The Pakistani Spectator

In today’s article, I continue my recent discussion of political parties, begun in How Many Parties. In response to that article, the comments mainly focused on the problems with alliances, where alliances tend to defeat the intended role of a representative democracy where the parliament or congress ought to decide issues based on the majority will of the individual representatives, rather than on the will of a minority made up of just a majority of the majority party or coalition. I tend to agree, although I also see no really effective way to prevent the tempting opportunity that alliances provide for the majority group to magnify its power and freeze the minority party almost wholly out of power. Perhaps the best opportunity to moderate the tendency of parties to vote as a block lies in the voters’ choices – one way a party can distinguish itself is how much it appears willing to work with the other party or parties even when it holds the majority, and how much it is willing to let its members act as individuals, rather than as obedient robots following the “party line” chosen by the party leadership. In the US, I believe, the Democratic Party has tended to be more cooperative and flexible in its exercise of power, when it holds the majority (getting Democrats to work together and follow leadership has been compared with “herding cats!”), while the Republicans, in recent decades, at least, have tended to vote more as a block and to follow rather ruthless party leadership, at least in my opinion. A voter who wanted more cooperative exercise of power, and who otherwise had no strong preference between the parties, might choose the Democratic Party just for this reason, so while the Democrats sacrifice some power by being less ruthlessly partisan, they may also gain some votes as compensation. Assuming that representatives actually believe in Democracy, not just in having more power, they might also choose a more cooperative strategy for that reason, alone.

In the previous article, I argued that majority parties (or coalitions of parties) tend to take more extreme positions if they have too much power for too long, and tend to grow more arrogant and corrupt in their exercise of that power. I also argued that this tendency is fortunately self-correcting, because the opposition parties, in this event, grow more middle-of-the-road, and offer a progressively more attractive alternative over time, because voters willing to abandon the arrogant, extreme, and corrupt majority party (or coalition) will pass control to the better opposition when this happens. This tendency for the pendulum to swing between parties or coalitions on opposite sides is healthy, and tends to keep both sides more honest and more moderate, if they are wise enough to want to hold moderate power steadily, instead of trying to hold extreme power just temporarily.

The built-in assumption in this argument, though, was that voters are willing and free to change their choice of party, and that they would base that choice on a continuing examination of which party (and which individuals within the party!) would most favor government decisions that they want. From your comments to other articles in The Pakistani Spectator, I have read, however, that many voters in Pakistan base party choice on who they are (loyalty to their group identity), rather than on their view of the party positions. Certainly, I see the same thing in many young governments where ethnic divides are important in politics, for example, in Iraq’s new government, between Sunni Arabs, Sunni Kurds, and Shiites. I understand the human tendency to show group loyalty, but when a political party “owns” ever-loyal members of some group, regardless of its political policy decisions, and regardless of its quality of governance and its honesty, democracy is a pale shadow of what it ought to be! A party that can take votes for granted will be run as an elite, not as a democratic institution, with all the tendencies toward steady degradation that I described earlier in rule by an elite. The voters loyal to parties like this are selling their votes for the wrong reasons, or for no reason at all.

There are really two scenarios, here:

1. If the party is run by an elite simply for the benefit of the elite, these voters are simply giving away their votes for no return at all.

2. If the party actually favors the ethnic group that loyally gives it its votes (which is surely a good way to keep those votes!), then political battles between such parties become naked grabs for national resources – the ethnic groups controlling ethnically based parties in the majority are far too likely to use their majority to plunder national wealth for the use of the majority groups, at the expense of the minority groups.

It is legitimate and necessary for leaders to make real choices that inevitably help some citizens more than others, or favor views held by some citizens while going against the wishes of others. (Ideally, these decisions do more good, overall, then harm, and ideally everyone gets a turn at being on “winning” side, sometimes. If one decision helps you twice as much as it hurts me, and the next decision helps me twice as much as it hurts you, we might both end up better off than if government simply did nothing in both cases.) Any political decision that is not simply obvious must meet this description, being popular with some and unpopular with others. However, when the group that benefits from the party or coalition in power is defined purely by ethnic identity, or language, or religion, or by the area of the country helped, at the expense of the other groups, the process involved is not democracy or politics – it is simply theft – the same large group of people “mugging” the smaller, weaker group, over and over again! (I am assuming the victimized group is smaller, if the group-defined “parties” are “fairly” elected, so the government is controlled by the larger ethnic group, or some coalition of ethnic groups that holds a permanent majority.)

