Dispatch #68: Liberty-Who is she? When she’s at home? Part 2

In this dispatch we explore the state-society relationship & how liberty emerges as a result of this interaction. We dive into the main themes of the book 'The Narrow Corridor' by Acemoglu & Robinson

Source: Britannica

Hobbes didn’t get everything right. As we saw in the previous dispatch, a society even with a strong Leviathan capable of controlling the war can turn against its own citizens. Similarly, a stateless society can manage to control violence. An example of this is the Mbuti pygmies in the Congo region of Africa. They don’t have a formal chief or a council of elders to resolve conflicts. They settle their disputes through discussions and turn to traditional forest deities during life-changing events such as marriage or death. Anthropologist Charles Stanish, in his book ‘The Evolution of Human Co-operation,’ explains why people in stateless societies develop ‘norms of economic and social development’ even in the absence of a centralised authority. According to him, it’s the ritual practices of these societies that ‘encode elaborate rules of behavior and are ingenious mechanisms of organizing a society in the absence of coercive states’. 

Stanish explains:

The major problem that this book, therefore, seeks to resolve is this: how do people living in small groups without money, markets, policing powers, bureaucracies, social classes, and other coercive mechanisms develop norms and rules of economic and social cooperation that are sustainable over time? This is, after all, precisely the context in which complex societies evolved in the Holocene. I argue that such cooperation is achieved by “ritualizing” the economy. These groups constructed norms, rituals, and taboos to organize their economy. These conclusions are based on a rich set of ethnographic data on stateless societies around the globe and on observations of the archaeological record. Far from being quaint and exotic customs of “primitive peoples,” the elaborate rules of economic behavior, encoded in rich ritual practices, are ingenious means of organizing a society where political coercion backed by overt or subtle force is absent. In other words, in stateless societies, the collective action problem is dealt with by ritualizing certain behaviors and providing the rewards and punishments necessary to maintain cooperation. The degree to which economic relationships between members of the co-operative group were ritualized to support that co-operation is the key to success in the competitive environment of the Holocene.

Acemoglu and Robinson (AR) have attributed this to social norms. According to them, stateless societies use ‘customs, traditions, rituals, and patterns of acceptable and expected behaviour’, to bring order and stability. Hence, it’s not only the all-powerful Leviathan that brings peace, justice, and economic activity. 

AR add:

Norms determine what is right and what is wrong in the eyes of others, what types of behaviours are shunned and discouraged, and when individuals and families will be ostracized and cut off from the support of others. Norms also play a vital role in bonding people and in coordinating their actions so that they can exercise force against other communities and prevent them from committing serious crimes in their own community.

But is everything hunky dory in a stateless society governed by norms and rituals?

The answer is No.

The same set of rituals and norms that were evolved to ‘coordinate action, resolve conflict, and generate a shared understanding of justice’ also create a stifling cage where liberty is curbed. Societies that do not have a centralised authority and depend entirely on norms, end up disempowering their people. AR call this phenomenon the ‘cage of norms’. They use an excellent metaphor to explain how it works. In stateless societies, there are a few people who are more powerful than others; who are more well-connected than others, and who have more influence in society than others. If you need protection then you have to accept their dominance over you ‘voluntarily’. This subservience leads to the curbing of an individual’s liberty. 

In the Indian context, an example of the cage of norms is the caste system. 

AR add:

Once traditions and customs become so deeply ingrained they start regulating many aspects of people’s lives. It’s then inevitable that they will start favouring those with a little more say in society at the expense of others. Even when norms have evolved over centuries they get interpreted and enforced by their more powerful individuals. Why shouldn’t they tilt the board in their favour and cement their power in the community a little more?

Hence, what’s emerging from this discussion is very different from what Hobbes conceptualised. The absence of a Leviathan not only leads to the short, nasty, and brutish existence of humans but also may result in a rigid set of rituals and costumes called the cage of norms that also dominates individuals. The society is organised in such a way that a few sets of people have more sway on matters such as justice delivery, maintaining law and order, and deciding the rules for economic exchange. 

This essentially means that we are stuck between Despotic Leviathan (strong state, weak society) or Absent Leviathan (weak state, strong society) which results in the cage of norms.

AR ask the same question while also suggesting a solution:

Are we then doomed to choose between one type of dominance over another? Trapped in either Warre or the cage of norms or under the yoke of a despotic state? Though there is nothing automatic about the emergence of liberty and it hasn’t been easy to achieve in human affairs and this critically depends on the emergence of states and state institutions. Yet these must be very different from what Hobbes imagined, not the all-powerful, unrestrained sea monster, but a shackled state.

A Shackled Leviathan is one where we have a state that has the capacity to create and enforce laws, resolve conflicts, enforce contracts when there’s any economic exchange and tame regressive societal impulses but at the time has checks and balances coming from a well-organised society. A society with Shackled Leviathan has ‘massively expanded the capacity and can now resolve myriad conflicts fairly, enforce a complex set of laws and provide public services that as its citizens demand and enjoy’. It is a state that creates liberty by taming the centralised authority and curbing its tendency of becoming Gilgamesh, at the same time it checks dominant forces within the society to hijack public goods and services. 

