Podcasts about for hobbes

India Policy Watch #1: Futility Of Fighting Lies Insights on burning policy issues in India— RSJI have been following the case of Mohammed Zubair, the co-founder of the fact-checking site Alt News with interest. He was granted interim bail by the Supreme Court a couple of weeks back. You can read more about the story here. I border on free speech absolutism, so my opinion on this case, as with many other similar cases in India, is simple. No one should be jailed for any speech unless they are violating Mill’s harm principle. In his essay On Liberty, Mill wrote:“That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind is warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”But free speech is not the only reason I have brought up the case of Mohammed Zubair here. The case illustrates a point I have made before in this newsletter: while countering lies with fact checks is a noble, worthwhile endeavour, it means nothing in an environment where people are intoxicated with half-truths and grand illusions about a ‘real’ past or an ‘imagined’ future.A few years back, I came across this wonderful essay ‘Monopolize the Pretty Lies’ by Bryan Caplan. While I understood it back then, reading it again now is insightful. Caplan writes:What then is the primary purpose of censorship?  It’s not to suppress the truth – which has little mass appeal anyway.  The primary purpose of censorship is to monopolize the pretty lies.  Only the powers-that-be can freely make absurdly self-aggrandizing claims. Human beings like to say – and think – whatever superficially sounds good.  Strict censorship allows rulers to exploit this deep mental flaw.  If no one else can make absurd lies, a trite slogan like, “Let’s unite to fight for a fantastic future!” carries great force.  Truthful critics would have to make crowd-displeasing objections like, “Maybe competition will bring us a brighter future than unity,” “Who exactly are we fighting?,” or “Precisely how fantastic of a future are we talking about?”  A rather flaccid bid for power!  Existing rulers tremble far more when rebels bellow, “Join us to fight for a fantastic future!”This is why I think this case won’t go anywhere. It will fizzle out here because fact-checkers don’t really matter. What will matter is if there is a counter-narrative based on dubious claims of an equally fantastic future. It explains why AAP is seen as a credible threat by the BJP.Caplan ends his essay with a rather pessimistic view of free speech:Doesn’t this imply that free speech is overrated?  Yes; I’ve said so before.  While I’d like to believe that free speech leads naturally to the triumph of truth, I see little sign of this.  Instead, politics looks to me like a Great Liars’ War.  Viable politicians defy literal truth in virtually every sentence.  They defy it with hyperbole.  They defy it with overconfidence.  They defy it with wishful thinking.  Dictators try to make One Big Political Lie mandatory.  Free speech lets a Thousand Political Lies Bloom.Yes, freedom of speech lets me make these dour observations without fear. I’m grateful for that.  Yet outside my Bubble, dour observations fall on deaf ears.  Psychologically normal humans crave pretty lies, so the Great Liars’ War never ends.I guess once you’ve gotten into the chakravyuha of the Mahabharata of lies, there’s no way of getting out. You will only find an avalanche of prettier lies from all sides engulfing you in future. India Policy Watch #2: Nature Of Representation Insights on burning policy issues in India— RSJDroupadi Murmu, the NDA presidential nominee, was elected as the 15th President of India a couple of weeks back. Murmu, a tribal leader from Mayurbhanj, Odisha, had earlier served as the governor of Jharkhand. That a woman from a historically marginalised section of the society now occupies the highest constitutional post is a moment to celebrate in the 75th year of Indian independence. It shows a kind of deepening of democracy. This is because we associate democracy with representation. It was no surprise therefore that a lot of opinion pieces reflected this sentiment while talking about her. Here’s Aditi Narayani Paswan writing for the Indian Express:“Droupadi Murmu is not just a source of inspiration for us; her life and struggle, determination and success in the face of great odds represent the hope and promise of New India.Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Indian democracy has become more representative and inclusive. The BJP represents the New India of prosperity, equality and socio-economic mobility, reflecting the true embodiment of samajik samarasta (social harmony). A tribal woman succeeding a Dalit to the highest constitutional post of the nation is a remarkable testimony to the deepening roots of Indian democracy.”And here’s a piece in Outlook:“What is really significant for us to understand here is that Murmu’s victory is not merely the victory of a specific party to power. Rather its implications can be drawn deep down to the very philosophy of what India as an independent nation has been striving to practically achieve. Whether or not her victory can bring goals of that philosophy to fruition is a matter of time to tell. But at the moment, from the point of view of a modern, multicultural, multi-ethnic nation-state, Murmu’s victory is the victory of representation.”Origin StorySince we are all talking about the victory of representation, I thought it would be useful to go deeper into the idea itself. What does representation mean in a democracy? How useful is it? Does an increasing emphasis on identity in society mean a greater opportunity for democracies to be truly representative? Is there such a thing as too much representation? To understand this, we will go back to the modern conception of the state and, therefore, to Hobbes. There are good reasons to go back to ancient history and the Roman republic or the Roman empire while talking about representation. But the political theory of the time concerned itself with the question of who was fit to rule us from among the people who should be ruling us. It didn’t answer the question of how we find who was fit to rule us. The process didn’t matter much then. So, we start with Hobbes again. This is a familiar territory for this newsletter so forgive me for going over it again. For Hobbes, human life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’. We would be a ‘fractious multitude’ forever at war with each other for scarce resources because there would be no powerful force to keep us in order. The solution, Hobbes wrote, was for people to come together to form a pact, let’s call it the ‘commonwealth’, where they voluntarily give up some of their freedoms to a powerful entity called the ‘sovereign’ in exchange for protection against the violence that’s inevitable in the state of nature. So that’s how the State worked. There were the multitudes, a notion of the commonwealth, and then there was the sovereign. The sovereign was all-powerful but ruled because of the legitimacy of the commonwealth. If the sovereign itself became brutish, the multitudes might dismantle the commonwealth and look for another. Hobbes didn’t care much about how to search for the sovereign. It could be through a parliament, or it could be a monarch; it didn’t matter so long as it had absolute power to maintain order which was in turn voluntarily offered to them by the people. The enlightenment thinkers who followed Hobbes concerned themselves with two big ideas. One was individual liberty and how it should be protected and championed in the face of a powerful sovereign. The other was the separation of the ‘church’ from the State or how to ensure the sovereign doesn’t bow down to another power in the name of God. The revolutions and political reforms in the late 18th century Europe and North America were a result of the excesses of the sovereign and the propagation of these ideas within those societies. The primacy of individual liberty, the weakening of monarchy and the separation of the church led to the evolution of the modern, representative democracy where the people chose who would lead them. The people would be sovereign through the mode of representation. A system of checks and balances between the legislature, executive and judiciary would limit the concentration of power in any one person. This became the democratic model to emulate. The Problem Of RepresentationThe