DEMOCRATIC AUTHORITARIANISM

symposium participants

a symposium on

the fusion of authoritarianism and

democracy in India and the world

14 THE PROBLEMPosed by Kanchan Chandra, Professor, Wilf FamilyDepartment of Politics, New York UniversityAUTHORITARIAN ELEMENTS IN DEMOCRACYKanchan Chandra, Professor, Wilf Family Departmentof Politics, New York UniversityTHE AUTHORITARIAN TEMPTATIONLarry Diamond, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution andthe Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies,Stanford UniversityTHE AUTHORITARIANISM OF DONALD TRUMPScott Malcomson, International Security Fellow,New America Foundation, New YorkWHAT IT MEANS TO RULE LIKE PUTINHenry Hale, Professor of Political Science andInternational Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs,George Washington University, Washington, DCTHE AGE OF AUTHORITARIANISM ANDTHE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW ITManu Bhagavan, Professor of History and Human Rights,Hunter College and the Graduate Center, The CityUniversity of New YorkMODI’S COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISMRajeev Deshpande, Chief of National Bureau,‘The Times of India’, DelhiKARUNANIDHI AND TAMIL POLITICSAndrew Wyatt, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University ofBristol and C. Manikandan, independent scholarLIVING UNDER AMMAJohn Harriss, Professor, School for International Studies,Simon Fraser University, British ColumbiaMORAL TRANSCENDENCE? THE GURU INDEMOCRACYAya Ikegame, Associate Professor, Institute for AdvancedStudies on Asia, University of TokyoTHE CULT OF THE BOSSLucia Michelutti, Department of Anthropology,University College LondonINDIA’S DEMOCRATIC MARKETPLACEFOR CRIMINALITYMilan Vaishnav, Senior Fellow, South Asia, CarnegieEndowment for International Peace, Washington, DCAFSPA: THE DARKER SIDE OF INDIAN DEMOCRACYSanjib Baruah, Professor of Political Studies,Bard College, New YorkBOOKSReviewed by Sudhir Chandra and Sushila RavindranathCOMMENTCrime and Punishment in SyriaVithal Rajan, writer and playwright, HyderabadBACKPAGECOVERDesigned by www.designosis.in

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India’s democraticmarketplace for criminalityM I L A N V A I S H N A V

ONE of the most distinctive develop-ments in India’s post-independencepolitical evolution has been the grow-ing nexus between crime and politics.1Indeed, a statistic often quoted inreference to India’s present politicaleconomy is that as many as one-thirdof elected Members of Parliament(MPs) face ongoing criminal cases.While many of these cases involveminor charges, one in five MPs faceat least one case involving potentiallyserious infractions, ranging from mur-der to physical assault.2

The group of lawmakers (andalleged lawbreakers) include figuressuch as Pappu Yadav, a notoriousbahubali who once bragged thatthere was no jail in his home state ofBihar whose insides he was not fami-liar with; Rajan Vichare, the Shiv Senastrongman hailing from Thane inMaharashtra, who faces a dozen caseswinding their way through the courts;and the Congress Party’s AdhirRanjan Chowdhury, the self-styled‘Robin Hood of Baharampur’ in WestBengal. Despite the anti-corruptionrhetoric of Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) Prime Minister Narendra Modi,eight legislators in his first cabinet wereconnected to serious criminal cases.Indeed, the prevalence of criminal taintis widespread, touching all parties andreaching all corners of the country.

At first glance, the affinitybetween crime and politics paints amental picture of democracy beingsubverted by rogue actors who regu-larly employ coercion or violence andwhose actions defy the popular will.And coercion, to be sure, is very mucha part of many criminal politicians’standard repertoires. Indeed, a candi-date’s coercive reputation can beviewed as an asset insofar as it helpsto weaken or counterbalance politicalopposition from rival groups through(actual or threatened) violence andintimidation.

