When Crime Pays

by Milan Vaishnav

  The Ethnic Cue

  There is a vast literature that suggests that ethnic identity is the most important axis around which politics in India—and in a range of other democracies around the world—revolves. By “ethnicity” I refer to identities based on ascriptive categories, such as language, caste, and religion. These categories are not necessarily interchangeable, but for simplicity’s sake, I group them together.28

  In her seminal book Why Ethnic Parties Succeed, Kanchan Chandra argues that in multiethnic “patronage democracies” like India, a reliance on a series of cognitive shortcuts leads voters and politicians to favor co-ethnics in the reciprocal exchange of votes and benefits.29 By mobilizing on ethnic lines, political elites can take advantage of deep, preexisting social networks, organizations, and focal points that allow them to efficiently communicate with voters.30 Ethnic identity serves as a kind of commitment device—voters are more likely to deem promises made by co-ethnic politicians as credible, and politicians can rely on norms of reciprocity and social sanctioning within the group to ensure voters uphold their end of the bargain.31 Ethnicity, then, functions as a clear signal of a politician’s credibility among those who share his or her ethnic identity—“co-ethnics” for shorthand. Whether politicians actually deliver on their promises of favoring co-ethnics once in office (or curbing the advantages previously granted to non-co-ethnics) is less relevant than the perception that they will act in this way if elected.

  While Chandra’s theory is primarily focused on the ethnic makeup of political parties and party brands, ethnic considerations also extend to the identities of individual candidates as well. This is especially true where party labels have little salience or where parties must rest on diverse coalitions to win election. One would also expect the identity of candidates to matter in countries where the state plays a crucial role dispensing benefits and services because elected representatives will play an outsized role in directing those items to maximize electoral returns.32

  Although in India—and many other low-income democracies—it has been well documented that ethnic identity is the most relevant social cleavage in society, there might be social cleavages other than ethnicity that politicians can exploit for political purposes. It may well be the case; the central assumption is merely that social cleavages exist and that they provide a reasonable shortcut for politicians to identify, target, and mobilize voters. The proclivity toward mobilizing on such social cleavages is greatly enhanced when parties are pragmatic, rather than ideological, in a programmatic sense.33

  The Salience of Ethnic Differences

  Within multiethnic democracies, the import of ethnic cleavages is not felt the same in all places at all times. The relevance of social divisions is likely to vary across time and space, according to local conditions—ranging from the actions of political elites, to demographic characteristics, or to the strategic behavior of voters.34 In other words, the salience of ethnic identity is socially constructed; it is important insofar as it serves a purpose—at a given time and place—for individuals or politicians looking to mobilize groups of people.35 For instance, one study found that survey respondents in Africa tend to identify “ethnically” the closer the survey is to elections and where elections are highly competitive.36 Why? The authors conclude that this could be due either to wily politicians “playing the ethnic card” or to forward-looking voters seeking to maximize post-election benefits from co-ethnics. Another study by political scientist Daniel Posner found that the salience of ethnic identity often varies according to the size of ethnic groups and whether they are large enough, relative to the electorate, to serve as viable blocs for coalition building.37 Where ethnic groups are too small to be politically consequential, politicians do not waste their time “activating” social divisions in society.

  Whatever the precise reason, the importance of ethnicity in politics works like a volume dial on your stereo: it is not stuck permanently in any one place, but can be turned up or turned down at will.

  Contestation over Local Dominance

  One instance in which ethnic differences are particularly salient is when there is a contest over local dominance; that is, when multiple competing (and sizeable) social groups are at odds over which group exerts primary control over the levers of political and economic power in an area.38 A contestation over dominance is more than just politics-as-usual; it is fundamentally about reordering social hierarchies. In India, this has traditionally meant a clash over who is able to set new ground rules over social status, labor relations, and access to state patronage.39

  Contests over dominance are likely in one of two cases: when a community is trying to protect, or prevent the erosion of, traditional patterns of dominance; or from the opposite end of the spectrum, when a community is trying to consolidate newfound political and economic gains.40 For instance, imagine a scenario in which lower-caste residents are seeking to upend centuries-old practices of labor subordination by upper castes or eliminate discriminatory behaviors in everyday social relations. For their part, traditionally dominant upper-caste communities will be reluctant to alter the status quo and will instead try and preserve their entrenched position. In such a scenario, where rivalries between multiple groups run high and local dominance is contested, social cleavages are salient and identity-based voting takes on greater importance.

