November 2011

Most years in the Germany section of our course, I show a brief scene from the film Cabaret, a classic 1972 musical about Weimar Germany, young love, and youthful exploration in those electric years.  The film excerpt depicts youthful innocence, naivete, and the ways we can be manipulated, not only by politicians and propagandists, but by art, by music, and by song.  For a long time I thought Cabaret too dated to speak to today's students, its window onto large events too small.  The "big themes," I long had rationalized, for the most part elude the plot.  But the scene made me consider anew the relationship of art to politics.  As much as the parts of other good films we have viewed (e.g., Dr. Zhivago), or whole films that I often mention in this course but do not show (e.g., Fiddler on the Roof, The Nasty Girl, Reds, Little Vera, The Official Story), I again call the whole of the film "Cabaret" to your attention.  Rent it, borrow it from a library, but see it.  Make the effort to see the dazzling dance performances by Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey -- father of a recent winner on Dancing with the Stars, Jennifer Grey.  Rent it for perspective that can come from realizing how modern issues such as the harassment of gay people actually have been a concern for several generations.  But rent it most for the insights that can come from thinking about that beer garden serenade I showed-- it's late in the film.  A blonde, blue eyed, clean shaven, youthful "role model" of maybe 17,  breaks into song whose chorus goes: Tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs, tomorrow belongs to me.  Then, nearly the whole beer garden full of diners, rapt in dewy-eyed attention, rises and gustily chimes in.  Only after we have been drawn in by this stirring chorus does the camera pan down to his arm.  The swastika emblem silently conveys the filmmaker's powerful message. 

An appreciation of art --and film can be art-- can liberate us to see with new eyes that which has been all around us but which has remained unnoticed.  Truly, tomorrow does not  belong to those fictional celluloid images in that film: it belongs to you. 

What sort of tomorrow will it be?  This course, and my teaching as a whole, has an agenda on that matter.  It aims to raise questions within you.  I want your generation to think about what is the best way that humans can understand their freedom.  I want us all to think about how freedom, and other important values -- order, security, justice-- can be achieved.  It is not enough to skip lightly past these matters, or only to address them if they happen to come up as you fulfill, say a Humanities requirement, where you might just as well have studied Christian Scriptures as to have opened up to John Locke.  (He's not just a loopy character on the television drama "Lost"!)  Just because philosophers too abstractly and for long have wrestled with difficult things, and have come to no universally accepted answers, does not relieve us, now, of the need to try anew to understand freedom in our times.  About freedom, human societies already have created so ample a track record of real evidence.  The whole point of the social scientific approach to politics is to try to convert the eternal quandaries of philosophers into a somewhat more systematic search for answers, not for "pure knowledge," but to guide us.  Through coming to know the patterns in the humans experience, political science basically asks:  "What has helped, and what has hindered, particular human communities in their attempts to create and to preserve orderly freedom, justice without tyranny?"  Amid what may have seemed merely to have been a blizzard of disorderly details, I hope that these larger concerns are what you take away from this course.

When you were but youngsters, and when some of you even were toddlers, way back in the 1990s, Harvard's Samuel P. Huntington , the late Prof. Huntington for he died in December 2008, suggested that humanity had reached a new plateau, and the "Third Wave" of world democratization in human history had reached its flattened mountain top.  Authoritarian regimes, left and right, had failed, but the democratic alternatives then emerging, could they last?  Sam was skeptical: twice previously the sunrise of democracy had been eclipsed in "reverse waves" of retreat from free government.  He suggested that the early bloom of freedom, and with it the flower of democracy, was beginning to wither once again.  As years have passed, in this Sam seemed (again) to have been right.  Only in parts of the world did there emerge a prospering middle class, an ingredient observed by Aristotle and still needed for democracy to support Constitutional government and democratic norms.  Only in parts of today's world have religious institutions backed limitations on the power of the state and thus supported democratic consolidation.  In other places, such as Iran, intolerant religious institutions continue to tyrannize, to license total government.  In Iran and in too many other places, complete intolerance of genuine opposition has made elections a sham.  

Why was this "Third Wave" of global democratization so brief?  This is an important issue now, for the "Fourth Wave" of world democratization apparently has erupted in the revolutionary impulses in the Arab world in 2011.  If success is to come this time, we must know why each earlier "wave" receded, why some democratic revolutions of earlier generations succeeded, and others failed.  I would argue that the decline of the Third Wave, like its rise, was limited by the material undertaking it: democratization in the 1980's and 1990's was the product of human learning.  Humanity benefited from the "demonstration" effect of successful transitions: authoritarian Portugal and Spain became free democracies, and this in term inspired a similar transition in Latin America.   Poland broke the new democratic path for Central and Eastern Europe.  Central Europe's example then guided the republics of the former USSR.

