A Post-Mortem, at the end of the month

One reason why so much recent political philosophy/theory is (recall) obsolete is that it fails to take seriously the possibility of ‘despotic Bonapartism’ as an inherent feature of liberal democracy. When it is conceptualized at all it is misrepresented as ‘backsliding’ or treated as the problem of accommodating ‘minority’ rights in light of ‘majoritarianism.’ One way to conceptualize despotic Bonapartism — which I articulate below — is due to James Burnham (1905 – 1985).

Burnham is no liberal, so please don’t conflate my articulation of his view with my own attitude toward Bonapartism. There are, in fact, echt-liberal analyses of Bonapartism not the least in the writings of Benjamin Constant (recall this post) with which I am more attuned. But today my interest is in the diagnosis of the problem and the salient vocabulary not in Burnham’s solutions.

Because Napoleon was, for a while, a successful general it is natural to identify ‘Bonapartism’ with military dictatorship not the least because some Bonapartists have been military dictators. But to count as ‘Bonapartist’ it is sufficient to aspire to a “democratic despotism, founded on democratic doctrine, and, at least in its initiation, committed to democratic forms.” (James Burnham (1943) The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom, part V, chapter 3, p. 146.) It’s crucial in the Burnhamite/Machiavellian analysis of democratic Bonapartism that the commitment to democratic forms remains; without (apparent) plebiscites or elections the despotism changes character.

Democratic despotism is the Achilles heel of all theories that presuppose the natural goodness or generosity or uncorruptness of ‘the electorate.’ As Burnham notes such despotism is, in fact, always a live possibility in virtue of what the sociologist Michels (somewhat grandiosely) calls “the iron law of oligarchy.” This iron law shows that the democratic idea of genuine self-government by the people is impossible in relatively large societies. Regardless of one’s constitution or mores, the principle of representation — that is, of a minority governing on behalf of the people [and so in reality a species of oligarchic rule] — opens the door to democratic despotism.

To put the same point in classical terms, liberal democracies are instances of aristocratic government—the rule, as Burnham puts it, of an organized minority. But the democratic element in liberal democracies opens the door to shift the rule of a few into rule of one in virtue of the fact that the one actually is better positioned to express or represent the will of the people. (Think about it: often, a president is elected by the widest franchise, while senators, MPs, governors are elected by a small element of the people.)

As an aside, it is precisely because liberal democracy is de facto rule of an organized minority that conceptualizing the problem of Bonapartist despotism in terms of ‘backsliding’ or the ‘protection of minority rights’ is so problematic. Under Bonapartism all rights are endangered, and there is a sense in which Bonapartism is not backsliding at all but a culmination of the development of the democratic principle. (On this latter point more below.)

As another aside, when back in the day, Iris Marion Young pointed out that Habermas’ norms for public democratic deliberation were, in fact, exclusionary she grasped an instance of the workings of the iron law of oligarchy. The exclusionary character of norms that facilitate purportedly inclusionary self-government is a feature and not a bug of the art of government.

Be that as it may, Burnham, thus, embraces a kind of road to serfdom thesis: Bonapartism is the “normal—though not perhaps the invariable—historical culmination of democracy.” (p. 145.) As he puts it “the great nations which, in the period since the Renaissance, adopted democratic political formulas and representative parliamentary practices have without exception in this century exhibited a powerful tendency toward Bonapartism.” (p. 146)

The mechanism that enables Bonapartism within democracy is the necessity of leadership (even of the ruling minority) when time for decision-making is short and urgent and the decisions involve matters of judgment, that is, in the context of military crisis or (what Nick Cowen and I call) novel externalities (e.g., pandemics, market crises, etc.) There are circumstances where there “must be leaders because there must be a way of deciding questions which the…group [or people] is not in a position to decide.” (Part V, ch. 2, p. 131; emphasis in original)

In fact, some degree of Bonapartism is always inherent in presidential systems, which lack the useful fiction of collective leadership and collective responsibility we find in parliamentary-cabinet driven systems. (Many of the most robust parliamentary systems also have a constitutional or ceremonial monarch to block a democratic path toward Bonapartism.) This inherence toward Bonapartism is illustrated by the fondness for decrees and executive orders.

It’s not wholly obvious in Burnham’s account how one can extract oneself from Bonapartism or how it can be avoided. He cannot avail himself of the libertarian suggestion of a minimal executive (and perhaps a heavy dose of con-federalism). My sense is that for Burnham there is no self-evident way out of Bonapartism except a loss of faith among the ruling group that supports the despot (say due to a defeat in war or domestic crisis), or the rise of an alternative potentially more powerful elite in society dissatisfied by the lack of opportunity due to the lack of mobility under despotism.

Burnham implies that the prevention of the road-to-despotism requires what one may call the existence of (what later came to be called) robust countervailing powers in society alongside the enforcement of non-trivial amount of (to adopt Ingrid Robeyn’s phrase) limitarianism (which Burnham emphasizes) and antitrust (which he ignores). Something like this (recall) seems implied by his account of domestic freedom which is an effect of the conflict among different, roughly equal sources of power in society. But the risk here is one does not really realize — we have all seen Bezos taking a knee — how robust these countervailing powers are until these are stress-tested by and crumble in the face of a would-be-despot.

To be continued.