Value Competition

Should India become a great power?

[The riff below is based on the "Can India become a great power?" cover and accompanying editorial and article in the latest Economist...the Economist line is summarized in the concluding graf: "That India can become a great power is not in doubt.  The real question is whether it wants to."  By that, the Economist means that India has to decide whether it wants to jettison an outdated philosophy of non-alignment and semi-pacifism in favor of a culture that supports an active security policy aligned with the West and democratic values.  

A value competition line on India (AKA what I might write if I ran the Economist, which fortunately for all concerned I don't) follows...]

That India can become a great power is in serious doubt.   Given its distinctive and valuable history and culture, whether it should want to become a great power is also open to question.

First, as to whether India can become a great power.  A requisite of a contemporary great power is a high level of discipline and efficiency on the part of its people in their work, including if necessary the projection of force against other nations.  India for all its pockets of economic excellence and military proficiency is a very considerable distance away from the driven, disciplined culture of work that one sees in the West and in East Asia.   Whether we will see South Asia in the coming century transformed by the rise of a South Asian moral equivalent to the individualist, Calvinist work ethic of the West or to the different but also hard-driving work ethic of East Asia is a fascinating question.  It would be incautious to assume a yes answer.  If the answer turns out be no, India will not become a great power.

Second, there are serious grounds from an Indian perspective, and also from an international one, for wondering whether great power status for India is the right future for the country.  India has a culture and a history of exceptional richness in philosophy, religion, and the arts.  Relatedly or not, it also has a history dating back for millennia of being the conquered, not the conquerer.  Indian armies have not swept out from the heartland to conquer Persia or central Asia; the pattern has always been the reverse.  Finally, it also has a long history, like all other parts of the world, of agricultural toilers and elites alike who for millennia have worked with less than the driven, shame and guilt-driven intensity that marks workers and elites in the contemporary West and East Asia.   

It is entirely possible that the right answer for India going forward does involve its becoming a work culture like that of the West and East Asia.  If it does so, great power status will follow.  But is also entirely possible that the right answer is that India should become a great non-great power.  Given its distinctive culture and history and size, India has more potential than any other nation in the world to become an exemplar of a 21st century alternative to the productivity-driven ethos of the West and East Asia.

In the end, it may well be right from the perspective of India that Indian culture transform itself into a driven, Calvinist one like that of the West and East Asia.   From an international perspective, though, the case is less clear.  The world can benefit from a competition of values in which not all nations are driven by the same values and follow the same paths.  It would in many ways be wonderful to welcome India along with China to the ranks of the world's work-driven societies and great powers.  But even as that would make both India and the world a richer place, it would also in one important way make the world a poorer place.   The gods above us and within us who counsel a remorseless duty to produce--the God of Calvin and the secular gods of the Meiji Restoration--are worth respect.  But so too are the gods above us and within us--the jovial Ganesh, the transcendant Rama, the oppositional Shiva--of a culture that supports different, less remorselessly driven, ways of living.

 

 

"Asian Democracy" Past, Present, and Future--Dominant Party Systems Can Be All Right

For a number of years in my "big politics book" project, one of my organizing themes was the importance of close or "50-50" competition between a right oriented toward markets in economics and security in culture and a left with the reverse orientations.  I'm still down with the importance of left-right competition involving culture and econ, with the left favoring growing the nation as fast as possibly culturally and the right favoring growing it as fast as possible economically.  But I don't think any more that it's that important to have a relatively close balance between the sides. Having democracy with a clear A side that wins a great majority of the time and a clear B side that scarcely ever does can I think be perfectly all right; it may even be the long-term dominant pattern for democracies not only in Asia but around the world.

Some applications of the revised framework:

1) The old LDP dominant system in Japan was just fine to the extent it involved a right that sincerely aimed at lifting the GDP and a socialist-led left that was sincerely committed to a vision of cultural growth for Japan.  Japan now has closer political competition but an inferior political system.  The basic problem under my framework as I'd now apply it is the lack of a left in the current Japanese order.  It would be very nice for Japanese prospects if a serious cultural left party--even if an electorally doomed one like the old socialists--arose that championed a culturally and ethnically diverse Japan.

