The Lockean Evolution of Nonviolent Revolution

Myanmar Protesters Recently Using the Three-Finger Salute from "The Hunger Games."  The Military Dictatorship Has Banned This Salute.

Over the past three months, we have seen in Burma (Myanmar) what could have happened in the United States if Donald Trump had overturned the presidential election of 2020 and declared his right to rule under martial law.  In November, Burma's National League for Democracy led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won by a landslide the elections for Parliament.  On February 1, only a few hours before the new Parliament was to meet, the Burmese military (the Tatmadaw)--under the commander in chief, General Min Aung Hiaing--announced that because the elections had been fraudulent, the Parliament would be abolished, and the military would take power over the country under a one-year declaration of emergency.  Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of Parliament were arrested.  Almost immediately, protesters marched across the country, launching a nonviolent resistance campaign to overthrow the military dictatorship and restore parliamentary democracy.

Many Americans have feared that something like this could have happened in the United States.  Before the election of 2020, Trump indicated that he might refuse to accept the outcome of the election if he lost.  After he lost the election, he insisted that the election had been rigged against him, and so he might refuse to leave office.  Some of Trump's supporters--including Michael Flynn, speaking after he was pardoned by Trump--said that Trump should declare martial law and suspend the Constitution so that he could rule as a military dictator.  On January 6, Trump ordered his supporters to march to the Capitol to stop the Senate from authorizing the stealing of the election, which led to insurrectionary violence in the Capitol Building.

Before the election, thousands of Americans had agreed to an elaborate plan of action for a nonviolent resistance movement to stop any such military coup by Trump.  This plan--"Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy"--was based on the theory and practice of nonviolent civil resistance to overthrow dictatorships, particularly as studied by scholars like Gene Sharp and Erica Chenoweth (Marantz 2020; Merriman et al. 2020).  

The fundamental idea behind this plan is Lockean--that governmental power depends on popular consent and that the people have the natural right to overthrow an oppressive government by withdrawing their consent.  This revolutionary overthrow of government can be either violent or nonviolent.  The proponents of nonviolent resistance argue that the nonviolent methods of revolution are more likely to succeed and cause less suffering than are the violent methods, and there is some historical evidence to confirm this.  

Over the past 120 years, this history shows a Darwinian cultural evolution of nonviolent revolution, in which there has been an evolutionary process of variation and selective retention, so that methods of nonviolence that have succeeded in one country are transmitted by imitation in other countries.  In this evolutionary diffusion of ideas, scholars like Sharp and Chenoweth have provided instruction through the collection and analysis of the historical data for comparing violent and nonviolent revolutions.  (I have written some posts on this process of Darwinian cultural group selection.)

SERBIA 2000: "HE IS FINISHED!"

One historical example of how nonviolent resistance can overthrow a dictator who is trying to overturn an election is Serbia in 2000.  Slobodan Milosevic had been President of Serbia since 1989, whose authoritarian power was based on electoral fraud, suppressing freedom of the press, police brutality against his opponents, and political assassinations.  University students had formed an organization named Otpor (Serbian for "resistance") in 1998 devoted to overthrowing Milosevic through nonviolent resistance.  Their resistance movement was guided by the writings of Gene Sharp--particularly his book From Dictatorship to Democracy (2012)--which presented 198 methods of nonviolent revolutionary struggle  to overturn a dictatorship and establish a democracy in its place.  Sharp's book was translated into Serbian, and thousands of copies were distributed to political activists around Serbia (Arrow 2020, 176-92).  This book was an abbreviated version of his long magnum opus--The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973), which originally was his dissertation at Oxford University.  (I have written some previous posts on nonviolent resistance here and here.)

Sharp taught them that every dictatorship--like every government--depends on "pillars of support" or key institutions that sustain the power of the dictatorship.  They might include the police, the military, governmental bureaucrats, businessmen, and religious organizations.  If enough people in those groups can be persuaded to defect--to withdraw their support--the dictatorship will collapse.  This could be explained by the idea of "minimal winning coalitions": no ruler can rule alone, because even an absolute dictator needs the loyal support of a coalition of powerful people, and when those people withdraw their consent to the government, the rulers become powerless.  (I have written about this in another post.)

Sharp thought that this dependence of rulers on popular consent was recognized by Niccolo Machiavelli when he said that the prince "who has the public as a whole for his enemy can never make himself secure; and the greater his cruelty, the weaker does his regime become" (The Discourses, I.16.5).  Sharp has been called "the Machiavelli of nonviolence," because of his Machiavellian toughness in explaining the strategy and tactics of nonviolent resistance as a form of revolutionary warfare.

In his public lectures, Sharp would often employ aggressive language.  He would begin by saying: "My name is Gene Sharp, and we're here today to discuss how to seize political power and deny it to others.  I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle!  And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who try to justify with pretty words that kind of combat.  With this kind of struggle, one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons, and political weapons.  This is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice, and tyranny than is violence."

                                                A Clenched Fist Was the Symbol of Otpor

The Otpor leadership identified the police and the army as the most important pillars of support for Milosevic, and they began infiltrating these organizations through personal contacts.  Otpor members wrote letters to every police station in Serbia.  The letters warned them that they should think about their life after the end of the Milosevic regime.  They also said: "You are our friend.  Your kids are in Otpor.  If you hurt them, your fellow citizens will shun you."

Otpor organized massive protest marches across Serbia.  To keep the marches nonviolent, they had trained people as marshals who would direct the protests and isolate any individuals who became violent.  They anticipated that Milosevic's security forces would plant provocateurs in their marches to initiate violence, so that Milosevic could then identify Otpor as a terrorist organization.  The protesters would lose public approval, and the police would support the regime.

Over the summer of 2000, many members of Otpor were arrested by the police, beaten, and imprisoned.

An election was coming on September 24, 2000.  The opposition parties agreed to run a single candidate--Vojislav Kostunica--to maximize their chance of defeating Milosevic.

Anticipating that Milosevic would try to steal the election, the opposition organized an elaborate exit polling system for counting the votes.  When they reported that Kostunica had won the election, Milosevic's party announced that no party had won a majority, and so there would have to be a run-off election.  The opposition declared that this was a lie, and that the people should prepare for a general strike and mass protests against Milosevic.  Soon the entire country was shut down by the strike.

On the morning of October 5th, convoys of people from around Serbia began to move towards Belgrade, the capital, where they were to meet at 3 p.m. outside the parliament building.  The plan was to take control of the building.  Milosevic deployed his police around the edges of Belgrade to enforce roadblocks.  But when the convoys reached the roadblocks, the police stood aside, and the convoys moved through.  When the convoys reached the square outside the parliament building, the people were singing and chanting, "Gotov Je! Gotov Je!" ("He's finished!").

The police and the army were ordered to clear the square and to fire into the crowd of protesters.  But that order was not carried out.  Later, it was reported that those in command refused the order to fire because they knew members of their own families were in the crowd.

But at this point, by the evening of October 5th, the disciplined nonviolent movement began to lose control of the crowd.  The parliament building was on fire, and word got out that some people were breaking into Milosevic's Socialist Party Building, planning to burn it down.  When the leaders at the Otpor office heard about this, they gathered volunteers and rushed to the building to drag the provocateurs out.  They surrounded the building to protect it and to prevent any outbreak of violence.

Late that night of October 5, Milosevic announced he was resigning.  All across Serbia, and even elsewhere around the world, crowds of people celebrated.

One of the leaders of Otpor--Srdja Popovic--has said that one of the most important lessons taught to them by Gene Sharp was the need to maintain nonviolence, because if protestors had turned to violence, this would have provided an excuse for the military to launch a coup to restore order, and thus a new dictatorship would have taken control.

The other important lesson from Sharp illustrated in this successful nonviolent movement in Serbia was that mass protest marches are not enough to succeed.  Watching the CNN coverage of the crowds around the Parliament Building, it was easy to conclude that such a movement needs only to attract mobs of people to flood the streets, and then the government collapses over night.

That's not true, because Otpor had been training their people and organizing their movement for years, and mass public protests were only one of many methods they used.  That's the point of Sharp's 198 methods of nonviolence--that to succeed, nonviolence must flexibly employ many techniques over a long time.  

