electorates and selectorates

Says Tony Judt:

My generation has been catastrophic. I was born in 1948 so I am more or less the same age as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Gerhard Schröder, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – a pretty crappy generation, when you come to think of it, and many names could be added. It is a generation that grew up in the 1960s in Western Europe or in America, in a world of no hard choices, neither economic nor political. There were no wars they had to fight. They did not have to fight in the Vietnam War. They grew up believing that no matter what choice they made, there would be no disastrous consequences...  

 Traditionally leaders rose to power through wars or conquest. We have had six, seven generations of leaders who came to power exclusively by political manoeuvring, which is historically very unusual. It’s like inbreeding: there are no external inputs, no new kinds of people, only the political class breeding itself. This isn’t an argument in favour of war, just a historical fact. 

I really don’t like the linkage of political decrepitude with the absence of war, though the inbreeding point seems to be generally a good one. 

One thing that keeps occurring to me is that if the quality of politicians produced by electorates has gone down, that produced by dictatorships seems to be on a generally upward trend. This may be something to do with a general move from individual dictatorship to something resembling oligarchical collectivism, to borrow a phrase. Authoritarian leaders seem these days more likely to be produced by a process of elite selection and to regard themselves as primus inter pares of a ruling group, sometimes, as in Russia, with a public voting ritual attached for legitimization purposes: Sometimes, as in Iran, no one individual seems to be fully in charge. Classical totalitarianisms are few and far between. These days, it’s more like a competition between electorates and selectorates. 

While the electorates used to give us Attlee, Adenaur and Truman, they went on to give us Bush, Blair and Berlusconi. The selectorates, meanwhile, have moved from Stalin and Mao to Putin and Hu Jintao. I'm not arguing moral qualities here, but can you imagine David Cameron, say, actually outthinking Vladimir Putin on any given issue?  Overall, it reminds me of those studies of psychopaths which find that their behaviour improves when they enter middle age because they finally figure out that acting like a maniac all the time doesn’t do them any good. 

This matters in practice because it affects the actual proposition put before the subject of a dictatorship: oppose the leader from a position of powerlessness, take extreme risks with your life, liberty and income...and eventually, if you’re very lucky, you could have a Berlusconi of your very own. It’s not a winner. 

 Obama? Well at least he’s non-catastrophic.

Comments

[Richard J]

Authoritarian leaders seem these days more likely to be produced by a process of elite selection and to regard themselves as primus inter pares of a ruling group, sometimes, as in Russia, with a public voting ritual attached for legitimization purposes:

Isn't this different to the process of selecting a modern party leader only in matter of degree, not a fundamental distinction?

[Cian]

I'm not sure Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the best example here. Probably smarter than Bush and Cameron, but not by much. And while Putin is pretty sharp, most of the Stan leaders are anything but.

And what does Saakashvili do the debit and credits column. Democrats lose the stupidest leader alive, and he's got to at least cancel out Putin.

[ajay]

Traditionally leaders rose to power through wars or conquest.

Translation: I am utterly ignorant of the phenomenon known as "hereditary monarchy" which includes most of the governments in history.

We [Europe] have had six, seven generations of leaders who came to power exclusively by political manoeuvring, which is historically very unusual.

Translation: I also think that Europe - which includes Germany, Italy and the whole of eastern Europe - has had "six, seven generations of leaders who came to power exclusively by political manoeuvring", which implies that the Second World War, the Kaiser, the House of Romanov, the Habsburg Empire, the rise of Fascism and the Red Army are really just collections of syllables to me.

It’s like inbreeding: there are no external inputs, no new kinds of people, only the political class breeding itself.

Someone who can look at the pre-Great War rulers of Europe, compare them to the present lot, and decide that the latter are the ones best described in terms of "inbreeding" probably uses crayons to write.

Incidentally, I'd be cautious of assuming that Putin is necessarily some sort of genius. Remember his reaction to the Kursk.

[Alex]

While the electorates used to give us Attlee, Adenaur and Truman, they went on to give us Bush, Blair and Berlusconi.

This is rampant cherry picking, no? You could as well say the electorates used to give us Stanley Baldwin, Calvin Coolidge, and Enoch Powell, and went on to give us Willy Brandt, Lula, and Angela Merkel, while the selectorates once pulled out Tito and now offer Yahya Jammeh and Robert Mugabe.

