Written by Richard E. Blanton
Was Western Political History Really Unique?
Armed with a new theory, good governance measures to evaluate it, and a vast array of descriptive studies available from ethnographic, historical, and archaeological sources, we dwelled on the question: Was Western political history really unique? We know that coercive and autocratic states did exist in the past, as they still do today, but were there also experiments in state-building, outside of Western history, which were based on contingent mutual benefit and good governance, and were they similar to democracy? The coding of good governance variables yielded a surprising answer to this question as we were able to identify such experiments.
Although there is considerable variation in the details of governance across these cases, we identified forms of governing outside of Western history in which the central force guiding political change was contingent on the bond of obligation between governing authorities and subjects rather than on coercion. Further, in such cases, we also found that mutual benefit and good governance brought numerous advantageous downstream consequences for their respective populations.
For example, compared with the more autocratic and coercive states, the collectively organized polities were more politically stable, in part because public safety was greatly enhanced, there were far fewer episodes of anti-state movements (although disgruntled elites often would militate against the more egalitarian and inclusive policies), and there was a reduction in the frequency of internal conflicts between ethnic groups or religious groups.
As a result of these outcomes, resulting in part from the fact that states organized based on mutual benefit and good governance, citizens were provided with opportunities to engage in cooperative social interactions and alignments that could bridge social, cultural, and economic cleavages. Good governance, for one, was a fertile ground for commercial growth in the form of marketplace economies that provided new opportunities and increased living standards for buyers and sellers irrespective of wealth, patrimony, or rural-urban setting. Marketplace economies grew alongside other institutional outcomes, including open recruitment to positions of governing authority, which provided entirely new pathways to social mobility for the public. Well-organized and more livable cities, which were easy to navigate, also enhanced possibilities for commingling, cooperative interactions, and bridged social alignments weakening the likelihood of antagonism between different groups. The collective action theory is an action-oriented framework that focuses on the idea that diverse webs of cooperative action in society are engendered by the palpable social actions of persons who want to realize collective benefits. In relation to leadership, this requires a display of commitment to carrying out the necessary and often challenging work of good governance.
Patterns of Stability and Collapse: Three Counterintuitive Discoveries
To confirm that premodern governments could, in some respects, display features that we associate with contemporary democracy was itself a surprise, but we discovered other unanticipated aspects of premodern governance:
Endurability: Despite the obvious advantages in cases where we see a focus on mutual benefit and good governance, their focal periods (the period when a particular set of policies and principles remained stable) were only slightly longer, at 166 years on average, compared to the more autocratic polities with focal periods of 152 years, a difference that is not statistically significant. In addition, polities built more strongly around mutual benefit occurred relatively infrequently (only 27 percent of our sample had consistently high scores for good governance). This shows that despite the advantages of mutual benefit and good governance, they have been difficult to build and sustain in the long run.
Collapse Patterns: Further, while providing many more benefits to their citizens compared to autocratic polities, states that organized to achieve good governance also had more of a collapse pattern than polities that scored lower on good governance. That pattern includes the emergence of damaging factional struggles for power, the loss of fiscal viability of the state, and even food shortages and demographic decline.
Collapse in the case of autocracies brought less serious consequences because, lacking much in the way of governance, groups such as neighborhoods, ethnic groups, and rural communities were already organized at the local level to respond to hazards. Yet, this fragmented form of adaptation was itself problematic, precluding coordinated responses to, for example, urban fires, lawlessness, or the actions of wealthy entrepreneurs who, lacking any opposition from a well-organized authority, were in a position to distort fair marketplace pricing.
Initiating Collapse: Earlier we mentioned the separation of religion and state because, although violating its premise was not the only misstep exhibited by the respective leaderships, it was among the most damaging. In Ming China, collapse followed the actions of leaders of the mid-16th century, including the Chia-ching Emperor, who became so obsessed with Daoist ceremonies and alchemy that he neglected his duties; his successor, the Wanli Emperor, turned his attention to gaining personal wealth, a violation of long-standing prohibitions. In the case of the Mughals, the fourth emperor, convinced by Muslim leaders, abandoned religious neutrality, even taxing Hindus more than Muslims and permitting the destruction of new temples. The Roman Emperor Commodus lacked interest in governing and became an avid performer as a gladiator. He identified himself with the god Hercules. Following his failed reign, the empire devolved into a chaotic and corrupt system in which, as the historian Ramsay MacMullen concluded, “relationships involving anything other than the wish for material possession had no chance to develop.”
The case of Venice is particularly troubling in light of what has transpired in recent years in the U.S. Although the Venetian government possessed the institutional capacity to impeach leaders, when Doge Giovanni Cornaro and his family broke the religious neutrality and other rules, for example, as a result of his son accepting the position of Bishop of Bergamo, the governing council refused to impeach him. This action, regarded by many inside and outside of the government as a violation of long-standing rules, was not corrected, and the governing council’s response to criticism was to double down on its authority. These moves, according to the historian John Norwich made the council ever more unpopular both with the citizens and other organs of government and precipitated a rapid unwinding of the societal threads that had, for centuries, underpinned inclusive forms of cooperation and devotion to a governing system that aimed to realize the common good.
It is important to note that these polities had developed the governing capacity to productively address various expressions of social malfeasance, including administrative corruption and shirking and free riding among citizens that could challenge the confidence of people in each other and the government. Yet, when it was the leadership that turned away from meeting expectations—including diligence in sustaining a system of governance and maintaining its religious neutrality—all the governments in question illustrated a key vulnerability: they lacked the institutional capacity to punish leadership displaying self-serving acts contrary to the pursuit of societal benefit.
Moral Collapse and Its Relevance to Contemporary U.S. Politics
Like the societies we have discussed, the original charters of the U.S. government featured mutual moral obligations between governing authorities and citizens at their core and specified key governing precepts, including the rule of law, the peaceful transfer of power, inclusion, checks and balances on the concentration of power, and the separation of church and state. Over more than two centuries, these principles, although sometimes opposed, have largely been followed. But now they face serious challenges from the presumptive leadership of the Republican Party and influential governing bodies including the Supreme Court. These challengers reject the notions of inclusiveness and lawfulness embedded in the original charters in a way that does not align with what the majority of American citizens believe and would like to preserve. In particular, challengers deviate from broad sensibilities both when they show strong support for the idea that white nationalist ideologies and religious fundamentalism should serve as the religious foundation for our governing practices and principles, and when they assert their belief that violence is an acceptable means to achieve political goals in the face of opposition.
We hope that our discussion of historical cases is a reminder that mutual benefit and good governance succeed or fail based on the choices of contingently cooperative citizens. Contingency implies that, as in Venice and the other cases we pointed out, the loss of citizen confidence in the leadership can trigger an unexpected unwinding of the societal threads that underpin inclusive forms of cooperation and devotion to a governing system designed to realize common good.
Source: This article was produced by Human Bridges.
“Political Collapse: Lessons From Fallen Empires” by
Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski and
Lane F. Fargher-Navarro is licensed by the Observatory under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). For permissions requests beyond the scope of this license, please see Observatory.wiki’s Reuse and Reprint Rights guidance.
Published: September 4, 2024
Perspectives in Anthropology 