Peter Turchin, born in Russia but now settled in the US, started his career as an ecologist. He is now a historian. Academics do cross disciplinary boundaries or straddle thes. The late Harvard professor Hollis Chenery, who was once Chief Economist of the World Bank, had originally studied engineering. Economics Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen is also known for his contributions to philosophy.
But how does an ecologist become a historian? And why am I starting an article on elites and aspiring elites by citing such a person? Let me explain.
As an ecologist, Turchin studied the population dynamics of insects and animals. He used sophisticated statistical methods to sift through enormous amounts of data to discern patterns. One question that exercised his inquisitive mind: Why do many animal populations go through boom-and-bust cycles?
After two decades working on such topics and feeling that most questions of interest to him had been answered, Turchin decided to switch disciplines. In his latest book called End Times: Elites, Counter-elites and the Path of Political Disintegration, Turchin writes, “With some trepidation, I began to consider how the same complexity-science approach could be brought to the study of our societies, both past and present.” The result of this was the start of cliodynamics, an innovative approach where big data are used to discern historical patterns.
Perhaps it was the unraveling of the Soviet Union, the country that he came from, that triggered Turchin’s interest in studying social and political upheaval. The immiseration of large sections of a population is often a major driver of such turmoil. Turchin added another factor, ie, the clash between the established elites and what he calls the aspiring elites or counter-elites in a society.
We know that the abolition of slavery was a major subject of controversy in the run-up to the American civil war. The South wanted to maintain slavery, the basis of its economy, society, and politics, while the North wanted to abolish it. Turchin does not deny the role of slavery in the Civil War but suggests that it was more the result of a conflict between the established elite of the South, notably the cotton plantation owners who dominated American politics, and the aspiring elites of the North - the industrialists, the bankers, and the professionals. The same is true, Turchin argues, of other important upheavals of recent human history, such as the French and Russian revolutions.
Bangladesh context
Let us try to understand the concept of elites and aspiring elites with concrete examples from the Bangladesh context. Turchin defines the elites as those who have the power to influence others, or at least the power to lead their own lives as they want. This power often comes from wealth and social status.
The established elites are those who have inherited these features. Their parents or grandparents may have been ministers, university professors, large industrialists, or senior bureaucrats. The children acquired an elite status by virtue of their birth. However, while their birth into an elite family gives them a head start, they often must fortify that status through their own achievements.
By contrast, the new elites are those who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth but had moved into the elite ranks through their own efforts. In an upwardly mobile society, such as the Bangladesh of recent times, a large part of the elite class may be of the “new elite” variety.
An interesting group are the aspiring elites. Turchin defines these as “individuals aspiring to elite status by virtue of their newly acquired wealth or educational credentials.” The aspiring elites have not yet acquired the status of an elite but have fulfilled the pre-conditions for becoming one. If the established and new elites are already in the room, the aspiring elites are the ones knocking on the door. Some would get entry and become elites. Others would be rebuffed.
The elite-aspirants who see their hopes dashed become, in Turchin’s words, the counter-elites. Counter-elites can often be a source of instability for a social and political system. Many Bengalis who organized resistance to the Pakistani state, initially asking for an equal share in resources and economic opportunities, then demanding political autonomy and, finally, fighting for independence, belonged to such a class.
We may think of four tracks on which people advance as they aim to acquire an elite status: The business, the bureaucratic, the intellectual, and the political tracks. The business track has industrialists, traders, and owners of other businesses. The bureaucratic track has members of the civil service, the armed forces and the police. On the intellectual track we see teachers, journalists, public intellectuals, and a motley mix of professionals. The political track has a wide range of actors, from the village level political operatives to ministers and heads of governments.
Moving up the ladder
The important dynamic that we are interested in is aspirations. On each track, some people are content with where they are. But others aspire to move up the ladder.
A small trader may aspire to become a large trader or at least a small industrialist (being an industrialist is considered more prestigious by many). A small industrialist wants to be a large industrialist and a large industrialist operating in a single industry may want to be the owner of a conglomerate with interests across business lines. There is a threshold, such as size of business revenue or employment, crossing which allows a person to acquire the status of a business elite.
Similar aspirations exist in the other tracks. A local-level politician may aspire to become a member of parliament and thereby gain access to the elite class in the political track. A major or colonel in the army may dream of becoming a general, a joint secretary may want to be a secretary of a ministry, and an associate professor may aspire to a professorship. Those who reach these levels may sometimes aspire for even more -- to become the chief of staff of the army, the principal secretary to the prime minister, the governor of the central bank, or the vice-chancellor of a major university. Why stop being an elite when the super-elite class beckons?
