Brexit: The First Major Casualty Of Digital Democracy

The following article originally appeared in The Huffington Post India on June 27, 2016. It was reproduced on the Brookings Instituion's Order for Chaos blog on June 29, 2016. 

In the aftermath of the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the European Union, we are left with more questions than answers. What kind of relationship will the UK now forge with the EU, and how will that affect economic relations and migration? Will Scotland and Northern Ireland opt to leave? What is the future of British politics, given turbulence within both the Conservative and Labour Parties? Will a successful Brexit set a precedent for other EU members — perhaps even some eurozone members— to leave the union? What are the long-term economic consequences of the resulting uncertainty? Will Brexit even happen at all, given the absence of a clear post-referendum plan, the apparent unwillingness of ‘Leave’ campaign leaders to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and the fact that the referendum was advisory and non-binding? Answers to these questions will make themselves evident in the coming weeks, months, and years.

But there’s a bigger question worth asking: What are the implications of Brexit for democracy? Arguably, Brexit represents the first major casualty of the ascent of digital democracy over representative democracy. This claim deserves an explanation.

When historians look back at the world of the past 25 years, they will likely associate it not with terrorism or growing inequality but with the twin phenomena of the “rise of the rest” (particularly China and India) and of globalization. Globalization involves the easier, faster and cheaper flow of goods, people, capital and information. One big enabler of globalization is the internet, the global network of networks that allows billions of people to cheaply and easily access enormous amounts of digital information. The rise of service and high-technology industries, trade liberalization, container shipping, and the development of financial markets have also been important enablers, as is the increased ease and lower cost of travel, particularly by air.

Many technology optimists have assumed that globalization would lead to the democratization of information and decision-making, and also greater cosmopolitanism. Citizens would be better informed, less likely to be silenced, and able to communicate their views more effectively to their leaders. They would also have greater empathy and understanding of other peoples the more they lived next to them, visited their countries, read their news, communicated, and did business with them. Or so the thinking went.

But there has been little to justify such panglossianism. There is some evidence for a correlation between greater information, political democratization and economic progress, in that all three have advanced steadily, if at different paces, over the past two decades. But that correlation is weak. Instead, digital democracy — the ability to receive information in almost real time through mass media and to make one’s voice heard through social media — has contributed to polarization, gridlock, dissatisfaction and misinformation. This is as equally applicable to the countries in which modern democracy took root — in the United States and Europe — as it is to India, the biggest and most complex democracy in the developing world.

The ascent of digital democracy around the world has some shared features. One characteristic is that access to greater information has, rather counterintuitively, contributed to a “post-fact” information environment. Nick Cohen — speaking of British pro-“Leave” journalists-turned-politicians Boris Johnson and Michael Gove —called out their use of bold claims, their contempt for practical questions, their sneering disregard for expertise, and their transgressions of the bounds of political spin. These tactics are not all that dissimilar to Donald Trump’s assertions about Barack Obama’s birth certificate or immigration policies, or Subramanian Swamy’s insinuations about the nationality of senior Indian policymakers.

But leaders only exploit the vulnerabilities of a post-fact world. The conditions have been laid by the digital sphere. A recent example springs to mind. There is a widespread belief on Indian social media that US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is somehow anti-India, pro-Pakistan, and/or anti-Modi. I am no supporter of Ms. Clinton, but as someone who worked on foreign affairs in Washington and knows many of her advisors, I found these claims baffling. In fact, Clinton’s political opponents (whether Barack Obama in 2008 or Donald Trump in 2016) have accused her of being too close to India, while Pakistanis often view her as critical of their country and Prime Minister Modi appears to enjoy cordial relations with her. After some inquiries, and a few tips, I managed to trace these sentiments to a single publication, a poorly sourced and misleading column that gained widespread circulation upon its release. The article’s contents were deemed sufficiently credible to have now become instilled as absolute fact in the minds of many Indians active online. In a digital democracy, a lie or (better yet) a half-lie if told enough times becomes truth.

