General Thoughts about Politics and Government.

Politics, originating from the Greek polis and politeia, deals with questions surrounding the purpose, organization, and conduct of ordered communities. Social scientists generally refer to politics as the means by which things of value are allocated, or in laymen’s terms, who gets what when and how.

Government involves the institutional structure by which politics is carried out. All governments must also deal with questions of rule, that is, how does one compel another to obey the directives, or laws, established by or through government, and how does government gain the right to enforce these directives.

The power of government to compel or restrain actions among people in an ordered community is referred to as authority, which the grounds upon which it derives its authority is called legitimacy. Generally speaking, if a government is not legitimate, it maintains itself only through great difficulty, as the Florentine writer Niccolo Machiavelli pointed out, either through force or through fraud.

Politics, and political questions, are as old as humanity. Yet in Western thought the first systematic examination of politics was not written down until the fifth century BC by the Greeks. Beginning with Herodotus and Thucydides, and undergoing further development with the Athenian philosophers Plato and Aristotle, politics came to be understood as a natural condition of mankind; that being political was fundamental to being human. That man is a political animal was considered a self-evident truth, in that the definition of man included a natural inclination toward banding together to form organized communities. Since being political was a fundamentally human thing to do for both Plato and Aristotle, it was left to examine what kind of political societies were possible, in order to arrive at which one, if any, was the best way to order a community.

Plato, in his Republic, favored the institution of a rule by an enlightened king, a philosopher whose sole interest was the good of the community, and through his wisdom knew ultimately what was best as well as what was most just. However, it was clear to him that such a king would be difficult at best to recognize, and this ideal city was practically impossible. Yet while no other regime (way of ordering the life of a city) quite measured up to the rule of the philosopher king, some regimes were preferable to others. To the end of finding the best regime which could be realistically expected, he made the following distinction:

Every regime, according to Plato, no matter how high in the list above, eventually collapses into the regime beneath it. Aristocracies become timocracies, oligarchies are overthrown by democrats, and democracies collapse in to anarchy which allows for the possibility of tyranny. Curiously, the collapse of a democracy also allows for the possibility of a philosopher king to emerge and to rule as a monarch, but it is extremely difficult for the majority of people to tell the difference between a philosopher king and a potential tyrant.

Plato’s student, Aristotle, divided regimes somewhat differently. Recognizing that that all governments have some good as their reason for being, and that governments don’t always collapse in the manner Plato described, Aristotle divided governments according to the good they serve as well as their basic institutional structure.

A virtuous regime is described as one in which the rulers rule with the good of all the people in the city as their primary concern. A defective regime is ruled by those whose primary focus is their own good, often excluding others who are affected by the rules or laws made by the rulers. (Polity is a name used to describe a regime which Aristotle stated " has no name" because no example has ever existed.)

Aristotle had difficulty with the stability of any regime. In particular, he found that no matter how well established a monarchy or an aristocracy is at its founding, every virtuous regime eventually becomes a defective one. To keep this collapse from happening, Aristotle proposed a "mixed regime" which incorporated features of the three basic kinds of rule. This idea stands as a classic precursor to the idea of a government with distinct branches. Some argue that the Roman Republic illustrates the nearest real-world example of a mixed regime.

The new science of politics finds its origins in the old, especially in the writings of Thucydides. More importantly, however, the theoretical underpinnings of the new science of politics are to be found in the political writings of a late fifteenth century Florentine writer and one-time magistrate named Niccolo Machiavelli. With Machiavelli’s Prince and his Discourses on Livy came a new understanding of the nature of man and of politics. For Machivelli, the structure of government was less important than the manner in which it maintained itself, and the way in which it compelled those it ruled to obey. From the basic understanding that human beings on the whole care for naught but their own good, Machiavelli held that the basic purpose of government is to maintain itself and its authority. Machivelli set the stage for later thinkers, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, as well as a new understanding of politics and government.

Thomas Hobbes’ massive treatise on the philosophy of law, Leviathan, was largely informed by his translation of Thucydides into English, as well as by the writings of Machiavelli nearly a century before Hobbes himself. In the Leviathan, Hobbes rejects the classical notion that humanity is by nature political; rather, politics only arises as a consequence of a social contract in which the people entering into society agree to surrender certain rights they have in a state outside society, a state of nature, in order to make themselves relatively safe from harm.

Outside of society, every human being is equal to every other human being, and has the same right to self-preservation as everyone else. Yet because the things needed to survive are scarce, people are forced to compete for possession of those goods, resulting in a state of total war of each individual person against every other. Hence, without such a social contract, life for man in the state of nature is described as "nasty, brutish, and short." Based upon this understanding of the state of nature, any society, and any form of rule, is preferable, and consequently may take many legitimate forms, including a despotic monarchy.

