Traditionalist conservatives and classical liberals need Charles Darwin. They need him because a Darwinian science of human nature supports Burkean conservatives and Lockean liberals in their realist view of human imperfectibility, and in their commitment to ordered liberty as rooted in natural desires, cultural traditions, and prudential judgments. Arnhart's email address is larnhart1@niu.edu.
I have written about Donald Trump's chimpanzee politics. Recently, we have had an excellent illustration of how to counter Trump's alpha male theatrics. An alpha male cannot rule by himself, he needs the support of beta males. But then beta males are vulnerable to the charge that they are . . . only beta males servile to the alpha male.
Tim Ryan is a Democrat running for the U. S. Senate from Ohio. Normally, Ohio would seem to be Trump Country. And once Trump endorsed J. D. Vance for the Senate, that would seem to be enough for Vance to defeat Ryan.
But a few weeks ago, Trump held a rally in Ohio, where he bragged that while Vance had criticized him in 2016, he sought Trump's endorsement in 2022. Now, he's "kissing my ass," Trump gloated. Vance then walked onto the podium to praise Trump. In a debate with Vance, Ryan reminded the audience of this. What kind of a man would give up his dignity to win Trump's endorsement, he asked. He observed that no one he knows from his high school class would have done this--to emasculate himself in becoming subservient to a higher ranked male. What Ohio wants, Ryan proclaimed, is not an ass-kisser but an ass-kicker.
Notice that this has nothing to do with policy debates. It's pure chimpanzee politics--who's the dominant male, who's the beta male. Ryan simultaneously identified Vance as the beta male and himself as alpha--as an ass-kicker not an ass-kisser.
This is a dramatic illustration of the evolutionary psychology of the Democratic strategy for subverting Trump's rhetoric of chimpanzee politics. A narcissistic alpha male like Trump cannot prevail without the support of submissive beta males, but the very submissiveness of these beta males exposes them to the humiliation of being toadies.
Political commentators cannot explain the surprising success of Donald Trump in advancing towards the Republican nomination for President.
But those of you who have followed this blog over the years will recognize Trump's behavior as showing the chimpanzee politics of an ambitious male seeking alpha dominance. We can easily understand what Trump is doing by reading Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics and Jane Goodall's In the Shadow of Man (1971) and The Chimpanzees of Gombe (1986). De Waal described the political behavior of a captive group of chimps in a zoo in the Netherlands, while Goodall described the political life of the wild chimps in the Gombe Reserve of Tanzania.
When Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1994, he recommended that freshmen Republican representatives read de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics as a good book for understanding Washington politics. He identified himself as the dominant chimp, and many observers noticed the similarities between the Republican power-takeover in 1994 and de Waal's depictions of his power-striving chimps. Now we see Trump attempting another power-takeover through some of the same techniques used by chimps who become alpha males.
In a recent article in New Scientist magazine, Christopher Boehm has compared Trump to the Gombe chimp named Mike, who suddenly became alpha male when he incorporated new techniques into his charging displays of bluffing intimidation. Mike discovered that making lots of noise with empty kerosene cans could intimidate the high-ranking males. Trump has discovered that loudly yelling insults at anyone who challenges him is so shocking and flamboyant that he becomes the center of attention for voters, and his competitors are thrown into stunned confusion. This should show us that much of political competition has little to do with intellectual debates over public policy and much more to do with gut-feelings about who looks dominant and who looks subordinate, gut-feelings rooted in our evolved primate political psychology.
We often assume that competition for high social rank among political animals is settled by physical violence, so that the bigger and stronger individual prevails. But while physical aggressiveness is important, there are many other factors that contribute to determining the dominance hierarchy in a group of chimps.
Males tend to reach their peak in the hierarchy between age twenty and twenty-six years. Goodall explains: "Factors other than age, which determine the position of a male in the dominance hierarchy include physical fitness, aggressiveness, skill at fighting, ability to form coalitions, intelligence, and a number of personality factors such as boldness and determination. . . . At Gombe some males strive with much energy to better their social status over a period of years; others work hard for a short while, but give up if they encounter a serious setback; a few seem remarkably unconcerned about their social rank" (415).
