The Compatibility of Monarchy and Democracy

I recently ran into a short article I wrote for the Adrian College alumni magazine shortly after I began teaching there in 1964. It has autobiographical elements, but also introduces a way of thinking about democracy that later was a key part of my 1981 college textbook (now available for free at my website). I thought it would be fun to post it here and make it available to the wider world.

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Contact Magzine, Adrian College, July 1966.

Although we tend to make a fuss over visiting royalty, it is difficult for most Americans to regard the institution of hereditary monarchy dispassionately. During our very earliest days as a nation monarchy had a bad press, and even today utterance of the word “monarch” tends to conjure up images of George III and colonial exploitation. Consequently it is not surprising that eyebrows are raised and questions are asked when I profess, on occasion, to be a monarchist. The questions people ask me are frequently very penetrating ones, ones worthy of a serious answer. The following paragraphs are devoted to the answers that might be given to four such questions.

1. How is it possible for someone who is not a complete idiot to become a monarchist in this day of enlightenment? There are several alternative ways one might deal with this question.

One approach would be to deny that our age is a particularly enlightened one. But this is only a clever evasion of the real issue.

A second possible reply might be that it isn’t possible. Taking this assertion as the major premise, and “X is a monarchist” as the minor premise, one can form a syllogism, but its conclusion is clearly (I would argue) unacceptable. At least one of the premises must therefore be false.

My own answer would have to be that it isn’t easy. The circumstances leading me to become a monarchist were no doubt somewhat unusual. As an aficionado of science fiction, I happened during my junior year as college political science major to pick up a copy of Robert Heinlein’s novel, Double Star. Since the plot was laid in the future, I most have assumed that the prevailing form of government would be republican. But like most people with assumptions, I was not aware of having assumed anything.

After 115 pages containing nothing incompatible with my assumptions, one of Heinlein’s characters say: “You probably won’t have to do anything. . . . But it isn’t as if it were anything hard. . . .just an audience with the Emperor. . . .” These words completely amazed me. This was my first encounter with the suggestion that the future might produce governments other than republics (whether democratic or totalitarian). A moment’s meditation sufficed to show me, however, that there was nothing inherently impossible about a monarchical future. My amazement at my amazement then initiated a sequence of thoughts that ultimately led me to write a doctoral dissertation on constitutional monarchy.

Evidence gathered in writing my dissertation convinced me that monarchy, whether absolute or constitutional, is a very good form of government. It appeared that absolute monarchy is preferable to alternate types of absolutism (because more easily democratized), and that constitutional monarchy has many advantages over the republican form of democracy.

2. Are monarchy and democracy really compatible? Analysis of this question requires a certain amount of complexity.

Some people have believed that monarchy and democracy are not compatible in any sense. Thomas Paine, for example, felt that “Everything connected with hereditary royalty bears the mark of infamy or folly.” After George V opened the British Parliament in 1933, one deputy shouted at him: “It’s a shame to have all this rubbish and show while people are starving outside. You’re a gang of lazy, idle parasites, living on wealth created by the people.” And the Large Soviet Encyclopedia tells us that “The monarchial form . . . facilitates defense of the bourgeois dictatorship.”

Other individuals may admit that in practice monarchy and democracy have undeniably been able to coexist in many western European countries, but will maintain that in fundamental principle monarchy and democracy are not compatible. The union between monarchy and democracy is thus merely a marriage of convenience, tolerable only because the monarch is not allowed to do anything. It is perhaps in this frame of mind that the Swedish social scientist Herbert Tingsten writes of the monarchy: “Institutions which once were irritating have become harmless . . . .”

Still other people argue that monarchy and democracy are fully compatible in principle as well as capable of coexisting in a marriage of convenience. This happens to be my position. But this happens also to be a position that depends on a particular conception of democracy.

In the western political tradition, there are two different general approaches to defining what is meant by “democracy.” One school of thought regards democracy fairly literally as “government by the people.” The other approach would tend to define democracy as “government by some people whose behavior, by virtue of their desire to be reelected, is limited by the people.”

Only the second conception of democracy is compatible in principle with hereditary monarchy. In a constitutional monarchy, the king reigns by hereditary right. Since the king is not legally or politically accountable, however, actual decisions on matters of government policy are made by the cabinet ministers, whose countersignature is necessary to make the signature of the king legally valid. These ministers who make the ultimate governmental decisions are clearly not the people, but some people----usually less than 20. Of course the cabinet ministers remain in power only as long as they can command majority support in their parliament, and a party or coalition can retain a parliamentary majority as long as it can get the votes of a majority of the electorate. But the electorate does not “govern”; all it can do is vote or threaten to vote one way or another.

