The Political Economy of Good Government:International Stability, Strategic Issues and US Policies

1. Peace, Stability and Prosperity: the Nature of Good Government 22. Stories Being Told to Us: Welcome to the New World Disorder 53. Foreign Policy for a Dangerous Old World: Adoption, Adaptation &Resilience 84. Brave New World: the Emerging Balance, Pluralities, & Non-zero Sums 12

Existential Crisis Around the Agora II: New World Stories 16

IntroductionThis collection of blog postings asks the fundamental question we face thisnext century – what is good government? Why do we care – that is what arethe consequences of failing to encourage and support the evolution of widespread good government? And finally – what would the Brave NewWorld look like that saw the emergence of good government look like and howto encourage it. We spent the 20

Century experimenting with alternativeideologies of government and spent millions of lives and untold wealth. Nowwe are slowly learning to do better but need to do better still. There are nowfinal answers here but there is a comprehensive, workable and testedframework for thinking about the problem.

Peace, Stability and Prosperity: the Nature of Good Government

May 25, 2008http://llinlithgow.com/PtW/2008/05/peace_stability_and_prosperity.html Just in case you haven't noticed we've ended up with a series of postings and excerpt collections that paint apicture of the current state of the world. And that SoW started with a survey of the "non-flat" realities and pointedback at the role of culture, values and institutions. And proceeded by looking at the Good, the MabyeSo's, the Badand the Really Ugly. Overall, on balance, we have to judge that more progress has been made for more peoplethan at any time in human history. Largely by improvements in state governance that have allowed greaterstability and peace to promote economic progress. Which in turn has led to increasing prosperities around theworld.Yet at the same time we've also documented a wide range of the usual troubles and tribulations as well as deeperstructural challenges. It is possible that as we try and keep the wheels on all this that we're going to pass into amulti-decade tunnel on the other side of which lies a general worldwide stable order that provides the good thingsin life for an increasing portion of the world's populations. May it be so. At the heart of all this though we've founda couple of key things. One is the question of good government (we won't repeat Adam Smith's famous dictumwhich we've used several times but...please remember it). The other is the tendency of the developed countries tocombine the notion of imposing their own solutions on the rest of the world without due grasp of their histories andcultures. Whether we make it thru the tunnel is, therefore, a question of encouraging the growth of goodgovernance in a re-architected world system that builds on the native inheritances. Adopting and adapting fromworldwide best practices but changing and transforming them to suite local idiosyncrasies.So what is good government ? That seems to be the question at the heart of the challenge.Well we've certainly tried and experimented with a lot of alternatives thruout history, as this spectrum suggests.As a spectrum it also implies a sense of progress but that's not true for a couple of reasons. The obvious beingthat it is all too often the case that one sees regression historically. The other, subtler one, being that it's not clearthat farther to the right is inherently better on many grounds. If one tries to impose a form of government, say acomplicated oligarchy, on a small tribe that's so obviously ridiculous that we'd never consider it. But the principleholds - the form of government needs to be appropriate for the size and complexity of the society involved. It alsoneeds to recognize the realities of history and culture - imposing a pure democracy on a people without muchexperience, commitment or civitas hasn't worked well either. We forget that we've been experimenting with thegradual evolution of representation and civitas - the commitment of the citizen to a society and a societycommitted to the rule of law reciprocally - in the English-speaking worlds for almost a 1,000 years.The third, and most important and critical factor, is that governments should be the ultimate arbiter of force and its'monopolist in a given area. Again we've gotten used to "good government" and forgotten the historicalunderpinnings, or ignored them, in all our debates. We've got a lot more to explore here but this point is soimportant I'm tempted to stop for a moment of reverent contemplation. For example Spain, France and Germanyhave all gone thru major changes of government, aside from general war, in the 20thC. In France the 4thRepublic, formed in '48, fell in '58 under the threat of civil war from the French military and was replaced by DeGaulle and the Fifth Republic with an entirely new constitution. That was just fifty years ago !

I've often thought that actors and English professors shouldn't be allowed to pontificate on Shakespeare becausethey haven't the background to understand him. The people who should be watching, commenting and learningare large-scale organizational executives. If Iago's double-dealing, back-stabbing and clever treachery isn't as apta description of Wall St. investment banks as there is I've seen none better. But Lear - now there they miss theboat. This isn't just about a dysfunctional family. This is about a King who's spent his entire life building a countrythrough war, conflict and wise ruling thinking he's found a way to pass on that inheritance for his people andwatching as all he's worked for and all his hopes for that country crash around him thru the ambition of the peoplehe trusted most in the world.And Shakespeare wasn't writing fiction - he was writing from history and his own personal experiences. As theysay, "Politics read in tooth and claw". "Ol Wille Boy knew that better than the generations of professors, punditsand limp-wrists who's prisoner he's become. The same could be said for Kipling who knew what it was to face thechoice on the plains of Afghanistan of blowing out your brains or waiting for the women to come out.William especially understood that most difficult of moments for any form of government - the transition to it'ssuccessor. A peaceful transition with a history of peaceful transitions changes the entire equation because itmeans that stable government is likely to persist over generations. What were the Wars of the Roses, which gaverise to the Tudors eventually but tore England apart in bloody fighting over power for two generations or more,about but transitions. Go watch Ian McKellen'sRichard IIIfor as stunning a depiction as you'll ever see.So laugh at chads all you want and believe whatever popular mythology about miscounts you care to. But we tookit for granted that the issue would be resolved according to rule, procedure and process; AND that everybodywould ADHERE to it. Not something the rest of the world can take for granted. Ask Nikita Khrushchev or LavrentiBeria if you don't believe me. So when the Chinese are looking forward to their fourth peaceful transition in a row,according to rules, appreciate what you're seeing.All of that suggests two fundamentalquestions, or composite, questions touse in evaluating the suitability andeffectiveness of a government.Ultimately pointing to the question ofwhether or not it will be able toestablish a monopoly on force,maintain it over generations and usethat force for the provision of theinstitutional frameworks required forcivilization and prosperous societies.One could even make the argumentthat much of human history is givenover to the debate over thesequestions. Just by way of exampleconsider this exhibit on theArt ofAncient Mesopotamiaand check outtheStandard of UR. You'll see asaccurate a depiction of War and Peacefrom 5,000 years ago as you'd seefrom paintings of the Spanish CivilWar. Or better yet compare andcontrast the murals on the walls of the Council of Nine of the Italian city-state ofSiena. And notice that the implicit"messages" are identical then - and now for us. You'll find the history of Siena revealing as well. Which leads usto the accompanying graphic on a structural analysis of good government.