When Trump dismissed Jeb Bush as a "low energy" candidate, presumably Trump was identifying him as someone who lacked the necessary intensity in striving for dominance.
Chimp male canine teeth are powerful weapons for killing. But remarkably, chimp fighting almost never leads to killing, except when male chimps are attacking chimps outside their community. Fighting for dominance within a community is carried out through the bluffing of spectacular, charging displays of intimidation.
In the Gombe community, in 1961, Goliath was the alpha male. In 1964, Mike challenged and defeated Goliath through his intelligent use of noisy cans in his charging displays. In 1971, Mike was overthrown by Humphrey. All of these individuals shared one clear trait--an intensely strong desire to dominate their fellow chimps.
Here's Goodall's description of how Mike first rose to the top:
"Mike's deliberate planning was a striking aspect of his rise to alpha status. Once, for example, as a group of six adult males groomed about 10 meters away, Mike, after watching them for six minutes, got up and moved toward my tent. His hair was sleek and he showed no signs of any visible tension. he picked up two empty cans and, carrying them by their handles, one in each hand, walked (upright) back to his previous place, sat, and stared at the other males, who at that time were all higher ranking than himself. There were still grooming quietly and had paid no attention to him. After a moment Mike began to rock almost imperceptibly from side to side, his hair very slightly erect. The other males continued to ignore him. Gradually Mike rocked more vigorously, his hair became fully erect, and uttering pant-hoots he suddenly charged directly toward his superiors, hitting the cans ahead of him. The other males fled. Sometimes Mike repeated this performance as many as four times in succession, waiting until his rivals had started to groom once more before again charging toward them. When he eventually stopped (often in the precise spot where the other males had been sitting), they sometimes returned and with submissive gestures began to groom Mike."
"Whereas most directed displays are performed in silence, Mike's were almost always accompanied by pant-hoots; it is as though he was emphasizing his identity in connection with the noise of the racketing cans. Since he learned to keep as many as three banging and bounding ahead of him as he charged, flat out, toward his rivals, it is scarcely surprising that his bluff was so effective" (1986, 426).
Notice that the higher ranking males initially tried to ignore Mike's noisy displays, just as Trump's Republican competitors tried to ignore him and hoped that he would fade away. But now that Trump's display behavior has made him the center of attention and the leading vote-getter, his competitors must pay attention, and some are beginning to become submissive to him.
Goodall describes Mike's fight with Goliath:
"First one male and then the other displayed, and each performance seemed to be more vigorous, more spectacular than the one preceding it. Yet during all that time, apart from occasionally hitting one another with the ends of the branches they swayed, neither chimpanzee actually attacked the other. Unexpectedly, after an extra long pause, it looked as if Goliath's nerves had broken. He rushed up to Mike, crouched beside him with loud, nervous pant-grunts, and began to groom him with feverish intensity. For a few moments Mike ignored Goliath completely. Suddenly he turned and, with a vigor almost matching Goliath's, began to groom his vanquished rival. There they sat, grooming each other without pause for over an hour."
"That was the last real duel between the two males. From then on it seemed that Goliath accepted Mike's superiority, and a strangely intense relationship grew up between the two. They often greeted one another with much display of emotion, embracing or patting one another, kissing each other in the neck; afterward they usually started grooming each other. During these grooming sessions it appeared that the tension between them was eased, soothed by the close, friendly physical contact. Afterward they sometimes fed or rested quite close to each other, looking peaceful and relaxed as though the bitter rivalry of the past had never been" (1971, 116-117).
Similarly, within a few days, Chris Christie went from being Trump's competitor for dominance to being his submissive friend, who now grooms Trump with intensity.
