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ronya posted:We are back to presupposing a (global?) technocratic decisionmaker who faces no political constraints. Yep, this is the problem I had as soon as I saw the thread title- the question "what should be done about India" presupposes that there's someone out there with the means, motive, and mandate to just go and "fix" a country of over a billion people. And then the OP goes and posts things like this: OwlBot 2000 posted:I made a joke or two in GBS but decided I wanted to actually learn what is being done or should be done because India is really that bad. Is there any chance of India becoming a superpower absent some miracle / competent dictator or is it too fragmented and too late to the race? As if he really believes in the pop-culture myth of the "benevolent dictator" who can overcome all political limits and just implement the "right" policies. Development has a lot more grey areas than that. Any solution will have to be legitimate in the eyes of the Indian people, and that means it can't be imposed by an outside force (dictatorial or colonizing or whomever). OwlBot 2000 posted:But once again, whither corruption? Are certain cultures just naturally corrupt, or is there something else which can encourage people to be more or less corrupt? I think the "something else" you're looking for is what political scientists call structural incentives. Part of the job of political institutions, like government, is to structure individual incentives in such a way that a person's individual best interest coincides with the best interests of society. So, in an institution where there's little room for upward mobility, with a weak legal system, it's in my best interests to scam the system for all it's worth. Introduce transparency and a strong legal system, corruption goes down. It's not very simple, since every society's institutional arrangement is unique and you can't just look at one institution in a vacuum, but it's better than a facile appeal to culture. Jargonless version: don't blame the player, blame the rules of the game. Guy DeBorgore fucked around with this message at 08:54 on Mar 11, 2014 |
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Mar 11, 2014 08:40
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