The Importance Of Associational Government

WHAT IS THE best way to create a prosperous and free country? Is it through the careful work of an enlightened elite, the imposition of a higher form of government from the top down? Or is it through the peaceful interaction of ordinary people, the slow work of trust-building from the bottom up?

It’s an important issue at a time when the United States is trying to bring democracy to Iraq and wondering what to do about the eruption of left-wing thugs in South America.

In a thoughtful article in TCSDaily Arnold Kling looks at this critical matter, and introduces the work of Meir Kohn. Kohn opposes the concept of “associational government” against “predatory government.” As Kohn writes:

The economic basis of associational government is joint action. A group engaged in any common activity -- whether production, trade, or predation -- will organize itself for joint action whenever it is advantageous to do so. Unlike predatory government, associational government is government from below, it is voluntary, and it derives its authority from the will of the group.

Or to put it in Kling’s words:

Kohn's theory is that the associational state -- meaning limited government that is held accountable to the governed -- is built from the bottom up by smaller forms of associations. Government as we know it is not created by constitutions or democratic vote. Those institutions can help to maintain associational government once it is established, but associational government is possible in the first place only if people have a strong tradition of religious, commercial, and lesser governmental institutions.

The success of self-government in the Dutch Republic, in Britain, and in the United States built upon a solid foundation of voluntary institutions. But the big states like France and Spain had a strong king and weak institutions. It is not therefore an accident that “the commercial and industrial revolutions took off earliest in the associational states” like Britain.

The problem is that this model does not encourage optimism on Iraq. Writes Wretchard at the Belmont Club:

There is total lack of trust among the families, the tribes, and the sectarian factions created by the 35 years of despotism and isolation of the criminal Saddam regime.

Without a foundation of cooperation and trust how can the groups of Iraq get together and govern?

And when we look at the peasant cultures in Venezuela and on the altiplano of Peru and Bolivia we can understand why it is that left-wing thung dictators can battle to power.

The bottom line is, of course, that if you want the prosperity of capitalism you have to build the associational culture of cooperation and trust throughout society. In Marxian terms you would say that the superstructure of freedom depends of the productive forces released by the bourgeois culture of serving the consumer.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches… they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

There was nothing new about the Frankish drive to the east... [let] us recall that the continuance of their rule depended upon regular, successful, predatory warfare.
Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

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