Mitt Romney and other leaders of the Republican Party are forming powerful coalitions of people to stop Trump's rise to dominance. But Trump is defiant in denouncing the power of the "Republican establishment." Mike also had to stand against such a coalition in 1964:
"Led by David Greybeard, who was quickly joined by Goliath, an alliance of five senior males advanced threateningly on Mike. He turned and fled, seeking refuge up a tree. The five followed, displaying and uttering fierce waa-barks, and it seemed that Mike would lose his newly acquired status. Instead, as they pursed him into the branches, he suddenly turned on them--and all five retreated to the ground! Mike's victory was particularly impressive in that even his suspected sibling, J.B., joined in against him. The fact that as many as five angry adult males can be intimidated by one determined individual, quite on his own, is another example of the importance of psychological factors in chimpanzee dominance interactions. It implies also that the lone male who dares to face such opposition is either stupid (cannot imagine the possible consequences) or has rather a large share of boldness--a quality that perhaps comes close to courage" (1986, 428-29).
Although Goodall might seem to say here that the alpha chimp stands alone as an absolute despot, Goodall, de Waal, and other primatologists have all recognized that the alpha chimp gains and holds power only with the support of other high-ranking males and of the females. De Waal notes that chimpanzee dominance depends on the support of a "minimum winning coalition." In the group studied by de Waal, Yeroen had been the alpha male until he was overthrown by Luit. But then once Yeroen formed a coalition with Nikkie, which won the support of the females, Luit fell from power.
Similarly, human political dominance depends on a minimum winning coalition. Pure one-man rule is impossible, because even the most powerful despot needs a coalition of supporters, who must believe that the despot's rule serves their interests. The difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is in the size of the minimum winning coalition. In a dictatorship, the minimum winning coalition is small. So, for example, Kim Jong-un's power in North Korea probably depends on his being supported by a few hundred high-ranking people, who could overthrow him if they became dissatisfied with him.
In a democracy, the minimum winning coalition is larger. So, for Trump to become President, he must first win a majority of the delegates to the Republican Party Presidential Convention, and then he must win a majority of the Electoral College electors. To do this, he will have to convince a large coalition of voters that his election will benefit them. And thus the debate over public policy does become important, because the voters must be persuaded that the policies likely to be promoted by the President will serve their interests, which they will see as the public good of the nation.
Trump knows this, of course. And that's why he brags about his high poll numbers. He wants to be popular, and to be popular he must persuade people that they will be--as he often says--"very happy" with his policies as President. His opponents can then challenge these claims. And in the last Republican debate, one could see that Trump was visibly uncomfortable when he was challenged with evidence that his proposed policies are unlikely to work well, and that some of his business enterprises (like Trump University) have fraudulently exploited customers.
[Addendum: We now know that Trump is fully aware of how he uses chimpanzee displays of dominance like Mike's noisy use of kerosene cans. In Bob Woodward's Fear: Trump in the White House (2018), Woodward reports that many of Trump's advisors have urged him to stop tweeting, because it makes him look bad. Trump has responded by saying: "This is my megaphone. . . . This is who I am. This is how I communicate. It's the reason I got elected. It's the reason that I'm successful" (206).]
So what really happened in the Presidential Debate Monday night? The previously alpha male chimpanzee was defeated by the alpha female bonobo. Everyone who watched the debate knew this as soon as they saw Clinton's shimmy.
After a lengthy comment, Trump concluded: "I have much better judgment than she has. There's no question about that. I also have a much better temperament than she does."
Clinton's response: "Whoo!" she said. "OK." She then shimmied her shoulders while smiling broadly. The audience laughed. She was having fun. Trump was not.
I have written a previous post on Trump's "chimpanzee fascism." The only way to explain Trump's success is to see that he is showing the chimpanzee politics of an ambitious male seeking alpha dominance through charging displays of bluffing intimidation. Just like the Gombe chimp Mike discovered that making lots of noise with empty kerosene cans could intimidate the high-ranking males, Trump has discovered that loudly yelling insults at anyone who challenges him is so shocking and flamboyant that he becomes the center of attention for voters, and his competitors are thrown into stunned confusion. This shows us that much of political competition has less to do with intellectual debates over public policy and more to do with gut-feelings about who looks dominant and who looks subordinate, gut-feelings rooted in our evolved primate political psychology.
