Former president Donald Trump wrote about his possible indictment related to his trying to stay in power after he lost the 2020 election:
“An Indictment of me would only further destroy our Country.”
A critical observer (perhaps under the influence of Public Choice analysis) may reflect that the word capitalized should have been “me” instead of “country.” But we should not minimize the concerns that many of Trump’s voters had, even if they were naively looking for a dear leader, instead of individual liberty, to resolve them. And the following also applies to his successors and, indeed, to many of his precursors’ sometimes smaller steps. The populist temptation and unlimited democracy naturally become competitive dictatorship.
Power is a matter of incentives. Incentives must be such that a potential dictator will not find it in his own self-interest to pursue his project. On this topic, a reflection by famous economist Mancur Olson is especially relevant (quoted from his book Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships [Basic Books, 2000], pp. 39-40):
Sometimes, when leading families or merchants organized a government for their city, they not only provided for some power sharing through voting but took pains to reduce the probability that the government’s chief executive could assume autocratic power. For a time in Genoa, for example, the chief administrator of the government had to be an outsider—and thus someone with no membership in any of the powerful families in the city. Moreover, he was constrained to a fixed term of office, forced to leave the city after the end of his term, and forbidden from marrying into any of the local families. In Venice, after a doge who attempted to make himself autocrat was beheaded for his offense, subsequent doges were followed in official processions by a sword-bearing symbolic executioner as a reminder of the punishment intended for any leader who attempted to assume dictatorial power. As the theory predicts, the same city-states also tended to have more elaborate courts, contracts, and property rights than most of the European kingdoms of the time. As is well known, these city-states also created the most advanced economies in Europe, not to mention the culture of the Renaissance.
READER COMMENTS
Craig
Jul 27 2023 at 10:11pm
Dateline July 21st, 1944, Hitler’s armies crumbling under the weight of the Allies invasion of France and the Soviets launching Operation Bagration in the East and fearing another Stauffenberg, Hitler, ahistorically, decides to throw in the towel and accept unconditional surrender, well, almost unconditional, except on condition of a Napoleonesque St. Helena exile with Eva Braun and immunity from war crimes prosecution for Nazi war criminals or perptrators of the Holocaust. Would you take Hitler up on that deal knowing the body count from July 21st, 1944 until May 8th, 1945 but realizing that justice would be denied to the victims of Nazism?
Fast forward to the late 90s and Augusto Pinochet is extradited to face justice for the murder of Spanish citizens in Chile. Justice served, correct? After all nobody can condone Pinochet’s criminal acts. Fast forward again though to today, July 27th, 2023 and one might note that Assad desperately clings to power in Syria. Would he accept a champagne brunch exile in Zurich? He might also be thinking of his children too. Meanwhile the people of Syria naturally continue to suffer.
Incentives? Indeed, I agree, Professor, and indeed one of those incentives is ‘not to do it at all’ which is one thing, but another incentive is that if you do it, you have to go to the mat, all in, succeed or die trying and bring everybody down with you. If you’re Putin, I would suggest that calculus leads to nuclear war perhaps. I hope I am wrong of course.
With respect to a wannabe Trump, I might refer that person to my copy of “How to Launch Coups and Crush People” — Dale Carnegie’s less famous companion to “How to Win Friends and Influence People” where it says, “Don’t send the bull shaman in, make sure to shoot everybody in Congress, Joey B and never give up, even if it means a civil war”
Fortunately the cold civil war persists. And the persecution of Trump, notably occurring on the heels of one of the very few polls that came out showing Trump ahead of Biden (most polls do NOT show this of course) is another baby step to #nationaldivorce. Meanwhile I find it rather ironic that the man who they thought was going to launch WW3 at the moment seems to be the best bet to stop it. Please, before the gerontocracy gets the ‘bright’ idea to sacrifice my son on the altar of Ukrainian territorial integrity.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 28 2023 at 3:38pm
Craig: Here is the other side of the argument. We don’t know the future. Perhaps we can let all shoplifters go scot-free and the benefits will outweigh the costs. Perhaps if all young men aged 17-24 are put in preventive detention (don’t worry, you’ll see your son back when he is 25), murders will diminish by 39%. Perhaps, if the worst any American would-be dictator can fear is an exile on the Riviera and lazy summers in Saint-Tropez, other factors (he may find God, for example) will still persuade him to become a curling player instead. Perhaps… But given that we don’t know the future, it is better to follow rules that have proven their usefulness and that are supported by economic theory and empirical evidence. That’s the Hayekian justification, if there is any, of the maxim “fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus”–provided of course that iustitia is iustitia.