2) A Congress-dominant system in India is fine essentially forever to the degree there continues to be a BJP opposition that really does want to grow India economically and a Congress that continues to believe in cultural growth.  Even if the BJP's Hindutva, nationalist side makes it too raw for ruling a nation as diverse as India except occasionally, it can still keep Congress from descending into the anti-growth economics that characterized the old Gandhi-Nehru India.

3) The prospects for a successful dominant-party system arising in the future in China seem to me not at all bad.  Some set of Communist leaders, if not Xi Jinping and the current new coterie, should one day be equal to the challenge of splitting off a value-driven opposition that would lose all the time at first and heavily over the long haul but be a useful foil.   Given the reality of the current Communist system and its preoccupation with economic growth, the A party would most plausibly be a right party--how about the Communist-Confucianist Party?   The B party would most plausibly be a left party pushing cultural freedom and ethnic inclusion--maybe the Communist-Freedom Party?  

The hypothesized future for China and Japan also strikes me as plausible for Korea and Taiwan: dominant right parties committed to economic growth with useful left oppositions committed to cultural openness and growth.  Russia if treated as an Asian country could also be in this category if and when its people and leaders figure out the challenge of creating a genuine "cultural freedom and ethnic diversity" left opposition to replace the corpse of communism.  Such a Russian left could help keep a dominant right genuinely committed to economic growth as opposed to looting.

Are there other major Asian countries in which the Indian "left party dominant" model may apply in the future?   Maybe Iran, if and when Islamist passions work their way through and are replaced by the long-term rule of a party that embodies the pro-growth cultural side of Gandhi-Nehru politics.  Then again, maybe not: When and if Islamism runs its course, Iran like the other nations previously discussed here could readily go into a dominant right model.

Highly ethnically divided nations that follow the Indian pattern of an ethnic majority that is ahead of the major minority or minorities economically are ones in which a dominant left party may well make sense as an equilibrium.  Perhaps the Lee Kuan Yew model with a dominant right party that has driven Singapore to affluence will give way over time to a dominant left party model in which a cultural freedom and ethnic inclusion side usually wins over a "grow the GDP" side.  Israel, if and when its relations to its neighbors are resolved, would fit a dominant left party model well.  So would European nations in which a sense of ethnic division between a Christian and post-Christian majority and a Muslim minority is high.  So might the U.S., Canada, and Australia in the future if ethnic divisions are high enough in these countries that the right winds up being ethnocentric over the long haul.

Ethnically divided nations with an ethnic majority that is economically behind the major minority or minorities are ones in which it is hard to get an effective political opposition between a cultural growth left side and an economic growth right side off the ground.  The prospects for democracy giving enough weight to growth as opposed to cultural and economic security for the majority are weaker in these countries.  Malaysia (clearly) and Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines (less clearly) fall into this category in southeast Asia.  Elsewhere, Lebanon, Egypt, and South Africa do.  So I believe does most of Latin America, much as I hope I'm wrong about the degree of ethnic division in places like Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Peru.  One possible way for this category of nations to have better prospects for economic and cultural growth involves their becoming nations like India or Singapore with a more economically advanced majority through substantial immigration of poorer people who are ethnically distinct from the majority group.  So, for example, if a large number of lower-income immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa are allowed to come to, say, Egypt, South Africa, Peru, or the Philippines over the course of the 21st  century and eventually become a significant ethnic bloc and voting bloc in their new country, I'm optimistic about the democratic prospects and the growth prospects of the country they come to. 

The First New Nation, part MMXII

FInishing up the draft of a long paper...have been blogging about NYT CWPs instead of academic stuff as part of a productivity management strategy I'm not sure I understand...

