#257 Of Nonconformists
Friend-enemy Distinction, A Framework on Social Norm Flipping, and Evaluating the Shakti Scheme
Global Policy Watch: Kyunki Har Ek Enemy Zaroori Hota Hai
Global issues relevant to India
— RSJ
Earlier this week, a New York jury returned unanimous verdicts on all 34 counts that were brought up to charge former President Donald Trump of falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme to cover up a sex scandal that might have prevented his 2016 run for the White House. He will be sentenced on 11 July. You would think being convicted for falsifying business records to hush an extra-marital affair with an adult film star would kill any political campaign, let alone a Presidential one. But this is Trump, and this is 2024 USA.
Trump called the trial ‘rigged’ and a ‘disgrace’ and ever so easily painted himself as a victim. From the NYT:
“This is a case where if they can do this to me, they can do this to anyone,” Mr. Trump said of the prosecutors from the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, who won a conviction against him. “These are bad people. These are in many cases, I believe, sick people.”
Soon, he asked his supporters to give a fitting response to this trial by donating to his campaign in record numbers. And that’s exactly what happened according to the Trump campaign team. CNBC reports:
“The Trump campaign said Friday it nearly doubled its single-day fundraising record after a New York jury found Donald Trump guilty in his criminal hush money trial.
The Republican’s campaign said it raised $34.8 million from small-dollar donors in less than seven hours following the historic verdict Thursday afternoon that convicted the former president of 34 counts of falsifying business records.
Nearly 30% of those donors were brand new to the Trump donation site WinRed, senior campaign advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a press release.”
This isn’t the only thing that’s unusual about how Trump support has evolved over the past week. Niki Haley, who until late in March believed Trump to be ‘unhinged’ and ‘dangerous’ for America, changed her tune this week when she declared that while Trump "has not been perfect", President Joe Biden "has been a catastrophe". So, she will be voting for Trump.
She isn’t the only high-profile convert this week. Earlier, Stephen Schwarzman, Group CEO of Blackstone, the largest private equity firm in the world and a mega-donor, also came around to endorsing Trump. Schwarzman had distanced himself from Trump after the ‘insurrection’ at the Capitol but has come around now because he shares “the concern of most Americans that our economic, immigration and foreign policies are taking the country in the wrong direction.” That apart, he is also worried about the rising anti-Semitism in American society, which he indirectly attributes to Biden’s poor handling of the war in Gaza. Other billionaires, including Harold Hamm, Nelson Peltz and Robert Bigelow, who had similar reservations about Trump, have followed suit in endorsing Trump, offering similar reasons.
The question that naturally comes up then is, what explains this? Does Trump have some kind of a reality distortion field around him where he can bend every piece of news or information to his advantage? Is the conduct of Biden and his supporters so polarising that everything they say or do pales in front of the worst form of ethical or criminal misdemeanours of Trump? Or is there something else going on here?
If you ask me, I will point to a philosopher I have often invoked on these pages over the past four years and who is having a bit of a moment these days in discourse.
Carl Schmitt.
Schmitt claimed that the specific political distinction in society hinges on the friend-enemy distinction. Schmitt believed any difference that marks out one group from the other will take a political hue if it has the strength to align them into opposing and warring camps ready to inflict real damage onto others. Your politics is defined more by what you specifically oppose rather than what you support. Your opposition is what defines you in specific terms; in fact, politics comes about because some people group together in opposition to others.
Leo Strauss, writing to Schmitt in 1932 summarised Schmitt’s view on political distinction:
"because man is by nature evil, he, therefore, needs dominion. But dominion can be established, that is, men can be unified only in a unity against—against other men.”
As Schmitt wrote:
"Each participant is in a position to judge whether the adversary intends to negate his opponent's way of life and therefore must be repulsed or fought in order to preserve one's own form of existence.… The political adversaries of a clear political theory will . . . easily refute political phenomena and truths in the name of some autonomous discipline as amoral, uneconomical, unscientific and above all declare this - and this is politically relevant - a devilry worthy of being combated.”
