Eric O’Keefe

Maurice McTigue of the Mercatus Center yesterday told a group in Scottsdale Arizona that while technological innovation was the primary area of competition for the last twenty years of the 20th century, “in the 21st century government policy will be central in competition.”

This is most apparent in Europe, where Ireland and then former communist areas in Eastern Europe have led a tax-cutting competition.  McTigue uses these examples to show that “small chellenges can make big groups change.”

He is spending a fair amount of his time promoting reform, and therefore policy competition, between the various states in the U.S.  Here the foundational reform is transparency and accountability.  It is difficult to hold politicians to account if we don’t know what they did with our money.

One of McTigue’s slides reads: “The greater the transparency of government processes and procedures the better the decisions, with less possibility of corrupt practices.”

McTigue was a leader in the New Zealand government which took the country from the edge of socialist lethargy in the mid-1980s to a thriving market economy.