Anyway, back into the lists w/ a light post...

Just saw something this morning--not remembering what--on how everywhere else in the world (assume this means Europe) uses red for the left and blue for the right and how the reverse usage in the US is confusing...I've seen that point before maybe xiv times...for some reason it set me off this time...

So here goes...

The US blue-red scheme goes along with our getting first, in the usual fashion noted by Seymour Martin Lipset, to a place on social class and politics that our European friends with their more frozen party systems will take some time to get to but that is coming there just as it's come here.  True blue for the center-left goes along with that side being the side of a coherent, well-ordered, establishment of upscale people that is deeply committed to the blue team, especially on culture but on economics as well, and that has a home in major sectors of the economy and society (e.g., government service, professing, teaching, non-profits, the arts, and the sciences).  Angry red for the center-right goes along with that side lacking a coherent establishment and having to rely on a combination of splenetic cultural populism and pro-capitalist beliefs that is supported by no major upscale occupational group.   Our colors are the way the West (maybe not the world) is going; the European colors are a relic of the way things used to be over there.

Two views of the world: "A rich white minority and everyone else" OR "A liberal minority and everyone else"

Lens A: The world can be divided racially and economically between a small minority of affluent white people in Europe, North America, and Australia and the overwhelming majority of human beings, who are neither white nor affluent.

Liberal version of lens A: The rich white minority historically has oppressed and to some extent continues to oppress the majority of the world's people everywhere through racism, colonialism, ethnocentrism, and classism.   Although liberals are themselves/ourselves largely drawn from the ranks of affluent, educated white people, they/we are sympathizers with the underdogs who are an overwhelming majority of the world.   By contrast, the well-off, educated white people who are leaders in the conservative ranks are advocates for a group that is a tiny minority of the world.

Conservative version of lens A: The economic success enjoyed by people in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia, along with certain other societies such as Israel, Japan, and increasingly China, is a function of cultural habits of hard work and conscientiousness in these societies that are less well developed in most parts of the world.   Unfortunately, liberals plus a large number of people in the US and other wealthy nations who do not share the culture's commitment to work and personal responsibility (Mitt Romney's 47%) plus people from cultures without that core attachment to work form a large majority of the world's population, at least for now.

Lens B: As Haidt has contended, the world can be divided morally and culturally between a small minority of liberals who embrace a narrower morality that highlights fairness, compassion, and resistance to oppression and are skeptical of traditional moral foundations such as authority, loyalty, purity, sacredness, and punishment of wrongdoers and the overwhelming majority of human beings--conservatives, moderates, and working-class people in wealthy countries, and the overwhelming majority of the population everywhere else in the world--who embrace a broader morality that includes the traditional moral foundations alongside the more limited set endorsed by liberals.

Currently, lens B is not nearly as widely employed as lens A is.   It should be much more widely used, in my view.   One key reason is that both the liberal version of lens B--which amounts to something like, "we may be a minority, but we are a key contributor to modernity and we will grow as a proportion of the world over time"--and the conservative version--which amounts to something like, "we are and want to remain a majority, but we acknowledge a debt to you on the liberal side for being a straw that stirs the drink and makes us better in our understanding and practice of our own morality"--are much more reasonable and conducive to civility than the liberal and conservative versions of lens A.

To put the point another way: Lens A with its racial and economic slicing up of the world is conducive to a war between liberal and conservative conceptions of fairness and desert.  Lens B with its moral and cultural slicing up of the world is conducive to a sense of both modern and traditional moralities and cultures as playing a constructive role.  Lens A strikes me as a "one best way" lens, lens B as a "diverse moral and cultural goods" lens.

If the criterion is who truly values diversity, advocates of lens B should in the end be able to win over advocates of lens A.