John Locke, in his Second Treatise on Government, modifies Hobbes’ understanding of the state of nature, and the need for a social contract among human beings. However, Locke differs from Hobbes in his understanding of the nature of that social contract.  For Locke, a wholesale surrender of basic natural rights undermines the very purpose of government, which is security and the good of those who are governed. Furthermore, a government, in order to secure the lives, the freedom of reasonable action, and the property of the governed, can only do so if it legitimately arises by the consent of the people it governs.   Thus government is not understood necessarily as consisting of a sovereign over subjects, but that sovereigns and subjects stand as more or less equal partners in their mutual security and benefit.  Instead of surrendering rights for the sake of security, subjects share their power to enforce the law of nature with the sovereign in order to secure their natural rights of life, liberty and property.

The Founders of the United States adopted many of the basic tenets of Locke’s understanding of the nature of government, yet they differ from Locke in terms of the question of the right to property. Where Locke understood a right to own things, The American Founders recognized that an acknowledgment of a simple natural right to property would require all people to have property, and if government is to secure the natural rights of the governed, it would have to guarantee that every citizen would have property. Furthermore, while many would desire a great amount of property, others may see excessive property as a burden, and would see guaranteed property ownership as an infringement of their liberty. As a result, the Lockean language of life, liberty, and property is revised in the Declaration of Independence to include a right to pursue happiness, however citizens may understand happiness, provided no one else’s rights are trampled in the process. 

The Declaration outlines the following as self-evident truths:

All men are created equal, in that they have certain natural, God-given rights.

Certain rights are inalienable: that is, no one, no authority, may legitimately take these rights away.

Among the inalienable rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In order to secure rights, governments are established.

Governments must derive their power from the consent of the people they govern.

Whenever government attempts to take away these inalienable rights, or else does not protect its citizens’ natural rights, the people have the right to change or abolish the existing government so that a new government which does secure the rights of the citizens can be put in place.

This last point, sometimes described as the 'right of revolution',  illustrates a further departure from either Hobbes' or Locke's view of sovereignty.  Where Hobbes understood sovereignty as the legitimate power to enforce the social contract with sovereigns exercising power over subjects, and where Locke understood sovereignty as a power to complete the enforcement of the natural law under the social contract, the right of revolution in the Declaration of Independence implies that sovereignty, a power to compel action in the interest of securing one's natural rights, remains with citizens and cannot be transferred under any legitimate circumstances.   For Jefferson, the sovereign and the subject are one in the person of the citizen.  Government therefore remains a tool of sovereignty and not a sovereign itself.  Since tools may become damaged over time, they may need to be repaired or replaced when they are destructive of their purpose, in this case the security of natural rights. 

Interest and Political Culture

All countries have a distinct political culture. The discussion regarding various regimes, and consequently various ideologies, revealed that different societies place different value on some principles.

The same is true even within the United States, where liberty, equality, property, interest and the expression of the natural rights argument generally (the "self-evident truths" above) are interpreted variously. In addition, historical, economic, demographic, and geographic factors play a role in influencing what is seen as most important to members of the body politic. In the United States, fundamental ideological differences are narrow, given that the dominant historical influence stems from interpretations of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Ideologies such as liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism, while extreme in some cases are nevertheless reflections of the distinct political subcultures which have arisen in the United States—moralism, traditionalism, and individualism. While not all moralists are liberals, nor are all traditionalists conservative, nor even all individualists libertarians, these cultures have come to shape the way Americans talk about politics, and how they understand their respective interests.

20^th and 21^st Century Liberalism as an ideology, that is, a set of beliefs founded upon particular political, social, or economic ideas, tends to favor an active government in regulating the economy and to promote equality in the standard of living for individuals within American society. On social issues, liberals advocate a limited role in regulating private action, except in matters where social justice may be promoted.

Conservatives, by contrast, tend to favor limited government in the economic sector, except to promote greater economic freedom, seen to be a necessity for the good of society. On social issues, conservatives tend to advocate an active government role in preserving their understanding of traditional mores, manners, and customs.

Libertarianism is the most strongly individualist ideology in the United States, in that it rests on an inherent distrust of all government regulation over both economic and social affairs. For the libertarian, the government’s role is to be strictly limited to a strict understanding of common defense and domestic tranquillity; any action or regulation beyond this is understood as an unjust intrusion into the liberties of the citizens.

Both liberals and conservatives tend to be cast as opposite ends of the political spectrum, while libertarians are often cast as a marginal ideology. However, as they are practiced in the United States, they are not vastly different from each other, except in how they interpret the fundamental principles of politics and government laid out in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Other political ideologies which hold little sway in the US include Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, and Fascism. Under each of these ideologies, the basic natural rights argument is effectively denied or rejected in favor of a regime where power is understood as absolute (authoritarianism), or that the purpose of government is to mould human nature (totalitarianism), or that power is an end unto itself (fascism).