Republic: The Least Stable Form of Government

There appears to be some delusional belief amongst the Australian “intelligentsia” that: 1) republicanism makes you modern and clever; 2) new immigrants, having often come from republics, must desire them; and 3) having a republic is inevitable. This is, in the words of American troops describing their MRE rations (Meals Ready to Eat), three lies for the price of one.

1. The “ideal” of republicanism is literally ancient, and the modern experience of republics is a failure rate of 95 per cent.

2. The vast majority of new immigrants and refugees coming to Australia are fleeing the horrors of their failed republics in search of a safe, stable political system—like our constitutional monarchy.

3. The entire flow of modern history—from China to Russia to Iran to Iraq to Zimbabwe to Venezuela—is apparently intent on proving that the brief post-war infatuation with liberal democratic republics was just a bad joke.

This article will consider the astonishing failure rate of republics; the reason republics fail; and the reason Australia is infinitely better off as a constitutional monarchy.

The ideal of democratic republicanism—loosely based on a romantic, and largely inaccurate, re-interpretation of ancient Greek and Roman institutions—became popular during the “Age of Enlightenment”. According to Wikipedia, the word democracy combines the elements demos, which means “people”, and kratos, which means “force” or “power”. Whereas: “A republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people (or at least a part of its people) have an impact on its government.”

Here we run into confusion with Churchill’s oft-misquoted statement that democracy is the worst system of government, except for all the other ones. It would be impossible to quantify the number of people who have confused the word democracy with the concept of republicanism. In practice of course, almost all modern constitutional monarchies have stable democratic systems, whereas the vast majority of modern republics are not remotely democratic.

In fact the eighteenth-century idealism about democratic republics is quite old-fashioned compared to the much more recent nineteenth- and twentieth-century idealistic experiments of new-style “republics”—communist, socialist and fascist, all of which have been discredited by extensive horrible experience. (If one simplistic statement could sum up twentieth-century European history it would be, “There are three types of democracy in Europe: Protestant Democracy, which we call Constitutional Monarchy; Catholic Democracy, which we call Fascist Dictatorship; and Orthodox Democracy, which we call Communist Dictatorship.”)

The ongoing romance of republicanism is largely attached to the revolutionary fervour which is often mistakenly associated with the establishment of the American, French or South American republics. Slavery and the many other terrors that resulted are usually quietly ignored. Somehow advocates for these “proper” republics have also managed the mental gymnastics to detach their mystical success stories from the many socialist republics, soviets, Maoist republics, people’s republics, Islamic republics, and other romantic revolutionary movements that have been the end result of most republican movements of the last century. The correct technical name for almost all those states is dictatorships.

The common theme of these republican romances is by no means rose-coloured, and has usually been violence and repression. Whether you take the examples of the Yellows, Reds and Blacks who suffered in the US Revolution; the sectarian civil wars of the Middle East, Asia or the Balkans; or the “enemies of the people” who were slaughtered in such vast numbers by virtually every republic you care to name from eighteenth-century France to twentieth-century Russia, Turkey, China, and almost anywhere in Africa ever called a republic of any sort: you would be unable to find any system of government in history which has shed more of its own people’s blood than states called democratic republics.

This is because democratic republics are inherently unstable, and almost inevitably collapse into chaos or dictatorship: dictatorships of individuals, such as the Weimar Republic when it voted in Adolf Hitler; or dictatorships of the all-righteous “majority”, such as the republics which have unloosed bloodbaths on their minority groups—from Turkey in the 1920s to Rwanda and Burma more recently.

The statistics on the 240-odd (some very odd) democratic republics founded in the last century or so, are sobering. About 10 per cent, some twenty-three republics, were ephemeral, their existences measured in mere months, ranging from the Bavarian Socialist Republic of 1919 to the Chinese Soviet of 1931 to 1934. Most were smashed during horrible civil wars. Another 70 per cent, about 150 republics, lasted a little longer but less than twenty years before collapsing into dictatorship, civil war, ethnic cleansing or other chaos. These include everything from Weimar Germany to Pakistan, Fiji to Zimbabwe, Kuomintang Nationalist China to Venezuela. That leaves a scant half-dozen that have lasted longer. Leaving a few exceptions for later discussion, the average life expectancy of all modern democratic republics is less than 20 years.

It is possible to make republics last a bit longer—as long as they are not democratic. Forty of the more successful ones last century include: twenty-six former communist republics like Albania, Bulgaria, Mozambique, Poland, Yemen and Yugoslavia, which lasted an average of 24.5 years—thanks largely to occupying armies. Then there are four current non-Marxist socialist republics—Bangladesh, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Tanzania, which have lasted more like forty years (seven such states had made it to thirty-five years—vale Libya, Egypt and Syria). And there are five Marxist/Maoist socialist republics—China, Cuba, North Korea, Laos and Vietnam—making it to fifty-plus years.

A very few modern democratic republics, perhaps 3 per cent of the total, have made it to fifty years without going through nasty dictatorships and civil wars. All seem to have special circumstances. A few European countries—usually those threatened by the Soviets and occupied by the British-American alliance after the war; Israel and South Korea—also under constant threat of invasion; and Botswana—effectively a one-tribe state with all four “elected” rulers coming from the tribal “royal” family.