But just as these examples pointed toward a spreading democracy, counter trends then spilled from nation to nation.  By the first decade of the new millennium, the "Third Wave" was undone by passions uncontained, in Georgia one year, in Thailand the next, and in messy Afghanistan again and again.  Elections solve, and can solve, nothing permanently.    As Robert Kaplan (an insightful editor for the sagacious Atlantic Monthly) has pointed out, in much of the world a pale shadow of the real deal, "electoral democratization," discredited democracy.  Electoralism without justice, without vibrant and independent civil societies, simply came to legitimize the dominance of this elite or that elite in new ways.  But the cultures that supported tyranny remain.  Born of want, of envy, and of rejection of the West, too little was present to nourish the fragile plant of freedom.  Iran comes to mind.  Russia seems to have been next.  If Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya are to be spared a similar fate following their struggles for freedom, prudence points us toward trying better to understand why the last "wave" of democratization washed out to sea.

I have tried to point to some guides.  Philippe Schmitter, from the start of our course, asked us to weigh the particular qualities in society that meaningful democratization requires.  Yes, with massive problems in the areas of creating jobs and financial stability, public health, pollution, and terrorism, it is now harder than ever to establish democracy in Russia, or anywhere.  But, as the study of political science informed by history shows, it never was easy. 

The task is not impossible, for the needed building blocks are present wherever there are thinking humans.  As contemporary Iraq vividly illustrates, today's newly democratic states must define their future in the face of ethno-religious challenges to their authority now more easily mobilized in an era of cell phones, text messages, and websites like Facebook.  Yet in just the last few years, most fighting in Iraq has ended, the American war role has been brought to conclusion (September 2010), and later this month (i.e., December 2011), the last U.S. soldier will leave Iraq.  While the terrorists still seek to spoil our exit, violence there is at its lowest point since the war there began in March 2003.  Fair systems of law and due process are being established with more difficulty; habits of revenge hold cherished places among the norms of that culture.  Ironically, the onrush of technology itself may create new barriers: in our electronic age the news of the act to be revenged arrives so quickly, while corpses are so fresh, while passions are still raw and emotions still are close to the surface.  In such circumstances, even if authority can be constructed, managing critical problems of internal security necessarily will take away precious resources needed elsewhere.  Schools, hospitals, clinics go underfunded while Iraqis, and soon Iraqis alone, train to spot bombs.  Investment to develop jobs, to build hope as the global economy strains, these tasks are impeded when democracies, new and old, must spend so much on security.   Put simply, it is expensive to keep the lights turned on when bombers keep trying to implode the power plant.  It's even more difficult for an Afghanistan if its neighbors, in this case elements in Pakistan and the Government of Iran, seem intent on supplying the explosives.  And yet, as Iraq now shows, it is not impossible: Egyptians, take heart! 

Leadership in politics means choosing, and choosing to make investments in the future of a people will always compete with the temptation to pursue personal grandeur, or to manipulate public purposes through cultivation of corruption.  For democracy to succeed, care must be taken to limit the effects of the social inequities that national development through capitalism will aggravate.  A democratic framework, even the best Constitution, isn't enough to build the sturdy house democracy requires.  To build a sufficiently solid, popular base of support so democratic institutions can endure, democratic rule must be accompanied by public policies that give promise to eventually achieve social and economic betterment for all.  But we also need a people patient enough to wait.  To accomplish anything: order is primary, essential. 

The cases of Weimar Germany and of the Gorbachev era in Soviet Russia thus were included in our course for a purpose.  These cases have shown that social and economic change do not always produce development; sometimes, even often, they overload a state with demands.  Breakdown follows.  If the marriage of economic development to effective public policies is not harmonious, dissent through peaceful channels at times has yielded to chaos, and chaos begets revolutionary impulses.  And revolutions, as Russia twice has shown us, do not necessarily lead finally to more human freedom.   

The leaders of the democratizing states of today must appreciate this tension as they attempt to solve pressing problems within limits placed on all states that are imposed by growing international interdependence, often called "globalization."  Unlike our limited isolation of the 1790's, the challenges of globalization today make impractical any solutions designed by one nation alone.   Clearly, no state on its own can reverse global warming, or stop the rise in the oceans that threaten to inundate their ports, or reverse the global economic recession.  For Egyptians to succeed, they first must eat.  Our free society can help in this regard, as we have so many others in the past.