Craig
Jul 28 2023 at 4:37pm
Let me know when Bush and his cabal along with every member of Congress who voted for the Iraq invasion, clearly contrary to the UN Charter, are held liable for launching a war of aggression. Until then all I see is a criminal regime criminalizing politics.
TMC
Jul 28 2023 at 10:12am
As someone who had gone through the training on classifications, it is the two tiers of justice that is the issue. Whether Trump had the right to hold the documents (he did – the courts already ruled on this with Bill Clinton)*, the fact that Hillary Clinton broke the law significantly worse without any repercussions does not sit well with anyone who cares about rule of law.
This prosecution makes the Biden administration the tin pot dictatorship, not Trump.
*I’m in favor of reforming the law to not allow Presidents carte blanche, but that’s not the way it is now.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 28 2023 at 10:53am
TMC: I share some of your concerns, but it is not easy to know the evidence in a non-prosecuted possible crime. And my main point is the following: the symbolic executioner in Venice was there to provide an incentive for a ruler not to grab more power and not to continue ruling after he has been dismissed (it was not a question of paper shuffling).
David S
Jul 28 2023 at 6:49pm
It seems that most people have forgotten that when Trump was elected, many unelected bureaucrats refused to acknowledge the election. Were any of them put on trial for treason? It really seems that there is a separate law for liberals and conservatives.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-officers-revolt-against-trump-policies-they-say-are-immoral-illegal
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/us/trump-election-protests.html
(The agency I personally remember was the national parks – but I can’t find it quickly)
Jim Glass
Aug 1 2023 at 12:08am
It seems that most people have forgotten that when Trump was elected, many unelected bureaucrats refused to acknowledge the election.
You mean, as per the links you posted, they protested against Trump. (They sure didn’t insist that Hillary won!) Protesting against presidential victors goes back uninterrupted to Washington’s second term. It’s called “free speech”.
Were any of them put on trial for treason?
There hasn’t been a treason trial in the USA since WWII, Tokyo Rose & friends.
It really seems that there is a separate law for liberals and conservatives.
It really seems that there’s been the same law for everybody for the last 75 years – no treason charges against anybody.
Are you saying there should have been treason charges against people who protested against Trump? Wow, aren’t you a fan of totalitarian dictatorship!
Craig
Jul 28 2023 at 12:29pm
“the fact that Hillary Clinton broke the law significantly worse without any repercussions”
And even that is penny ante nonsense compared to the extent of the war crimes that has been accepted as the ‘norm’
Aleksander
Jul 29 2023 at 9:43am
If Hillary had refused to cooperate with the authorities, continued to run her server and forced the FBI to raid her house in order to shut it down and recover evidence, I think she would have been prosecuted.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 29 2023 at 12:29pm
Good point, Aleksander!
Jim Glass
Jul 29 2023 at 11:45pm
Good point, Aleksander!
Yes, Trumpistas can be funny.
Trump has two, soon three, likely four criminal indictments coming at him, with 40+ charges and counting. “He’s being persecuted!”
But, if he’d had his emails on an unsecured server, been as bad as Hillary — then they’d have to disown him. 🙂
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jul 28 2023 at 12:31pm
At least one could make previous attempts at overthrowing the government (Chavez, Hitler) disqualifying.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 28 2023 at 3:49pm
Thomas: Agreed, with two caveats. First, it must be a constitutional rule (isn’t there already one like that in the US Constitution?), not a law that can be changed by the whim of any temporary majority. Second, the rule should not overrule the Tullock condition (which is difficult under a very powerful state, that is, state power must not be too tempting):
Craig
Jul 28 2023 at 4:40pm
‘(isn’t there already one like that in the US Constitution?)”
Yes, XIV Amend, sec 3
“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”
David Seltzer
Jul 28 2023 at 5:50pm
Pierre: “The State should have enough power to ‘keep the peace’ but not enough to provide temptation to ambitious men. The State should never be given enough power to prevent genuinely popular uprisings against it”. Should as normative is the surprise in the punch bowl. In terms of self-interest, consumers want to maximize satisfaction, corporations want maximize profits and the state wants to maximize power. What disincentives do minorities have to control Trump and other self-interested quasi-despots? Trump has been indicted but that is after the fact. He wasn’t deterred with threat of decapitation.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 29 2023 at 12:34pm
David: No deterrence is guaranteed to block all apparent incentives. One factor in this case is that Trump’s knowledge of the American legal system (not to speak of economic and political theory) resembles that of a poor, uneducated, recent illegal immigrant from Mexico.