The failure of the Tiananmen Square protests in China in 1989 illustrates this point.  The Chinese students in this movement had not read Sharp's books.  Nor had they studied any of the history of nonviolent resistance.  They were not organized or trained.  They relied on only one method--occupy the Square in Beijing.  It was easy then for the Chinese military to end the movement by sweeping into the Square and firing in the crowds.

By 2000 in Serbia, the cultural evolution of nonviolence had spread knowledge of nonviolent methods around the world; and the leaders of Otpor had deliberately studied Sharp's books to learn how best to organize their movement.  In subsequent years, those who had led Otpor could spread the knowledge of their practical experience and transmit Sharp's books to other countries engaged in nonviolent struggles to overthrow authoritarian regimes--such as the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia (a former Soviet state) and the "Orange Revolution" in the Ukraine.

"LETTER TO A SLEEPLESS SYRIAN"

In 2011, the revolutionary uprisings of what came to be called the "Arab Spring" began in January and February.  Mass public protests in Tunisia forced President Zine Abdine Ben Ali to flee the country after 23 years in power.  Similar protests in Egypt forced President Hosni Mubarak to resign after 30 years in power.  In Libya, a revolution began the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled for 34 years.

It seemed that Syria might follow a similar revolutionary path in March when a civil uprising began to challenge the rule of Bashar al-Assad, who had governed as a dictatorial president for 11 years, preceded by 30 years of rule by his father Hafez al-Assad.  This uprising began as a nonviolent resistance movement led by some Syrians who were following Gene Sharp's teaching.  But by the middle of the summer, the opponents of the regime turned to armed warfare, and from that point to the present, Syria has been in a civil war.  Today, nearing the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the civil war, large parts of Syria are under the control of rebel factions or foreign powers, but al-Assad seems to have largely won the war.

Authoritarian dictators can point to this example of Syria as showing the foolishness of nonviolent resistance to tyranny, because it soon becomes violent, which leads to a destructive civil war that is worse than any tyrannical government.  But, actually, Sharp himself warned his Syrian followers to remain nonviolent, and he accurately predicted that if the Syrian protesters became violent, this would provoke a civil war that they were unlikely to win (Arrow 2020, 267-286).

Some of the Syrians who were leading the revolution in Syria early in 2011--such as Ausama Monajed and Mohammed Alaa Ghanem--had studied Sharp's books, and they developed a strategy for nonviolent resistance derived from his teaching.  They launched a campaign to attack Assad's "pillars of support" by selecting slogans that challenged Assad's legitimacy to rule, by persuading those in the military to defect, and by calling on Syrians to boycott the products of those in the business community supporting Assad.  All of this was directed to demanding Assad's resignation and the establishment of a truly democratic regime.  In April, in an interview in London, Ausama Monajed said: "Gene Sharp's tactics and theories are being practiced on the streets of Syria as we speak now."

By late April, it appeared that the nonviolent movement against Assad was winning.  Assad ordered his soldiers to arrest, torture, and kill the protesters.  But the atrocities committed against civilians was provoking popular disgust with the regime.  Soldiers were starting to defect because they did not want to shoot into crowds of people that might include members of their own families.

Far from stopping the atrocities, however, Assad increased them.  He had learned from his father the lesson that it was better to be feared than loved--that princes can secure their power against opponents through "cruelty well-used."  The most infamous example of this from his father, Hafez al-Assad, was the massacre in 1982 in the town of Hama.  For 6 years, the Muslim Brotherhood had led an Islamist violent insurgency against al-Assad, which included attempts to assassinate him.  Then, in response to an uprising in Hama, al-Assad ordered that over 12,000 troops surround the town and then destroy it.  The fight continued for over three weeks.  The town was virtually leveled.  The rebels were killed.  And thousands of civilians were massacred, perhaps as many as 20,000 to 40,000.  It has been described as the deadliest attack by an Arab government against its own people.  This ended the Islamist rebellion against al-Assad and secured his rule and the rule of his son for another 30 years.

Imitating his father's cruelty, Bashar al-Assad ordered his soldiers to shoot the protesters, and those who refused the orders or who defected were shot by snipers placed behind the regular soldiers.  He recruited violent criminals and others to move through the country without uniforms to murder and rape the protesters.  They posed as Alawite Muslims killing Sunni Muslims, or as Sunnis killing Alawites.  He wanted to sow sectarian hatred.  He also wanted to provoke the nonviolent protesters into becoming armed insurgents, because then he could identify them as terrorists, and his soldiers would be motivated to fight against them rather than defecting.

He succeeded.  On July 29, 2011, seven officers who had left the Syrian Armed Forces to join the resistance announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army.  Later, other armies and militias to fight against Assad were formed.  These rebel soldiers said that they would protect the nonviolent protesters from the violence of Assad's troops.

When Gene Sharp was told about this, he warned that this was a mistake that would destroy the nonviolent movement and favor the triumph of Assad, because he would always have military superiority.  He was asked about this in an email from Mohammed Ghanem, who signed off as "The Sleepless Syrian."  Sharp wrote back in a letter called "Letter to a Sleepless Syrian" (Arrow 2020, 283-84):

"The present unease of the troops in obeying orders is clear.  Otherwise he regime would have no need to order immediate killing of disobeying soldiers.  That is strong evidence that the reliability of the army is very shaky and possibly on the verge of collapse.  That means that wise resistance actions are crucial to take the army away from the regime. . . . The regime clearly is desperate.  They may intend for their brutalities to enrage protesters so much that they resort to violence.  The protesters should not be tricked into that.  Significant protest violence would guarantee the army's loyalty and the defeat of the revolution."

Sharp warned against the offer of armed protection for the protesters from the army defectors:

"This supposed major help can dramatically change the conflict so that the regime's still overwhelming superior military capacity will shape the course of the continuing conflict.  Then, without major external military intervention, the dictatorship is likely to triumph.  Inevitable major casualties are likely to vastly exceed even exceptionally high casualties in a nonviolent struggle conflict.  The nonviolent resisters are likely to become irrelevant to shaping the future of their country."

So here, as he had often done, Sharp claimed that nonviolent revolutionary movements are better than violent revolutionary movement in at least two respects:  nonviolent movements have a lower death rate and a higher success rate than violent movements.  In his writings, he cited many historical cases to support this claim (Sharp 1973).  But he never did a systematic quantitative analysis of the historical data that would conclusively demonstrate this. 

COMPARING VIOLENT AND NONVIOLENT REVOLUTIONS

In recent years, Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues have collected the historical data for over 627 nonviolent and violent revolutionary campaigns from 1900 to 2019, and they done a quantitative analysis of that data to compare the outcomes (success or failure) of these movements.  They have found that Sharp is right about the superiority of nonviolent movements over violent movements (Chenoweth 2021).  (I have written about Chenoweth's research here and here.)

If we define the success of a revolutionary campaign as the overthrow of a government or territorial independence achieved because of the campaign, then over 50% of the nonviolent revolutions from 1900 to 2019 have succeeded, while only about 26% of the violent revolutions have succeeded.  So nonviolent revolutions do not always succeed.  They do not even succeed most of the time.  But at least they succeed about half of the time, which is to say they succeed as often as they fail.  Or if you see that the glass is half empty, they fail as often as they succeed. That makes nonviolent revolutions almost twice as successful as violent revolutions.

Nonviolent resistance is risky, in that governments can respond to a nonviolent resistance movement by killing unarmed civilians.  But nonviolent resistance is less risky than violent resistance.  If "mass killings" are defined as state violence in which at least one thousand unarmed civilians are killed, about 23% of nonviolent revolutions have suffered mass killings.  By comparison, about 70% of violent revolutions have had mass killings, in which governments kill civilians suspected of supporting the armed insurgents.

We might say that nonviolent resistance is more risky than obedience.  But even obedience is risky if it means obeying a brutal government.  Chenoweth has found that the strongest predictor of nonviolent revolution is a government's violations of human rights: when a government is arbitrarily imprisoning, torturing, and killing people, then people can decide that they have no choice but to rebel.  This was Locke's point: people will suffer a bad government while its evils are sufferable, but they are inclined to revolt when governmental cruelty becomes unbearable.

