• About Oren
  • Edited Anthologies
    • The Odds Are Against Us
  • Fiction by Oren Litwin
  • Lagrange Books
    • Calls for Submissions
      • The Future of Audience-Driven Writing
      • Archives
        • Call for Submissions— “Asteroids” Science-Fiction Anthology
        • Call for Submissions— “Family” Fantasy Anthology
        • Call for Submissions—Military Fiction Anthology
        • Call for Submissions—”Ye Olde Magick Shoppe” Fantasy Anthology
    • The Wand that Rocks the Cradle: Magical Stories of Family
    • Ye Olde Magick Shoppe
  • Politics for Worldbuilders
  • Scholarship

Building Worlds

~ If You Don't Like the Game, Change the Rules

Building Worlds

Tag Archives: popular representation

Who Rules? Part Three—The Forum

03 Tuesday Jul 2018

Posted by Oren Litwin in History, Politics, Politics for Worldbuilders, State Formation, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

democracy, militia, politics, popular representation, State Formation, worldbuilding, writing

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

Some time ago, we mentioned the four potential ruling groups laid out by Samuel Finer, and discussed the Palace Polity; in the second post in this set, we discussed the Nobility and our first hybrid polity, Palace/Nobility. Now, let’s add the Forum into the mix, along with the Palace/Forum.

While in the Palace it is the autocrat who rules, and in the Nobility autonomous aristocrats hold power and scheme jealously against each other, in the Forum, power is vested in the people. In earlier posts, we have briefly noted egalitarian societies in which no true state exists, in which the people of the society share a voice in the major decisions of that society. In the Forum, the rule of the people is explicit and formalized. State institutions exist to carry out the needs of society, but they are subject to the people and depend on it for their orders. Formal mechanisms such as voting, written law and public law courts, and public debate translate the opinions of individuals into a collective imperative, that is sovereign over the government administrators.

Forums can take several forms, of which democracy is only one—and they need not include everyone in the population. In Greek democracy, for example, the vote was restricted to free males who were heads of their households, and often who met certain criteria of wealth. Most of the time, fewer than 10% of the residents of ancient Athens were eligible to vote. But for Finer, that is sufficient, because the franchise was broad enough to go beyond a narrow aristocracy or oligarchy, broad enough to include significant parts of the people itself in its self-rule.

Ancient Israel, which Finer believes was the very first Forum state in history, was not a democracy; but it was a tribal society in which decisions were made by a consensus of elders, until the rise of the monarchy—and even then, the kings had to be careful not to ignore public opinion or the tribal leadership, as could be seen by Ahab’s hesitance to simply confiscate the land of Naboth, or the secession of the northern tribes from the obnoxious rule of Rehovoam, successor to King Solomon.

In both cases, and in pretty much every durable Forum, the political power of the people rested on a foundation of popular military participation. Usually, a Forum was made up of a nation in arms. One of Finer’s main arguments is that political power tends to correspond to the distribution of military force. In early pre-state societies, all able-bodied men (and occasionally women) were considered warriors. Weapons tended to be simple and were widely available, so that the distribution of power between people was fairly even. This is one of the factors sustaining an egalitarian social structure. (By contrast, one of the key processes involved in the emergence of Danish chiefs, over a society that had previously been egalitarian, was the chiefs’ strategic control over the new technology of iron swords, and their careful distribution of swords to their favored supporters.)

Popular military power was true of the Greek polis, where to be qualified for citizenship you had to be able to serve as a hoplite, a spearman in the famous Greek phalanxes. But it was also true of the tribal confederation of ancient Israel. In its earliest, pre-kingly phase, the Israelites served in the popular militias, largely on foot and without heavy armor. (Thus, in the Biblical account of Deborah’s war against the Canaanite general Sisera, the Canaanites possess heavy chariots which the Israelites could not match. They therefore forced battle in the hill country, where the light infantry of the Israelite militia could negate the Canaanites’ advantage.)

The power of the popular militia restrained the growth of centralized political structures in Israel, for a time. Later, the arrival of heavy armor, chariots, cavalry, and foreign mercenaries provided increased military power to those wealthy enough to afford them, creating the basis for a ruling class; the first monarchy emerged shortly after. (I discuss the social effects of weapons technology in a bit more detail here.) But even during the time of the monarchy, Israel was unique among any polity for over a thousand years in that the Forum remained important. The king was the first limited monarch in history; he was subject to the Divine law, and was not its author or above it in any way.

More recently, the Forum polity of the United States was founded on the colonists’ successful rebellion against the British, made possible by the widespread ownership of firearms; the French Revolution, too, was sustained by the invention of the “citizen’s army,” which resisted the combined invasions of the other major powers of Europe. But wait—the French Revolution was hardly a Forum, you may say. It was a cruel totalitarian regime, soon overthrown by self-styled “Emperor” Napoleon! So why include it here?

The French Revolution may not have been a pure Forum, but it was a classic example of a very important hybrid type: the Palace/Forum. In this regime, though most power resides in the Palace, the legitimating ideology is very different. While a pure Palace draws legitimacy from itself or from the gods, the Palace/Forum claims the right to rule on behalf of the people. In principle, the autocrat is simply a trustee of the people, rather than its master. In practice, this might even be true; the modern United States is effectively a Palace/Forum that, even though imperfect, is far better at actual representation (for now) than are other Palace/Forums such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or any one of a dozen caudillo rulers in South America. But as my examples make clear, even nominally democratic Palace/Forums need not remain so for long, if too much power accretes in the hands of the Palace. As long as the Palace claims legitimacy as a trustee of the Forum, its behavior will be markedly different from a pure Palace. (But not necessarily better.)

(On a related note, popular legislatures today are a poor protector of the rights of the Forum. In the early history of legislatures, the rulers had to pay attention to them because it was the legislatures who collected taxes. Ignore the legislature, and the ruler went broke. But ever since rulers have been able to build their own tax-collection machinery, the “power of the purse” in legislatures has become more and more attenuated.)

Recent Posts

  • Building an Economy: Money, Part 1
  • Worldbuilding, National Beliefs, and Punishment
  • New Release! Telling the Stories of Women Veterans
  • Group Identities in Politics: Ethnic Groups
  • Building an Economy: Capital

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Not a fan of RSS? Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 253 other followers

Follow me on Twitter

My Tweets

Archives

  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • July 2017
  • February 2017
  • December 2016
  • December 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2013
  • August 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Categories

  • Better Fantasy
  • Credit
  • Economics
  • Education
  • Finance
  • Health
  • History
  • Homeschooling
  • Investing
  • Lagrange Books
  • Manifesto
  • Military
  • NaNoWriMo
  • Politics
  • Politics for Worldbuilders
  • Real Estate
  • Revolution
  • Self-Actualization
  • Self-Promotion
  • State Formation
  • Uncategorized
  • War
  • Weapons
  • Writing

Blogroll

  • Discuss
  • Get Polling
  • Get Support
  • Learn WordPress.com
  • My Other Blog
  • Theme Showcase
  • WordPress.com News

Personal Webpages

  • My Other Blog

Writing Resources

  • Ralan—Publishing Market List
Links on this site may lead to products for which the owner may receive compensation.

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Building Worlds
    • Join 253 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Building Worlds
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar