Much has been written about the portrayal of torture in 24. What’s not so well appreciated, however, is that the programme is also an exercise in transactions cost economics (pdf), insofar as it shows the costs and benefits of hierarchical decision-making.
The costs are clear. Hierarchies often just get things wrong - as for example when Brian Hastings assumed a bomb was in the UN building, thus jeopardizing President Hassan’s life. One reason this happens is that decisions are taken by single individuals who are often detached from the ground and so lacking in information or gut feeling; this vindicates Hayek‘s strictures that central planners necessarily have limited knowledge.
The second cost is simply that hierarchical decision-making is slow. “We don’t have time for that” is as much a cliché of 24 as a reference to Cuddy’s ass is in House, or a re-make of a scene from the X-Files is in Fringe.
Equally, though, hierarchies are necessary. Jack couldn’t do his job without CTU. This isn’t just because he needs specific expertise; this can be detached from the organization, as it was in series 7 when Chloe and Bill were freelancing. It’s because only top-down organizations can mobilize resources quickly. With a single phone call, Jack can call upon a tactical support team. If he had to rely upon pure market transactions, he’d have to haggle over the price of mercenaries and helicopter hire, and never get near a villain.
In this sense, fighting terrorism requires both hierarchical decision-making and Jack’s freelancing. Either, on its own, would be inadequate.
All this is pure Coase and Williamson.
But there’s more. A consistent theme of 24 is that CTU is run by the wrong people. Hastings, like Ryan Chappelle or Erin Driscoll before him, is a bumptious but incompetent careerist. CTU’s geeks, whilst necessary for the organization, never get the top job - or at least, not for long.
What’s probably going on here is something discussed in this paper. The people responsible for hiring CTU’s boss - the unseen middle-ranking politicians - can’t judge technical skills. So they prefer people like themselves - big-talking managerialists. In this sense, a further cost of hierarchy - missed, I think, by Williamson - is that it has an innate bias towards being run by incompetents.
Here, though, lies a curious thing. The men who look like mere careerists can become heroes, if conditions change. When we first see Bill Buchanan he is an ambiguous character. It’s only later that he becomes a genuinely good guy. Similarly, George Mason was a mere manager, but when he found that he was dying, he died heroically, flying a nuclear bomb into the desert.
In this regard, 24 is saying that incentives determine character - think, for example, of the changing portrayal of Tony Almeida. If people can be warped by hierarchies into being self-centred managerialists, they can be unwarped surprisingly quickly. This is an idealism shared by neoclassical economics and (vulgar?) Marxists.
The costs are clear. Hierarchies often just get things wrong - as for example when Brian Hastings assumed a bomb was in the UN building, thus jeopardizing President Hassan’s life. One reason this happens is that decisions are taken by single individuals who are often detached from the ground and so lacking in information or gut feeling; this vindicates Hayek‘s strictures that central planners necessarily have limited knowledge.
The second cost is simply that hierarchical decision-making is slow. “We don’t have time for that” is as much a cliché of 24 as a reference to Cuddy’s ass is in House, or a re-make of a scene from the X-Files is in Fringe.
Equally, though, hierarchies are necessary. Jack couldn’t do his job without CTU. This isn’t just because he needs specific expertise; this can be detached from the organization, as it was in series 7 when Chloe and Bill were freelancing. It’s because only top-down organizations can mobilize resources quickly. With a single phone call, Jack can call upon a tactical support team. If he had to rely upon pure market transactions, he’d have to haggle over the price of mercenaries and helicopter hire, and never get near a villain.
In this sense, fighting terrorism requires both hierarchical decision-making and Jack’s freelancing. Either, on its own, would be inadequate.
All this is pure Coase and Williamson.
But there’s more. A consistent theme of 24 is that CTU is run by the wrong people. Hastings, like Ryan Chappelle or Erin Driscoll before him, is a bumptious but incompetent careerist. CTU’s geeks, whilst necessary for the organization, never get the top job - or at least, not for long.
What’s probably going on here is something discussed in this paper. The people responsible for hiring CTU’s boss - the unseen middle-ranking politicians - can’t judge technical skills. So they prefer people like themselves - big-talking managerialists. In this sense, a further cost of hierarchy - missed, I think, by Williamson - is that it has an innate bias towards being run by incompetents.
