Daily Times

Robert Kaplan prognosticated in his very interesting article ie The Coming Anarchy published in the February 1994 edition of the The Atlantic Monthly, a vision of a chaotic world where the disorder would rule the roost. The article was a counterpoint to the liberal democratic utopia propounded by the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama in his ‘The End of History and The Last Man’ thesis. Fukuyama had predicted a Kantian peace undergirded by shared ideology of liberal democracy and free market economies in a unipolar world. Samuel Huntington had also propounded his jeremiad like vision of an inevitable clash between the civilisations after the end of the ideological confrontation of Cold War.

It is another thing that Huntington had ultimately retracted from that inevitability of the clash between the civilisations in his book ie Who Are We? envisioning instead a clash between the forces of civilisation and barbarism. Kaplan on the other hand had visualised a world where threats like tribalism, resource scarcity, environmental degradation, overpopulation, disease, and crime would empower primordial identities based on culture and ethnicity leading to conflicts and chaos.

Kaplan’s vision echoed a Malthusian spectre of a world running out of resources where the localised conflicts over resources would trump political and ideological conflicts of cold war era. Kaplan also posited a thesis about the limitations and perils of democratic systems of governance sans some vital pre requisites. These prerequisites, according to the author, included a sizable middle class, a reasonably established system of law enforcement and tax collection, and a strong judiciary capable of dispensing justice without any pressures. Kaplan also believes that the growing urbanisation in the developing countries is leading towards stress on economies due to requirements of urban infrastructure and food security. The rapid urbanisation is enlarging the size of middle class in real terms but in relative global terms this middle class remains poor and below par in socioeconomic indices. Thus the ghettos and slums that dot the urban landscape in developing countries pose a challenge to social stability and security in these countries. A healthy and sizable middle class therefore is a better barometer of democratic stability than the number of elections in a country.

Countries like China that have progressed under an autocratic dispensation have achieved phenomenal growth due to the ability of autocratic government structures that have very effectively overcome problems — of poverty and ethnic polarisation

Countries like China that have progressed under an autocratic dispensation have achieved phenomenal growth due to the ability of autocratic government structures that have very effectively overcome problems of poverty and ethnic polarisation.

Chinese Communist Party and its political cadres have acted as a democratic equivalent whereas the state law enforcement agencies have acted as the autocratic instruments to keep in check the destabilising factors like Hun-Uighur differences, rural-urban divide, and ethno-linguistic particularism. The political stability and economic development fostered by the forces of authoritarianism give rise to an economically vibrant and politically aware middle class that in due course acts as change agent throwing out ironically the same forces of authoritarianism that in the first place nurtured it. The authoritarianism thus supplanted by a democratic dispensation seeks to challenge the democratic excesses unleashed by a politically conscious and economically empowered middle class that acts as the engine of democratic growth. The struggle between the two competing strains of democratisation and authoritarianism give rise sometimes to what the classic Greek historian Polybius calls the “Hybrid Regimes”. These regimes have a mix of democratic and autocratic polity. In countries where colonial subjugation left a trail of economic devastation the autocratic regimes build institutions of governance along with a middle class that helps develop the required democratic processes and representative institutions.

Countries like China that have built a large middle class have improved the quality of life and human development indices of their population significantly. By enhancing the personal freedoms i.e freedom from poverty, hunger, and disease these countries have changed the meaning of human rights that in Western parlance mean political freedoms, freedoms of press, and freedom of association.

The Hybrid regimes like Turkey that combine a measure of authoritarianism with democracy have redefined the concept of human rights pulling a vast multitude of their population out of the clutches of poverty. As Isaiah Berlin states that for a country where potable water is inaccessible to population the freedom of press is meaningless, the meaning of human rights and human development differ from country to country.

Writers like Lipset 1959, Almond and Verba,1963, and Moore, 1966 averred that democracy was more likely to emerge in countries with advanced socioeconomic development. In 1974 there were only 41 democracies amongst the existing 150 states but a democratic wave in the seventies and eighties took this figure to 121 by the year 2003. The new wave however did not lead towards stable democracies as there were perpetual conflicts and wars amongst several newly minted democracies.

So in a post democratic world described chaotic by Kaplan where disease, hunger, poverty, and bad governance would result in meltdown of state and rise of militancy identifying with culture, religion, and ethnicity how would countries like Pakistan fare? Would a Westminster like democracy empowering business and feudal oligarchy deliver in Pakistan or a Hybrid Regime proposed by Polybius and Kaplan?

The answer might perhaps lie in a reality check of the current governance scene in Pakistan. While it is true that harking back to 1950 and 60s style of autocracy might not be possible in this new cyber era, it is also a fact that the unadulterated brand of democracy practiced by us through imitation of the Western model has failed to deliver the desired dividends. While the world has passed us by, we gaze in an abyss which in turn gazes back at us promising nothing.

The repeated sequence of elections without an economically empowered and educated middle class would yield nothing but a clique of oligarchs masquerading as leaders whose predilection for personal aggrandisement would leave the country rudderless and undeveloped.

A water scarce country’s political leadership that only stands above Ethiopia does not have the will, gumption, or the vision to build large water reservoirs due to petty political interests. A runaway population that threatens to devour environment, natural resources, and housing infrastructure demands emergency measures but no sense of urgency is in sight.

For a country threatened by resource scarcity, economic meltdown, environmental degradation, over population, crime, terrorism, and food insecurity every ounce of public, government, media, and intelligentsia energy should be consumed in debates about the coming anarchy. What we have instead are interminable TV debates on politics, scandals, and sensationalism that continually drive the insatiable hunger of a corporate media. What then must be the role of the institutions that can prevent the meltdown of the state?

The answer yet again may lie in the Kaplan’s prescription of a Hybrid Regime where the politicians run the show through representative institutions but the sinews of state power like judiciary, armed forces, and civil society perform more actively retaining a check on the corruption, lack of development vision, and the political expediency of the poorly performing governments. Judiciary and armed forces should act as a ‘Deus ex Machina’ displaying traits of ‘Noblesse Oblige’ in the best patriotic traditions of true national salvation institutions.

Decisions that cannot be taken by politicians due to political expediencies should be forced upon them by state institutions in the best interest of the country. A symbiosis of the institutional activism, civil society support, and responsible journalism should act as the development spur that the country desperately needs today.

Army and judiciary should act as the silent yet puissant backstop to the government’s long and difficult haul up the national development ladder. A National Development and Planning Council on the lines of National Security Council should be set up staffed by the civil as well as military experts to identify the emerging threats to national security and to offer solutions to counter these.

Army should ensure in coordination with judiciary that the recommendations by the panel of experts in the National Development and Planning Council are implemented untrammelled by political considerations. Army’s muscle, judiciary’s acumen, and the civil society’s vision should form a pole of the hybrid regime that should force the non performing political pole to take all those difficult decisions that have been kept pending due to political compulsions. The present CPEC inspired moment of development is simply too precious to be squandered away due to democracy’s limitations. Hybrid regime with more active judiciary and armed forces therefore might just be the solution to tame the forces of the coming anarchy.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; email rwjanj@hotmail.com.

Published in Daily Times, October 29^th 2017.