[jamie]

Well yeah, point taken. On the other hand you could argue that Blair, Bush and Berlusconi are worse than Baldwin, Coolidge and Powell in a number of important respects, so you still have your trend. And Merkel counts in the plus column, but she's no Willy Brandt.

I mean I'm not arguing from evil geniuses here but I think there is evidence to support the notion that the overall competence of authoritarian leadership is rising while that of elected leadership is falling.

[ajay]

OK, well, to give it a veneer of quantitative merit:

Proposed: that democratically elected leaders today are significantly worse than they were in 1950, and authoritarians are significantly better.

On the democratic side, taking the biggest democracies:

Merkel/Brandt
Sarkozy/Auriol
Brown/Attlee
Obama/Truman
De Gasperi/Berlusconi
Harper/St Laurent
Rudd/Menzies
Singh/Nehru
Syed Gillani/Liaquat Ali Khan
Zuma/Malan

On the autocratic side:
Stalin/Putin
Mao/Hu
Shah Reza Pahlavi/Ali Khameini
Kim/Kim
Castro/Castro
King Farouk/Hosni Mubarak

Thoughts?

[jamie]

Hmm. Ok. On the democratic side you've got a couple of people who aren't bad (merkel/Singh) overshadowed by their predecessors. And Brown's definitly not in the same class as Atlee. Harper's a bit of a raving wingnut and Berlusconi's a walking catastrophe so that group pitches somewhat towards the degenerative.

I think your authoritarian list demonstrates the point about authoritarianism strengthening itself by becoming slightly more inclusive. Castro and Kim are the last of the old style maximum leaders and their countries have withered on the vine. If Russia and China had just come up with another Mao and Stalin, they'd be in the basket case category along with North Korea.

[ejh]

Translation: I also think that Europe - which includes Germany, Italy and the whole of eastern Europe - has had "six, seven generations of leaders who came to power exclusively by political manoeuvring", which implies that the Second World War, the Kaiser, the House of Romanov, the Habsburg Empire, the rise of Fascism and the Red Army are really just collections of syllables to me.

Ah, is there any confusion between the use of "generation" meaning parent/child, i.e. normally about 20-25 years, and that meaning "political leaders and their successors", which might be rather shorter?

[Dan Hardie]

I really don’t like the linkage of political decrepitude with the absence of war'...

I agree absolutely on that, but I think one could refine Judt's point a little: democratic politicians who have experienced war at first hand may well be less callow- and less bloodthirsty- than those who haven't.

You mention Attlee, Truman and Adenauer as exemplary politicians: service in the First World War was a formative experience for the first two, while Adenauer was mayor of a city occupied by a foreign army not once but twice.

Of course, anti-democratic politicians who fetishise their wartime experiences are an utter nightmare, from Hitler on down. But it's probably all to the good if a liberal politician, in a free state, has some kind of first-hand experience of a major social problem, and the suffering that it brings. Bevin's illegitimacy and poverty, Havel's jail time, FDR's polio...

There's a good moment in 'Primary Colours' where one character says 'FDR without polio is George Bush (ie the elder)- preppy guy, never read a book, summers in Maine...'

[Dan Hardie]

'Merkel/Brandt'

Brandt wasn't Chancellor in 1950- Adenauer was. Brandt didn't get the top job until 1969. And certainly, until about 1953, the German politicians running the Federal Republic were very much under Allied supervision.

'Sarkozy/Auriol'

Comparisons here are a bugger, because the 4th Republic's Presidency had nowhere near the power of the 5th Republic's Presidents. In fact, they had very few mandated powers at all beyond 'reserve powers'. The closest 1950 comparison to Sarkozy is probably either of France's prime ministers that year.

The first was Georges Bidault, who was a pre-war anti-fascist, then a genuinely early, genuinely effective member of the Resistance, and ended up in the OAS- he billed himself as its political leader, though no doubt all the Colonels would have had something to say about who should move into the Elysee had they succeeded in killing De Gaulle.

The second was Henri Queuille, and I'd like to pretend I know something about him, but to judge from the hasty Wikipedia reading I've just done, he was the jobsworth's jobsworth taking Buggins's turn.