Another outcome of digital democracy may be a variation of what the psychologist Barry Schwartz has called the paradox of choice. Quite possibly, the greater abundance of political choice leads to less satisfaction, and the result is citizens increasingly voicing their displeasure with their available political and policy choices. The political platforms of mainstream parties rarely adhere entirely to individual voters’ views. That may explain why many voters are gravitating towards parties, factions or leaders who offer the simplest messages, and project themselves as alternatives to the mainstream.

A third result of digital democracy, and one that has been better documented, is the political echo chamber. Social media, rather than creating connections with people who possess differing views and ideologies, tends to reinforce prejudices. As the psychologist Nicholas DiFonzo has noted, “Americans across the political spectrum tend to trust the news media (and ‘facts’ provided by the media) less than their own social group.” This makes it easier for views and rumours to circulate and intensify within like-minded groups. Similar digital gerrymandering was evident in the EU Referendum in Britain and the polarization is palpable in the Indian online political space.

Finally, instant information has increased the theatricality of politics. With public statements and positions by governments, political parties and individual leaders now broadcast to constituents in real time, compromise, a necessary basis of good governance, has become more difficult. When portrayed as a betrayal of core beliefs, compromise often amounts to political suicide. Political grandstanding also contributes to legislative gridlock, with elected representatives often resorting to walkouts, sit-ins, or insults — all manufactured for maximum viral effect — instead of trying to reach solutions behind closed doors. Even as ease of travel allows legislators to spend more time in their constituencies, making them more sensitized to their constituents’ concerns, less gets done at the national or supranational level. It is a trend that, once again, applies equally to the United States, Europe, and India.

The unintended consequences of digital democracy — misinformation and discontent, polarization and gridlock — mean that the boundary between politician and troll is blurring. The tone of democratic politics increasingly reflects that of anonymous online discourse: nasty, brutish, and short. And successful politicians are increasingly those who are able to take advantage of the resulting sentiments. Exploiting divisions, appealing to base instincts, making outlandish claims, resorting to falsehoods, and pooh-poohing details and expertise. All that could just as easily describe the playbooks of populists around the world, on the right and left: Marine Le Pen, Frauke Petry, Donald Trump or Subramanian Swamy as much as Jeremy Corbyn, Beppe Grillo, Bernie Sanders or Arvind Kejriwal.

In all these cases, populists are willing to cross the lines that mainstream parties have flirted with, becoming forces that the centre cannot hold. US Republicans fanned the anti-immigration sentiments that first the Tea Party and then Trump are only taking to their natural conclusions, just as mainstream Democrats’ economic protectionism has been seized upon by Sanders. Cameron’s euroscepticism, explained away initially as constructive criticism, spiralled out of control with Brexit, just as those who pronounced the death of New Labour helped paved the way for Corbyn. Will the same one day apply in India, to the economic populism of the Congress, of which Kejriwal has become a new torchbearer, or to the chauvinism of the right, which Swamy now threatens to run away with?

Brexit is not anti-globalization so much as a product of globalization. It is also a product of democracy rather than an affront to it. But it is a democracy of a different sort, one that many of its ideological forebears anticipated. When James Madison warned of “the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority,” or John Stuart Mill cautioned against “a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression,” or BR Ambedkar argued (in a slightly different context) that “political tyranny is nothing compared to social tyranny,” they could just as easily have been speaking in 2016 as in 1787, 1859, or 1936. Democrats around the world may not yet be married to the mob, but plenty have been betrothed.

None of this should be interpreted as some kind of nostalgia for an older, simpler world. That world was not necessarily simpler, but it was more violent and chaotic, prejudiced and unfair, and poor and backward. It may be hard to discern amid the smoke and noise, but there are some benefits to digital democracy. Information is no longer in the hands of the few. It is easier than ever to bring injustices to light. And the same process can throw up mainstream leaders from backgrounds that are far from privileged, such as a Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, or Narendra Modi. Two of the three, Obama and Modi, rose to power on the backs of unprecedented social media movements.

But representative democracy as we have come to know it is under threat, and Brexit represents the first major casualty. Rather than fight the tide, a collective rethink is needed about how to make democracies resilient and productive in the digital age. It won’t be easy.

