Managed Populations Scene I: On The Lateral Elite

A Faculty Seminar

Seminar Room 3B. Late afternoon. A whiteboard bears the word “ACCOUNTABILITY” in careful block capitals.

Blottisham (leaning back, hands folded):

I confess I find the premise faintly overwrought. Governments are elected. If they fail, they are removed. That is the genius of democracy. One need not mystify it.

Quillibrace (arranging his papers with surgical calm):

I am not mystifying it, Mr Blottisham. I am observing its operation.

Blottisham:

Its operation is straightforward. The public chooses. Leaders serve. Accountability flows downward.

Quillibrace:

Does it?

Blottisham:

Manifestly.

Elowen (tilting her head):

Professor, you seem unconvinced.

Quillibrace:

I am unconvinced that accountability flows where we assume it does.

Blottisham:

Now we are in dangerous territory.

Quillibrace:

Only descriptive territory.

Blottisham:

Elections occur. Power changes hands. Policies shift. What more verticality do you require?

Quillibrace:

I require that those who govern identify primarily with those who are governed.

Blottisham:

And you believe they do not?

Quillibrace:

I believe they increasingly identify laterally.

Elowen:

Laterally?

Quillibrace:

With one another. With peer networks. With international counterparts. With security officials, policy advisers, economic institutions. Their sense of “us” is structured horizontally.

Blottisham:

That is simply professionalism. Modern governance is complex.

Quillibrace:

Quite. Complexity is precisely the point.

Blottisham:

You cannot expect ministers to consult every citizen before making decisions.

Quillibrace:

Nor do I suggest it. But I observe that the circle within which identification occurs has shifted.

Blottisham:

Shifted from what?

Quillibrace:

From electorate to network.

Blottisham:

That is rhetoric.

Quillibrace:

Is it?

(He gestures lightly toward the whiteboard.)

Consider foreign policy. Successive governments, nominally opposed in ideology, maintain nearly identical alignments. Security cooperation, intelligence sharing, economic frameworks — these persist regardless of electoral turnover.

Blottisham:

Because they are necessary.

Quillibrace:

Necessary to whom?

Blottisham:

To the nation.

Quillibrace:

Or to the network in which the nation is embedded?

(Blottisham exhales.)

Blottisham:

This is precisely the sort of suspicion that corrodes public trust. Governments cooperate internationally because the world is interconnected.

Elowen:

But Professor isn’t denying cooperation. He’s asking where identification stabilises.

Blottisham:

Identification stabilises with responsibility.

Quillibrace:

Responsibility to what?

Blottisham:

To the electorate.

Quillibrace:

Then why does public moral outrage so rarely alter structural policy direction?

Blottisham:

Because public outrage is often misinformed.

Quillibrace:

Always?

Blottisham:

Frequently.

Elowen:

What about when protests are peaceful, widespread, and sustained?

Blottisham:

Protest proves freedom. It does not require capitulation.

Quillibrace:

Indeed. But observe the pattern. When protests align with elite consensus, they are absorbed. When they disrupt it, they are managed.

Blottisham:

Managed? You make governance sound sinister.

Quillibrace:

It is administrative.

Blottisham:

Administration is not oppression.

Quillibrace:

Nor did I say it was. But administration reframes moral conflict as risk management.

Elowen:

So the issue isn’t suppression alone — it’s translation?

Quillibrace:

Precisely.

Citizens speak in moral language.

Institutions respond in procedural language.

Between the two, something is lost.

Blottisham:

Or refined.

Quillibrace:

Refined into abstraction.

Blottisham:

You cannot run a modern state on sentiment.

Quillibrace:

Nor can you preserve democratic legitimacy without relational recognition.

(A brief silence.)

Blottisham:

Let us be clear. Are you suggesting that elected officials cease to care about their constituents?

Quillibrace:

I am suggesting that the structural conditions of modern governance reward lateral coherence over vertical responsiveness.

Blottisham:

You make it sound as though elites are a class apart.

Quillibrace:

They are.

Blottisham:

They are elected!

Quillibrace:

And then inducted.

Elowen:

Inducted into what?

Quillibrace:

Into continuity. Into briefings, alliances, intelligence frameworks, fiscal constraints, diplomatic expectations. Into a peer environment that extends beyond national boundaries.

Blottisham:

That is called governing.

Quillibrace:

It is also called re-identification.

Blottisham:

Re-identification?

Quillibrace:

The shift from identifying primarily with the electorate to identifying primarily with the governing network.

Blottisham:

You assume such a shift.

Quillibrace:

Observe the evidence. Policy continuity across administrations. Rapid alignment with international partners. Shared rhetoric among ostensibly opposed leaders. Swift policing of dissent that threatens systemic coherence.

Blottisham:

Are you proposing conspiracy?

Quillibrace:

I am proposing structure.

Elowen:

If elites identify laterally, what becomes of the electorate?

Quillibrace:

They become an input.

Blottisham:

They are the sovereign!

Quillibrace:

Symbolically.

Blottisham:

That is intolerable cynicism.

Quillibrace:

It is description.

Blottisham:

If the public disapproves strongly enough, governments fall.

Quillibrace:

Governments fall. Structures persist.

Elowen:

So elections rotate personnel within an enduring framework?

Quillibrace:

Often.

Blottisham:

Because the framework works!

Quillibrace:

For whom?

(Blottisham straightens.)

Blottisham:

For society.

Quillibrace:

Or for those who operate comfortably within its abstractions?

(A pause.)

Elowen:

Is that why protests feel… unheard? Even when they are numerically large?

Quillibrace:

They are heard. They are processed.

Blottisham:

As they must be.

Quillibrace:

As risk.

Blottisham:

As stability concerns.

Quillibrace:

Exactly.

Elowen:

So the public becomes… something to be stabilised?

Quillibrace:

Managed.

Blottisham:

That is inflammatory language.

Quillibrace:

Administrative language, I assure you.

Blottisham:

You cannot possibly believe that democratic citizens are merely managed populations.

Quillibrace:

I believe they are increasingly treated as such within the operational logic of large-scale governance.

Blottisham:

Even if that were true — and I do not concede it — what alternative do you propose? Chaos? Direct plebiscitary rule on every matter of state?

Quillibrace:

I propose clarity.

Blottisham:

Clarity achieves nothing.

Quillibrace:

On the contrary. It prevents ritual from masquerading as relation.

(Another silence. Elowen looks between them.)

Elowen:

If identification has shifted laterally… can it be shifted back?

Blottisham:

It need not be shifted at all.

Quillibrace:

That is the question we are here to examine.

(He turns back to the board and underlines the word ACCOUNTABILITY.)

Quillibrace:

We must ask: when we say democracy is accountable — accountable to whom, and through what relational channel?

The room holds the question.

Blottisham does not answer immediately.

Elowen writes something quietly in her notebook.

The seminar continues.