Monthly Archives: May 2018

Who Rules? Part One—The Palace

14 Monday May 2018

Posted by in Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation, Uncategorized, Writing

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(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

Up to now, we have spent a lot of time discussing the constraints that any political regime has to deal with—the problem of legitimacy, taxation and legibility, power projection, and so forth. There are still more areas to discuss, such as the strategic problem of having a standing army (which can pose a threat to its own political leadership, and often does); but for now, let’s switch gears and discuss the differences between regimes, starting with a fundamental question: which elites rule?

Rather than exhaustively catalogue the relatively minor differences between presidential democracies and parliamentary democracies, or sultanist dictatorships and technocratic dictatorships, here we will follow the work of the eminent political scientist Samuel Finer. In his model, there are four possible groups of political elites who could claim the right to rule a regime (or polity, as he terms it): the Palace, the Nobility, the Church, and the Forum. Pure types exist, or you can have hybrids such as Palace/Nobility or Palace/Church; but per Finer, these four contenders for power are it. (This is convenient for worldbuilders, because we can figure out the broad type of our regime without being excessively constrained in the details that we love to invent and tinker with.)

Before examining each, we have to ask: what about the military, or the bureaucracy? Both of these group can hold tremendous power in a regime, and indeed become the de facto rulers. Yet to Finer, neither of these groups is capable of ruling legitimately, because the justification for their power derives from one of the four groups: a military junta may claim to rule on behalf of the people, or a labyrinthine bureaucracy can claim to represent the Emperor. The military and bureaucracy in themselves lack a legitimating ideology, which is what the four main elite groups sometimes possess. Additionally, as Peter Feaver notes, if a general overthrows the dictator, he ceases to be a mere general because he is now responsible for the entire regime, not just the interests of the military, and the problem of civil-military relations begins anew (even if his fellow officers may trust him more, initially). In effect, he himself becomes a Palace autarch.

(I wonder, however, if we are not in our lifetime seeing the rise of an ideology justifying the rule of expert bureaucrats, on the grounds that the people are too stupid to rule. At the moment, though, this ideology has little purchase in the broad society—which is why the rulers of the European Union, for example, pay lip service to democratic ideals even as they cheerfully ignore the will of the people as a matter of course.)

With that, let us begin by looking at our first pure type, the Palace polity:

In the Palace there is only a single controlling will—that of the ruler, the center of the Palace, the nexus from which all decisions flow. The ruler could be called king, emperor, dictator, president, or any number of possible titles. He may preside over a nobility or other sorts of important people, but what distinguishes the pure Palace polity from the Nobility polity (to be discussed soon) is that nobles are totally dependent on the ruler—they do not have autonomous power, and their privileges depend entirely on carrying out his will. Within the state, the ruler has ultimate, arbitrary power, without procedural constraints of the sort we expect in a liberal democracy. The power of all others depends entirely on their proximity to, privileges from, and influence over the ruler.

In the Palace polity, Finer notes, legitimacy always derives from some form of charisma or tradition. Charisma could be “routinized” and shade into tradition, as when the hereditary ruler claims to be a god or otherwise supernatural. Rulers could also claim the divine right of kings, or the Mandate of Heaven, or some other transcendent blessing justifying his rule. But whatever the exact form of legitimacy, the ruler is ultimately responsible only to the power or beliefs grounding his rule: the gods, or God, or the harmony of the universe. This might require that the ruler spend much of his time in rituals and ceremonies befitting his cosmic role, especially if he is seen as the intermediary between Earth and Heaven. (The Chinese emperors were so perceived, for example, as were many rulers of the Ancient Near East.)

But the ruler is not required to justify himself to anyone else—especially not the people. Finer states that all of the types of legitimacy claimed by a [pure] Palace polity are, “without exception, authoritarian. There is no question of popular sovereignty. The monarch’s authority descends on him from a Higher Power and sets him above the people.” This is definitionally true; if the ruler does claim to represent the people, or actually is elected by them, he would no longer rule a pure Palace polity. Instead, this would be a Palace/Forum polity, a tremendously important type which we will discuss later.

Again, within the broad category of “Palace” the details of two different regimes could vary considerably; the Han Empire’s regime is quite different from ancient Persia, for example. But as you craft your setting, Finer’s typology can keep you grounded in the essential features of your regime.

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(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!