The available evidence indicates that democracy in the first sense, “government by the people,” is impossible. All government requires power. Social power is the product of organization. And organization is inherently oligarchical, which is to say that important organizational decisions tend to be made by a few key individuals. Democracies are no exception to this “iron law of oligarchy.” They make it easier to live with by allowing for competition among various oligarchies, and by providing for an ultimate decision by the electorate as to which of the competitors will rule for the time being. But, as Karl Popper has written, “the people do not rule . . . . The government rules. All the people can do is to vote. . . . This proves in practice to be a fairly effective way of restraining governments.”

Since “government by the people” is impossible, limitation of the behavior of those individuals who do govern by the desires of the general public is the essential characteristic of democracy. Thus the existence of an hereditary monarch is not at all incompatible with democracy as long as his behavior is ultimately limited by the desires of the electorate. This necessary limitation is furnished through the mechanism of the counter-signature requirement and cabinet government.

3. Why should the government pay the monarch’s salary if he doesn’t do anything? The principle that “he who does not work does not eat” has considerable appeal, but at least two types of answer are possible to this third question.

In the first place, the monarch does a great deal of useful work. He handles ceremonial duties. He makes innumerable public appearances dedicating dams, inspecting storm damage, promoting his country in foreign goodwill visits, etc. He entertains visiting firemen of all descriptions. While these duties are not matters of cosmic significance in themselves, the fact that the monarch takes care of them releases the prime minister to devote his full energies to the problem of governing. (By contrast, the American president must continuously interrupt his work to receive delegations of Boy Scouts, proclaim National Rutabaga Week, or throw out the first baseball.)

A second reason the monarch deserves his salary is that without doing anything, merely by existing, he makes a great contribution to good government. A monarch is a living symbol of the autonomous nature of the powers of government. When a cabinet has fallen, the monarch does not wait for leaders to come forward on their own; he calls them. This is a realistic example of the way in which political institutions work, a way in which the government is not merely an agent of the people but actually is called upon to lead the people, to make proposals, to take initiatives. Monarchs are ideally suited to symbolize the capacities for initiative inherent and necessary in any government. Owing their status not to any positive action by “the people” but to hereditary right acquiesced in by the people, monarchs by their existence help to combat the false idea that powers “emanate” from the people. The monarch is in effect a symbol of the fact that government depends on the “will of the people,” if at all, for what it cannot do rather than for what it can do.

The existence of a monarch is also useful in the political education of children. In a democratic republic the symbols with which children must be taught the civic virtues and the virtues of civility are relatively high level abstractions such as “constitution,” “republic,” etc., which are very difficult for a child to understand. A monarch is superior to a high level abstraction as a symbol for civil instruction since a king, as Walter Bagehot long ago pointed out, is something which can be understood even by the “vacant many,” a category in which all young children must be included. Singing “God Save the Queen” must have far more concrete meaning for children than singing the American national anthem, which refers to another symbol, the flag, which itself is impersonal and difficult to understand.

Additionally, by virtue of their sheer existence monarchs help to produce a feeling of continuity and stability, to symbolize the permanence of the state amid the flux of daily events. Monarchs tend to last a very long time, even those with comparatively “short” reigns. This is directly traceable, of course, to the hereditary basis of their positions. It may well be that the greater sense of security resulting from the conservative symbolism of monarchs has been a factor permitting a constructive and experimental approach to such things as social legislation, an area in which the European monarchies have gone further than most other countries.

4. Should God save the Queen? A group of students recently traveled from Harvard University to the University of Windsor in Canada to debate this question. I do not know which side, if indeed either, won the debate. If anyone were to ask me such a question, however, it is probably clear from the above remarks that my answer would have to be a resounding: Yes!

Putting Wisconsin in Context: Civil Service Systems

Discussing Wisconsin Governor Walker’s efforts to restrict collective bargaining by state employees, the Wall Street Journal reports that “Sixty-two percent of Americans polled oppose efforts to strip government workers of collective-bargaining rights.” Many of these people might have answered the pollsters differently if they had been aware of the civil service systems protecting most government workers.

A major argument for unionizing private workers is that they otherwise face arbitrary treatment by their employers. Collective bargaining contracts commonly create procedures for handling workers’ grievances against such treatment, often including binding arbitration.

Long before collective bargaining, however, most government workers were already well-protected from high-handed treatment. Our federal and state governments had enacted merit civil service systems providing excellent security against arbitrary dismissals and other mistreatment.

Before 1883, government employment was very insecure. When the White House changed hands, many workers were fired to make room for supporters of the new administration. This was known as the “spoils system.”