We might wonder, however, whether it is reasonable to compare violent and nonviolent movements given the fact that nonviolent resistance is often combined with some violence.  And we might suspect that the success of nonviolent resistance movements often depends on the movement becoming violent or at least threatening violence.

How we answer this question will depend on how we define violence.  Chenoweth defines it as "an action or practice that physically harms or threatens to physically harm another person" (Chenoweth 2021, 145).  Even when a resistance movement is predominantly nonviolent, it can have "violent flanks"--some people in the movement who use violence along with the mostly nonviolent campaign.  These violent flanks can be either armed (people taking up arms such as guns) or unarmed  (people fighting in the streets or throwing rocks and other projectiles or destroying property).

In her database of nonviolent revolutionary campaigns, Chenoweth found that over 60% had no armed factions.  But she also found that over 80% of the nonviolent revolutionary movements had some unarmed violence such as street fighting and destroying property.

She noted, however, that authoritarian rulers threatened by nonviolent resistance want to provoke nonviolent protesters into becoming violent, because this allows the rulers to justify the violent repression of the resisters as the proper punishment of violent criminals.  When nonviolent protests become violent, this reduces public support for the protest movement, while at the same time the police and the military are less likely to defect.  Her historical data confirm this: while 65% of the nonviolent revolutions that had no fringe violence were successful, only 35% of the nonviolent revolutions that had some fringe violence were successful.

So why then do nonviolent resistance movements so often turn to violence?  The answer from Sharp and Chenoweth is that when nonviolent resisters rely exclusively on concentrated street protests, they expose themselves to violent attacks from the government; and this will often provoke many of them to defend themselves with violence.  Their mistake is in failing to see that there are many methods of nonviolent resistance that are less risky than visible street protests--such as stay-at-home strikes, boycotts, and other forms of noncooperation--that are effective in weakening a dictatorship.

So how does this apply to the current situation in Burma?  Can the nonviolent resistance against the military dictatorship remain nonviolent?  Or will the movement be provoked by the government into violence?  I will turn to those questions in my next post.

REFERENCES

Arrow, Ruaridh. 2020. Gene Sharp: How to Start a Revolution. London: Big Indy Books.

Chenoweth, Erica. 2021. Civil Resistance: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press.

Marantz, Andrew. 2020. "How to Stop a Power Grab." The New Yorker. November 16.

Merriman, Hardy, Ankur Asthana, Marium Navid, and Kifah Shah. 2020. Hold the Line: A Guide to Defending Democracy.  Washington, DC: International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

Sharp, Gene. 1973. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers.

Sharp, Gene. 2012. From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation. New York: The New Press.

The Evolution of Violent and Nonviolent Resistance to Tyranny: From Foraging Society to the Present

In John Locke's state of nature, all individuals are free and equal because they can punish anyone who tries to bully or tyrannize over them, which Locke calls the "executive power of the law of nature."  For the worst offenders--such as murderers--the natural punishment is death.

Although the threat of such punishment can enforce the social norms of cooperation that constitute the law of nature and that can make the state of nature a state of peace, this state of society without government tends to become a state of war, because, in the absence of formal institutions for establishing, judging, and enforcing laws, people lack any impartial system for the rule of law, and their natural propensity to partiality in judging their own cases leads to violent feuding.  To secure the peace of society, governments are established by the consent of individuals to provide known, settled laws established by formal lawmakers, interpreted by impartial judges, and executed by those entrusted with the natural executive power of the whole society. 

When these powers of government are abused, in being used by the rulers to exploit the ruled contrary to the common good of all, then the people, according to Locke, have the natural right to reclaim the natural executive power for punishing tyrants through overthrowing government and consenting to a new government that is more likely to secure their natural rights.  In their resistance to tyrannical government, people have a natural right to meet force with force, even to the point of killing their rulers.

There are two lines of historical evidence for judging whether Locke is correct about this.  The first is the evidence about the history of human foragers.  The second is the evidence of the history of resistance to tyrannical government.

As I have indicated in previous posts, anthropological studies of the foraging bands that are most likely to resemble our late Pleistocene ancestors indicate that Locke is largely correct in his account of the state of nature as a customary social order in which all individuals had the right to punish deviants.  Punishment included killing, although this was not common, and it was mostly directed against murderers.  The more common forms of punishment were gossip, ridicule, shunning, and physical forms of punishment short of lethal violence.  As Christopher Boehm has shown, foragers enforce their moral norms mostly through what Locke calls the "law of reputation," or what evolutionary theorists call "indirect reciprocity."

The history of political violence and rivalry over governmental rule also shows that people are inclined to exercise their natural right to punish rulers who abuse their powers in tyrannical ways.  In recent years, there have been some rigorously quantitative studies of this history that show a historical pattern of declining political violence and increasing nonviolent resistance to tyranny.

In the first systematic and quantitative study of regicide in Europe, Manuel Eisner (2011) has collected data on the frequency of violent death and regicide among 1,513 monarchs in Europe between AD 600 and 1800.  He has distinguished four categories of violent death: accident, battle death, murder, and legal execution.  He found that in the seventh century, the frequency of regicide was 2,500 murders per 100,000 years in office.  There was a long decline in regicide.  So that by the eighteenth century, the frequency of regicide was about 200 per 100,000 years in office.  By comparison, the homicide rate in Western Europe today is around 0.6-1.5 per 100,000 person-years.  Clearly, then, European kingship before the Industrial Revolution was one of the most dangerous occupations in the world, comparable to that of soldiers in combat.

Eisner found that for most of this history, regicide was carried out within the noble elite in the competition for political rule.  But, then, by the seventeenth century, regicide became increasingly a matter of legal execution--such as the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the execution of Louis XVI in 1793.  In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, James II was deposed without being executed.

The decline in regicide seems to be part of the general historical decline in homicide (Eisner 2003; Pinker 2011).  This general pattern of declining violence seems to be associated with a Hobbesian pacification process, in which the state claims a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, and with a Lockean liberal culture of bourgeois virtues that arise in modern commercial societies, in which people learn to control their violent impulses for the sake of peaceful economic and social exchange.

While a Hobbesian state can bring peace, it can also bring tyrannical coercion that provokes violent resistance.  And yet, there is some evidence that resistance to Hobbesian tyranny has become more nonviolent.

Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan (2008, 2011) entered into a data base all forms of both violent and nonviolent revolutions and reforms since 1900.  Analyzing that data, they found that nonviolent resistance campaigns were more than twice as likely to succeed as violent resistance movements.  Violent resistance is largely limited to young, strong, and violent males.  But the methods of nonviolent resistance--such as strikes, boycotts, and symbolic protests--can recruit a broad array of people. 

And, indeed, as Locke indicated, successful revolutions depend on "people power."  Chenoweth and Stephan were even able to specify that every campaign that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful, and that many succeeded with even less participation.  Every campaign that did surpass the 3.5 percent threshold was nonviolent.

This provides quantitative evidence for Locke's account of government by consent of the governed.  Tyrants cannot rule by themselves.  They need supporters--or what Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith (2011) call a "minimum winning coalition."  Of course, in a dictatorship, that winning coalition can be a very small elite group of people who receive special benefits from the dictator's rule.  But as Chenoweth and Stephan show, that small group of people supporting the dictator can be persuaded by a small nonviolent resistance movement to turn against the dictator.  Dictators cannot rule without at least the passive acquiescence of the great body of the people, and thus they can be overthrown by the active resistance of 3.5 percent or less of the people, even when that resistance is nonviolent.

So while the exercise of the natural executive power to punish tyrants has often been violent, it can also succeed when it's nonviolent.

REFERENCES

Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Alastair Smith. 2011. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics. New York: Public Affairs.

Chenoweth, Erica, and Maria Stephan. 2008. "Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict." International Security 33: 7-44.

________. 2011. Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.

Eisner, Manuel. 2003. "Long-Term Historical Trends in Violent Crime." Crime and Justice 30: 83-142.

________. 2011. "Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600-1800." British Journal of Criminology 51: 556-577.

Pinker, Stephen. 2011. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined.  New York: Viking.


Chenoweth has summarized her research in a TED talk. and a lecture at Dartmouth College.