  Under these conditions, politics becomes a zero-sum game: any gains made by one community are perceived to come at the expense of the other’s overall standing in society. As political scientist Steven Wilkinson points out, whether the probability of the threat posed by the “other,” rival community is high is irrelevant—what matters is that the people believe that the stakes are high.41

  Weak Rule of Law and the Abuse of Discretion

  In settings where the rule of law is weak, once politicians are ensconced in office they can use (and abuse) their powers of discretion to serve the interests of their constituents. This is what allows “patronage democracies” to function as such; voters cannot rely on the impartial delivery of key state-provided goods and services.42 When politicians can manipulate their discretionary authority over goods and services the state provides, they often choose to do so along ethnically motivated lines. “Patronage” here refers not simply to jobs, handouts, or other transfers and permissions but to privileged access to state power more generally.

  Here, three dimensions of a weak rule-of-law environment are important. First, in weak rule-of-law settings the state is unable to adequately enforce its writ. When it comes to dispensing justice, basic public goods, and security, the state’s performance is hamstrung. Second, where the rule of law is weak, politicians can exercise considerable discretion over state resources once in office. The ability to direct (or misdirect, as the case may be) public resources to favored constituencies on the basis of political criteria, as opposed to objective need, increases the value of holding office. This inflates what would-be officeholders are willing to do—and crucially, what they are willing to pay—to get elected. There is undoubtedly a positive relationship between the ability to direct state resources and the cost of elections, thereby limiting the talent pool for public office. A third aspect of weak rule-of-law societies is that politicians can engage in extralegal activity with a reasonably strong assurance that they will face only weak legal consequences for those actions. This “culture of impunity” lowers the costs of engaging in illegal acts because the credibility of punitive action is limited.

  In a political context characterized by divisive politics and discretionary authority, the incentives to appeal to co-ethnic sentiment are high. Thus, in addition to salient social divisions, weak rule of law contributes the second factor necessary for criminality to emerge as an integral sign of credibility (see figure 5.2). Given the void that exists where state authority might ordinarily function, politicians can find adequate space to entrench themselves as an institution that supplants the state’s role, replacing rule of law with identity-based group p
olitics.

  Criminality as Credibility

  When there is a sharpening of ethnic differences in weak rule-of-law settings, there are payoffs for candidates who can exploit this friction by providing an additional signal of their credibility.43 This creates space for a candidate to use his criminality to signal his ability to protect the interests of his community. This signal can be sent using at least four distinct channels: redistribution, coercion, social insurance, and dispute resolution.

  First, a candidate’s criminal reputation can serve as a clear indication of his willingness and ability to bend the rules to suit his group’s own interests. For instance, candidates can use extralegal means (or the threat of resorting to such means) to safeguard a community’s economic interests or to influence the distribution of public sector benefits. This is especially relevant in those democracies where access to the state’s resources is a vital lifeline for a large swath of citizens.

  Second, a candidate’s criminality can also help to weaken or counterbalance political opposition from rival groups through coercion and intimidation. This can work in a variety of ways. In a context of competition among rival social groups, a candidate’s willingness to “flex his muscles”—or the perception that he is capable of doing so—allows him to enhance his credibility to “get things done.”44 At the same time, a criminal reputation can simultaneously help keep rivals at bay insofar as coercion is used to provide physical security for in-groups or intimidate and pressure rival out-groups. Another possibility is that some elements of a voter’s core base might receive some psychic or expressive benefits from a politician’s calculated use of force.45

  A third way criminality can serve as a cue of credibility is through its potential to act as a de facto social safety net. After all, criminality (and serious criminality in particular) often requires an organizational platform, and this platform can serve multiple purposes: it is useful both for engaging in criminal acts as well as for carrying out constituency service. Because candidates with criminal reputations portray themselves as credible fixers who can effectively interface with the state (or, in some cases, substitute for it), voters often turn to them as a last resort if they experience some kind of economic or personal shock, such as shouldering the burden of covering costs for a sick relative, helping an unemployed family member get a job, or making payments for a daughter’s wedding.

  Importantly, an organizational platform requires financial resources. Money helps explain why political parties might find muscle attractive, but the resource advantage suspected criminal candidates might possess also has an impact—both direct and indirect—on voters’ bottom lines. These candidates can provide resources out of their own pocket to help constituents experiencing difficulties. But money also has an indirect impact on voters, in the sense that it can enable politicians to set up effective organizational platforms for dealing with voters’ everyday problems.

  Finally, in weak rule-of-law settings, ordinary citizens often do not have faith that the official mechanisms for resolving social disputes will operate in an impartial manner. The inability, or unwillingness, of the state to adjudicate disputes in a transparent, fair, and timely fashion creates the space for a strongman who can use his position of strength to serve as local arbiter. Although such informal justice is often a poor substitute for the effective functioning of formal adjudication mechanisms, an imperfect settlement that offers certainty may be preferable to a formal resolution that might never come (or might not be properly enforced were it to come to pass). Indeed, the state’s failure to provide adequate justice and channels of resolving disputes has been one of the factors driving the proliferation of criminal organizations in many parts of the world such as Italy, Japan, and Russia.46

  Although criminality signals credibility primarily among co-ethnics, in many cases it may not be possible for candidates to win election solely on the backs of their kinsmen. In highly fractured environs, candidates may need to construct a minimum winning coalition formed of multiple social groups to get elected. Here, candidates associated with wrongdoing can add to their core voter base by relying on their comparative advantage in deploying redistribution, coercion, or social insurance to voters outside of their bailiwick, especially those groups occupying weaker positions in society. These voters might lend their support, either out of fear or because they perceive that a politician attached to crime will be more likely to deliver on his promises.