[Alex]

Merkel/Brandt

Well, this raises an important point - historical contingency. Merkel can't reconcile with East Germany, for because of it not being there, neither can she do so with Poland or Russia, because it's done. I'd find it hard to argue that she would have done any worse, and Brandt had some pretty good facepalms, like having his private office run by a Stasi agent.

Sarkozy/Auriol

What Dan said, and beyond that, not much to choose.

Brown/Attlee

1-0 to the 1950s.

Obama/Truman

Well, he got a healthcare bill did. It's going to be hard to call this one before the time is up.

De Gasperi/Berlusconi

2-0!

Harper/St Laurent

3-0!

Rudd/Menzies

The nuggety Aussie pulls one back. 3-1

Singh/Nehru

Hmm, Singh actually did deliver Indian industrialisation...and has so far avoided doing anything dangerous despite extreme provocation. 3-2

Syed Gillani/Liaquat Ali Khan

Codgers score! 4-2

Zuma/Malan

The sad thing is that in some ways the gap here is not so great...until you remember what a total bastard Malan was. 4-3

On the autocratic side:
Stalin/Putin

1-0 to Dynamo.

Mao/Hu

2-0.

Shah Reza Pahlavi/Ali Khameini

A difficult one to call, especially as the system is very different. Probably, Khameini's government doesn't torture quite as many people as SAVAK did, and it has elections with consequences, even though the consequences are sometimes negative.

2-1

Kim/Kim

This is basically a choice between two buckets of shit. No score.

Castro/Castro

Same here.

King Farouk/Hosni Mubarak

All that separates these two is style.

Which means that the past leads by an odd goal in both groups.

[Igor Belanov]

Surely South Africa only became a fully-fledged democracy in 1994 so you can hardly compare Zuma and Malan.

[Alex]

True - which adds one crapmonkey to each group.

[Richard J]

Hang on, if we're comparing Brown/Atlee and Castro/Castro, there's a mis-matched comparison there, surely?

Oddly, Batista/Castro gives one to the dictator's team, but Eden/Brown gives Democracty FC the equaliser.

(Now, which team does Singapore come out for?)

[Richard J]

SuperMac/Brown is a closer race though.

[sanbikinoraion]

It is surely futile to compare "leader now" against "any great leader of the past", since there are several more leaders from the past to choose from in each case.

Anyway, response to the OP is different: Blair, Berlusconi and Bush all had enormous help from the media in getting and staying in power. The electorate can do little when faced with such a barrage of lies.

So, a refinement of your theory: it's not political inbreeding that has undermined democracy, it's the rise of large, self-interested media conglomerates. Anyone care to refute?

[Richard J]

it's not political inbreeding that has undermined democracy, it's the rise of large, self-interested media conglomerates

Randolph Hearst, Lord Beaverbrook, the Rothermeres...

[ajay]

Obvious mistakes: Castro wasn't in power in 1950, Batista was. Also, of course, Adenauer not Brandt. Sorry.
Contra Alex, remember we're looking at 1950, and SAVAK didn't exist in 1950. And Iran certainly had elections with consequences in 1950, come to that, because that's how Mossadegh got in.
Also, I think that black South Africans still had the vote, more or less, in 1950 - Malan had only got in in 1948, and the Group Areas Act was only passed that year, so I think we can put 1950 SA in the "democracies" category, more or less.

So, a refinement of your theory: it's not political inbreeding that has undermined democracy, it's the rise of large, self-interested media conglomerates. Anyone care to refute?

Gladly, in three words: William Randolph Hearst.

I think one could refine Judt's point a little: democratic politicians who have experienced war at first hand may well be less callow- and less bloodthirsty- than those who haven't.

Or they may not. Prime example: Winston Churchill.

[ajay]

Expanding on the 'experience of war' point: I think this is going to be a difficult one to prove either way because, until pretty recently, every democratic politician in Europe had experienced war at first hand, except for a few Swiss, Swedes etc. And now almost none of them have.

[Chris Williams]

The exit moment for that factor being that brief conversation Chirac had with Blair in 2003, in which he noted that he'd been a conscript in Algeria, and it wasn't very nice. Blair's response "Jacques doesn't get it" sums up the calibre of the man perhaps better than anything else ever has or could.

