Armenia’s Political Culture Problem: Benevolent Nepotism and Underdevelopment

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Laws matter, but culture matters more. Political systems matter, but it is the legal system that gives substance to the political. Political culture matters above all else, for it is political culture that shapes legal and political systems. But what shapes political culture? The culture of a people. The Republic of Armenia, the citizens of the Republic, the social, political, economic, and interpersonal engagements of the citizen with the state and the legal system are all defined by political culture, which, itself, is the byproduct of the Hayastantsi sociocultural system. To understand the political behavior of the Armenian state, its institutions, its leadership, and its interactions with the public, and to understand the Armenian citizen, its relationship with the political and legal system, and how it views and engages in the political, one must decipher and understand the political culture of Armenia, and more so, how this political culture is shaped by the Hayastantsi culture. The broader qualifier of “Armenian” culture is not used here because the cultures or subcultures of the Armenian nation, and of its various diasporas, are quite different, and in many respects distinct, from the Hayastantsi sociocultural system. And because it is the Hayastantsi culture that shapes the political culture of Armenia, our specific concentration will be on the Soviet and post-Soviet cultural syndromes that have reproduced the shared beliefs, values, attitudes and norms that Armenian society holds about its political system, and how its citizenry views legitimacy, civic duty, authority and the responsibilities of the state and its institutions. 

The broader research on political culture contends that orientation to political action is generally defined by particular patterns embedded in the given political system, with political culture consisting of a system of beliefs, symbolic expressions, and values that contextually define political activity, ideals, and operating norms of a society. At the same time, the effect of culture on collective action and political life are generally indirect, and to fully understand cultural effect it is necessary to inquire how the impact of culture interacts with interests and institutions. Important to note are the following observations: 1) culture frames the context in which politics occurs; 2) culture links individual and collective identities; 3) culture defines the boundaries between groups, factions and organizations; 4) culture provides a framework for interpreting the actions and motives of others; and 5) culture provides resources for political motivation and action.

Perhaps more importantly, culture orders political priorities, that is, it defines symbolic and material objects people consider valuable and worth fighting over, the contexts in which such disputes occur, and the political rules involved. Simply put, culture defines interests and how they are to be pursued. It is for this reason that cultural understandings are at the core of the definition of political community, and authority in political community is culturally-constituted and consists of rules that community members deem legitimate or illegitimate. Most crucially for the Hayastantsi sociocultural system, culture shapes conflict, for cultural values define that which is worth fighting for, while offering an account of political behavior that makes particular actions more or less likely and connects the interests of individuals with groups or factions. 

So, what is it about the Hayastantsi culture that reproduces a political culture that is defined by underdevelopment, anti-system or anti-government attributes, low trust of political institutions, systemic patronage and “benevolent” nepotism, strategic indifference to law, collective normalization of illegal behavior, and general disregard toward civic duty and responsible citizenship? Why does the Hayastantsi culture reproduce norms and values in which members of its society do not respect laws and institutions, and why does this sociocultural system extol forms of behavior that value informal, interpersonal, and clannish transactionalism over civic duty? Why have the attributes of the Hayastantsi culture produced a highly-effective social system of honor codes, interpersonal loyalty, and visceral devotion to cultural mores, yet none of this has properly translated into functional engagement with political processes, adherence to laws, respect for institutions, and trust or loyalty to the state? In layman terms: Armenians have a highly-sophisticated culture, with a civilizational inheritance that reproduces a rich identity; yet they possess a political culture that is unsophisticated, unrefined, and emulative of the coarse, borderline hooligan ethos of post-Soviet dissoluteness. Why is this the case, and how does this explain the state of politics and the political values of current Armenia?  

In the Hayastantsi ordering of values, cultural law supersedes political law, and in this context, what constitutes or qualifies morally upright or socially-accepted behavior is not defined by the legality of the act, but rather, the extent to which it acquiesces with cultural mores. One can engage in behavior that is illegal, for example, yet culturally extolled, because cultural norms define the morality of the act. Legality, in this context, is an external, foreign concept superimposed on the cultural, and it is this lexical order that reproduces a defective political culture in Armenia. Thus, cultural law exists in of itself, while political law (legal system) exists outside of itself: one is an intrinsic truth that transcends governments and territory, while the other is an imposition precisely by government and spatial restraint. This, in turn, creates a collective rationale: laws aren’t truths, nor are they coherent stipulations that must be voluntarily adhered to, but rather, they are impositions that should be avoided, bypassed, and if need be, broken. 

