President Biden is now firmly in the saddle, and by now he would have realized that leading charge from the opposition is more glamorous than leading a country. He will be following almost all policies followed by Trump to varying degrees. He had to immediately start dealing with China and immigration related issues along with unemployment. Covid is still raging even if it is masked. Of course, he manages with much less acrimony, stridency and use of twitter. The simple point is that in today’s world of statecraft, it is no fun to be a CEO. It is best sitting ‘across the aisles’ and keep sending darts and making broadsides. This is true for all Nations and parties. The fact is that Governments are increasingly becoming ungovernable.  The ruling parties fight anti-incumbency from day one.  Not even the honeymoon period it gets.       

Policy making and governing are increasingly becoming intractable. This is generally the case in international diplomacy wherein two countries can keep meeting to decide where the next meeting should be and what to discuss when they meet or keep exchanging maps. This is increasingly becoming the case in domestic politics. Issues are framed such that there is no meeting ground. For example, farmers associations say repeal and we will talk, and Government says anything other than repealing would do. It ends where it starts.  Earlier the demands will be placed giving each other party space for a face-saving formula. Not anymore. These are now framed such that one of the parties has to lose face. Apart from being a zero- sum game where one gains at the cost of the other, these are also cases of Greek tragedies wherein everybody loses in different proportions.

 The Principle of Ungovernability  

 Julia Black, Professor of Law from LSE writing on ‘ungovernability’ characterizes it as, “autonomy and ungovernability of the actors'', and autonomy consists in each actor / system acting in their own way (Critical Reflection of Regulation, LSE and Political Science, 2002). According to Black power, control and knowledge are fragmented and each actor / system is autonomous resulting in each system being Autopoietic. According to Prof Kooiman from Leiden University, present day society is characterized by ‘diversity, complexity, and dynamics and the complexity of the ‘socio political governance’ which is often engaged in organizing itself. In substance, it is getting increasingly complex to govern for very many reasons. Black writes, “There is an increasing recognition that social problems are the result of various interacting factors, not all of which may be known, the nature and relevance of which changes over time, and the interaction between which will be only imperfectly understood…. Those interactions are themselves complex and intricate, and actors are diverse in their goals, intentions, purposes, norms, and powers'' (p3).  

Increasingly, contrary to the belief of the various organs of Governance, there is no organ of society or Government that is all powerful, be it Government or Parliament, court, media, civil society, or experts. Each organ is fragmented and divided. For example, the Government has to engage every time with thirty plus farmers’ associations whenever it tries to engage with them, with the locus of control of some of these negotiating parties being elsewhere. The thirty plus associations put together still don’t represent the farmers from the rest of India. 

Ungovernability from Complexity

 Covid-19 is a case on hand. Ideally it should belong to the techno economic field, but has become an open field for the opposition and critics. It opened the floodgates for the torrential flow of advice and criticisms. Ideally, the medical professionals, virologists, and epidemiologists should be taking the stage, but they are relegated to the background. It is the political analysts, economists, sociologists, social scientists, media and finally not to be outdone, the retired bureaucrats who are directing the narratives.

 There are many theories about when to open up, whom to vaccinate, what went wrong, etc. The subject is such a complex situation which is constantly evolving, moving from critical to normal, and with the end still not in sight.  In such situations your guess is as good as mine and it is an open field for every domain expert. Nothing wrong. Problem is within each domain where the experts are divided among themselves. This happens when there is no single solution and solutions themselves lead to problems. These are called ‘wicked problems’ in management. In such circumstances, Governments generally do what is called ‘muddling through’ and make sense as it goes. These are some manifestations of complexity. 

Tradeoffs: Transparency vs National Interest

Complexity comes with tradeoffs and open-ended issues. A Government always twiddles between various tradeoffs and the constructed world. The most obvious tradeoff is between status quo and change. That handled, the next hurdle becomes one of how much change to bet. It is here that maximum political acumen is required. The government’s task will be in reducing the options to few and ensuring convergence, while the opposition effort will be in blowing it out of proportion.  Caught in between in this battle are the beneficiaries and ordinary hapless citizens.

This is where the opposition or critics can think of more options because the ruling party has the skin in the game, and the opposition can think unconstrained. In this context, leave alone unpopular decisions, even routine decisions like when to open, vaccination strategy, etc. everything becomes contentious.

Autonomous Systems and Loose Coupling

One aspect of ungovernability the author mentions, is the reality of multitude institutions and multiple agents which are independent and move around within their own subsystems. The very design of governing is based on the principle of balance of power among multiple institutions so that no particular institution is vested with overriding power. At the next level, we have scores of Ministries dealing with a range of subjects occupied by thousands of bureaucrats coming with their own idiosyncrasies and belief systems. At policy as well as operational layer, there is no subject which does not require more than one ministry. No wonder the Prime Minister has been expressing his frustration over intransigence of bureaucracy. Over laid on this is the waterfall structure from the Center to State to local governments. There is a central head in this system who can command complete control or can claim to steer. The system is mired in mystery.

Narrative Setting and Articulation

Whether it is the border issue or covid 19 or privatization, the Government has more information than critics commenting on it. One would expect that at the minimum, the Government would be using the information it has.  We find that even in areas like border management, the critics would not take the Government's version which will be obviously a sanitized view in the interest of security. The critics would rather lap up outside view which gives immense advantage to the enemies and the critics are fully aware of it. The dilemma for the government becomes how much to reveal keeping transparency in mind and how much to hide keeping Nation’s interest in mind. This is true in handling of Covid as well; as revealing a lot may end up psyching the Nation and revealing less may make them casual. The ungovernability extends to many areas of Government and in many ways. Narrative setting and articulation are important dimensions of ungovernability and calibrating the responses.

The Government could have fielded experts, but they field spokespersons who are equally in diatribe mode. In fact, it is neutral experts who provide cover fire for the Government. The critics as well as the Government are fully aware that they are discussing the unknown. Ordinary menfolk apply only one filter, which is who is aligned with whom.

Over the years, the Government of the day also becomes immune or diffident, conforming to one of the Teubner’s trilemma of the ‘indifference of the target system to the instrument’ itself. The critics can wear themselves out, but the Government has to go on. 

The net effect of all these is there is plenty of debates but very less progress even in areas in which consensus has progressed, and where laws have been passed in the Parliament. For the ruling party, the performance lies in pressing ahead, and for the opposition the prowess lies in ensuring status quo. This is the fallout of lack of bi partisan political system. The search for compromise is for the second best or third best solutions.

Benumbed

The crux of the matter is that India or any other democratic nation is ungovernable. India is ungovernable even in normal times. Critics characterized the earlier UPA regime as policy paralysis. In this regime, we have a no-nonsense Government, and Actors / Systems benumbed by the overwhelming churn of reforms. The systems react the best way it can, that is benumb the working systems also. This is another manifestation of ungovernability.

 

Image Credits: Adam Cohn at flickr.com

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