Popular Lockeans at the "No Kings" Protests Against Trump

 

On February 19, 2025, this picture was posted on the official White House "X" account.  Trump had posted: "CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD.  Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED.  LONG LIVE THE KING!"

My wife and I participated in the "No Kings" protest in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  This was one of over 2,000 protest gatherings across the United States attracting millions of participants.  We were surprised by the size of the crowd.  There appeared to be something over 20,000 people, which is about ten percent of the population of the city of Grand Rapids.  The first rally was in the park on the Grand River in front of the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum.  When we arrived, the park was so packed with people that it was impossible for us to get in, which was also true for thousands of other people milling around the area.

We were also surprised that there were no police anywhere, as if the Grand Rapids police had decided that there was no reason to expect any disruptions from the protest crowds.  Moreover, there were no "Proud Boys" or "Michigan militia" types carrying guns who might have caused trouble.  Later in the afternoon, we heard about the political assassination in Minnesota that reportedly caused some of the "No Kings" protests in Minnesota to be cancelled.

These protests were scheduled for June 14 to counter Trump's military parade in Washington to celebrate his birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.  I watched the parade on CSPAN.  The CSPAN cameras showed remarkably small crowds in the bleachers and on the grass.  Of course, the White House claimed that over 250,000 people attended.  But if that were true, the Mall would have been completely covered with people, which was not the case.

To me, Trump's military parade was really dull and lifeless.  Many of the spectators at the parade showed the same reaction.  Here's a picture of some of them:

The "No Kings" protests raise at least two kinds of questions.  First, what motivates millions of people to turn out for these mass protests?  What do they expect to achieve?  And how likely are they to succeed?  

Secondly, what's wrong with monarchy?  Why do most Americans--and perhaps most people around the world today--assume that monarchy is bad?  Should we take seriously the argument of some intellectuals supporting Trump (such as Curtis Yarvin) that monarchy is a better form of government than democracy, and therefore Americans should be happy to have Donald Trump as their king?

NONVIOLENT RESISTANCE AS LOCKEAN NATURAL PUNISHMENT OF DICTATORS

The people participating in these mass protests can be identified as "popular Lockeans."  I have written about that term as used by historian T. H. Breen to describe the ordinary Americans who supported the American Revolution in acting according to the principles of John Locke even though most of them had never read Locke.  In the state of nature, Locke thought, everyone has the "executive power of the law of nature," which is the natural right to punish those who violate the law of nature; and this can be expressed in both violent and nonviolent resistance to tyranny.  The American Revolution began with American nonviolent resistance from 1761 to 1775, followed by the violent resistance in the Revolutionary War from 1775 to 1783.  June 14, 1775 was the day that George Washington was formally appointed Commander of the Continental Army by the Second Continental Congress.  In July of that year, the "Appeal to Heaven" Flag was adopted as a battle flag for the American Army, which explicitly invoked Locke's term for revolutionary violence.

Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues see the "No Kings" protests as part of the growing nonviolent resistance to Trump.  As indicated in some previous posts, Chenoweth has compiled an impressive data set (from 1900 to the present) for violent and nonviolent resistance movements that shows that every campaign of nonviolent protest that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful.  As indicated on the "No Kings" website, the organizers are inspired by the "3.5 principle"--believing that mobilizing only a small proportion of the people in mass protests can overturn a dictatorial ruler.

Over the past 40 years, scholars like Chenoweth and Gene Sharp have developed practical rules for organizing successful nonviolent resistance movements.  One of the most important features of this is avoiding violence by having well-trained "marshals" at every protest whose job is to manage the crowd to suppress any disturbance that might become violent.  We saw those marshals at work at the Grand Rapids protest.

The political theory of nonviolent resistance is Lockean in being founded on the fundamental principle that all governmental authority depends on the consent of the governed, and therefore governments fall when the people withdraw their consent through nonviolent or violent resistance.

As Chenoweth has indicated, protest movements succeed when they gain momentum.  And momentum can be measured through a simple law of physics:  momentum equals mass times velocity (p = mv).  The momentum of dissent is a product of participation (mass) and the number of protest events in a week (velocity).  So as the number of participants in the "No Kings" movement increases, and as the number of protests per week increase, the movement gains momentum, and thus becomes more successful.

The test will come when law enforcement and military people are ordered to shoot the protestors.  Will they obey their orders?  If they disobey, then the protestors have won.  Even if they obey, this will provoke a moral revulsion in the country that will draw more people into the protests.

Another test will come in the mid-term elections in November of 2026.  If opponents of Trump take control of the two Houses of Congress, then the Congress can impeach him.  If Trump's Republicans cancel the elections, then the popular movement to overturn Trump's rule becomes stronger.

THE RISE AND DECLINE OF MONARCHY

But why "No Kings"?  Why are so many Americans not persuaded by Yarvin's argument that Robert Filmer's defense of divine-right monarchy was superior to Locke's theory of government by popular consent?

As I have indicated in previous posts, monarchy was the most common form of government for over 5,000 years, but then around 1900, the number of nonmonarchies began to surpass the number of monarchies.  There are two possible reasons for this.  First, monarchy has always depended on perceiving society as a rigid hierarchy in the chain of command, in which everyone knew his place.  At the top was a ruling elite--the monarch and one or two percent of the people who were nobles and priests.  At the bottom, about 80-90% of the population were peasants.  One possible answer as to why this premodern conception of natural and divine hierarchy has been undermined in modern culture is that modernity has adopted the Lockean evolutionary symbolic niche construction of the bourgeois culture of equal liberty.  "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . ."

Consequently, as I have written previously, the few monarchic governments that survive today--like the British monarchy of King Charles III--are not real monarchies because the king is only a ceremonial head of state without any absolute power.

A second reason for the decline of monarchy is that the development of mass communications has made monarchy unnecessary.  In the past, democratic or republican forms of government were possible only in small societies where the people or their representatives could meet all together at one public assembly--Athenian democracy or the Roman Republic, for example.  Larger societies were so disconnected that they needed monarchy as a focal point to which everyone could look as the central authority.  But then with the growth of communications technology--the printing press, newspapers, national postal systems, the telegraph, radio, television, and finally the internet--large societies have become so highly mobilized and interconnected that there is less need for a monarch as a focal point for authority.  

The internet has made it easy for popular mass movements like the "No Kings" protests to form across large societies and even around the globe.  And that's why it's so hard to preserve autocratic rule in the modern world without shutting down or at least censoring the internet.

The Lockean Natural Punishment of Dictators Through Nonviolent Resistance

I have written many posts over the years on the Darwinian science of natural punishment in Lockean liberalism.

The natural right to punish--the "executive power of the law of nature"--can be expressed in both violent and nonviolent resistance to tyranny.  Previously (here), I have written about Erica Chenoweth's research showing that since 1900, nonviolent resistance campaigns have been more than twice as likely to succeed as violent resistance movements, and that every campaign of nonviolent protest that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful.

Now, we have new research from Chenoweth (with her coauthor Margherita Belgioioso) adding to her theory of nonviolent resistance--"The Physics of Dissent and the Effects of Movement Momentum," just published online in Nature Human Behaviour (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0665-8).

Here is her abstract: "How do 'people power' movements succeed when modest proportions of the population participate?  Here we propose that the effects of social movements increase as they gain momentum.  We approximate a simple law drawn from physics: momentum equals mass times velocity (p = mv).  We propose that the momentum of dissent is a product of participation (mass) and the number of protest events in a week (velocity).  We test this simple physical proposition against panel data on the potential effects of movement momentum on irregular leader exit in African countries between 1990 and 2014, using a variety of estimation techniques.  Our findings show that social movements potentially compensate for relatively modest popular support by concentrating their activities in time, thus increasing their disruptive capacity.  Notably, these findings also provide a straight-forward way for dissidents to easily quantify their coercive potential by assessing their participation rates and increased concentration of their activities over time."

