Parts to Wholes: the Socionomic Systems Nexus: Peace, Stability and Prosperity: the Nature of Good Government

Just in case you haven't noticed we've ended up with a series of postings and excerpt collections that paint a picture of the current state of the world. And that SoW started with a survey of the "non-flat" realities and pointed back at the role of culture, values and institutions. And proceeded by looking at the Good, the MabyeSo's, the Bad and the Really Ugly. Overall, on balance, we have to judge that more progress has been made for more people than at any time in human history. Largely by improvements in state governance that have allowed greater stability and peace to promote economic progress. Which in turn has led to increasing prosperities around the world. Yet at the same time we've also documented a wide range of the usual troubles and tribulations as well as deeper structural challenges. It is possible that as we try and keep the wheels on all this that we're going to pass into a multi-decade tunnel on the other side of which lies a general worldwide stable order that provides the good things in life for an increasing portion of the world's populations. May it be so. At the heart of all this though we've found a couple of key things. One is the question of good government (we won't repeat Adam Smith's famous dictum which we've used several times but...please remember it). The other is the tendency of the developed countries to combine the notion of imposing their own solutions on the rest of the world without due grasp of their histories and cultures. Whether we make it thru the tunnel is, therefore, a question of encouraging the growth of good governance in a re-architected world system that builds on the native inheritances. Adopting and adapting from worldwide best practices but changing and transforming them to suite local idiosyncrasies.

So what is good government ? That seems to be the question at the heart of the challenge.

Well we've certainly tried and experimented with a lot of alternatives thruout history, as this spectrum suggests. As a spectrum it also implies a sense of progress but that's not true for a couple of reasons. The obvious being that it is all too often the case that one sees regression historically. The other, subtler one, being that it's not clear that farther to the right is inherently better on many grounds. If one tries to impose a form of government, say a complicated oligarchy, on a small tribe that's so obviously ridiculous that we'd never consider it. But the principle holds - the form of government needs to be appropriate for the size and complexity of the society involved. It also needs to recognize the realities of history and culture - imposing a pure democracy on a people without much experience, commitment or civitas hasn't worked well either. We forget that we've been experimenting with the gradual evolution of representation and civitas - the commitment of the citizen to a society and a society committed to the rule of law reciprocally - in the English-speaking worlds for almost a 1,000 years.

The third, and most important and critical factor, is that governments should be the ultimate arbiter of force and its' monopolist in a given area. Again we've gotten used to "good government" and forgotten the historical underpinnings, or ignored them, in all our debates. We've got a lot more to explore here but this point is so important I'm tempted to stop for a moment of reverent contemplation. For example Spain, France and Germany have all gone thru major changes of government, aside from general war, in the 20thC. In France the 4th Republic, formed in '48, fell in '58 under the threat of civil war from the French military and was replaced by De Gaulle and the Fifth Republic with an entirely new constitution. That was just fifty years ago !

I've often thought that actors and English professors shouldn't be allowed to pontificate on Shakespeare because they haven't the background to understand him. The people who should be watching, commenting and learning are large-scale organizational executives. If Iago's double-dealing, back-stabbing and clever treachery isn't as apt a description of Wall St. investment banks as there is I've seen none better. But Lear - now there they miss the boat. This isn't just about a dysfunctional family. This is about a King who's spent his entire life building a country through war, conflict and wise ruling thinking he's found a way to pass on that inheritance for his people and watching as all he's worked for and all his hopes for that country crash around him thru the ambition of the people he trusted most in the world.

And Shakespeare wasn't writing fiction - he was writing from history and his own personal experiences. As they say, "Politics read in tooth and claw". "Ol Wille Boy knew that better than the generations of professors, pundits and limp-wrists who's prisoner he's become. The same could be said for Kipling who knew what it was to face the choice on the plains of Afghanistan of blowing out your brains or waiting for the women to come out.

William especially understood that most difficult of moments for any form of government - the transition to it's successor. A peaceful transition with a history of peaceful transitions changes the entire equation because it means that stable government is likely to persist over generations. What were the Wars of the Roses, which gave rise to the Tudors eventually but tore England apart in bloody fighting over power for two generations or more, about but transitions. Go watch Ian McKellen's Richard III for as stunning a depiction as you'll ever see.

So laugh at chads all you want and believe whatever popular mythology about mis-counts you care to. But we took it for granted that the issue would be resolved according to rule, procedure and process; AND that everybody would ADHERE to it. Not someting the rest of the world can take for granted. Ask Nikita Krusshchev or Lavrenti Beria if you don't believe me. So when the Chinese are looking forward to their fourth peaceful transition in a row, according to rules, appreciate what you're seeing.

