The conventional wisdom on Trump regime is that this regime is subverting and undermining the beautiful American Democracy. This conventional view is propagated by American intellectuals like Timothy Snyder, Ruth Ben Ghiat, Jennifer Mercieca, Lawrence Tribe etc.
My thesis about America is that Donald Trump is an endogenous variable of American political and economic system. Meaning - Trump is a spontaneous outcome of systemic failure of America’s political and economic system. The correct causality is that a failing Democracy created Donald Trump. And thereafter there’s a bidirectional causality between Trump and crisis of American democracy.
I write on political economy. Political economy sees politics, policy and economy as a single organism. I see crisis of Neoliberalism, crisis of American democracy and dismantling & dysfunction of American state as symptoms of a single disease. And i believe that heterodox theory of economics must include a theory of the state. To understand Trump regime and crisis of democratic world in general, heterodox theory of Democracy is an indispensable requirement. Schumpeter can be treated as starting point on heterodox theory of democracy.
Hence, i would strongly suggest that you read the book - ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy’ by Schumpeter. The book has advanced philosophy on political economy and so it may not be a cup of tea for every one. While i recommend reading of the book in its entirety to fully understand the concept of democracy, however, you can also read the section on democracy as a standalone part of book. Now i move to present topic of post.
I am adding some crucial context to my thesis on Democracy where i debunked mainstream tenets of democracy. My other articles on theory of democracy especially in context of India are here (1, 2, 3). Politics, policy and economy are intertwined and it’s not surprising that the fallacies and problems in any one of these areas has a commonality with other two. One of my favorite parts of Schumpeter’s thesis was his assertion that Democracy is a ‘Capitalist concept’. When i wrote the previous article on tenets of mainstream political theory, i actually made parallel analysis of it with mainstream economic theory to show how the fallacies that riddle both areas have remarkable commonality and convergence.
Democracy as an instrument of governmental legitimacy - Instrumentality of Democracy
One of the features of neoclassical economic theory is its instrumentality in implementing policies even without logical basis of those policies. Milton Friedman said “nobody knows the economy” and governmental policies should be focused to minimize government’s role in economy - ‘the free markets know the best’. Monetarism was a crackpot doctrine but it was used as an instrument to create recession. The view of Volcker and monetarists was that stagflation is caused by too much power of Labor. Hence, a recession should be engineered, unemployment should be raised, a reserve army of unemployed should be created, unions should be neutralized etc - all this to crush the power of labor and their expectations from the state.
In fact, many modern economists support neoclassical theories purely out of personal bias for laissez-faire ideology. Markets knows the best. Whatever policies minimize government role in economy are thus better. Hence budget cuts, deregulation, privatization, Austerity, tax cuts etc etc - are favored policies of mainstream economists. If you talk about a government infrastructure project or healthcare expansion, the mainstream econ will say that it will crowd out private investment. If you talk about fiscal stimulus, the mainstream econ will say it will upset confidence fairy. If you talk about a reasonable reform on patent & IP monopolies, the mainstream econ will say it will strangulate innovation.
Since the old days of doctrines of ‘Social Darwinism’ to the current day of Neoliberalism, field of economics is much riddled with ideology & instrumentality rather than grounding on objective merit and internal logic. The same thing goes for Democracy in Politics. Since you’re a child, you are fed with gospel of ‘Political equality’ , ‘will of the people’ , ‘rational electorate’ , ‘democracy as the best political system’ , ‘democracy is a self correcting system that leads to prosperity’ etc - all these are tenets of classical theory of democracy. They sound nice and appealing. But when you study heterodox theory of Democracy, you discover that these tenets are grossly over-simplistic nonsense. In my previous article, i debunked 5 tenets of mainstream political theory. Now we talk more about 6th - legitimacy of democracy.
There’s a difference between ‘substantive legitimacy’ and ‘perceptional legitimacy’ of political system. What is substantive legitimacy? It’s a political system which actually delivers material progress to people of the State, improve their lives, raising their standards of living, gives social security to population - education, healthcare, ladders of social mobility etc, perpetually creates technological and scientific advancement etc.
What is ‘perceptional legitimacy’? In perceptional legitimacy, you may have a process of elections, multiparty politics, voting rights, universal suffrage etc - in short you have an appearance of a functional political system where all citizens ‘perceive’ they can participate. But despite the appearance, the system may not deliver on substantive basis. For example, such system will have massive inequality, gross structural violence in system, few crony oligarchs accumulating the large chunk of national wealth, the social mobility ladders are broken, government cannot deliver on economic rights like education, healthcare etc, the corruption is institutionalized etc. This kind of system has ‘perceptional legitimacy’. Average Joe & Jane may perceive it to be a fair and healthy system but it isn’t.
For a long time, America had both - substantive legitimacy and perceptional legitimacy. American political system made life of its people better through its Democratic political system. But in last several decades of American politics, the substantive legitimacy receded. If FDR was exponent of substantive legitimacy of American democracy, the later Politicians since the 1980s on both sides of party spectrum were reduced to be symbolic to perceptional legitimacy alone. The situation with Trump is so bad that even scholars of conventional wisdom in America are naming it as ‘Trump regime’ because Trump is dripping with so much illegitimacy.