But criminality cannot bereduced to coercion or the perpetra-tion of violence alone. Especiallysince the mid-1990s, when the ECI(Election Commission of India) cameinto its own as a powerful ‘referee’institution, booth capturing and brazenintimidation at the polling booth haveprecipitously declined.3 Operating inenvironments where there are seriousgovernance gaps, criminal politiciansalso rely on non-coercive mechanisms– such as redistribution, social insur-ance, and dispute resolution – to winover voters.

Therefore, while scholars mustacknowledge that coercion is typicallypart of the modus operandi of seri-ous criminal politicians, they must alsodevote sufficient attention to under-standing how ‘tainted’ politicians donot simply survive, but thrive in someof the most competitive elections in the

1. This article is based on edited excerpts fromthe author’s book, When Crime Pays: Moneyand Muscle in Indian Politics. HarperCollinsIndia, New Delhi, 2017. The author is grate-ful to Rebecca Brown for research assistanceand Kanchan Chandra for her comments.2. Data compiled by the Association forDemocratic Reforms; for more information,see http://myneta.info.

3. E. Sridharan and Milan Vaishnav, ‘ElectionCommission of India’, in Devesh Kapur,Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Milan Vaishnav(eds.), Rethinking Public Institutions in India.Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2017,pp. 415-461.

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world. Like all politicians in India, thosewith criminal reputations also live anddie at the ballot box. And, arguably,elections today are freer and fairerthan they have been at other points inIndia’s post-independence history.

To that end, I argue that it isuseful to view the relative success ofcriminal politicians as a byproduct ofdemocratic practice, rather than itsauthoritarian antithesis. Indeed, undercertain conditions, malfeasant politi-cians and democratic accountabilitycan be compatible. Granted, this formof accountability is often partial,imperfect, or counterintuitive. Yet, itoffers a corrective to the traditionalnarrative that the very existence of alarge number of corrupt or criminallegislators is symptomatic of a break-down in the standard chain of demo-cratic accountability.

It is helpful to think about politicians,of all types, operating within an elec-toral marketplace.4 In elections, thereare buyers (voters) and sellers (partiesand politicians). As with any market,there are both supply and demand fac-tors at work that allow the market tosurvive. The idea of supply can bedisaggregated into two components:the decision of individuals to step for-ward as candidates, and the selectionof candidates by political parties.

In India, the initial supply ofcriminality resulted from strategicdecisions taken by criminal entrepre-neurs who had long been active in thepolitical sphere. Indeed, the historicalrecord dating back to the early days ofthe republic is replete with evidence ofpoliticians conniving with ‘antisocial’or ‘lumpen’ elements, who functioned

akin to free agents, in the early post-independence era. Indeed, even in thefirst general election of 1951-2, theECI found scattered evidence of Con-gress Party politicians contractingwith local strongmen to influenceelections by coercing opponents,mobilizing supporters, distributingclientelistic handouts, and, in someextreme cases, stuffing ballot boxes.5In providing assistance to politicians,criminals occasionally engaged in ille-gal activity, but they also used theirsocial capital and local standing to bridgethe divide between state and societyin ways that political parties increas-ingly struggled to do, especially as theirorganizational foundations atrophied.

Over time, a number of trends pulledcriminals into a more direct role in elec-toral politics; these included thegradual erosion of the Congress Par-ty’s hegemonic status, rising socialdemands often expressed throughidentity politics, the deterioration ofpublic sector institutions, and the col-lapse of the prevailing system offinancing elections. However, criminalswere also pushed into politics by theirultimate desire for self-preservation.As political competition intensifiedand the party system grew increasinglyfragmented, criminals allied with theCongress could no longer take theirpolitical patrons’ re-election forgranted. This uncertainty createdhuge new risks for criminals: withoutsecure political protection, they wouldbe subject to retribution, either at thehands of the state or from their politi-cal rivals.