The database for this study is the Social Conflict in Africa Database (SCAD). There are some good databases for armed conflict such as the Uppsala University Armed Conflict Dataset, which collects global data on armed conflict as including state-based, non-state, and one-sided armed conflicts. What is novel about SCAD is that it is not limited to armed conflict, but includes social conflict such as nonviolent demonstrations and protests as well as violent riots.  The researchers have identified social conflict events in Africa by conducting keyword searches of Associated Press (AP) and Agence France Presse (AFP) news wires.  They looked for five terms: "protest," "riot," "strike," "violence," and "attack."  Between 1990 and 2010, they identified 7,200 distinct social conflict events (Idean Salehyan et al., "Social Conflict in Africa: A New Database," International Interactions 38 [2012]: 503-511).  For each event, they identified the start and end dates; and they determined the particular actor(s) involved, their target(s), and the issue(s) at stake.

In compiling their own dataset, Chenoweth and Belgioioso excluded violent events such as riots and included only nonviolent methods of dissent, such as protests and strikes.  They then went to the ARCHIGOS dataset, which has information on political leaders in 188 countries from 1875 to 2015, and they identified the dependent variable by looking for cases in which the leader lost power through "irregular means," defined as leader removal "in contravention of explicit rules and established conventions."

They found that in Africa from January 1, 1990, to January 1, 2014, there were 45 cases of leaders losing power through irregular means.  They then analyzed these 45 cases to see that in 21 cases, leaders were overthrown through assassinations or coups that were part of internal political maneuvers of the ruling elites outside the contest of any popular revolts, which left 24 cases of leaders forced out of power in response to peaceful popular protests.

In none of these 24 cases did participation in popular protests exceed 13.3% of the national population.  This confirms Chenoweth's earlier conclusion that nonviolent resistance can overthrow unpopular leaders even when the active protestors are only a small minority of the population.  But the main point of this new research is that peak participation rates alone are not sufficient to explain the success of social movements.  It is only when rising participation rates are combined with mobilization at a high velocity (measured as the number of protest events in a week) that a protest movement is likely to succeed.

In those 24 cases of leaders who fell from power in response to popular protests, the primary agents forcing their exit were military people, police, or other security personnel.  When those who are armed to protect the leader defect--perhaps by refusing to obey his orders to kill the protestors--then the leader must fall because he depends on the loyalty of his "minimum winning coalition"--particularly the military.  Even the most autocratic ruler cannot rule on his own without supporters.  (I have written about this here.)

Here we see the Machiavellianism of our chimpanzee politics: like chimps, human beings show three or four distinct political "humours"--the one, the few, and the many, and perhaps the military as a fourth humour.  The ambitious few want to rule over and oppress the people.  The many do not desire to rule or oppress, but they do desire to be free from the oppression of the few.  The one--the "prince"--rules as the alpha male who depends on the support of the few or of the people.  He can rule best through fear rather than love, but he must avoid the hatred of the people, because if he is hated, either he will be assassinated, or he will be overthrown by the ambitious few who see how vulnerable he is without the people's acquiescence in his rule.  That explains why Frans de Waal could not understand what he was observing in his chimpanzee community in the Arnhem Zoo until he read Machiavelli.

I have written about this in a previous post, which is illustrated by the case of Hosni Mubarak's fall from power in Egypt in 2011.

The overthrow of Mubarak is one of the 24 cases of successful nonviolent resistance in Chenoweth's study.  As Vice President of Egypt, Mubarak became President in 1981 after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat..  Mubarak himself was the target of at least a half-dozen assassination attempts.  So he understood Machiavelli's teaching that even the most powerful prince can be brought down by any assassin willing to die in an attack.  He also understood the importance of being feared, and he held his princely power for almost 30 years through a declaration of emergency law that allowed him to arrest and terrify his political opponents without any legal procedures.

His mistake, however, during the Arab Spring movement of 2011, was in failing to see that even if the prince is feared, he must avoid the hatred and contempt of the people.  He provoked popular demonstrations of protest that made him vulnerable to those ambitious few around him who were looking for the first opportunity to take his power from him.  His dependence on the military then left him open to the military decision to force him out of office.  The leaders of the Egyptian protestors had studied the techniques of nonviolent resistance--the techniques of Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and others, as presented in some books by Gene Sharp.

Mohamed Morsi was elected President of Egypt in 2012.  But then he too faced popular protests in 2013, and the military forced him out of power.

What one sees here in these cases of leaders being overthrown in Africa as analyzed by Chenoweth confirms Locke's account of how the natural desire to punish cheaters enforces government by consent of the governed, within a system of elite rule in which the people do not rule directly, but whose acquiescence to being ruled is required for elite rule.

The American Declaration of Independence in 1761: Lockean Natural Punishment Through Nonviolent Resistance

In a series of letters from 1811 to 1818, John Adams explained how the American Revolution began not in Lexington in 1775, or in Philadelphia in 1776, but in Boston in 1761 with a speech by James Otis.

In a letter to Richard Sharp dated February 27, 1811, Adams responded to Sharp's proposal for writing a history of the American Revolution:  "But, give me leave to Suggest that the Period you have defined from 1775 to 1783 was by no means the most important nor the most interesting Eight Years of the Revolution.  The Revolution was indeed effected in the Period from 1761 to 1775.  I mean a compleat Revolution in the Minds of the People.  A total Change of the Opinions and Affections of The People, and a full Confidence in the practicability of a Union of the Colonies.  All this was done and the Principles all established and the System matured before the year 1775.  The War and the Peace followed of Course."

In a letter to Jedidiah Morse dated November 29, 1815, Adams repeated this idea that the American Revolution began long before the military conflict with Great Britain: "An History of military Operations from April 19th, 1775 to the 3rd of September 1783 is not an History of the American Revolution, any more than the Marquis of Quincy's Military History of Louis 14th, though much esteemed is a History of the Reign of that Monarch.  The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People, and in the Union of the Colonies, both of which were Substantially effected before Hostilities commenced."  He asked: "When, Where, by what means, and in What manner, was this great intellectual, moral, and political Change accomplished?"

He began his answer to this question by saying that the American Revolution began in Boston in 1761 when James Otis gave a long speech in a courtroom arguing that the British use of "writs of assistance" in the colonies would violate the natural rights of the colonists.  Writs of assistance were general search warrants that would allow British customs officers to search for smuggled goods in any house without specifying the house or the goods, which Otis identified as a violation of the right to property.

In a letter to Thomas Jefferson dated August 24, 1815, Adams repeated this claim about the start of the Revolution: "As to the history of the Revolution, my Ideas may be peculiar, perhaps Singular.  What do We mean by the Revolution?  The War?  That was no part of the Revolution.  It was only an Effect and Consequence of it.  The Revolution was in the Minds of the People, and this was effected, from 1760 to 1775, in the course of fifteen Years before a drop of blood was drawn at Lexington."

William Tudor was writing a biography of James Otis, and he wrote to Adams to ask for any information he might have about Otis and his place in the Revolution.  Adams responded (March 29, 1817) by emphasizing the importance of Otis's speech in 1761.  He exclaimed: "Otis was a flame of fire!  With a promptitude of Classical Allusions, a depth of research, a rapid summary of historical events & dates, a profusion of Legal Authorities, a prophetic glance of his eyes into futurity, and a rapid summary of impetuous Eloquence he hurried away all before him.  American Independence was then & there born.  The seeds of Patriots & Heroes to defend the Non sine Diis Animosus Infans; to defend the Vigorous Youth were then & there sown.  Every Man of an immense crouded Audience appeared to me to go away, as I did, ready to take Arms against Writs of Assistants.  Then and there was the first scene of the first Act of opposition to the Arbitrary claims of Great Britain.  Then and there the Child Independence was born.  In fifteen years i.e. in 1776, he grew up to Manhood, & declared himself free."

Adams's interpretation of the American Revolution suggests at least three questions.  How was America's revolutionary political independence achieved prior to 1775?  Why did the American revolutionaries turn to violent resistance in 1775 and 1776?  What was the intellectual and moral content of the "revolution in the minds and hearts of the people" prior to 1775?  

John Locke helps us to answer all three questions.  Locke's answer to the first question would be that revolutionary resistance to tyrannical government is an exercise of the "executive power of the law of nature"--the natural right to punish those who threaten our natural rights to life, liberty, and property.  That natural punishment can be violent resistance to tyranny, as in a revolutionary war.  But it can also be expressed through nonviolent resistance, as in the popular refusal to obey the governmental rulers and popular protests against the government.  From 1761 to 1775, the American revolutionary resistance was mostly nonviolent--popular demonstrations of resistance, boycotts of imported British goods, writings and speeches criticizing the government, refusal to pay taxes, and the creation of extralegal congresses and conventions as revolutionary governments.

