considerations on de maistre and berlin

Berlin makes the following observation on de Maistre:

Only the use of the faculty of reason aided by the growth of knowledge founded on sense perception—not mystical inner light or uncritical acceptance of tradition, dogmatic rules, or the voice of supernatural authority, whether vouchsafed by direct revelation or recorded in sacred texts—only that would provide final answers to the great problems that had occupied men since the beginning of history.

Even if this holds true of the civilization in question, can this encompass the dilemma of societies caught at an earlier point, where this thesis cannot be taken for granted?

Historical Particularism

Political science approaches the study of politics from a specific angle - politics is taken to be a process common to all human societies, occupying a similar position across societies, and operating by a set of rules which do not vary from society to society. To clarify, I do not mean that politics is everywhere the same, but that apparent diversity arises not from an essential difference in political societies, but in the arrangement of institutions, the balance of interests within the society, the distribution of preferences across a large public and, perhaps, questions of the access to information of political active agents within the society. The basic building blocks for political life everywhere, according to a discipline dominated by rational choice methods and assumptions, are self-interested (either left as a tautology or defined materially), utility-maximizing sovereign individuals. And the crucial variables determing how those blocks stack are the institutions which canalize that self-interest, and the balance of powers that exists between those self-seeking actors. Once these basic variables are determined, outcomes should be mathematically computable.
However, utlitarian accounts of human behavior run into significant empirical problems. The most obvious has to do with the subjective nature of "utility," that elusive holy grail which is supposed to serve as the inerrant lodestar for purposive human behavior. The whole concept of utility and its social science use has become closely associated with economics, and in analysing economic behavior an obvious definition for utility suggests itself - profit. The market operates with a liquid, fungible currency that can be deployed in a vast number of ways to meet the whims of economic agents - the point of the market is profit, so it makes sense that economic utility would concern maximizing financial return. However, political life operates in a different fashion than economic life - though there are those who insist, through a tortured logic and against empirically visible human behavior, that politics represent a mere extension of the market. In political matters, utility cannot be reduced to pure material returns - there are also intangibles, such as security, social solidarity, etc. These are not fungible values, and there is no basic utility principle to which these diverse priorities can be reduced. This brings up one of the great problems in describing and studying politics - if political life is meant to provide some good for those who engage in it, what good is it providing? If government is tolerated as a necessary evil, then what is the benefit that earns it this toleration? If government is not a necessary evil, but a positive benefit, what is the nature of that benefit? Although these are the sorts of questions that positive political scientists and those of an empirical bent would adore to avoid and elide, a way around them (rather than through the quagmire that any attempt to answer them is likely to produce) is not obvious. A fall back position that many find appealing is to attempt to provide provisional, working answers to these problems based on what its advocates believe to be a tough-minded, sober understanding of human nature and what detractors take to be a dangerous fantasy - namely, some materialistic basic notion that the sole considerations that individuals have with respect to political leadership concern material self-interest or pure fear. However, this provisional answer is not as sound as it first appears, because the drive towards material accumulation is a distinct psychological process to the existential anxiety concerning the sufficiency of basic staples to maintain existence at a stable level. Similarly, the power of fear is contextual, and the ability to marshal the credible threat of violence as a means of social control depends on the beliefs of those controlled on the dreadfulness of physical pain compared to other forms of suffering. The materialist assumptions about the basic motivations for obedience - the desire for material benefit and the fear of violence and death - are not intrinsicly absolute, but need to be ideationally cultivated against alternative basic orientations. Among a large number of societies the fear of social exclusion can be deployed to trump material or security considerations - in many places, it is possible to "shame' someone into sucide, or into suicidal bravery. Similarly, the threat of death loses much of its terror when it is met by the promise of paradise, or countered by the greater threat of everlasting damnation. Further, these are not marginal cases that inflect a world which otherwise runs on the clockwork of individual utility - the vast majority of the Earth's population is comprised of believers in one or another religion, with deeply-held beliefs that do not lose their power outside of temple, church or mosque. Even those who subscribe to a rational skepticism about religious teachings cannot be said to represent "natural" man, free from the myths and superstitions of history and thus free to be as he fundamentally is. Skeptics may not believe in much, but they do believe in skepticism, and rely on a set of assumptions - assumptions! - about what distinguishes good from bad, desireable from undesireable, correct from incorrect which are not themselves amenable to rational evaluation. These assumptions are the basic intellectual building blocks out of which other ideas and hypotheses are built - these are the things that one reasons through, not about. That they are inherited from mathematicians, economists and other secular authorities instead of prophets and gurus does not change the basic reality that they are assumptions. Without being yoked to the fables, myths and miracle-accounts that are part and parcel of traditional religion may make them more useful, more robust and less ridiculous, but assumptions they remain. Further, while these assumptions do not have an objective basis in the material constitution of human beings, they make claims about that constitution, and thus condition and create the very human behavior they claim is fundamental and uncreated. They then manifest themselves in the society that they have possessed, in seeming confirmation of the basic assumptions that hold sway. It is only when, peering into neighbor's pastures, a society with a different underlying logic, produced by a differently-derived but similarly-hegemonic set of assumptions about human behavior, comes into focus that an awareness of the relativity of preferences and of social outcomes might emerge. Of course, the preferred reaction is denial or, if that proves impractical, the dogmatic insistance that the foreign society over there is in reality the same as ours, but with funny accents, different hats and universal sufferage.