Plus, the associated Kickstarter project is now live! We’ve got a fancy video and everything…)

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Power and Legitimacy

08 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by in Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation, Writing

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(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

Why do people follow kings? Or presidents, or dictators?

The ruler of a state is a single man (or occasionally, a single woman). He is surrounded by people with guns, any one of whom could easily shoot him. But instead, they follow his orders and shoot other people, or sometimes don’t need to shoot anyone at all—because everyone else is following the ruler’s orders too. But why?

Remember from our discussion of selectorate theory that the ruler needs to have a support coalition on which to anchor his rule. The simplest way to maintain your coalition is by providing benefits to its members—either explicit payments, or privileges, or public goods such as peace and commerce. Perhaps, then, your coalition will follow you instead of another ruler because they believe that you are better at providing benefits than others would be, or that the disruption involved in overthrowing you is not worth the potential gain.

This can be enough, if you have particular administrative or political skill. But it is a relatively fragile basis for your rule; at any time, a competitor might arise who promises to rule more effectively. More seriously, each official has opportunities to ignore your commands if it would benefit him—by receiving bribes, for example. If his only reason for following you is the benefits you provide, he will be much more likely to take bribes or exploit his position in other ways when the opportunity arises. Over time, this kind of venality can totally undermine your rule.

Another common method is to rule by fear—provide benefits to your military enforcers, and use them to cow the rest. This reduces the likelihood of venality, because the official must weigh the potential benefit against the danger of being caught. And realistically, most regimes use a combination of benefits and fear, as they are more effective in combination. (Even in “nice” societies, we rely on the police to deter official corruption—which raises a problem when it is the police who are corrupt. But I digress…) Still, relying on fear is also a fragile strategy—if you ever grow weaker and lose your ability to punish defectors, your entire regime may crumble overnight.

Both providing benefits and threatening punishment lead to a mindset of constant calculation of one’s odds. Better for the regime if it could appeal to a reason why obeying it is the right thing to do, even aside from personal benefit. Such a sense that you ought to obey and that the ruler is entitled to rule is called legitimacy.

Max Weber, that towering genius of sociology, identified three kinds of legitimacy (there are more, but he was focused on the contrast between ancient religious societies and the modern state, his personal enthusiasm): charismatic legitimacy, traditional legitimacy, and rational-legal legitimacy. All three can coexist, and often do, but as pure types they look like this:

Traditional legitimacy is where we follow a given regime because that is what we have always done. The prince succeeds the dying king because no one imagines doing anything different; the peasants pay the tax-collectors (as little as possible) because that’s what their fathers did, and their grandfathers, and everyone they can remember. This does not necessarily imply unthinking obedience; routine behavior can often become its own justification, because changing behaviors can introduce disruption, uncertainty, even chaos and suffering. But traditional legitimacy appeals to history, and one’s obedience to historical norms, as the main justification for continued cooperation with the regime.

All this is thrown into upheaval by the charismatic leader, who appeals not to history, but to his or her own remarkable personal qualities. Often, the charismatic leader claims to be a prophet, either of a god or gods, or of inevitable historical forces, or of a radical new ideology. The charismatic leader challenges the way things have always been done, and gathers followers by force of personality and the momentum of his achievements. Examples would include Martin Luther King, Joan of Arc, George Washington, Julius Caesar, Benito Mussolini, or Adolph Hitler. Clearly, charisma can be used for good or ill.

Ironically, however, a successful charismatic leader cannot sustain a regime by charisma alone. Taxes need to be collected, laws enforced, and supporters rewarded; charisma is a poor means of doing that over long periods, and even if it were, what happens when the charismatic leader dies? The wise charismatic leader will take steps to institutionalize his rule, by building a bureaucracy or a durable support coalition. And certainly once the original leader dies, his successors will tend to justify their rule by appealing to his memory. Thus, Weber notes, the initial charismatic revolution becomes transformed into a traditional regime of its own—or, in more modern times, a rational-legal one.

Weber’s description of rational-legal legitimacy was highly colored by the Germany of his day (the early 1900s), in which the ideal of a disinterested bureaucratic technocracy was supplanting the rule of the old German aristocrats. Thus, he describes a rational-legal regime as based on a bureaucratic class that operated according to laws and regulations, without a hint of self-interest, justifying their activity with the sacred power of the law. The law becomes self-justifying, as an expression of the will of the state. The self-interested rule of traditional aristocrats and the disruptive power of charisma become replaced by the impersonal wisdom of statecraft, executed by a professionalized bureaucracy.