The obvious solution to thisdilemma was for criminals to takematters into their own hands and join

electoral politics. Much like privatefirms seeking to ‘vertically integrate’their operations, criminals decided tocut out the politician middleman inorder to maximize control over theirown survival and protection by becom-ing politicians.6 For example, a gang-ster such as Suryadeo Singh – a hugeplayer in the Dhanbad coal mafia – par-layed his rising clout into a successfulcareer in politics, contesting and win-ning assembly elections in 1977 and,eventually, a seat in the Lok Sabha in1984.

This transition played out in the 1970sand 1980s; by the 1990s, the predomi-nance of elected representatives fac-ing criminal charges, including thoseof a serious nature, had been locked in.For instance, an estimated eight percent of Uttar Pradesh Members of theLegislative Assembly (MLAs) electedin 1984 assumed office while undercriminal scrutiny. In 2012, that sharestood at 45 per cent.

The supply of criminally linkedpoliticians, however, cannot be reducedto a story of individual incentives alone.In nearly all democracies, parties arethe key gatekeepers that decide whichpoliticians eventually get a spot onthe ballot. Candidates always have theoption of running as independents,but the success of those choosing thisoption is rather limited, in India andelsewhere. Indeed, according to ECIdata, of the 4,300 MPs elected bet-ween 1977 and 2014, a mere 1.4 per

4. Elections and markets are, of course, notcompletely analogous. For instance, the elec-toral market is shaped by social realities andimperfections that prevent it from consist-ently operating as a ‘free market’ in the pur-est sense. These caveats aside, there is a utilityto employing the market analogy.

5. Election Commission of India, Report onthe First General Elections in India, 1951-52.Election Commission of India, New Delhi,1955, http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/eci_publica-tions/books/genr/FirstGenElection-51-52.pdf(accessed 5 July 2013).

6. ‘Vertical integration’, a concept popular-ized by the Nobel economist Oliver William-son, refers to the ‘substitution of internalorganization for market exchange’, or themerging together of two businesses that areat different stages of production. A classicexample is an auto manufacturer that decidesto make its own tyres in-house rather thancontract with a third party to manufacturethem. See Oliver E. Williamson, ‘The VerticalIntegration of Production: Market FailureConsiderations’, American Economic Review61(2), May 1971, pp. 112-23.

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cent (or 82 in total) lacked a formalparty affiliation.

Why parties recruit candidateslinked to wrongdoing is not obvious, butparties’ underlying quest for ‘rents’suggests one possible explanation.7 Insettings where elections are costly yetparties are weakly organized, seekingout self-financing candidates is anattractive option. Candidates with deeppockets can contribute financial rentsin numerous ways; in addition to plug-ging election funding gaps, they candirectly provide financial payments toparty leaders or engage in other kindsof rent-seeking behaviour that couldultimately benefit the party. Indeed,qualitative evidence suggests, andquantitative analyses confirm, thatmoney is a prime motivation for whyparties are willing to embrace ‘mus-cle’.8 Candidates with greater financialresources (read: spending capacity)are much more likely to win elections.And candidates linked with criminality,in turn, often have better access toresources. Data from the last threegeneral elections reveal that the rich-est quintile of candidates (the wealthi-est 20 per cent in terms of personalfinancial assets) were more thantwenty times as likely to win electionswhen compared to candidates in thepoorest quintile.

What remains a mystery, however,is why voters might support candidateswith serious criminal reputations.Scholars who have studied the con-nection between malfeasance and

democratic politics have often assumedthat voters do not willingly supportso-called ‘bad politicians’ – shorthandfor politicians involved in illegal orunethical behaviour – but insteaddo so inadvertently due to a lack ofinformation.9

In a poor country such as India,where widespread illiteracy anduneven media access are a reality, it iscertainly plausible that many votersmake their decisions on election daywith a heavy dose of ignorance aboutthe qualifications of their local candi-dates. If this were the case, the elec-tion of suspected criminal candidateswould be incidental, rather than agenuine expression of latent demand.