problem of representation wasn’t too difficult to solve in the early days of democracy. There was no universal suffrage, people lived in villages over generations, their representatives knew their issues well, and the people chose someone who presented the best option to address their concerns. There was very little information asymmetry. This model started fraying with increasing industrialisation and deepening of capitalism leading to greater social and geographic mobility. Cities with diverse populations, new professions, break down of the feudal structure in the countryside and universal suffrage followed. This meant it was difficult for any representative to know their people as well as before. Even the people couldn’t keep pace with all the information around them. Like Walter Lippman would write, there was a world outside, and there was a picture of it inside our heads. We make our decisions based on this picture which is a second-hand view of the world because we cannot see all of the world. Because of this, we search for an authentic messenger who can explain the real world to us. The elites use the media to present themselves as the authentic messengers and shape public opinion. It is this elite then who influence representation for the public. Once this model got established, we saw the elites dominate representation in democracies for most of the 20th century. This wheel turned in the last decade when the excesses of the financial system, the concentration of the benefits of globalisation, the proliferation of media and greater disparity in opportunities led to a populist backlash against the elites.The Three NarrativesThere are now three competing narratives on representation today. The first is the old Burkean point on the role of a representative of people. His speech to the electors of Bristol in 1774 is a classic on the role of a representative:“Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”This is the model of an independent representative with a mind of his own. They work with autonomy using their judgment to do what they think is best for their people.The second narrative is about the representative being either an expert or who will rely on experts for finding the best answers to the concerns of the public. This narrative strengthens when a nation is in crisis because of a war, economic failure or an emergency (health or environment, for instance). These don’t last long, and an expert eventually falls out of favour unless they reinvent themselves. The last narrative is that of a representative who is like you and me, the proverbial US politician who you could have a chat with over a beer. This is the literal interpretation of representation where fealty to someone is drawn because of how closely they resemble us. In a world where every expertise can be questioned, where independent thinking is viewed with suspicion, and tribal loyalty is the highest virtue, this literal view of representation is the strongest. Of course, this isn’t to say that these narratives of representation cannot come together in the shape of a single person who could satisfy all of them. But that looks increasingly rare around the world these days. What’s easier is for a representative to fashion themselves in closer affiliation to a particular identity among the people and use that to come to power. Over-indexing on any one of these narratives and choosing representatives on that basis is bad for democracy. It weakens the state. It is something we must keep in mind while celebrating representation.  Matsyanyaaya: A New East Asian TransitionBig fish eating small fish = Foreign Policy in action— Pranay KotasthaneThis week’s news was dominated by the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. If you weren’t sleeping under a rock, you would have already read many views, claims, blames, and counter-claims around this event. Here’s another one, but from an Indian realist perspective.The dominant narrative sees this visit as another episode of the ongoing US-China great power rivalry. In this narrative, Taiwan by itself, is secondary. All that matters is to place the blame either on China or the US for the escalations. One framing is that this visit was unnecessary, provocative, and irresponsible. The argument goes that the US has worsened the security situation of China’s neighbours by inviting the latter’s aggression. The opposite framing suggests that the blame rests solely on China’s expansionist tendencies over the last five years. China’s response of activating a military response ahead of the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party only shows what this event is really about.Both frames of the dominant narrative are missing a crucial element: the choices of the Taiwanese people. The great power rivalry framing often ignores that other nation-states also have the agency to make their sovereign choices, even if doing so sometimes involves playing one great power against another. Ukraine’s case is similar. Some people blame NATO’s expansion on Russia’s borders, while others point out that an invasion has no justification (I share this view). But we forget that most Ukrainians themselves want to move away from Russia and get closer to the West. Any final analysis needs to take this factor into account. My colleague Nitin Pai made a critical argument in early March: ““NATO/EU shouldn’t have expanded” is an insult to the agency of countries that have willingly exercised their choice to join. Accepting their sovereign decisions is also realism. Pretty silly to call yourself a ‘realist’ while pretending sovereign states don’t exist/lack agency.”So is the case with Taiwan. Some analysts are stuck in the old times, believing that Taiwan is China’s “internal issue”. They haven’t been paying enough attention to Taiwan’s domestic polity. The Taiwanese “nation”—the imagined community in Benedict Anderson’s conception— has been carefully constructed over the last few years. Democracy, freedom, and deep connections with the broader world are key foundations of Taiwanese nationalism. This kind of nationalism is antithetical to the mainland’s nationalism. The two consecutive electoral victories of the ruling party—Tsai Ing-wen’s DPP—is a sign that this Taiwanese identity has taken shape. The DPP defeated the grand old Guomindang, a party that has been soft on China. This is what Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu said in a BBC interview a couple of days ago:"We want to maintain the status quo, which is that Taiwan has no jurisdiction over mainland China and the People's Republic of China (CCP) has no jurisdiction over Taiwan. That is the reality… On the index of freedom Taiwan is ranked number one, on economic freedom Taiwan is also at the top. Taiwanese people enjoy democracy, freedom and the value of human rights, that put Taiwan in the democratic world…. We have the will and the capability. We need other countries to provide Taiwan with defensive articles, but defending Taiwan is our responsibility, we are not asking other countries to sacrifice their lives to protect Taiwan."Read the lines again. They are definitely not about a small internal issue or a minor historical, ideological tussle. What About Pelosi’s VisitHaving understood the categorical shift in Taiwan’s politics, we can better understand Ms Pelosi’s visit. The Taiwanese government knew what they were getting into. Taiwan orchestrated the visit precisely to clarify to the world that its differences with China are irreconcilable. Even the Guomindang came out in support of the visit. Having been under the threat of a mainland invasion for over 73 years, the Taiwanese know China’s intentions and actions better than most others.The visit, by itself, was just symbolic. It didn’t involve a leader from the Biden administration. Moreover, both Pelosi and the Biden administration made it clear that they are not reversing the “One China” principle. It was China that raised the stakes. China could’ve opted to let it pass by with a strong statement alone. But it chose to ratchet tensions, hoping that this tried-and-tested strategy would stare down Taiwan.But that was not to be. Taiwan and Pelosi called China’s bluff. And when that happened, China began conducting massive military drills, fired missiles and withdrew from important dialogue forums with the US. All this in response to just a symbolic visit by a legislators’ group! Just like the unsportsmanlike