Apart from specific instrumental contributors, this blog has rarely explored fundamental structural causes for the weak state in countries like India. This post is the first in an effort in this direction and relies heavily on the framework provided by Francis Fukuyama in his two volume work (which itself draws heavily from Samuel Huntington's work of the late sixties). It is only an attempt at refining thoughts and by no means a final version.
The story Francis Fukuyama weaves on development goes something like below. See this and this videos. See also this paper.
Fukuyama posits development as a combination of a strong state constrained by Rule of Law and democratic accountability. Relatedly, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson have described development as the journey of a strong state shackled by a strong society along a narrow corridor.
Societies, for a different historical reasons and after long-drawn struggles, adopt Rule of Law. It affirms the supremacy of law over even the ruler, and thereby acts as the restraining factor on monarchs and autocrats alike. Religion has played the central role in its emergence. In all societies - Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and Hindu - religions created the moral rules that governed the society and created the social consensus. In all these traditions, religious rules made by religious specialists and priests, and interpreted by them were considered superior to the will of whoever is running the country. There existed a hierarchy of religious specialists (ulama, priests, brahmins etc) in law whose interpretation prevailed and who had to sanctify even important decisions in the political realm. The only exception was China, which did not have a transcendental religion.
In Europe, the Church, under Pope Gregory VII initiated two important reforms. One was to ban marriages and mandate celibacy among priests. This limited patrimonial relationships and sale of church offices. The second, important for Rule of Law, was to initiate a long battle with the Carolingian empire (which had centralised all powers, including appointments of Popes and bishops), which by the 12th century led to the emergence of a consensus on separation of powers between the political and religious authorities. The modern secular state emerged. The Concordat of Worms of 1122 allowed the papacy complete authority over church investitures and religious sphere, and in return it submitted to the emperor in the secular realm. Simultaneously the Justinian Code from the sixth century was revived and the civil law tradition was established, replacing the particularistic Germanic customary law.
A similar division has existed in the Islamic world between the Sultan and the Caliph. It endures even today. For example, in case of Saudi Arabia, it manifests in the balancing between Al Saud family and the Wahabi/Salafi ulama, and externally within the Gulf in the struggle to control the spread of Islamist organisations.
There is a strong case that in Britain the evolution of its aristocracy and emergence of a land owning class complemented the Church in the emergence of Rule of Law. The land-owning class emerged as a powerful countervailing force against the monarchy. The Magna Carta was an early reference point for an arrangement that constrained the rulers and protected the rights of the ruled.
Societies develop strong states after long struggles. Strong states are characterised by its ability to get things done. This typically arose (both China and Europe) from the exigencies of fighting wars ("war made the state, and states made war", Charles Tilly) - need to raise revenues, management of revenue administration, recruitment and administration of large armies, logistics chains to transport armies, management of conquered territories etc.
Here, kinship ties posed the inevitable challenges arising from nepotism and patrimonialism. This created problems in fighting and winning wars. There arose a need to create an impersonal bureaucratic system where recruitments are some form of merit-based. Historically, there have been two responses to the challenges posed by kinship ties. The first, is that of a merit based bureaucracy. The Chinese were the first to adopt this as early as the third century BC under the Qin dynasty. It emerged after a long period of brutal wars (Spring and Autumn, and the Warring States) starting from 11th century BC.
The Abbasids and then the Ottoman Turks developed a form of merit-based military slavery involving Christian boy recruits from conquered territories, mainly Balkans. The Devshirme system under the Ottomans involved converting and indoctrinating these converts and subjecting them to a series of examinations and appointments to all positions in the army and civilian administration on merit basis. Their appointments were not hereditary and they could not transfer their properties to heirs. The soldiers recruited under the system were called jannisaries and were critical in the military successes of the Ottomans.
In both cases, the primary motivation for merit-based systems was to develop an army capable of winning wars.
The Church too played its role in the dissolution of kinship ties in Europe. Its proclamations on the patrilineal system and marriage and inheritance related directives, were motivated less by any religious consideration than by a material desire to maximise accumulation of property.
The weakening of kinship ties accompanied by the industrial revolution was also associated with the emergence of middle classes who too demanded both better government services as well as participation in the government bureaucracies. This triggered a wave of civil service reform across the western world. The main examples were Stein-Hardenberg legislation at the turn of the nineteenth century in Prussia, the Northcote-Trevelyan Report in the UK in 1854, and the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Acts in US in 1883 after the assassination of President James Garfield by a patrimonial post seeker.
In the case of India, the caste system acted as a barrier to all these dynamics playing themselves out.
Finally, societies come to accept the need for democratic accountability of its rulers. Again, historically, this has emerged in parallel with economic progress and emergence of large enough middle-classes.
He argues that while China developed a strong state with impersonal bureaucracies as early as the 3rd century BC with the Qin dynasty, both Rule of Law or democratic accountability have remained elusive. Instead of Rule of Law, the Chinese government enforces Rule by law, with law being formulated by the government. He posits the historical absence of a transcendental religion with religious authorities as an important reason for this.