One way that social scientists have studied this is to have people judge political candidates through their nonverbal displays. Some years ago, Jim Schubert, a colleague of mine at Northern Illinois University, did a study in which he asked people in Europe and in the United States to watch videos of political candidates running for office in Romania and then to rate them for "electability." With the sound turned off, they saw only the bodily and facial displays. Remarkably, their rankings corresponded closely with the electoral outcomes.
Similarly, Jonathan Mahler has written an article for the New York Times on his experience in watching the Clinton/Trump debate with the sound off and with no other information about the debate. His assignment from his editor was to test the idea that nonverbal displays in debates can determine winners and losers. And, indeed, he knew that Clinton had won the debate when he saw the restless anxiety and frustration of Trump's displays and the confident serenity and humor of Clinton's displays. That shimmy of her shoulders and her big grin were enough to show that Clinton was the alpha female.
If Trump has been trying to show that he's the alpha male chimpanzee, Clinton has shown that she can be the alpha female bonobo. In chimpanzee communities, there are both male and female dominance hierarchies, but the alpha male is clearly superior to the alpha female. In bonobo communities, as I have indicated in some posts, the alpha female seems to be dominant over the alpha male, although some primatologists think there is actually codominance shared by the alpha male and alpha female.
Since chimps and bonobos are the closest living evolutionary relatives of the human species, we might expect that we combine chimp and bonobo traits, as Frans de Waal argues. In all human societies, even in egalitarian foraging societies, men tend on average to hold more dominant positions than do women. There has never been a true matriarchy in human history. But even so, some women have the ambitious temperament that inclines them to seek dominance, and obviously Hillary Clinton is one of those. In fact, this became an explicit topic for the debate--whether she had the "temperament" or "stamina" to be President.
Bonobo males are physically bigger and stronger than bonobo females, but when bonobo females form alliances with one another, they can dominate over the males. Similarly, Clinton in the debate indicated that she was leading a female alliance against Trump's attempts at subordinating and denigrating women. Clinton spoke about the case of Alicia Machado, who was crowned Miss Universe in 1996 when Trump ran the Miss Universe contest. When Machado began to gain some weight, Trump ridiculed her as "Miss Piggy." He also called her "Miss Housekeeping," an insulting reference to her Latina ethnicity as a Venezuelan woman. Now Machado is a U.S. citizen, Clinton indicated. So in supporting her against Trump's insults, Clinton was appealing to both women and Latino immigrants.
What this shows is that the rhetoric of dominance displays is not mindlessly irrational, because it does have some rational content insofar as it's connected with policy issues--in this case, questions about immigration, the social status of women, and the leadership style of those competing for dominance.
As Gary Johnson argues in his op-ed article for the New York Times, he offers a third way between Clinton and Trump--fiscal conservatism and social liberalism. If he is allowed onto the debate stage, he will have to display the dominance style of a classical liberal.
On April 2, Trump announced his new tariff policies: there would be 10% tariffs across the board on all imports and much higher rates for the European Union, China, and dozens of other countries. He called it Liberation Day. And he said this would "Make America Wealthy Again."
Over the next two days, the U.S. stock market had a drop in value equal to what it had in 2020 at the beginning of the Covid pandemic and lockdowns.
China retaliated by announcing that it would hit U.S. goods with an additional 34% tariff to match Trump's new tariff on China.
On Saturday, April 5, the 10% universal U.S. tariff took effect.
On Tuesday, April 8, Trump told Republicans: "I know what the hell I'm doing."
On Wednesday, April 9, at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time, the Liberation Day tariffs officially went into effect. In the morning, at 9:33 a.m., Trump said in a social media post: "BE COOL! Everything is going to work out well."
Then, amazingly, in the early afternoon, at 1:18 p.m., Trump announced in a social media post that he was pausing his highest tariffs for most countries for 90 days, although the 10% tariff would remain, and China would be hit with a tariff of 145%.
When Trump was asked to explain his change of mind, he told reporters: "Well, I thought that people were jumping a little bit out of line. They were getting yippy, you know, they were getting a little bit yippy, a little bit afraid."
