Reading Snippet - Why Nations Fail (10)

How to persist an inclusive society

Once the seed of inclusiveness and equality among all citizens has been planted and germinated, the question of why some states managed to build and develop equality rather than reversing back to extractive society became the big item for the authors.

A number of aspects need to advance for inclusiveness to stay. The first is the rule of law - not just that laws are clearly set out and enforced, but also that the law is equally applicable to all members of the state. It also requires change of law to be based on people's want rather than arbitrary desires of a small group of elite. In this way, law could not be abused to give political and economic favour to a small group of elites, nor could they easily change laws to cement their power or tilt the playing field. But this also means that the administration must be centralised enough to enforce law.

The second is to transfer political power to the wide base of citizens and ensure they could exercise their political powers freely. This power includes the ability to vote and choose legislators and administrators, but also the ability to petition and receive information, so that they could act according to best judgement instead of manipulation. By having this broad power base, the elite risks being de-selected if they do not satisfy the broad population.

The third is to de-couple political and economic powers as much as possible. Anti-trust laws in the US prevented businesses from becoming too big to leverage their size over politics. In Southern US, the plantation owners remained rich and powerful even after the civil war, and they were actively trying to gain influence over politics to maintain their economic power (over the black population). This means that de-coupling is not just about changing the law (the plantation owners could still exploit loopholes), but also enrich the general population so that they had sufficient economic power from selling their political power to feed themselves; the extent of political power should also be clipped so that political power in one field could not easily translate into economic favours. The de-coupling also reduces the incentives for people who want to get rich to get into politics - you do not need to join politics to get the favours for economic gains.

The fourth is obscure but arguably the most important - people must be allowed to exhibit their individual colours, such that a multi-faceted and pluralistic society emerges. In the first British revolution, the rival groups magnified their intra-group commonality and were quick to distribute favours amongst the 'similar' people. In Glorious revolution, the revolutionaries recognised their intra-group differences (MPs, merchants, rich landowners etc) and were keen to preserve and respect their diversity. In this way, the constituents were keen to voice their own concerns and negotiate a way to accommodate each other - if they decided to displace the other sub-groups, the fear is the others may one day gain power and do the same, and their hard-won power would perish altogether. By winning rights through a coalition (i.e. exposing the differences instead of similarities), there is incentive to preserve the coalition rather than start in-fighting.

These aspects need to advance together to maintain inclusiveness. It is a hard maintenance.