The Legitimate State

Jun 05, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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There is a debate on whether we have the requisite quantum of “trust” for power sharing in Guyana. The thrust for trust rests on a presumption of affinity for ideal societies: if Guyana were not ethnically divided we’d all be enjoying a love fest. Stated more concretely and normatively, the notion of “national self determination” has become the dominant paradigm for modern nations.
Peoples, with an ethnic, cultural, or linguistic identity of their own, have a right to constitute themselves as a political community with a state and legal system of their own. Trust is thought to come with the territory, through the principle of affinity. But the fact of the matter – or more to the point – the fact of history has made most modern societies multi-cultural to one extent or another.
Rather than wonder “what would have been”, we have to deal with the facticity of our cultural diversity, which exacerbates other cleavages (such as class and gender) that develop in even the most culturally homogenous societies. How to engender trust?
Some of the earliest theorists of western political science grappled with the conflicts that were seemingly immanent in the human social condition. Didn’t Hobbes declare that the reason why man established political communities was to prevent endemic violent conflict and not to validate affinity? Or Madison pointing out that if men were angels there would be no need for governments?
But it was Kant who put the matter in the most helpful perspective. People who live “unavoidably side by side”, whether sharing affinities or not, will inevitably come into conflict for one reason or another – resources, status or whatever. And it is for this reason we need the juridical and administrative apparatus of the state to regulate the endemic conflict. This is the principle of proximity. Whether we form the state out of self interest (survival) or as a moral imperative (justice) the state is vital for regulating the agon. The state is the prerequisite and a sine qua non for a stable and just society. And to establish the basis for creating trust.
I point all of this out not just to expand on the question of trust, but to also connect it to Dr David Hinds’ declaration: “Parity of the armed forces cannot be discussed outside of parity in the economic sector and in the government.” The armed forces, I had pointed out, along with the bureaucracy and judiciary were the key institutions of the state. What Dr Hinds seems to be wilfully ignoring is that unless the state, through its institutions, is made legitimate, changing the composition of the executive is just a salve that leaves the inherent conflicts festering. The end results that he desires for his people will never be realised.
Dr Hinds fails to distinguish between at least three levels of legitimacy in his studied conflation of the state, economy and government: ‘regime-legitimacy – referring to the propriety or rightfulness of the rule of the administration; Government-legitimacy – with a particular form of government and with its corresponding ideology and institutions, and State-legitimacy, the broadest of these categories, concerned with the justification of the political unit itself, rather than with either individuals or governments. To deny legitimacy to a regime is not to deny it to a government. To deny legitimacy to either a regime or a government is not to deny it to a state. To deny it to a state is to deny it to all three levels.’
The domination of the key state institutions by one ethnic group had delegitimized our state before and since independence. The PNC focused on consolidating the state – already skewed historically by the British for its own divide and rule stratagem – in the image of its constituency.
In Francis Fukuyama’s just-released and magisterial “The Origins of Political Order”, Fukuyama points out that the default condition for most large societies is tribalism and for any sustained development they had to develop an official class loyal to the state rather than to kith and kin. He stresses that though impartial institutions are the basis of the modern state, the instinct to favour family never disappears and will reassert itself whenever possible. It must always be counteracted.
The PPP, for what I have labelled “the rule of anticipated consequences”, faltered in reforming the state’s legitimacy. And today we’re all wringing our hands that “nothing works”. By challenging regime and government legitimacy but leaving state legitimacy in abeyance, Dr Hinds is being dangerously disingenuous, just because such reform would address the Indian Ethnic Security Dilemma. He would cut his nose to spoil his face.
Guyana and none of its groups will ever progress if the state remains manned by kith and kin. This is the condition precedent for engendering trust.

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