This is hard to explain. From Liberation Day to yesterday morning, Trump was a radical protectionist (perhaps persuaded by Peter Navarro). But by yesterday afternoon, Trump seemed to have decided that radical protectionism was wrong (perhaps persuaded by Elon Musk and others). So what's going on?
As I argued a few weeks ago, it's a mistake to think Trump cares about ideas or theories--cares about whether protectionism is correct or not--because as a grandiose narcissist, all he cares about is himself and whatever he has to do to win and maintain his alpha male dominance. Trump's politics is the chimpanzee politics of dominance, deference, and counter-dominance in which Trump must always be the King of the Mountain.
In exercising his arbitrary, absolute power over tariffs, Trump draws the eyes of the whole world to himself, so that by tapping a few words in a social media post, he shakes the global economic system.
Consider this remark in a New York Times article: "For a while, the tariffs created a dynamic Mr. Trump most enjoys--global leaders coming to him and, as he said on Tuesday night, 'kissing my ass' in search of deals. Administration officials said that more than 75 countries had reached out to them."
That's what he wants--most of the world "kissing my ass." But instead of kissing his ass, China retaliated by raising their own tariff barriers to U.S. goods, which is now at 125%. This forced Trump to raise the tariff on China to 145%. China's retaliation has showed resistance to his dominance over the world.
At the same time, Trump's reversal of his tariffs for most countries, at least for 90 days, shows his fear of the American resistance to his dominance that would be provoked by creating a financial crisis that would create a recession or even depression.
The resistance to Trump's despotic dominance can take many forms. I have written about the Lockean evolution of nonviolent resistance. And there is growing evidence of nonviolent resistance to Trump during the first months of his new term.
One form of nonviolent resistance to despotic tariffs that deny the natural right to free trade is smuggling. Smuggling to evade tariffs and restrictions on trade (such as Prohibition) is an old American tradition, and Trump's tariffs will Make American Smuggling Great Again.
The U.S. has only 26,000 customs officers to enforce tariffs, and that's not enough to prevent smuggling. For example, goods from China can be covertly transported to the U.S. and sold on black markets. Alternatively, importers of goods subject to high tariffs can lie to customs officials about the goods being imported. When imported goods arrive at a U.S. port of entry, importers must submit paperwork electronically to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection detailing the value of the imported items, where they were made, and what materials they include (for example, how much aluminum and steel is contained in some garden furniture); and based on that information, the importers calculate the tariff they must pay. Customs agents must review the paperwork and then clear the goods for release. Importers have either 10 or 30 days to calculate what they owe and make payment to Customs. Customs officials can do spot checks and random inspections, but since it's impossible for them to check everything, there will be lots of smuggling, especially when the tariffs are exorbitantly high.
Over 10 million shipping containers per year pass through the Port of Los Angeles alone. Imagine being a customs official charged with inspecting those containers to detect smuggling. The number of containers entering that one port per day (27,400) exceeds the total number of customs officers across the U.S.!
A Container Ship
If there is a natural right to free trade, there is also a natural right to protect free trade from oppressive tariffs through smuggling.
The debate over whether the Mueller Report justifies Trump's impeachment should remind the readers of this blog of how the power of an American president resembles the dominance of an alpha male chimpanzee in depending on a minimum winning coalition.
No ruler--either among humans or among chimps--can rule alone. To win and hold power, every ruler requires a minimum coalition of powerful people who are loyal to him. When a ruler is abandoned by his loyalists, he loses his power. The only difference between a dictator and a democratic leader is the size of the loyal coalition. A dictator depends on a small coalition. A democratic leader depends on a larger coalition. But in any case, the dominant coalition is less than the whole community.
The dominance of an alpha male chimpanzee depends on the support of a coalition of high-ranking males, perhaps combined with some support from the high-ranking females. The overthrow of a dominant male chimp can come either through violence or non-violent resistance. The assassination of the alpha male chimp is extremely rare. Scientists have observed this only a few times. Usually, the challenge to the alpha male comes from bluffing displays that only threaten violence. Although chimps will kill other chimps in war with other outside groups, within the group fighting usually ends without fatal injuries, as one side submissively surrenders to the other.