kid who walks away with his bat, ball and wickets after being adjudged out. (I know I’m breaking my injunction against anthropomorphising international relations.)How Should We in India Process This?Thus far, we have opted for our favourite position of taking a stance by not taking a stance. Foreign ministers of the US, Australia, and Japan jointly condemned China’s launch of missiles. The fourth Quad member was conspicuous by its absence.From an Indian perspective, Taiwan standing up to China’s expansionism is encouraging. India is familiar with China’s tantrums over visits by foreign diplomats. On every occasion a US Ambassador to India visits Arunachal Pradesh, the Chinese government gets riled up. Pelosi’s visit should be seen in the same context. China’s unreasonable demands and the disproportionate escalation when the demands aren’t heeded, deserve strong criticism short of any change in the “One China” formulation. At the same time, India should close the long-pending free-trade agreement with Taiwan. Its strategic value far outweighs the benefits of haggling over import duties.These words from Joseph Wu serve as a useful reminder to India and Indians:“Look at their[China’s] behaviour over Hong Kong, or claiming the East China Sea and the South China Sea. It is the typical expansionism of an authoritarian state.. Countries in this region need to watch out for what China is trying to do. Taiwan is not going to be the last piece in Chinese dream of expansionism.”Want to find out more about India and Taiwan? Start with this Puliyabaazi episode we recorded with Sana Hashmi, an Indian scholar of East Asian international relations (it’s in Hinglish). Earlier this year, Sana also anchored a comprehensive policy report analysing the India-Taiwan partnership for the Taiwan Asia Exchange Foundation. The report has twenty chapters on various facets of the relationship. I have co-written a chapter on semiconductors, while my colleague Shambhavi has a chapter on bilateral cooperation to tackle future pandemics. Finally, my colleagues have analysed a few cross-strait scenarios from an Indian national interest perspective in an excellent Takshashila Intelligence Estimate. Course Advertisement: Admissions for the Sept 2022 cohort of Takshashila’s Graduate Certificate in Public Policy programme are now open! Visit this link to apply.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Blog] If you are interested in the semiconductor angle in the Taiwan-PRC tensions, we have a post on it in our High-tech Geopolitics newsletter. [Book] Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China by Ezra Vogel is necessary reading to understand China better. [Tweet thread] Common mistakes we make in pronouncing Chinese names. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit publicpolicy.substack.com

The HBS hosts look under the hood, inspect the engine, and try to figure out what drives us. Perhaps more than any other affect, desire is put to work in so many areas of philosophy. For Plato, it is the beginning of knowledge (or the soul's search for truth), for Augustine, it is what marks post-lapsarian humanity–“Our hears are restless until they rest in you.” For Hobbes, it is one of the root affects and, perhaps, the root of the war of all against all. More recently, desire has become a focus in feminist philosophy, Foucauldian “geneaology,” philosophies of race, and queer theory, just to name a few central directions. In this episode, the HBS hosts talk about desire.Full episode notes at this link:http://hotelbarpodcast.com/podcast/episode-50-desirePlease support HOTEL BAR SESSIONS podcast on Patreon here:patron.com/hotelbarsessions

Back with a new edition of this newsletter. We spent the past 5 weeks trying to work on a few long pending items that needed our attention. Unsurprisingly, the earth went on spinning and nobody missed us. Not much work got done either.Anyway, things happened in these intervening weeks. We reached a billion vaccine jabs last week. Quite an achievement. We often lament about the ineffective state and the poor health infrastructure in India. But there’s no denying there are times when the state can will its agencies to reach an ambitious target. The vaccination number was a measurable target, its benefits to people were clear and there was a vaccine administering infrastructure available that’s been built over the years. So, the state moved with speed and purpose because the incentives to get this right were aligned to the government’s desire to strengthen its self-image of being effective and driven. These occasional instances of the state doing its work often lead people to momentarily forget the overreach and the many subsequent failures of the state that are apparent all around us. There’s a common sentiment expressed in such situations - if only we could tackle all our problems the same way we did this. Unfortunately, the other problems that we must solve as a nation aren’t so unambiguous, their solutions aren’t easy top-down diktats that need to be followed, nor are the interests of everyone so clearly aligned to those solutions. The state will continue to flounder there. That apart it was business as usual in India. A megastar is being hounded because of what appears like a minor infraction of his son. The underlying motives are open for speculations because the remarkable focus the NCB has shown in this case belies their previous track record in controlling drug use in India. The news channels have picked it up with the same fervour like they did with the suicide of an actor last year. We wrote about that episode here (“A Star Is Dead”). There was also much brouhaha over how an ethnic retail fashion brand tried to ‘de-Hinduise’ Diwali in their ads. This is now routine during any of the big Hindu festivals. In the arms race of purity, there’s always a marketer who will trip up. The outraged will then take over. #NoBindiNoBusiness is trending as we write. What a time to be alive! Last year there was the Titan ad and we wrote about it here (“That Tanishq Ad”). Lastly, the largest opposition party in the country took its self-destruction model to yet another state where it is in power. Its ineptitude would have been funny were it not so sad. Democratic accountability rests on the risk of a party losing its mandate in the next elections. A functioning opposition makes that risk real. Congress is dysfunctional now. India Policy Watch: A Good Representative Insights on burning policy issues in India— RSJTalking about politics brings me to a conversation Pranay and I were having last week. It was about the concept of representation and the notion of belonging to a political party. Does a politician represent her people anymore? Does membership of a political party trump all other identities and roles in a democracy? The way things are, maybe M.P. should stand for Member of Party, Pranay half-jokingly said. The party line trumps the individual position, the likely interests of the constituents and the opinions of the experts. The other point he made was how the state governments fight among themselves over trifling issues while missing the big picture. Their interests would be served better were they to unite and demand a better share from the union in a way the federal structure of the Indian state was meant to encourage. This isn’t a new phenomenon. The anti-defection bill introduced in the 80s made it difficult for an individual member to go against the party ‘whip’. The centralisation of power in political parties and the high command culture that every party defaults to have rendered the members of legislatures powerless. So, the question is what happened here? How did we get here?Origins of LegitimacyLet’s hark back to the early phase of modern democracy. The core ideas that emerged from the enlightenment thinkers and political philosophers that powered both the American and French revolutions were about individual liberty and the formation of a state that reflected the ‘will’ of the people. These built the foundation of the liberal democratic order as we know it today. This sounds simple but conceptually there was more happening. The Hobbesian model was that of human multitudes coming together to hand over power and authority to a sovereign through a political structure in abstract called the ‘commonwealth’. Hobbes defined commonwealth as “One person of whose acts a great multitude, by covenants with