Efficient apparatus, rule of law, and accountability are the pillars of effective government and thus political order. Bypassing the thinking of Ancient Greece, Fukuyama relies on anthropology to locate the modalities of government and simultaneously man’s tendency to underline structure through familial instincts. Premodern China, 13th-century Egypt, 16th-century Turkey, and the medieval Catholic Church provide leading case studies of statecraft and its demise. As ever, decline is an important theme: moral and cultural advancement suggest political decay. To paraphrase Chris Caldwell, in this taxonomy of political forms (up to the French Revolution), the author as political thinker considers what is best for man, and as political scientist what is best for government. As such, passages are dry and detached; however, the beginning each chapter helpfully limns its contents. Worth rereading.
Government
25. Menzies, Afternoon Light (10 Dec 2022)
Essays in postwar government by Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, showing a pragmatic, legalistic bent. The politician ought neither trust in emotion nor be a cynic, but demonstrate pragmatism. Menzies sketches leading contemporaries, notably Churchill and Queen Elizabeth as well as his predecessors. In portraying diplomatic efforts to persuade Nasser to negotiate over the Suez Canal, the author asserts Eisenhower undermined efforts. The Australian and American constitutions are compared, the latter charter being more subject to political considerations, and the relationship of Australian government to the British metropole considered. Menzies criticizes the Commonwealth’s automatic admission of newly formed republics as well as treatment of South Africa and Rhodesia. The object of Commonwealth meetings is not to issue resolutions but to exchange ideas.
7. Kelly and Bramston, The Dismissal (24 Apr 2016)
Governor-General Sir John Kerr’s dismissal of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam violated multiple standards of propriety, including Kerr’s obligation to inform Whitlam of the seriousness of the budget crisis (i.e., blockage of supply), Kerr’s keeping counsel with High Court judges, his discussions with the opposition, and the use of ‘reserve powers’. The authors generally located the shortcomings in the personalities of the vainglorious yet timid Kerr and to a lesser degree the ambitious Malcom Fraser and the bombastic Whitlam. Constructed as a journalist’s tick-tock account with the newest information presented first, the book seems unlikely to be the last word because of its focus on personalities to the near-exclusion of contemporary society, economy, and politics; it reads like a polemic, defending contemporaneous conclusions, although this could be a byproduct of Aussie vernacular.
Virtu vs experience
Do civic elites seek to frame judgement on those matters which the populace cannot properly evaluate, so to insulate themselves from criticism?
Writing of Guicciardini’s
- Dialogo
, JGA Pocock observes:
…Guicciardini had himself expressed in earlier writings that the many are good judges of their superiors, able to recognize qualities which they themselves lack, and so fit to be trusted with the selection of the few to hold office. Once the distinguishing quality of the leader ceases to be virtu and becomes esperienzia, this belief becomes less plausible, since esperienczia is an acquired characteristic which can be evaluated only by those who have acquired some of it themselves, and since a republic is not a customary but a policy-making community, there is little opportunity for the many to acquire experience of what only governors do – a form of experience whose expression is not custom but prudence.
JGA Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 2016, p234.
2. Beard, SPQR (10 Feb 2019)
Sketches the political and sociocultural history of Rome from its putative foundation in 753 BC to 212 AD, when the granting of citizenship to all of empire’s residents changed the empire’s character. This resolution to the question of basic civic rights, a continuing issue since the state’s acquisitive nature engendered cultural ferment, was more important than the doings of the Julio-Claudian dynasts (the ‘biographic tradition’ of historiography). Over the fifth and fourth centuries BC, the Conflict of Orders gradually more or less replaced rule by wealth (i.e., generally by birth) with merit, the highlight being the establishment of the Twelve Tables law code in 451-450. The effect was to establish ambition and competition at the heart of the social order; political reform was typically radical action (e.g., distributing land, offering subsidized wheat) justified as a return to past practice. Meanwhile, Rome’s expansion was built on willingness to incorporate defeated enemies into its army and society, and to manumit slaves, both unlike any other ancient society. Despite the primary political traditions of libertas and republican governance, the logic of the empire created the emperors: the scale of responsibility (e.g., territory, resources, population) could not be managed by a deliberative senate. Augustus, though inscrutable, created the dynasty’s template, but failed to solve the problem of succession. (Meanwhile the senate lapsed into a legislative body.) Making use of archaeology, Beard undertakes lengthy excursions into common life, sometimes betraying Whiggish assumptions, much as she earlier discusses the city’s founding traditions. In the Julio-Claudian era, there were few attempts to impose social controls. Local elites cooperated, doing Rome’s work by adopting its culture even as they retained local traditions. Christianity was the one religion which could not be adopted (suborned) by the empire. In conclusion, Beard holds that Rome’s treatment of basic matters of political philosophy, for example in the conflict between Cataline the radical demagogue and Cicero the traditionalist, remain fundamental to contemporary Western society. But her heart really lies in the sociology of a pre-modern empire and perhaps too its applicability to the 21st century.