Apart from that, the most significant probability for success as a republic is coming out of the British Commonwealth after many decades of adapting British-style legal and government institutions—Ireland, India and Singapore for instance (with no more than a percentage or two of the populations dying in the resulting civil conflicts).

By contrast there are forty-four current monarchies, some absolute, but most constitutional (or heading that way). Figures are harder to average, mainly because many are so old. But (despite what some people think), they include a dozen new monarchies—from Spain post-Franco in 1978, to Qatar in 2003 and Bhutan in 2007.

There are eleven European constitutional monarchies with an average life of 145 years. (The number is only that low because Sweden adopted a new constitution in 1974, Denmark in 1953, and Spain started a new monarchy in 1978.) The real average life of European constitutional monarchies is actually over 230 years. If you add all the other constitutional monarchies like Japan, Thailand and Morocco; elected monarchies like Malaysia and the Vatican, and absolute monarchies like the United Arab Emirates, the average life expectancy of the world’s forty-four monarchies climbs to about 340 years. Although there are still a few Third World absolute monarchies, all the longer-lived ones—with the exception of the Vatican—are now constitutional monarchies. Which means constitutional monarchies—whether European, Asian, Middle Eastern or African—have a seventeen-times better life expectancy than democratic republics!

Nor is it just the statistics of durability that impress. The average constitutional monarchy has a ten to twenty times higher living standard than the average republic (despite the substantial counter-weight of the US, Germany and Finland). Of the top twenty wealthiest and healthiest nations in the world, 70 per cent are constitutional monarchies. Of the bottom 100 poorest and lowest-life-expectancy states in the world, only one (Morocco), is not a republic.

Nor is this rule varied by geographical or cultural regions around the world. Whether you are in Europe, Africa, Asia or the Middle East, similar results occur. Over the last century, which of these neighbouring pairs of monarchies versus republics would you prefer to have lived in? Sweden or Germany? Netherlands or France? Morocco or Libya? Jordan or Syria? United Arab Emirates or Iraq? Thailand or Burma? Japan or China?

This appears to be an inevitable result of the strengths and weaknesses of the two systems. Limited democracy can be an excellent component of a balanced system of government, but only tends to survive in a system with adequate checks and balances—such as a constitutional monarchy. By contrast the inherent instability of democratic republics, and their lack of checks and balances, invariably leads to the collapse of those states.

Machiavelli explained this process in his Discourses:

Some other writers on politics distinguished three types of government, viz. the monarchical, the aristocratic and the democratic … Other authors, wiser according to the opinion of many, count six kinds of government, three of which are very bad, and three good themselves, but so liable to be corrupted as they become absolutely bad … Thus monarchy becomes tyranny; aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy; and popular government relaxes readily into licentiousness …

I say then, that all kinds of government are defective; those three which we have qualified as good because they are too short lived, and the three bad ones because of their inherent viciousness. Thus sagacious legislators, knowing the vices of each of these systems of government by themselves, have chosen one that should partake of all of them, judging that to be the most stable and solid. In fact, when there is combined under the same constitution a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people, then these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.

Machiavelli rightly pointed out that the only system of government that is not unstable is one which combines the strengths of each system: the long-term perspective of the monarch, the balancing of interests of the aristocrats, and the popular consent of the people. If these three are in balance, then any two of them can combine to prevent a takeover by the third.

The issue, as identified by the economist and social scientist Mancur Olson in his book Power and Prosperity, is that what you are trying to balance is not just special interests, but special interests with different time horizons. The Wikipedia article on time horizons looks at it from a business perspective:

The most common horizons used in planning are one “quarter” … and five years (in corporate planning). More far-sighted companies and government agencies may also use between ten and one hundred years. Thirty years is often used in mortgage contracts and US Treasury bonds such as the “long bond”. One hundred years, sometimes considered equal to seven generations, is a time horizon often cited by the ancient Iroquois and modern Greens.

In terms of government, a monarchy is looking a century or more ahead, an oligarchy tends to think about thirty-year bonds, and the democratic part is worrying about yesterday’s opinion polls. Or, to put it in the words of Sir Humphrey Appleby, “Diplomacy is about surviving to the next century, politics is about surviving until Friday afternoon.”

The British system—the “mother of parliaments”—still consists of a balancing act between the monarchy, the House of Lords and the House of Commons: but the components of those roles keep developing. The executive monarch developed into an administrative role, now mainly confined to reserve powers to do with the stability of the whole system. The Commons used to be the gentry in combination with representatives of the trading towns, but has since kept extending the franchise (possibly too far) until the only qualification to vote is reaching a certain age. The House of Lords began when the wealth and power of the oligarchs were mainly based on holdings of land—hence the hereditary element, now much reduced—and has evolved as the society has developed more industry and commerce and science. Now, with so many life peers—most of whom could never have dreamed of being elected—being appointed for their achievements in such fields as science, industry, business, charity, arts and unions, the House of Lords is by far the most meritocratic house in the world, and arguably the most impressive “house of review” in the world.