another, have made themselves everyone the author to the end he may use the strength and means of them all as he shall think expedient for their peace and common defense.” For Hobbes, the people willingly transfer the power to one man or to an assembly, agree on being united under that power of commonwealth and use the sovereign to safeguard internal harmony and defend against external threats. Once created, the sovereign could continue to derive its legitimacy from this original covenant of the multitudes or, over time, it could fall back on bloodline or divine right. For Hobbes, the sovereign didn’t need to be representative as long as it used its authority and power like it was designed in the social contract. The Hobbesian idea of commonwealth and sovereign were great but there were two problems that later political philosophers had with them. First, what circumscribes the power of the sovereign? For Hobbes, it was absolute and that was both good and necessary. Others weren’t so sure. The idea of balance of powers through natural checks and balances was a consequence of that. Second, what provides legitimacy to the sovereign? Hobbes was only concerned about the multitudes living in peace. So long as the sovereign assured that, it had legitimacy. The later thinkers thought there has to be more to it. That’s how the design of the modern democratic system came to be. There was to be a balance of power between the various arms of the sovereign or the state. The origin of this thought goes back to Montesquieu and his theory of separation of powers. And those controlling the levers of the state will have to pass the test of legitimacy. Winning the mandate to represent the people offered legitimacy. And, therefore, elections became central to conferring this legitimacy to the state.Things Have ChangedNow, let’s see what’s changed with elections since then? First, there was an assumption that an average voter knows enough to make an informed and rational choice on who will represent her. This was possible in the pastoral world of the late 18th century. Like we have written before, she is what Lippmann called the omnicompetent citizen. This is no longer possible in the modern world where the average voter only sees a narrow sliver of the world from her perspective. We have ‘pictures in our heads’ of the likely world outside. Political parties create narratives and offer themselves as the best choice by influencing these pictures in our heads. Second, political parties themselves weren’t a fully formed notion in the early years of modern democracy. There was a view that the citizens will choose from among them their best representative who will then legislate laws on their behalf. Political parties were viewed as a partisan coming together of vested interests. As early as 1796, Washington was railing against political parties as factions motivated by ‘spirit of revenge’, compromising on public good and allowing "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" to "subvert the power of the people". But as Schmitt would put in many years later, the concept of the political is reducible to the existential distinction between friend and enemy. Therefore, the electoral battle for the spoils of power would make the party system inevitable. In fact, by 1942, E. E. Schattschneider, in his work Party Government, argued “that the political parties created democracy and that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of parties”. The political party was both useful and indispensable. These key functions of a political party are best summed in the table below:Third, the role of the representative of the people has undergone a change too. The usual question that comes up on this is whether the representative is a delegate of people or a trustee of their will and aspirations. In the delegate model, the representative is a mere mouthpiece for the will of her constituents and they have limited autonomy of their own. In many forms of direct democracy (or council democracy), this is a norm. The representative was to be subservient to those who she represents. This was also how many viewed representation in the initial years. This was contested by Burke in his famous 1774 speech to electors of Bristol which laid the foundation of the trustee model of representation.Burke begins with this clear distinction of the role of the representative:“Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”He then goes on to argue why the conscience of the representative is important for a democracy:“To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.”And goes on to clarify what a Parliament is meant to be. The representative should neither be hostage to the views of his constituents nor of the interests of his party:“Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole.”And Burke concludes with a point similar to what Pranay made when he defined M.P. as Member of Party:“You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.”The centralisation of power in parties in India has meant we now follow neither the trustee nor the delegate model of representation. The representative is beholden to the party alone. There is another change as well. For years, the continued strengthening of identity politics meant it was more important for the representative to reflect the identity of her constituents than their aspirations. The selection of candidates by parties on caste, sub-caste and community lines across constituencies was the dominant trend. This meant the individual representative could count on his local knowledge and alliances to be useful for a party. So, she could still stand up as an independent voice of judgment secure in her strength like Burke envisaged when needed. But this is now being reshaped by the dominant party in India. The nationalist, Hindu and resurgent India narrative might likely subsume the local identities and the natural balance of power that was available in the Indian polity. This has made the dominant political party today stronger than the sum of its parts and consolidated power in the ‘high command’ further.This is an interesting time to contemplate on representation in a democracy like India. We chose universal adult franchise at the time of independence much ahead of many other nations. This was fundamental to the right of equality that the Constitution guaranteed. The social re-engineering phenomenon that dominated most of our politics between 60s-90s was an outcome of this right given to every citizen. The representative might not have been a trustee in the way Burke thought of her. She might have been toeing the party line on most issues. But she ‘reflected’ the ‘narrow’ identity of the people she represented and this mélange of narrow identities coming together in the parliament possibly made the democratic system more robust. What we have now is a gradual shift to a more dominant single-party system with a greater focus on what can be called the One Nation, One “X” philosophy. This sounds seductive in the aggregate especially if your definition of the imagined construct of the Indian nation aligns with what’s being promoted. Will it make democracy stronger? The odds are stacked against it if history is any guide. A Framework a Week: Confronting Trade-offsTools for thinking public policy— Pranay KotasthaneA common folly in policy analysis and commentary is the inability to confront trade-offs of well-intentioned, nice-sounding government actions such as the European Commission’s recent proposal mandating a common charger for electronic devices. Not that confronting trade-offs is easy in business or household decision-making but the problem gets acute in public policy. A recent study finds that even people who consider trade-offs in private consumption fail to do so while thinking of government actions. Opportunity cost neglect is a way more serious issue when governments are involved. I suspect three reasons might be at play here.One, we as individuals do not feel connected to the money government spends although it’s we who pay for the expense in the form of taxes. So we ignore the costs and get anchored to the benefits promised by a government policy. Two, some analysts instinctively think that the government is the right agency to solve all our problems regardless of the nature of the problem itself. Three, we ignore the implementation capacity required to put the solution in place.Even so, there’s no getting away with