A takeaway for practical politics: Lens B makes it possible for political moderates and conservatives, who often see "diversity" as a code word for a liberal agenda, to embrace it for themselves.   So, for example, in education moderates and conservatives can counter liberal arguments that diversity rightly understood means cultural competence training to help teachers and others to recognize institutional exclusion/bias/racism and thus empower those now not doing well in school.  As an alternative to that line, moderates and conservatives can advance their own constructive, non-adversarial arguments that begin with a respect for moral diversity--traditional morality as well as progressive morality is good!--and contend that initiatives based on such respect can empower people who are now not doing well in the schools more effectively than the adversarial cultural competence agenda can.

 

My Ideology Project

In connection with working to have a credible case for promotion next year, I've been thinking about what was supposed to be my big book on the history and logic of ideology.   That book and the ideology project that lay behind was my major academic project for ten years until I decided to go back to journal articles three years ago.  

My basic argument was as follows: The opposition between the left and the right has been and continues to be one of the key requisites for making modernity work.  Alhough the antagonistic intensity of red, blue, and purple is morally troubling, it is also necessary to create a value-enhancing politics in which individuals, parties, and the system rise above narrow interests and elite deals.  Further, although the lack of intellectual coherence of red, blue, and purple on key values such as individualism, communitarianism, excellence, and equality is intellectually troubling, it is also necessary if we are to create a moderate politics of elite-majority coalitions rather than a polarized politics of elite-majority conflict.  What about the future?  It is possible that there will be a movement centered in the modern elite toward a new kind of faith that is an alternative to political faith, much as there was a parallel movement centered in the 18th century elite toward political faith over religious faith that was a central part of the transition to modernity.   If such a future elite movement arises, then red-blue-purple political faith will migrate down the ladder socio-economically, much as religious faith has done over the past few centuries.  That would be a good thing, in that it would help impart the moral conviction and meaning that political faith now brings to some people's lives to a wider range of people.

As I summarize my line on ideology, I am reminded of the problems I've faced in making my project into a book, including but not limited to problems of method--am I doing tech modeling, accessible historical narrative, Continental musing, or some ineffable combination of all of them?--normative implications--do I claim that the theory leads to cool ideas for rads, centrists, etc., as I've wanted to do at some points?--and capacity--for all that I spent several years trying to make myself less parochial and learn about world politics, what do I really know?   For all these and other reasons, I get why I've had a tough time making the project work.  It does seem like something worth returning to after I get promoted, and like something worth thinking about now if doing so can help illuminate more immediate projects.  

 

The (Im)possibility Theorem and the Future of Political and Religious Ideologies

If one believes that Arrow's (Im)possibility Theorem is important--and I do--well-functioning democratic politics will wind up having one basic dimension along which parties, pols, and the people array themselves.  If one further believes that the modern competition between a center-left that trends solidaristic-populist on economics and individualist-elitist on culture and a center-right that trends solidaristic-populist on culture and individualist-elitist on economics is effective in countering both the tyranny of the majority and of the elite minority-- and I do--the future of politics--or so one may hope-- is more of the same, with the center-left versus center-right politics of the affluent democracies eventually extending to all nations and to some form of world democracy with global elections between center-left and center-right parties as well as national and local elections.

A likely and/or desirable future for religious ideologies strikes me as a trickier matter.  Four possibilities:

1) In the end, religion and politics will always be fused, Madison's hopes to the contrary notwithstanding.  Accordingly, the future of politics will also be the future of religion.  Protestantism in the US is a leading indicator of the way the world will go: fragmentation, but with the customized religious sects arrayed on the same left-right dimension that defines politics;

2) Madison will win, and religion and politics will decouple, with religions flourishing along multiple dimensions in addition to left and right.  In particular, there will be libertarian-elitist religious sects even in the absence of significant libertarian parties, and solidaristic-populist religious sects even in the absence of significant populist parties; 

3)  Religion will continue as a key element of clashing civilizations, as in Huntington's vision, and existing religions and new religious sects will increasingly become ethno-national.  Hopes for the extension of democracy to all nations and for world democracy will be decisively defeated by assertive ethno-nationalist religion;

4)  A new version of religion will arise that is based on rejecting both left religion and right religion in favor of a different, non-political ideal of the sacred in human life.