Similarly, human rulers are overthrown when they lose the support of their winning coalition, and this overthrow can come either through violence (sometimes including assassination) or through non-violent resistance. So, for example, in Venezuela today, the political drama is over whether Nicolas Maduro can retain the loyalty of a few hundred or a few thousand military people who constitute his minimum winning coalition, and part of the battle depends on the attempts of the non-violent resistance movement of protestors who are trying to persuade the military to desert Maduro. If he loses, he could be killed, or he could resign and leave the country.
Under the U.S. Constitution, Trump's alpha male dominance depends on a minimum winning coalition that is defined in two ways--enough electoral votes in the Electoral College to win the presidency and enough support in the Senate to avoid impeachment. In the 2016 election, Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million votes, a margin of 2.1%. Trump won only 46.1% of the popular vote. And since only 60% of the eligible voters voted in 2016, Trump won only 27.6% of the eligible voters! Still, Trump won the electoral college by 304 to 228. Clinton lost the Electoral College because of the low turnout of Democratic voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. What this illustrates dramatically is that the minimum winning electoral coalition for electing a president is often a tiny minority of the electorate.
But then once he has won alpha male dominance, a president must avoid losing it by being thrown out, and someone with such a small winning electoral coalition as Trump is particularly vulnerable, as indicated by the fact that impeachment has been a looming threat from the day of his inauguration. In this way, Trump is like Luit, who became the alpha male chimp in the group observed by Frans de Waal in Chimpanzee Politics. Yeroen had been the alpha male until he was overthrown by Luit. But then once Yeroen formed a coalition with Nikkie, which won the support of the females, Luit fell from power, and Nikkie became the alpha male. Eventually, Luit returned to power, but finally he was assassinated by Nikkie and Yeroen.
Throughout much of European history, kings often lost power by being killed. In England, the House of Commons could vote for impeaching royal officials, and then a trial could be held in the House of Lords. But the monarch was above the law and could not be impeached, or even tried for any crime. When Charles I was tried before the Rump Parliament of the New Model Army in 1649, he denied that they had any legal power to indict him. He argued: "no earthly power can justly call me (who is your King) in question as a delinquent . . . no learned lawyer will affirm an impeachment can lie against the King." Nevertheless, the Rump Parliament convicted him of tyranny, and he was beheaded.
After their Declaration of Independence in 1776, the American colonists extended the impeachment power so that their new state governors could be impeached by the legislature for "offending against the State, either by maladministration, corruption, or other means" (Virginia Constitution of 1776). In the Constitutional Convention of 1787, some of the delegates said that a congressional power to impeach the president was "rendered indispensable by the fallibility of those who choose, as well as by the corruptibility of the man chosen" (George Mason). Some of the delegates were especially worried about likelihood that the president would be corrupted by foreign governments, and impeachment would be the only way to remove a president who had colluded with foreign powers. (This material can be found at the website for The Founders Constitution.)
The Constitution gives the sole power of impeachment to the House of Representatives and the sole power to try impeachment to the Senate, in which conviction would require two-thirds of the Senate. So, today, that means that at least 67 Senators must vote for impeachment for a conviction. Consequently, as long as at least 34 Senators vote against impeachment, this constitutes the minimum winning coalition for the president to stay in office. Today, there are 53 Republican Senators; and so conviction of Trump would require that all the Democratic Senators and at least 20 of the Republican Senators vote for his impeachment. This seems unlikely, given the partisan commitments of the Republicans to Trump.
This requirement for a supermajority in the Senate for impeachment is one reason why impeachment has been so rare. Only two presidents have been tried (Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton), and neither of these were convicted in the Senate.
This goes against the expectation of the Constitutional framers that the impeachment of presidents would be a frequent response of the Congress to presidential "maladministration," "corruption" (such as collusion with foreign governments), and "abuse of power" (such as usurping the powers of Congress). Responding to those critics of the Constitution who thought the president could become an elected monarch, Alexander Hamilton argued in Federalist Number 69 that the president was unlike the British monarch in crucial ways--one being that the president would be liable to impeachment, while the British monarch was not subject to impeachment. So, to the extent that presidents do not have to worry about impeachment, the presidency becomes monarchic.
