Pranab Bardhan and Liberal Democracy's assless chaps.

India is not a Liberal Democracy. It is a Secular, Socialist, Republic. Its Constitution gives the Union of India substantial powers to curb any threat to its existence. Thus it has no theoretical 'Achilles heel'.

Pranab Bardhan writes of the 'Achilles heel of Liberal Democracy' in 3 Quarks.

Many find fault with liberal democracy because it exacerbates inequality, particularly when wedded to unbridled capitalism.

This is no longer true. Very few people talk in that way. People want to retain their vote and their civil liberties even if they will use their vote to elect authoritarian leaders.

On the other hand, many Chinese people may reject 'liberal democracy' because it exacerbates corruption, incompetence and socio-economic stagnation. 

But inequality has been rampant in authoritarian countries as well, with or without capitalism. Many non-capitalist countries in actual history have been friendly neither to liberty nor equality, never mind the soaring rhetoric, whereas some liberal democracies have provided their alert citizenry with the means of taming the harshness of capitalism, showing the possibility of liberty and equality working together at least up to some distance.

With greater truth, one could say 'liberating the invisible hand of the market' rather than 'taming the harshness of capitalism'. 

Others find fault with liberal democracy because its emphasis on individual freedom may loosen community bonding and rootedness, but ‘liberty’ and ‘fraternity’ need not work at cross-purposes, and one should keep in mind that communitarian excesses without liberalism can hurt interests of minority and dissident or non-conformist groups and individual autonomy.

Where are these 'others'? They may have existed a hundred years ago and some Professors may know about them. But they have disappeared.

For a discussion of these issues see my piece, “Can the Local Community Save Liberal Democracy?”. Yet why is liberal democracy so fragile? All around us demagogues rule even in traditional bastions of democracy; and majoritarianism so easily hollows out democracies and keeps only the shell (and even sometimes triumphantly gets that shell described by the oxymoronic term ‘illiberal democracy’).

People who don't like the outcome of an election speak of Democracy being fragile. Everybody else thinks their ego is fragile and that they are terrible bores once they start spouting this sort of shite. 

For a discussion of these issues see my piece 'Can gassing on about Liberal Democracy make Pranab Bardhan more boring and stupid than he would otherwise be?'

In my article, “Coping with Resurgent Nationalism” I have suggested that if the constitution in some democratic countries incorporates liberal inclusive values and is reasonably difficult to change, it can provide the basis of some form of civic nationalism (or what Habermas called ‘constitutional patriotism’) that may resist the marauding forces of majoritarianism or exclusivist ethnic nationalism.

But the very mechanism by which the Constitution is changed to 'incorporate' the sort of shite Bardhan approves of, could be used to nullify that shite and incorporate its diametric opposite. Patriotism has to have a Patria to focus on because geography can't be changed. Constitutions can. In any case, the Bench can interpret them any which way. So it is silly to fetitize the thing.

When I was a kid 'Revolution' was fetishized. They were supposed to make everything better. Now, we abhor them unless they are 'velvet'- i.e. not Revolutions at all. 

But the ethnic nationalist leaders are so adept at whipping up our primordial or visceral evolutionary defensive-aggressive urge to fight against so-called ‘enemy’ groups, that such resistance is currently crumbling in many countries –for example, conspicuously in India under the onslaught of Hindu nationalism, even after several decades of reasonably successful civic nationalism based on values of pluralism enshrined in the constitution and undergirded by centuries of folk-syncretic tradition of tolerance and pluralism of faith among the common people.

Bardhan emigrated in 1977. He did not witness massacres and extra judicial killing in Assam, Punjab, Kashmir etc. He wasn't in Delhi when Sikhs were slaughtered in the streets. He did not see the Masjid/Mandir terrorism and mob violence. He has been living in an Ivory Tower fool's paradise.

In an insightful article economists Sharun Mukand and Dani Rodrik detect the fundamental problem in something lacking in the origin of the democratic political settlement.

Mukand & Rodrik are cretins. Their paper is shite. 

One popular version of this settlement in European history has been that democracy came about as a compromise between the economic elite (interested in securing their property rights) afraid of mass upheavals and the organized working classes and peasants, clamoring for political rights.