  Politics of Dignity

  The interests suspected criminal candidates claim to protect are often grounded in the politics of dignity and self-respect.47 The provision of redistribution, physical protection, social insurance, and justice are tangible benefits that voters desire and candidates seek to deliver, but they are inextricably linked with larger issues of a community’s status or honor (in Hindi, sammaan).

  Material benefits are important insofar as they represent tangible manifestations of an improvement in the level of respect, equality of status, and associated symbolic gains that accrue to a given community.48 We know from scholars of social identity theory that an individual’s evaluation of his or her self-worth is often a product of how others recognize the status of the group to which he or she belongs.49 The political scientist Donald Horowitz explains: “If the need to feel worthy is a fundamental human requirement, it is satisfied in considerable measure by belonging to groups that are in turn regarded as worthy. Like individual self-esteem, collective self-esteem is achieved largely by social recognition.”50

  Indeed, a candidate’s criminality is often cast in defensive terms—a politician who runs afoul of the law can frame such activity as being intrinsic to defending the dignity or status of the in-group. This does not imply, of course, that an individual’s criminality was actually defensive in nature. Rather, the point is that there are incentives for both a politician and his supporters to characterize the criminality in such terms. A similar argument has been made by Steven Wilkinson to explain why democratic politicians often stand to gain from sponsoring ethnic violence: because most voters did not witness the original illegal act, they will rely on accounts provided by fellow co-ethnic kinsmen and factor in stereotypes about out-groups.51

  Creating a Feedback Loop

  The modus operandi of candidates linked with crime requires that they act to reinforce the very conditions that give them relevance in the first place. Without them, they risk becoming dispensable. This is why candidates with criminal reputations cast their behavior within the framing of “defensive criminality” and consistently embrace the “politics of dignity” rhetoric. The preferred discourse is typically about protecting “our community” in the context of a troublesome, untrustworthy, and—crucially—aggressive “other.” This thinking, in turn, further deepens social divisions, creating a positive feedback loop. For instance, it is possible that politicians calculate that it is in their narrow self-interest to engage in criminal acts in order to polarize the vote along ethnic or sectarian lines, thereby rendering the protection or other services they can provide even more relevant.52 This is not to suggest that criminal politicians engage in identity-based rhetoric purely out of cynical motivation. They might well be true believers who are articulating very real social grievances; the limited point is that they are deriving political benefit from doing so and perpetuating their own “heroic” status.

  Furthermore, the “defensive criminality” justification and the constant references to the “politics of dignity” are what provide political parties who embrace criminal politicians an easy out when pressed as to why they choose to give tickets to tainted candidates. I once spoke with a leader of one national party’s state unit in Bihar, who confidently asserted that his party had not fielded even one tainted candidate in the coming election. When I pressed him about one well-known candidate who had recently been released from jail just in advance of the election, he replied: “Oh, yes, but he is one exception. He was in prison until recently but he is a respected leader in the [upper cast
e] Bhumihar community. They are feeling insecure and he will help address that. He looks after their interests and makes sure they are well protected.”53

  A similar dynamic is at work when it comes to the rule of law. Weak or patchy enforcement of the rule of law is what gives criminal candidates the space to swoop in as saviors while reassuring them of the low probability of being held to account by the state. The appeal of criminality in this context is to fill in a governance vacuum that is being ceded by the public sector. It is accomplished often by serving as judge, jury, and executioner—not to mention police officer as well. But this enforcement of the rule of law must, by definition, be highly personal. If the rule of law vacuum were solved by investing in state capacity to provide basic public goods, criminal candidates would lose their luster. Thus, the enforcement of the rule of law must be selective, giving the candidate a highly personalized role.

  The Centrality of Information

  If criminality signals enhanced credibility, it implies that there are incentives for politicians with criminal records to make their reputations widely known. After all, if a strongman politician cultivates a reputation as someone who is willing to run afoul of the law, he needs to occasionally publicly engage in activities befitting such a figure and ensure that his constituent voters are aware of his credibility. This flips on its head the argument that voters support candidates with criminal records because they lack information about candidate characteristics: rather, voters support such candidates because they have information about their reputations. Information about candidates’ alleged criminality is central—indeed, essential—to understanding their appeal.