Governance vs Human Nature

Since the times of Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece, the classical question that has gained the pivotal position is about how to achieve Good Life? And the question that emerges as an offshoot from the previous one is –“what are the factors that hurdles the prevalence of good life?” Philosophers and scholars have addressed this question on different grounds and perspectives. But the issue that has stood mostly contested is that of “human nature”.

In the classical literatures written by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Rousseau, Jeremy Bentham, J S Mill, Karl Marx, and many more, much of the debate has been centered on how is the human nature? Some of them like Locke and Mill argued that humans are peace seeking and benevolent creatures while thinkers like Hobbes termed them greedy, nasty and brutish! Thus the very ground of politics then becomes about how humans tend to be cooperative towards their fellow beings and that in return will determine how far the state will be able to govern them. It means that the nature of state will be indirectly based on the understanding of human nature itself. For example, when Machiavelli saw human nature as “bad” and “immoral”, he prescribed an authoritarian state. While on the other hand, Locke preferred a liberal democratic state because humans were peace loving creatures according to him.

On the onset of 21st century, the world has been radically transformed by the evolution of science, technology and artificial intelligence. Governance today, is not a simple State-Society interaction. The age of Globalization and Liberalization has given birth to many new players of in politics like Multi-National Corporations, Non-Governmental Organizations, Global Civil Society, International Terrorist Groups and so on. These factions are not only present internationally but have transcended the national boundaries too. National and Local governance too have been intertwined with these complexities. Among all these, the major focus of governance has been towards the hurdles emerging out of material scarcities. Today, the items that are being considered under the banner of serious governance challenges are poverty, unemployment, corruption, resource scarcity, terrorism, communalism, environmental degradation, and so on. But what has been ignored is the very source from where these issues emerge – “Human Nature”.

Governance is all about allocation of resources in a fair and economic manner. Also it is about providing security to the citizens. On a further note, a welfare state may demand state to look after the economic and social well beings of its citizens. Thus Governance is an art of management and calculation along with an understanding of sociopolitical dimensions of the society. Governance is delivered by the people who are delegated the responsibilities to do so. It is utmost important to take a note on how they perform their duty. It is from here where all the challenges of governance arise. Besides them, also the public, for whom the governance is meant for, affects the effective functioning of governance. In short, this “human nature”, which is present in both- the governing and the governed, influences the process of governance at its very foundation.
When we look on the side of those who govern, they are normal people like us. All of us determine to work for maximizing satisfaction of our family and earn money for them. Basically we all are self-seeking individuals and are in a run for our own personal gains. Now when we consider the people who are in positions of public responsibilities, they too have families. Then one may wonder what makes them work for the people and not for themselves? But if we analyze, they too are there to earn and maximize their own personal profits. During day to day governance, they will not compromise any of they own personal interest for that of public. Thus all their decisions, their allocation and their governance is diverted for the interest of those few who governs and for those who can influence them! And yes whatever little good they do is to maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the legal framework of the country. The challenge of governance is thus not due to scarcity of resources; it is due to the very human nature.

What we might wonder then is that what is the solution for this? Of course human nature is inherent in all of us, but it is also what I shaped by our external surrounding. As Karl Marx said, our consciousness is determined by our existence. It means that our thoughts and mindset is influenced by what we see around and our social setting. It can be thus derived that human nature can be changed with time and persistent efforts. We as citizens need to inculcate habit of making our actions more community centered and other regarding. This will in turn make human nature as “good” by default. The task of governance is not one sided, it is a cyclic process where the governing people deliver on the basis of what they receive from the society. Political awareness along with social benevolence is what public needs to generate in order to transform the process of governance positively.
Finally, Human nature is not what we inherit but it is what we generate out of our lives.

🙏Thank You for reading🙏