It is also conceivable that so-called‘low information’ voters could bemore susceptible to coercive threats bystrongmen politicians. As one recentpaper on India’s criminal politicianssuggests, ‘literate voters are endowedwith a whole panoply of resources,including access to information andaccess to police protection, that toge-ther offers them greater resilience inthe face of electoral violence.’10

Such arguments often portrayvoters as unwitting pawns in a game

rigged by political elites. As such, theydo not leave much space for ‘affirma-tive’ sources of support for criminalcandidates. However, there is an alter-native explanation that suggests vot-ers can have an underlying strategiclogic for supporting criminal candi-dates when two conditions are present.

In places where the rule of law is weakand social divisions are rampant, poli-ticians can use their criminality as a

7. ‘Rents’ are typically defined as an economicpayoff where the ultimate beneficiary incursno costs in producing that payoff. Wheneconomists think of rents, they typicallythink of illicit acts of corruption. But a moreexpansive definition could include funds can-didates provide to cover the expenses of con-testing elections or contribute to party coffers.8. For a qualitative exploration of the linkbetween money and muscle, see ChristopheJaffrelot, ‘Indian Democracy: The Rule ofLaw on Trial’, India Review 1(1), 2002, p. 98;

James Manor, ‘Changing State, ChangingSociety in India’, South Asia: Journal ofSouth Asian Studies 25(2), 2002, pp. 231-56.For a recent quantitative study, see BhaskarDutta and Poonam Gupta, ‘How Indian Vot-ers Respond to Candidates with CriminalCharges: Evidence from the 2009 Lok SabhaElections’, Economic and Political Weekly49(4), 25 January 2014, pp. 43-51.9. Alicia Adsera, Carles Boix and Mark Payne,‘Are You Being Served? Political Accountabi-lity and Quality of Government’, Journal ofLaw, Economics, and Organization 19(2),2003, pp. 445-490; Claudio Ferraz andFederico Finan, ‘Exposing Corrupt Politi-cians: The Effects of Brazil’s PubliclyReleased Audits on Electoral Outcomes’,Quarterly Journal of Economics 123(2), 2008,pp. 703-45; and Eric C.C. Chang, MiriamA. Golden and Seth J. Hill, ‘Legislative Mal-feasance and Political Accountability’, WorldPolitics 62(2), April 2010, pp. 177-220.

10. Toke Aidt, Miriam Golden, and DeveshTewari, ‘Criminal Candidate Selection forthe Indian National Legislature’, unpublishedpaper, Department of Political Science, Uni-versity of California, Los Angeles, November2015, http://www.golden.polisci.ucla.edu/single-post/2015/11/11/Criminal-Candidate-Selection-for-the-Indian-National-Legislature(accessed 18 January 2017).11. Indeed, numerous official documents, andvarious committees and commissions revealthat the Government of India itself is veryconcerned by the interaction of crime and poli-tics. Indeed, the government has repeatedlyidentified the need to rid politics of criminalsas a key public policy objective. The most wellknown of these reports is that of the VohraCommittee. See Ministry of Home Affairs,Government of India, Final Report of theVohra Committee. Government of India, NewDelhi, 2005, http://adrindia.org/sites/default/f i l e s / V O H R A % 2 0 C O M M I T T E E %20REPORT_0.pdf (accessed 20 April 2016).12. Nishith Prakash, Marc Rockmore andYogesh Uppal, ‘Do Criminally Accused Poli-ticians Affect Economic Outcomes? Evidencefrom India’, unpublished paper, Departmentof Economics, Youngstown State University,October 2015, http://yuppal.people.ysu.edu/criminal_mla_11_08_14.pdf (accessed 23January 2016).13. Given India’s first-past-the-post electoralsystem, in which elections at the constituencylevel are regularly won with substantially lessthan a majority of votes, winning coalitionscan be quite narrow. For instance, in the 2014general election, 37 per cent of candidates wona majority of votes cast in their respectiveconstituencies. That number was actually asignificant increase from 2009, when just 22per cent were ‘majority winners’. See MilanVaishnav and Danielle Smogard, ‘A New Erain Indian Politics?’ Carnegie Endowmentfor International Peace, 10 June 2014, http://carnegieendowment.org/2014/06/10/new-era-in-indian-politics/hdc6 (accessed 15 June2014).

