Adding to Aristotle, via Machiavelli

Or, Begging Some Ph.D. to Give Me the Mockery I Richly Deserve



Recently I picked up at my favority little hole-in-the-wall book and music shop a copy of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, which I will analyze next week, and a compendium of Machiavelli, containing both The Prince, and his longer and less famous work, The Discourses. I'd read the former in high school, and had somehow mislaid my copy. The latter book I'd heard of but never read, and have only just skimmed the first two chapters when something occurred to me.



Attempting to describe the origin of the Roman Republic, Machiavelli harkens back to an idea loosely derived from Aristotle, that their are six kinds of government. Three of these are "good" in the sense of being moderate and devoted to providing justice and good order: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (which Aristotle would have called polity). The evil twins of these forms are the three bad kinds: monarchy devolves into tyranny, aristocracy devolves into oligarchy, and democracy devolves into chaos and mob rule (which Aristotle, seemingly just to make it confusing, referred to as democracy). Aristotle seemed to think that a system of government which mixed these forms would be most stable, and Machiavelli seems to be agreeing, and, if I guess at his gist right, will be arguing that the Roman Republic was just such an attempt.



I remember ideas of this kind from poly-sci classes in both high school and college, and remember in particular one professor pointing out that the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1787 were working from this premise. Thus, our constitution was a practical experiment in "mixed" government: the seperate executive branch represents monarchy, the Senate represents aristocracy (or so it was originally envisioned, when state legislators elected senators, not the people), and the House of Representatives represent the masses.



All of which makes the average American kid pat himself on the back for belonging to the nation that had such wise founders, but as one ages, one sees the cracks in the system. For one thing, the Senate has been as subject to the popular winds as the House since 1913, and even when it wasn't, does being elected by the representatives of the people at the state level really seperate them from the vox populi enough to be considered aristocratic. And given the science that gerrymandered construction of "safe" congressional districts in the House, one could hardly be faulted for suggesting that the Senate is actually more responsive to shifts in popular winds. If you doubt me, consider this statistic, while control of the Senate has changed hands 5 times in the past 24 years (in 1982, 1986, 1994, 2001, and 2002) control of the House has changed only once in the same period.



It also used to bother me that these analyses always left out the judicial branch. The Founders may have intended the third branch to be the weakest, but it's difficult to say so now. In fact, if De Toqueville was right and America's aristocracy is the legal profession, I would say that the black-robed savants of the Supreme Court are the true grandées of the land. They command, and even the President obeys; after all, in most cases the President belongs to their class, just as any King was also a nobleman.



Satisfying as such impertinence is, it is not the true goal of my thoughts here. Machiavelli seems to be suggesting that Aristotle's polity = our republic and I submit that such ought to be considered the fourth kind of good government, seperate from democracy. This will do much in helping to explain the differences between the presidential and the parliamentary system. In England, the official executive (the Queen) is weak, practically a cypher, while true executive power derives from control of the legislature, which, because of tighter party discipline, results in greater control of policy by the voters.



In their elections, British subjects vote less for a specific man, than one of two or more party platforms, and the party that wins usually enacts that platform with a minimum of fuss, by majority vote. Our political parties are much less disciplined, and our committee systems much more convoluted, so legslative defeats are common for the party in power. Therefore, in spite of the fact that Britain is officially a monarchy, I would describe it as functionally a democracy (in the good sense), whereas despite the democratic trappings of the American goverment, I would describe it as functionally a mixed government, or a republic.



But we have a conundrum here. For each of Machiavelli's three good forms, there is a bad form. Anyone aquainted with the history of Rome knows that her Republic did not last forever, but slipped away from it, its forms preserved (the Senate of Rome continued to meet, in various guises, into the Medieval period) but its substance utterly transformed. Similarly, 200 years past 1787, and there is virtually no one in America who believes that the government created in her Constitution is a flawless example of "good" government. Republicans believe as a matter of course that something has gone wrong since the founding, and Democrats believe that the system requires constant revision to meet the needs of succeeding generations (the "living Constitution"). So what is the republic's version of tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule?



Let us return, as Machiavelli did, to Rome. When the Republic died, it did not backslide into the hereditary monarchy of the Tarquins. The Emperors of Rome sometimes inherited their positions, but more often they fought for them or were appointed to them by their unrelated predecessor. In the struggle between the nobility and the commoners of Rome, the winner was the army that served them both. It became the undisputed emperor-maker, and very soon after Augustus became a law unto itself, often beyond even the power of the emperor to control. However, the army, far from being an exclusive club, was open to all citizens and (later on) non-citizens. Do your time and earn your place and you too would ride the gravy train, and if popular enough, even stood a chance of calling yourself Caeser.



What do we call an institution that purports to be servants of the people but really holds power well beyond their official task, and really pursues its own ends, and rewards members not for serving the public good but for playing the game by the institutions own rules and traditions?



I submit that the best term is found in this editorial by British historian Paul Johnson in the July '03 issue of Forbes. Chastizing European anti-Americanism as cultural racism as ignorant as anything Americans are accused of being, Johnson writes:

The truth is, on the European Continent there is little experience of working democracy. Italy and Germany have had democracy only since the late 1940s; Spain, since the 1960s. France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes. Elements of the French system are being imposed throughout the EU, even in countries such as Denmark and Sweden that have long practiced democracy with success. In a French-style pseudodemocracy, intellectuals have considerable influence, at both government and street levels. In a true democracy, intellectuals are no more powerful than their arguments.

A few problems: Johnson has a different viewpoint on American democracy than I do (although his is worth considering). Also, I don't know if his take on European democracy is wholly, or in any part, just (but I suspect there is some truth to it). But, if accurate, his description of the diplomatic elite of the EU undermining voter intent in Europe partly mirrors the military elite that undermined Rome's electoral processes.



So we come back to our question. What do we call it when the servants of a republic become its masters, when the rules of holding office and the authority of the office-holder takes precedence over the popular will that ought to guide a mixed government?

France is not a democracy; it is a republic run by bureaucratic and party elites, whose errors are dealt with by strikes, street riots and blockades instead of by votes.

France's position is unique in Europe: alone among her neighbors, her President wields actual authority, and is seperately elected from the legislature. She is thus, by my definition and her own, a republic. So, if Johnson has described her situation accurately (a description which one could also apply to the federal government of the United States), what do we call her? What is the bad form of the republic?



I think bureaucracy works just fine. If you have a better term, I'm all ears.