“The Evolution of Political Thought” by C. Northcote Parkinson (1958) points out that “political progress” actually happens in cycles and that the appearance of “progress” is just the result of people having short time horizons and not being able to see enough of history to see the whole cycle. Also not realising what is happening in the third world, where many democracies have collapsed into dictatorships.
Governing bodies can be either one person (monarch or dictator), a small group (oligarchy or aristocracy) or by a majority (democracy). (Parkinson included Communism in the chapter on Theocracy). States tend to cycle through these different types. This has been known from ancient Greek times. (The Greeks were the first place where there were lots of small city states in a small area and they could see each other in different parts of the cycle.)
Let’s start with Monarchy.
A monarch has children and wants to give something to each child, not just the eldest. Thus the other children become nobles. Over time this family grows and grows and the number with political power keeps increasing until the government is really an aristocracy.
Its not fair that a limited number of people have power in the aristocracy so its size keeps growing. Eventually it is so big that there is not much distinction between aristocrats and other and the system evolves towards democracy.
The problem with democracy is that the populace can vote themselves largess from the treasury (cf current situation in USA where everyone wants “the government” to pay for their health care, or the situation in Greece where political parties that promised that Greece would not have to pay off its public debt (which would have required higher taxes and cutting pensions) were successful in the recent election). Sooner or later the government falls apart because it has no money. In the chaos a dictator arises and is GIVEN the power by the majority in return for making everything predictable and safe again.
The dictator passes on power to his children and over generations this becomes established by custom as a monarchy and so the cycle continues.
Parkinson does claim that different cultures fit more naturally in different forms of government, racing through the others until they get back to their natural form where they tend to be stable for longer.
Parkinson’s schematic is ridiculously, well, schematic. And from this perspective in time, the usual ideologue’s move of taking a concern of his time (anti-liberalism and big government) and claiming it applies over all time.
Democracies die because of too much welfare? Ridiculous! Is that how the Athenian democracy died, voting too much pay for jurors? Is that how Weimar Germany became Nazi Germany, because the burgomasters were drawing too much disability? Is that how the nascent Japanese Meiji democracy was snuffed into militarism with the Emperor’s aid? Is that why Sun Yat-sen’s democratic movement split into the Communist and the corrupt KMT, because they were voting themselves largesse? Venice’s oligarchical democracy didn’t seem to have any such problem before its conquest. And so on.
The monarchy to democracy progression is little better. I bet you could not name 6 clear examples of that, from the full sweep of human history. Certainly it doesn’t apply to America, Japan, or Athens, which either went straight from aristocracy (such as it was) to democracy, or retained the aristocracy well into their democratic periods.
(I used to think my time reading people like Thucydides or Herodotus or Gibbons was wasted on trivia, but at least it saves me from grotesquely false simplifications.)
This argument seems plausible on the surface but it doesn’t explain the recent and dramatic global shift toward government by democracy. And I struggle to think of a single example of this cycle completing as described.
“The Evolution of Political Thought” by C. Northcote Parkinson (1958) points out that “political progress” actually happens in cycles and that the appearance of “progress” is just the result of people having short time horizons and not being able to see enough of history to see the whole cycle. Also not realising what is happening in the third world, where many democracies have collapsed into dictatorships.
Governing bodies can be either one person (monarch or dictator), a small group (oligarchy or aristocracy) or by a majority (democracy). (Parkinson included Communism in the chapter on Theocracy). States tend to cycle through these different types. This has been known from ancient Greek times. (The Greeks were the first place where there were lots of small city states in a small area and they could see each other in different parts of the cycle.)
Let’s start with Monarchy.
A monarch has children and wants to give something to each child, not just the eldest. Thus the other children become nobles. Over time this family grows and grows and the number with political power keeps increasing until the government is really an aristocracy.
Its not fair that a limited number of people have power in the aristocracy so its size keeps growing. Eventually it is so big that there is not much distinction between aristocrats and other and the system evolves towards democracy.
The problem with democracy is that the populace can vote themselves largess from the treasury (cf current situation in USA where everyone wants “the government” to pay for their health care, or the situation in Greece where political parties that promised that Greece would not have to pay off its public debt (which would have required higher taxes and cutting pensions) were successful in the recent election). Sooner or later the government falls apart because it has no money. In the chaos a dictator arises and is GIVEN the power by the majority in return for making everything predictable and safe again.
The dictator passes on power to his children and over generations this becomes established by custom as a monarchy and so the cycle continues.
Parkinson does claim that different cultures fit more naturally in different forms of government, racing through the others until they get back to their natural form where they tend to be stable for longer.
Parkinson’s schematic is ridiculously, well, schematic. And from this perspective in time, the usual ideologue’s move of taking a concern of his time (anti-liberalism and big government) and claiming it applies over all time.
Democracies die because of too much welfare? Ridiculous! Is that how the Athenian democracy died, voting too much pay for jurors? Is that how Weimar Germany became Nazi Germany, because the burgomasters were drawing too much disability? Is that how the nascent Japanese Meiji democracy was snuffed into militarism with the Emperor’s aid? Is that why Sun Yat-sen’s democratic movement split into the Communist and the corrupt KMT, because they were voting themselves largesse? Venice’s oligarchical democracy didn’t seem to have any such problem before its conquest. And so on.
The monarchy to democracy progression is little better. I bet you could not name 6 clear examples of that, from the full sweep of human history. Certainly it doesn’t apply to America, Japan, or Athens, which either went straight from aristocracy (such as it was) to democracy, or retained the aristocracy well into their democratic periods.
(I used to think my time reading people like Thucydides or Herodotus or Gibbons was wasted on trivia, but at least it saves me from grotesquely false simplifications.)
This argument seems plausible on the surface but it doesn’t explain the recent and dramatic global shift toward government by democracy. And I struggle to think of a single example of this cycle completing as described.
It is amusing that this description how democracy leads to tyranny is virtually identical to that of Plato.