What is the phenomenon of ‘ungoverning’?
What is the phenomenon of ‘ungoverning’?
Months before Donald Trump entered the White House, Nancy Rosenblum and Russel Muirhead, renowned professors of political science and governance in American universities, published a book titled ‘Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos’. Nancy Rosenblum, 80, is a professor of ethics and governance at Harvard University, and Russel Muirhead, 60, is a politician and head of the Governance Department at Dartmouth College in the USA.
The term ‘ungoverning’ can be roughly translated as ‘ungoverned’.
The goal of these professors in writing this book was and is to explore how a government can be rendered ungoverned. Last week, both professors jointly published a detailed article on the Foreign Affairs website with the same title.
Although their target is the current US government and President Trump, the concepts and characteristics that these two professors have introduced and the term ‘ungoverning’ they have coined for the first time in the political science vocabulary apply to countries where opposing parties and groups do not have the nation’s best interests at heart and do not care about the future destiny of their country.
Rosenblum and Muirhead provide comprehensive definitions of ungoverning a government or de-stating a state.
Although from the perspective of these two analysts, individuals like Trump and the Republican Party are seeking to ungovern the United States government, in our country, Iran, there are other groups, parties, and individuals who are pursuing this policy.
While in our country, hopes of lifting sanctions are emerging, suddenly extremist groups are found who are trying to dry up these hopes. It should be seen why their interests lie in continuing sanctions or even cutting off relations with America in this regard.
What is happening is discouraging the people, which is the same goal pursued in ungoverning.
In fact, according to Rosenblum and Muirhead, ungoverning takes advantage of the wave of despair created in the functioning of government bureaucracy.
Its goal is not institutional reform, but rather structural dismantling. Essentially, ungoverning a government disrupts the deliberate disruption of the normal order that exists among the people.
A prominent example can be seen in issues such as the laws on chastity and hijab, as well as filtering. Other cases can also be mentioned in which these groups attempt to undermine the government by confronting public institutions and ideas.
Another method these groups use to undermine the government is through attacks that undermine the effective capacity of the government. In fact, with these attacks, they aim to reduce the government’s ability to develop and implement policies that government officials believe improve national public welfare.
From the perspective of governance and leadership, the guidelines issued by extremist groups to undermine the government or to overthrow a government can include the following:
1. Reduce the existing government’s capacity by diverting and circumventing ministries and institutions.
In this regard, you can take a look at the economic policies that the government is trying to implement and the opposing groups that are seeking to launch a counterattack. The government aims to, for example, join the FATF because it is a global treaty that even Russia and China are members of, and only Iran and North Korea are not benefiting from it. However, opposing groups that benefit from Iran’s non-membership in the FATF have not presented convincing reasons for their opposition to Iran joining the FATF. When asked about the significant costs that Iran incurs due to non-membership, they try to divert even this question.
It is enough to look at the mutual attacks on executive performances and specialized topics in this field. It is interesting to note the attackers and their subjects. One of these attackers, for example, demanded a debate with the Minister of Economic Affairs on joining the FATF.
They lower the level of the debate so much that the expert feels embarrassed to participate. What happens in these types of debates is that the non-expert starts shouting slogans while the other person is forced into silence.
Three comprehensive campaigns against the usual executive methods that the government is forced to take to improve the livelihood of the people involve certain actions that may jeopardize the interests of stakeholders, such as combating fuel smuggling.
Can it be as easy as stealing airplane fuel through a two-kilometer pipeline and influential groups being aware of it? When the government takes action, opposing groups enter from another direction and attack the government or its leader on various pretexts.
Differentiating people against the government’s reduced capacity scares hardline groups from people’s presence everywhere, from elections to supporting the government. Therefore, they try to make people indifferent to the government’s actions in any way possible.
Their actions include reducing the government’s executive capacity. The government promises to lift filtering but are hindered from implementing it. The government promises to lift sanctions but want to prevent their next actions by attacking the government’s foreign policy.
They strive in various ways to position the people against the government by implementing laws on chastity and hijab.
The history of overthrowing the government or making the stateless in Iran has a long history. Radical groups, with the crises they create, have no goal other than overthrowing the government. National interests are not important to them; what matters to them is to make the government stateless.
If this happens, they have achieved their goal, but making the government stateless also has serious consequences, including setbacks in development, worsening living conditions, and the loss of Iran’s position in the region’s geopolitics, among the risks that could be imposed on the country.