Can India's Think Tanks Be Truly Effective?

The following article originally appeared in The Huffington Post India on April 15, 2016.

I have worked for much of the past decade in, or with, think tanks in both the US and in India, and am regularly confronted with misperceptions and misapprehensions about the sector. What is the purpose of think tanks? Who sets their agenda? What do they do on a day-to-day basis? The answers are, unfortunately, not so simple.

These questions are particularly important today because significant changes are afoot among New Delhi's think tanks. The opening of Carnegie India means that one of the world's leading think tanks on international affairs will now have a permanent presence in India. Carnegie joins its Washington neighbour The Brookings Institution, in many ways the archetypal think tank, which established Brookings India in New Delhi a few years ago, and recently moved its offices in the diplomatic enclave of Chanakyapuri.

Meanwhile, in March, the Observer Research Foundation concluded the Raisina Dialogue, giving India a major international policy conference. And the appointments last year of former Ambassador to Nepal and Afghanistan Jayant Prasad as Director General of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) and Nalin Surie, ex-envoy to China and the UK, as head of the Indian Council on World Affairs (ICWA) means that accomplished diplomats now head the two premier government-funded foreign policy think tanks. Taken together, these developments offer a good opportunity to revisit think tanks' role in the Indian policy establishment.

How think tanks work

The primary purpose of think tanks is to generate ideas and debate on matters of public policy. In that sense, they are both research institutions and conveners, bringing together different viewpoints and facilitating an exchange of views. In terms of research, what think tanks do is not dissimilar to business consulting, intelligence analysis, investigative journalism, or academic research in the social sciences. The difference, however, is that the research produced by think tanks is meant to inform and influence public policy. Their target audience is therefore either policymakers in government or the broader public.

Think tanks also serve as a venue for political leaders, bureaucrats and military officers to exchange views and interact with other actors: foreign counterparts, the media, academics, corporate representatives and the wider public. Having neutral venues for these kinds of interactions is particularly important given the changing roles and growing clout of some of these stakeholders in public policy formulation and implementation.

Despite these broad shared characteristics, there is considerable diversity among think tanks in terms of their mandates, priorities, and structures. Some focus narrowly on specific aspects of public policy, such as foreign relations and defence, domestic politics and governance, economic and trade policy, or education, migration, and environmental issues. Others are broad, covering a range of topics. Some, such as ICWA and IDSA, are government-affiliated while others are entirely autonomous and privately managed. While some Indian think tanks function almost exclusively as research institutes, such as the Centre for Policy Research, others prioritize convening, such as the Observer Research Foundation.

Think tanks such as IDSA and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) have been active in India since the mid-20th century. But the last 25 years have witnessed a tremendous growth and proliferation of Indian institutions, including privately-funded entities and military service-specific think tanks (the Centre for Land and Warfare Studies, the Centre for Air Power Studies, and the National Maritime Foundation). Location matters, given the need to be proximate to policy makers. There is a reason that global think tanks have congregated in major capital cities such as Washington and London, Brussels and Beijing. So it is only natural that the majority of Indian institutes have been established in Delhi. However, newer initiatives like Gateway House in Mumbai, the Takshashila Institution in Bangalore, and the Hindu Centre for Politics and Public Policy in Chennai now provide platforms beyond the capital.

Glorified talk shops?

If there is one big challenge that all think tanks face it is measuring their effectiveness. Ideas coming out of think tanks, even when adopted as government policy, are rarely credited as such. Some of the most effective work done by think tanks--in the form of private briefings and inputs to government policy makers--is often, by necessity, not publicly acknowledged. It becomes easy, then, to dismiss think tanks as ineffective talk shops. But at their best, they can play a big role in advising governments on sound policy, enabling increasingly important dialogue with a variety of stakeholders, and interpreting obscure policy issues for the broader public. They can also help build expertise, and perform in-depth or specialised research that government do not have the time or capacity to do. Despite its healthy growth in recent years, the Indian think tank sector today suffers from certain shortcomings. These have prevented them from competing for talent with academia, the private sector, and competitors abroad. They have also been inhibited from being fully effective.

