Can empire-sized Republics long survive, and the failure of judicial supremacy as a bulwark
On the self-government of prehistorical human settlements, whether empire-sized Republics can long survive, and the failure of judicial supremacy as a bulwark
Can the Empire-sized Republic long survive? This was the issue I pondered after Donald Trump was elected President in 2016. Once a country gets big enough, do elected officials ultimately fail, and people inevitably turn to an autocrat to lead them?
That led me on a journey reading the histories of all of the larger Republics in human history, from Rome through Venice, Genoa, Florence, the Swiss Confederation, the Dutch Republic, and the Glorious Revolution that birthed the modern UK.
It also caused me to realize that the most revolutionary part of the US Constitution, although the Founders did not realize it at the time, was the enshrinement of judicial supremacy over the other two branches of government, via the philosopher kings with life tenure who sat on the Supreme Court and who were allowed the last word on interpreting the US Constitution and the statutes of Congress. In so doing, the Founders broke a cardinal rule that had guided Republics for over 2000 years; namely, the greater the power of the office, the shorter period of time it should be held. Otherwise, the temptation of tyranny would be too great.
This was made bracingly clear this past week with the leak of Alito’s draft opinion overruling Roe v. Wade, and making quite clear that the majority of the present Court views entire “right to privacy” as illegitimate – which if it is close to the final opinion, is the biggest “crossing of the Rubicon” for the Court since Dred Scott. Judicial supremacy with lifetime appointments means that the entire basic structure of society, no matter how long entrenched, is subject to the whims of a bare majority of the members of that Court. The arguments of anti-Federalist Brutus, that the Supreme Court, once it recognized its power, would turn tyrannical, and whose essays I have highlighted in past posts, have at last been proven thoroughly correct.
To return to my main theme, I have also recently read “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow, after which I compared it with Yuval Noah Harari’s “Sapiens.”
While I was unimpressed by most of “The Dawn of Everything” – most of it was extrapolation and speculation every bit as valid as that by the drunk at the end of the bar – the part that was most convincing was the hard evidence of archeology. There are two important facts that jumped out about the excavations of ancient cities and settlements: (1) the brickwork and construction were every bit as exact and impressive as your best planned modern city or town. These were no hovels or shacks, but well-executed dwellings; and (2) as the authors point out, most of them show no evidence of palaces or any other outsized buildings we would expect to be occupied by rulers. In short, going back 10,000 years, the hard evidence of archeology suggests that most settlements were village-sized Republics, on the order of New England town halls.
Why did “civilization” begin? I think Harari has the better argument. Graeber and Wengrow think that civilization drives population growth, but the evidence is most consistent with the reverse causation, i.e., population growth drove the necessity for more organized and permanent food production, and for denser and permanent living arrangements. Harari notes just how exponential long-term human population growth has been. Only 2500 years ago, during the golden age of Athens or the first Chinese dynasty, the human population was only about *1%* of what it is now.
In any event, there is a good argument that historically the default government for most human populations hasn’t been dynasty or autocracy, but rather small-scale Republics, with pre-set rules and public participation (Vindication for John Rawls!).
In the last 500 years, but especially the last 200 through 1991, the long-term political trend has been the displacement of heredity autocracies by Republics on a large, nation-state or empire scale (including those where there are still monarchs, but like QE2, they only reign but do not rule). Before that, only the Roman Republic, its opponent Carthage, and medieval Venice were republics that had ever governed very large or disparate land areas.
The first modern transformations were the Dutch revolt of the 1580s and the ensuing Republic, followed by the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688. But the real turning point, where the transformation scaled up, were the American and French Revolutions, both of which established Republics on very large scales. It took 200 years, but by 1991, all of the *ruling* monarchies had been overthrown, and in almost the entire West, including Latin America and, briefly, Russia, but also in places like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, the rule of law – however shakily – was ascendant.
But – to return to my initial question – can Republics also be Empires? As I wrote above, the historical examples going back 1000s of years are few and far between – and two of the three came to bad ends (the exception, Venice, was fading ever since Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, but was not finally overcome until Napoleon. Only 70 years later, it became part of Italy). The British Empire certainly qualifies, but their civic participation was most definitely *not* extended to the imperial vassal states. And now we come to the present, where the US and EU are the modern tests.
Since 1989, with the crushing of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations, the alternative – Great Powers ruled as autocracies – has been gaining strength and become ascendant, by the entrenchment of Vladimir Putin in Russia, and a host of autocratic rulers in places like Hungary. And Trump’s (temporary?) failure in the US in 2017-21 wasn’t for lack of trying.
In other words, from a large scale historical perspective, to reiterate my opening remark, we have turned the page into an era where the question is, can liberal democratic Republics survive long once they reach the size of Empires; or must they inevitably fall into tyranny (the ancient cycle long ago proposed by the Greeks on the scale of city-states)? From the internal viewpoint of the US in 2022, I am not too hopeful.