Jim Glass
Jul 30 2023 at 12:00am
I’m trying to understand what this could mean in the non-academic real world. E.g., what’s a “genuinely popular” uprising that shouldn’t be prevented? How popular is “genuinely” popular for an uprising?
In reality most citizens always are apathetic and ignorant about politics, just want to get by in their lives. In the US in spite of billions of dollars spent on marketing and media in each election cycle to get out (scare out!) and buy votes, on average only a bit more than 50% of eligible voters have turned out in Presidential elections, and a lot less in lower-level elections. Without all those billion$ spent, how genuinely popular would even our big parties be?
In popular revolutions the revolutionaries typically are small militant minorities. During the American Revolution there was no Gallup polling but the general consensus is the population was maybe a quarter pro-revolution, a quarter pro-Tory, and half or more just trying to get along. Was 25% pro-American Revolution genuine popularity?
Or take Germany 1932. Hindenburg handed the state to Adolf after the Nazis scored 32% in the election. That was certainly a “genuine popular uprising” success as such things go, although maybe only half of those votes were really *for* the Nazis with the other half being more anti-Communists (who were behaving alarmingly similarly on the other side of the political spectrum). So should the state, following Tullock, have welcomed the Nazis in as it did, not preventing this genuinely popular uprising? I’d think most people would say, “Sheesh, no! That was terrible!”. But then, what’s the point? What’s the popularity needed to pass the Tullock test for a genuinely popular uprising not to be prevented, 51%? That’s not an uprising, it’s just a normal election result.
Then we have the extra complication that the Tullock state is carefully constructed constitutionally to protect freedom by preventing the rise to power within it of “ambitious men”. Yet if a genuinely popular uprising with an overt totalitarian agenda starts happening, the state should not have the power prevent it. Really? I don’t get it.
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 30 2023 at 12:52pm
Jim: You raise a very good point, which goes to the heart of contractarianism, even of the Buchanan-Tullock-Brennan variety. We do know, if we know anything, that not all individuals would grant power to the Nazi Party, but how do we know which rules exactly are unanimously consented to? And how is a “constitutional revolution” done (a question raised by Brennan and Buchanan in their The Reason of Rules). In my review of this book, I ask some ancillary questions.
All that is related to Madison’s famous statement:
What we know from public choice theory that Madison did not know is that the control of government should be as external as possible because it cannot literally control itself. That is how I interpret Anthony de Jasay‘s claim:
The Second Amendment would be part, but only part, of that (although the Supreme Court did not say so).
Richard W Fulmer
Jul 30 2023 at 4:24pm
Dictatorship is also a matter of character.
Mactoul
Jul 30 2023 at 10:02pm
I continue to be amazed by suggestions that Trump is any kind of wannabe dictator. Comparisons with real dictators like Hitler are entirely silly. Trump couldn’t even manage his re-election.
Richard W Fulmer
Jul 31 2023 at 7:43am
Wanting to be a dictator and being too incompetent to become a dictator are not mutually exclusive.
Jim Glass
Aug 1 2023 at 12:55am
Wanting to be a dictator and being too incompetent to become a dictator are not mutually exclusive.
Exactly. Trump was too incompetent to get himself re-elected, to not lose both the House and the Senate (which his Republican predecessors had gifted to him), to get his chosen Senate candidate elected in Alabama — his chosen guy lost to a Democrat in Alabama! — to not get himself impeached twice, to not get himself indicted twice and counting (four times probable, 40 counts so far…)…
He’s been God’s gift to the Democrats. Biden’s been running for president since 1987. Who else did he ever come close to beating?
And to this day Donald is singing the praises of his heroes Putin and Xi Jinping. While the Trumpistas somehow think of him as being some kind of “alpha male winner”. While both he and they whine about how he’s being “persecuted” — just as alpha males do! 🙂 Is it because they’re kind of attracted to dictators too?
Pierre Lemieux
Jul 31 2023 at 5:58pm
Mactoul: Matter of degree. Nayib Bukele looked nice when he was elected. Hugo Chavez too. Napoléon appeared to be a much nicer man than his predecessors when he was overwhelmingly elected Consul for life in 1802. Mussolini looked OK too. Have a look also at my Regulation book review “You Didn’t See It Coming.”
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