Nonsense! First the bourgeoisie challenged the Aristocracy and, thanks to their money power, got a restricted franchise. Then the Aristocracy turned the tables on the bourgeoisie by extending it to peasants and factory workers. Look at the current situation in the UK. The aristocratic BoJo got elected by poorer working class people in deprived areas. 

This led to extension of franchise and political representation, and rights to express, assemble, and organize, which ultimately led to welfare states of varying strengths.

It also meant that the 'Liberal' party turned into a fringe movement. Welfare States are perfectly rational examples of 'risk pooling'. By the Seventies, the working class had turned against redistribution because it meant transfers from their own pockets to immigrants and work-shy hippies. 

The workers in their turn accepted some limits in their demands so that capitalist property rights and opportunities are essentially preserved.

Nonsense! Why accept any 'limit on one's demands' just out of sympathy for rich dudes? What happened is that workers did not want their own pockets to be picked to help niggers or hippies or single moms etc. 

In this democratic settlement the economic elite had the strength of their wealth and the workers the strength of numbers. But the groups that lost out in this bargaining process (or never had a chance) are those who have neither wealth nor numbers—the various minority groups in society (defined by ethnicity, religion, ideology, language, gender identity or sexual preference).

Very true! Just look at the parlous condition of the Jews in Europe and America. It pains me to see Zach Goldsmith begging outside the Tube Station. On the other hand, I condemn Lord Rothschild for snatching and running away with my doner kebab. I appreciate that rampant anti-semitism means Lord Rothschild has no other way to feed himself. Still, theft is wrong.

Way back in 1787 James Madison in the Federalist Papers rightly put the issue of minority rights at the center of democratic concern in a new republic.

African Americans were a minority as were indigenous Americans in some of the States. Did Madison really want to grant them equal rights? Perhaps Bardhan thinks non-Aryans are not human. Or maybe he is an ignorant immigrant. 

Today it has become the Achilles Heel of liberal democracy.

Rubbish! The American Revolutionaries got rid of the Loyalists.  They didn't protect their rights. What was the result? America became the mightiest nation in the history of the world. It has no 'Achilles heel'. Some virtue-signallers may pretend otherwise- but they have been at it for 50 years and the doom they foretold has not materialized.

I may say 'Britain is bound to break up and will descend into cannibalism if the power of the Iyengar is not curbed.' Indeed, I do say such things when people approach me and start babbling nonsense. That's the only way to deal with boring cretins. You must be even more boring and cretinous.

Mukand and Rodrik distinguish between political rights and civil rights, the latter largely relating to protection of those minority groups (including protection of the rule of law, habeas corpus, equal access to public services, etc.).

Everybody makes this distinction. We understand that if we visit a foreign country we have some legal rights but no political rights because we are not a member of that polity.
Why not make a further distinction between the right to kisses- which Mummy readily grants you and the right to have your diaper changed- which nobody will grant you because you are a 46 year old Cost and Management Accountant. On the other hand there are people you can pay for that service. But that is a market transaction.

They point out that in the aforementioned bargaining equilibrium between the economic elite and the majority of workers, those civil rights may go by default, and there may not be a strong enough group to fight for them or make any credible threats to the other groups.

Bargaining equilibria are irrelevant under free entry and exit. Instead you have mimetics and 'Tiebout sorting'. In other words, people vote with their feet and the places they land up outperform those they left behind. This has a 'demonstration effect' whereby the left behind polities mimic those which have forged ahead.

Some exceptions may take place where the ethnic minority is part of the economic elite (as in the case of the Chinese businessmen in parts of south-east Asia, or some Jewish Americans important in the business and media elite of their country—but even in these cases hate-crimes and discrimination against such minority groups have not been uncommon).

Who knew? Jewish Americans are being discriminated against. Trump is forcing them to wear a Yellow Star. Conditions in the ghettos of Beverly Hills and Palm Springs are intolerable as Larry David's brave documentaries have shown. But a few brave Americans are compiling their own Schindler's lists and rescuing Jews like Jared Kushner.  I need hardly say this is all the fault of those dastardly Iyengars.

The distinction between political and civil rights is related to the distinction between participatory and procedural aspects of democracy that I have emphasized in all my recent writings on populism.