Culture as Constraint

Political Science sand liberal social science more generally, has reached a consensus concerning the treatment of culture as a variable governing (or at least influencing) political and social outcomes - ignore it! Discussion of culture should be avoided whenever possible. if, for some reason, the toprc must be broached, do so in passing. If it most be given consideration, speak about it only in the highest-level, must general terms -Never, under any circumstances, actually name a real-world culture or examine its elements. To do so would run the risk of actually discovering knowledge about cultures, and suggesting that the might not be a uniform, universal code for behavior and values.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success

The embrace of liberal political reform by approximately 100 diferent states in the third wave of democratization of the 1990s was taken as a marker of the universal appeal of liberal society. The argument was made that the world-wide extinction of Leninist regimes, together will liberalization even among non-Leninist authoritarian states, indicated a world historical drift towards a liberal, capitalist order. Further, this was less the result of historical contingency but rather the expression of natural human aspirations, finally freed from external repression. the world wide embrace of democratic-liberal language and political programs were accepted as evidence of the universal appeal of applicability of liberal politics. Rejecting the Cold War perspective of pessimism based on theories of preconditions (economic, social, cultural) for democratic politics and society, contemporary observers instead claimed that no preconditions were necessary. Societal embrace for democratic values (at both the elite and mass level, through pacts and mass movements) was sufficient and the great expense of the third wave democratization demonstrated how broad the potential support and appeal could be. Every where human baby), being human, favored democracy and everywhere democracy could succeed. The third wave was both the greatest flowering of liberal politics and the great vindication of liberal political sensibilities.

However, this mistakes the source of the appeal of liberal politics. The liberal states of the West are not only remarkable for the extent of individual freedom that their inhabitants enjoy, but also for their high material standard of living, economic achievements and international prestige. This complicates any argument for the universal appeal of liberal politics base on the experience of the third wave -are foreign publics responding to the moral and ethical appeal of the system, or is it the material prosperity of power of the West which inspires emulation? Nothing succeeds like success, and the power and prosperity of the West are great enough to provoke a certain level of admiration and envy from poorer societies. However, such an appeal is purely a result of economic and power considerations, not a election of a universal valves consensus or convergence. From such a perspective, liberal reforms are simply a tool - the secret of the West's success, desirable only for the sake of the tangible benefits that are associated with them. Political institutions are patterned along Western lines in the belief that such reforms will bring the benefits of development, and the legitimacy of those new institutions then takes on a developmentalist cast. For from representing the end of history, the Third War can also be thought of as merely the latest in a series of asp rational emulations by less developed countries seeking to somehow reproduce the elements of material success found in more advanced model countries. This has occurred before -in the late 19th century, the ascendance of Western powers triggered a wave of developmentalist emulation abroad - it was in this period that Japan and China replicated Western forms of government, and the Balkan states began a series of liberalizing, parliamentary reforms. However, much more damning is the interwar period - at the nadir of liberal prestige worldwide, the model for emulation become fascist Italy, with its promise of a nationalist path to successful, independent modernity. With few exceptions, the states of Central and Eastern Europe embraced variants of this ideology, eschewing any pretence to a liberal orientation. Fascism likewise found an ease reception outside of the West, including in sophisticated and relatively prosperous Japan. Ever in the post-war period, with the defeat of the fascist powers, Marxism provided a compelling alternative to liberal-style development, inspiring dozers of Communist revolutions and socialist followed states. All of this begs the question - what is the motivation of those societies which embarked on reform in the third wave? Was it the expression of long-repressed universal values, or principally and attempt to capture the material prosperity and development visible in the West?

This is a far from insignificant question - if liberal values are indeed universal values, then the prospects for successful liberalization are somewhat insulated from pragmatic concerns. Disappointing economic progress or traditional administrative disorder should not fatally undermine the appeal of liberal reforms. lf, on the other hand the principal source of the chrisma of liberalism lies in its developmentalist promise, and the legitimacy of liberal orders in their ability to deliver on that promise, then we can expect impatience and disillusionment to he normal reactions to the frustration of developmental expectations.

Rational Legitimacy and System Survival

Advocates of liberal political and social order make two kinds of arguments: moral/ethical and practical. The case that moral/ethical arguments are cultural conditioned is the one that I'll be examining in excruciatingly close detail for the next two years or so, so today I'll limit myself to looking at the pragmatic side this time.