Another reason for the rarity of impeachment is that the only impeachable offenses are "Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors," and many people--including many in the Congress--have assumed that this requires proof "beyond a reasonable doubt" that the president has committed some indictable crime that is very serious ("high"). Any careful study of the Constitution and of the pertinent documents from the founding shows that this is incorrect, because "High Crimes and Misdemeanors" was understood as "maladministration" or serious "abuse of power," which was a political judgment rather than a criminal judgment. The standard of evidence for such a political judgment is not "beyond a reasonable doubt" but rather "preponderance of the evidence" or more-likely-than-not.
By giving the sole power of impeachment to the House of Representatives, the Constitution gives the House the sole power to investigate the conduct of the president to determine whether he should be impeached. But the House has created confusion by allowing for the appointment of a "special prosecutor" by the Department of Justice to investigate misbehavior by the president. The first problem this creates is that the appointment of a "prosecutor" suggests the normal standards of criminal prosecution, the same standards that govern any of the U.S. attorneys in the Department of Justice. This obscures the point that impeachment requires a political judgment by the Congress of abuse of power rather than a regular judicial judgment of criminality. The second problem is that when Congress allows the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate presidential conduct subject to impeachment, this puts what should be a congressional investigation under the supervision of the Executive Branch and thus subject to the president's power to dismiss executive officers under his power.
We have seen both of these problems manifest in Robert Mueller's work as special counsel to investigate the collusion of the Trump campaign in 2016 with the Russians and Trump's obstructions to the investigation. Mueller conducted what should have been a purely congressional investigation under the supervision of the Department of Justice. This exposed Mueller to being dismissed at any time during his investigation. And then once he gave his report to the Attorney General, the Attorney General was free to act as Trump's lawyer in suppressing anything in the report that Trump might want to cover up.
The other problem is that Mueller was given two contradictory assignments in his original appointment by Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on May 17, 2017. First, he was authorized to investigate "any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump." Second, he was also "authorized to prosecute federal crimes arising from the investigation of these matters."
The standards of evidence for these two kinds of investigation are not the same. First, deciding whether there were any links between the Trump campaign and the efforts of the Russian government to interfere in the U.S. elections in favor of Trump is a matter of deciding whether the weight of the evidence supports a conclusion that such links were very likely. But, second, deciding whether these links were such as to justify prosecution as federal crimes required evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt," which is the high standard for criminal convictions.
The Mueller Report makes it clear that there was compelling evidence for links between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 election, and this would justify the Congress in impeaching Trump. But the Report also makes it clear that these links did not justify criminal charges. So, at one point, the Report declares: "while the investigation identified numerous links between individuals with ties to the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign, the evidence was not sufficient to support criminal charges" (vol. 1, p. 9). Similarly, on the question of whether Trump was guilty of obstruction of justice in impeding the special counsel's investigation, the Report concluded: "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him" (vol. 2, p. 8). Here, again, the compelling evidence that Trump tried to obstruct the investigation could justify impeachment by the Congress, even though there was not evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" to justify conviction for a federal crime.
Consequently, it was easy for Attorney General Barr, acting as Trump's personal lawyer, in his letter of March 24 to Congress, to quote the Mueller Report as saying that "the investigation did not establish" that the Trump campaign "conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." And Trump could shout "No Collusion!" on his Twitter account. But then Mueller, in his letter to Barr on March 27, could rightly complain that Barr's letter "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office's work and conclusions," and thus it sowed "public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation."
The ultimate source of this "public confusion," however, is the Congress's failure to assert its sole authority over impeachment--not to be shared with "special prosecutors" in the Department of Justice--as well as the Congress's failure to insist that impeachment is a political judgment of the Congress and not a legal judgment of prosecutors or the courts.