Making Indian think tanks more effective

A few measures, if taken, could rapidly revitalize the Indian think tank industry, to the benefit of these institutions, government policy and public discourse.

1. Research needs to be given priority over convening

There is today no shortage in India of policy conferences, panel discussions, and Track II dialogues (which involve non-official participants from different countries). On almost any given evening in Delhi, there are book launches or speeches by visiting dignitaries hosted by one or another Indian think tank. But there remains a paucity of authoritative, in-depth, ground-breaking research. Book-length studies on such topics as the evolution of India-Southeast Asia relations, Pakistan's contemporary political dynamics, India's trade policy, defence acquisitions, the 1965 war, or India during the Narasimha Rao years--to list just a few topics--would be immensely useful. Op-eds and policy papers remain useful vehicles to disseminate ideas, but think tanks provide the luxury of time for truly detailed and path-breaking work.

2. Quality needs to be given priority over quantity

Think tank scholars ought to be among the most knowledgeable experts in their fields, and that means that institutions must be able to compete for talent with the private sector, universities and foreign organizations. At present, India's think tanks often function as homes for retired civil servants and military officers. These former officials can--and do--offer a wealth of experience, enabling them to document issues on which they have had first-hand experience and reflect on lessons learned. But generating new ideas and fresh perspectives will require tapping a wider pool of talent. This means investing in regional and topical expertise, a variety of disciplines (history, economics, and area studies, in addition to political science), and a mastery of languages. We currently lack the requisite expertise on our neighbours: China, Myanmar, Iran, and even Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. Economic expertise, in particular, is missing at many Indian institutes. Establishing an external peer review process for publications will also help improve the quality of output across the board.

3. More autonomy and transparency

Institutions affiliated with the government are in constant danger of becoming extensions of ministries: rigidly hierarchical, risk-averse, bureaucratic, status conscious, and driven by patronage. The entire raison d'être of think tanks is to overcome these constraints. Meanwhile, privately funded think tanks have to show they are not beholden to their benefactors if they are to retain their credibility. Transparency about sources of funding allows people to draw their own conclusions about the nature of any research.

4. Think tank scholars need more interactions with government

This can be mutually beneficial. Unlike in countries where a revolving door enables experts to migrate between think tanks and government positions, in India, a career bureaucracy inhibits such career paths. Quite often, the lack of interactions with officials means that think tank experts in India are badly misinformed. Many of their recommendations--while well-intentioned--are simply impossible to implement, failing to take into account bureaucratic processes, political realities or resource constraints. By taking on more government advisory work, think tanks would increase the expertise available to officials while becoming better-informed about government priorities and processes.

5. Research needs to be usable

Finally, one big difference between policy research and other fields is that it cannot simply dwell on the past, but must have implications for the present and future. Far too much work being done by think tanks - and not just in India - tends to be descriptive, rather than analytical.

Additionally, for policymakers pressed for time, only certain kinds of information are useful. New conceptual frameworks that function as shorthand for policies (such as "Look East" or "Digital India") can enrich public discourse, while specific domain knowledge (such as language or area studies) and data compilation are useful contributions for babus pressed for time or requiring specialized expertise. Policy research must also be easily accessible if it is to inform officials pressed for time or shape the public debate, a particular challenge in an era of information overload. Rethinking outputs, both their form and their very medium, is a necessity for all think tanks today. Many are branching out into online content and multimedia presentations, such as podcasts, videos and interactive information platforms. Even with traditional written outputs, verbosity is too often equated with erudition. Presenting information in a manner that is easily digestible remains a challenge.

If it were to take some of these considerations into account--more research, higher quality standards, greater autonomy and transparency, more interactions with government, and higher-impact outputs--there is no reason that the Indian think tank sector cannot flourish. We are witnessing a period of increasingly acrimonious and often ill-informed public discourse. Now is the perfect time for India's think tanks to come into their own.