confronting trade-offs. Because actions of the State have wide-ranging effects on large sections of its citizens, even the worst-possible policies might have some benefits. Remember how the then Finance Minister claimed that terror funding with fake notes had gone down because of demonetisation? Similarly, even the most well-intentioned, impactful policies will have negative consequences and will make some people worse-off. Consider how the Minimum Support Price (MSP) for grains did perhaps help India defy Malthusian predictions but it also led to ecological and environmental issues that the future generations are condemned to face. Given that a perfect policy with only benefits and no costs is yet to be devised, how does one go about evaluating any public policy proposal? I have a four-step heuristic to help.Step 1. Try to anticipate the unintended consequences. Economic reasoning, history, and the social context are some good guides that can help in this step. We have discussed how to anticipate the unintended here. Step 2. Once you have identified the unintended consequence and the people who are likely to bear these effects, check if the policy has measures to try and align their interests. If not, it might be subverted through direct opposition. As is the case with the ongoing farmer agitation. Or the purpose could be defeated by taking over-ground activities underground. A good hack for this step is to think about how drastically a policy changes the incentives of the current players. The more drastically it does, the higher likelihood that it will be subverted. The red flags to watch out for are bans, high rates of taxation, or imposition of huge penalties. Step 3: Do intellectual, financial, regulatory, and compliance capacities to carry out the proposal exist? Ignoring capacity leads to implementation failures. Step 4. Consider whether anticipated benefits outweigh anticipated costs. Standard cost-benefit analysis techniques can be deployed here. A hack for this step is to analyse if the policy measure has well-defined endpoints or sunset clauses baked in. If yes, undesirable effects can be reigned in; the policy is amenable to negative feedback. If not, the policy measure can lead to difficult-to-measure intergenerational effects. A PolicyWTF ChargeWith this framework in mind, let’s analyse the EU Commission’s proposal mandating a common charger (USB-C) for electronic devices. Read the excellent background documents on the commission’s website here.The stated intent of the policy is two-fold. One, reducing consumer inconvenience because of multiple chargers. And two, reducing e-waste. Lofty goals, who could possibly oppose that these aren’t problems that need to be solved. The evidence presented for these two problems is as follows:“In the European Union, approximately 420 million mobile phones and other portable electronic devices were sold in the last year. On average, a consumer owns around three mobile phone chargers, of which they use two on a regular basis. 38% of consumers report having experienced problems at least once that they could not charge their mobile phone because available chargers were incompatible. The situation is inconvenient and costly for consumers, who spend approximately €2.4 billion annually on standalone chargers that do not come with their electronic devices.In addition, disposed of and unused chargers are estimated to represent about 11,000 tonnes of e-waste annually. A common charging solution is expected to reduce this by almost a thousand tonnes annually.”The benefits sound great. If one were to read an analysis that presents the above problem, evidence, the proposed solution seems obvious and indispensable almost. But wait, now let’s apply the framework we discussed. Step 1: The EU Commission is making a choice on consumers’ behalf that the ease of using one charger is more beneficial to them than the benefits that different charging technologies may offer. For example, one technology could be charging faster, it might be lighter etc. Next, it is locking users into another technology USB-C, which itself might get outdated in a few years. Third, this measure ‘disincentivises’ manufacturers from developing new charging technologies. Step 2: I don’t see any major issues with aligning the interests of stakeholders as this measure impacts just one company today that has a proprietary charging solution (Apple) and perhaps the EU wants it to pay. The ban on other charging technologies should make us circumspect. Step 3: Capacity is not a big issue in the EU assuming they just need to control a handful of manufacturers.Step 4: Weighing costs and benefits is where this policy has severe drawbacks. The benefits are marginal. For one, there are just three major charging technologies in the market, down from 30 a decade ago. Two, the cost-saving per consumer is ~€6 annually (=€2.4 billion/446 million population). Three, this measure is expected to reduce the charger e-waste by a mere 10 per cent. An impact assessment study on the EU Commission itself has this to say:“Environmental impacts: [The USB-C solution and some such solutions] only have very minor, potentially negligible (no more than 1.5% change compared with the baseline) impacts on the environment, as they are expected to lead to very small changes in the number of chargers sold, as well as, in some cases, to changes in the types of chargers sold (with very minor impacts on their weight and composition).”Economic impacts: This option delivers relatively high economic costs for manufacturers and distributors, and may slightly constrain innovation. It may also entail minor economic costs for SMEs in the EU. Social impacts: [The USB-C solution and other such solutions] are all expected to result in minor convenience benefits for consumers, as well as very small improvements in terms of product safety and illicit markets (mainly due to the expected very small reduction in stand-alone charger sales).On the other hand, the costs to manufacturers and consumers to transition to another technology are substantial. From the same report:“This option [USB-C mandate] could potentially have a major negative effect in terms of reducing future innovation in phone connectors, both by effectively ruling out any new “game-changing” proprietary connector technology, and by potentially reducing the pace of “incremental” innovation as regards future generations of USB connectors, and limiting the characteristics that this future connector might have… If companies are not given the choice to remove receptacles, it may however have a significant indirect impact on innovation in wireless technologies.”So, as we dive deeper, the shine of promised benefits gets dulled by the impact of probable costs. Other solutions such as unbundling chargers and phones seem to have a better cost-benefit trade-off. Beware of intuitive solutions to complex policy problems.HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Book] Political Representation by F.R. Ankersmit [Podcast] As the peak-air pollution days come closer, listen to this Puliyabaazi on the science of air pollution. Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com

This newsletter is really a public policy thought-letter. While excellent newsletters on specific themes within public policy already exist, this thought-letter is about frameworks, mental models, and key ideas that will hopefully help you think about any public policy problem in imaginative ways. It seeks to answer just one question: how do I think about a particular public policy problem/solution?PS: If you enjoy listening instead of reading, we have this edition available as an audio narration on all podcasting platforms courtesy the good folks at Ad-Auris. Global Policy Watch — Storming Se Storming Tak: From 1642 To 2021- RSJHere’s a short quiz to begin things. What’s common to these dates (not an exhaustive list)?4 January 1642: EnglandFeb 27, 1933: Germany Feb 23, 1981: SpainApril 27, 2017: MacedoniaDifficult? Here’s a clue. The latest entrant to this listJan 6, 2021: USA‘Workout-able’ now? These are select instances of attacks on parliament buildings in democracies over the years. Of course, this is different from attacks that happen within the parliament building where lawmakers have a go at each other using microphone stands, paper-weights and files as projectiles. That’s a rich and glorious tradition where Taiwan, South Korea and India are global