But leaving Churchill aside for one moment, how about we put in another hypothesis? The 1980s saw the very last hurrah of a generation which had seen, and in many cases taken part it, the top-dow technocratic mobilisation of a modern industrial state in order to carry out a complex and remarkably difficult end ("Total Germany", went the message), and the successful completion of that end. So it's less about whether you charged at Omdurman, more about whether you helped Bevin with the manpower budget.

By the 1980s, we may have been laughing at Lord Longford, but perhaps we'd forgotten that there was a time when he was in charge of a quarter of a country.

[Chris Williams]

for 'it, the top-dow' above, read 'in, the top-down', obviously.

[Richard J]

Interesting point, Chris. Having done some elementary Wikipedia research, 1982 was both, obviously, the year of the Falklands, and also the first year that the Chief of the General Staff had not had any WW2 experience.

[Igor Belanov]

"it's not political inbreeding that has undermined democracy, it's the rise of large, self-interested media conglomerates. Anyone care to refute?"

As others have pointed out, powerful mass media organisations did meddle in politics and public opinion a lot in the past, and Berlusconi is still an anomaly, fortunately.

I think the rise of the career politician is the main reason for 'undermining democracy'. As we've seen with 'New Labour', controversy seems to be based very much on conflicts between entourages and personalities, and political experience used as a way of broadening incomes and opening future career opportunities.

[ajay]

I think the rise of the career politician is the main reason for 'undermining democracy'. As we've seen with 'New Labour', controversy seems to be based very much on conflicts between entourages and personalities, and political experience used as a way of broadening incomes and opening future career opportunities.

My problems with this are 1) it assumes that democracy has, recently, been undermined, which I don't see much evidence of and 2) a politician who's only in it for a few years to enrich his CV is the very opposite of a career politician.

[ejh]

There might be a case for saying that eras which do not see not just wars, but revolutions and serious ideological conflicts, are less likely to produce substantial political figures than eras which do.

[Alex]

Or alternatively, that we perceive people as substantial political figures because they emerged during eras of world-historical conflict. Postwar Winston Churchill would have been a eccentric version of a one nation Tory with dramatic hobbies and not much chance of ever getting into ministerial office for very long.

[Chris Williams]

Actually, peacetime WSC generally was a terrifically flawed man: floor-crosser, loose cannon Home Secretary, exceptionally useless Chancellor, past-it PM.

[Richard J]

And arguably he wasn't much better as a wartime PM. However, he was right about the vast majority of the big things, which goes a long way to absolving most of his mistakes.

[Cian]

He was a pretty disastrous First Lord of the Admiralty as well. One thing he and Hitler had in common. Both thought they were strategic genii, when in fact...

[Cian]

Um geniuses. Time to disable the automatic spellchecker plugin...

[Richard J]

Still, he gets some kudos in his Admiralty post for repeatedly trying to get a dreadnaught named after Oliver Cromwell, over regal objections.

Both thought they were strategic genii, when in fact...

The important distinction is best summarised by means of a quote from Scoop. "Up to a point, Lord Copper."

[Igor Belanov]

"My problems with this are 1) it assumes that democracy has, recently, been undermined, which I don't see much evidence of and 2) a politician who's only in it for a few years to enrich his CV is the very opposite of a career"

There is certainly a much narrower political spectrum in Western politics these days for one.

The politicians who were 'peddling influence' have been in politics for much longer than a few years and, though they have fallen from higher circles, have been indulging sidelines while sitting in the House of Commons. It's the years of grovelling and manipulating within the political system that have given them the opportunity to broaden their options in semi-retirement. These 'perks' help to compensate when the rewards of political life start to falter.

[ajay]

There is certainly a much narrower political spectrum in Western politics these days for one.

Well, good. I don't really miss the fascists, or the Stalinists come to that. They aren't around so much nowadays because they were wrong (in both the practical and the moral sense), and the voting public have belatedly realised this and aren't voting for them any more. (Except in Italy. See AJP Taylor footnote.)