The assassination of President James A. Garfield in 1881 by a disappointed office-seeker prompted the 1883 Pendleton Act. Later, state governments also created merit civil service systems.

In Oregon, civil service reform responded to strings attached to grants funding welfare programs during the Depression. The new federally-funded programs were administered by state agencies. But Congress did not want this money to bolster state spoils systems; hence the “strings” requiring the states to establish merit systems.

Governor Walker’s critics claim that his reforms will leave public workers in a much worse position than private workers. But they overlook the fact that these workers will still be protected by Wisconsin’s civil service system.

In fact, federal and state civil servants have been protected so well that it is sometimes impossible or too expensive to fire even disastrously incompetent workers. J. Edgar Hoover used to deal with this problem by relocating FBI agents who had messed up to Butte, Montana, where they could do no harm. Other federal agencies have likewise established “turkey farms,” as they are known in the trade, offices where such people are warehoused until they can retire. Presumably state governments have turkey farms of their own.

Of course most government employees are competent, hard-working, and doing important work. But even someone like Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was very sympathetic to such workers, drew the line at collective bargaining.

On August 16, 1937, Roosevelt wrote to leaders of the National Federation of Federal Employees. He noted that “All Government employees should realize that . . . collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

Roosevelt, strong supporter of private collective bargaining, went on: “Particularly, I want to emphasize my conviction that militant tactics have no place in the functions of any organization of Government employees. . . . . . It is, therefore, with a feeling of gratification that I have noted in the constitution of the National Federation of Federal Employees the provision that "under no circumstances shall this Federation engage in or support strikes against the United States Government."

Although Roosevelt here spoke of federal employees, there is no reason to suppose he felt differently about state workers.

Walker’s critics need to rethink their position. Seen in the context of merit civil service systems, ending collective bargaining would not subject government workers to high-handed treatment. And elected officials do have a history of offering unions magnificent future benefits (which future leaders will have to figure out how to pay for) to induce them to accept lower current salaries. Ending such bargaining—especially as to fringe benefits---may help avoid future financial catastrophes.

IN DEFENSE OF GOVERNOR WALKER

We have recently been treated to editorials, op-ed columns, and letters-to-the-editor fulminating about legislation Wisconsin Republicans are trying to enact. Governor Scott Walker, who proposes to reduces the privileges and scope of bargaining of state employee unions, seemingly is a prime candidate for the national ogreship.

Columnist Tim Rutten, for example, accuses Walker of enacting “a series of tax breaks that eliminated what would have been a budget surplus” and using the resulting deficits as an excuse to attack the unions. Numbers do matter, however, and the tax reductions in question were a tiny fraction of the several billion dollars Wisconsin will soon be in the red if something drastic isn’t done. If Rutten’s claim were true, the unions would hardly agree to the wage and fringe benefit concessions that they have said they will accept.

Apparently union leaders are less concerned with protecting members’ wages than they are with protecting the income received from members’ dues. The governor proposes to stop automatic withholding of union dues from state employee salaries. When this was done temporarily in New York City, after an illegal transit strike, union income fell about 35%.

It is strange to denounce as anti-labor a measure that would merely make payment of dues voluntary rather than compulsory. If unions are beneficial to their members, do the critics think they are too stupid to know their own interests?

If Governor Walker is an ogre, what about Franklin D. Roosevelt, the father of modern labor law in the U.S? Roosevelt felt that collective bargaining by government employees would be a horrible idea. Government employees were pointedly not included when the National Labor Relations Act was written during the 1930s.

Unlike private employees, whose employers risk bankruptcy if they pay higher wages than they can afford, government workers have no incentive to be reasonable in their wage demands. Their work cannot be outsourced to China. We have therefore been moving towards a two-class society, with government workers protected from many of the dangers afflicting private workers. Many have even received taxpayer-financed raises while most other workers are hurting.

Nobody likes salary reductions. If I were a government employee, I would be just as unhappy as anybody about it. But something has to give, and unfortunately public employees are the next in line to take a hit. Either their wages and fringe benefits will be reduced, or a large number of them will be laid off. If layoffs were based on a lottery rather than seniority, one can bet that their willingness to allow fellow workers to be thrown to the wolves would be greatly reduced.

If Governor Walker’s proposals are implemented, however, there is one way public workers can mitigate reductions in their income. We are told that union dues in Wisconsin now range from $500 to $1000 a year (the latter amount for teachers). Those who prefer to stop paying union dues can thus reduce the decrease in their disposable income without having to negotiate it with anyone.

