Montesquieu described three distinct types of government: Republic, Monarchy, and Despotism.
He makes salient the difference between Monarchy and Despotism: in a monarchy, the power of the sovereign is constrained, where in a despotism, the sovereign has total power to execute his every whim.
Rather than making one threefold distinction, as Montesquieu does, it seems more appropriate to make two twofold distinctions: the seat of sovereignty, and the limits to that sovereignty. The first distinction is who holds power, whether the masses (democracy), a few (aristocracy or oligarchy), or one (monarchy). The second distinction is how much caprice that sovereign is allowed. The former distinction is discrete and the latter continuous.
The ancient Greeks called a corrupted monarchy tyranny. Both these words are in common use. Less common is their word for corrupted Democracy: ochlocracy – mob rule.
I submit that modern Democracy tends (and has been tending since the New Deal) more towards ochlocracy. The fears of the early founders about the tyranny of the majority have been and continue to be realized in costly centralized and non-optional programs such as social security, and now the individual mandate for healthcare.
Let us divest ourselves of romantic notions that “Democracy isn’t perfect but it’s the best system we’ve got”. Democracy turns to ochlocracy, monarchy to despotism, when limits to sovereign power (in our case Constitutional) are ignored – when we interpret our founding documents as negative, rather than positive, meta-policy.
The solution isn’t better politicians. Every election in retrospect shows us this, yet our hopes of reform are inflamed anew with each one coming. We can only redeem our (or any) democracy with structural limits on what it can do.
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Starving Artist says: Jun 06, 2010 at 16:26In whom do you propose we vest the power to impose those structural limits on democracy? And how soon would that also be corrupted?
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thrica says: Jun 06, 2010 at 16:42To go back to the Greeks’ trifold distinction, they also categorized the three types of social order (which are slightly different from Montesquieu’s) by the characteristics they require of their people:
-Democracy requires virtue
-Aristocracy requires moderation
-Monarchy requires honor
Some have argued “beget” instead of “require”, but I think experience has shown that’s more fantasy than reality.
As much as I’d like to conceive of a robust system that requires no specific characteristics of its people, your point is where it becomes impossible to factor out personal responsibility from the system. Democracy, if it is to be a system of liberty, requires a certain degree of vigilance on the part of the people. If the people lapse into servility and become indifferent to the exercise of power over them, then Democracy turns into Ochlocracy, and from there into something probably worse.
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Ben Triplett says: Jun 08, 2010 at 22:14I was just reading a chapter on post-liberal theology in Barth, Yoder and Hauerwas. Have you read either of the former? I think you would be intrigued…(and yes, it has to do with your post…especially Yoder)
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thrica says: Jun 08, 2010 at 22:54I have read Hauerwas, and one chapter of Barth – otherwise, no, but I still have that reading list you made for me a few years ago, if you want to make an addendum.
Oh, and I mean ‘redeem’ in the very loosest non-religious sense of the word. ;)
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Ben Triplett says: Jun 09, 2010 at 15:17Hahaha…I see you read some of Theopolitical Imagination? What did you think?
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thrica says: Jun 10, 2010 at 18:55Actually I haven’t yet; this post and the next were from reading Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society. I’m glad to know I’ll be in a good frame of mind to read it when I’m done though!