All of that suggests two fundamental questions, or composite, questions to use in evaluating the suitability and effectiveness of a government. Ultimately pointing to the question of whether or not it will be able to establish a monopoly on force, maintain it over generations and use that force for the provision of the institutional frameworks required for civilization and prosperous societies. One could even make the argument that much of human history is given over to the debate over these questions. Just by way of example consider this exhibit on the Art of Ancient Mesopotamia and check out the Standard of UR. You'll see as accurate a depiction of War and Peace from 5,000 years ago as you'd see from paintings of the Spanish Civil War. Or better yet compare and contrast the murals on the walls of the Council of Nine of the Italian city-state of Siena. And notice that the implicit "messages" are identical then - and now for us. You'll find the history of Siena revealing as well. Which leads us to the accompanying graphic on a structural analysis of good government.

Here we've shown the answers to the two questions as the key dimensions of a graphic where the horizontal indicates the extent of participation in the governing process and the depth of that participation. Otherwise known and labeled as "legitimacy" - do the citizens believe in the validity of their state and are they committed to it. That is do they trust it and in it. "For the people, by the people, of the people" ? Which question we measure on the vertical axis by measuring "predation" - that is to what extent does a government collect and allocate resources for the betterment of the people, the government or the power-holders. The classic dissiptative prince problem verses defense, maintaining order, establishing courts and property rights, building roads and bridges, investing in education and so on. Tell me what was Versailles ? That's not as simple a question as it might appear as Louis IV came to power after the French Wars of Religion and repeated insurrections on the part of the nobility. To establish and maintain his legitimacy part of the necessary strategy was to overawe the fractious and self-serving nobility, especially the major ones who otherwise might do again to France what their peers had done during England's Wars of the Roses.

At the end of the day there are two fundamental tradeoffs at play here. One is the ability to collect taxes - think of it as the rent one pays for all the potential goods that stable and effective government can provide. Or conversely as an evil to be avoided when collections exceed what is economically sustainable. Put another way governments will tend to collect taxes up until the point where the cost of the last ducat collected is greater than the benefits derived for the government. But there's a host of inter-dependent factors because a good government that invests its' revenues in growing the society can keep the proportion of taxes collected the same and get more revenue; or even lower the proportion and still get more revenue. Further a government trusted by the citizenry will find their resistance to taxes lessened by their conviction that the funds will go their benefit, to a greater or lesser extent. Furthermore the greater the participation in the political and governance processes the more people are making decisions for and about themselves. The result is that the more inclusive, or representative a government is, the more taxes can be raised legitimately AND the more likely they'll be invested in the overall good of society.

In a nutshell we just captured the themes and moral lessons in Shakespeare's plays and Chinese legends - consider a film like "House of the Flying Daggers" whose hero is a doctor fighting against a corrupt mandarinate. Or how much the story resembles our own Robin Hood legends. When a small band of farmers is being raided by bandits they will hide their wealth and under-invest in improvements in farming. So the more excessive the depredations of these predators the less and less there is to gather tax-wise - the story of the Magnificent Seven eh ? During some of China's worst troubles in the '20s and '30s once warlords had seized control of large areas they found it in their own interests to build bridges and roads and to operate on that efficient frontier where MR=MC. Or consider the Serene Republic of Venice where the oligarchy ruled for hundreds of years and constantly re-invested tax revenues in public projects like the Arsenal of Venice whose ship-building prowess was the backbone of Venices's trading prosperities.

Or consider our present-day nation-building exercises in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as our earlier efforts in Germany, Japan, South Korea or Taiwan (admittedly stretching the examples just a bit). All four of the latter have become some of the most successful, effective, prosperous and representative societies on earth. Contrast that with Kilcullen's assessment (Iraq Resartus (Readings): Stability, Progress and Will) of the challenges in moving from tribal societies built on shifting alliances of warring factions where each faction is out for what it can get...because it must be. Good government is centripetal - that is it reinforces itself as a virtuous cycle of efficient taxes leads to more public investment. Bad government is centrifugal - that is it tends to fall apart as each faction sacrifices the good of the whole for its' own survival.

And, there in another nutshell, is a fundamental principle of US foreign policy. Our goal should, and must be, to constructively engage in seeing as many societies as possible get as good a government as is possible. Ones that are appropriate for their stage of development; and allowing for their histories and cultures.

Brave New World: Non-Flatness, History and Challenges

SoW I (the Good): Britain, Brazil, Mexico and India

SoW II(the Maybe So): Africa and Asia (China, Burma)

SoW III (the Bad): Challenged Russia...another Potemkin Village

SoW IV(the Ugly): Israel, the ME and Good vs Bad Government