Here, though, lies a curious thing. The men who look like mere careerists can become heroes, if conditions change. When we first see Bill Buchanan he is an ambiguous character. It’s only later that he becomes a genuinely good guy. Similarly, George Mason was a mere manager, but when he found that he was dying, he died heroically, flying a nuclear bomb into the desert.
In this regard, 24 is saying that incentives determine character - think, for example, of the changing portrayal of Tony Almeida. If people can be warped by hierarchies into being self-centred managerialists, they can be unwarped surprisingly quickly. This is an idealism shared by neoclassical economics and (vulgar?) Marxists.
Machiavelli in his Discorsi puts forward a conception of republican institutions whereby things are so ordered as to manipulate individuals' self interests so that selfish pursuits end up benefiting the community, particularly by enhancing collective liberty.
It's a theme common in republican writings (see James Harrison's Oceana and Rousseau's infamous dictum that the laws may force us to be free). Yet in such theories men are usually seen as liable to revert to destructive self interest should institutions fail.
So I'd say it's not just neoclassical economists and (vulgar) Marxists. There's a case for including republicans too.
Posted by: Paul Sagar | February 08, 2010 at 06:05 PM
Hayek criticised planning because it 'failed' to respond to regional short term decisions but late monopoly capitalism has the same problem writ large and capitalism tends towards monopoly.
Funnily enough Hayek was less vocal about this problem.
And that is even ignoring the enourmous waste and anarchy inherent within it.
Just had to say that.
Posted by: Steve | February 08, 2010 at 06:09 PM
There's a non-vulgar kind?
Posted by: Alex | February 09, 2010 at 02:38 AM
1) Not sure who the buxom young lady is
2) Not sure why more cleavage isn't on show as it normally is on your blog
3) Fairly certain that the reason people become " brave" or "good" has lots to do with being bloody-minded when shit scared and/or angry. I had an uncle who won 2 MCs and bars, and he maintained on each occasion it was that he was simply NOT going to give in under ANY circumstances. It's why the suicide bommbers are lethal. You can't do anything to them to make them want to stop.
Posted by: kinglear | February 09, 2010 at 03:29 PM
Errm, it's fiction? Admittedly, like much of the economics output from HMG (and the opposition and the wonkeries) at the moment.
What does it tell us? The 24 screen-writers don't think that people are much interested in having management portrayed as competent - probably because they suffer from the same confirmation bias as the rest of us in remembering the poor amongst the mix of managers they have worked for.
Of course, if you look at the CSI / NCIS / Criminal Minds / Without a Trace genre, the management are portrayed much more sympathetically, with middle management being core 'hero' characters - Grissom, Caine etc. Not being an obsessive watcher, I may be (aka am probably) wrong but I think Ecklie in the original Las Vegas is the only one portrayed as regularly counter-productive to the team and, even then, he is a highly competent careerist going through several promotions (and you can easily argue that, in the US legal system, a devotion to process is hardly a major flaw.)
As for turning in to heros? All that tells us is that the script writers came up with an entertaining way of ending somebody's contract.
Posted by: Surreptitious Evil | February 10, 2010 at 10:08 AM
"In this sense, a further cost of hierarchy - missed, I think, by Williamson - is that it has an innate bias towards being run by incompetents."
Isn't this the Peter Principle?
Posted by: ian | February 12, 2010 at 05:09 PM
"If he had to rely upon pure market transactions, he’d have to haggle over the price of mercenaries and helicopter hire, and never get near a villain."
I'm not familiar with any of the shows you are discussing, but I think that comment is wrong. If response time is an important product characteristic you can buy it, just like other characteristics.
I am told that firms that sell computer support to other firms routinely guarantee to fix problems within some (short) time, and do so.
So far as "haggling" is concerned, quite a lot of goods and services are sold at predetermined and publicly stated prices.
Posted by: David Friedman | February 14, 2010 at 07:20 PM
Transaction cost is a cost incurred in making an economic exchange. For example, most people, when buying or selling a stock, must pay a commission to their broker; that commission is a transaction cost of doing the stock deal.
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