Wisconsin’s troubles are not unique. Oregonians should observe how things turn out in Wisconsin and see if that gives us any ideas we can use here.

Wisconsin: Unprincipled analysis by Paul Krugman

I have just sent off a letter-to-the-editor at the New York Times about Paul Krugman's piece in today's issue claiming that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's proposed legislation removing many privileges from the labor unions representing govenment employees is an attack on democracy. The article can be read here.

Here is my letter:

To the editor:

Paul Krugman, commenting on December 20, 2009 on the health care legislation:

“It was, however, a close-run thing. And the fact that it was such a close thing shows that the Senate — and, therefore, the U.S. government as a whole — has become ominously dysfunctional.

“After all, Democrats won big last year, running on a platform that put health reform front and center. In any other advanced democracy this would have given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes. But the need for 60 votes to cut off Senate debate and end a filibuster . . . turned what should have been a straightforward piece of legislating into a nail-biter.”

Paul Krugman, commenting on February 21, 2011 on the situation in Wisconsin:

“So will the attack on unions succeed? I don’t know. But anyone who cares about retaining government of the people by the people should hope that it doesn’t.”

Mr. Krugman, meet Mr. Krugman! Republicans “won big” in Wisconsin last November. But Krugman now turns 180 degrees and says this has not “given them the mandate and the ability to make major changes.”

Unprincipled invoking of principles is not uncommon in politics. But Krugman is supposed to be an analyst, not a spin-doctor. He should be ashamed of himself.

Paul F. deLespinasse, Ph.D.

Corvallis, Oregon

Coming soon: Atlas Shrugged, the movie!

One of my former students in the Great Current Books class at Adrian College has just tipped me off that Atlas Shrugged, one of the books we read, is being made into a movie. Details here.

In the Great Current Books classes, which met at our house on Wednesday evenings during my last eight years at the College, I always used open-book, take-home final exams. Students would write an essay discussing one of a dozen or more alternate questions. One question I liked to ask was to consider the problems and opportunities that would be presented in making the book into a movie. Although I never said so, I always thought that turning Atlas Shrugged into a movie would be nearly impossible, though perhaps not quite as impossible as one of the other books we read in that class, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (not to mention T8me Enough For Love, another Heinlein work we also read!). So I'll be very interested to see how this movie turns out.

This movie is billed as "Part I" of three parts, and as I recall some students thought Atlas Shrugged might be best as a miniseries rather than a single film, so they must have been on to something.

If any of the students who took this class sees this blog, I'd enjoy hearing their reactions after they see the movie!

Another thoughtful response to "If I ran an editorial page"

I have received another editor's thoughtful response to my analysis "If I ran an editorial page", and with her kind permission am reprinting it here.

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Paul,

The Gazette-Times' editorials result from a consultation among three editorial board members. We meet almost every week, and although we don't always agree on local issues, we reach an agreement that manages to include aspects of the issue and reach a conclusion.

There is no royal "we"; it's two editors and our circulation manager.

I wouldn't buy a newspaper whose editorial page did nothing more than raise questions.

Also, when a newspaper reveals its editors' own take on controversial issues, that keeps it honest. It allows readers to decide just how fairly we're reporting an issue in our news pages when they know how we feel about it from the position we've take on the editorial page.

This is most relevant because we focus as much as possible in letters and editorials on local matters, and I'm not at all shy about saying that our newspapers -- and newspapers in general -- continue to be the go-to source for local news that is so often ripped off by "aggregate" internet news sites, the radio and even other publications.

We don't know everything, but the issues of Corvallis and Benton County concern us the most.

That makes it important that we remain relevant to our readers, which includes having our clearly stated opinion. They're never shy about letting us know when they disagree.

Regards,

Theresa

Excellent criticism of my article, "If I ran an editorial page"

A newspaper editor to whom I sent "If I ran an editorial page" (see below), not for publication but because I thought he might be interested in it, sent me the following very thoughtful (and persuasive!) reply. I am posting it here, with his permission.
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Dear Paul:

Thanks for these comments. By and large I have found that editorials need to stimulate, and to do that they can't seem indecisive. That's why question-mark editorials for me are the exception, and used only as a last resort. I don't usually intend to be wrong, but I would rather be wrong than sound tepid. I have found that making strong assertions is the best way to get reaction from people who know better. Especially in Corvallis, readers are not shy about telling me how misinformed or wrong-headed I am about lots of things. I could be wrong, again, but I don't think always and only asking what people think is the best way to operate an editorial page.

I'm grateful, obviously, for thoughtful readers such as you, and for your occasional contribution.

Best wishes,

Hasso