leaders.The attacks on parliament from the outside is a different phenomenon. It points to a fracture in the common belief among citizens about the power or legitimacy of the sovereign. This is not mere symbolism. Often the attacks are real attempts to disrupt or change the outcomes of a parliamentary process to elect the head of the government. That’s what happened, say, in Spain on Feb 23, 1981 when Lt. Col Tejero and his small band of army men burst into the lower house of the Spanish legislature during the vote to elect a new Prime Minister. The attempt to overthrow the democratic regime came unstuck when King Juan Carlos denounced it in a televised address. The storming of the Macedonian parliament in 2017 was done in somewhat similar circumstances though without any section of army backing it. That brings us to Germany. The fire at Reichstag in 1933 right after the Hitler had been sworn in as the Chancellor was blamed on a communist conspiracy. It is almost certain now that this was engineered by the Nazis to demonise their opponents. This incident of arson was then used by the Nazis to issue a nationwide emergency and pursue the communists with a vengeance. The Communists MPs were arrested and the Nazis won the elections to those vacant seats as was expected. Within a year the Nazis had complete control over the German state. You know how that story ends.The Original StormingMy interest, however, is in the first instance of the storming of a Parliament: Jan 4, 1642. This was no ordinary rebel laying siege over the lawmakers in Westminster. It was Charles I, the king of England. He entered the Parliament with armed soldiers to arrest five MPs who he accused of treason. What had they done? Well, to the king and his loyalists, they were anti-nationals. Sounds familiar. They were accused of encouraging Scotland to invade England and a conspiracy to defame the king. Charles went into the parliament and called out the name of the five MPs seeking their arrest. He asked the House speaker, William Lenthall, about their whereabouts. Lenthall responded:“May it please your majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here; and I humbly beg your majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me.” In a historic first of sorts, the speaker had sided with the parliament over the divine will of the king.“All my birds have flown,” Charles I said as he scanned the member benches for the five MPs.The storming of the parliament by Charles I was a seminal moment in the history of democracy. The tussle for sovereignty between the parliament and monarchy that had been simmering for over three decades had reached its flashpoint. The English parliament in those days was a collection of landed gentry who controlled the exchequer through their power of collecting taxes. The king needed its approval to raise taxes. By the time Charles I ascended the throne in 1625, the Crown was deep in debt no thanks to the expensive wars of the Tudor and Stuart periods and the lavish lifestyles of the royalty. This apart Charles had other problems too. There was a deep suspicion among the aristocrats about the strength of his Protestant affiliation after he married the Catholic Bourbon princess Maria of France. His subsequent religious acts did nothing to dispel this impression. The desire of Charles I to go to war with Scotland meant he wanted the parliament to increase taxes and do his bidding. The parliament continued to resist and Charles dissolved it in 1629. The next 11 years when he ruled without a sitting parliament is termed his ‘personal rule’. He introduced new taxes arbitrarily, supported Catholic religious policies and hounded the aristocrats who opposed him. The tyranny was going well but for a small hitch. He still needed the parliament to convene for collecting the tax revenues. He called a new parliament in 1640 in the hope he will be able to control it. Not quite. The parliament passed an act that forbade its own dissolution and went about rolling back the policies that Charles had set in motion. The stage was set for him to storm the parliament looking for the errant MPs.The Post-Metaphysical AgeThe storming of the parliament led to what is collectively called the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians. Charles I was tried and executed in 1649 (none of this namby-pamby impeachment business in those days). There were three key outcomes of the civil wars:The replacement of English monarch by the Commonwealth of EnglandThe consolidation of Protestant ascendancy and the defeat of Catholicism in England. The downstream impact of this was hugeThe precedent that the English monarch cannot rule without the Parliament’s approval. The seal of Parliamentary sovereignty and the establishment of individual rights, however, were legally established only after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. There’s a subplot here. A gifted English polymath who had fled England in 1640 to Paris watched all this unfold with interest and concern. A man of science who counted Galileo, Bacon and Mersenne among his friends, he was developing a theory of about people, nature and politics as he came to terms with the chaos in his country. He was also the tutor to Charles II, the young prince, who was in exile in Paris. By 1650, he was ready with his magnum opus that broke new ground on the relation between the state and its subjects. In 1651, he returned to England. His name was Thomas Hobbes. The book was Leviathan. The Genesis Of The Modern Liberal StateHobbes is, arguably, the founder of modern political philosophy and Leviathan is a masterpiece of original thinking. Hobbes made three core arguments in it:The State of Nature: Human beings left to themselves will pursue their objectives of maximising their comforts. These pursuits will bring them in conflict with others. People are similar (within a range) in terms of their physical and mental prowess. So no one person can dominate others for long. This led him to conclude that humans in their state of nature would be in constant strife with one another. “A war of everyone against everyone” is how he called it. In this state, he famously said, human life would be “nasty, brutish and short.”The Laws of Nature: Hobbes argued that humans were rational beings who understood the futility of living in the state of nature. They would seek a practical solution to establish peace. To Hobbes, this solution was for people to establish mutual covenant (agreement) among themselves to submit to the authority of a sovereign. Simply put, people will be willing to forego some of their freedoms to a sovereign institution in return for peace and rule of law governed by that authority.Unlimited Sovereign Authority: For Hobbes, once the people had come together to hand over the power to the sovereign, its power was unlimited. There was no quid pro quo involved here. No real checks and balances. So long as the sovereign kept peace among its people and protected them from outside powers, it retained its political legitimacy. Nothing else mattered. Any attempt to split the powers of the sovereign would render it ineffective. The impact of Leviathan on future political philosophers was profound. In many ways, it is the foundational text of the modern state. Everyone from Locke, Rousseau, Weber to Rawls have used it either as a springboard or as a counter to develop their social and political theories. The criticism of Hobbes over the centuries is also useful to shine a light on the originality of his thinking. The usual arguments offered against his political philosophy include:A bleak view of human nature: The short conclusion easily drawn from Leviathan is that Hobbes held no illusions about the nature of human beings. Left to themselves in a natural state, they would be in an endless series of internecine wars. This is Hunger Games territory. But Hobbes was a bit more nuanced than that. To him, it is not human nature to be in a war of everyone against everyone. Instead, in the absence of laws and its enforcer, human beings pursuing their rational interests will get in the way of each other. This will be the basis for strife and not the absence of better angels of their natureSocial contract theorist: Some view Hobbes belonging to the line of social contract theorists who thought and wrote about the arrangement between the society and the state or the ruled and the rulers. This isn’t exactly accurate. Social