Power vs. Authority and the State

Jun 12, 2011 Features / Columnists, Ravi Dev

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I return to the theme from last week’s article “A Legitimate State”, where I pointed out that the neglect of the state and its legitimacy from our political debates was hindering our search for a just political order.
Power is granted to the state to establish administrative, legal, extractive, and coercive institutions such as tax bureaus, armies, police, bureaucracies, judiciaries etc. to coordinate – ultimately through coercion of one form or another – the activities of the populace. This coercive power we bequeath to the state is crucial to appreciating the nature of the state. In fact, the classic definition of the state as, “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” was offered by Max Weber.
The ideal would be that the state should serve the interest of all the people since it was constituted by all of them: this is the criterion of its fundamental legitimacy. There will always be the question as to who or which group controls or has undue influence over the state: the question of the autonomy of the state. Marxists say the state is simply the instrument of the capitalist class owning the means of production. In Guyana, however with its ethnicised politics, CLR James’ observation is very apt: “The race question is subsidiary to the class question in politics…but to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.”
In Guyana, while we look at the ethnic composition (moreso the ethnic support base) of the political parties that are elected (as the government) to direct the state, we can’t ignore the ethnic composition of the state institutions when we evaluate its efficacy and thus its legitimacy. This is not to say that governments are of no consequence. But the government of the day has authority not power: this is a distinction that is invariably ignored in Guyana. Meaning that the government simply has the constitutional authority to direct the institutions of the state in which power actually resides.
Many a time the government official may press a button but nothing happens at the other end. While at the Square of the Revolution I protested the government’s evident recourse to extra-judicial means to quell the violence emanating from the epicentre of Buxton, my opposition colleagues all ignored the obstinate refusal of elements of the state security apparatus to accept the authority of the government’s policy directions.
Mr Ogunseye’s confidence, expressed in his “riot act” speech, that the security forces would not act if Africans were to ensure there would be “no Guyana” illustrates the point in the present. And this concern is not confined to the coercive apparatus. In the case of the bureaucracy, their power lies in their power to craft, shape, hinder or apply policy initiatives of any government.
Representative and professionalised state institutions, such as we have been calling for since 1988, would go a long way towards securing the fair and equal treatment all Guyanese expect from the state. I have been amazed at the refusal of African representatives not to accept this truth. Do they believe that the manoeuvres of the PPP to work around the ethnically (and inevitably politically) skewed institutions bequeathed by the PNC regime is in any citizen’s (including their constituency’s) interest?
Lee Kwan Yu’s singular innovation in transforming multiethnic Singapore into the first world power it is today was because he first addressed the contradictions of his inherited colonial state. In re-staffing his state, he used the facially neutral criterion of merit – even, as from the results, he also had ethnic targets – not quotas. By obdurately sticking our heads in the sand on the legitimacy question, what we have created is the rightfully much maligned “weak state” that will ensure the best laid plans of any government – shared or otherwise – will go awry.
Today the state is expected not only to address the physical security and biological needs of its people but also psychological needs such as identity, recognition, participation, and autonomy. This is a tall order that does not need handicaps. The state – especially in a divided society – must not only act fairly in the satisfaction of these needs but must be seen to act fairly. A representative state apparatus can only help towards this end.
In terms of the call for “power sharing”, I find it ironic that the advocates want to share executive authority but not state power. That, of course is already skewed in their favour. I wonder if they ever consider that the PPP refuses to consider their construct because it means letting the fox into the henhouse?
Finally, I remind my old comrades in the opposition that the few instances where power sharing worked was when it was only a small part of a broader power dividing regime – such as federalism.

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