FA on States and Cities

There's an interesting, if unintentional, parallel in the current issue of Foreign Affairs Quarterly which picks up on a hobbyhorse of mine.  One component  is Michael Mazarr's (ungated!) essay on "The Rise and Fall of the Failed-State Paradigm," designed to give comfort and cover to those who want to do what George W. Bush used to say (back before he was George W, Bush) that we just ought to back off from this whole state-fixing business.  Mazarr presents a full-frontal assault but the pervasive aroma is that state building is pretty much undoable and anyway, we've got other fish to fry.

Now bracket Mazarr with a (n undated!) capsule review (by G. John Ikenberry) of If Mayors Ruled the World by Benjamin Barber, subtitled "Dysfunctional Nations, Rising Cities."  Barber's pitch isn't exactly new--Edward Glaeser's Triumph of the City sounds like it covers a good bit of the same turf.   

I can think of all kinds of ways in which cities can go wrong. They can consolidate the power of an elite (think the Yorty/Chandler Los Angeles).  They can mobilize a majority against a disfavored minority (think Karl Leuger of Vienna in Hitler's youth).  They can--well, I was going to say "they can produce the nightmarish masses of Katherine Boo's Beyond the Beautiful Forever, or Rohinton Mistrty's  A Fine Balance, or even David Gregory's Shantaram--but are they books of urban failure, or of urban success?  Complicated question, I suppose, but in all these contexts, you'd have to say that cities have a kind of concreteness (couldn't avoid the pun) that the more abstract and universal state does not enjoy.

Consent of the Governed

My friend Ignoto has been hassling me a bit about my allegedly misty-eyed daffiness over the Somalis. Somalia is not a "failed state" I argued; it is not "ungoverned;" it is just governed by principles other than those we recognize.

Well, I'm sticking to my guns (ahem) here, though I will grant it would be useful to drill down a little further.  I think Ignoto's point is that it can't be a government worthy of the name unless in some sense it concerns itself with the welfare of its citizenry.  

That's a very seductive proposition.  Consent of the governed blah blah.  Social contract blah blah.   Hold these truths to be self evident, long train of abuses and usurpations, hoo boy where have I heard all that before.

Actually, you know the answer to that last question.  The snippets were, of course, from the Declaration Independence, the crowning achievement of a long struggle to establish a theory of government on the principle of the welfare (or at least the "consent") of the government.  It's the ornament of our history, our presiding narrative, but that's the trouble: it is so much a part of the fabric of our lives that we forget that it is a human creation, a cultural artifact that lives in time and space. We cannot conceive it otherwise.

Cannot conceive it otherwise; this doesn't mean it can't be otherwise, and that is where I give myself the prize.  I'd hate, hate, hate, to give up this presiding narrative; still my point is that societies can operate without it. Can?  Hell, most have, and still do.  We live now in a world where our presiding narrative is so deeply ingrained that virtually everybody has to pay obeisance to some version of it.  Some are sincere; some are sincerely deluded.  Some barely bother with the pretense.

Am I saying that "common weal" begins with, e.g., John Locke?  I wouldn't go quite that far.  I suppose going back to prehistory, contenders for elite status made a habit of appealing to some model of the common interest.  It is good that you delegate to me because I am stronger, tougher, wilier than the rest of you and thereby better than you at implementing your own interests.  I suppose  fair amount  of that goes on today.  I suppose also it was common enough that after a few years in office, he'd decide that God's real plan was to be implemented through his own (earthly) DNA, his own spawn.  And after a few more, the idea of general welfare probably fell under the bus* altogether.

Other times, other strategies.  The Classical Greeks are a fascinating example because they seem to be a rare outlier in which some combination of weak leadership and endemic paranoia seemed to provide for decentralized authority to exist for more than just a few weeks.  But that's the point: they are fascinating because so unusual.