The political side of me likes alternative 1 while the religious side of me likes alternative 4.  The political side of me worries about alternative 2 undermining democratic stability, and both my political and religious sides find alternative 3 a highly unappealing though entirely possible future.

 

 

The norm of non-use

Re-reading Schelling's Micromotives and Macrobehavior...the last chapter is a version of his Nobel acceptance speech on how a norm of non-use of nuclear weapons has developed over the lastr sixty years.

The norm Schelling refers to can be operationalized: We can call it shame that reduces the payoffs of a player who uses nuclear weapons when the other does not by the amount that the other loses from one's decision to use nuclear weapons.  Below are two matrices: The one on the left assumes egoism, while the one on the right assumes shame applies.

                       USE-NO USE--EGO                         USE-NO USE--SHAME

              Use                    No Use                    Use                        No Use      

Use       -10, -10                 1, -15                 -10, -10                   -14, -15 

 

No Use   -15, 1                       0, 0                -15, -14                       0, 0

The game with egoistic players is a prisoner's dilemma, with using nuclear weapons as the dominant strategy and the only equilibrium.  The game with shame is a stag hunt, with no dominant strategy; in that game both use, use and no-use, no-use as well as a mixed strategy are equilibria. 

Christopher Hitchens

I just finished reading Hitch 22, Christopher Hitchens' political memoir.  Hitchens seems to be a person whose moral emotions are not checked as much as most people's are by the cooler sides of human character.  The intensity of his loyalty to his great and good friends, of his belief in the authority of reason over religion, of his judgments of unfairness, of his sense of disgust, of his invocations of human suffering--all betoken a person in whom the inhibitions that tamp down moral feeling in many of us have been reduced.   

Obama's Peace Prize

The following op-ed uses Obama's recent Nobel Prize to combine value competition ideas about good things arising from the competition of self-interested pols with classical/neoclassical economic ideas about good things arising from the competition of self-interested businesspeople:

Robbed by Oslo:

 

Obama and Other Peacemakers Whose Successes Were Overlooked

 

Wayne Eastman

Rutgers Business School—Newark and New Brunswick

1 Washington Park

Newark, NJ 07102

weastman@business.rutgers.edu

(973) 353-1001

 

    With its airy recognition of Barack Obama for potential rather than accomplishment--"for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"--the Norwegian Nobel Committee did the President and the cause of peacemaking a disservice, but not for the reason that most critics of the award have suggested.

    In fact, Obama would have been a reasonable if controversial choice for a peace prize based on accomplishment, given his substantial contributions as an opposition politician and then as President to the winding down of the war in Iraq.

As an anti-war Democratic candidate in 2007, Obama took the position that the U.S. needed to withdraw large numbers of troops from Iraq relatively quickly.  At the time, that position was highly controversial though popular among many Democratic primary voters, and was opposed by Hillary Clinton, John McCain and other Republican candidates, and the Bush administration.   Two years later, Obama’s position has become conventional wisdom, and has gone along with a major reduction in violence and considerable political progress in Iraq. 

    It is true that the situation in Iraq was and is highly complex, and that figures in addition to Obama--David Petraeus with his military ingenuity and Nouri al-Maliki with his outreach beyond his political base are just two who come to mind—can also be credited with major roles in the reduction in bloodshed and increase in order.  Still, a Nobel award that recognized Obama “for his central role as a democratic opposition politician and then as President in fostering a resolution to a long-running war in Iraq” would have been sound in a way that the actual award citation was not.

Although the oddity of Obama’s being recognized by the Nobel Committee for the wrong reason makes his situation unusual, he stands in a long line of figures in politics and in business over the decades who have made major contributions to peace but have been unrecognized by Oslo, with its chronic bias toward noble gestures and diplomatic agreements.