Humans being what they are, everyone in government constantly seeks to expand their patch, and their power. Inevitably, in any straight democracy, this eventually leads to a form of dictatorship (see the 95 per cent of the republics mentioned above), unless there is enough balance in the system to prevent it (see any constitutional monarchy above). The ideal situation is that proposed by Machiavelli: where any one of the three makes a play for supreme power, the other two gang up to stop it.

This is what happened in miniature during the English Civil War. The King looked set on the path towards European-style absolute monarchy, until brought to heel by the English oligarchs and nascent democrats. Unfortunately the Civil War required the oligarchs to get the support of the English (and even more importantly Scottish) commons, which threw up all sorts of popular movements such as the New Model Army, the Presbyterians and the Levellers. Within a few years the English republic (sorry—“Commonwealth”), found itself with a dictator—Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector—who passed on his job to his son. Fortunately the dictatorship was overthrown by a combination of monarchy, oligarchy and commons, which then set up the carefully balanced constitutional monarchy with both lords and commons—the prototype adapted by most stable long-term democracies today.

The Australian Commonwealth has renamed its monarch, lords and commons—as governor-general, Senate and House of Representatives—but they fill the traditional functions of representing respectively the “long term” perspective of the Queen’s representative; the “balancing of interests” of the Senate (in our case the states, as designed, and the parties, as they have developed); and the “popular consent” of those governed. Only one serious attempt has been made to rule without joint consent, when the Whitlam government tried to govern without the Senate approving supply, and attempted unconstitutional loans and policies. The resulting crisis didn’t lead to a Weimar republic, or an American civil war, simply because our system had checks and balances whereby the governor-general simply called an election. (Some people still seem to think that resolving the problem by having the umpire call an election, instead of through violence, is somehow an argument against our system!)

The United States had a go at designing something that would do a similar job, but made some mistakes in redefining the roles. They made a popularly elected president/executive the plaything of the demos, put the Congress in to represent the interests of the states within the federation, and attempted to assign the long-term security role to their Supreme Court. Unfortunately activist judges have made even more of a mess of this plan than pork-barrelling congresses and populist presidents. It is hard to see any part of the US system that has not devolved into what Machiavelli called “licentiousness”.

(The most amusing thing about Australian republicans pushing the US example of a successful republic, is that most of their Baby Boomer politics since they were old enough to wave a protest sign has been fundamentally anti-American. They seem unable to explain why they laud the ideal political system of the US while decrying its crass results. The best American comedy writers have much clearer vision. In one amusing episode of West Wing, the Belorussians visit to discuss becoming a presidential democracy like the US. White House officials beg them to go for a nice safe constitutional democracy, pointing out that only four American-style presidential republics have lasted more than thirty years.)

So this leaves the basic problem with republicanism. The only states that came close to being the unfettered democratic republics of popular mythology were the small and oligarchic city-states of Greece and Rome, and later, Venice. The main things they had in common were a very limited body of similar and right-thinking, male and property-owning citizens, of the right race, who could get together and agree in open assemblies. Oh, and slavery. The only other thing they had in common was their spectacular collapses into chaos, dictatorship and foreign conquest.

Modern republics by contrast have attempted to some extent or other to expand the franchise beyond just “people like us”. Property franchises have been expanded or abolished, sex franchises expanded, race franchises expanded, age franchises expanded (there are people seriously campaigning for the vote for sixteen-year-olds—often the same people who are pointing out that modern research shows that adolescents’ brains are not completely developed on the concept of consequences until they are in their twenties, and that therefore these children should not be held responsible for committing crimes). As a result modern republics have almost universally failed. Consensus is rarely achievable by such disparate masses. Unfettered democracy leads to bread-and-circuses corruption, or to dictatorship, or both.

Traditional republicanism was a failed experiment of the ancient (and modern) slavery-based societies. Modern republicanism is a failed Enlightenment concept of unfettered democracy that has usually led to gulags and pogroms and terrors and dictatorships—many of which make Genghis Khan look like a dilettante.

As the 1975 election, and the 1999 referendum on a republic, seem to demonstrate, the Australian voters (and certainly most of our refugees from failed republics) don’t really want to give our supposedly demos house and its party machines more power. By and large we like the balance-of-power system inherited from Magna Carta via the English Civil War. We certainly dislike the sort of gerrymanders that idealistic Labor politicians introduced into Queensland and have tried to bring to other states. We even have a penchant for voting a strong government in the demos house, and then selecting a more varied group of special interest parties in the special-interest house.

What we generally don’t want, don’t trust, and don’t need, is anything that weakens the balances in the system we have. This includes giving the political classes the power to choose their own preferred president; or even the possibility of a popularly elected president: either of which would destroy the “long-term” component of our system, and probably head us down the path of US-style politics.

Let the republicans appeal to the “future”. Let them sing praises to states without monarchs or oligarchs (from which category, naturally, they exclude themselves). Let them, in their wilful ignorance, believe that unfettered bread and circuses will make a better world. In fact let them continue living in cloud-cuckoo-land. We, the deplorable voters, like stability and security.

In fact, far from seeking fewer old-fashioned checks and balances, most of us would like a few more.