Civil society is a buffer between the rulers and the ruled.
Although every civil society is a buffer, not every buffer is a
civil society. Clientelistic networks provide a buffer but not a
civic buffer. In all societies, save primitive pre-historic ones,
there is some mechanism of authority; all societies are ruled one
way or another. In modern societies, the rulers are not persons
but are the cold, rational, predictable instruments of law and
administrative regulation. In traditional societies, where the
rulers are living souls, the spectre of arbitrary actions is
always in the air. The ruled, therefore, strive for connections to
the ruler in order to obtain exemptions from arbitrary actions, and
some even use those connections to initiate favourable arbitrary
actions (e.g. rent-seekers). Those vertical connections are known
as wasta in Arabic (for more see Wasta: the hidden force in Middle
Eastern society. / Cunningham, Robert, 1937- / Westport, Conn# 1993
HN766 A8 C86 1993 PCL Stacks). On the other hand, the instruments
that rule a modern society, being lifeless, eliminate the payoff
for vertical connections since arbitrary actions are not possible.
Of course those two cases are idealized. In reality, all
rulers are a mixture of human arbitrariness (I will refer to it as
h ) and instrumental regularity ( i ). Let the sum of h and i be
equal to 1, and hence as h approaches 1 then i approaches 0 and the
reverse is true (i-->1, then h-->0). This means that in the
idealized modern society which is ruled completely instrumentally,
i=1 and h=0. In the traditional society h=1 and i=0. In real life,
we can say that the instrumental component is higher in northern
Italy than it is in southern Italy, which in turn is higher than in
Egypt. what is the point of all this h and i ? The point is that
I am setting the problem up for the application of game theory.
The following payoff matrices for a simple 2-player game (like
the prisoner s dilemma) show why people associate vertically in
societies where h is predominant (h>>i) and horizontally where i
is predominant (i>>h). Each of the players can choose between two
strategies: pursue vertical association or horizontal civic
association. The payoffs for each player are listed as x,y where x
is the payoff for player 1 and y for player 2. The equilibrium is
in bold.
Game#1: h>>i
(Middle East)
Player 2
vertical civic
vertical 2,2 4,0
Player 1
civic 0,4 0,0
Game#2: i>>h
(North Italy)
Player 2
vertical civic
vertical 0,0 0,0
Player 1
civic 0,0 4,4
The equilibrium in Game#1 is (vertical ,vertical) meaning that
vertical association will be dominant in such a society. The
equilibrium in Game#2 is (civic, civic) meaning that horizontal
association will be dominant. As I said earlier, the rulers in a
society are a combination of human arbitrariness (h) and
instrumental regularity (i), where h+i=1. The general rule is: as
h-->1, equilibrium -->(vertical, vertical) and the corollary: as
i-->1, equilibrium -->(civic, civic).
The meaning of all this is that civil society will not exist
in a situation where it is manifestly irrational to be civic. In
Egypt, clientelism and rent-seeking are rational while civicness is
not. Advocates of civil society within and without Egypt are
ploughing the sea, because it is currently irrational for an
individual in the Middle East to be civic rather than
Clientelistic. Associating horizontally has a minuscule payoff
whereas associating vertically brings great rewards (jobs,
government contracts, promotions, admission to certain colleges and
faculties and above all exemption from arbitrary government
actions). When someone is arbitrarily arrested, the very civic
Human Rights Organization yaps and effects little, but if one is
vertically connected ( protected or has a back in Arab slang) a
phone call from the patron will bring a speedy release and maybe an
apology. Perhaps this picture is too bleak, perhaps not. Civil
society cannot flourish; it cannot persist anywhere that h ( h
stands for the arbitrary human component of the rulers as opposed
to lifeless instrumental regularity) is predominant as it is in the
contemporary Middle East.
The US government should not invest its resources in attempts
to make the ruled more civic but instead should try to make the
rulers less arbitrary. Instead of spending its money on setting up
horizontal associations and on evaluating their progress, it should
reduce its support to the old rotten arbitrary regimes that make
civicness irrational and make clientelism and rent-seeking
rational. No amount of American funding for civic association is
going to change this reality.
The obvious question that comes to mind is how do the
proportions of h and i come about? why is h much higher in the
Middle East than it is in the West? So far, my depiction has been
static; Game#1 only capture a snapshot of a society where the
values of h and i are constant and so does Game#2. In reality, h
and i fluctuate over time; there are outbursts of personal
arbitrariness and there are flows of instrumental regularity.
Whenever an outburst of personal arbitrariness abates and i
increases, many members of the society realize that as i increases
the payoff for vertical association diminishes and the payoff for
civic association grows. As we know the payoff for both players in
a civic equilibrium is much higher than their payoff in a vertical
equilibrium. Thus, with a small increase in i, their payoff in a
civic equilibrium quickly exceeds their payoff in a vertical
equilibrium. Then, the equilibrium shifts from (vertical, vertical)
to (civic, civic).
Furthermore, members of one society can realize the
superiority of the civic equilibrium if they see it in another
society. With the increased flow of information, the following
years are going to be a period of sustained downward pressure on h
and boost for i . As i increases the payoffs of vertical
association diminish and the old rotten order of patronage and
arbitrariness is supplanted by one of instrumental regularity; it
is a virtuous cycle.
It is important that one does not become prematurely
pessimistic when instances of arbitrariness continue to occur for
decades, because this virtuous cycle depends on human cognition: a
broad diffusion of perceptions and attitudes that may require 60-
100 years. It is already happening in Southern Italy where a
newfound will on the part of sou
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