5 - The state as idiot

Summary

Let us suppose for a moment that one could minimize or eradicate the shortcomings of the state we have examined thus far – its propensity to meddle, to be biased, and to privilege majority over minority norms and practices. Suppose one could build a benign, well-intentioned state that consistently acted in ways that respected individual rights, and was impartial between competing interests and protective of minority cultures. According to the sceptical stance we consider in this chapter, one would still be faced, even under these conditions, with a deeper, arguably intractable, tragedy of the state. The state is, on this view, an idiot. Its bureaucratic remoteness means that it lacks the situated knowledge and therefore the capacity to deliver security across a diverse array of local settings. Nor can it easily acquire such knowledge without resorting to authoritarian, diversity-threatening means. The state, moreover, is not merely deficient in the knowledge of local circumstances that is prerequisite to the production of security. It also tends towards obduracy – being both unreflexive about its own cognitive limitations and determined to press on with its purposes, including its policing and security purposes, in wilful disregard of its own ignorance. The state, or so it believes, ‘knows best’.

Idiocy and obduracy are, according to this view, characteristics even of strong democratic states operating within their own national boundaries – in conditions, that is, where they at least possess the sovereign capacity and authority that enable them to generate knowledge of ‘their’ territory and populations, however imperfectly.