5. Barraclough, Crucible of Europe (18 Apr 2019)
Narrates the emergence of dynastic (neo-nation state) and church institutions in France, Italy, and Germany during the 9th and 10th centuries, contrasting the post-Carolingian order with Anglo-Saxon England. Several persevered into the pre-modern era and later. With the fall of Italy to the Lombards and Spain to Islamists, the center of a truncated Europe had moved north. The lasting importance of the Carolingian Franks lies in the spread of government and civil administration through the northern lands including Poland and Bohemia. In this era the allied Catholic Church became a force to be reckoned with (rather than merely the hallmark of a religious society). Carolingian learning, notably the copying of manuscripts but also innovative epistemology, set down the height of erudition and specifically the legacy of the Latins until the 12th century. The settlement of 812 crowned Charlemagne as a western emperor, fusing two kingdoms in his own right and separating them from the Byzantine lands. But Frankish rule was built on conquest and had already begun to sputter; relying on feudal vassals and missi dominici was too much for contemporary government especially in Lombardy, Bavaria, neo Hungary, and Saxony – even though later peoples would look back upon it as an idealized unity when forging their new state forms. The Danish, Saracen, and Magyar invasions acted as a solvent on the Carolingian state, which was partitioned under Louis, whose legacy is the establishment of the new nation-states as well as primogeniture. In this time, Nicholas I built up the independent role of the papacy.
The raids brought depopulation, agricultural decline, and people seeking protection from local strongmen. They hit hardest in France, hastening retreat to the country castle. Here the tendency to revert to pre-Carolingian traditions was most pronounced, here the author contends we most see the Carolingian breakup did not produce separate countries, but rather they were borne of different regional responses to anarchy. In France, it took more than two centuries for territorial and social restoration of order. Contra Wickham, there was no ‘caging of the peasant’: people willfully surrendered freedom from security from Viking raids. The criterion of nobility was ability to bear arms, not birthright. Vassalage lost stigma of servitude, gaining an ethos of common service and serving to demarcate the political classes. The ca 850 edicts of Charles the Bald required men to choose their lord, sanctioned the vassal’s oath, and sanctioned hereditary succession to the local fief. Thus the country would emerge into medieval feudalism, with 55 counties, up from 27 at the start of the 10th century. But the French rulers’ continued concession of lands to win the support of nobles all but bankrupt the Carolingian and Capetians: the monarchy did not regain really independent strength until 1100. Again the author contends feudalism did not produce anarchy but was an organic reaction. Its principles spread throughout Europe via the Spanish Reconquista, the Norman invasion of England, adoption in Germany and eastward; and would remain the basis of order down to 1789.
The history of post-Carolingian Italy is the struggle for control of the Lombard plain among two Frankish families, from Spoleto and Friuli, and one from Lucca. As the raids in Italy were piratical, the towns continued to develop, under the tutelage of bishops; the role of counties weakened. Order was restored comparatively earlier, by the German Otto I in 961-62.
The Germans were the first to recover from anarchy, being less impacted by the raids and more inclined to retain elements of Carolingian government including a loyal aristocracy. Henry I prevented the breakup of eastern Frankish lands, his successor Otto I sought not to break the dukes but reasserted control over the royal demenses and the church in the duchies, so as to ally the church with the crown. Vassalage remained an onerous condition, marking another contrast with France. Otto’s crowning by the pope in 962 marked a turning point in progression to dynastic order in German lands under the Saxon dynasty, but its middle-term decline was germinated by its retroactive character.
England did not dissolve by result the Viking raids, as in France, but produced a more coherent, forward-looking response then the Germans: local government via the hundreds and the shires and a single monarchy from several pre-raid kingdoms. Alfred reorganized the military even while on the defensive, forging a mobile, unified force (i.e., not a local levy), a network of forts (burhs), and a navy for forward response. The forts became the basis of civil authority, as in Lombardy, France and to a lesser degree Germany; the hundreds extended the forts in promoting social order (e.g., responses to crime). By assuming responsibility for peace, the monarchy created a machinery for order where none had existed; this was extended beyond the Norman conquest.
The reestablishment of settled government broadened agriculture (notably in Italy), economic exchange, and indeed the purview of civilized northern Europe, most recently centered on Charlemagne’s Aachen but now more dispersed among Hungary and England. Monastic reform, another response to anarchy, also served to extend social order and played a related role in breaking down regional differences; but the church loosed sociopolitical forces which were to challenge the Saxon monarchy in the mid-11th century. Aristocratic hostility to Salian (successor to Saxon) reforms undermined royal authority. After a half century of struggle, a new order in central Europe emerged in 1122.