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signal of their enhanced capacity andwillingness to do whatever it takes toprotect their supporters’ interests. This‘protection’ typically involves substi-tuting for a state administration that isunable (or unwilling) to effectively andimpartially fulfil its basic functions,such as guaranteeing public security,resolving disputes and providing corepublic services.

The constituent ‘interests’ poli-tician’s pledge to protect are often castin terms of preserving the status of theethnic community (or communities) inquestion, which further allows a can-didate to spin his criminal reputationas doing whatever is necessary to‘defend’ his allies. According to thislogic, information about a candidate’scriminality is not only well known tomany voters, but it is also intrinsic totheir voting behaviour.

Many politicians therefore weartheir outlaw bona fides as a badge ofhonour. Examples abound, but con-sider a strongman politician such asBrij Bhushan Sharan Singh of UttarPradesh. Sharan Singh, a one-timestudent activist turned Thakur casteleader, at one point had racked up asmany as forty criminal cases, rangingfrom murder to kidnapping and evenabetting terrorism. The defiant netaonce claimed his controversial actionsare done with the intent of helping thehelpless, remarking: ‘I have never trou-bled the poor and the decent and I havenever shied away from taking onthose who oppress others.’ Once, whenlaunching a protest over the inaction ofthe local police, Sharan Singh was

asked about his tendency to create aruckus for political gain: ‘I am a mafiaman. How can I be Gandhi? I haveforty cases lodged against me,’ the MPstated. ‘How can I be any good? I tryto do my best. This is the public. I wantto be of some help to them.’ The vot-ers, for their part, have been quitehelpful in return; in 2014, Sharan Singhrang in his fourth term as an MP.

The existence of a marketplace forcriminal politicians does not meanthat one should gloss over the corro-sive effects the fusion of crime andpolitics can have in democratic sys-tems. To the contrary, the symbiosisbetween crime and politics should be acause for concern on several counts.11

First, the fact that many of India’s lead-ing lawmakers are also among itsforemost (alleged) lawbreakers hasserious implications for the sanctity ofthe rule of law. If citizens believe thatlaws can be openly flouted withoutrepercussion, these perceptions cancreate a self-fulfilling reality, therebyencouraging widespread disrespectfor the rule of law.

Second, one recent study findsthat constituencies with an electedrepresentative who has an ongoingcriminal case experience significantlylower rates of economic growth. Thisnegative effect is even larger when theincumbent faces serious cases, casesinvolving financial crimes, or hails fromstates with endemic corruption andweak institutions. The authors of thestudy surmise that this is a byproductof lower investment in public goodsprovision.12

Third, when it comes to socialwelfare, it is true that there is somesegment of the electorate that standsto gain from the presence of criminalpoliticians – namely, their core sup-porters. Yet these improvements arenot likely to be evenly distributed; theremay be gains for certain segments ofsociety, but politicians who tout theircriminal reputations thrive by exploit-ing – not resolving – social divisions.Their modus operandi relies principallyon catering to narrow segments of theelectorate, rather than the populationat large.13

But even for their supporters, crimi-nal politicians arguably have a mixedimpact. On the one hand, candidatesknown for flouting the law regularlycampaign on pledges of deliveringbenefits of various sorts to their adher-ents. While these can be material innature, they also involve things likephysical protection or dispute resolu-tion and justice. But while politicianssuspected of wrongdoing appear toplug a governance vacuum, they alsobenefit from the persistence of a bro-ken public sector machinery. If thestate were able to consistently andeffectively carry out its core duties,these candidates would certainly losemuch of their relevance. This way offunctioning finds an analogy in theoperations of mafia groups in otherparts of the world.