Long time ago I tried to wrap words around a notion I had that when the statistical population grows large enough, diverse enough, across just so much territory it is, like a perpetual motion machine, a statistical inevitability bound by all the laws of man and nature to fail, to implode. Doesn’t really roll off the tongue well, and I’m 1) not sure it’s right and 2) not sure if it’s a residual bias from reading too much scifi not so long ago.
TB,
Sure that I read too much scifi as as kid (a very long time ago), but the stories that I recall about the apocalyptic nature of humanity had us failing to work together until some war with each other, some aliens, or super-robots that we had built to be either servants or soldiers, took us to the brink of extinction. After that existential struggle was won, then homo sapiens was reminded why it had evolved as a social animal, the need to cooperate for our own mutual survival.
TB,
IOW, statistically then the history of human civilization provides far too small a sample size to draw “a large scale historical perspective” about any possible future much less any inevitable future.
…not withstanding any apocalypse of climate change or nuclear war to abbreviate the possibilities.
“…In so doing, the Founders broke a cardinal rule that had guided Republics for over 2000 years; namely, the greater the power of the office, the shorter period of time it should be held. Otherwise, the temptation of tyranny would be too great…”
[That is an operational reality completely consistent with human behavior. OTOH, I would not read too much into the half life of empire sized republics OR autocracies. Human civilization has not been around long, neither has technology. If we can dodge the climate change bullet, then we may yet learn how to more democratically organize human existence. Our greatest existential threat is that the aggregate human power to destroy far exceeds the aggregate human capacity to organize rationally for our own health and safety. So far in human history, our experiments with government have been clumsy and poorly thought out due in some part to the rapid advance of population and technology that has overtaken the incremental advance of republican polity that is still tightly bound to the hereditary constructs of elitism.
This is where one might actually learn some from John Taylor Gatto in his history of public education built upon the legacy of the Egyptian and Prussian empires. However, I would ignore Gatto’s politics. I liken it to the social model of bees with their queens, drones, and workers. Elites have historically taken steps to compartmentalize society to preserve their special place. Horace Mann was no exception with his system to train the general public to serve their masters as soldiers and workers and loyal followers. Our republic, just like others in history, has been designed to preserve elite status and allocate political power to the worthy. If we want a different outcome, then we need to work along a different plan. We now have the means to scale democracy, but we still lack the will. Something about tyranny of the majority, which was an elitist idea from the start. Tyranny of the ignorant is something to concern ourselves with though.]
Strange to read that a possible decision by the Supreme Court that would confirm the authority of a legislature over that of judges is sort of an example of “enshrinement of judicial supremacy over the other two branches of government.” Roe v Wade, which has been in the news lately so readers could be familiar with it, feels like a clearer example.
New Deal Dem
I thought the point of Graeber was the archaeology. As for the drunk at the end of the bar, the same might be said of your essay, but I think that both you and Graeber rise above that standard.
My own sad conclusion after reading Graeber was that attempts at “republics”…societies without government coercion… was that they were all eventually conquered by societies with bigger armies.
Those bigger societies were often both “democratic” and coercive.
Ron
i think your arguments are better than the drunk’s at the end of the bar too. I would just throw out [“into the ring”, not “away.”] my opinion that “the masses” are never going to be “well informed.” They will always be led by someone who puts enough effort and “genius” into leading them. And the resulting “elite” will rule by force however disguised by “democracy” while that leftover idea from the last revolution is still popular. Those small non-coercive republics that Graeber describes as having consciously rejected “wealth” in favor of freedom, were still ruled by coercion…the coercion of public opinion, easier to manage without naked force in a small “state” than a large one.
Coberly,
It is entirely possible that my own faith in ordinary people has been colored by the people that I have known over the decades, but especially those that participated with me in protest demonstrations in the late 60’s. This experience has perhaps made me healthier and (non-materially) wealthier than it has wise in the ways of the larger world. Adding to this illusion is the response of others towards me over the decades both at work and at play. In my experience thoughtful decent people have outnumber the other kind by a factor of well more than ten to one.
Speaking of ratios, then if the entire roll of eligible voters that choose not to vote were added to the roll of voters for either of our two parties, then the remaining of our two parties would rarely ever win any office in a general election.
Eric377
strange indeed.
until you realize it’s all lies. the SC has no interest in states rights. it is interested in bringing to power a faction that uses “state’s rights” to decive the people to whom it sounds like a good idea.
the whole point of the 14th Amendment was to restrict states from denying the rights of people. This may or may not have been contemplated by the Framers, but would be a pretty natural growth from the basic idea of “all men are created equal” that fueled the Revolution and the Constitution that gave hope to the world.
as it is, reserving some “rights” to the states is part of the whole checks and blances thing that is supposed to prevent the rise of tyranny. easier in states than in a nation, but easy enough in a nation that the very rich have learned how to control.
preserving “liberty” is just a complex enough problem that no one’s simple idea or slogan is going to do the job. and maybe nothing is up to the job when one faction becomes dedicated enough and rich enough and sophisticated enough to destroy freedom by using the slogans of “freedom.”