Bruce Mesquita - The Logic of Political Survival

Many results are probed further by close examinations of case histories, both to illustrate the workings of our theory “on the ground” and to evaluate the similarity between our theory and real-world politics. The combination of formal logic, statistical testing, and case histories provides a basis for evaluating the credibility of the theory’s explanation as a significant part of the story of political survival and, indeed, much else in politics. The tests also help separate standard claims about democracy, autocracy, and monarchy from the argument we offer regarding the role played by coalition size and selectorate size in central aspects of politics. Ultimately, of course, this theory—like any theory—can only be judged through the development of still more demanding tests, better indicators, and the extent to which its core arguments prove consistent with the empirical record, past, present, and future.

If we can summarize our results in one sentence, it is that we have provided an explanation of when bad policy is good politics and when good policy is bad politics. At the same time, we show how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives to pursue good or bad public policy, with good and bad referring to governmental actions that make most people in a society better off or worse off. In that regard, we offer policy prescriptions in the closing chapter, being careful to base those prescriptions on what we believe has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically. Others, of course, will prove far better judges of what we have done and what we propose than we can be.

In the course of writing this book, we have collectively and individually amassed many debts of gratitude that we are happy to acknowledge here. We thank Ray Wolfinger for the use of his office at Berkeley as a central meeting place. We benefited greatly from the able advice, guidance, and insights of David Austen-Smith, (the greatly missed) Jeffrey Banks, Marcus Berliant, Ethan Bueno de Mesquita, Larry Diamond, George Downs, Yi Feng, Robert Jackman, Kenneth Judd, Tasos Kalandrakis, Robert Keohane, Jacek Kugler, David Laitin, Dimitri Landr, Fiona McGillivray, Stephen Morris, Thomas Nechyba, Robert Powell, Adam Przeworski, Thomas Romer, Hilton Root, John Scott, Kiron Skinner, and Paul Zak, as well as many other colleagues at the University of Arizona, University of California, Cato Institute, University of Chicago, Claremont Graduate University, University of Colorado, Columbia University, Harvard University, Hoover Institution, University of Michigan, Michigan State University, New York University, Princeton University, University of Rochester, Rutgers University, Yale University, and elsewhere where portions of our research were presented, discussed, and critiqued. Portions of this research were kindly and generously funded by the National Science Foundation, grants SBR-9409225 and SES-9709454. Other portions were supported by our respective universities and departments. We particularly thank The Hoover Institution and its Director, John Raisian, for its exceptional support of this project. Beyond the support of two of us as fellows of the Institution, visiting fellowships at Hoover greatly assisted the development and writing of this book by allowing us to work together for extended periods of time. Only our own pigheadedness has led to the errors and deficiencies that remain.

I

A THEORY OF POLITICAL INCENTIVES

1

Reining in the Prince

Thomas Hobbes, writing in 1651, observed of life in the state of nature that it is “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short” (Hobbes [1651] 1996, chap. 13, p. 89). The Leviathan’s concern is to investigate what form of government best improves that state of affairs. After so many centuries we might pause to ponder how much progress, if any, humankind has made in the quality of life and how such improvements relate to alternative forms of governance. Certainly life on our crowded planet is not solitary, though whether people are more engaged in supportive and protective communities—Hobbes’s notion of escaping a solitary life—is an open question. Improvements in sanitation, nutrition, and medicine ensure that life is considerably longer than it was in Hobbes’s day, but not everyone has shared in these improvements equally. For some it is less poor, though oppressive poverty remains the everyday circumstance for many people. As for life being nasty and brutish, progress is regrettably mixed. Today, despite various waves of democracy, much of the world’s population continues to live under the yoke of nasty, brutish regimes.

Hobbes’s remedy for the war of all against all is the absolutist Leviathan state. In this view, monarchy is the ideal form of sovereignty because

in monarchy the private interest is the same with the publique. The riches, power, and honour of a monarch arise only from the riches, strength, and reputation of his Subjects. For no king can be rich, nor glorious, nor secure, whose subjects are either poore, or contemptible, or too weak through want, or dissension, to maintain a war against their enemies. (Hobbes [1651] 1996, chap. 19, p. 131)

A century and a half earlier, Niccolò Machiavelli pondered similar questions, arriving at rather different answers. Though best known for his advice in The Prince , especially his observation that a ruler is better off being feared than loved, Machiavelli favored the individual liberty provided by a republic over the corruption of monarchy. His lament was that few places had either sufficient people of probity and religious conviction or institutions to foster competition across classes so that liberty and law could coexist “in such a manner that no one from within or without could venture upon an attempt to master them” ( Discourses I; Machiavelli [1531] 1950, chap. 55, p. 253). He reasoned that Germany in his day was unusually successful in sustaining republics because the Germans engaged in little commerce with their neighbors and because Germans maintained equality among the people, rather than permitting the emergence of what today we might call “the idle rich”—that is, those gentlemen as he called them “who live idly upon the proceeds of their extensive possessions, without devoting themselves to agriculture or any other useful pursuit to gain a living” ( Discourses I; Machiavelli [1531] 1950, chap. 55, p. 255).

In Machiavelli’s view,

whoever desires to establish a kingdom or principality where liberty and equality prevail, will equally fail, unless he withdraws from that general equality a number of the boldest and most ambitious spirits, and makes gentlemen of them, not merely in name but in fact, by giving them castles and possessions, as well as money and subjects; so that surrounded by these he may be able to maintain his power, and that by his support they may satisfy their ambition, and the others may be constrained to submit to that yoke to which force alone has been able to subject them. . . . But to establish a republic in a country better adapted to a monarchy, or a monarchy where a republic would be more suitable, requires a man of rare genius and power, and therefore out of the many that have attempted it but few have succeeded. ( Discourses I; Machiavelli [1531] 1950, chap. 55, p. 256)

We share Hobbes’s concern to explain when the public’s interests are most advanced and Machiavelli’s to comprehend when a republic is most likely to succeed. We will argue that Hobbes’s confidence in monarchy was mistaken in logic and in fact and that Machiavelli’s perspective that a republic is best for promoting freedom and institutional stability is correct. Indeed, this book can be construed as an investigation of the accuracy of the above-quoted suppositions of Hobbes and Machiavelli about the ties between civic-mindedness (i.e., probity), public well-being, private gain, the security of leaders in office, and alternative institutions of government. We will suggest that the appearance of honest, civic-minded government is a consequence of key features of republican political institutions and that corruption and political security are consequences of parallel features in monarchy and autocracy. On the basis of our analysis, we propose ways of reigning in not only Hobbes’s Leviathan, but Machiavelli’s well-advised Prince as well.