Obviously, this goes against the established liberal dictum that all politics is a contestation of ideas on how to better society. Schmitt was quite clear. Without a friend-foe distinction among somewhat homogeneous groups who have the will and the energy to annihilate the other group, there is no politics.
And that’s exactly what’s playing out in American politics right now. Of course, in India, the friend-enemy distinction exists too but one side is too weak at the moment to counter the other in what Schmitt might call a death match. The election results this Tuesday will only confirm the same, no matter how much noise has been made in the past couple of weeks about the race tightening. But, as I have mentioned in the past, there is a simplistic assumption that once the friend-enemy distinction disappears because one side has overwhelmed the other and there is no longer an issue that separates members of a group, the political contest ends. This was the predominant assumption in the early 90s when the liberal democratic order felt it had vanquished the other. As later events have shown, political identity abhors a vacuum. People will find another identity to take on that will replicate the intensity of the political conflict of the past. To repeat Straus: "because.. man needs dominion.” Any move to sequester your group from your enemies will lead to your group finding enemies within to fight.
I don’t expect surprises when the 2024 election results unfold on Tuesday. But, I have a Schmittian belief that a real friend-foe distinction will emerge from within the success of these results in 2029.
A Framework A Week: Norm Flipping
Tools for thinking about public policy
— Pranay Kotasthane
In the Telugu hit movie Bharat Ane Nenu, the lead protagonist (Mahesh Babu) returns from phoren to take over as a Chief Minister. Bamboozled by the Brownian motion of on-road vehicles, he hikes the fines for traffic violations to deter the jaanbaaz drivers. It works, and the film city’s roads transform into German Stadtstraßens.
In real life, the government attempted something similar by substantially hiking fines under the Motor Vehicles Act 2019. Many people back then cursed the movie for this change. Not that it mattered. The deterrent effect didn’t prove significant enough. The social norm didn’t flip, and we are stuck in the same rut. By 2023, some states were even offering a ‘discount’ of up to 90 per cent to settle all pending traffic challans!
Obviously, increasing fines without better enforcement doesn’t change longstanding social norms. The question, then, is, what makes social norms change? Is there a systematic way to sequence policy steps to influence behaviour?
A recent Works in Progress article by Nick Cowen, a criminologist, offers some clues. His article tries to develop a theory of how drunk driving, once a commonplace social norm, came to be defeated. It claims that deterrence theory, when executed in a sequence, does work in changing deviant behaviour. What follows is my interpretation of Cowen’s recommendations. By combining it with the framework in edition #169, the five-step sequence can help us think about norm flipping in other policy contexts.
Step 1: Increase Detection of Problematic Behaviour to Target Conditional Offenders
Norm-breakers get emboldened when they see many others breaking the norm. It is important to tackle the cohort of such conditional offenders first. This can be done by increasing detection followed by swift sanction (however small).
Cristina Bicchieri’s pioneering work on social norms tells us that the survival of a norm depends concurrently on two kinds of expectations: empirical expectations (I do something because everyone around me also does the same thing) and normative expectations (I think that others expect me to behave in that particular way). When lots of people are upholding a norm, it means that the empirical expectations and normative expectations are aligned. Research also indicates that the two empirical expectations matter more—people engage in a behaviour if they think others will do so similarly, even when they believe doing so would not be met with approval.
Consequently, abandoning a norm requires a change in empirical expectations to precede a change in normative expectations. Empirical expectations can be altered by increasing detection and swift sanction (even if small). When a conditional offender internalises that the ones acting like him get sanctioned reliably, it causes him to reconsider his actions.
