When cities or countries are accustomed to live under a prince, and his family is exterminated, they … are very slow to take up arms, and a prince can gain them to himself and secure them much more easily. But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them.
-Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Chapter 5
Machiavelli, almost 500 years ago, had this keen insight on the apparent paradox that the stronger a government is, the easier it is to overthrow. He is of course speaking entirely from the perspective of conquering it as an outsider however – I intend to generalize the notion to include (and focus more on) the overthrow of the government from within.
Let us regard the power of a government for coercion as a fraction from 0 to 1, with 0 being anarchy and 1 being totalitarianism (Such a measurement could never in fact be quantitatively made. However the logistical problems inherent therein are irrelevant to the discussion: for us it matters only that a government could be placed on this scale relative to other governments, as the number itself is irrelevant except insofar as it can be said to be greater or less than another. It is thus an ordinal, and not a cardinal scale). This number can be thought of as an overthrow effectiveness coefficient (hereafter denoted by Ω). For our purposes we will only look at overthrows of subjugation rather than overthrows of liberation – i.e., moving from a lower coefficient to a higher coefficient – for the problems of relinquishing power where it before existed are of a qualitatively different sort than of obtaining power where it before did not. The former may be looked at on another occasion.
It is at this point necessary to draw a distinction between the act of overthrow and the ease with which one establishes and maintains its substitute rule. The overthrow of a government becomes easier the less powerful it is – that is, the probability of success can be thought of as an increasing function of force used (whether from within or without), and a decreasing function of Ω. However, the ease of maintenance of that rule once obtained is an increasing function of both force and Ω. In general, the easier it is to depose a government, the harder it is to rule its people.
Why are the weakest and most limited governments the hardest over which to maintain control? Machiavelli, in the passage above, attributes it to entirely cultural factors, and is right in doing so with regard to invasion from without. The people of the freer state resent their loss of liberty, whereas those of the totalitarian state never had any to miss.
This is, however, only a special case: more generally, the reasons are more institutional than cultural. The institutional factors are only obviated in the case of external invasion because the invader necessarily carries with him established institutions with which to bind his captives. In the case of an internal revolution on the other hand, such institutions do not already exist. This is where it becomes the most useful to think of Ω as an overthrow effectiveness coefficient: the societal impact of the collapse of the existing government is determined by it. For example, it would be rather easy to overthrow a minarchist state. But the effect on society would be minimal. Many people would doubtless not even be affected in any meaningful way. More powerful institutions must be formed from scratch, and only with great difficulty can a group from within enslave a formerly free people. The overthrow was easy, but the efficacy of the overthrow towards the establishment of substitute rule was very low.
If on the other hand Ω is closer to 1, the effects of a government overthrow upon society will be very noticeable. It will be first of all more difficult to overthrow as the existing power has by necessity more physical power at its disposal. Even in the event of success, if the government uses fiat currency, the crisis of confidence will most likely lead to hyperinflation. But once these obstacles are hurdled – if the new group successfully deposes the current regime and restores some semblance of normalcy to society – the institutions of coercion and control are already fully functional. Such a revolution, once completed, will find little difficulty in keeping itself in power: the overthrow itself was difficult, but was very efficacious toward the establishment of substitute rule.
Perhaps these institutional factors are ultimately cultural as well. Certainly institutions of coercion and control are not maintained without some degree of complicity from the populace. But the question of whether culture or institution is logically prior (or whether either can spring from the other) is beyond the scope of this article. Suffice it to say that no matter the source of the overthrow, the principle of the inverse difficulty (ceteris paribus, at least) of overthrow and maintenance still hold.
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