In truth, as I mentioned, most regimes have elements of all three forms of legitimacy (and really, I am tempted to include ideology as a fourth type, since it has its own unique characteristics and doesn’t fit neatly into Weber’s schema). Any dictator worth his salt will try to create a cult of personality; hence, Kim Jong Il claiming to be a champion archer and athlete. Similarly, in the United States, much of the populace reveres the Founders as a sort of secular pantheon. And bureaucracy was known as far back as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, though it was not professionalized as Weber would like.

More importantly, any form of legitimacy imposes constraints. The ruler must act, at least in public and at least most of the time, in ways that are consistent with the claimed basis of the regime’s legitimacy. Otherwise, the manifest hypocrisy will erode the feeling of obligation among the citizens that legitimacy is meant to create. The fall of the Soviet Union is perhaps the most spectacular example of recent times, coming as it did after the people had grown cynical of a ruling class that mouthed the platitudes of Communism without providing social equality or development.

Speaking of which, even well-entrenched legitimacy will only take you so far. If a legitimate king puts his support coalition at risk with reckless policies or defeat in war, they will only stick with him for so long before inventing a pretext to replace him, crown or no crown. Similarly, if the laws are not being enforced and no one fears the regime, it will be only a matter of time before petty opportunism snowballs into something more serious.

Still, legitimacy is supremely important. It is the glue that holds societies together. It allows regimes to rule effectively without imposing a costly police state, as most of the people will respond with quasi-voluntary compliance, in the phrase of Margaret Levi.

For writers, legitimacy can be a powerful theme. Does the regime have the support of the people? On what basis does it claim the right to rule? Do your protagonists live under a legitimate but feckless ruler, such that they must choose between respecting their traditions and physical survival? How might a regime seek to generate more legitimacy? Does a ruler behave as he should in public, but violate his claimed principles in private? How might an external enemy, or a rebel group, or a treacherous nobleman, attack a regime’s legitimacy?

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(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!

Plus, the associated Kickstarter project is now live! We’ve got a fancy video and everything…)

Ye Olde Magick Shoppe is Live on Kickstarter!

04 Friday May 2018

Posted by in Self-Actualization, Writing

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You may have noticed that I’m accepting submissions for a new fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Well, I’m pleased to announce that the associated Kickstarter project is now live!

The more backing we receive, the more short stories I can accept and the more that authors will be paid. So if you like reading fantasy stories about when magic is for sale, definitely check us out; and if you like writing such stories, do check out the submission rules and submit your work before the deadline.

Onward!

Identity, Boundaries, and Conflict

03 Thursday May 2018

Posted by in Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation, War, Writing

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(This post is part of Politics for Worldbuilders, an occasional series.)

Identity is a thorny topic, especially as it relates to political behavior. One’s identity can have many parts: I am at once a son, a husband, a father, a writer, a blogger, a gamer, a political scientist, and a whole host of other things. Some of these identities take precedence at some times, only to be pushed into the background at other times.

Then there is ethnic or national identity, a common source of political conflict. But even then, one’s identity has many layers to it, each of which can be more relevant at some times than others. For example, one can call himself American, Latino-American, Guatemalan-American at different times; and sometimes the identity of “Guatemalan” will be more important than the larger category of “Latino”—usually when you are in conflict with other Latinos.

Political theorists are split on the topic of identity. The “primordialist” view is that some identities, like ethnic identity or national identity, are basically set in stone: they derive from “real” sources like genetic heritage and group history. An ethnic Berber, for example, will be sharply distinguished from neighboring black-skinned Africans, first of all by physical appearance, but then by fundamental attitudes deriving from Berber history and culture. No matter how much our Berber immerses himself in another people’s culture and adopts their customs, he will never stop being Berber.

The opposing view is “social-constructivism”; this view holds that all identities are socially constructed, built on the cumulative decisions and interpretations of individuals as such, and as interacting participants in a shared social setting. The social-constructivist view of identity focuses on the ways in which identities are malleable; the American category “white,” for example, used to exclude Mediterranean peoples such as Italians and Greeks, whereas today it encompasses them. The constructivist view of identity will emphasize both the changing content of a given identity, and the shifting boundaries between in-group and out-group. In particular, many cultural practices have the explicit purpose of dividing “us” from “them,” and these practices take on more importance in times of danger—when knowing who is a “fellow” becomes crucial.

