The End of Power

by Naim, Moises

  Power exercised through code, or moral obligation, also faces challenges as the three revolutions advance. Custom and religion have long been relied upon to provide moral order and explain the world. Indeed, for people who live short lives marked by disease and poverty, traditions embedded in families or tightly knit communities help them to cope, share support, and accept harsh realities. But as their material comforts increase and they gain access to more alternatives, they become less dependent on their inherited belief systems and more open to experimentation with new ones.

  In times of intense material and behavioral change, appeals to custom or moral obligation are less likely to succeed unless they reflect changing conditions. As an example consider the crisis of the Catholic Church, whose growing inability to recruit priests who accept the vow of celibacy—or to compete with small evangelical churches that can tailor messages to the culture and the concrete needs of specific local communities—makes for a spectacular cautionary tale.

  Power also operates through persuasion—for example, the pitch made by an advertising campaign or a real estate broker—and through inducement—by rewarding constituents, employees, or other subjects with packages of benefits that ensure their participation and consent. The three revolutions are changing the landscape for pitch and reward as well.

  Imagine a political candidate or party trying to drum up votes for an upcoming election through a combination of messages, advertising, and promises of rewards in the form of constituent services and jobs. The More revolution is creating better-educated and better-informed pools of constituents who are less likely to passively accept government decisions, more prone to scrutinize authorities’ behavior, and more active in seeking change and asserting their rights. The Mobility revolution is making the demographics of the constituency more diverse, fragmented, and volatile. In some cases it may even be creating interested players who are able to affect the debate and influence voters from faraway locations—indeed, from a different country. The Mentality revolution breeds increasing skepticism of the political system in general.

  A similar dilemma affects employers, advertisers, and anyone else trying to attract support or sales in communities where interests and preferences are fragmenting and becoming more diverse. It may be easier to invent a package of benefits that does a good job of achieving the enthusiastic consent of a smaller group than one that does a mediocre job of attracting a larger population. The more the advantage of size and scale diminishes, the more niche marketing and single-issue politics, for example, stand to benefit. As a result, large corporations are increasingly being compelled by market forces and the actions of smaller rivals to behave as niche players—something that does not come naturally to organizations long accustomed to relying on the overwhelming power of their large scale.

  BARRIERS DOWN: THE OPPORTUNITY FOR MICROPOWERS

  In the pages ahead, we will take these concepts into the real world. One reason it can be difficult to talk about power except in the most general philosophic terms is that we are accustomed to think about the dynamics of power very differently depending on whether we focus on military conflict, business competition, international diplomacy, the relationship between husband and wife, father and son, or some other arena. Yet the changes highlighted by the three revolutions affect all of these fields and go beyond any one particular trend-of-the-moment. Indeed, they are more deeply woven into the patterns and expectations of human society today than they were just a few years or decades ago, and they are challenging the conventional wisdom about what it takes to get, use, and keep power. The question of how that challenge is unfolding, and how the dominant players inherited from the twentieth century are responding to it, will occupy the rest of this book.

  By no means is big power dead: the big, established players are fighting back, and in many cases they are still prevailing. Dictators, plutocrats, corporate behemoths, and the leaders of the great religions will continue to be an important feature of the global landscape and the defining factor in the lives of billions of people. But these megaplayers are more constrained in what they can do than they used to be in the past, and their hold on power is increasingly less secure. The chapters ahead will show how the micropowers are limiting the choices available to the megaplayers and how in some instances they are forcing them to retreat—or, as was the case during the Arab Spring, even to lose power altogether.

  The More, Mobility, and Mentality revolutions are attacking the model of organization so persuasively advocated by Max Weber and his followers in sociology, economics, and other fields, and they are attacking it precisely at the points where it drew its strength. Large organizations were more efficient because they operated with lower costs, thanks to economies of scale; today, however, the costs of maintaining order and control are going up. Large organizations were more effective because they centralized and warehoused scarce resources; today, resources such as commodities, information, human talent, and customers are easier to source and serve, from distances near and far. Large organizations had a sheen of authority, modernity, and sophistication; today, headlines are being made by small newcomers that are challenging the big powers. And as the advantages of the large-scale, rational, coordinated, and centralized model of organization diminish, the opportunities increase for micropowers to make their mark using a different model for success.

  But to what extent is power decaying? And with what consequences? In the rest of the book we turn to the specifics of how this process is playing out in domestic politics, war, geopolitics, business, and other fields. Exactly which barriers to power are coming down? What new players have emerged, and how have the powers-that-be fought back?

  The reorganization of power, as the barriers have fallen, is far from complete but is already producing fundamental changes.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  WHY ARE LANDSLIDES, MAJORITIES, AND STRONG MANDATES ENDANGERED SPECIES?