I don't see much evidence that Roman emperors (say) took much thought of the common welfare, though they may from time to time have pretended to--out of grandiosity, out of fear, or both.  But in his heart of heart, each knew that he was the one who counted, and the rest of the multitudes could go fry or not, as they saw fit.

This is an artless adolescent-style lurch at an issue that deserves (and, let's admit it, often gets) more serious or sophisticated treatment.  My narrow point for the moment is that there is nothing inherent about "welfare of the people."  It's a feature. not a bug, but you can perfectly well organize a society without it, and usually do.

This Man's Army--Whose?

Audioreading The Shadow World, Andrew Feinstein's history of the global arms trade, I'm struck by something I never gave much thought to before.  That is: at least as late as World War I, it was proper in polite circles to believe that there should be no private arms trade whatever--that the manufacture of arms should be the province of the governments only, corollary, I suppose, to that "monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force," the Monopol legitimen physischen Zwanges, which Max Weber took to be the defining mark of the state.  Apparently Woodrow Wilson thought so--and so also Lloyd George, until he found himself the leader of a great nation in war.

I know what you are thinking; we can burble on about how the arms trade has been "privatized," and the structure of arms production and distribution has indeed revolutionized itself over the generations.  But privatization? Perhaps, but maybe the real point is that the fulcrum of violence has shifted and it is the Lockheed-Martins, the BAEs, the EADs that run the show while states exist (if they do) as--oh, I don't know, the human relations department or the brokerage office.  Feinstein has some wonderful stuff about the British government's headlong plunge into the arms trade, driven by the very good reason that they needed the money, that's why.  And this was a socialist (heh!) government, too (I'm talking about the pre-Thatcher 70s).  It may have seemed like a novelty in its time. These days, that sort of thing may raise issues, but its elementary being is just taken for granted.

We talk about "failed states," of course, but I think I've argued before that "failed state" is a misnomer: Somalia continues to function, just not according to a Treaty-of-Westphalia model  (recall also: by general report, the Somalian shilling continues to function, even if the "sovereign" does not--from what we hear this weekend, perhaps more effectively than the Bitcoin).  And any agglomeration of people that can draw 2500 tribal leaders together into a loya jirga--well, there may need to be a new name for it, but the name is not "failed."

[Side note: I know it's just a  movie, but I'm harking back to that hijacking flic I watched the other night out of socialist, statist, Denmark, by all measures one of the most successful "states" in being.  Can I make anything out of the fact that "state" presence in this operation was exactly nil?  We had scruffy pirate kids on the one side; grey-suited corporate types on the other.  The nearest thing we had to a "sovereign" presence was the Aussie (yes?) freebooter whose advice, if followed, might have ended matters more cheaply and quickly.]

Were I the point man for an international arms conglomerate, I suppose I'd be willing to keep the traditional state around--to preserve deniability, perhaps, to handle the inconvenient and onerous cleanup chores, probably to provide the costly training and apprenticeship programs I would need for my work force.  Or perhaps as cosmetics--the lipstick of legitimacy on the pig of violence.  Yeah, as John Lovitz would say, that's the ticket.  Or perhaps it has already come to pass?

Aeschylus among the Somalis

In his Orestia, the Greek playwright Aeschylus recalls Orestes, whose life story provides a climax the cycle of violence that has dominated the House of Atreus. Aeschylus' audience would have known how Orestes, on the entreaty of his sister Electra, had killed their mother Clytemnestra, because she had killed their father Agamemnon, and how Agamemnon, in turn, had killed their sister Iphigenia. He thereby sparks the ire of the Eumenides (oddly, "the kindly ones"), avengers of patricide and matricide. Pursued by the spirits, Orestes seeks shelter in Athens, and the protection of its eponymous protector Athena.

Aeschylus fashions a climax in Athens which likely seems abrupt to modern audiences, and may have provoked the same sort of response from Athenians: Athena convenes a jury. She persuades the furies, in advance, to accept the verdict. The vote is a tie which, on Athena's rule, counts as an acquittal.

