I see. This seems to be the crux of the matter.
So this would seem to indicate a division between executive and legislature is a good thing.
No, that's not quite what I'm getting at. "The executive" isn't one monolithic thing that does the same thing at all levels of government; the executive at a national level is VERY different to the executive at a local level. The responsibilities of city councillors are limited not only by the size of their city but also by the nature of their responsibilities. A city councillor will be concerned with the administration of healthcare, ensuring that hospitals are run efficiently, that their bills are paid, that they are fully staffed, etc. In other words, they will be concerned with the day to day running of their hospitals, in accordance with the law, common practice, and healthcare policy. A government minister in the Health department will be concerned not with the day to day running, but with matters of healthcare
policy. This is, partly, a legislative role, but also an executive role: if a Health minister wants to change hiring policies, so that nurses are recruited in a differently, then it
may require legislative changes, but is in fact an executive decision. The job of a Health minister is to decide how hospitals should hire nurses; the job of a local councillor is to ensure that hospitals in their city are hiring nurses in the way prescribed by health ministers.
I realise now that this is not a very good example, since hospitals are actually administered by independent trusts, not by city councillors. But a similar thing happens in areas where local councillors do have administrative oversight, such as education, or direct control, such as town planning. Somebody who is good at administering a school might not be good at deciding how a school should be administered. This becomes obvious when you see how many engineers, say, get promoted to management positions because they are good engineers, only to end up being terrible managers: the key attributes for a good engineer are different from the key attributes of a good manager. Similarly, the attributes that I think are good in local councillors are not necessarily attributes that I think are good in Westminster.
Now, having said all this, I do realise that I earlier said that good administrators are not necessarily good legislators. What I mean by this is that legislators at a national level are concerned with policy; the executive at a national level is concerned with policy; but the administrators at a local level are not concerned with policy. The skill-sets for national level legislators are very similar to the skill-sets for national level executors.
This isn't always true, mind you. There are plenty of people who might be good at formulating policy, but who are terrible at delivering it. Such as Andrew Lansley. But I don't think it's such a big deal: the executive of the UK government is, what, 20-odd cabinet ministers, each with 3-4 ministers beneath them. Out of a country of 60m people, I'm sure we can muster 80 people who are good at both formulating policy and delivering it.
Well, you'd hope so wouldn't you.
And why do you think administrators can't be good legislators? Are you thinking in terms of personality types here?
I don't think I used the word "can't". I said "not necessarily", and it's because they require different skill-sets. For Dunbarcracy to work, administrators would HAVE to be good legislators ("policy-formulators" might be a better term). I'd have to limit my votes to people who are both good administrators and good policy-formulators. And I'd have to do that on a local level, picking from just 74 other people....... Chances of finding a decent representative are pretty slim.