  The Decay of Power in National Politics

  THE ESSENCE OF POLITICS IS POWER; THE ESSENCE OF POWER IS politics. And since the Ancients, the classic path to power has been the pursuit of politics. Indeed, power is to politicians what sunlight is to plants. What politicians do with their power varies; but the aspiration to power is their essential common trait. As Max Weber put it almost a century ago: “He who is active in politics strives for power, either as a means in serving other ends, ideal or egoistic, or as ‘power for power’s sake,’ that is, in order to enjoy the prestige-feeling that power gives.”1

  But that “prestige-feeling” is a fragile emotion. And these days, its half-life is getting shorter. Consider the last decade in American politics, which political analyst Ron Brownstein has called “The Age of Volatility.” Voters gave the Republicans control of both Congress and the White House in 2002 and 2004 and then took it away from them in 2006 and 2008—only to restore control of the House of Representatives to them in 2010 and 2012. Previously, in the five elections from 1996 to 2004, the biggest gain in House seats by any one party was nine; in 2006, the Republicans lost thirty seats, in 2008 the Democrats won twenty-one, and in 2010 the Democrats lost sixty-three. The number of American voters registered as independents now regularly exceeds the number who align with Republicans and Democrats.2 In 2012, the importance of Hispanics became obvious.

  This is not just an American phenomenon. Everywhere, the basis of political power is growing more fragile; gaining a majority of votes no longer guarantees the ability to make decisions, inasmuch as a multitude of “micropowers” can veto, delay, or water them down. Power is seeping away from autocrats and single-party systems whether they embrace reform or not. It is spreading from large and long-established political parties to small ones with narrow agendas or niche constituencies. Even within parties, party bosses who make decisions, pick candidates, and hammer out platforms behind closed doors are giving way to insurgents and outsiders—to new politicians who haven’t risen up in the party machine, who never bothered to kiss the ring. People entirely outsi
de the party structure—charismatic individuals, some with wealthy backers from outside the political class, others simply catching a wave of support thanks to new messaging and mobilization tools that don’t require parties—are blazing a new path to political power.

  Whatever path they followed to get there, politicians in government are finding that their tenure is getting shorter and their power to shape policy is decaying. Politics was always the art of the compromise, but now politics is downright frustrating—sometimes it feels like the art of nothing at all. Gridlock is more common at every level of decision-making in the political system, in all areas of government, and in most countries. Coalitions collapse, elections take place more often, and “mandates” prove ever more elusive. Decentralization and devolution are creating new legislative and executive bodies. In turn, more politicians and elected or appointed officials are emerging from these stronger municipalities and regional assemblies, eating into the power of top politicians in national capitals. Even the judicial branch is contributing: judges are getting friskier and more likely to investigate political leaders, block or reverse their actions, or drag them into corruption inquiries that divert them from passing laws and making policy. Winning an election may still be one of life’s great thrills, but the afterglow is diminishing. Even being at the top of an authoritarian government is no longer as safe and powerful a perch as it once was. As Professor Minxin Pei, one of the world’s most respected experts on China, told me: “The members of the politburo now openly talk about the old good times when their predecessors at the top of the Chinese Communist Party did not have to worry about bloggers, hackers, transnational criminals, rogue provincial leaders or activists that stage 180,000 public protests each year. When challengers appeared, the old leaders had more power to deal with them. Today’s leaders are still very powerful but not as much as those of a few decades back and their powers are constantly declining.”3

  Strong claims, these. After all, the diversity of the world’s political systems is intimidating. There are centralized and federal systems and many variants in between, and some countries are part of supranational political systems like the European Union. Dictatorships are single-party, nominally but artificially multi-party, or no-party; they are military or hereditary or underpinned by ethnic or religious majority or minority groups, and so on. Democracies are even more diverse. Presidential and parliamentary systems fragment into numerous subdivisions that hold elections according to different schedules, make room for fewer or more parties, and have complex rules governing participation, representation, election financing, checks and balances, and all the rest. The customs and traditions of political life vary by region; even the respect accorded political leaders and the allure of political careers depend on numerous shifting factors. So how can we generalize and announce that politics is fragmenting and that, everywhere, political power faces more constraints and is increasingly becoming more ephemeral?

  Consider, first, the answer from politicians themselves. Every political leader or head of state I’ve spoken with has cited a growing litany of interfering forces that limit their ability to govern: not just factions within their parties and ruling coalitions, or uncooperative legislators and increasingly free-wheeling judges, but also aggressive bondholders and other agents of global capital markets, international regulators, multilateral institutions, investigative journalists and social media campaigners, and an ever-widening circle of activist groups. As Lena Hjelm-Wallén, Sweden’s former deputy prime minister, minister for foreign affairs, minister of education, and, for many years, one of her country’s leading politicians, told me: “I never cease to be amazed at how much and how fast political power has changed. I now look back and marvel at the many things we could do in the 1970s and 1980s and that now are almost unimaginable given the many new factors that reduce and slow down the ability of governments and politicians to act.”4