Unless they engage in dramatic diplomatic deals, hardheaded democratic politicians like Obama who care about winning elections and who often wage war as well as peace are poorly represented in the roster of Nobel Peace Prize winners.  For example, Boris Yeltsin, whose decision to end Russian control over Ukraine and the other parts of the Soviet empire was intertwined with his own electoral calculations as President of Russia and who later went to war in Chechnya, did not win a Nobel.

Given the Nobel Committee’s tilt against practical politicians, Yeltsin’s failure to win is not surprising.  But considering that it was Yeltsin—not Mikhail Gorbachev, who wanted to preserve the Soviet Union—who ended the coercive Russian empire, the Nobel Committee wound up snubbing one of the century’s major contributors to peace. 

Another politician who didn’t fit the Nobel Committee’s preferences for idealism and diplomacy but who made a major peacemaking contribution was Charles de Gaulle.  Given his deep identification with the French military, French nationalism, and French party politics, along with his often undiplomatic diplomacy, de Gaulle did not fit the Nobel Committee’s criteria well at all.  But as the man who led his nation out of a brutal, futile, and very difficult to end war in Algeria in the early 1960s, he would have been a deserving winner.   

Hardheaded businesspeople who worry about profits are even more poorly represented among Nobel Peace Prize winners than hardheaded democratic politicians who worry about elections.  But business leaders who have knit the world together economically have likely done far more for international peace in the past several decades than many actual Nobel winners have. 

For example, Sony founder Akio Morita and long-time Toyota leader Eiji Toyoda would have been worthy Peace Prize recipients, given their roles in transforming a nation that had been convulsed by violent nationalism into a model of how to succeed through economic rather than military strength.  Neither Toyoda’s contributions to a just-in-time inventory system that has encouraged businesses to integrate their operations with those of other businesses around the world nor Morita’s contributions to innovations in electronics that in turn have contributed to a global popular culture fit into the familiar Nobel categories of idealism and diplomacy.   But if the right test is how much a life’s work has moved a nation and the world away from the ways of war to ways of peace, both men would have been good choices.

Given that consequences are tricky to evaluate and that hardheaded democratic politicians and businesspeople have multiple motives and are not saints, recognizing them for contributions to peace will always be controversial.   If Sam Walton had won a Nobel Peace Prize for his central role in knitting together the Chinese and American economies and in doing so enhancing the prospects for world peace, the award would have been simultaneously reasonable and open to reasonable criticism from the many critics of Walton and Wal-Mart.

   Likewise, it would undoubtedly have been controversial if Obama had been recognized in 2009 for his contributions over the last two years to reduced violence in Iraq, given the complexity of the situation there and the close connection between Obama’s actions and his political ambitions.  But such recognition would have been much more sensible than what the Nobel Committee actually did.

There have been all too many Nobels awarded over the years for high-minded but less than effective idealism and ultimately futile diplomatic deals.   Progress toward world peace has depended and will depend in large part on hardheaded, calculating actions by imperfect, unsaintly leaders like Boris Yeltsin, Charles de Gaulle, Akio Morita, Eiji Toyoda, and Sam Walton.  Perhaps in his acceptance speech in Oslo, Barack Obama can employ his formidable gift for explaining to tell us how he is proud to be one of those leaders, rather than the plaster saint that the Nobel Committee takes him for.

Popular Cosmopolitanism and Business Nationalism in Indonesia

Sukarno, Indonesia's post-colonial leader from 1945 to 1966, was, along with Nehru in India and Nasser in Egypt, one of the pillars of the non-aligned movement, and shared with his counterparts a modernizing, internationalist, secular ethos on culture and a belief in state-led, populist approaches on economics.   By contrast, Suharto, the dominant figure in Indonesia from 1965 to 1998, led a regime that was pro-business on economics and, by comparison with Sukarno, nationalist and traditionalist in its cultural orientation.