contract theory assumes that society already exists with a contract among its members. The society then enters into a ‘second contract’ with the state by relinquishing some of its freedom in exchange for peace and stability from the sovereign. For Hobbes, there was no second contract. The society or the state don’t exist ab initio. There is only a single contract - the covenant between the members of the society to come together. The sovereign emerges from this. It is almost like the ‘Big Bang’ theory of political philosophy.Totalitarian: The other criticism of Hobbes is he justifies a totalitarian regime when he lets the sovereign off the hook for any kind of quid pro quo contract with the society. This is misreading of the term absolute. Hobbes considers the sovereign absolute in terms of its power which means they ‘can interfere’ in ‘any aspect’ of the lives of its citizens. This is different from a totalitarian regime which is based on the idea that the state ‘will permeate’ into ‘every aspect’ of the lives of its people. In fact, Hobbes was the first to free religion from the construct of the state. Once you are free from theology, you set the basis for a liberal state. Bookended By HobbesThe storming of the Capitol building by pro-Trump protesters marks a moment in the history of democracy in America. There’s always a temptation to over-read the current moment. But the irreversible slide of the discourse, the shrinking of the middle ground with a loony, conspiracy-theory fed right and an anarchist, self-righteous left and an almost cult-like adherence to prior beliefs that get accentuated in the echo chambers of social media have meant this moment was nigh. The strength of the social covenant (“we, the people) is under stress rarely experienced before. Once that covenant is broken, the political authority wanes or gets delegitimised as we see it happening in America for most of last year. Unless checked and reversed, we will be back to the state of nature. Chaos will follow. Maybe there’s a polymath philosopher watching all of this unfold with unease while developing an original political thesis like Hobbes over four hundred years ago. The storming of the English parliament of 1642 and the siege of the Capitol in 2021 seem to bookend the political era whose foundation was laid by Hobbes. There’s a need for a new social contract for these times. A Framework a Week: OOOTools for thinking public policy— Pranay KotasthaneThe union government’s first post-pandemic budget will be presented in the Parliament on Feb 1. The all-consuming buildup has already begun as if it were a Rajinikanth movie. As the budget date nears, you will come across many more number-based narratives — the need for higher public health expenditure, the imperative to reduce allocations for subsidies, and the necessity to adequately fund the requirements of our armed forces. So let’s revisit a framework that helps put these numbers in perspective. The Outlays-Outputs-Outcomes (OOO) framework is a useful way to analyse the many schemes that the Finance Minister will announce on Feb 1. Inputs/Outlays refer to the resources provided to a scheme or project that the government runs. Once the budget is presented, virtually all the public discussion will be on these outlays. This gives an idea of how the union government prioritises all its functions. But as we all know, outlays for a project is no guarantee for success. To measure success, policies or schemes need two other parameters: outputs and outcomes. Outputs refer to the direct and measurable product of program activities, often expressed in physical terms or units. Outcomes, on the other hand, are the long-term benefits that a project or intervention is designed to deliver.Using this framework allows us to scrutinise government schemes better. As Ajay Shah writes:This framework became famous around education, where the inputs are school buildings and recruitment of teachers, the outputs are kids who are enrolled and attend school, and the outcomes are what the kids actually know. From about 2004 onwards, we have understood that very large increases in public expenditure in the per-pupil expenses were associated with essentially no gains in the outcomes. The education bureaucracy has proclaimed its victories as counted by school buildings, teachers employed or kids enrolled. But at a fundamental level, state spending on elementary education has not delivered: vast increases in the input has not delivered gains in the outcome.This framework also yields a useful vocabulary for measuring success. We can assess policies in terms of its economy, efficiency, and effectiveness. Economy refers to inputs. It answers the question: are project inputs being purchased at the right price? Efficiency relates to outputs over inputs. It answers the question: what is the relationship between investment in inputs and the outputs that are produced? Effectiveness relates to outcomes over outputs. It answers the question: are outputs leading to the expected outcomes? (all definitions are taken from Indicators of Inputs, Activities, Outputs, Outcomes and Impacts in Security and Justice Programming, DFID).Ideally, any government programme should begin with a theory of change that connects the desired end state (outcomes) to the programme activities that need to be carried out (outputs) which further require a set of resources (inputs). Seen from this frame, a policy that fails to achieve the desired outcomes can mean two things. One, that there was an implementation failure. Insufficient outlays or difficulty in converting outlays into outputs due to corruption are examples of implementation issues. Two, that there was a theory of change failure which means that the assumed causal linkage between outputs and outcomes was incorrect. In the Indian context, a commonly held notion is that governments have good policies but poor implementation. What’s less appreciated is that policies often fail because the underlying theory of change itself is inaccurate. Better data and feedback help uncover this theory of change failure. For example, ASER surveys have now shifted the conversation on education by disproving the theory that more schools and better-paid teachers alone can lead to better student learning outcomes. The National Family Health Survey data can similarly help question the assumed causal linkages between health outlays, outputs, and outcomes. It is indeed a positive sign that on both health and education, we are talking effectiveness and not just outlays. This reflects that governance in these areas is maturing. PS: For the upcoming budget, skip the outlay PDFs and open this new document called the Output Outcome Framework. It maps each government scheme outlay to the desired outcomes and outputs over the next financial year. If the budget were also to map the performance of each scheme against the promised outcomes in the year gone by, it will go a long way in correcting both implementation and theory of change failures.Matsyanyaaya: False Equivalences with Chinese Characteristics Big fish eating small fish = Foreign Policy in action— Pranay KotasthanePolitical turmoil in the US has understandably shaken many of us here in India. Events of this magnitude lead to a general despondency about democracy itself. The hope is that this despondency would get displaced by introspection and positive alternatives. At the same time, we need to guard against narratives that cite these events to equate the US and China. One strand of Indian strategic thought has long held the view that a world order shaped predominantly by the PRC might be just as good (or bad) for India as the current one underpinned by US power. China’s border incursions last year led to the deprecation of this narrative but the churn in the US can give it a new lease of life. Aided by the PRC’s attempts at drawing false equivalences on one hand and spurred by the self-criticism that is bound to dominate American thinking, we might see arguments such as this make a comeback:We do not know how Chinese hegemony will work in the future, but we know the exploitative and heinous character of the French and the British Empires. The question is, why are we not as afraid of the West as we are of the Chinese? [China is Not Alone in Adding to the Indian Ocean Woes, Economic & Political Weekly, Atul Bhardwaj, April 2018]Nothing can be further from the truth. For one, there is enough