21. Kelly, March of Patriots (22 Nov 2019)
Prime ministers Paul Keating and John Howard extended Alan Hawke’s reform program, albeit for different reasons and in contrasting ways, positioning Australia for a tranquil prosperity in the 21st century. The pair shared a working-class heritage though the Labor man was egalitarian by ideology, the Liberal by creed. Kelly describes the outcome as ‘Aussie exceptionalism’, the transition from a protected to a global economy while preserving pragmatic, socially egalitarian features and avoiding ‘US style’ laissez-faire (or neoliberal) features.
a Then-Liberal party leader Alan Hewson should have won the 1993 election, but his Fightback platform provided Keating a target to distract from a deep Labor recession; this year, not 2007 ended ‘neoliberalism’ in Australia. Despite winning Keating blamed Hawke for not relinquishing power in 1988. His income tax cuts (combined with raising gas and tobacco surcharges) were cynically designed to make the Hewson’s GST proposal unworkable, and would force his finance minister to resign soon after delivering his first budget. Nonetheless, despite 10 percent unemployment he stood by the 1980s reforms, breaking tradition of responding to downturns with higher tariffs. The introduction a central bank and abandoning the wage award system would set the stage for low inflation. As a cultural warrior, Keating was anti-British (a la Manning Clark) and a radical nationalist (i.e., anti Federation), exemplified by his attack on the flag. Prone to overreaching, he required faith in his ideological, ‘redemptive’ positions on the market economy, republicanism, Aboriginal reconciliation, and Asian détente. Keating held the Mabo decision allowed for ‘coexistence’ of native claims and pastoral title, allowing the former a seat at the negotiating table; but the outcome was judicial administration and so tanglement. Ultimately he failed to graft Mabo, Asian détente, republicanism, and multiculturalism onto modernization.
Labor’s contesting the 1996 election on terms of concealed budget deficit cost the party a decade. Workchoices, Howard’s effort at labor (industrial) deregulation, not only raided the opposition’s turf but also sought to demonstrate growth did not result in inequality (but shared gains). Howard could not have succeeded Hewson, but followed Alexander Donner because Kevin Costello was prepared to wait his turn. He had changed since his first term as Liberal leader, moving beyond the party divisions of the 80s to fuse a Burkean conservatism with Smithian economics. Labor’s reform model comprised financial deregulation, tariff cuts, moves to counter inflation (i.e., the central bank), privatization, and enterprise bargaining; Howard added tax (GST) reform as well as fiscal and labor measures – unusually conceding credit to Labor for the effects of financial and tariff changes. Unemployment was not conquered until the 2000s, but the Liberal PM renewed the country’s sense of personal responsibility, moving it further away from (social) protection. He was disinterested in religion as a political objective, and dropped opposition to ‘multiculturalism’, but held his ground on citizenship and immigration and contested Mabo and the 1996 Wik case, which implicated some 40 percent of the land. Kelly writes Howard missed his opening vis-à-vis Aboriginal reconciliation. He loved talkback radio and laid claim to a generation of ‘battlers’, the Aussie Reagan Democrats.
The passage of GST was opened by a court ruling stopping New South Wales from taxing tobacco; monies were to go the states. The newly floating currency enabled the country to weather the Asian crisis, while underlining Howard’s confidence in its Western ties. Under Howard, Australia’s plan was not détente but world deputy (e.g., Afghanistan) and regional leader (Timor independence). By the end of his term, relations with Tokyo, Dew Delhi, Jakarta, and Beijing were at a high point; Howard skillfully drew closer to China while immediately supporting America in its war on terrorism (having been present in Washington on September 11, 2001). Hanson was a noisy, worrisome, and ultimately flawed challenger. As to an Aussie republic, Howard agreed with Keating a popular presidential mandate would overturn the Westminster system, and exploited uncertainty whether it meant the country would no longer have a British head of state or should become a direct democracy.
After the debacle of Seattle 1999, Howard had sought a bilateral trade deal with America, sealing the arrangement with instinctive show of support after 9/11: Howard immediately understood the attack as a threat to the West. (Ironically, the economic downturn of the Howard’s second term, punctuated by the 2000 introduction of the GST, a landmark to his tenacity, broke the common assumption that Australia was tied to the US economy, the Antipodean slump being unrelated to tech.) The Tampa incident demonstrated both determination to control Australia’s borders and response to judicial activism. Australians agreed with Howard the executive branch should be responsible immigration, regardless one’s party affiliation. Post-reform Australia was not prepared to accept judicial activism as an alternate policy mechanism.
Full of contemporaneous and post facto interviews, Kelly is Australia’s answer to Bob Woodward, himself an establishment figure if not quite so biased. Though sometimes repetitive, and the introduction is something of a flying start, the book is clearly the starting line for academics.