Democratic political system has this inherent strength that it has tremendous perceptional legitimacy. Even when this system is failing badly, people tolerate it to great length thinking that it’s ‘their government’ which is taking the decisions. Obviously, the political system in America & other western nations are yet still in decent health despite the problems. But Democratic political systems in many nations are failing very badly - think of Russia, India, Turkey, Pakistan etc. These nations have process of elections, multiparty democracy, universal suffrage etc but their governments don’t have a substantive legitimacy. In fact, we regard them as regimes, not governments (like Putin regime or Modi regime).
In his book, Fritz Bartel makes this interesting point about politics of 1970s and 1980s - the period of economic instability in the world and debt crisis in global south. The governments and political regimes in eastern European nations and Latin America etc needed to make structural adjustments in their economy. The eastern European nations intended to convert their centrally planned economies into market economies. (Now it’s a separate debate on how it should’ve been done. My opinion is that transition to market economy could’ve been done differently instead of diktats of IMF.)
The political regimes and governments of global south states and Eastern European (Comecon states) nations recognized need for these reforms but they found it very difficult to implement them. There was public resistance against painful economic reforms (price liberalization, closing unprofitable state enterprises, austerity, budget cuts, cutting pensions etc). Also the regimes well understood that they lacked perceptional legitimacy to impose unpopular & painful economic reforms. Bartel describes this in detail in his book. So how the reforms were finally imposed? Under the cover of Democracy. The political systems of these nations were overhauled, multiparty elections were held and Democracy was implemented. Thereafter, the population was ready to digest painful economic policies.
To be sure, the economic and political liberalizations were a mixed bag. For nations like Poland and GDR, they worked out well as they were integrated into common European project and unified Germany. But nations like Russia which initially also had great commitment to Democracy & market economy turned out to be failures. ‘Sthans’ of South East Asia were in similar league. A slightly different example is my home country India - the so called largest democracy in the world. Democracy and market economy failed to do any magic here. India remains a failed state.
A political system should have both types of legitimacy for proper functioning though it can be a tough balancing act and legitimacy is not something absolute but more like a degree on a scale. Regimes which have little or no perceptional legitimacy have to resort to force and oppression to rule over people. Think of North Korea & similar dictatorships. Such kinds of regimes lack both kinds of legitimacy and they govern nations as a police state. Then there are first world nations like South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, many European states etc which have both kinds of legitimacy and especially very strong perceptional legitimacy. The people have faith in their government and hence no oppressive force is required to rule the state.
Then there are nations like China which are somewhere in between. They have a degree of substantive legitimacy but they lack in perceptional legitimacy. Substantive legitimacy, to some extent, acts as compensating factor for perceptional legitimacy but such States still require some oppressive force and surveillance for governance. There are odd examples like Greece - a western nation which is significantly lacking in both perceptional as well as substantive legitimacy despite being a modern multiparty democratic political system. Why? Read this book.
Let’s recap on how Democracy came about in the world. First was the category of nations where the Democracy indeed worked out well (western states in 18th-19th-20th century and later in some states in Asia Pacific & Eastern Europe etc in 20th century). Yes, Classical theory of Democracy can work if nation has certain delicate requisites (Schumpeter’s mentions four main requisites and explain them in detail). Democracy worked well in these states for a long time. Meaning - the democratic political systems delivered on both substantive and perceptional legitimacy.
But starting late 20th century, the substantive legitimacy of Democracy started to recede in certain western states - America and UK are prime examples. Also note that Democracy is not a universal success spanning space and time. A nation where democracy worked in past may not have same success in future. Political democracy requires certain delicate requisites and when they vanish, Democracy fails. This is happening even in certain developed nations of the world, including America.
In other nations, especially backward post colonial States that didn’t have the requisites for a functional democracy; democracy did not deliver. Why did these states adopted democracy in first place? Because the old political elites of these nations that agitated for independence against Colonial powers were disciples of classical theory of democracy. In other words, they didn’t understood the actual concept of democracy and saw democracy as some magical instrument of national success. The old political elites of these post colonial states thought they could emulate success stories of western democratic states. That never happened.
But why do these failed states still run on democracy? Two reasons. First is inertia. A flawed and dysfunctional system is carried on for so long that people have lost capacity to think outside of it. Secondly, because the market economy on which these states now run is conducive to democracy. The incompetent and corrupted regimes of those post colonial nations have very little capacity to deliver material progress to society. Hence they need perceptional legitimacy to keep their political systems stable to some degree which is provided by Democracy.
Intellectuals and activists in many failed post colonial nations worship Democracy as some great achievement. They don’t know that it’s now only a cover to conceal the increasing lack of substantive legitimacy. A governmental legitimacy is judged by accounting both types of legitimacy. Trump has proven that a democratically elected government even in a modern developed state can actually be a regime with no legitimacy.
There’s something in common among the intellectuals of West (like America), where substantive legitimacy has majorly receded and intellectuals of failed Democratic states (like India), which never had any substantive legitimacy in their democracy. Both of these intellectuals are disciples of classical theory of democracy which is now less and less applicable to nations like America and which was never applicable to nations like India.
Musical Coda
California Dreamin' (1965)