In a legitimate system of government, government acts as the necessary “brain” of the nation, making decisions that must be made as a nation if the nation is to protect itself, and prosper, and provide a good infrastructure for economic growth that benefits all the citizens. However, in a government run for the benefit of an ethnic group, the best analogy for government is not a “brain” – it is a parasite! The parasitic government (called by Jared Diamond a “kleptocracy, where the root “klepto” means thieving) exists to extract the nation’s wealth into the hands of the leaders. In that case of a democratic version of this parasitic government, the government will tend to control as much of the economy as possible, and will hand out the fruits of that control strictly to the majority ethnic group enjoying power. The juiciest fruits will be government jobs with real control, especially economic control, over people’s lives, the sorts of jobs that might offer valuable opportunities to extract bribes in return for government permission to conduct some sort of business, or (as in the case of police corruption) in return for allowing illegal activity. These jobs can be so valuable for their bribe-receiving potential that government need not pay a real salary (thus guaranteeing that the only people who want the jobs will be dishonest, and the people who want them most will be the most dishonest!) In fact, very likely, the higher-up leaders who control access to these jobs will themselves expect bribes in return for access to these “plum” jobs – the whole government hierarchy developing more or less spontaneously into a pyramid that funnels wealth from the bottom right to the top. At the very bottom, on the receiving end, are poor members of the favored ethnic group who get minor, powerless jobs with the help or permission of government – such as taxicab drivers granted a government permit, or garbage collectors given a government job. On the purely-victimized end are the members of the “excluded” ethnicities, who pay bribes out, but never receive them, and who must pay high taxes and bribes simply to survive. Only those at the very top of this parasitic sort of democracy really benefit from the arrangement – even the majority of the “favored” ethnic group is much worse off than it would be under a non-parasitic form of government, since even though they get a “larger slice of the pie” than the unfavored groups, at the expense of the unfavored groups, the whole pie is smaller because the parasitic form of government cripples economic growth and tends to focus wealth into the hands of a very small elite.

Unfortunately, once such a system develops, those in the losing groups have no easy, peaceful path to power. (It is all too natural that it should develop, where people perceive deep ethnic differences, with few friends outside their ethnic group, and no outside-group family, owing to very rare (and frowned-upon) intermarriage.) Most voters in the “winning” group may recognize that a non-parasitic government would be better for almost everyone, even if it meant losing their advantages over the smaller groups, but they may also fear leaving their ethnic party, because then perhaps that smaller group might manage to take control and “turn the tables” on their former oppressors!

This practice of voting based on identity rather than on the quality of a party’s decisions is disastrous, and a recipe for civil war! Very likely, the only solution the oppressed groups will see is to divide the country – this part for one group, this other part for another. Likely, they already live somewhat separately, so the lines of division, and the battle lines for physical fighting are likely somewhat pre-drawn, although there will also surely be “ethnic cleansing,” as minority members of communities find themselves in a desperate position of being left on the wrong side of a likely future border, more hated than ever, possibly going from “favored,” formerly, to disadvantaged in the newly-broken-off country. Most dangerous of all, each group may perceive that it can grab, hold, and control a larger piece of the nation if it can just reduce the numbers (through genocide!) of that other group, and this may be going on on both sides, giving each side an excuse for their own crimes. Imagine a nation divided into ethnicities, 60%, 25%, 10%, 3%, and 2%, for A, B, C, D, and E. “A” controls the country at the expense of the rest, so the other four groups work together to carve out some piece of the country for themselves, taking control in this new nation after war and “ethnic cleansing” on both sides. Now the purely-A remnant of the original nation no longer has 40% of its population to take advantage of, and perhaps proper parties might form, and good governance might take hold, if the habit of corruption can be broken (and if “A” does not itself have smaller subparts that may become the new basis form mindless loyalties and parasitic parties!) Of course, at least a few minority citizens likely got left behind in all that ethnic cleansing, but if they are very few in number they are not much threat and not much of a target for thievery, so they might actually integrate more or less, at least from an economic perspective. Consider the other side of the divide, however; B, with 25-thousand citizens for every 10-thousand Cs, 3-thousand Ds, and 2-thousand Es, suddenly finds itself in the position of top-group in the new nation, and the whole ugly business repeats, until C, D, and E break off into a third nation, then D and E break off into a fourth, then E breaks off into a fifth. Sure, this is an extreme scenario, but it is not so different from what happened when Yugoslavia lost the iron-fisted central control of Tito (tiny Kosovo recently playing the part of “E”!), and it may happen in Iraq.