Rubbish! The distinction is based on laws and administrative practices relating to voting- nothing else. Civil Rights may be superior under a Theocracy or a Monarchy. The 'procedural aspects' of Democracy refer to how Laws and enacted and enforced. The 'participatory aspects' refer to who can stand for election and who can vote. In the UK, Commonwealth citizens, but not European citizens, could vote in general elections. But European citizens had a superior right to bring their spouses into the country.

Rights only matter if they are linked to remedies under an incentive compatible bond of law. For a Democracy to triumph over exigent circumstances both civil and political rights must be almost infinitely defeasible. Lawyers and Professors may pretend otherwise- but there's is a meretricious trade. 

Majoritarian populists either of the right or the left variety usually ride roughshod over the procedural aspects (like the “due process” that the minorities are entitled to under rule of law).

But so non majoritarian un-populists- in the opinion of their rivals. Indeed, we ourselves- if we live long enough- will realize that we had unthinkingly done all sorts of reprehensible things and hurt many different types of vulnerable people by reason of our ignorance and insensitivity.

The Law's own 'due process' is constantly being discovered, by its own leading spirits, to have erred unconscionably over vast tracts of time. 

The question is, how does one preserve and sustain these procedural aspects?

This is the sort of stuff lawyers and parliamentarians learn as part of their job. We don't need to bother with it anymore than we need to bother with the finer points of plumbing or brain surgery or Kathakali dance. 

An alternate way of looking at the origin of democracy—still keeping to an essentially interest-based (rather than idea-based) explanation—may provide a bit more hope for the political logic behind the sustenance of civil rights or procedural aspects of liberal democracy.

Rubbish! A cretin's way of looking at things is always cretinous. No alternative perspectives can save Bardhan from writing stupid mendacious shite. 

This alternative ascribes the rise of democracy to competition within the elite, rather than the threat of mass uprisings faced by the elite as a whole.

Utterly foolish! Democracy was a fad. Every newly independent country said it was a Democracy but then either forgot to hold elections or else turned into a One Party state or succumbed to Dynastic rule. The India Bardhan left was dynastic. 

In my 1984 book, The Political Economy of Development in India, I ascribed the survival of democracy in India, against a formidable set of odds, not so much to the strength of liberal values in the belief system of the Indian population, as to how in a country of immense diversity, even the elite is so fragmented (with no element individually sufficiently strong to hijack the system by itself) that they agree on some minimum democratic rules in their transactional negotiations, to keep their rivals at the bargaining table under some limits of moderation.

Bollocks! India remained a Democracy because the Army couldn't seize power. Nor could any dynast be sure of its loyalty long term if it locked up all its foes.

Still, General Kaul was considered a possible successor to Nehru. But he fucked up in '62. Still, after the Bangladesh War, Indira did confront Maneckshaw to find out if he was plotting to displace her. But the man was a Parsi. He could scarcely hope to head a Hindu country. Anyway, ruling India is messy. The Army preferred to keep its boots nice and shiny.

(Of course, when the diversity or the lack of trust is extreme the process may unravel, and the rival groups turn to civil war, as has often happened in Africa).

Bardhan forgets that the advent of Democracy meant the partition of India. It could have broken up- as Pakistan broke up- if the Center had tried to impose Hindi as the National language. Like the British, Congress had to rule India in accordance with the preferences of its people. 

In the book I had referred to the 19th-century British example of the industrial bourgeoisie allowing an extension of franchise to the working classes, not necessarily out of love or fear of the latter, but more to checkmate their elite rival in the landed aristocracy.

This is nonsense. It was the Tory, Disraeli, who passed the '67 bill which was opposed by 'Adullamite' Liberals. He didn't go far enough. The fact is, had the Tories enfranchised Women, the Liberals would not have been prolong their existence into the Nineteen Twenties. 

(Roughly similar, episodic, cases have been cited by political scientists in the history of Denmark, Greece, Spain and France in the 19th century, and of Argentina and Portugal in the early part of the 20th).

But 'political scientists' are as stupid as shit. 

