics, 1994.

Striner, Herbert & Donald Michael, "Discussion," Proceedings of the International Society For Panetics, October 14, 1992.