  ESTABLISHED POLITICIANS ARE ALSO BUMPING INTO A NEW CAST OF characters within the corridors of legislative power. In the 2010 parliamentary elections in Brazil, for example, the candidate who won the most votes anywhere in the country (and the second-most-voted congressman in the country’s history) was a clown—an actual clown who went by the name of Tiririca and wore his clown costume while he campaigned. His platform was as anti-politician as it gets. “I don’t know what a representative in congress does,” he told voters in YouTube videos that attracted millions of viewers, “but if you send me there I will tell you.” He also explained that his goal was “to help needy people in this country, but especially my family.”5

  Politics in Max Weber’s sober view was a “vocation”—a craft to which politicians aspired and which required discipline, a set of character traits, and considerable effort. But as the standard “political class” in country after country loses popular credibility, outsiders such as Tiririca are finding more success. In Italy, the comedian Beppe Grillo, who lambastes politicians of every stripe, writes the most popular blog in the country and fills every stadium in which he appears. “Call him a comedian, a clown or a showman but Beppe Grillo is the juiciest piece of Italian political news for a while,” wrote Beppe Severgnini in the Financial Times in 2012. In that year’s local elections, Grillo’s movement polled about 20 percent of the national vote and won several mayoral contests.6 In Canada, Rob Ford—whose past transgressions gave his opponents fodder for attack signs reading “wife-beating, racist drunk for mayor”—got elected mayor of Toronto in 2010. In Spain, Belén Esteban, a strident television personality who reveals her most intimate secrets on camera, has gathered a cadre of enthusiastic followers that many traditional politicians would like to have.

  In the United States, the rise of the Tea Party movement—far from unorganized, but also very far from any traditional political organization—boosted candidates like Christine O’Donnell, who allegedly dabbled in witchcraft and made opposition to masturbation a key part of her agenda. Even when O’Donnell and her fellow Tea-Partier, Nevada Republican Sharron Angle (who at one point suggested that the way to fix Congress was for Americans to resort to “Second Amendment remedies”—i.e., armed insurrection7), failed to win their races, their victories in Republican Party primaries in 2010 underscored the waning ability of traditional party leaders to control the nomination process. The Republican party’s traditional leaders not only lacked the power to contain the savage rivalry among the presidential contenders for the party’s nomination but also could not protect several incumbent senators (notably Indiana’s long-serving Richard Lugar) and hand-groomed senatorial candidates (Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst) from successful 2012 primary challenges by Tea Party upstarts.

  Increasingly, political heroes are transcending not only parties but organized politics itself. They accrue power and influence not necessarily to seek and hold a political office but to advance and draw attention to their cause. These are the likes of Alexey Navalny, the Russian lawyer and blogger who has become a focal point for the anti-Putin opposition; Tawakkol Karman, the mother of three who won a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to promote freedom and democracy in Yemen; and Wael Ghonim, who emerged as a key leader of Egypt’s revolution (and thus, like Karman, is an iconic figure of the overall Arab Spring) from his position as a mid-level executive in the local office of Google.

  Of course, as impressive as such stories are, they are just that—stories. To truly chart the ebb and flow of power in politics, and specifically its decay, we need data and hard evidence. This chapter aims to provide proof that in many (and increasingly more) countries, the clearly defined power centers of the past no longer exist. A “cloud” of players has replaced the center, each with some power to shape political or governmental outcomes, but none with enough power to unilaterally determine them. That might sound like healthy democracy and desirable checks and balances, and in some measure this is the case. But in many countries, the fragmentation of the political system is creating a situation where gridlock and the propensity to adopt mi
nimalist decisions at the last minute are severely eroding the quality of public policy and the ability of governments to meet voters’ expectations or solve urgent problems.

  FROM EMPIRES TO STATES: THE MORE REVOLUTION AND THE PROLIFERATION OF COUNTRIES

  Can one date, one moment, change history? Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, called it a “tryst with destiny.” And indeed the stroke of midnight, ushering in August 15, 1947, did more than just mark political freedom for India and Pakistan. It set in motion the wave of decolonization that transformed the world order from one dominated by empires to one that today has almost two hundred separate and sovereign states. And with that, it set out the new context in which political power would henceforth operate—a context unknown since the era of medieval principalities and city-states, and certainly never before known on the world scale. If world politics today is fragmenting, it is because there are so many countries in the first place, each with a modicum of power. The scattering of empires into separate nations whose existence we now take for granted represents the first level in the political cascade.

  Before that moment in 1947, the world counted sixty-seven sovereign states.8 Two years earlier the United Nations had been founded with an initial roster of fifty-one members (see Figure 5.1). After India, decolonization spread in Asia, reaching Burma, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Then it hit Africa with full force. Within five years after Ghana’s independence in 1957, another two dozen African countries had gained freedom as the British and French colonial empires unwound. In almost every year until the early 1980s, at least one new country in Africa, the Caribbean, or Pacific achieved independence.