The Decline and Rise of Democracy, a new book by David Stasavage, a political scientist at New York University, reviews the history of democracy, from “early democracy” to “modern democracy.” I review the book in the just-out Fall issue of Regulation. One short quote of my review about the plight of modern democracy in America:
[Stasavage] notes the “tremendous expansion of the ability of presidents to rule by executive order.” Presidential powers, he explains, “have sometimes been expanded by presidents who cannot be accused of having authoritarian tendencies, such as Barack Obama, only to have this expanded power then used by Donald Trump.” We could, or course, as well say that the new powers grabbed by Trump will likely be used by a future Democratic president “who cannot be accused of authoritarian tendencies,” or perhaps who might legitimately be so accused.
The book is a book of history and political theory, not a partisan book. But the history of democracy has implications for today. An interesting one is how bureaucracy typically helped rulers prevent the development of democracy. Another quote from my review—Stasavage deals with imperial China and I compare with today’s America:
At the apogee of the Han dynasty, at the beginning of the first millennium CE, there was one bureaucrat for every 440 subjects in the empire. … In the United States, which is at the low end of government bureaucracies in the rich world, public employees at all levels of government translate into one bureaucrat for 15 residents (about one for 79 at the federal level only).
If you read my review in the paper version of Regulation, beware. I made an error in my estimate for the federal bureaucracy and the printed version says “37” instead of “79”. It is corrected in the electronic version. Mea culpa.
READER COMMENTS
Everett
Sep 18 2020 at 11:12pm
Relevant graphs: https://historyinpieces.com/research/federal-personnel-numbers-1962
Phil H
Sep 19 2020 at 5:03am
“Han dynasty…one bureaucrat for every 440 subjects…In the United States…one bureaucrat for 15 residents”
I’d much rather live in the modern USA than in Han Dynasty China, so score another one for big government.
The idea about bureaucracies suppressing democracy is interesting. While I can see that they suppress *local* democracy, isn’t there a sense in which they create democracy over a larger space? Because they demand some kind of uniformity of rules, which forces them to be at least compatible with every part of the empire. Obviously there’s friction in that process, but it’s not obvious to me that the friction is worse than under highly democratic localist rules.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 21 2020 at 10:50am
@Phil H: Stasavage’s thesis is that bureaucracy allows the rulers to rule without consulting the ruled (which is necessary without a bureaucracy). I think this is an easily defendable thesis. Moreover, central, uniform rules discourage experimentation and innovation–which is what Walter Scheidel argues in Escape from Rome. This would not include rules (like freedom of commerce) that allow the very freedom that favors innovation. As for your first point, Stasavage would agree with you, but I think it’s a mistake to believe that stifling regulation is good if approved by a nominally democratic government.
Everett
Sep 21 2020 at 2:39pm
This is an interesting point.
If everyone was a “bureaucrat”, what governmental form would this be, and how close would it be to “democracy”? On its face it would seem like state-socialism, but I think this would depend on the types of feedback (e.g. voting) in the particular system.
Would not a broader-based bureaucracy limit the ability of the “ruler” to rule without consent of the governed? When people screw over their neighbors karma more easily bites them.
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 27 2020 at 5:06pm
Everett: Anthony de Jasay has answered your question: it would be the Plantation State where the government controls the “citizens” like plantation owners controlled their slaves. The state would have previously abolished electoral competition because, among other reasons, the system could not work with citizens determining their own wages.
Everett
Sep 20 2020 at 12:29pm
Link eaten by the spam filter.
The number of executive branch civilian employees has been basically flat since the 1960s. (From ~2.5 million to ~2.75 million)
Uniformed military personnel have noticeably dropped since the Vietnam war. (From above 3 million to ~1.5 million)
Legislative and Judicial branch employees have more than doubled. (From ~ 30 thousand to ~ 60 thousand).
Meanwhile the US population has increased from under 200 million to over 200 million.
So are you saying that bureaucracy now will help entrench democracy the way it historically helped entrench monarchy?
Everett
Sep 20 2020 at 12:30pm
“under 200 million to over 300 million”
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 21 2020 at 11:06am
@Everett: On the technical issue, the system identified you as a new commenter and thus retained your comment, which has now been published. I don’t think it seriously challenges what I said: the trend from 1970 to 2010 is short and what happened is that technology substituted more than perfectly for the reduction in the number of bureaucrats.
You write:
Yes and no, depending on what one means by “democracy.” (Perhaps Stasavage or even Tyler Cowen would agree with your interpretation.) But if democracy is the tyranny of the majority (or minority) in power, which can while it is in power ram through diktats that shackle the minorities not in power—diktats that will remain in force when the tyranny of the next majority in power gets equal by ramming different diktats shackling the previous majority. None of that would be possible without a powerful bureaucracy.
Robert EV
Sep 20 2020 at 12:31pm
Why is the spam filter eating my comments? I don’t even have any links in them, and my email address is a good one.
Is it because I changed my user name?
Jose Pablo
Sep 21 2020 at 10:02am
The State is, in every possible form it can adopt, expansionary. The action bias and the human ambitions all but guarantee that it will keep growing, almost “as if” having “human ambitions” on its own. Anthony de Jasay in The State offers one of the most interesting recounts in this regard.
So, nothing really surprising here.
And I don’t think there is a big difference between the increase in the use of executive orders by the President and the increase in the “passing legislation tendency” of Congress. The difference in the process: one person heavily influenced by a small group of advisors vs a collective body (both properly “chosen”), does not say anything about the quality of the outcome. There is no way of designing the legislative “process” in a way that can guarantee the “quality” (if we could ever agree on how to define it) of the laws. This judgement will always be “content-dependent”.
The Founding Fathers were well aware of the risks of “excess legislation” (coming either from the President or from Congress) and they designed the best system they could though of to prevent legislation from happening. 233 years before we can conclude that the Founding Fathers ingenuity regarding this topic was no match (by far) to the growing tendencies of The State described by de Jasay and the government permanent desire (no matter what branch) to legislate in excess.
Here Scalia at his best talking about this topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd–UO0
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 21 2020 at 11:16am
@Jose: Great speech of Scalia you linked to!
I agree with your Jasayian argument that both Congress and the president are dangerous, but that is mainly because they have one (and the same) powerful bureaucracy.
Jose Pablo
Sep 21 2020 at 10:13am
The size of the government (in terms of number of people per bureaucrat) should be related to the productivity of the society they rule upon.
At the end of the day, somebody has to produce the surplus required to feed this group of idle mandarins that don’t produce any of the good or services required for subsistence.
I have never seen an historical analysis of this kind, though. Any reference on this topic?
Pierre Lemieux
Sep 21 2020 at 11:35am
Yes, the number or proportion of bureaucrats should be evaluated ceteris paribus—a point neglected, I think, by Phil H above. The only historical analyses that come to my mind are indirect and focus on the detrimental effects of centralization and accompanying bureaucracy on economic growth: Joel Mokyr’s A Culture of Growth and Walter Scheidel’s Escape from Rome (the links are to my reviews of these two books).
Jose Pablo
Sep 21 2020 at 12:51pm
Thak you, Pierre.
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