All state structures contain the seeds of failure, but the methods of failure are mediated by the local contexts of history and culture. Martin Kettle points out that the long-term trend towards centralisation in Whitehall, accelerated under Blair, has the style of an ad-hocracy, with policy accretions and institutions designed to resolve particular problems.
Part of the answer lies in the historical peculiarity of modern Britain. We have been through a lot in the last quarter century. Our individualistic culture, our weakened institutions and our class and cultural divides - both the cause and the effect of Thatcherism - give this country a distinctive, disorganised and ad hoc quality which, while not without attractions and advantages, would tax the ability of any better-ordered government to master. That is why we've never been the consensual social-democratic Sweden that Robert Taylor hymns in a new Compass pamphlet. But it is also why the import of individualistic American prescriptions does not work either.
Britain's complexity is not unique. Complexity is a condition of all modern societies and systems, private as well as public. You cannot always pull a lever at the centre and know what the effect will be at the grassroots. But politicians can see when something isn't working. The big divide is between foolish ones, who think that the response to failure must be to micro-manage everything more ferociously that ever, and smart ones, who recognise that, having invested and tried to ensure that the country was getting something for its money, the big challenge now is to let go. That's why one of the new big ideas in Whitehall is to let systems become self-sustaining.
There is hope, but it will take some time before Whitehall remembers that smaller is better.
For Whitehall watchers, Kettle also recommends the forthcoming reform pamphlet by Sir Christopher Foster, "Why Are We So Badly Governed?"