What is the solution? It is clearly not an easy problem to avoid, where ethnic identities are strong. There is no easy solution. The hard solution is to spread ideas of good government so that more and more voters demand that the party they choose follow principles of government that are “blind” to group-favoritism – the only legitimate notice of groups that government should take would be to protect minority groups from unfair treatment, to protect them from discrimination in employment, services, and housing, to ensure their rights to worship as they please, and to use their home language in their business and press, for example. (Language in schools is a trickier problem – for access to the best jobs, and for full involvement in government, it is probably necessary and good that all children learn a fluent command of the dominant national language in the public schools, but they should also be free to use their own language whenever they wish, and if the schools can manage to provide a good education in both languages, that is probably ideal.) To prevent turning government into a collection of parasites, as many as possible of the government jobs should be awarded by a rigorous, merit-based “civil service” system, based on education and test scores (and of course, access to higher education must also be merit-based), without regard to ethnicity or other factors that have nothing to do with ability to perform the job. At the very top of the administration of government, we cannot escape the need to have a few party appointees, but these appointees should only set policy, according to law and party views, with no power to fire the “permanent” civil service employees except in cases of demonstrated incompetence, corruption, or negligence. 99% of the government employees (essentially all of the employees who interact directly with the public) should have their jobs without regard to their political views or party identities, and certainly without regard to their ethnicity, and they should keep their jobs through repeated elections, regardless of who wins. These jobs must pay well enough that competent people will desire them without expecting that they also get side-benefits in the form of bribes. (Government, itself, can charge fixed and well-understood fees, if necessary, to pay the costs of these salaries to perform these necessary jobs – these will cost less than the bribes did, and they will be fairer, so the ability to pay these salaries even in a poor government should not be an obstacle.)

Government has legitimate roles to defend the nation, to defend individuals against criminals, to educate and protect children, to protect the disadvantaged, to provide “safety nets” that make unavoidable bad luck less tragic for those who experience bad luck (especially children), to provide the infrastructure and regulation for a healthy economy, and impartially to collect the taxes necessary to provide these services. None of these roles depend in the slightest degree on the ethnicity of the leaders, who can impartially fill these roles equally well regardless of their ethnic identity, and provide these services regardless of the identity of those receiving the service. Given all this, the very last thing that should matter in defining a party should be any question of ethnic identity. Instead, parties ought to be defined by their ethnically impartial answers to the real questions of governance – where does government get involved, and what should government leave to free-enterprise? What are the rights of the people? How much should government spend on the schools, and how can that be divided fairly? How much should government spend on the military? How should government tax the people (clearly without regard to ethnic identity), and what should government do about balancing its budget, or dealing with debt? How does the government protect individual rights and the impartial rule of law, with proper checks and balances between the branches of government? The answers to these questions are excellent bases for divisions between parties, but none of these answers should define a party identity that is automatic. Ethnic identity should have very little impact on an individual’s feelings about these questions, so parties of this sort should be well-mixed, ethnically, leaving all ethnic groups feeling reasonably well represented, regardless of which party holds a temporary majority. In this case, there is little reason for a country to split on ethnic lines, through bloody civil war. Choose the party that matches your views on your most important issues best, today, and change parties tomorrow, if another choice makes more sense, then, because you changed your views, or because your old party didn’t live up to its own promises – this is loyalty to the nation and to yourself, both of which are better and higher loyalties than loyalty to a party!