evidence to suggest that a Sinocentric world order will not align with India’s quest for yogakshema — peace and prosperity for all Indians. Look at the way China has alienated — simultaneously and purposively — a new generation of peoples in all of its neighbouring countries. Look at how the Chinese Communist Party has imposed one language on a diverse set of its own peoples. And finally, look at how it has transformed its all-weather friend into a mere tributary. Second, it’s true that the US conduct on the liberal international order is not untainted. But the norm of a liberal international order is in India’s own self-interest. We must and we do question the US when it deviates from this norm. For example, the Indian PM’s condemnation of the Capitol violence is possible in the current order. In a Sinocentric world, this norm itself will cease to exist. If the Indian PM were to criticise something even remotely equivalent in China, the party-state will spring into concerted anti-India action in economic, political, and military dimensions.These are two clear and important differences that we shouldn’t take our eyes off in the zeitgeist. HomeWorkReading and listening recommendations on public policy matters[Book] Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes with an essay by the late W. G. Pogson Smith (skip the religious bits) [Article] Tom Mctague in The Atlantic: Is This How Greatness Ends? [Article] Rathin Roy distinguishes between the better and worse forms of deficit financing.[Paper] Abel Schumann’s OECD paper Using Outcome Indicators to Improve Policies is a must-read for public policy enthusiasts.[Podcast] Indrani Bagchi discusses the geopolitics of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue on Puliyabaazi. . Get on the email list at publicpolicy.substack.com

Thomas Hobbes is the type of writer you love to hate– but he’s also the guy you’d love to play cards with. Scott believes Hobbes’ Leviathan is one of the most fruitful books he has ever read. It’s a founding text of western thought filled with original ideas that are still relevant to contemporary politics.  In today’s episode, Scott and Karl dig into chapters 13-15 and 17. It's only 36 pages so make sure to read it before listening in! For Karl, Hobbes says things about human nature that he doesn’t want to be true. But that he’s not sure aren't true. Around the time “Leviathan” entered the English lexicon, Britain was engaged in a time of civil discord. The tooth and nail mentality of the time might explain Hobbes’s summary of man as “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.” In order to improve these conditions, the duo considers what makes people want to live in a commonwealth. For Hobbes, it was 3 things: fear of death, the desire of commodious living, and hope of getting it. Hobbes then provides 19 laws of nature he derives from that. Tune in to the episode to hear Scott and Karl’s rendering of Hobbesian liberty. If you are interested in starting your journey with the Great Books, use the discount OGBPODCAST to save 25% on enrollment at Online Great Books.  

Bettina Bergo is Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal. Her project at the Marty Center, a monograph entitled Anxiety: History of a Concept in 19th and 20th Century Philosophy and Psychology, traces the intellectual history of anxiety, as an idea and a sign. Aimed at an interdisciplinary readership, the book is concerned with a recurrent theme in disciplines that framed the meaning of life, embodiment, subjectivity, and indeed, intersubjectivity. Abstract: even the so-called egalitarian and loosely structured societies known to anthropology, including hunters such as Inuit or Australian Aborigines, are in structure and practice subordinate segments of inclusive cosmic polities, ordered and governed by divinities, ancestors, species masters, and other such metapersons endowed with life and death powers over the human population. "The Mbowamb spends is whole life completely under the spell and in the company of spirits" (Vicedom and Tischner). "[Arawete] society is not complete on earth: the living are part of the global social structure founded on the alliance between heaven and earth" (Viveiros de Castro). We need something like a Copernican revolution in anthropological perspective: from human society as the center of a universe onto which it projects its own forms--that is to say, from the Durkheimian or structural-functional deceived wisdom--to the ethnographic realities of people's dependence on the encompassing life-giving and death-dealing powers, themselves of human attributes, which rule earthly order, welfare, and existence. For Hobbes notwithstanding, something like the political state is the condition of humanity in the state of nature; there are kingly beings in heaven even where there are no chiefs on earth.

The concept of sovereignty is discussed in Hobbesian terms. For Hobbes, "the sovereign" is an office rather than a person, and can be characterized by what we have come to associate with executive power and executive authority. Hobbes' theories of laws are also addressed and the distinction he makes between "just laws" and "good laws." The lecture ends with a discussion of Hobbes' ideas in the context of the modern state.

The concept of sovereignty is discussed in Hobbesian terms. For Hobbes, "the sovereign" is an office rather than a person, and can be characterized by what we have come to associate with executive power and executive authority. Hobbes' theories of laws are also addressed and the distinction he makes between "just laws" and "good laws." The lecture ends with a discussion of Hobbes' ideas in the context of the modern state.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued: "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man". For Hobbes, the difference between order and disorder was stark. In the state of nature, ungoverned man lived life in "continual fear, and danger of violent death". The only way out of this "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" existence, he said, was to relinquish all your freedom and submit yourself to one all powerful absolute sovereign. Hobbes' proposal, contained in his controversial and now classic text, Leviathan, was written just as England was readjusting to life after the Civil War and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. In fact, in his long life Hobbes’ allegiance switched from Charles I to Cromwell and back to Charles II. But how did the son of a poor clergyman end up as the most radical thinker of his day? Why did so many of Hobbes' ideas run counter to the prevailing fondness for constitutionalism with a limited monarchy? And why is he regarded by so many political philosophers as an important theorist when so few find his ideas convincing? With Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge; David Wootton, Professor of History at the University of York; Annabel Brett, Senior Lecturer in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge University.

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great 17th century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes who argued: "During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man". For Hobbes, the difference between order and disorder was stark. In the state of nature, ungoverned man lived life in "continual fear, and danger of violent death". The only way out of this "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" existence, he said, was to relinquish all your freedom and submit yourself to one all powerful absolute sovereign. Hobbes' proposal, contained in his controversial and now classic text, Leviathan, was written just as England was readjusting to life after the Civil War and the rule of Oliver Cromwell. In fact, in his long life Hobbes' allegiance switched from Charles I to Cromwell and back to Charles II. But how did the son of a poor clergyman end up as the most radical thinker of his day? Why did so many of Hobbes' ideas run counter to the prevailing fondness for constitutionalism with a limited monarchy? And why is he regarded by so many political philosophers as an important theorist when so few find his ideas convincing? With Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge; David Wootton, Professor of History at the University of York; Annabel Brett, Senior Lecturer in Political Thought and Intellectual History at Cambridge University.