By Hana Passen, Associate Director for New America’s
National Network, www.newamerica.org
EDITOR’S NOTE: New
America is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank and civic enterprise that brings
promising new voices to public discourse.
New America shares its essays with the media. More on New America at www.newamerica.org
The first
two months of the new administration have been plagued by widespread protests,
leaks, acrimony with the press, and legal challenges, fueling a flood of think
pieces calling this a “constitutional crisis,” comparing President Donald
Trump’s brand of populism to that of dictators around the world, and auguring
that this version of white ethno-nationalist populism may signal the end of American
democracy as we know it.
Yet while we are certainly
seeing tensions between the branches of government, as well as alarming changes
in the tenor of our politics, it seems unlikely this rising populism will
damage our governance forever. Why? Because this debate is literally thousands
of years old—political commentators from ancient Greece and Rome were ever wary
that what they viewed as too much democracy might lead to rule by a demagogue
or to anarchy. And while neither Aristotle nor Polybius can address,
specifically, the stressors in our democracy today, their ancient analysis of
the ways governments grow and change can give us insight into our own time—and
what we need to do better.
Both Aristotle and Polybius
identify three virtuous forms of government—monarchy, aristocracy, and
democracy—and their three “perverted” forms—dictatorship, oligarchy, and mob
rule – and lay out the ways that each form arises and cycles through the others
(Aristotle Politics 3.7, Polybius Histories 6.6-6.9). Both see the cycle of
government beginning with a just monarchy, falling into dictatorship, morphing
into a virtuous aristocracy, which decays into an oligarchy, before the people
rise up and establish a constitutional government—or democracy—which in turn is
perverted. Here, Aristotle and Polybius differ. Aristotle sees democracies
declining into rule by the masses over the rule of law (Politics 4.4), while
Polybius claims that “this is the regular cycle of constitutional revolutions,
and the natural order in which constitutions change, are transformed, and
return again to their original state (6.9). Both, however, see democracy as a
stop on the road before it slides into a perversion of itself.
So what can we do about it?
Aristotle’s solution to the
inevitable perversion of each form of government was, at its most basic, an
appeal to education. He claimed “that which most contributes to the permanence
of constitutions is the adaptation of education to the form of government.”
(Politics 5.9), such that if a government is democratic, the people should be
educated democratically, and taught early the spirits, norms, and assumptions
that undergird that form of government. Polybius, on the other hand, found the
solution in mixed government—a form of constitutional arrangement that
“combined together all the excellences and distinctive features” of monarchy,
aristocracy, and democracy.
He believed that by mixing
the best parts of a central single ruler with the powers of a strong few and
the mitigating influence of popular rule, “no part should become unduly
predominant, [nor] be perverted into its kindred vice; and that … no one part
should … decisively out-balance the others; but that, by being … in exact
equilibrium, the whole might remain long steady.” (Polybius Histories 6.10).
And both worried that “many practices which appear to be democratic are the
ruin of democracies” (Aristotle Politics 5.9).
America’s Founding Fathers
also worried about the over-democratization of political processes. In
Federalist 10, for instance, James Madison wrote that “democracies have ever
been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible
with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short
in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths … A republic, by which
I mean a government in which the scheme of representation takes place, opens a
different prospect, and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” He and his
co-authors found clear value in intermediate layers between the people and
their exercise of power. Why? To keep the nation from sliding too far toward
pure democratic rule, which they worried could lead to a tyranny of a majority
over disagreeing factions.
We can see the evidence of
some of their worries in today’s political debates. We have entered an age of
unprecedented democratization of communication and connection. Technologies
like Twitter and Facebook have changed the way a president communicates with
the people who elect him or her, sidelining the role of an independent media.
Trump himself has said that he doesn’t need traditional media, instead turning
to Twitter to reach the people directly through pithy one-liners, speculation,
insults, video statements, and more.
With such a direct connection
between the president and the people, we lose the important intermediate steps
of fact-checking, analysis, and commentary that are important in ensuring a
well-informed populace, and find ourselves instead in the realm of “alternative
facts”—Aristotle would have been aghast at how far from a civic and democratic
education we’ve come! Here, trust in an independent, and fact-based media is
key to combating the proliferation of incomplete information put out in a
140-character tweet.
Polybius, meanwhile, would
probably be unsurprised by the rise in hate speech incidents following Trump’s
election. He wrote that when a demagogue takes power in a democracy, “as soon
as [the mob] has got a leader sufficient and daring … [it] produces a reign of
mere violence” (Histories 6.9)—and the direct, daring communications of our
current president can be wielded against (especially) minority groups in ways
that lead to violence.
We can also use Aristotle and
Polybius’ lens to examine how we might address the over-democratization of the
political process. For one, civic education would reestablish baseline norms to
animate all political discussions. Increased understanding of the differences
between legislation and executive orders, the powers apportioned to Congress as
opposed to the president, and the role of the judiciary could fuel real
discussion about the appropriate reach and power of the president’s executive
orders, for instance, and their likely effects. Moreover, the compilation of
best practices based on fact and experience might bring some of the intense
polarization in Congress to a halt.
Equally, Polybius speaks to
obedience and to fair and just laws as a necessary condition for a just
democracy (Histories, 6.47). Today, the role of a fair and independent
judiciary is paramount to maintaining limits on the power of the president, as
demonstrated in last month’s Ninth Circuit decision to strike down Trump’s
first travel ban, and the Hawai’i court’s restraining order against the second
ban last week. Our Founding Fathers conceived that “controversies between the
nation and its members or citizens, can only be properly referred to the
national tribunals” (Federalist 80)—and while the Supreme Court only built a
case for judicial review of executive and legislative action in the landmark
Madison v. Marbury case of 1803, we see the courts play an important role in
making sure there are barriers between the will of the people and the person
they elected, and their exercise of power.
Yet more important still, we
can look to Aristotle and Polybius to remind us how unlikely it is that the
Trump presidency will be the end of democratic governance as we know it.
Philosophers have been debating the fall of great civilizations for thousands of
years. We can turn to ancient analysis on how to strengthen our democracy
because we’ve been here before (and will, regrettably, likely be here again).
With active support for civic education, an independent media, a strong
judiciary, and adherence to Republican principles of representation rather than
direct rule, our institutions are very likely to survive this
presidency—despite fears to the contrary.
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