On US Corruption, Tariffs, and Political Renewal
One good side-effect of contemporary politics is that a more sober look at the merits and demerits of the US Founders’ legacy is possible again. The current US President has contempt for reverence toward the past; and his opponents have no time for reflection.
One defect in the Founders’ constitution is that while they are very concerned with developing mechanisms against what Machiavelli and his followers called ‘corruption’ — a word frequently used in the Federalist Papers —, but that it leaves too little room for what Machiavelli and his followers would have called ‘renewal’ (or ‘renovation’)—a word almost wholly absent from the Federalist Papers. (Corruption is not just about illegal and legal bribery, but also and even more about the bending of the rules such that when they function properly the public good is structurally undermined.) There is glimpse of awareness of this lacunae in the historiographic debate(s) over the status of Lincoln as a refounder of the Constitution, despite the fact that the civil war itself conclusively indicates its failure.
Yet, as Machiavelli notes “those [republics and religions] are best organized and have longest life that through their institutions can often renew themselves or that by some accident outside their organization come to such renewal.” Discourses on Livy (hereafter Discourses; 3.1), translated by Allan Gilbert (Chief Works, Vol. 1) p. 419. So it is not an irrelevant topic.
One general problem is that one sign that corruption is very advanced is that the existing institutions that are supposed to renew a republic fail to do so. And one discovers this empirically in all the wrong ways: namely through catastrophic failure. An especially notable recent example of this can be found if we reflect on the then Senate Republican leader’s reasoning to explain his stance toward impeachment on 13 february, 2021:
Leaving aside the merits of the Senator’s understanding of the purpose of intra-governmental safety-valves, it turns out that the criminal justice system and civil litigation were already fatally corrupted. I suspect Senator McConnell is as blinded to this fact as most inside the Beltway. (It’s a peculiar fact that the very people who know a system’s limitations best are often the most ardent institutionalists.)
Because the political and conceptual frame of reference of both the contemporary left and contemporary right is so shaped by the twentieth century and its fondness for monocausal roads to totalitarianism, ‘corruption’ seems quaint compared to fascism, Stalinism, etc. The important thing about corruption, then, is that its sources are not monocausal. (So, it’s not just the absence of a scary enemy, or the pernicious role of wealth in the political and criminal justice system, or rent-seeking, or the abolition of the draft, the open primaries, the destruction of The Glass–Steagall act, the generous reduction of top marginal tax rates of the income tax, the socialization of risk among the 1% while keeping the rewards, the perversion of free speech in Citizens United, [and introduce all your pet theories] etc.) The dispositions and practices that uphold a well-functioning constitutional order are multifaceted and so usually a source of robust-ness; but also sensitive to the particularities of the polity.
But because the US constitution deliberately makes amendment difficult and de facto presupposes either a broad consensus among the political class or among the citizens (or both) to make it possible, it actually makes what we might call ongoing structural renewal extra difficult. This status quo bias has many virtues, but it also means that when it most needs actual renewal it will be least likely to occur.
In fact, what’s crucial about ages of advanced corruption is that even the most well-intended technocratic tinkering (single transferable vote, sortition, fact-checking, political quotas, proportional representation, etc.) almost comically misses the mark. Even if they bring some of the benefits their advocates promise (I am myself a fan of proportional representation), for their proper functioning they presuppose an uncorrupted regime.
I don’t mean to suggest that Machiavelli himself provides much guidance on how to regulate corruption prevention and subsequent renewal. In order to block corruption, his main advice that is compatible with modern liberal democracy is to set up mechanisms for accountability of officeholders. Most of his other suggestions involve public offices that regulate the ambition and pride of public officeholders and ambitious citizens—that route was rejected a long time ago (although loyalty oaths might come back into fashion for the wrong reasons).*
So, when a state of corruption has arrived one must hope on Machiavelli’s view that one is visited by charismatic political leaders, who call the people back to their former ways (and so manage to introduce needed reforms). But, alas, this is most likely to work after, say, military defeat (a “blow from outside” (p. 420)).
The problem here is that such a political leader must in the context of a corrupt polity, itself engage in modes of activity that are dubious at best, and awful in practice (as reflection on all Enlightened dictators teach us). This is a feature of the theory of renewal. And, unfortunately, recognition of this fact means that even when there is consensus on the reality that ‘we’ find ourselves in a corrupt state, a political leader’s decisive actions may be interpreted as either a means to overcome corruption (that’s the arc from “the flight 93 election” to the present on the political right) or an instrument of reinforcing it.
From the vantage point of Machiavellian social theory, the re-election of Trump, who gave the keys to the Treasury and its data-management to Musk, is evidence of the height of corruption; whereas for (let’s call them what they are) the accelerationists this is is the means toward renewal. The US polity has reached that very duck-rabbit point.
This week-end’s abrupt attempt, through pre-emptive tariff changes, to reshape the global environment to new political reality is the beginning of the test to what degree the US can ignore the reactions of the rest of the world (and stack the deck toward a certain kind of new regime) as its struggles internally over its future. Your guess is as good as mine in these matters, but I strongly suspect that none of the rules of thumb and maxims about how the world really works that policymakers, commentators, global businesses, NGOs, and academics have relied upon for, say, the last thirty to sixty years, are going to be very robust.
*In fact, because modern liberal democracies refuse to impose terror on their populations, one may well suspect that Machiavelli is wholly irrelevant for our predicament. For, the function of renewal for Machiavelli is:
By revising the government they meant inspiring such terror and such fear in the people as they had inspired on first taking charge, for at that time they punished those who, according to that kind of government, had done wrong. When the memory of such punishment disappears, men take courage to attempt innovations and to speak evil; therefore it is necessary to provide against them by moving the government back toward its beginnings. (421; emphasis added)