Three Takeaways from Modi's Pakistan Stopover

The following article originally appeared in the Huffington Post India on December 26, 2015.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's brief stopover in Lahore--to visit his counterpart Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and the occasion of his granddaughter's wedding--came as a complete surprise to observers in both countries. A lot of speculation has followed about the circumstances and implications of the visit, much of it uninformed if not completely erroneous. Despite being the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Pakistan in almost 12 years, the meeting's full significance will only make itself known in due course. But a few points are worth considering.

First, by meeting without advance public notice, Modi and Sharif have effectively de-linked India-Pakistan engagement from the pressures of domestic political opposition and the media. The almost farcical circumstances surrounding the cancellation of talks between India and Pakistan's National Security Advisors (NSAs) in Delhi earlier this year demonstrated the extent to which the two countries' media--rather than the leadership--were determining the pace and nature of diplomatic engagement. This was clearly unhelpful and unproductive.

Precedents for less formal and less scripted meetings were partially set by the prime ministers in Paris and by the NSAs in Bangkok. But in Lahore, Modi and Sharif effectively set a new standard for meeting on their own terms--not anyone else's.

Second, the apparent spontaneity of Modi's stopover in Pakistan is also an attempt to create a new normal in India's regional engagement, something the prime minister attempted when he invited the leaders of eight South Asian countries to his inauguration ceremony in May 2014. If he is to be serious about regional integration, Modi's conviction is that he must make meetings with leaders in his neighbourhood more routine.

India-Pakistan (or, for that matter, India-Bangladesh or India-Nepal) summits must begin to resemble meetings between, say, two European or two Southeast Asian leaders, barely making news even in their home countries rather than being intensely debated or held hostage to domestic pressure groups. This, Modi seems to believe, is the only way forward for the region as a whole.

Third, before the 'Aman ki Asha' brigade becomes too euphoric, the meeting in Lahore should not be misinterpreted as a radical change in India's Pakistan policy. Nor does it mean, as some critics are suggesting, that India is somehow dropping its guard or ignoring the threat of terrorism emanating from Pakistan.

The Indian government has repeatedly made it clear that attempts at derailing normalized relations--whether or not supported by a "meddling" Pakistani military--will be met with appropriate retaliatory measures. All too often over the past year-and-a-half, India's twin-track approach to Pakistan--developed after a steep one-year learning curve--has been mistaken for policy schizophrenia. Modi's visit on December 25 rather nicely complements, rather than contradicts, measures taken in the past (and possibly again in the future) to deter and dissuade destabilizing activities by terrorist and insurgent actors and Pakistan's security forces.

Overall, after some dramatic ups and downs in India-Pakistan relations, both sides can be content to have ended the year on a high note.

US Academics Worried About Modi Visit Need To Do Their Homework

The following article appeared in The Huffington Post India on September 2, 2015. An excerpt is below, and the full text can be accessed here.

The tragedy is that many of the letters' authors are in positions to play much more constructive roles in advancing educational objectives, information dissemination and open debate in India. Their views should not be dismissed simply because they are professors in the social sciences or the humanities. Indeed, questions of history, law, ethics, sociology and political theory are more relevant than ever to the formulation of sound digital policies. The academic community should be providing the Indian government more advice, not less. But if only the statement's signatories had opted for less posturing and better-informed and more constructive criticism, they may have advanced their objectives of promoting academic and online freedoms without resorting to petty, personal and puerile attacks. [Full text.]

The Dying Art of the Visa: A Personal History

The following article was originally published by the Huffington Post (India) on April 12, 2015. An excerpt is included below, and the full text can be accessed here.

Poor Phileas Fogg. In his fictitious journey around the world in eighty days, Jules Verne's globetrotting hero may have saved a woman from ritual immolation, been mistaken for an arch-criminal and survived an attack by Sioux warriors. But he also had to undergo the bothersome, mundane exercise of attaining a visa, whether upon arrival in Suez or in San Francisco.

It's an experience seasoned international travellers know all too well. Our wanderlust compels us to spend many wasteful hours at embassies and consulates, filling out mind-numbingly bureaucratic forms (sometimes in triplicate) and shelling out hundreds of dollars on visa applications.

But all that is fast changing. More countries are beginning to issue visas electronically or upon arrival, while others are doing away with short-term visas completely in order to encourage tourism and business travel.

Today, anyone lucky enough to be in possession of a valid American passport can take a holiday or business trip to Peru or Poland, Malawi or Mongolia at a moment's notice. The same holds true for travel to some 156 other countries. Many citizens of Europe are even better off. Finns, Swedes and Brits are able to travel on a whim to 173 countries and territories. Even some of us less fortunate have it easier than ever. As an Indian passport holder, I can now visit about 45 countries without a prior visa, and in some other cases can have visas issued electronically.

The slow death of the visa is naturally for the best in our ever globalising world. But one minor casualty is that the visa -- as a physical object -- has become something of a dying art. Visas were traditionally meant to serve several purposes. They had to easily communicate necessary information to authorities, such as validity and the terms of stay. They were often designed to prevent easy forgery. And they were occasionally used to convey aspects of a country's national character through visual symbolism and imagery. For all these reasons, the visa, in its brief heyday, was (like the modern airline baggage tag) a little-appreciated masterpiece of modern design.

Over the past 25 years, the visa's form and function has evolved, along with technological advances. Security holograms, watermarks and other such breakthroughs made visas -- like banknotes -- less susceptible to forgery. Bleeding ink, security fibres and raised printing were often added, serving both security and design functions. And various digital technologies, from machine-readable text to digital photography allowed for easier data access and identification by airline and immigration officials. A glance through visas in my old passports -- I found six going back to 1988 -- revealed some fascinating technological, political and artistic trends from the past quarter century. [Read more]

Beyond the Obama-Modi Bromance

The following article originally appeared in the Huffington Post India on January 26, 2015. An excerpt is included below, and the full text can be accessed here. 

Official negotiations have a tendency to be bogged down in bureaucracies, at one or both ends. And this is particularly true when it comes to technical or legal discussions, when either one or both negotiating teams lacks the authority to stray from their guidelines. Today, high-profile bilateral summits serve a useful function in providing clear deadlines for decisions to be reached, and forcing negotiators to compromise.

Such periodic brinkmanship has been a hallmark of India-U.S. engagement since at least 1998, when India conducted a series of nuclear tests. Bilateral India-US negotiations have been described in detail by the likes of former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, Indian scholar and journalist C. Raja Mohan, the Indian Prime Minister's former media adviser Sanjaya Baru, and academic Rudra Chaudhuri in their books, and hint at some of the limitations of bureaucratized working-level talks.

Similar negotiations were taking place over the past few months, and Obama's visit enabled a series of compromises, detailed in the joint statement and a joint press conference. Headlines will undoubtedly be dominated by the two leaders announcing an agreement on civil nuclear liability, an issue that had stymied U.S. civilian nuclear commerce with India despite a U.S.-led initiative between 2005 and 2008 to grant India access to nuclear imports and investments. The lack of compromise had lead to much frustration with India in Washington, and limited cooperation in an area that has important implications for India's energy needs and economic growth.

A further set of agreements relates to defense. In addition to agreeing to a ten-year defence framework agreement, which follows a similar agreement signed in 2005, the two sides agreed to operationalize four small-scale joint defence development initiatives. These include jointly developing and improving tactical Raven drones for battlefield scenarios, surveillance and reconnaissance equipment for C-130J aircraft, protection for soldiers against chemical and biological weapons, and mobile electric hybrid power sources. They also agreed to start talks on the joint development of jet engines and aircraft carriers, which are far more ambitious and long-term.

Finally, the two sides agreed to establish, continue, or strengthen a series of discussions, financing initiatives, and technical information sharing endeavours. These relate to economic growth, energy and the environment, and technological fields such as health and space. While an agreement comparable to that between the United States and China on climate targets was not forthcoming, nor realistically expected, clean energy initiatives find considerable space in the joint statement. Additionally, there were a range of issues related to third countries and regions, the most important of which was the Joint Strategic Vision for Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region.