Elite aspirations may also involve moving across the tracks. Thus, elite industrialists or traders may want to use their wealth to also become a political elite. The usual entry point for this is to seek nomination, and then election, as a member of parliament. The next step is a seat in the cabinet. Bureaucratic elites may also want to switch tracks to enhance their elite status. A retired major general may want to go into business, while a retired secretary may aspire to be a parliamentarian. Both may also want to become a regular fixture on television talk shows, thus acquiring elite status also on the intellectual track.
As indicated above, not all aspiring elites see their hopes fulfilled. When the number of such frustrated aspirants, whom we may call the counter-elites, is large, that could be a source of social and/or political instability. The likelihood of turmoil goes up if the masses are being immiserated at the same time.
How does today’s Bangladesh look like when seen from this prism? Sustained economic growth over two to three decades, along with government patronage of various forms, has created opportunities at different rungs of the social and economic ladder. Many have grabbed these opportunities to move up the ladder. A small trader in a mofussil town in north Bengal may have accumulated enough capital to set up an industrial unit in the Gazipur industrial belt, if not a business in Dhaka itself. The bright daughter of a small farmer in Satkhira may have become a government officer through a competitive exam. Such upward mobility may have further enhanced their aspirations. Having entered the building, they are now looking for the elevator to the top floor where the elite reside.
In brief, sustained economic growth, and the granting of various privileges by the government, has created a large class of aspiring elites in Bangladesh. But can all of them become elites? Is it possible that we have experienced an “over-production” of aspiring elites?
My hunch is that we have. The over-production of aspiring elites means that the system will not have enough resources to accommodate all the aspirants into the elite class. One way the government addresses the demands of aspiring elites is by expanding government spending. Increased government spending needs to be funded by tax revenues. If the latter does not increase in tandem with growing expenditures, fiscal deficits are generated. More government borrowing to cover the deficits increases government debt and, thereby, also interest payments. Such developments often put a brake on government expenditures.
This seems to be happening in Bangladesh in recent years. Total government expenditures were rapidly rising a few years ago but had to be restrained in more recent years. The total expenditure/GDP ratio increased from 13.6% in FY17 to 15% in FY19 but had to be brought down in subsequent years. By FY23, it had reached 12.9%.
Why? Because, the government failed to increase revenues, which were significantly lower than expenditures to start with. During FY17-19, government revenues averaged 9.83% of GDP; this fell to 8.73% in FY20-23 (all these figures are from IMF country reports). A root cause of this is the elite’s opposition to raising more taxes, or even the collection of existing ones.
Let us consider another challenge, that of ensuring adequate capital machinery and raw materials for industry. It is widely believed, and this is reflected even in statements by some senior government functionaries, that a major cause of the recent depletion of foreign exchange reserves is capital flight, largely the doing of a section of the elite class. This depletion of reserves has seriously curtailed imports of raw materials and capital goods. There has not been any serious study of the incidence of the import restrictions, but it is likely that a large section of the aspiring elites has been impacted.
Think of small factory owners whose businesses were expanding, raising their hopes of graduating to the elite status of a large industrialist. Import restrictions may have frustrated such ambitions, and in some cases, even survival may be an issue.
These two examples, ie, the brake on government expenditures due to a failure to raise more revenues, and the curtailment of imports due to serious depletion of foreign exchange reserves, illustrate how the actions of a section of the elites can frustrate the dreams of the aspiring elites. Surely there are more such examples.
On the political front, the emergence of two sets of Awami League affiliated parliamentary candidates, the official nominees, and the so-called independent candidates, has been the subject of much discussion in recent weeks. Some are amused, many find entertainment. But I think there is something more profound going on here.
Many of the official nominees have been members of parliament before and thus may be considered members of the elite class. Others may not have been in parliament, but had acquired elite status in the business, bureaucratic or intellectual tracks.
By contrast, most of the independent candidates may be classified as aspiring elites. Some were already political elites, having been ministers or at least members of the parliament, but now, after being denied nomination, are at risk of losing their elite status. The contest between these two sets of candidates is thus in some way a duel between the elites on one side, and the aspiring and frustrated elites, on the other.
Many in Bangladesh are speculating about post-election violence where the ruling party may be pitted against the opposition. Some are talking about the possibility of social turmoil as growing inequality and rising inflation push the poor to revolt against the system.
I personally feel that turmoil, if it happens, is more likely to result from a conflict between the elite and the aspiring elite, a conflict that has started to play out on the economic front and may now spill over to the political front.
Syed Akhtar Mahmood is an economist, previously with an international development agency.