Indeed, some of the recent theorists of nonviolent resistance as the best form of revolutionary activity have drawn attention to John Adams's interpretation of the American Revolution, and they have written about the history of the revolution "before Lexington" as showing the effectiveness of nonviolent tactics for revolution.  (See David Toscano, Gene Sharp, Ronald McCarthy, and Walter Conser, eds., Before Lexington: Resistance, Politics, and the American Struggle for Independence 1765-1775 [Boston: Albert Einstein Institution, 2015].)  

I have written (here and here) about the evidence for the evolution of nonviolent resistance as a form of Locken natural punishment.

But if the nonviolent strategy was successful, why did the American revolutionary leaders turn to violent military measures in 1775 and 1776?  Theorists of nonviolent resistance who have studied the American Revolution have suggested six possible answers.  First, there might have been changes in the revolutionary movement so that military action became their last resource.  Second, the nonviolent strategy might have proven to be inadequate to the revolutionary cause.  Third, there might have been a particularly violent party within the movement--with people like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry--who pushed them into violence.  Fourth, one might say that the Second Continental Congress was confronted with a fait accompli after the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill and the seizure of Ticonderoga, so that they had no choice but to push ahead with military forces.  Fifth, the revolutionary leaders might have decided that they needed to form a military as a symbol of sovereignty before the world.  Sixth, we might say that what we see in 1775-1776 is a mistaken premature abandonment of a nonviolent strategy that could have been followed to victory, so that when Great Britain launched a full invasion of the colonies in 1776, the Americans could have defeated the invaders through nonviolent resistance.  The most fervent proponents of nonviolent resistance--people like Gene Sharp and Erica Chenoweth--would probably favor the last explanation.

In June of 1775, when the Second Continental Congress appointed George Washington as general and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, the Americans decided to make what Locke called an "Appeal to Heaven"--that is, an appeal to the God of Battles to decide the dispute with Great Britain.  In fact, this was made explicit when the "Appeal to Heaven" flag became a flag for the Continental Navy.  I have written about this.  I have also written about how the Americans won the war of independence by not losing to the superior military power of the British.

Adams also suggested, however, that the American war of independence would not have been successful if the intellectual and moral revolution that began in 1761 had not formed a revolutionary mind that understood the Lockean principles of natural liberty and equality.  Those principles were first taught by James Otis in his appeal to the Lockean state of nature.  I will write about that in my next post.

Ten Rules of Nonviolent Resistance for ICE OUT! The Natural Right to Refuse Consent to Unjust Government

 

Five-Year-Old Liam Conejo Ramos Being Detained by ICE Agents in Minneapolis, Later Locked Up in a Detention Facility in Texas.

Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio.  Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient principle from Magna Carta (Article 39) that forbids the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so.

On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas' Western District, granted their petition, freeing them to be returned to Minneapolis.  Here is an excerpt from his written decision:

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children.  This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

Apparent also is the government's ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence.  Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation.  Among others were:

1. "He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People."

2. "He has excited domestic Insurrection among us."

3. "For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us."

4. "He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures."

"We the people" are hearing echoes of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:  "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized."  U.S. CONST. amend. IV.

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.

That is caused the fox guarding the henhouse.  The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration's detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R.  The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency.  And the rule of law be damned.

Below his signature, Judge Biery attached the widely seen photograph of Liam, with an anonymous photo credit--"Credit: Bystander."  He also cited two Biblical verses: Matthew 19:14 ("But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of heaven") and John 11:35 ("Jesus wept"). 

As A. O. Scott of The New York Times has noted, Judge Biery's opinion is a remarkably eloquent and subtle piece of writing that refutes Trump's "unitary executive theory" of presidential power.  Without ever mentioning Trump by name (except the card-table verb "trump"), the Judge intimates that Trump is acting like the "would-be authoritarian king" George III condemned by the Declaration of Independence.  He also suggests that Trump and his agents are motivated by "the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest."

Notice also that the "lust for unbridled power" is checked by legal principles (the rule of law and separation of powers) that enforce moral and scriptural principles (such as "human decency" and protecting young children).

Judge Biery's decision shows us how the separation of powers allows a judicial officer of government to resist an unjust government.  But when Judge Biery gives credit for the photograph of Liam to "Bystander," he recognizes another kind of resistance to unjust government--the nonviolent resistance of those many ordinary people who have been observing, recording, and publicizing ICE misconduct.

This American nonviolent resistance to ICE is similar to the nonviolent resistance to the Gestapo in World War II Europe.  At the Waging Nonviolence website, Rivera Sun has pointed out the parallels.  In 1940, when the Nazis invaded and occupied Denmark, a 17-year-old Arne Sejr printed a flier called "10 Commandments for Danes" that became a program for the Danish resistance movement.  Here are the "10 Commandments for Danes":

1.  You must not go to work in Germany and Norway.

2.  You shall do a bad job for the Germans.

3.  You shall work slowly for the Germans.

4.  You shall destroy important machines and tools.

5.  You shall destroy everything which may be of benefit to the Germans.

6.  You shall delay all transport.

7.  You shall boycott German and Italian films and papers.

8.  You must not shop at Nazis' stores.

9.  You shall treat traitors for what they are worth.

10.  You shall protect anyone chased by the Germans.

As I have indicated in my previous posts on nonviolent resistance, the fundamental insight here is that tyrannical rulers depend on the cooperation or at least passive acquiescence of the people they rule.  When the people exercise their natural right to refuse to consent to unjust government by actively resisting that government, the ruling elites are denied the resources and cooperation required for ruling.  

There is empirical evidence that this works.  Erica Chenoweth and her colleagues have gathered data from hundreds of resistance movements over the past 100 years, and they have shown that if at least 3.5 percent of the people become active in a mass nonviolent resistance movement, it is highly likely to succeed.  

Following the example of the "Ten Commandments for Danes" and the experience of the American nonviolent resistance movement of the past year, Rivera Sun has proposed "10 Rules of Resistance for #ICEOUT":

1.  No silence.

2.  No selling. 

3.  No service.

4.  No hotel rooms.

5.  No entry.

6.  No informing.

7.  No looking away.

8.  No collaboration.

9.  No transporting.

10.  No detention centers.

In her essay, she provides details and examples for each of these rules.

A few days ago, Trump border czar Tom Homan announced that the "surge" of thousands of ICE agents into Minneapolis will be drawn down.  If that happens, that will show the first big victory for the resistance movement against ICE. 

The Evolutionary Politics of Minimal Winning Coalitions: On the Work of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith

The apparent closeness of the American presidential race between Obama and Romney is a reminder of the fundamental principle of human politics--the political survival of leaders depends on their having the support of a minimal winning coalition. 

No ruler can rule alone.  Even an absolute dictator needs a small coalition of powerful people who are loyal to him, and to win and maintain that loyalty, the dictator must buy them off with money and status.  Once a dictator is abandoned by his loyalists, he loses his power.  But as long as he has the support of that small winning coalition, he can rule successfully even when he oppresses the great majority of the people under his rule.  The private interest of his small coalition of supporters is advanced at the expense of the public interest of the people at large.

A democratic leader differs from a dictatorial leader in that the democratic leader depends on a larger coalition of supporters.  Because of the large size of a winning democratic coalition, democratic leaders must persuade a large number of supporters that he will advance public policies that serve the general welfare of this big coalition.  But still this large democratic coalition is less than the whole community, and it does not have to be a majority of the citizens.

In the American electoral college system for the presidency, the minimal winning coalition requires the support of those voters in various states who will give a candidate at least 270 of 538 electoral votes.  As we know, the winner in the Electoral College does not necessarily need to win the majority of the popular votes.  Moreover, if neither Romney nor Obama wins at least 270 electoral votes, perhaps because they have evenly split the electoral votes (269 for each), then the election will be decided by a vote of the House of Representatives, with each state delegation casting one vote.  In that case, the minimal winning coalition would be 26 state delegations, which could represent a minority of the voters.  To avoid this outcome, the tie in the Electoral College could be broken if one or more of the electors could be persuaded to betray their party commitment and vote for the popular vote winner.  There is a very slight possibility that this could happen in this election.