In his landmark work on theSicilian Mafia, sociologist DiegoGambetta argues that a lack of socialtrust in Italy first gave rise to the mafia.What mafia members could offer – to

FIGURE 1Bad Politicians and Accountability:

Standard View

FIGURE 2Bad Politicians and Accountability:

Reverse Induction

FIGURE 3Bad Politicians and Accountability:

Revisionist View

Votersarmedwith

informa-tion

Success of‘partial’

accounta-bility

Providesupportfor ‘bad’

politicians> >

Access toinforma-

tion

Democraticaccounta-

bilitypreserved

Ability topunish‘bad’

politicians> >

‘Bad’politi-cians

Result ofasymme-tric infor-

mation

Failure ofdemocraticaccounta-

bility> >

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all parties involved – was the credibi-lity that a transaction would be hon-oured, thus overcoming the social trustdeficit. But, as Gambetta explains, the‘Mafioso himself has an interest inmaking regulated injections of dis-trust into the market to increase thedemand’ for the very protection heoffers.14 After all, if citizens were ableto organically develop bonds of trustamong themselves, the mafia wouldbe out of business.

From the standpoint of democracy,the intimacy of crime and democraticpolitics confounds many commonlyaccepted notions. After all, many of theleading lights from political scienceand political philosophy who havewritten eloquently about democracyover the past several centuries suggestthat what distinguishes democracyfrom autocracy is that the formerengenders accountability becauseelections offer voters the opportunity– at regular intervals – to punish law-makers who betray the public trust.This mechanism is at the heart of thedemocratic project and is thought toprovide the carrot and the stick bywhich ‘bad’ politicians can be weededout and ‘good’ politicians ushered in.

Later, scholars came to the reali-zation that democracy did not alwayswork as advertised. On the contrary,they postulated that democracy couldfacilitate accountability only when vot-ers participating in democratic pro-cesses had access to informationabout the behaviour of their represen-tatives. Armed with this information,voters could then make rational deci-sions about whether to re-elect or rejecttheir incumbent politician, thus facili-tating true accountability (Figure 1).

Based on this reasoning, it is nosurprise that most studies of wayward

lawmakers contain an assumption thatthe political success of bad politiciansin democratic countries is inherentlysymptomatic of a breakdown in thechain of democratic accountability.This is taken as a given; an alternativescenario in which bad politicians andaccountability might coexist is typicallynot envisioned.

In a few instances, some scholarsactually begin with this premise andthen work in reverse. Once the accoun-tability failure is identified, scholarswork backwards to identify the primarycause. In many instances, informationis often believed to be at the heart ofthis breakdown – the missing ingre-dient which, when absent, creates thespace for bad politicians to creep inunder the cover of darkness. This pro-cess of reverse induction (Figure 2) ismore likely subliminal than intentional.

Whichever causal logic is pur-sued – that depicted in Figure 1 orFigure 2 – the ignorant voter thesis isa compelling narrative and has beenshown to be true in a great many cases.But it is not a universal truth. Assum-ing away the possibility that connec-tions to illegal behaviour can sometimesbe an asset, rather than a liability, forpoliticians in consolidated democra-cies can be deeply problematic.

This turns the standard logic onits head: well informed voters may, infact, have good reasons to lend theirsupport to bad politicians, thus creat-ing a victory for democratic account-ability (Figure 3). Granted, the ensuingform of democratic accountability ispartial, imperfect, and flies againstmany common normative concep-tions. Furthermore, it is not withoutits adverse side effects. Yet, it offers acorrective to the narrative that voters,and parties, are saddled with malfea-sant politicians. To the contrary, theymight have rational, affirmative rea-sons to give them support.

14. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia:The Business of Private Protection. HarvardUniversity Press, Cambridge, 1996, p. 25.