In case of India and many other developing countries (and others like Italy and Greece), he argues that they adopted democratic accountability before strong states emerged. In case of India, he argues that the strong brahminical order meant that the ruler was always subordinated to a some set of traditional rules, practices, and rituals. But the caste system also prevented the diminution of kinship loyalties and also the emergence of strong countervailing economic interest groups with society-wide representation.
Besides, it did not experience anything like the long periods of brutal wars that characterised China and Europe. Neither did it undergo the sort of industrial revolution that would have triggered the need to deliver public goods and also the emergence of a large enough middle class. Into this mix, colonial power had no innate interest in the country's economic progress.
For now, I am inclined to accept the narrative so far. But I'll differ with the following.
He then makes an important point about the premature arrival of democratic accountability into societies where kinship loyalties are still all pervasive and where state is weak. This, he argues with the illustration of United States in the nineteenth century, leads to the development of clientelism for electoral mobilisation. He describes political parties as being built on patronage relationships, with clients demanding public offices in return, which in turn, leads to governments packed with patrimonial appointments, who in, in turn, pander to specific interest groups mainly with policies that exclusively benefit them. Also, parties end up directly engaging with client groups to buy electoral support. He argues that developing countries are today where US was at the turn of the 20th century.
However, at least with respect to India, this description is flawed and incomplete. Importantly, India has had merit-based impersonal bureaucracies at all levels, at least since independence. There is a clear distinction between the political and permanent executive. It can be safely argued that, barring a few occasional exceptions, egregious kinship or other patrimonial arrangements are largely absent in public recruitments.
But there are two other important problems.
One, the persistence of caste ties and the expediencies of electoral politics have meant that political parties have had to resort to clientelism approaches for electoral mobilisation. This clientelism has operated not through patronage networks in bureaucracies, as in the US, but more in terms of vote buying by offering benefits aimed at specific interest groups. Being kinship based meant that these offers were skewed toward individual benefits and away from public goods.
As a result, we have a massive patchwork quilt of countless central and state government welfare benefits programs aimed at specific population categories. Besides, the dominant platform of electoral mobilisation is based on caste and kinship ties. This remains just as much true of national parties as of regional parties.
Two, the strong caste ties have meant that the bureaucracy, though notionally impersonal, carries all the problems associated with kinship loyalties. Individual bureaucrats remain heavily influenced by caste considerations and collectively captured by dominant majorities. This is especially pronounced at the lower levels of the government.
The combination of these two, along with other factors, have been instrumental in perpetuating and reinforcing clientelism and preventing the emergence of strong states. It has prevented the delivery of public goods emerge as a political good, displaced scarce public resources from the provisioning of public goods, marginalised reform imperatives, and prevented the emergence of strong state capacity. Apart from its negative role, these two factors have also strengthened the positive reinforcing effect of clientelism.
Consider a few channels of causality. One, the demand for public goods force governments into focusing on its delivery. Over time, the scope of delivery moves from mere provision to quality. Besides, provision of public goods demand increased tax revenues. All these demand an increasingly capable and strong state.
Some nuance is required here. The narrative of the developmental state which successive governments have embraced enthusiastically meant that public goods and services delivery was an important role for governments. But its limited electoral mobilisation role coupled with the weak state capacity, especially at the local level, meant that intent has remained just that, virtue signalling through the form of delivery and not actual commitment to the substance of delivery.
The focus on private benefits aimed at client networks and associated de-prioritisation of substantive focus on delivery has also had several consequential effects. Most importantly, it has fostered exits - the rich and the middle class voting with their feet, leaving public services as the realm of only the poor. All this collectively have had the effect of lowering the credibility and delegitimising the importance of governments.
If public services are crap, why pay taxes and why have governments itself except for a few basic necessities? Why not deregulate everywhere and privatise everything? The society as a collective, especially its vocal sections, ends up seeing only evil in governments. There is no vocal and influential mainstream constituency which is batting for the government and public services.
Even calls for reform are about deregulation and enabling private participation and markets, and rarely about strengthening state capacity to deliver something. So even the recent agriculture and labour reforms are seen in deregulatory terms of governments getting out of the way, and not about dismantling something to build something better. Even fundamental issues like oversight and regulation are characterised in technical terms of faceless inspections, digital compliances, third-party assessments and so on.
In other words, notwithstanding professions and homilies, the actual collective commitment and resolve to a professional bureaucracy, deliver good quality public goods and services, undertake important structural reforms, increase public resources, and thereby usher broad-based national development have been very weak.
All these in turn exert an amplifying effect on both enfeebling existing state capacity and preventing the emergence of strong states. The popular delegitimisation of governments as a force for creating the conditions of human development and economic growth is near complete.
It's hard to imagine that we can realise a higher level of sustainable and productive economic growth without reversing these trends. And this reversal is unlikely to happen in any meaningful manner as a technical and bureaucratic exercise, its leadership will have to be in the realm of political action.
No comments:
Post a Comment