Power

The bulk of my thinking about political theory and practice for the last year and a half has focused on liberal democracies with capitalist economies. When selecting my reading list for the winter break, it only seemed appropriate to break with this relatively well-accepted theme and to delve into the theory of power--unlimited power. I noticed on my bookshelf an unread copy of Machiavelli's The Prince that I had acquired for my aborted class on the history of European civilization and a copy of Hobbes' Leviathan which I had received for free from a student who was trying to get rid of old coursebooks (somehow this seemed so un-Hobbesian). Needless to say, the political theory of power is fascinating stuff, much more so than the democratic theory that we digest over and over from the time of our births in this country.

The most remarkable fact about Machiavelli is that, despite his reputation, he was actually heavily in favor of the republican model of government. In the book, he repeatedly states this, and even gives a brief analysis of why it is so. The point then is, that if there exists a nondemocratic form of government such as a dictatorship or monarchy, then the sole incentive that leaders possess is to maintain their power, not strictly to maximize the welfare of society. After all, if they cared about maximizing the welfare of society, then they would immediately instate a democracy. This does not happen empirically. So, with the objective of power in mind, Machiavelli gives "advice" to a power-seeking "prince". In so doing, he (if inadvertently) constructs a remarkably complete deductive model of how a rational dictator ought to operate. This alone is innovative enough, but he also tests the facets of the model (i.e. his particular pieces of advice) through extensive historical analysis. Remarkably, I can't think of any significant claim in the work with which I strongly disagree.

Hobbes, on the other hand, is very disagreeable, but even more interesting than Machiavelli. Hobbes attempts to use mathematical argumentation to construct a purely deductive model of political behavior and thereby demonstrate the need for a single supreme sovereign with unlimited power. This, he claims, is the optimal form of government. While I am only about one-third of the way finished, the main problems with his argument appear to be in his initial propositions.

It is a very long and comprehensive work, so I will not go into the precise details of my counterarguments, but I believe one can successfully apply the model to explain why democracy tends to fail more often in third-world countries. To see this, we first must look to some of the general shortcomings of Hobbes' argument. Most generally, Hobbes fails to consider forces of social cohesion that cause the individual's optimal behavior to not be "warre-like". One good example is the existence of a stable economic institutions. Supposing these institutions exist, as long as there some semblance political order, democratic, aristocratic, or dictatorial, it is very likely that individuals will have an incentive to remain peaceful rather than return to the state of nature. Even with a small amount of order, the benefit that can be reaped from a vibrant economic environment will be greater than that that comes from destroying it and trying to gain more political power in a system devoid of economic activity.

In third-world nations, however, these baseline institutions frequently do not exist, so Hobbes's argument about the state of nature holds because the cost incurred when the nation reverts to the chaos is much smaller than in an economically vibrant nation. In such a state, there will therefore be more people vying to seize power. Moreover, in such a climate Hobbes's argument that all-powerful sovereigns are more stable than democracies is probably true. Democracies allow competition for power, so all parties will simultaneously be attempting to defeat each other with no strong leader in place. Thus, in third-world nations, the democratic outcome is highly unstable, while the dictatorial outcome is very stable: the dictator can just systematically eliminate his opposition, given enough force.

That being said, I still cannot agree with Hobbes's conclusion that the all-powerful sovereign is the optimal outcome even in the third-world case, because of the incredible economic and human capital benefits that come from having a free and open society. Such a society would be highly improbable under an all powerful sovereign.