Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY
/
A Comedy of Bureaucratic Errors
A Comedy of Bureaucratic Errors
Jul 18, 2025 7:46 PM

  The Apple original series Slow Horses centers around a man who has fought two wars. The world-worn Jackson Lamb, brilliantly performed by Gary Oldman, is disheveled, indifferent, and bitter. And he’s got every right to be because he’s not only been fighting against the Soviets and numerous security threats to the UK, but has also battled the large institutional bureaucracy within MI5 Britain’s security agency. At the end of each season, viewers are left wondering which conflict is worse.

  Those bureaucratic wars, skillfully crafted by creator Mick Herron, are important in explaining the appeal of the show. All espionage tales have the great inherent attraction of peeking into the shadowy world of cloak and dagger and witnessing the deadly battles between competing systems of governance. But Slow Horses has something else. Intelligence and security agencies are large impersonal bureaucracies just like the DMV. Herron has humanized his characters and placed them in a world where individuals are susceptible to both traitorous temptations and the basic human instincts of self-interest and ambition that play out in the politics of bureaucratic institutions—whether it’s getting the corner office or murdering a loyal agent to cover up a scandal. At a time when the West faces multiple security threats from terrorists, dictators, hackers, and extremists and is also experiencing explosive growth in unchecked bureaucratic autonomy and authority, Herron has made the well-worn spy thriller even more relatable to his audience.

  Until the 1960s, scholars modeled individuals in the public sector as public-spirited in their motivations and work. One of the founding fathers of public choice, the irascible Gordon Tullock worked in the US foreign service in China after completing law school. That experience, and his general skepticism about—well—everything, prompted him to turn his attention to the administrative state. Tullock and his Nobel prize-winning co-author James Buchanan built a model of politics that posited politicians and bureaucrats as self-interested rather than public-spirited and rational rather than angelic. They also included the idea that politics is an exchange process, much like a market. Using those two assumptions, they turned the world of political analysis upside down.

  Tullock’s career was illustrious and varied. His work on bureaucracies included two important books studying the administrative state that provided fresh ways to analyze the government agencies that all of us caricature from time to time. We know that the public sector can be inefficient and sclerotic. Bureaucrats avoid responsibility and try to claim credit, and without market signals, the quality of their work is difficult to judge. Taking those institutional constraints and assuming individuals are not angels once they are hired by the government, Tullock argued that bureaucrats work for the same reasons all of us do: to make a living, be happy with our work, and gain the esteem and approbation of others. Because metrics to measure “good” work are hard to find in large non-market organizations, promotion is often more about flattery, popularity, and serving your superiors wishes, which can lead to consensus views and uniformity of opinion, even incorrect ones.

  Faulty opinions and unconstrained loyalty loom large in Herron’s world, and he balances realism with a dark humor that’s smart and frequently disarming. I doubt he is familiar with Tullock’s work, but they are kindred spirits in their pursuit of a more realistic way of understanding modern life within large institutions. The premise of the show illustrates another key insight of Tullock: it’s almost impossible to fire incompetent bureaucrats. Slow Horses is based on a fictitious place where MI5 sends those agents who have messed up. Rather than trying to fire them, the flawed agents are sent to a building called “Slough House” run by the aforementioned Jackson Lamb. Lamb is something to behold. He hilariously curses, ridicules, and mocks. But he is also gifted and revered even among the leadership of MI5. Under all of his bluster and cynicism, he helps guide the group in each season through the dangers of spying to endings that might not be “happy” but avoid as much carnage and chaos as possible.

  Among the misfit spies are a drug addict, compulsive gambler, recovering alcoholic, and the grandson of a famous service character who infamously “blew up” Stansted Airport in a training exercise. All of them are more interesting for their warts and humanity. Imagine not super spies like James Bond or George Smiley, but rather characters from The Office or Parks and Recreation (if slightly darker) fighting real security threats. It’s an odd mix, but it works beautifully because Herron makes them sympathetic and human. There are spies looking for love after failed marriages and who are too trusting of Russians with a bottle of vodka. The recovering alcoholic has a stunning attention to detail and is gifted at chess. The drug addict has a Bruce Willis-esque irreverence when she isn’t sneaking off to the bathroom to get high.

  All of the seasons that have been released so far have many excellent illustrations of the points Tullock articulated, but the third season is the clearest and best. An outside private security agency with ties to a cabinet minister is tipped off by one of the MI5 leaders about weaknesses with security protocols, but the real reason is to reveal a cover-up at the top of the agency. Slough House is used as the weak point in the test and the vulnerabilities of the agencys security are found. But an idealistic former agent flips the script and brings Lamb and his crew into the action, which culminates in brutal bloodshed and an orgy of automatic weapons fire in an old documents storage facility. It’s a fitting way to end this latest season and one Tullock would have very much enjoyed.

  Under Lamb’s highly unorthodox leadership style, he slowly tries to reform the profoundly human agents dumped in his lap and protect the UK.

  There are four layered games going on. First, there is a struggle for power between MI5’s two most powerful figures, the so-called “first desk” who is ruthlessly self-interested and emotionally frigid even by MI5 standards and played brilliantly by Sophie Okonedo of Hotel Rwanda fame. “Second desk” is played by Kristin Scott Thomas who looks like she is having a ball meddling in operations, verbally sparring with Oldman, and trying to undermine her boss while advancing her own career. First Desk has engaged in an extensive cover-up to protect her position. It’s now spiraled out of control and Scott Thomas’ character is slowly leaking it out to undermine her. At one point the two meet to discuss the situation and Scott Thomas notes sadly that a Slough House agent has been kidnapped. Okonedo shakes her head saying the two of them needed to “limit the collateral damage.” Scott Thomas interprets this as saving their missing agent, but Okonedo corrects her and admits, “I wasn’t meaning her, I was talking about us, but yes I hope she’ll come through unscathed.”

  The second game involves a quest for justice by a selfless former agent who is masquerading as a member of a for-profit security group. His love for a fallen comrade pushes him to leave a trail of corpses as he struggles to shine light on the cover-up. Third, there is the material self-interest of a wide range of characters including the ambitious, greedy, delightfully immoral British cabinet minister played by Samuel West, who lacks the guile and cunning of his MI5 counterparts. Chris Riley’s bull in the China shop turn as the head of security follows Okonedo’s bloody illegal orders to promote his own career in exchange for her promises of promotion for loyalty. There are times throughout this season when I almost started referring to Slough House as Tullock House. Eventually, Okonedo ties Scott Thomas to the leaks. From there the two veteran actors play out the remainder of the season in an office trading barbs in a psychological chess match over a gifted bottle of rare single malt scotch as the battle between the goons loyal to First Desk and the Slow Horses rages in a secret MI5 document facility.

  Finally, there are the personal struggles of those working at the Slough House. The compulsive gambler and drug addict arrive at the scene of the climactic confrontation literally fighting for their careers. At the same time, the recovering alcoholic, the misanthropic IT whiz, and Lamb evade a hit team sent by Riley to “clear the board.” Lamb tries to tiptoe through the minefields of all four games with his supreme confidence, raucous sarcasm, biting tongue, and finally his often brutal but necessary use of honesty, almost as a weapon. It’s great fun, but there are important lessons here as well.

  In the Federalist Papers, Publius argues famously that political power can be constrained in a number of ways, but one of the key limits was that ultimately ambition can be made to counteract ambition if institutions are well constructed. However, Publius could not have anticipated the size and scope of the current administrative state in the West and elsewhere. Can that same principle apply today? Can we have hope that agencies such as MI5, charged with the critical task of protecting “our way of life,” will be successful despite being staffed with “regular” people, immune from electoral accountability, ill-suited to flexibility and adaptability? At the end of season three we see ambition can counteract ambition, but only at tremendous cost.