In Federalist Paper no. 10 James Madison looked upon a great number of what he called ‘factions’ (the most important example of factions in his mind was the different type of interest groups) and their diversity as the safeguard against tyranny –- he pointed to “the greater security afforded by a greater variety of parties (i.e. ‘factions’), against the event of any one party being able to outnumber and oppress the rest”.

Why quote that silly man? Did America not suffer a terrible Civil War? 'Factionalism' does not matter. Being able to fuck up any enemy, at home or abroad, is the only thing which counts.

One, of course, needs more institutional structure for sustenance of civil rights. If elite fragmentation is such that each fragment is suspicious that some other fragment may get too powerful to endanger its civil rights, each fragment may then have a stake in a social contract that ensures some minimum framework of civil rights for everybody.

Elite fragmentation does not matter. What matters is having an Army and a Police Force and a Navy and so forth which can fuck up anybody who fucks with the burgeoning might of the State. Otherwise, you get a failed state- no matter what its institutional arrangements. 

(This is somewhat akin to the Rawlsian theory of justice under a kind of ‘veil of ignorance’, applied here to procedural rights).

But Rawls was a cretin. What we choose behind a veil of ignorance is the same thing as we choose otherwise- viz. risk pooling insurance schemes. Nobody in their right mind would want to live in a Society where nobody gets to do anything till it is proven that their action benefits the least well off. As for the weak and vulnerable, they would be the first to starve in Rawls's Utopia.

Consider what happened to 'multi culti' pluralism. It led to stalemate and the cultivation of an antagonomic 'grievance culture' under the rubric of 'Identity'. Thus, a shithead like Chomsky got to complain that, when Obama took out Osama, he should also have taken out some anti-Castro terrorist who, however, had never hurt any Americans.

Mukand and Rodrik have a somewhat similar case in the special situation when there is no permanent majority or minority in society, and if coalitions keep shifting.

This is not a 'special situation'. It is what obtains in most Democratic countries. There are exceptions- like Japan which has a very different culture. 

To make such a social contract binding the elite fragments may then be interested in constitutions or other such founding documents that limit over-reach on the part of anybody through built-in arrangements like separation of powers and checks and balances.

This is a feature of American political culture. But, under exigent circumstances, the thing disappears completely. The Executive has untrammeled power. America could mobilize its resources more effectively than Nazi Germany or Japan. So could Britain whose unwritten Constitution and hereditary House of Lords proved just as flexible.

Constitutions don't matter. Fucking up enemies before the fuck you up is the only recipe for successful States. 'For forms of Government, let fools contest/ Whatever is best administered is best.'

In particular the institutions like judiciary within the governmental set-up, and the media, universities, and other civil society organizations outside can become watchdogs against abuse of power, particularly in oppressing minorities.

No they can't- as Bardhan will shortly prove-

In India, Turkey, Hungary, Poland, Russia, Brazil, and elsewhere popularly elected governments are now systematically using their majoritarian muscles to weaken and intimidate these institutions that safeguard minority rights.

And the Courts and the Media and the Universities and Trade Unions and so forth can do absolutely nothing that is not immediately counter-productive.
Minorities which do stupid shite get fucked up. If they still do stupid shite they get chased away or effectually ghettoized where they can prey upon each other.

On the other hand, minorities which are smart and which do useful stuff tend to get assimilated, in one way or another, to the majority. Indeed, they may play a vanguard role. 

In the United States these institutions, for all their faults, have been somewhat stronger all along,

Because America has kept getting stronger. When a country does well, its institutions do well. But the arrow of causation is strictly one way. You can improve institutions while the Nation goes to the dogs. 

and are offering a bit stiffer resistance so far against a marauding President and his subservient party legislators, but even there the judiciary seems to be in the process of being captured by partisan political appointments, and the media torn by sectarian polarization.

In other words, Bardhan- at the end of a long life- sees that everything he was taught and which he taught in turn was meaningless verbiage.  Institutions don't matter. Social Contracts are, in essence, incomplete. A 'one shot' type analysis is bound to mislead.

When it comes to Trump's re-election, what matters is not the 'strength of institutions' or the Media or the Universities. The Democrats have to stop constituting a circular firing squad. They need to roll up their sleeves and do grass-roots organizing. They must give up ideological shibboleths and tell Political Correctness and Identity Politics to go fuck itself.