But, if the new democracies confront new challenges unique to our age, they also must confront and overcome perpetual problems of all humans in politics, some of which we might more fully have addressed in this class.  Here I am thinking of the "Iron Law of Oligarchy" (Roberto Michels' now 100 year old idea), in which leaders will always tend to serve themselves, not the interests of the whole; and the "free rider syndrome" in which publics demand benefits but prefer to require others to pay the costs.  There remains more to learn, and I commend further study of economics and of politics to you to enlighten you about these.  These are perpetual problems to be mastered alongside some others that we have encountered here: the problem of designing constitutions and electoral laws so better to contain the potential of majority rule to produce elected tyranny.  This we have seen in Weimar, as we regrettably saw it anew in 2006 in the Palestinian territories, when a terrorist group, Hamas, won a balloting; and as we see in Russia today.   

A famous Stanford professor, the late Gabriel Almond, believed the solution to be found in a carefully limited capitalism, a capitalism with heart, "welfare capitalism."  Some evidence to support this view can be found in the cases in our course, and much rhetoric in this spirit animates the hopeful moments of the Obama Administration.  Yet, there is no "one size fits all" perfect model: even the German Social Market Economy cannot afford to save all of Europe.

With sensitivity to the condition of ordinary people we proceed to think about government, because if not for the condition of ordinary people, what purpose is there in political society?  The people matter.  Their welfare matters.  Reeling from decades of poverty and crime, Russians in the 2010's justifiably crave real security.  Though they once in the 1990's rejected electing anti-democrats-- Communists, or the bigoted Mr. Zhirinovsky-- genuine freedom the day after the polls closed has eluded them.  Mr. Putin, the enduring hand in Russian politics, embodies this problem: authoritarianism creeps across the land.  It may yet be spread in a "reverse wave" from Russia onto its neighbors, greased along the way by oil and natural gas riches in the hands of the Russian bear.

Thus, the cases of our three countries studied here in Poli Sci 111 are not sui generis, they are not unique; they are part of a larger story.  We are their cousins: they help us to answer "how can we preserve our freedom?"  How, indeed, what shall we "commend unto the nations"?  The first thing needed is awareness of what is and what has been done; this is why abstract models, and simulation games don't figure in my courses.  We need to learn from real experiences, thus the focus here is on three modern states that have chosen different routes.  I have endorsed no shorthand, no "master" model.  Instead, I have tried to depict their challenges with democracy not as the result of some belief in incoherent teeming masses, nor in inevitably clashing classes (as does Karl Marx).  Much as we are, these states are complex, pluralistic wholes, filled with myriad individuals and hundreds of groups, brimming with differing images of the sacred and the profane. 

How best to manage such wondrous potential, the social scientist asks?  Here in Virginia, serious contemplation has occurred.  Our revered icons litter the landscape; no one living here should miss Monticello.  Thomas Jefferson thought government best "which governed least."  But the absolute liberty implicit in his posture seems not the mother of freedom, but of anarchy:  Pogroms; lynchings; witch hunts; the violent streets of Weimar Germany, and of Gaza, Peshawar, Sanaa and Damascus today. 

Following Thomas Hobbes' observations in The Leviathan (1651), my lifetime of studying politics has led me to conclude that within human nature lie animal instincts to be unlearned; that without lawful, accountable government to provide order, life will become as it is today in much of central Africa.  Again, in Hobbes' words: lawless, nasty, brutish, violent, and short.

Inevitably, then, to preserve what is decent in our species, at the heart of each human community is politics; i.e., someone deciding "who gets what, when and how."  The preservation of human decency hangs in the balance, in how we conduct ourselves in the unending struggle for the roles that will determine whose desires will prevail to be authoritatively enforced.  As we have observed German and Russian politics, impressive evidence has been seen of the great capacity for humans to surrender all their freedom in exchange for mere promises of order, prosperity, or future perfection.  In this, great numbers of modern humans seem first to have been misled by themselves. 

When a political culture is charmed by great hunger for "the new," when those who promise perfection willingly are given all power, sooner or later great tragedy has followed.  Usually sooner.

Thus, the problem that another great Virginian, James Madison, identified in Federalist Paper #51 (1789) continues to be real: 

"If men were angels, no government would be necessary.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.  In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.  A dependence on the people, no doubt, is the primary control on the government, but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions."

Madison thought that "auxiliary precautions" best could be found by legally limiting the power of any governmental officer, through separation of powers, through institutional checks and balances, and through an elaborate list of citizens' rights, enforced by an independent judiciary.  In these ways a universal precondition for government in harmony with citizens' freedom would be achieved, for again in Madison's words: "ambition must be made to counteract ambition."  But in the 222 years since he wrote so convincingly, experience has shown us that even well crafted constitutions, with elaborate checks on overly ambitious rulers, can prove to be mere paper when highly motivated ideologues engage intemperate masses to achieve the political positions to act on their visions.

Yale University political scientist Robert Dahl (in Preface to Democratic Theory, 1963) once argued that there additionally must exist a set of "social checks and balances" within a society for its formal governmental system to both sustain citizens' freedom and to create an orderly environment in which we each can pursue prosperity. 

