{"id":7473,"date":"2021-01-13T08:39:04","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T08:39:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=149319"},"modified":"2021-01-13T08:39:04","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T08:39:04","slug":"our-post-trump-democratic-prospects-what-the-ming-dynasty-can-teach-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/13\/our-post-trump-democratic-prospects-what-the-ming-dynasty-can-teach-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Post-Trump Democratic Prospects: What the Ming Dynasty Can Teach Us"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How best to understand the assault on the Capitol this week? Might some historical perspective help us better comprehend how endangered our democracy has become? Could that perspective point us to a more promising post-Trump path?<\/p>\n

A global team of anthropologists from the United States and Mexico may be offering up just the sort of historical perspective we need.<\/p>\n

The team\u2019s newly published research \u2014 on pre<\/em>modern societies \u2014 might at first glance seem more than a bit irrelevant. Wednesday\u2019s mob violence has Americans by the millions, after all, worried<\/a> about \u201cdemocratic backsliding.\u201d But we had no democratic nation states in premodern times. So how could the experiences of premodern states help us overcome today\u2019s Trumpism, in any of its manifestations?<\/p>\n

Premodern states, counter the four anthropologists who\u2019ve authored \u201cMoral Collapse and State Failure: A View from the Past<\/a>,\u201d actually have plenty of relevance for us today \u2014 if we dare acknowledge our \u201cpresentist\u201d bias, the assumption that our modernity represents \u201ca radical departure\u201d from earlier, less evolved societies \u201cdominated by self-interested authoritarians whose political power and divine status\u201d stood as \u201cbulwarks against good government reform.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, explain Purdue University\u2019s Richard Blanton and his colleagues, premodern states at various times adopted \u201cpractices and policies of good government similar to modern democracies.\u201d We can compare these societies to our own \u2014 and learn from them.<\/p>\n

Blanton\u2019s team includes the Field Museum Integrative Research Center\u2019s Gary Feinman, the University of Georgia\u2019s Stephen Kowalewski, and the Instituto Polit\u00e9cnico Nacional\u2019s Lane Fargher in M\u00e9rida, Mexico. The four have scoped out some 30 premodern political states, looking for those elements of \u201cgood government\u201d practice most relevant to our politics today.<\/p>\n

Among those elements: \u201cthe governing capacity and willingness to accommodate citizen voice,\u201d a fair judiciary, and an equitable tax system. How many premodern states, the researchers also asked, provided public goods that people valued? Identified and punished those in authority who benefited privately from state resources? Had leaders who accepted limits on their power \u2014 and could be, in some way, \u201cimpeached\u201d for violating those limits?<\/p>\n

Overall, the four anthropologists found just four premodern states that rate well on all these attributes of \u201cgood government.\u201d But those of us in the modern<\/em> world, they caution, have no reason to feel particularly smug about that meager total. Even today, the researchers note, only \u201ca minority of nations\u201d can give a robust \u201cyes\u201d to the basic attributes of good governance.<\/p>\n

The four premodern \u201cgood government\u201d states that these researchers identified \u2014 China\u2019s Ming Dynasty, the Mughal empire in South Asia, the Roman High Empire, and the Republic of Venice \u2014 all endured for long periods and delivered broad prosperity. They all eventually also collapsed. Blanton and his colleagues dive into case studies to explain why.<\/p>\n

The Ming Dynasty, founded in the late 14th century by an emperor of peasant origins, saw itself as fulfilling the promise of Confucian philosophy and enhancing \u201cthe state\u2019s ability to serve the general good of society.\u201d The dynasty had the \u201cinstitutional capacity to field complaints from citizens\u201d and \u201cassure equitable taxation.\u201d State-sponsored community granaries \u201cbuffered families against food shortages and overpricing by grain merchants.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emperors, for their part, faced prohibitions against \u201cenriching themselves.\u201d Citizens expected them to behave frugally and selflessly. But that behavior would break down over the course of the 16th century. Citizens lost confidence in their rulers, and their rulers found themselves increasingly unable to control corruption in their administrative ranks.<\/p>\n

That corruption, in turn, reduced revenues for public goods. The ranks of the destitute burgeoned. Food production nosedived. The Manchus invaded from the north. In 1644, they ended Ming rule.<\/p>\n

Another example: the Venetian Republic that emerged in the 12th century. The prominent families that made up Venice\u2019s ruling \u201cGreat Council\u201d recognized \u201cthe importance of social cohesion for the success of the society.\u201d They saw grand private fortune as an invitation to the \u201cpolitical corruption that can threaten community solidarity\u201d and created a government \u201ccapable of addressing citizen concerns.\u201d They removed from office those who violated the public trust.<\/p>\n

That same government provided far more in the way of public goods than any other European state, everything from street lighting and food security to public education and relief for society\u2019s most vulnerable. All these arrangements lasted into the 17th century, until Venice saw \u201ca gradual decline in commitment to key principles and a hardening of the divide between wealthy and poor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rome and the Mughal empire have similar stories to tell. The lesson for our time? Good government demands \u201cchecks on power, a distribution of voice, ways to police corruption, equitable fiscal financing of the state, limits on greed, and leadership dedicated to public service.\u201d These qualities all erode when societies let wealth concentrate. Leaders lose their way. Citizens lose trust. Collapse, at that point, comes quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur findings provide insights that should be of value in the present,\u201d notes<\/a> Purdue\u2019s Blanton, \u201cmost notably that societies, even ones that are well governed, prosperous, and highly regarded by most citizens, are fragile human constructs that can fail.\u201d<\/p>\n

His team sees the United States hovering on the brink of that failure, with more and more citizens perceiving \u2014 amid \u201cthe growing influence of wealthy individuals and interest groups\u201d \u2014 that \u201cthey have little stake in what should be a democratic society.\u201d<\/p>\n

America\u2019s \u201cU-turn over the last five decades in wealth and income inequalities,\u201d these anthropologists conclude, continues to compound this \u201cdecline in citizen confidence.\u201d The nation\u2019s leaders have embraced \u201ca new ethos\u201d that elevates \u201cshareholder value, personal freedom, nepotism, cronyism, the comingling of state and personal resources, and narcissistic aggrandizement in ways rarely seen in the early history of our Republic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sixth day of 2021, the august New York Times<\/em> editorialized<\/a> the morning after the Trump-incited assault on the Capitol, \u201cwill go down as a dark day\u201d in U.S. history and raises the question whether \u201cAmerica is at the beginning of a descent into an even darker and more divided epoch or the end of one.\u201d<\/p>\n

The work of the researchers behind \u201cMoral Collapse and State Failure\u201d suggests a simple answer: Our descent into darkness will not end until our descent into ever greater levels of inequality begins \u2014 finally and significantly \u2014 to reverse.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How best to understand the assault on the Capitol this week? Might some historical perspective help us better comprehend how endangered our democracy has become? Could that perspective\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7474,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7473\/revisions\/7474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}