In a true crisis such as a war, leadership is hands-on from the top down. Only national governments have the power to find the funding and resources to make difficult things happen.
In peacetime democracies, power often devolves downwards. National government may control the purse strings, and require multiple levels of accounting for monies and resources it provides. But ‘the boots on the ground’ often get to decide on and deliver government services within the limits of their funding allowance.
So it is in peacetime Ireland, where the delivery of social services, such as the construction of affordable housing, as well the provision of shelter for the homeless, are the responsibility of local councils.
But what happens in peacetime if a looming crisis begins to grow to such a magnitude of human suffering and loss that it takes on the characteristics of a full-blown war?
How do governments transition away from social leadership enacted at the bottom level and burdened with necessary accounting checks and balances. What becomes of a full blown war on homelessness and unaffordable housing when the most effective leadership will be hands-on from the top down?
Irish governments at top and bottom levels would seem to be in a most uncomfortable quarrel as they try to determine just who should be in charge of what. Just one example: the housing minister ‘threatens’ to use emergency powers to deal with homelessness problems that local councils are claiming they are unable to solve, thanks to what they say is national government obstruction. Surely ‘threatens’ is both the wrong word and the wrong tone for a crisis of this magnitude. Surely a government doesn’t ‘threaten’ to fulfill an obligation, if the nature of a national crisis actually obliges leadership from the top, rather than the bottom?
This quarrel over the locus of responsibility between levels of government may well be played out in democratic governments world-wide as the affordable housing crisis deepens. Other countries take note.
Read more in the Irish Times: Housing crisis: Varadkar denies Government is trying to pass blame
And as to the idea that crisis can mount until only national government is capable of taking effective action, try: “Affordable Housing: The State Must Lead.”