This strategy is a better starting point than increasing the quantum of punishment (as shown in the aforementioned movie). When a norm is widely prevalent, making it costlier doesn’t work because the enforcers also don’t see anything wrong with it. As Cowen writes:
“Increasing severity alone is impractical as well as ineffective. Social norms also help determine what people think is an appropriate punishment. A community will resist the imposition of harsh sanctions for conduct that is considered relatively ‘normal’ even if it is widely acknowledged to be harmful. In some cases, juries are unwilling to convict and victims are unwilling to bear witness if they are concerned the resulting punishment for an offender will be too high.” [Source]
Step 2: Publicise deterrence measures
Publicising increased enforcement, combined with advertisement and messaging discouraging deviant behaviour, signals that society is against a labelled harmful activity.
Public messaging denouncing the harmful activity also strengthens the bystanders. They are more likely to intervene when they see deviant behaviour. This stage causes a shift in normative expectations. Conditional offenders now know that their behaviour will be met with disapproval.
Step 3: Increase Punishment to Target Habitual Offenders
Once the cohort of marginal offenders diminishes, the problem doesn't disappear. There remains a group of hardcore deviants. At this stage, increasing the quantum of punishment can deter some of them. Moreover, with the public support gained in Step 2, law and order authorities can more confidently apply severe punishment.
Step 4: Monitor and adjust deterrence measures
As the intervention progresses, it's important to continually monitor the effectiveness of the deterrence measures and make adjustments. This can involve increasing the intensity of enforcement or adapting the messaging to address evolving social norms. The goal here is to create a sustained shift in both empirical and normative expectations.
Step 5: Encourage positive social norms
As deterrence measures successfully reduce the prevalence of problematic behaviour, interventions can focus on promoting and reinforcing positive social norms. This can involve highlighting the benefits of compliance, showcasing examples of responsible behaviour, and identifying norm champions. The ultimate goal is to uphold the rule-following norm by getting both empirical and normative expectations to work in the same direction.
What do you make of this sequence?
India Policy Watch: Don’t Be Taken In by the Partial Equilibrium
Insights on burning policy issues in India
— Pranay Kotasthane
Earlier this week, I came across an article that quantifies the impact of making bus travel for women free in Karnataka’s government buses. With an annual outlay of ₹3,000 crore, the Shakti Scheme has garnered considerable attention across India. So, it’s quite positive that the government is now putting out some outputs.
Citing a report of the Fiscal Policy Institute, this Deccan Herald article makes two claims. One, Karnataka’s GST collection 'presumably' increased by ₹309.64 crore last financial year. Secondly, the state’s Female labour Force Participation has increased by 5 per cent points to about 30 per cent.
All of this seems good news at face value, but it warrants caution on two counts.
First, the data is showing exactly what Econ101 predicts—reducing the price of a good increases its demand. At the margin, free bus travel would surely attract more women to commute. Declaring the scheme a success based on derivative measures of this increased demand risks falling into a partial equilibrium trap.
Instead, we need to consider general equilibrium effects. Would private bus services scale their operations down? Should the government subsidise travel in private buses as well? If yes, what’s the additional outlay needed to ensure that the scheme leads to an improved status quo over the long term?
Second, given that India’s marginal cost of public finance (MCPF) is high, are the benefits sufficiently high to offset the costs? The gains appear impressive, but how do they fare with spending ₹3,000 crore/year on other measures to increase women's mobility, such as increased policing, cash transfers, last-mile connectivity, or better street lighting? Even if we don’t see these options as substitutes, attention is needed on the measures that can complement the free bus subsidy.
I’ll leave you with this article from my colleague Nitin Pai, written almost exactly a year ago. It predicted many of the scheme's gains. More importantly, however, there seems to be no policy conversation on the five recommendations he suggested. The tyranny of partial equilibrium continues.
HomeWork
Reading and listening recommendations on public policy matters
[Podcast] The next Puliyabaazi ft. Shivakumar Jolad is on all things demography —India's age pyramid, the Census, and population trends.
[Book] A new book asks Why Politicians Lie About Trade: ... and What You Need to Know About It
Nice. harmful behaviour should not become a social norm. obviously it is a slow process.