Rawlsian Political Analysis: Rethinking the Microfoundations of Social Science

Chapter Five: Political Analysis of Problems in Bihar

   121 c h a p t e r f i v e Political Analysis of Problems in Bihar Bihar . . . has become a byword for the worst of India: of widespread and inescapable poverty; of corrupt politicians indistinguishable from the mafia dons they patronize; of a caste-ridden social order that has retained the worst feudal cruelties; of terrorist attacks by groups of “Naxalite” Maoists; of chronic misrule that has allowed infrastructure to crumble, the education and health systems to collapse, and law and order to evaporate.1 Rawlsian Political Analysis Compared to Other Approaches This chapter presents Rawlsian political analysis by employing it to explain the causes of economic and social problems in the Indian state of Bihar.2 It illustrates the distinctive character of Rawlsian political analy­ sis as compared to neoclassical economic or rational choice approaches, including features at both micro and macro levels. At the micro level, 122 Rawlsian Political Analysis resentment and a resentment-inspired urge to domination have contributed to social violence in Bihar’s villages. At the macro level, Bihar’s state politics have suffered in several ways from conflicts between egalitarian principles of democracy and hierarchical principles of caste. This chapter shows how these conflicts eventually fueled a politics of resentment and misplaced loyalties that yielded widespread corruption and inefficiency. Just as chapter 4 demonstrates the analytic power that a program analysis gains by taking account of the reasonable, so the present chapter argues that the Rawlsian moral psychology permits a deeper and more convincing account of Bihar’s economic and social problems than one would expect from neoutilitarian accounts. I argue in chapter 3 that the implications of this conception of the person for political science are not limited to gaining a stronger positive or empirical analysis. First, the Kantian model of practical reason indicates that while political analysis is empirical, it is also constructive, in that by doing political analysis we participate in building our social world. Second, in light of Kant’s model, we find that the person has an imperfect obligation to promote social justice, and Rawlsian political analysis provides the means for developing an agenda and strategy to this end.3 Contemporary American political science has two forms of institutional analysis similar to the approach I propose. Both rational choice institutionalism and historical institutionalism, however, present themselves as merely empirical theories or approaches. Rawlsian political analysis presents itself as constructive as well as empirical, and, as long as we live in an unjust world order, it must also ultimately be a critical analysis. I propose that Rawls’s moral psychology could provide microfoundations for historical institutionalism, or that Rawlsian microfoundations are implicit in the structural analyses that historical institutionalism offers. Certainly , a historical approach is necessary for explaining the development and dynamics of principles. Lacking microfoundations of their own, it seems that historical institutionalists have sometimes taken their agendas from the neoutilitarians, whom they criticize (for example, in explaining the causes of more or less successful industrialization). Nevertheless, characteristic tensions between economic rationality and social justice tend to be closer to the surface in historical institutionalists’ accounts.4 Rawlsian political analysis, however, intentionally occupies the analytic space at the intersection of ethics and power. Political Analysis of Problems in Bihar 123 We should acknowledge the radical freedom and ambitious ideals that are inherent in the Rawlsian approach. Following Kant, Rawls points out that “practical reason is concerned with the production of objects according to a conception of those objects—for example, the conception of a just constitutional regime taken as the aim of political endeavor.”5 In contrast to Marx, Rawls does not see a just society resulting from an inevitable historical process or the possibility of social reform depending on the present configuration of interests. Progress toward justice depends on organized political action by autonomous individuals, possibly without regard to their material interests. Hence, a historical materialist would presumably find the Rawlsian approach excessively voluntaristic. Of course Rawls does not deny the deep roots and powerful inertia of established principles, much less the great influence of entrenched interests on politics.6 Rawls would count Bihar among what he calls “burdened societies,” but he does not define what it means to be burdened on the basis of income or the satisfaction of any configuration of interests. Rather, burdened societies have historical, social, and economic circumstances that impede the establishment of a public conception of justice that...