Being a law-abiding citizen has no substance in the Hayastantsi sociocultural system. By virtue of this, the legal and political systems are not constructs that serve a collective good or a national interest, but rather, are constructs that should be exploited, taken advantage of, and if need be, methodically abused. In the Hayastantsi culture, you are not a bad person if you break the law; in fact, you will very likely be viewed as foolish and idiotic for following the law. The legal system, political institutions, and the organs of the state are not respected; at best they are feared, and it is aversion to punishment that limits the scope of illegal behavior, and not some sense of civic duty or citizen responsibility.   

From the disciplinary model used by parents in the household to the streetcorners that children play to the playgrounds in school through which they socialize and into the job market or higher-education they find themselves in, the average Hayastantsi is not raised or conditioned to respect legal authority. Rather, they are raised and conditioned to fear legal authority. This fear-as-aversion postulate induces behavior that seeks to stretch or violate the law as a rational act: as long as one is not caught, there is nothing wrong with breaking the law. This, of course, begs another question, what authority, then, do Hayastantsis respect? The authority mandated by cultural law: family elders, kin, friends, and all factors that define interpersonal loyalty. Thus, fidelity is endowed upon that which cultural law gives ordering to, and allegiance is not to the laws of the state, but to the abstract: history, identity, the nation, religion, ancestors, and the cumulative legacy of a millennial-old civilization that is its culture.   

In Armenian society, there is a collective normalization of behavior that is indifferent to the law. But in the Hayastantsi thinking, illegality and indifference to the law are two different things: as long as what you do doesn’t directly harm another person, the illegality of the act produces no substantive concern. Thus, an entire family, for example, and their extended family, friends, neighbors, even co-workers may collectively partake, have knowledge, and indirectly engage in an illegal act, but none will consider themselves criminals. Does the reader want an example? Let us consider the act of bribing to avoid military service. 

Not only was (is) this act systemically spread in society and normalized as a noble endeavor, but one would observe a collective effort, from raising money to using whatever connections available within one’s circle of friends and family and up to entreaties of nepotism from public officials, all to “save” a young man from fulfilling their legal duties to the state. In essence, a wide-array of average citizens will participate in a conspiracy to commit a crime in order for the given young man to “escape” military service. Almost every act, from planning on how to break the law to initiating the very act of breaking the law, is a process that entails a normalized and socially-accepted scope of activity. Indeed, for almost every Hayastantsi, not only is this act of illegality normal and condoned, but more so, it is incumbent upon every family who is able to engage in it to do so. The fact that being a law-abiding citizen, in such instances, would be deemed irrational, incoherent, and even foolish, demonstrates how the cultural ethos justifies such behavior, thus overwhelmingly negating an Armenian citizen’s minimal consideration of their responsibility before the law. More so, not only is the breaking of the law not shunned or frowned upon, but it’s the opposite: it becomes a badge of honor and endows bragging rights, as it denotes social status or at least some modality of social capital for a family to be able to “liberate” their son from serving their own country. 

This, in turn, brings about another important aspect of the incompatibility between Hayastantsi culture and the development of a sophisticated political culture: violation and persistent breaking of the law is not an ad-hoc act conducted by a single individual or a family member, but rather, it is an act of continuity undertaken by almost every member of the family. Intrinsically, Hayastantsi children are raised by their parents to rigidly subscribe to and abide by cultural law. This is what entails decency, discipline, and sense of social etiquette and properness. Thus, when a teenager’s parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins all join to partake in some violation of the law, this is deemed to be a noble act for the interest of the family or a family member, and not some ethical horror where three generations of a family are casually committing a crime. Does the reader want another example? Let’s consider the scope and breadth of how high-school diplomas, college degrees, and disturbingly, even graduate degrees are secured in Armenia. 

This example, by no means, throws out the baby with the bathwater and it does not, at any level, suggest that every student and every scholar subscribes to this kind of behavior. However, and we do need to be very honest about this, the vast majority of high-school diplomas are the byproduct of the entire family or clan structure bribing high-school teachers, calling in nepotistic favors, or utilizing numerous modalities of extra-legal activities to achieve their goals. Similarly, most graduate degrees in Armenia are a collective byproduct of plagiarism, bribery, or some nepotistic engagement. But again, what is most fascinating is the fact that nobody considers their act of illegality as problematic or unacceptable. To the contrary, people casually brag about how their daughter “graduated” with a “red diploma,” even though they know and the person in front of them knows that the young girl has the intellectual capacity of a door knob. Similarly, let’s consider the number of those who have graduated from higher education, or law school, or medical school, yet never practice in the field of their studies because their degrees were purchased. But socially, they masquerade as pharmacists and intellectuals… I know first hand: I have a second cousin who graduated pharmacy school but couldn’t tell you the basic formula for sodium chloride (yes, that’s table salt).