So Orestes goes free of the charge that he murdered (though he certainly did kill) his mother. To modern ears, I suspect the result will sound like an odd bit of casuistry, a slender reed on which to base the narrative of a great nation. Athena, that is, hasn't shown that her result is “right” any fundamental sense. Only that it may be functional insofar as it ends s cycle of killing. But this last is an empirical proposition, and it may be anyone's guess whether Athena's justice can deliver on its promise of less killing or not.

So it may seem; but none of this appears to have inhibited the critical community, which has spent the last 2500 years (or so) identifying Athena's trial and Orestes' acquittal as landmarks on the path of progress from barbarism to civilization.

I thought of Athena and Orestes this week when I was reading Jay Bahadur's Pirates of Somalia: Their Hidden World. It's an interesting book, not helped by the fact thst the notorious menace appears to have been brought under control for the moment. Though I suspect we are due for a reprise in popular media as audiences get a look at Tom Hanks in his role as the bluff and earnest defender of property and good order, a sort of Sully of the seas. In fairness, I haven't actually seen the new Hanktacular, though I did hear him chat about it with Terry Gross and he made it sound like great fun—Hanks is one of the few actors that I know of who can actually say something interesting when he's not just reading a script. 

Still, if there is anything Americans remember about Somalia aside from “pirates” it is probably Black Hawk Down and “failed state,” the three not necessarily unrelated: note that the last link to a piece on “failed states” takes you to a piece about Somalia as the very definition of a failed state.

Well, I must say I have no desire to spend my sunset years or any years in any melange so afflicted with poverty, disease, infant mortality and whatnot: “socialist” Denmark looks a hell of a lot better to me than government-less Somalia. Still, I think there is a conceptual error here, and you can see it in Bahadur's book. For if you think of “failed state,” I suspect that what comes to mind is some kind of entropy—grey and formless, loose atoms bouncing off of each other at random.

But read Bahadur and you can see that whatever is going on in Somalia, there is nothing random about it: his whole point is that living/working in Somalia put him to the task much like negotiating rush hour traffic in Palermo: it's intricate, heart-stopping and take all your luck and skill. But there is a kind of order: just not the sort of order that you and I would want to enjoy. Which is hardly a surprise. The truth is, by the standards of anyone reading this blog, most of the world is wretchedly governed most of the time, and we wouldn't want to put ourselves in the clutches of those who govern there except in our worst nightmares—or rather, not without a USA passport and a fat credit line on our Visa card.

Which brings me back to Aeschylus: perhaps he is part of the problem. He seems to have set the benchmark for what does, and does not, count as a “state.” Ever since we have counted “law” and “justice” (with somebody like Athena as the tie-breaking—actually, tie-making—vote). But her “state” endless retribution is not a “failed state;” the worst you can say for it is that it is a state “not worthy of the name.” And that, I should say, is a much different proposition. On this measure, of course, I suspect there are no "failed states;" I doubt that there can be. But as much may be the beginning of wisdom.

Afterthought:  My Daily Drucker for October 16, offers a squib on "Legitimate Power in Society."  Peter Drucker says in part:

No society can function as a society unless the decisive social power is legitimate.  Legitimate power stems from the same basic belief of society regulating men's nature and fulfillment on which the individual's social status and function rest.  Indeed legitimate power can be defined as rulership that finds its justification in the basic ethos of society.  In every society there are many powers that have nothing to do with such a principle, and institutions that in no way are either designed or devoted to its fulfillment.  In its fulfillment, in other words, there are always a great many "unfree" institutions in a free society, and a great many sinners among the saints. But as long as the decisive social power that we call rulership is based upon the claim of freedom, equality, or saintliness, and is exercised through institutions that are designed toward the fulfillment of these ideal purposes, society can function as a free, equal or saintly society.  For its institutional structure is one of legitimate power.

For extra credit, the reader is invited to make what sense he can out of this passage in terms of Aeschylus and the Somalis.