The Consultocrat
A modest report on the state of affairs on the planet M-Earth
I. Prolegomena to Consultocracy
On the planet M-Earth, in a parallel universe that resembles ours in many details to an astonishing degree, a remarkable form of government has developed, which the political scientists there call consultocracy. It is a system in which the consultants advise those being advised on which consultants should be brought in for advice, while the cost of the advice is in turn evaluated by consultants.
No one embodies this system more visibly than Lushi van Ishing, the current Continental President of the M-European Commission. Her rise is an object lesson in how to reach an office one never stood for.
II. The Career of Debureaucratisation
As Defence Minister of the Moribund Republic of D. on M-Earth, Lushi van Ishing made a name for herself as a moderniser. Among the obstacles to modernisation, as later emerged, was that antiquated body of rules known as “procurement law” – regulations requiring that public contracts be put out to tender, compared, and awarded on the basis of quality and price.
During her term, the Defence Ministry spent sums in the hundreds of millions on external consultancies. The largest recipients bore names such as McKenzie and Accentura. The Federal Court of Audit found numerous breaches of procurement law. A committee of inquiry of the M-Earthian Bundestag took up the matter and heard 41 witnesses.
“Of course we also made mistakes in the process; there were procurement breaches and unclear involvement of third parties.”
Thus spoke the Consultocrat herself before the committee on 13 February 2020. Freely translated from M-Earthian political German: A few things happened, but someone else was responsible.
In its final report, the coalition majority on the committee concluded that the minister was personally beyond reproach. Responsibility, it said, had lain at the levels below, with state secretaries and heads of department. Among these state secretaries was a former director of McKenzie whom van Ishing had herself brought into the ministry. The opposition saw it differently.
III. The Art of Forgetting
In June 2019, a member of the committee of inquiry moved that the minister’s electronic communications also be admitted as evidence. What happened next deserves closer examination, for it illustrates the M-Earthian art of institutionalised forgetting.
According to the opposition’s account, it was said at first that the phone was being looked for, then that it was still locked with a PIN. In December the ministry conceded: the official phone of the minister, who had by then moved to M-Brussels, had already been completely wiped in August 2019. The ministry gave a security incident as the reason. It later emerged that the messages on her second device, an encrypted phone, had also been deleted.
On the wiping of the first device, the minister said: “I only know that from the newspaper, too.” She had not been in the ministry since 17 July, she said. And when asked whether anything important had been lost as a result, she pointed out: “Text messages are suited to quick communication.” Documents and strategies, she said, were drawn up and sent by other means in ministries.
One may see in this the pure, distilled essence of consultocracy: What is not archived never happened. What happened was not important. And what was important lay in other hands.
IV. The Democratic Innovation
In the year 2019 of the M-Earthian calendar, elections to the M-European Parliament were held. The party families had entered the race with lead candidates. The conservative party family emerged as the strongest force; its lead candidate was a certain Manfred W.
After the election, the heads of state and government deliberated behind closed doors. No majority could be found for Manfred W., nor for the lead candidates of the other families.
The solution: they nominated someone who had appeared on no ballot paper and in no campaign debate – Lushi van Ishing.
The M-European Parliament, whose members had fought for years for the lead-candidate principle, gave way. With a majority of nine votes above the required number, it elected the non-candidate President of the Commission.
Commentators at the time spoke of a slap in the face for voters. But the Consultocrat had understood what more idealistic politicians often overlook: Democracy is a process, and processes can be optimised. Most efficiently by cutting them short.
V. The Transparency Offensive
In spring 2021, the Commission concluded a contract for up to 1.8 billion doses of a certain vaccine, with a volume estimated at around 35 billion euros. Beforehand, as the New York Times reported, the Continental President had been in direct contact by telephone and text message with the chief executive of the manufacturer – let us call him Albert B.
Journalists asked: what did these messages say?
The Commission’s answer, in substance: such messages were short-lived, they were not archived, and decisions were not taken by that route.
The M-Earthian Ombudsman investigated the matter. She found that the President’s cabinet had never been explicitly asked to search for the messages, and assessed this as “maladministration”.
A journalist from the New York Times brought an action before the General Court of the M-European Union. In May 2025 the court found in her favour: the Commission had not plausibly explained why it did not hold the messages. It had relied only on hypotheses or provided shifting and imprecise information.
By that time, van Ishing had already been elected to her second term.
VI. The Method
It would be a mistake to pin consultocracy on a single person. It is a system, and systems need no intention. They produce their rules by themselves, without anyone having to write them down. On M-Earth, five such rules can be observed:
First: What you can no longer do yourself, you buy in. If something goes wrong, responsibility lies with the outsiders – settled by contract, without consequence in practice.
Second: What runs through fleeting channels leaves no file. What leaves no file, no one can request.
Third: If something does turn up, it is unimportant. If it is important, someone else was responsible.
Fourth: The majorities that support a government also determine how thoroughly it is investigated.
Fifth: No affair is so big that it would stand in the way of the next office.
VII. Epilogue from the Parallel Universe
On M-Earth, consultocracy has proved remarkably stable. Lushi van Ishing continues to head the Continental Commission. The deleted data remain deleted. The unarchived messages remain unarchived. The consultants go on consulting.
Occasionally someone asks: how could all this happen? The answer is simple: it happened because it could happen. And it could happen because no one prevented it. And no one prevented it because those who could have prevented it depended on those it concerned.
Jonathan Swift might have made this sentence of it – it appears in none of his books: One can govern an entire people without their understanding how, provided only that one takes care that the proceedings are complicated enough never to be fully understood, and boring enough never to be fully investigated.
And Kurt Tucholsky, equally freely invented, would have added: The secret of power lies in never denying the obvious – only its significance.
On M-Earth, this is called: governing.