[ejh]

Well, not good. Because, in the first place, as you must know, the part of the left spectrum which has all-but-disappeared was much bigger and much better than Stalinism and it's a very sizeable distortion of the truth to suggest otherwise. And in the second place, the consequence of this has been to drive politics to the right. Without powerful organised labour, opposition to the right neither has the practical nor the ideological force that it did. People who would previously have become socialists don't all, or even mainly, become some variety of progressive liberal - they're just as likely to be disenchanted, or apathetic, or attracted by the far right, or all three.

[ejh]

Incidentally, am I the only commentor who keeps pressing Preview and finding out I've posted?

[dsquared]

People who would previously have become socialists don't all, or even mainly, become some variety of progressive liberal - they're just as likely to be disenchanted, or apathetic, or attracted by the far right, or all three

What about all those Greens? The non-Stalinist Left that you're talking about basically went into single-issue politics and they've been massively successful. I just find it impossible to have these woe-is-me conversations about "where have the left gone", because in order to get the thesis off the ground you have to ignore this popular, successful and recognisably anti-capitalist movement.

[Chris Williams]

I love that AJP footnote. It still makes me laugh.

[ejh]

I just find it impossible to have these woe-is-me conversations about "where have the left gone", because in order to get the thesis off the ground you have to ignore this popular, successful and recognisably anti-capitalist movement.

Of course you don't:it's more the case that in order to think people have just moved political house a bit, you have to ignore the extraordinary decline in union affiliation and the sizeable decline in loyalty to labour and socialist parties. Or to decide that these don't really make much difference - either to the degree and nature of working-class political participation and thinking, or to the clout that organisations generally opposed to capital now possess. But they do, of course, unless we think that capital is as scared of George Monbiot as it used to be of Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones.

[ejh]

Bugger. Sorry about that. But Preview is going straight to Post, and this time it mattered.

[Cian]

. Hopefully this should fix it.

[Cian]

Hmm. This fix it?

Yeah, the right aren't really scared of the Green movement are they. And Doug Henwood's right. Marxist theory might have had a bunch of problems, but its better than the alternative we have now which is nothing.

[Dan Hardie]

'I just find it impossible to have these woe-is-me conversations about "where have the left gone", because in order to get the thesis off the ground you have to ignore this popular, successful and recognisably anti-capitalist movement.'

I'd be open to argument on this, but in UK politics have the Greens been successful in any meaningful way? Slightly more councillors than the BNP; a few MEPs doing the usual MEP thing; a lot of political obsessives going to meetings and reading each other's pamphlets and blogposts. FoE have had a fair bit of input into Government policy over the years, but not much more than dozens of professioal or industrial lobbying groups, from the Royal College of Nursing to the CBI.

There has been a fair amount of green legislation passed in the last three or four decades, but surely that has had more to do with the acceptance of empirically-based ecological arguments by Tory and Labour politicians, guided by their civil servants and scientific advisers?

And surely we should be asking 'where has the Left gone?' when it comes to the politics of poverty and redistribution. There just doesn't seem to be a well-organised lobby working for action on these issues in Britain. The unions make some noise on poverty but they have other priorities.

You've got an environmentalist Left in Britain, as Dsquared notes, and civil libertarians and Third World poverty types, but the Child Poverty Action Group doesn't hold a candle to these lobbies. And where is the organised left calling for a massive re-orientation of economic policy after the big financial screw-ups?

[Dan Hardie]

Bad luck if you're the next poor bugger struggling with computer problems when Cian rocks up looking eager, and says 'Hopefully this should fix it...'

[Cian]

Jesus, you don't let up do you. Next time why don't you email me directly. That way your feelings towards me won't have to bore everyone else.

[ajay]

.

[Alex]

At least some capitalists do seem sufficiently worried by the Greens to run a massive disinformation campaign against them.

[Martin Wisse]

Surely the reason we do get lousier politicians than during the golden years of social democracy is because the political system has been redesigned for that to happen? With the ceding of large parts of government responsibility to a horribly hybridised market/quango sector and the narrowing of the political playing field you get this type of politician whose sole function is to sell the same shit slightly different.

[ejh]

Talking of the same shit slightly different, I don't suppose Jamie has the power to correct whatever tagging error in my post above is causing this to come out in italics?

[Alex]

It's weird; you left an i tag open after "movement", but despite several people having closed it in subsequent comments the problem persists.

[Phil]

Why, don't you think your comments are important?