Scott’s project
started with trying to understand government attempts to make society “legible”—to
classify and organize the population and simplify taxation and protection
against internal and external threats. He began to see legibility as a key problem
for governance.
The issue? “The
pre-modern state was, in many crucial respects, particularly blind; it knew
precious little about its subjects, their wealth, their landholdings and
yields, their location, their very identity. It lacked anything like a detailed
‘map’ of its terrain and its people…As a result, its interventions were often
crude and self-defeating.” (2)
How did the State make
society more legible? Scott noted that a wide range of processes—from the creation
of permanent last names and population registers to the standardization of
weights, measures, language and legal terms—were all useful as efforts to
increase legibility.
This knowledge is necessary
for “effective” governance, whether benign or corrupt. If corrupt, political
agents cannot maximize their own goals without such knowledge. If benign but
lacking knowledge, government can only achieve success through blind luck—or more
often, find failure even with the best of intentions.
How the State Can Lead to Profound Evil
But Scott’s work
evolved as he considered brutal outcomes in the history of governance. In his words: “It is not so difficult, alas, to understand why so
many human lives have been destroyed by mobilized violence between ethnic
groups, religious sects, or linguistic communities. But it is harder to grasp
why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so
tragically awry.” (4) He hoped “to provide a convincing account of the logic
behind the failure of some of the great utopian social engineering schemes of
the twentieth century.” (4)
Scott argues that “a pernicious
combination” of four conditions is required (4-5, 88-89). First is his original
topic of study: “the administrative ordering of nature and society” as detailed
above. “By themselves, they are the unremarkable tools of modern statecraft;
they are as vital to the maintenance of our welfare and freedom as they are to
the designs of a would-be modern despot…”
Second is “a high-modernist
ideology”—strong confidence about progress through science and technology,
growing dominion over nature and human nature, and the rational design of governance
to promote an effective society.
Third is an authoritarian state that
is willing to use the weight of its monopoly on legitimate force to bring their
designs to life. Combining the first two with the third is when governance can
easily become lethal.
As a fourth condition, Scott notes
that a weakened civil society (family, religion, and civil organizations) is
helpful for the state that wishes to implement its plans. Taken as a set, “the
legibility of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social
engineering, high-modernist ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian
state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated
civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build…”
Observations
and Clarifications on “Modernist” Faith
Scott develops the idea of “modernism”
in chapter 3 and discusses it throughout the book. He notes that faith in “high-modernist
ideology” started in the West, following its remarkable successes in science, production,
and technological advance. But this emphasis on science should not be confused
with Science or ideal scientific practice. The ideology is more blind faith and
optimism about “progress” than a careful understanding of how science and
government work in practice.
Second, the emergence of this
ideology aligns with the Progressive Era in the United States—with its faith in
progress, science, and elites aggressively governing society. The means to
those ends ranged widely—from regulation of business to America’s leading role
in the eugenics movement.
Third, this ideology can be captured
by self-interests. Businesses want to restrict competition and pursue “state
action to realize their plans…There [is], to put it mildly, an elective
affinity between high modernism and the interests of many state officials.” (5)
Progressive regulatory efforts were often captured by industry in ways that
bolstered market power and profits.
Fourth, high-modernism is “no
respecter of traditional political boundaries; it could be found across the
political spectrum from left to right.” The key: the desire to “use state power
to bring about huge, utopian changes in people's work habits, living patterns,
moral conduct, and worldview.” (5) In our sloppy contemporary political
rhetoric, it is common to refer to “liberals” as those who prefer more
government activism. Of course, most self-styled conservatives (and certainly
most Republicans) prefer their types of optimistic activism as well.
Fifth, Scott avers that this utopian
vision [is not] dangerous in and of itself. “Where it animated plans in liberal
parliamentary societies and where the planners therefore had to negotiate with
organized citizens, it could spur reform.” (6) But Scott is certainly concerned
with any form of State-based idolatry—whether economic or social, whether driven
by nationalism or moral concerns.
An Illiberal Irony
Liberals are also
said to value choice and freedom—and to focus on individuals (particularly the
vulnerable) and to defend the rights of individuals (at least those who have
been marginalized). But government activism, by construction, is necessarily illiberal
in fundamental ways.
One of the ironies
of historical and contemporary Progressivism is its low view of the people they
seek to govern. Of course, in contrast, the elites are capable—and far more
capable than those they want to help. “What is perhaps most striking about
high-modernist schemes, despite their quite genuine egalitarian and often
socialist impulses, is how little confidence they repose in the skills,
intelligence, and experience of ordinary people.” (345)
The calculus
behind efforts to govern are “necessarily abstract, ignoring citizens as
individuals.” (346) One can govern based on an individual or some “average”
individual, but this is inherently reductionistic and flawed. More likely,
policymakers aim at abstract groups of individuals. A “planned social order is
necessarily schematic; it always ignores essential features of any real,
functioning social order.” (6) “The lack of context and particularity is not
an oversight; it is the necessary first premise of any large-scale planning
exercise.” (346) Moreover, as population size and diversity increase,
such aggregations are increasingly ineffective and illiberal.
In contrast,
economists and policymakers should strive to understand what models and
statistics say—and don’t say. They are always—merely—proxies for the state of
the world they purport to describe and measure. Taking them too seriously, too
literally, too far, will likely lead to various errors—or even, evils.
Implications for Public Policy
Scott warns that
his arguments should not be misunderstood as a defense of all voluntary efforts
or an argument against all government activity. He wants to “plead innocent to two
charges”—“uncritically admiring of the local, the traditional, and the
customary” and “an anarchist case.” (7) Likewise, “I am emphatically not making
a blanket case against either bureaucratic planning or high-modernist
ideology.” (6) One might disagree with Scott on the extent of the ethical
arguments for government’s use of force as a means to various ends. But anyone
can appreciate his closing points about pragmatic “rules of thumb” for better policy
prescriptions—or at the least, to “make
development planning less prone to disaster.” In his words (345):
1.
Take small
steps. In an experimental approach to
social change, presume that we cannot know the consequences of our
interventions in advance. Given this postulate of ignorance, prefer wherever possible
to take a small step, stand back, observe, and then plan the next small move...
2.
Favor
reversibility. Prefer interventions that can
easily be undone if they turn out to be mistakes.
3.
Plan on
surprises. Choose plans that allow the
largest accommodation to the unforeseen...
4.
Plan on
human inventiveness. Always plan under the assumption
that those who become involved in the project later will have or will develop
the experience and insight to improve on the design.
Knowledge and humility, foresight and flexibility, modest
proposals and sunset clauses. Outside of those who pursue power for its own
sake or see Statism as a desirable end, who could disagree with Scott’s
concerns about the State, utopian impulses, and government’s proclivity for
dangerous policy blunders?
Scott notes that “the discipline
of economics achieves its formidable resolving power by transforming what might
otherwise be considered qualitative matters into quantitative issues with a
single metric and, as it were, a bottom line: profit or loss. Providing one
understands the heroic assumptions required to achieve this precision and the questions
that it cannot answer, the single metric is an invaluable tool. Problems arise
only when it becomes hegemonic.” (346)
