GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES

The Dire Consequences of Shutting Down Governments

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Ian Morris
Board of Contributors

Feb 21, 2018 | 08:00 GMT

The U.S. Capitol.

The U.S. Capitol. An analogy to contemporary American governments' willingness to shut themselves down comes from the final decades of China's Ming dynasty.

(DREW ANGERER/Getty Images)

Highlights

  • The history of governments that refuse to let themselves operate is not a happy one, as the decline of the Ming dynasty illustrates.
  • Alliances and divisions of power can produce effective runs around recalcitrant bureaucracies, but there are few remedies when a government willfully shutters itself.
  • It's not clear how long a 21st century government can survive a shutdown, but it's clear shutting down is not how a government is meant to function.

Each winter, I spend a couple of days at the University of Zurich, teaching a module in its executive MBA program on how culture affects management. This year, my two days fell on Feb. 9 and 10, and just as we were sitting down to start the opening session, a student asked me what I thought about the latest government shutdown in the United States. I assumed he was talking about the events of Jan. 20-22, but no, he was referring to something new. Just a few minutes earlier — right before 11 p.m. on Feb. 8 in Washington, D.C., so right before 8 a.m. on Feb. 9 in Switzerland — the U.S. Senate had gone into recess after Sen. Rand Paul had challenged a proposed trillion-dollar spending bill to fund continuing government activities. This made a shutdown at midnight inevitable. For the second time in three weeks, the world's...

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