Pragmatic arguments make the case that liberal societies and polities can better provide some objective good - stability, peace and prosperity are most commonly cited, although there is no reason why similar arguments can't be made for loftier goods (beauty, for instance) or more mundane ones (street illumination, perhaps) - in a better way (more fully, more efficiently, or move sustainably) than alternative arrangements. ln the early part of this century, when challenger ideologies to liberalism were strongest in the West, this point was fiercely contested. Both fascism and Marxism promised to better deliver the benefits of modernity than liberal democracy. Indeed, much at the admiration directed towards Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Imperial Japan, and to a lesser extent Fascist Italy was inspired not by the moral or philosophical foundations of these regimes, but by their ability to get things done, like make the trains run on time, recover from the Great Depression, reestablish national might or foster economic development. Liberal societies were on the defensive, facing serious internal crises of confidence. The arguments made by the proponents of liberal democracy in this period and throughout the Second World War were primarily moral in character. It wasn't until the post-War period and the remarkable revival of democracy in Europe that the pragmatic pro-liberal position was revived. Gives the ambiguous development of Marxist counties, the debate was extremely relevant and the liberal side empirically tenable. The collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated the only meaningful competitor to the liberal side, seeming to vindicate those who argue for the pragmatic superiority of liberal systems (political, social of economic), and it is now generally taken for granted that liberal systems are pragmatically superior - certainly when it comes to development policy for poor nations, liberal solutions are the defaults offered. The 20th Century is treated as a great historical test of ideologies, one which liked democracy has passed and its rivals have failed. One does not look for answers in the dustbin of history. The appeal of Western developmental models in the developing world and the remarkable success of liberal reforms and revolutions in Eastern Europe seem to confirm this view.


There is a certain elegance to this argument, and the comfort and reassurance that it provides to advocates of liberals should be obvious. But it is deeply problematic in its basic foundations and rests as a false understanding at history.

The idea that human history comprises some kind of test for societies - that the competition between societies represents an evolutionary pressure, where success is granted to those systems that have salutary characteristics, are that in the absence of violent conflict, demonstration effects and peaceful competition will continue to apply evolutions pressure towards more competitive (understood as more productive, me efficient o more stable) forms of social organization- fails to fake into account certain basic realities of the historical process.

1. Societal competitiveness is highly contextual.

Competition between social systems has taken many different forms across time. There are periods when competition takes the form of competitive trade and development (mostly peaceful), other times when that competition is augmented by low-level endemic security conflicts, and other times when societies violently compete in wars of annihilation. The characteristics that are beneficial in one competitive environment may be hindrances in another. For instance, the Soviet system excelled at war fighting, but could not make the transition to peaceful economic competition. In 1948, it was genuinely unclear if the Soviet Union or the United States constituted the more powerful state. By 1988, after 40 years of a kind of competition the Soviet Union was unsuited for, the world-historical moment clearly favored the US. One reply is that flexibility is one element of a competitive society - liberal-democratic America was capable of demobilizing, demilitarizing and transforming itself into an economic and technological behemoth. But this begs the question of the determining factor for the type of global competition - the post-War peace was an artifact of post-War politics, and could have been unilaterally abrogated by the Soviet side. A military conflict in the late 40's between the forces of world Marxism and liberal democracy would not have necessarily ended in Soviet victory, but the triumph of the West would have been far from assured.

2. Competitiveness is not solely a product of domestic arrangements.

Some of the elements of competitiveness - productivity, for instance - do not arise solely out of domestic arrangements, but require access to external resources. The Oil Shocks of the 1970s demonstrate the vulnerability of hyper-modern economies to disruptions of raw resources. Liberal democracies, as a result of historical legacies unrelated to their domestic political and social arrangements enjoyed privileged access to strategic resources at a crucial historical moment, namely World War Two. If the Axis powers had similar access, then the conflict could have ended differently, and modern conventional wisdom would extoll the natural superiority of fascist civilization. Similarly, the development of competitive alternatives to liberal order is stymied by the dominant role of liberal power in the economic and political world system.

3. The number of competing states is too low for systemic traits to override historical contingencies

Ultimately, the ideological competition of the 20th Century occurred between a very small number of states, with the outcome of the great conflicts hinging on a very few key moments. At these junctures, shall, purely idiosyncratic factors determined victor and vanquished. A few bad decisions condemned Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, not necessarily structural weaknesses.

These criticisms are analytic, but there is of course also an empirical side to this question. If it could be empirically demonstrated that liberal institutional arrangements led to superior material outcomes than alternative configurations. Work on this his been done, with the goal of confirming the link between liberal politics and society and superior practical outcomes, most recently by the political scientists (and committed liberals) Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi. Their conclusion - no link between liberal politics and economic performance. If these most sympathetic researchers could not discern a visible relationship between regime type and economic performance, then such a link should not be taken for granted by anyone.

Starting up

I'm starting this blog to try to keep a record of my thoughts about my dissertation project, in a form that is both digital (making it easily edited, shared and transferred) and public (meaning that my daily posting quota is verifiable and enforceable). I'm uncertain about who to share this blog with -maybe just Angela so that she can yell at me if I underproduce. Perhaps also some of my Berkeley colleagues in order to get their reactions and feedback, or maybe I should just make it public for my friends as well, but that might prove unpleasantly revealing. In any case, let this be the first post, and tomorrow I'll sketch out my dissertation ideas and preliminary hypotheses.