  Tullock emphasized the importance of creating institutional structures to encourage better outcomes based on his assumptions of human behavior. The MI5 we see in Slow Horses certainly does little to deter misguided self-interested behavior. Under Lamb’s highly unorthodox leadership style, he slowly tries to reform the profoundly human agents dumped in his lap and protect the UK. They might never be real-life James Bonds or George Smileys, but the legitimately human and flawed spies from Slough House are surprisingly agile and effective without the overbearing bureaucracy that the “good agents” must endure. Herron’s slow horses aren’t just loveable underdogs, they are more realistic and approachable. And if flesh and blood spies can help protect us from the bad guys unleashed from the tyranny of an overbearing bureaucracy, that gives us a glimmer of unexpected hope for liberty from this razor-sharp series.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY
Editor's Note: Summer 2018
In early July, an Indian court issued a ruling that accorded the status of “legal person or entity” to animals in the state, saying “they have a distinct persona with corresponding rights, duties and liabilities of a living person.” With this measure, designed to prevent cruelty to animals, justices of the Uttarakhand High Court in northern India declared that “the entire animal kingdom, including avian and aquatic ones, are declared as legal entities having a distinct persona with corresponding...
Acton Briefs: Summer 2018
A collection of short essays by Acton writers, click a link to jump to that article: AU and building the free society by Jenna Suchyta Westminster Abbey praises God for the NHS by Noah Gould President Trump nominates Judge Brett Kavanaugh by Joe Carter AU and building the free society Jenna Suchyta, Acton Institute Intern Over 1,000 people flocked to Grand Rapids June 18-21 to listen to more than 80 inspiring faculty members lecture on a wide variety of...
Editor's Note: Fall 2018
When I accepted the new position as managing editor of Religion & Liberty, only one thing had been set in stone: Caroline Roberts’ article on Walker Percy would be the cover story. Everything else remained to be determined. Her essay is one of the first e from Acton’s new longform journalism platform, bines extensive reporting with beautiful photography to give readers an immersive understanding of the subject. This project continues to grow and improve. Curt Biren analyzes economic and...
Arvo Pärt and the universal soul of music
Sacred music is not only a devotional posed and performed to honor our Creator but also a bulwark against human sinfulness and frailties. Composer Arvo Pärt has been creating music of faith that inspires while at the same time subverts several of the most oppressive systems of government of the past century. poser’s lifelong development as a poser also led him to a deeper faith. He converted to Orthodox Christianity in 1972. Theologian Peter Bouteneff observed that Pärt is...
The politics of apocalypse
Disarmageddon” is what The Economist earlier this year called placent, reckless leaders” who “have forgotten how valuable it is to restrain nuclear weapons.” The politics of nuclear weapons – deterrence doctrines, mutually assured destruction and so on – have been the obsessive stuff of international politics since the Manhattan Project. There is, as Alissa Wilkinson and I argue in our 2015 book How to Survive the Apocalypse, something unique about the nuclear age, in which it es terrifyingly clear...
Power, people and things in 'Westworld'
Since I was a child I’ve always loved a good story. I believed that stories helped us to ennoble ourselves, to fix what was broken in us, and to help us e the people we dreamed of being.” So begins Anthony Hopkin’s character, Robert Ford, in his speech marking the finale of the first season of HBO’s mind-bending, techno-philosophical series “Westworld.” Ford is the brilliant co-creator of Westworld, a theme park set several decades in the future in which...
Labor unions, yesterday and today
Along-cherished predisposition on the part of the Roman Catholic Church is that labor unions act as a protection against the exploitation of workers. From Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum forward, the Church has been an outspoken proponent of organized labor, worker safety and human dignity. Thus, es as little surprise that the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops weighed-in when the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in February regarding the Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and...
Nature, technology, and Pompeii
The primary mission of the Acton Institute since its inception has been identifying and revealing both traditional and innovative tonics to ward off Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In fact, the manner in which we wield our power over one another, our environment and God’s other creatures defines our humanity, or, in other words, who we are as individuals and social creatures. bined tradition teaches us that humanity was not created by...
The return of nature worship
We live in decadent times. Universal human rights have not been fully attained, yet radical environmentalists insist that flora, fauna and even geological features and structures should be deemed legal persons, a meme known as “nature rights.” The drive to grant rights to the entirety of the natural world has already achieved stunning victories. In 2008, Ecuador granted human-type rights to “nature” in its constitution back, while Bolivia recently passed a law to the same effect. More than 30...
Sister Mary Kenneth Keller
For the first time, we can now mechanically simulate the cognitive process. –Sister Mary Kenneth Keller Sister Mary Kenneth Keller established herself as a strong influence in the world puter science at a time when women in the field were unheard of. At the same time, her work paved the way for what we now understand as the information economy – a key driver of wealth creation. She was the first woman in the United States to earn a...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved