The Competitive State

The Competitive State The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40050105 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA The Competitive State A dissertation presented by Syed Shimail Reza to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2018 © 2018 Syed Shimail Reza All right reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Professor Michael J. Sandel Syed Shimail Reza The Competitive State Abstract This dissertation studies competitive political institutions and institutional incentives in the context of legislative and executive politics, and asks to what extent they encourage representatives and ruling parties to always work toward advancing all their people’s welfare as best they can. Part I of the dissertation proposes a general theoretical framework for the study of competitive political institutions and processes, and argues that this framework avoids various conceptual errors in the scholarly literature – namely (i) the conflation of competitive and non- competitive political relations; (ii) the claim that political competition is analogous with market competition; (iii) the claim that competition in general produces desirable social consequences; and (iv) the claim that competition is in general normatively praiseworthy. Next, Part II applies this general framework to investigate competitive politics in modern representative democracies and democratic federations in three major contexts: (i) electoral competition; (ii) interstate competition; and (iii) competition between state and federal governments. All three forms of political competition are concluded to be significantly misaligned with the aim of encouraging representatives and ruling parties to always work toward advancing all their people’s welfare as best they can. Part III of the dissertation then considers competitive politics as it might be made to be. It proposes a schematic for a new competitive political system – population-maximizing competitive federalism – and argues that it should, in expectation, fare better. The dissertation concludes with a brief evaluation of population-maximizing competitive federalism along some additional normative dimensions, including contractarianism, liberalism, and political equality. Here, too, there are good reasons to favor the new political system. iii Table of Contents Part I: Introduction and Framework 1 Chapter One: Introduction 1 1.1 Scope 8 1.2 Departures From Contemporary Political Theory 16 1.3 Departures From Contemporary Research on Political Competition 30 Chapter Two: Analytical Framework 41 2.1 Four Necessary (and Sufficient) Conditions for Competition 42 2.2 Competitive Structure 46 2.3 The Double Edge of Competition 56 2.4 Conclusion 57 Part II: Modern Democracies and Democratic Federations 59 Chapter Three: Electoral Competition 59 3.1 Majoritarian Exclusion 61 3.2 The Electoral Logic of Sabotage 81 3.3 Partially-Undisciplined Activity-Span 93 3.4 Disincentives Against Innovation 106 3.5 Conclusion 127 Chapter Four: Interstate Competition 129 4.1 What Is Not Interstate Competition 134 4.2 State Elections I: National Comparisons 146 4.3 State Elections II: Local Comparisons 159 4.4 State Elections III: Interstate Pseudo-Competition 165 4.5 Federal Elections 171 4.6 Non-Electoral Interstate Competition Over Revenues 176 4.7 Conclusion 182 Chapter Five: Interstratum Competition 185 5.1 Interstratum Electoral Competition 187 5.2 Interstratum Jurisdictional Competition 199 5.3 Conclusion 216 Part III: Population-Maximizing Competitive Federalism 217 Chapter Six: A Schematic For a New Competitive Politics 215 6.1 Stipulations 220 6.2 The Institutional Schematic 224 6.3 Competitive Sustainability 251 iv Chapter Seven: Weak Competitive Federalism 262 7.1 Majoritarian Exclusion III 262 7.2 The Electoral Logic of Sabotage III 278 7.3 Partially-Undisciplined Activity-Span III 285 7.4 Disincentives Against Innovation III 295 7.5 Further Institutional Improvements 304 7.6 Objections 310 7.7 Population-Maximization vs. Other Organizing Principles 333 7.8 Conclusion 341 Chapter Eight: Alternate Normative Frames 343 8.1 Contractarianism 344 8.2 Liberalism 350 8.3 Political Equality 357 8.4 Conclusion 364 Appendices 366 Appendix A. Derivation of Fertility-Adjustment Factor 366 Appendix B. Population Growth Correlates 367 Appendix C. Illustrative Optimization: Majoritarianism vs. Universalism 368 Appendix D. Illustrative Optimization: Sabotage 375 References 381 v Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to many individuals for their help, support, and suggestions during the course of writing this dissertation. Atop the list are the my dissertation committee members – Professor Michael Sandel, Professor Eric Beerbohm, Professor Kenneth Shepsle, and Professor Richard Tuck – whose insightful comments and suggestions, as well as their exceptional mentorship, have made this project possible. I am also extremely grateful for comments and suggestions by Theodore Becker, James Brandt, Abraham Chaibi, Jeffry Frieden, Jonathan Gary, Sean Gray, Robin Glover, Hailey Loomis, Aseem Mahajan, Jacob Roundtree, Steven Serna, Brendan Wright, members of the Harvard Political Theory Workshop, audience members at the Northeastern Political Science Association Annual Meeting in 2014, and audience members at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in 2016. vi THE COMPETITIVE STATE PART I: INTRODUCTION AND FRAMEWORK CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION Institutions influence social outcomes. There are few less contentious statements in political science. Certainly, institutions do not determine all that occurs; they do, however, influence social outcomes because they influence individual behavior. They give people reasons to act one way or other. Laws penalizing theft, for instance, do not necessarily determine how any specific person behaves, but they do give people a reason to not steal – the threat of punishment – which tends to deter some would-be thieves even if it does not deter all. Institutions encourage and discourage, not command. They incentivize. And in doing so, institutions influence both individual behavior and, eventually, social outcomes – all human action ultimately contributing, however minutely, to society’s prevailing conditions. Encourage and discourage the right tendencies of behavior, and society, in expectation, flourishes. Do the opposite, and it becomes mired. This dissertation’s purpose is to study political institutions in terms of their incentives – specifically, how political institutions regulate the state via the incentives they create for public officials. For our purposes, political institutions are defined as the formal legal rules governing the delineation, allocation, and exercise of political power. These legal rules (i) define and divide political powers among public entities and offices – e.g. they define legislative, executive, judicial, or bureaucratic powers, and divide them among public entities like districts, courts, and administrative agencies, or particular offices like those of legislators, judges, and public administrators; (ii) specify the mechanisms by which control over these public entities and offices is allocated to individuals or groups – e.g. heredity, lottery, election, or appointment; and 1 (iii) establish the terms on which the associated political powers are exercised – e.g. rules concerning legislative voting, judicial procedures, and bureaucratic paperwork. Thus, political institutions regulate the state by regulating how its various powers may be acquired and exercised by public officials. For the most part, it is these public officials who control what the state does, since they pass and enforce laws and policies; but public officials’ decisions and actions are, in turn, influenced by the institutions within which they operate. It follows that by studying how political institutions encourage and discourage public officials, we will be studying how political institutions regulate the state. The dissertation’s focus will be on political institutions as they pertain to competitive politics. Competition is defined as any scenario where individuals or groups act against each other to attain logically or practically incompatible ends. Competitive politics is then politics characterized by competition over political matters – usually, competition over the delineation, allocation, or exercise of the state’s powers. Political institutions, among other things, create, channel, adjudicate, and regulate such competition – all functions whose importance is difficult to overstate: First, the basic purpose of all political systems is to establish mechanisms for adjudicating the ever-present competitive struggles of society, but in accomplishing this purpose political institutions transform these struggles into political competition. Different people invariably desire different things and pursue different goals, not all of them compatible. Not everyone can be simultaneously satisfied in every matter, and people’s attempts to attain their mutually incompatible ends result in competition among them.

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