According to Frans de Waal, this principle of minimal winning coalitions holds true not only for human politics but also for chimpanzee politics.  The natural drive of male chimps for dominance leads them to compete for rule over each chimp community.  Success in this competition depends on the exercise of strategic intelligence in which chimps must form coalitions that will support them as the alpha chimp in the hierarchy (see chapter 5 of de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics). 

This suggests that the human political principle of minimal winning coalitions could be rooted in an evolutionary history of politics shared with our primate ancestors, and thus it would be grounded deep in our natural history as political animals.

That all of politics can be explained through the principle of minimal winning coalitions is the argument of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith in The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics (PublicAffairs, 2011).  They have summarized the argument of their book in an article for Foreign Policy--"A Dictator's Handbook for the President"--in which they suggest that if Obama is to win reelection, he will have to act more like a dictator.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith assume that "politics is about getting and keeping political power" (xviii).  To explain how that is done, one needs to understand one fundamental fact about political power:  "No one rules alone; no one has absolute authority.  All that varies is how many backs have to be scratched and how big the supply of backs is available for scratching" (4).

They explain the variability of political life by explaining how leaders handle three groups of people--the nominal selectorate, the real selectorate, and the winning coalition.  "Fundamentally, the nominal selectorate is the pool of potential support for a leader; the real selectorate includes those whose support is truly influential; and the winning coalition extends only to those essential supporters without whom the leader would be finished.  A simple way to think of these groups is: interchangeables, influentials, and essentials" (5).

In the United States, the nominal selectorate or interchangeables for the presidency are those legally qualified to vote; the real selectorate or influentials are those who actually vote in any particular election; and the winning coalition or essentials are the smallest group of voters scattered properly across the states to win a majority in the electoral college.  By contrast, in North Korea, the nominal selectorate includes all the voters, although the elections are rigged; the real selectorate includes a tiny group of people who actually select the leader; and the winning coalition is probably no more than a few hundred people whose support is essential for sustaining the power of North Korea's leader.

Consequently, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith argue, there is no difference in kind between types of governance throughout political history, because they differ only in the relative size of their nominal selectorates, real selectorates, and winning coalitions.  Nevertheless, it is convenient to distinguish between dictatorships as small-coalition regimes and democracies as large-coalition regimes. 

In every regime, politics is about the leader paying off the right people--those who constitute the minimal winning coalition.  A dictatorial leader must pay off a small coalition of people.  A democratic leader must pay off a large coalition of people.  Thus, all politics is about "pay to play"--"Paying supporters, not good governance or representing the general will, is the essence of ruling" (25).  Consequently, all governments are corrupt, and they differ only in the level of their corruption.  "If corruption empowers, then absolute corruption empowers absolutely" (127).

In elaborating their theory, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith formulate 5 basic rules for all leaders (17-18):

Rule 1:  Keep your winning coalition as small as possible.
Rule 2:  Keep your nominal selectorate as large as possible.
Rule 3:  Control the flow of revenue.
Rule 4:  Pay your key supporters just enough to keep them loyal.
Rule 5:  Don't take money out of your supporter's pockets to make the people's lives better.

I find much of what they say persuasive.  I am particularly impressed by some of the insights that come from their theory.  One example is how they explain the remarkable stability of a dictator's rule when he has steady access to valuable natural resources (like oil, natural gas, gems, and forest products) that provide all the income he needs to pay off his small coalition of supporters.  If a dictator has this, he doesn't need his people to be economically productive, and so he doesn't need to limit his oppression in order to motivate them to work.  This explains the dictatorship of Senior General Than Shwe of Burma and others with control over vast oil resources.  By contrast, a dictator like Hosni Mubarak, who did not have access to steady income from natural resources, was exposed to revolt once the decline in foreign aid revenue and a faltering economy weakened his ability to pay off his small coalition of supporters.

Another example of the insights from Bueno de Mesquita and Smith is how they explain the failure of foreign aid to foster democracy and economic development:  foreign aid for countries ruled by dictators will inevitably be diverted to the benefit of the dictators, and by saving them from financial crisis, foreign aid takes away from dictators any need to expand their coalition of supporters.

But despite my general agreement with Bueno de Mesquita and Smith, I see five main problems with their argument:

(1) Following the traditional assumptions of game theory, they assume that all human beings are rational maximizers of their self-interest.  But they don't respond to recent research in behavioral game theory that shows human beings as moved by some moral concern for others.

(2) They denigrate political philosophy.  But then one notices that their ideas add little to the ideas of Aristotle, Machiavelli, and James Madison.

(3) They adopt the traditional stance of value-free social science, because they assert that they are concerned with studying what is and not with what ought to be the case in politics, and consequently they disparage any appeal to "good governance" or the "general welfare."  But then they endorse the values of liberal democracy as the regime that most closely approximates the ideal of good government.

(4) They assume that history is progressive in moving towards liberal democracy.  But they never explain or justify their theory of historical progress.

(5) They assume that there is a "natural order governing politics" (279).  But they never explain the ground of that "natural order."

(1) The axiom of self-interest
Bueno de Mesquita and Smith advise us to reject "fuzzy ideas like the national interest, the common good, and the general welfare."  Rather, we should see that "politics, like all of life, is about individuals, each motivated to do what is good for them, not what is good for others" (xix).  Thus, we should assume that all politicians are "self-interested louts" (xxv).  As one can see in his TED talk, Bueno de Mesquita is following the traditional assumptions of Rational Choice Theory about human beings as rational egoists. 

I agree that it is reasonable to assume that most human beings most of the time are moved by individual self-interest.  But it is unreasonable to assume that human beings never care for others, and that other-regarding behavior is never important for social and political life.  As products of natural and cultural evolution, we are both selfish and social beings.  We cannot explain our moral and political lives if we don't see this complex combination of selfishness and sociality.  Adam Smith was correct in the first sentence of The Theory of Moral Sentiments: "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

Moreover, as I have often noted on this blog, research in behavioral game theory (for example, in experiments with the Ultimatum Game) indicate that not all human beings act as rational maximizers of their selfish interest, because many people show sympathy or "fellow-feeling" for the experiences of others, just as Adam Smith said.  And this sympathy leads them to respect norms of fairness and social concern, even to the point of punishing violations of those norms at some cost to themselves.

Furthermore, scientific research in evolutionary psychology and neuroscience suggest that normal human beings are moved by moral sentiments or emotions such as guilt, shame, indignation, and love.  Perhaps the only people not moved by such emotions are pure psychopaths, who might be the only people who fully satisfy the assumptions of rational choice theory.  In fact, the most brutal and callous dictators are probably people with psychopathic personalities.  To explain all this, we need not just Rational Choice Theory, but also Emotional Choice Theory.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith contradict themselves on this point.  On the one hand, they assume that human beings never care about others.  On the other hand, they concede that at least some human beings show benevolence and concern for others, because there are some "benevolent dictators" (like Singapore's Lee Kwan Yee) (104), and there are some "benevolent leaders" in democratic regimes (127).

They recognize that dictators are exposed to assassination and revolutionary violence, but they say nothing about the willingness of assassins and revolutionaries to sacrifice their lives in the attempt to overthrow a dictator.  For example, they mention the assassination of Anwar Sadat, but they don't reflect on the fact that the assassins were killed.  Rational self-interest cannot explain the willingness of people to sacrifice their own lives for what they regard as a just cause.  Machiavelli was astute enough to notice that any ruler can be killed by anyone willing to give up his life in assassinating him.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are also silent about how dictators can be overthrown by the "people power" of social movements practicing nonviolent resistance.  Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan (Why Civil Resistance Works [2011]), using data from the past 100 years, have shown that every nonviolent resistance campaign that achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population was successful in overturning dictators.  This provides quantitative evidence for Locke's account of government by consent of the governed.  It seems that the small coalition of elites supporting the dictator can be persuaded by a small nonviolent resistance movement to turn against the dictator.  This shows that dictators cannot rule without at least the passive acquiescence of the great body of the people, and so dictators can be overthrown by the active resistance of 3.5 percent or less of the people, even when that resistance is nonviolent.