On the other hand, it is true that a reform of the US Postal Service- such that all employees wear assless chaps- will ensure that US Democracy returns to a proper trajectory.

Yet on the lines of Madison’s thinking it is the diversity of interest groups, regions and identities and their collective action ability that may be the main source of lingering hope in extremely diverse countries like India.

Graciella Chichilnisky has shown there is a 'Goldilocks condition' of not too much and not too little preference diversity for markets or social choice to exist. Indeed, this is a condition for language or any type of exchange or coordination. Madison's thinking is completely irrelevant because he lived in a very different time.  Furthermore, unlike Abraham Lincoln, he did not kill Vampires. Even Washington played a role in bringing down the evil cabal behind the headless horseman. John Adams was played by Paul Giamatti and, in a second series, will certainly help avert a Zombie Apocaplypse. By contrast, Madison is the name of a Mean Girl type Cheerleader. Bardhan should get over this silly crush of his. Madison't boyfriend is a Football player.

The Hindu nationalists currently enjoy a great deal of advantages in their onward march: a massive cadre-based disciplined, though thoroughly bigoted, organization (RSS) attempting to forge cultural homogenization among the Hindus, a charismatic political leader not averse to spreading misleading half-truths, lies and disinformation, access to a disproportionately large amount of corporate donations for election funds, and an infernal ability to use the arms of a pre-existing over-extended state to harass and persecute dissidents and intimidate the rest (through ample use of investigative and tax-raiding agencies, and misuse of colonial-era sedition laws against critics of the government, threats of withdrawal of public advertisements from critical media outlets, allowing impunity for the partisan lynch-mobs or police against minorities, and so on).

So, if you don't like the BJP, you need to back a cadre based, voluntary organization prepared to do grass-roots work. At the least a meritocratic, not dynastic, political party should be supported. Sadly, in India, all we have is the BJP on the one hand and authoritarian outfits like AAP or Trinamool or the BSP where the Supreme Leader's word is law. At one time the Left looked it could produce a meritocratic cadre based party. But its ideological imbecility and penchant for gangsterism, not to mention High Caste dominance, put paid to any such prospect.

The atmosphere of fear and intimidation has immobilized many civil society groups.

Because they were shite to start off with and only existed so as to score money from Western NGOs. 

Labor unions as a possible center of organized opposition have been in a kind of structural decline.

Because the Union Movement has destroyed the life-chances of India's working poor and prevent the growth of a large Industrial proletariat whose real income doubled every decade on the Chinese pattern. 

Sadly, even the judiciary seems to have been compromised, and often timid or erratic.

In other words, Judges have gone according to the Law rather than Bardhan's foolish opinions. 

Nevertheless in the long run the odds are against such drastic homogenization and cramming of the manifold diversities of Hindu society into the Procrustean bed of an invented, artificial, poisonous, religious nationalism—against which Gandhi, the father of the nation, fought all his life.

So Bardhan is talking shite. He is crying wolf where no wolf exists. Gandhi fought all his life for stupid shite. He failed utterly and, like Ambedkar, most leaders heaved a sigh of relief when he was killed. 

Hinduism has never been an organized or standardized religion and in a country of extreme linguistic, cultural and other diversities and powerful centrifugal forces, the project of suppression of the civil rights of the world’s largest minority population in any one country (nearly 200 million Muslims, apart from other dissidents) is unlikely to be viable over a long period, at least not without giving up all semblance of democracy.

By contrast, Pakistan and Bangladesh had no difficulty suppressing their non-Muslim minorities. So what Bardhan is really saying is 'Hindus are weak and lack cohesiveness'. This may be true of his own West Bengal. Indeed, under Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh is developing much faster than Mamta Di's fiefdom. Thus it is rational for 'buddhijivis' to want the Muslim proportion of the population to increase in the hope that their own stupidity gets diluted and the Condorcet Jury theorem will work its beneficent magic.

Social movements for group and regional autonomy and political movements for more decentralization and devolution of power are likely to grow in reaction.