What this cultural ethos of nepotism-as-benevolence has produced is a pretentious social demeanor that extols fakeness as cleverness, vanity as social competition, dishonesty as shrewdness, and irresponsibility as a tenable survival mechanism. And so when we look at the country’s political field, we cannot ignore one fundamental truth: everyone in the political domain–from opposition parties to governing elites to government bodies to civil society to technocrats–are all byproducts of this very sociocultural system. Thus, Hayastantsi culture breeds political incompetence, because political competence, governing, and stateness require one crucial thing, and that is professionalism. However, there is an incommensurability between favoritism-structured cultures and professionalism. The ethicality of the Hayastantsi culture is not conducive to political professionalism. This is why political discourse in Armenia is vulgar and unrefined, this is why members of the National Assembly behave like schoolyard children, this is why the political opposition doesn’t care about policy or development, and this is why the Government is not able to advance and improve the institutions of the state. In the Hayastantsi culture, everything is personal, yet in the domain of professionalism, the personal is and must be separated from the professional. But initiating the latter would violate the cultural ethos, because to be professional, for example, would be to prioritize political law over cultural law, and while a handful of political leaders are able to do that, everyone below them finds the idea untenable.   

This article, by no means, seeks to be a polemic against the Hayastantsi culture. As a rigid subscriber of the culture, I embrace its tenets and extol its values. But the sense of preeminence that one’s culture produces, while at the same time unwittingly producing detrimental side effects outside spheres, is something that we must address and not shy away from. Thus, the cultural must be separated from the political, and where cultural law contradicts or clashes with political law, the principle of legality should supersede cultural stipulations. But this need not entail enmity between the two. Rather, political laws should be drawn in a way in which cultural law, as much as possible, is integrated into the legal principles of the system. Thus, laws must be compatible with its people, and in this context, Hayastantsi culture must evolve to embrace political sophistication. Why is this important? Because extensive research on the subject, ranging from studies in Europe to Asia to Latin America, demonstrates that a country cannot become developed, cannot undergo economic, political, institutional, and structural progress if it has an underdeveloped political culture.  

As such, there is an empirical link between civic virtue and effective governance, which gives way to durable and persistent cultural syndromes. What Armenian culture needs to embrace is a sense of civicness, responsibility to societal duties, and a methodical paradigm shift in equating cultural mores with law-abiding virtues. If the Hayastantsi culture does not evolve to become compatible with a sophisticated political culture, it will not be able to address the problem of underdevelopment plaguing the country’s institutions, from the education system to security organs to economic capacity. It simply cannot become a strong state if it has a weak political culture with low rates of civicness. 

Compounding the matter is the problem of trust toward out-groups that the Hayastantsi culture commands. Distrust of the state, of political institutions, of political parties, and of the political process produces a citizenry that normalizes its indifference toward its own political system. Thus, the average Hayastantsi loves his or her country, but they could care less about the state or its government. While yes, this is, inherently, a paradox, this paradox, however, did not happen in a vacuum. 

To protect itself from the authoritarianism of the Soviets, the corruption and abuses of post-Soviet Armenia, and the oligarchic political system of pre-Velvet Armenia, the Hayastantsi culture vigorously turned inward and against the political. The latter became toxic, destructive, and in essence, anti-Armenian. Thus, the Hayastantsi sociocultural system reproduced a low-trust society, where interpersonal trust of kin far superseded trust in the state or its institutions. Yet as much research shows, political cultural attitudes, especially trust toward institutions, have major political consequences, as trust is closely linked to the viability of democratic institutions. Public trust in political institutions makes the political system legitimate in the eyes of the masses. To this end, what Armenia suffers from isn’t cultural underdevelopment (far from it), but rather, political underdevelopment, and until the Hayastantsi sociocultural system is able to reconcile its attributes and reproduce a healthy political culture, Armenia will keep lingering in purgatory, between democratic transition and socio-political stagnation. 

Statecraft & Governance