Greg Barns' op-ed views government and political boundaries in service delivery terms. He argues for a return to the New Federalism push of the early 90s but where government is organised along maximum service delivery efficiency - which is a social economist's view of the nation-state. But this raises issues of republicanism, democracy and politics which are not catered for. It is a state down approach to federalism rather than a citizen, or individual, up approach.

From the op-ed:

Today, we need to revive the non-ideological atmosphere of the new federalism discussions of 18 years ago. It is extraordinary that in 2007, we still have chronic duplication in areas such as health care, education and transport, or roads, where federal, state and local governments fall over themselves to cut the ribbon whenever a new strip of bitumen is laid.

This is the same argument as those that wish to abolish the states and replace it with a big Canberra government and local councils such as the Brisbane City Council [BCC]. John Howard in interviews has said that this structure would fit his view of Australia if federation was being done now.

Canberra likes this structure as it removes economic rivals to its power. NSW, Western Australia and Victoria can be peskily independent at times despite having half their budgets dependent upon GST and federal grants. NSW has a budget of approximately thirty billion a year, while the BCC has a budget of one billion. Which is a large difference of economic and political power.

Government service delivery to the levels it currently is probably reached its zenith after WWII when many aspects of economic life remained or were nationalised (for lack of a better word as many states maintained banks - but not the feds). It is really only a new thing, back when James Monroe was the Governor of Virginia it was a big deal that a new Jail was being built. Today the judicial landscape is littered with jails; public and private.

Barns continues with:

Take Tasmania and South Australia, for example. Their population is ageing and declining at an alarming rate. Providing high-quality services to the people of those states over the course of this century will become increasingly problematic as a result. Should they exist as separate states today given this bleak outlook?

Again he argues that political boundaries be based on service delivery, which means the government is organised relative to its ability to raise capital - ie tax. Canberra can tax heavily, while SA and Tasmania can't, hence by Barns' logic, those states should be abolished, and presumably become territories under Canberra's wing.

Barns' view of democracy becomes one of political economy. Republics were founded to minimise tyranny in government, of which democracy was a technology or participative method to keep representatives close to the public and easy to remove by popular will when they were under-performing or had fallen into tyranny.

Under Republicanism and Democracy as the method of political organisation, the government(s) are ordered in a way to minimize tyranny and maximise public participation. Under the service-delivery view of governments this directly impacts the capital poor (not much tax to harvest) and capital intensive areas (the opposite of poor tax harvest) of the electorate.

I am reminded of the view of the nation-state where it spends on the slow part of the country to make them catch up, while the market-state enables local regions to innovate more rapidly than central governance and service delivery can provide.

I do not think that service delivery should be the guiding philosophy behind the organisation of political boundaries and governmental forms.