(2) Political Philosophy
In a section of their book entitled "Great Thinker Confusion," Bueno de Mesquita and Smith assert that while "politics is not terribly complicated," "history's most revered political philosophers haven't explained it very well" (xix).  They indicate that people like Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Montesquieu, and Madison all failed to explain politics because they "lacked modern tools of analysis (which we, luckily, have at our disposal)" (xxi).

But anyone who has read those political philosophers might notice that there is almost nothing in the explanations of Bueno de Mesquita and Smith that were not laid out by those philosophers.  In fact, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith occasionally admit that what they say is very close to what Madison said about democracy and what Machiavelli said about dictatorship (xx-xxi, 11).

But since Bueno de Mesquita and Smith believe that "politics is not terribly complicated," they generalize about "leaders" without distinguishing the different motivations of politically ambitious people.  By contrast, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Madison recognize that the greatest statesmen are moved by a love of fame, honor, or glory that sets them apart from ordinary politicians.  People like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Winston Churchill are moved by "the love of fame, the ruling passion of the noblest minds."  One might say that this is still self-interest, and yet it's an expansive self-interest that moves magnanimous statesmen to serve the public good on a grand scale for the sake of a kind of immortality through glory.  (Consider, for example, what Lincoln told Joshua Speed about how issuing the Emancipation Proclamation would satisfy the longing for glory that he had sought his whole life.)  But the crudely simplified political psychology of Bueno de Mesquita and Smith cannot recognize magnanimous statesmanship, because this would make political science too complicated for them, and they are confident that "politics is not terribly complicated."

What Bueno de Mesquita and Smith say about dictatorship adds nothing to what Aristotle and Machiavelli said about what tyrannts have to do to preserve their rule.  For example, what Bueno de Mesquita and Smith say about the two ways that dictators can respond to revolutionary threats corresponds closely to what Aristotle says about the two ways of preserving tyranny (198).  What they say about democracy adds nothing to what Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Madison said about republican government as a mixed regime that balances the power of one, few, and many.

This distinction in political philosophy between one, few, and many corresponds to what Bueno de Mesquita and Smith identify as the three groups of people in political life--"leaders," "essential supporters," and "masses."  As opposed to a dictatorship, a modern liberal democracy is a mixed regime in which some large portion of the minimal winning coalition includes the "many" or the "masses."

(3) Value-Free Social Scientists Supporting Democratic Values
Unlike the political philosophers, who were concerned with "'the big questions'--what the highest nature of man ought to be, or what the 'right' state of government really is, or what 'justice' truly means," Bueno de Mesquita and Smith indicate that their concern is with what really is not what ought to be (xxii). 

But then, throughout their book, they assume that liberal democracy is the ideal regime, or at least the best approximation to the best regime, because while "autocratic politics is a battle for private rewards," "democratic politics is a battle for good policy ideas" (44).  While a small-coalition regime promotes the interests of the few, a large coalition regime promotes the interests of the many.

This creates contradictions in their writing.  They say that "paying supporters, not good governance or representing the general will, is the essence of ruling" (25).  But they also say that "paying off the right people is the essence of good government" (31).  So it seems that paying supporters both is and is not good government.

If "good governance" is identified with "representing the general will" or promoting "the general welfare," then, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith conclude, "democrats are closer to this good governance ideal than autocrats" (75), because in a democracy, politicians compete in offering good policy ideas about how best to secure the public good (43-44).  Once again, they contradict themselves--both denying that politics is concerned with "good governance" and affirming that democracy is concerned with "good governance."

This "good governance ideal" corresponds to what Aristotle, Machiavelli, and Madison recognized as the common good or the "general and aggregate interests of the whole" (Federalist number 10).  They would agree with Bueno de Mesquita and Smith that "working out what makes people do what they do in the realm of politics is fundamental to working out how to make it in their interest to do better things" (xxii).

So while Bueno de Mesquita and Smith set out to be value-free social scientists, they recognize that political life is value-laden, and therefore a purely value-free social science cannot explain the reality of politics.

(4) The End of History
Implicitly, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith have a philosophy of history as a progressive movement towards liberal democracy as the best regime.  But they never fully explain or justify this philosophy of history.

They assert: "Until recently, and with very few exceptions, small-coalition systems have been the dominant form of government" (226).  But there is "hope for the future," they say.  "Every government and every organization that relies on a small coalition eventually erodes its own productivity and entrepreneurial spirit so much that it faces the risk of collapsing under the weight of its own corruption and inefficiency.  When those crucial moments of opportunity arise, when the weight of bad governance catches up with despots, then a few changes can make all the difference" (281).  Consequently, "sooner or later every society will cross the divide between small-coalition, large-selectorate misery to a large coalition that is a large proportion of the selectorate--and peace and plenty will ensue" (282).

Notice, again, the contradiction: they denigrate the idea of "good governance," but then they say that every despotic government faces collapse when "the weight of bad governance catches up with despots."

They never explain why there has been such a sudden and unprecedented shift in recent history from small-coalition regimes to the large-coalition regimes.  After all, if Rule 1 of politics is "Keep your winning coalition as small as possible," why would politicians suddenly, for the first time in history, turn to large-coalition arrangements in a way that would make this the wave of the future?

To begin to explain this, we need to see that Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are wrong when they say that small-coalition systems have dominated human history until recently.  In fact, through most of human history, human beings lived in foraging bands of hunter-gatherers that were large-coalition regimes, because they were largely egalitarian societies in which leaders were severely limited in their power by popular resistance to exploitative dominance.  It was not until about 5,000 years ago that the emergence of agrarian states based on agricultural production made it possible for leaders to rule in small-coalition regimes in which the majority of people were exploited by the ruling elite.  And even in those ancient small-coalition states (like Mesopotamia), there were frequent rebellions against despotic rule.  The emergence of modern liberal democracies over the past two or three centuries is in some ways a revival of the popular constraints on power that prevailed in ancient foraging societies.

This points to a scheme of historical progress that moves through three epochs.  Recently, Douglass North, John Wallis, and Barry Weingast (in Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History [Cambridge University Press, 2009) have explained this as a history of three social orders--"the foraging order," "the limited access order," and the "open access order."  In the open access order, prohibitions on the use of violence or coercion allow for open entry and free competition in the formation of social, economic, and political organizations.  This allows for a vibrant growth in social, economic, and political life beyond any previous social order.

To fully understand this movement of history, we would need to understand it through an evolutionary science of natural selection and cultural selection.

5. The Natural Order
If there is a "natural order governing politics" (279), as Bueno de Mesquita and Smith say, how do we explain that "natural order"?

As I have just suggested, the only comprehensive science of natural order in political life is a Darwinian science of evolution.  This Darwinian science could explain the evolution of the complex interaction of selfishness and sociality in human nature.  It could explain the evolved human nature studied by political philosophers.  It could explain the value-laden character of politics as a moral order.  And it could explain the history of political order as passing through an evolutionary process of trial and error-- from the foraging order of hunter-gatherers to the limited access small-coalition regimes of agrarian states to the open access orders of large-coalition liberal democracies.

As Bueno de Mesquita and Smith indicate, freedom is the greatest public good.  Freedom is the natural condition for human flourishing, materially and spiritually (120-21, 124-25, 180, 214, 273-74, 278-82).  Although the evolutionary path to free societies is not predetermined, because evolutionary history is an undesigned, contingent process of trial and error, the greater wealth, inventiveness, and happiness of the free society make it likely that it will eventually prevail.

Here, again, they contradict themselves: having denied the reality of the public good, they affirm freedom as the greatest public good!

The evolutionary historical logic of this trend towards a free society has been elaborated in recent books by Robert Wright (Nonzero), Matt Ridley (The Rational Optimist), and Steven Pinker (The Better Angels of Our Nature).  It's an evolutionary logic that leads to expanded cooperation, greater prosperity, and less violence.

Here we see the argument for a new political science of Darwinian liberalism, according to which the minimal winning coalition in a mixed regime is broad enough to promote the general welfare of the one, the few, and the many.