I believe Dahl to have been right, but in this, he also was not so original.  Throughout history many great political thinkers have alluded in their own ways to this same, fundamental essence: the source of our freedom, and the chief threat to our freedom, is within each of us. It manifests in our collective actions.  It gains ascendance when the wise grow silent; it is retarded when intelligence finds its voice.

This then is the weighty obligation of the university: how can we contribute to the creation of these "social checks and balances" within our people?  Surely, in one course, and perhaps in a lifetime the full answer cannot clearly be known. But the broad outlines of the central threats to be overcome nonetheless can become more clear. 

Most visibly, the danger to be overcome lies in the realm of fanaticism, in the ideological cast of mind.  A skeptical British contemporary of our optimists, Jefferson and Madison, was Edmund Burke, who observed the fury of the French Revolution --violent passions not so different from those of our times--, in 1791.  Burke warned: 

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains on their own appetites.  Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within [us], the more of it there must be without [i.e., imposed by government].  It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions forge their fetters [chains]." 

The passionate fanatic: I hope this course has better prepared you to recognize and be wary of him/her. 

Less obvious, and therefore more dangerous threats, however, may be missed.  Two need mention.  One threat lies in post-modernism, the trendy campus affectation that seeks to lure today's generation away from the valuable tools acquired by learning to discern truth from falsehood.  All is mere text, all there can be are differing versions of an ever illusive reality, the post-modernists say.  Glibly equating the irreconcilable, the post-modernists would deprive the next generation of adult citizens of the idea of facts, of the analytic skill that comes from weighing alternative interpretations of the meaning of facts, and of reasoning ones' way through the thicket of contention by seeking truth.  Please, don't succomb when wooed by it.  The second threat is the ascendant fashion of political correctness, an attitude that some ideas deserve no right to be expressed, which is gaining hold of our mass media, of our public political discourse, and of even our courts as it washes out from university environoments in which it, without merit, has bullied its way into control.  Whether it stems from laudable or reproachable motives, the effect of honoring norms of political correctness is to chill debate.  Yet, for democratic society to flourish we must engage with, must reason with, and must attempt to persuade, not silence, even those with whom we most fundamentally disagree. 

Courses like this attempt to serve as an antidote.  It is not an affectation, simply text, mere language, that is involved in the exchange between the facts of Auschwitz and the reality of Holocaust deniers.(1)    It is not a mere mental exercise or word play about our times that is involved when we set out to explore the factors that brought demise to Weimar democracy in Germany.  All alternative explanations are not equal, for some sayings do not square with evidence; and some speakers do not seek to promote truth.

The best antidote to ignorance, fanaticism, and sophisticated nonsense comes from learning the consequences involved when earlier generations of humans abandoned their search for truth so to succumb to a singular, state-certified Truth, usually authored by State leaders, but sometimes posing as God's word.  Aristotle's comparative method points us toward the body of needed evidence to be weighed; but whether the stakes involved will be understood, that question is left to be answered anew by the human race on a daily basis. I wish you luck with it.  

 

 

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notes:

(1). I refer here specifically to the proven liar David Irving, who historian Deborah Lipstadt demonstrated to be just that in a London court in April 2000.  Yet the appetite to indulge the proven liar, Mr. Irving, continued.  In November 2007, the august Oxford University Union actually invited Irving to speak, but his presentation was cut short by protestors whose disorder stopped the show.  (Professor Bowen wants specifically to disavow such tactics, even when confronting fools like Irving).  But the problem of influential lies gaining hold on the minds of the next generation is most acute outside the West.  See, for example, see the comments made in Fall 2003 by Dr. Yousef Ziedan director of the Alexandria, Egypt, Library.  Or, for further example, see the related discussion on my weblog.

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Works referred to in this lecture:

Gabriel A. Almond, "Capitalism and Democracy," PS: Political Science and Politics (Sept. 1991): 467-474.

Edmund Burke, "Letter to a Member of the National Assembly," in Edmund Burke, The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke vol. 4, (Boston: Little Brown, 1866): 51-52.

Robert Dahl Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963)

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (New York: Bobbs-Merrill / Liberal Arts Press, 1958; originally published 1651).

Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993).

Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy : Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (New York: Vintage, 2001).

Deborah Lipstadt, History on Trial : My Day in Court with David Irving (New York: Ecco / Harper-Collins, 2005).

Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust : The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Plume / Penguin Books, 1994).

James Madison, "Federalist Paper No. 10," in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: New American Library, 1961; originally published 1787): 77-84.

James Madison, "Federalist Paper No. 51," in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers (New York: New American Library, 1961; originally published 1788): 320-325.

Philippe Schmitter and Terry Lynn Karl, "What Democracy is... and is Not," Journal of Democracy (Summer 1991).

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