Sultan Trump: Personalist Rule in the USA
At the time, many scholars were trying to figure out
why so many African countries did not become democratic after they gained their
independence from colonial rule. The reason, the authors in this book argued,
was that African “big men” were personalist rulers. They didn’t care about
laws, political institutions, or consistency in public policy. All they did was
decide on a personal basis who got what when. And often the people who got— who
were given profits, land, mines, slaves, women, graft from foreign aid—were the
big men themselves, their relatives and their friends.
These types of rulers engaged in what the early-20th
century sociologist, Max Weber, called kadi justice. The ruler made decisions
about justice on an ad hoc, individual basis: he didn’t refer to rational
principles and he wasn’t concerned with consistency. This was the type of
justice, Weber thought, that Muslim sultans often engaged in.
 |
| Max Weber |
Kadi rulers still exist, for example in Saudi
Arabia. You can go to the local prince’s house, line up for an audience
(literally, a hearing) with him, and hope that he’ll be interested in your case
and give you justice. But he can just as
easily brush you off or even arrest you for questioning his authority or
complaining about one of his relatives or cronies.
Donald Trump is now a “big man,” the biggest in the
world. His idea of justice is to dish out goodies to his family and cronies. He’s
brought in some of the richest men on Wall Street to his government, even
though throughout the election he derided Hillary Clinton’s alleged ties to Wall
Street. He’s behaving just like the personalist rulers in Africa who smile
smugly as they dispense billions of dollars in graft to their families, ethnic
kinsmen, and friends. And who occasionally dole out a few dollars or privileges
to the “little men” who beg them for help.
And it seems that what Trump would really like to be
is a sultan. He showed that last week (end of November, 2016) when he negotiated
a deal with a company called Carrier to preserve about 1,000 jobs in Indiana. The
employer had been threatening to move the factory to Mexico. To save the jobs,
he promised the parent company, United Technologies, about $7 million in
incentives. You can read about the deal here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/donald-trump-carrier-workers-indiana-1.3875277
So now Trump feels good: 1000 people and their
families are grateful to him and many voters think that he is able to keep his
promise to keep jobs in the USA, despite technological developments and despite
globalization. Those 1,000 people, though, will probably lose their jobs fairly
soon, as the other 1100 people working for Carrier in Indiana already have.
Meantime, other companies have learned that if they threaten to move out of the
US, they too may receive goodies from Trump in return for staying.
When Trump did this deal with Carrier he ignored precedent,
he ignored consequences, and he ignored the actual policies of the US
government. He preferred crony
capitalism, a characteristic of states where rich people and political leaders
are cronies. He was completely oblivious to what Weber called “rational,” or
rule-bound, justice. Rational justice applies to everyone and is consistent in
its application.
After he negotiated this deal, Trump went on a “thank
you” tour, where he once again enjoyed the adulation of the crowds that had voted
for him. Sultans do this too. They periodically pick up their tents and travel
with great fanfare around the country, where residents cheer them (whether they
really want to or not). Like African chiefs who have “praise-singers” to
accompany them when they travel, Middle Eastern sultans want praise: power is
not enough for them. And God help those who don’t praise them.
And God help not only all those Americans who don’t
praise Trump, but even those who do, and who will learn soon enough that having
an irrational, personalist ruler means they can’t predict what the future holds
for them.
No comments:
Post a Comment