AR articulate the features of a Shackled Leviathan by arguing:

It is accountable to society not just because it is bound by the Constitution, which emphatically exalts the rights of citizens, but more importantly because it is shackled by people who will complain, demonstrate and even rise up if it oversteps its bounds. Its presidents and legislators are elected, and they are often kicked out of office when the society they are ruling over doesn’t like what they are doing. Its bureaucrats are subject to review and oversight. It is powerful, but coexists with and listens to a society that is vigilant and willing to get involved in politics and contest power.

Historically, liberty has been rare. Many societies emerged with a cage of norms instead of a strong and capable state. Even at places where strong states emerged, they were rather oppressive and unresponsive to society’s demands. Thus the probability of liberty flourishing has been very scant. Shackled Leviathans emerged very late in history and their journey has been fraught with a lot of contention. Only Shackled Leviathans managed to protect liberty by ‘creating broad-based economic opportunities and incentivising and promoting a sustained rise in economic prosperity’. Having said that, it takes a lot of persistence and a perennial defense mechanism to safeguard liberty and Shackled Leviathan. 

Source: Reuters

The Red Queen Effect

Shackled Leviathan and liberty depend upon the balance of power between the state and the society. Both have to be equally powerful and should be able to put checks and balances on each other. If the state and elites become more powerful, we’ll end up with Despotic Leviathan. If the society and a few dominant men and women are stronger than the state then we’ll have Absent Leviathan. In order to sustain a Shackle Leviathan, both state and society must run together without one dominating the other. 

AR call this phenomenon ‘The Red Queen Effect’. This idea is from Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Alice meets the Red Queen and they start running together. After a while, she realised that even though they both seem to be running hard but the objects around them like trees seemed to be in their original positions. Therefore, the Red Queen effect emerges when both the state and the society run fast together to maintain a balance between them. If the society slacks and falls behind the state and its ever-growing power then the Shackled Leviathan slips into Despotic Leviathan. Similarly, if the state falls behind the state and lets the dominant forces command power and influence then again the Shackled Leviathan slips into Absent Leviathan. To shackle and tame a leviathan, the society needs to ‘cooperate, organise collectively, and take up political participation. That’s hard to do if it’s divided among itself into powers and their masters, tribes, and kinship groups.’ 

A brilliant example of how the Red Queen effect gets unleashed is the Bill of Rights in the American Constitution. While the makers of the American Constitution- George Washington, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton- were thoughtful men who introduced essential features of liberty into the Constitution such as introducing checks and balances and division of powers, they somehow overlooked basic rights initially. The American Constitution replaced the first laws of the nation, the Articles of Confederation of 1777-78. However, it did not have certain basic rights when it was written in 1787. The Bill of Rights, as they were called, is a set of the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. The Bill of Rights amendments, added later, guarantee personal freedom and rights. 

The fourth amendment states that:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Similarly, the sixth amendment states that:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.

It was not until after the continuous protests by Anti-Federalists like Patrick Henry who famously said ‘Give me liberty, or give me death’, that these amendments were made to the Constitution. Anti-Federalists were against the stronger American government. They were worried that the President might become a monarch if proper checks and balances were not put in place. The protection that the Bill of Rights provided was the result of the Red Queen effect, steered by the Anti-Federalists. 

The Bill of Rights story further cements the argument. One of the vital ingredients for a Shackled State is individuals and groups like the Federalists who would emerge as nation builders and would help establish a Leviathan to resolve conflicts and protect the people. The other ingredient is societal mobilisation in institutional ways (elections and parliaments) or non-institutional ways (putting pressure via protests and petitions). The checks and balances which Constitutions provide are akin to Enkidu. They are insufficient to tame a Gilgamesh kind of strong state or a democratically elected government with majoritarian impulses. What’s needed is the countervailing force of a mobilised society that becomes engaged in politics and shackles the state. 

Therefore, liberty depends upon the types of Leviathan, whether the society will live under a depot or inside the cage of norms. A balance of power between the state and the society shackles the leviathan and helps liberty flourish. 

In the first chapter of the book, AR conclude their arguments by saying:

A very different type of Leviathan, a shackled one, emerges when there is a balance between its power and society’s capacity to control it. This is the Leviathan that can resolve conflicts fairly, provide public services and economic opportunities, and prevent dominance, laying down the basic foundations of liberty. This is the Leviathan that people, believing that they can control it, trust and cooperate with and allow to increase its capacity. This is the Leviathan that also promotes liberty by breaking down the various cages of norms tightly regulating behaviours in society. Its defining feature is its shackles. It does not have Hobbes’s sea monster’s dominance over society, it does not have the capability to ignore or silence people when they try to influence political decision-making. It stands not above but alongside society.