Francis Fukuyama’s latest tome on politics and history has recently been released, according to the Economist which reviewed it. It is the second and final volume of a two volume work, the first of which appeared in 2011 and was entitled The Origins of Political Order. This one bears the title Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalisation of Democracy, and from the synopsis encapsulated within the review it might appear to have more than a passing relevance to Guyana.
Fukuyama, of course, a devotee of the grand sweep of history, first came to public prominence (as opposed to academic prominence) following the publication of his book The End of History in 1992. This was a work of unbridled optimism that predicted the relentless spread of liberal democracy all over the world, and the author no doubt felt constrained to explain in his latest offerings why history, as the Economist put it, is more complicated than he had imagined the first time around. The answer he gave, the review said, related to the quality of political institutions, since neither democracy nor markets can prosper outside the context of a competent state. That notwithstanding, a competent state can still supply the benefits of modernity without the advantages of either democracy or free markets.
The journal said that Fukuyama contrasted successful states with those whose institutions failed to keep up with social change, citing Latin America as an example of the latter. The Arab Spring, he apparently wrote, was a failure of “governmental capability,” and in the case of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood failed to understand the distinction between winning an election and winning total power. One can only indulge the reflection that the Professor could have come to Guyana and observed the same phenomenon.
According to the review the author gave the Chinese as an example of a modern state where there is no democracy or rule of law. They have been able to achieve this by reaching back into their history to recreate the example of the highly efficient bureaucracy set up by the emperors of China. It should be remarked that all the great empires, such as the Romans, the Incas, the British, the Mughuls, the Abbasids and that of Mali – to name a few – evolved sophisticated bureaucratic structures; quite simply, there would have been no empires without them. The British Empire is the one known best here, and anyone who has had dealings with its 19th century records – their contents aside – can only marvel at its systems and punctilious attention to detail in an age when there was no telephone.
It is what Fukuyama had to say on the United States which might arouse the greatest interest in his work. The Economist reproduced his view as being that the political institutions which had allowed the US to become a successful modern democracy were now in the process of decay. The separation of powers, for example, always had the “potential for gridlock,” but two developments had made that potential a “reality.” These were firstly, the fact that political parties were now “polarised along ideological lines,” and secondly, that powerful groups employed a veto against politicians of whom they did not approve. The US, he was reported to have written, had degenerated into a “vetocracy.”
There are elements here which will certainly reverberate in Guyana, more especially where gridlock is concerned. However, this country also has some idiosyncracies all its own, since it is not ideology so much that divides the parties, as ethno-political loyalties. Reams have been written on this subject, although one is inclined to the view that demographic changes will in the longer term force the parties into coalition politics of one variety or another, more similar to what obtains in Suriname. Even in the US, one suspects, demographic changes will eventually miniaturise the right wing of the Republican Party, although a more complex system there means that other forces come into play to impinge on the situation. However, for a variety of reasons one would like to believe that the present conditions in America are an interlude, and that the intrinsic rationality of the system will in due course reassert itself.
The use of the veto in our parliament is an opposition response, as mentioned above, to the Muslim Brotherhood style confusion of electoral victory (and that limited to a plurality in this instance) with the acquisition of absolute power. It is this which has brought us to the absurd situation where there are no local government elections, no general election and no resumption of parliamentary proceedings after a recess. Whatever it is, it is not democracy.
In addition, over the decades there has been a slow but sure decay of our institutions guaranteeing a decline in the competence of the state. It began with the undermining of those institutions, because Burnham preferred that method for maintaining control to the outright seizure of power, and it was accompanied by the habit of giving mostly loyalists preference in terms of employment in senior positions. The latter it might be noted, has been one of the significant factors allowing for the development of corruption, which in turn has been so responsible for institutional decay.
Fukuyama is said to have referred to the meritocratic principle at the heart of the old Chinese bureaucracy, and the fact that the British too eventually introduced it into their civil service in the nineteenth century. The older British system rested on patronage, as the Guyanese one does today, and, according to the author, some southern European states still do as well.
But patronage is not the only problem which has contributed to the decay of Guyanese institutions. The United States and China are countries with huge populations, and their reserves in terms of human resources are vast. Guyana has the critical problem of a brain drain, but that fact notwithstanding, loyalty to the party still trumps competence. In fact, even if loyalty were not a major criterion for appointment to certain posts, and a meritocracy held sway throughout the nation, there is still not the critical mass where skills are concerned to make this a competent state.
Attracting back skills and retaining the ones which are here is a complicated issue not easily addressed. However, in the first instance there has at some level to be a return to democratic principles and the rule of law, partly (but not wholly) facilitated by further work on the constitution. People of talent are not normally attracted by the kind of political confusion we are so adept at creating. In addition, of course, the institutional framework properly resourced has to be there for dealing with corruption.
Change is not going to happen in a hurry; our politicians are nothing if not both short-sighted and obdurate. But they will eventually be forced to change as they find themselves increasingly faced with conditions they have never encountered before, and the models of the past by which they make their current judgements become ever more irrelevant. The problem is that history will not be rushed; all kinds of elements have to be adjusted or reformed first, and given our politicians, the political process will be messy. In the end, however, Guyanese are as much entitled to a competent state as they are to democracy and the rule of law.