Practically speaking, both views have merit. In a trivial sense, all identities are socially constructed, in that they depend on the beliefs of the individual and the other members of the family or society. As far as I know, no society or person attaches a lot of importance to whether a person’s earlobes hang free or are attached, for example; so not all differences between people become vested with importance. On the other hand, there are some identities whose basis is effectively primordial. For example, being black in America is likely to remain salient for a long time to come, even for new immigrants from African countries who are not used to thinking of themselves that way; the people around them impose that identity, even if they themselves resist it. In that sense, even though the identity of “blackness” is indeed socially constructed from the point of view of the surrounding society, for the African immigrant it becomes effectively primordial—since it cannot be opted out of.

Still, what the identity of “blackness” means will vary, depending on how people think of it, and also how they draw the boundaries between “black” and “not-black.” Additionally, the priority one places on blackness, compared to other identities such as “parent” or “American” or “Methodist,” will vary as well. These areas of variability are where politics enters into the equation.

We mentioned that people carry many different identities, and which one is most important will vary. But why, and when? Generally speaking, an identity will come to the fore when it is being threatened, or when there is a social or political benefit to emphasizing it. As an old Bedouin saying puts it, “I against my brother, I and my brother against a cousin, I and my cousin against the stranger.” At each stage, different facets of one’s kinship identity are emphasized, depending on degrees of closeness and trust.

However, identities can also be manipulated politically. A tragic example is what happened in post-invasion Iraq, circa 2004 or 2005. The small community of Iraqi expatriate leaders, who had agitated for the war from their perch in the United States, now returned triumphantly to Iraq in order to claim the political positions in the new democracy to which they felt entitled. But they found that in their years abroad, they had lost all their connections to local communities; they thus had no base of electoral support. The less scrupulous among them responded by whipping up sectarian tensions; “Vote for me, because I am a proud Shia and I will defend my fellow Shia against the Sunni threat, and help us Shia get our revenge against those Sunni in the process.”

This process—convincing people that a certain identity needs to take precedence over other concurrent identities—is called boundary activation (the boundary between “us” and “them”), and it is one of the most powerful and often most dangerous forces in politics. In the case of Iraq, the expatriate politicians were often able to gin up electoral support based on ethnic or sectarian chauvinism, but they also set the groundwork for years of bloody inter-communal violence that strengthened the Iraqi insurgency, contributed to ISIS’s rise, and has caused an endless spiral of death squads and massacres.

More benign examples are convincing Americans that their identity of “worker” takes precedence over “consumer” (in support of protective tariffs) or the reverse, or that one’s identity as “American” takes precedence over “white” or “black” or “Latino”, or the reverse.

But there are always political figures who calculate that they can gain power by emphasizing a different set of identities, usually ethnic identities; and for them, it may be better if violence results, since that makes it harder to go back to the way things were—once different ethic groups are at war, it becomes actually dangerous to deemphasize your ethnic identity. That, in a nutshell, is what happened in the former Yugoslavia: Serb politicians were the first to deliberately incite ethnic war for their own gain, but politicians on all sides soon followed. (This is why appeals to ethnic identity-politics are so incredibly dangerous, whether at a Klan rally or in a social-justice seminar.)

The same happens in reverse as well. Many new states will violently impose a common nationalist identity over the separate ethnic identities of their many internal communities. From their perspective it is necessary to ensure the unity of the new nation, but for the persecuted minorities, this typically means the violent suppression of their culture and heritage, the forced indoctrination of their young, and the loss of their language and history. Latin American states’ treatment of their indigenous peoples are a good example.

For authors, political conflicts over identity are a gold mine of story drama. They hit both the external aspect of plot jeopardy, and internal character conflict of how your characters think of themselves: who they are, who they might be, and who they stand with. Many of our most powerful stories are built around identity conflict, and if you can layer the political aspect on top of that, so much the better. The key concepts to keep in mind are boundary activation (especially by unscrupulous politicians seeking to gain or keep power), identities that are imposed by the surrounding society (as in the case of African immigrants), and how violence can actually make it harder to reverse identity politics.

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(And don’t forget, I’m accepting submissions to a fantasy anthology, Ye Olde Magick Shoppe. Check out the announcement and start writing!)