Subsidiarity is a good thing. Economists want more of it. Currently, Modi is doing redistribution from well-run States to badly run States. If the BJP goes into opposition it will want to reverse this policy. Long run, that will be good for it because it can entrench itself in places where its brand of Hinduism has popular support. Modi was a rare politician in that he preferred to rule in Delhi rather than his own home State. But, going forward, only those without honour in their own natal Province will- as has happened before- yearn for the Prime Ministership. The Nehru dynasty, it will be remembered, settled in Delhi in the early eighteenth century. They viewed their sojourn in Allahabad as exile.

Already the military lockdown of Kashmir and particularly the anti-Muslim Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed National Registry of Citizens for the whole country have provoked widespread unrest, often led by women.

But that unrest is predicated on the notion that these were unconstitutional acts. Anyway, the BJP profited by these protests and will now crack down on them in obedience to the Supreme Court's orders. 

It has been an invigorating sight in recent times in the streets of different parts of India where diverse crowds of young people have gathered in thousands chanting the preamble to the liberal-pluralistic Constitution of India, while a repressive government has continued to use violence and intimidation against protesters.

Some people get their jollies from seeing useless protests like 'Occupy Wall street' or the 'Yellow Vests'. 

In the near future civil disobedience movements and regional resistance against arbitrary laws that seem to violate the spirit, if not always the letter, of the Constitution are likely to grow and provide formidable opposition.

There's the rub. The opposition they provide will be formidable only to the actual Opposition. Not every leader is as smart as Kejriwal or as tough as Mamta such that a proper distance is kept, or a properly heavy hand is used to cuff such protesters.

Of course, this opposition needs to be organized in all fronts, in the legislatures, in the media and in the streets, and by the state governments that are still controlled by opposition parties.

The Opposition is organized in the States it controls. It could be better organized elsewhere. But organization is not enough. In politics, a message is needed. There has to be something desirable, if not achievable, which people will allow themselves to be organized for. 

For far too long even the opposition states have allowed the central government to usurp powers arbitrarily, to assault the basic structure of the constitution in many ways, reorganize and overhaul some states, violate the spirit of federalism in not involving or consulting the state governments while ramming through crucial legislations on policing, law and order and social welfare services (all of which constitutionally are state subjects), in changing the terms of reference of the constitutional body of Finance Commission that allocates resources between the central and state governments, in introducing questionable forms of election funding, and so on.

So, those who did these things were or will be in Opposition.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Even when the central government actions are technically legal, one can follow Gandhi who had taught Indians to organize mass civil disobedience when the laws are not socially legitimate.

But every one of Gandhi's mass civil disobedience movements failed. 

Such movements even when started by refreshing bursts of spontaneity and the vigor and authenticity of decentralized leaderlessness, for gathering steam and ultimate sustenance over the medium to long run they’ll need some coordination and direction, particularly from some degree of association with mass organizations, with minimum common agenda for diverse groups and youthful leaders.

Does Kejriwal's AAP fit this formula? No. Kejriwal was a better communicator than his rivals whom he drummed out of his party so as to create an effective political party. He made some mistakes along the way, but he learned from them.

Mass movements come and go like waves hitting the beach. Occasionally, a leader surfs that wave and gains celebrity and creates a franchise. This may turn out to be a disaster for the public weal. But one can hope.

This is an uphill battle for protecting the essence of liberal democracy that liberals all over the world should keep a vigilant eye on.

Nonsense! Being a stupid academic of Bardhan's stripe may indeed be the punishment of a Sisyphus. But Liberal Democracy is about smart people running away when stupid shite goes down. When voters see that those who ran away are better off, they realize that they must stop doing stupid shit. 

It is vitally important particularly at a time when the Achilles Heel of liberal democracy everywhere looks grievously exposed.

Achilles heel was always exposed. But the chances of getting shot in the heel are small more particularly if the guy you are aiming at keeps chucking his javelin at you. What should really worry Bardhan is that the seat of Liberal Democracy's trousers has worn away and thus its asshole is exposed. Thus it is vitally important, today more than ever, that all Postal Workers wear assless chaps. Seeing their exposed assholes will remind citizens of the need to check that Liberal Democracy's trouser seat is not frayed or torn. Only in this manner can we prevent people laughing at Liberal Democracy and sneaking up behind it to stick things up its butt.