India, America and politics in big democracies
July 16th, 2008Author: Andrew MacIntyre
Is politics in big democracies necessarily slow and messy? I’ve found myself increasingly thinking so. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been fortunate to have a series of up-close meetings inside the political engine rooms of the United States and India. And for all the many and important differences between the world’s two largest democracies – from culture to constitutions – I have been struck by an underlying similarity. Decision-making in both is fundamentally fragmented.
Forging the necessary agreement to achieve reform involves cutting deals among multiple and diverse players and is inherently difficult. Very occasionally rapid consensus is possible. For instance, moments of great national emergency (as when US politicians united in response to 9/11), or when some powerful self-interest effecting all players is at stake (as when Indian politicians united in response to the threat of uncomfortably revealing campaign disclosure requirements). But mostly the political process is grindingly slow as the numerous tactical deals needed to enact change get squared away, with marginal change or no-change being the default position in both places.
Usually we think of this as depressing. We’re struck by all the opportunities for enhancing the provision of this or that public good that go begging for far too long. But perhaps the price of a democracy that can hold big – and therefore, in all likelihood, socially and regionally diverse – countries together is indeed fragmented and slow politics. Watching Manmohan Singh smash his parliamentary coalition over the proposed nuclear deal with the US and then scramble in search of a new one in India’s multiparty maze and wondering about how either Barak Obama or John McCain would go about constructing deals with Congress in a time of social division and partisan bitterness, I found myself starting to conclude as much.
One could debate the virtues of economies from political scale as opposed to more timely delivery of public goods. But in these two big democracies that’s not where the action is. For all their differences, in both cases it’s all about who can find ways of negotiating a saleable vision through in inescapably fragmented power structures to achieve some semblance of a coherent policy outcome.
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