These failures of the Congress to properly exercise its impeachment power have rendered that power largely ineffective in checking the propensity of the president to become an elected monarch. But there is also a failure here on the part of the constitutional framers: by requiring a supermajority of the Senate for an impeachment conviction, the framers lowered the minimum winning coalition for the president to 34 Senators obstructing impeachment. If the framers had required only a simple majority of the Senate for an impeachment conviction, impeachments would have been more frequent. Certainly, Trump's impeachment would have been much more likely if only 51 Senators were required to vote for impeachment.
As long as Trump has a minimum winning coalition among the Republican Senators to avoid impeachment, the only challenge to his alpha male dominance will be the next presidential election. As someone who was elected with only 46% of the votes and 27% of the eligible voters, he is vulnerable to challengers. Just as Luit was overthrown by a coalition of Yeroen and Nikkie, so that Nikkie could become alpha male, a candidate who could mobilize many of the eligible voters who did not vote in the 2016 presidential election could defeat Trump. The stunning defeat of so many Trump candidates in the 2018 mid-term elections suggests that once the anti-Trump voters are motivated to vote, Trump cannot attain the minimum coalition for winning. Moreover, that Trump is not impeached might actually be desirable if his running for reelection leads to a catastrophic defeat for the Republican Party that might then bring a realignment of the political parties and a new party system.
Some of my posts on the chimpanzee politics of a minimum winning coalition and Trump's chimpanzee personality can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
The Picture on the Book Cover of Machiavellian Intelligence II
In 1967, Antony Jay published Management and Machiavelli: An Inquiry into the Politics of Corporate Life. He argued that the pursuit of power in a modern corporation was just like the Renaissance politics described by Niccolo Machiavelli in The Prince, and that Machiavelli's principles for gaining and holding political power were also the best principles for successfully advancing one's position in a corporation. His book is considered a classic of management science that was followed by dozens of other books on "Machiavellian management."
Jay was also interested in how human behavior in organizations was like a lot of animal behavior. In a 2005 interview, he said: "During my own experiences, I saw how an awful lot of animal behavior, particularly primate behavior, comes up in the modern corporation." He also wrote the popular BBC television series "Yes, Minister" and "Yes, Prime Minister" that were comic depictions of British civil servants and government ministers fighting for dominance.
In 1970, Richard Christie and Florence Geis published Studies in Machiavellianism, in which they developed a procedure for identifying the "Machiavellian personality" of people who unscrupulously pursue their selfish interests by manipulating and deceiving others. They developed a "Mach Scale" based on whether people agree with a series of statements that are identified with Machiavelli. In its most extreme form, the purest Machiavellian personality might be a psychopath, who manipulates and exploits other human beings unrestrained by any moral emotions of shame, guilt, or love. The "Mach Scale" has been used extensively by social psychologists.
In 1982, Frans de Waal published Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes. The book was based on de Waal's study of the chimpanzees in the Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem, the Netherlands. At that time, this was the largest group of chimpanzees in a zoo (23 individuals). During the warmer half of the year, they were free to move over a two-acre outdoor island area surrounded by a moat, which allowed for careful observations of their social behavior by de Waal and his students.
De Waal says that he couldn't understand what these chimpanzees were doing until he read Machiavelli: "The biological literature proved to be of no help understanding the social maneuvering that I observed, so I turned to Niccolo Machiavelli. During quiet moments of observation, I read from a book that had been published more than four centuries earlier. The Prince put me in the right frame of mind to interpret what I was seeing on the chimpanzees' forested island, though I'm pretty sure the Florentine philosopher never envisioned this particular application" (de Waal 2016, 168). He found that "whole passages of Machiavelli seem to be directly applicable to chimpanzee behavior" in explaining "the struggle for power and the resultant opportunism" (1982, 19).
In 1988, Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten published their edited book Machiavellian Intelligence: The Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans, which explored the "Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis"--the idea that the evolutionary growth in the size of primate and human brains could be explained as an adaptation for the cognitive challenges of navigating through the social complexity of primate communities in which individuals must figure out how best to both compete and cooperate with other members of their species. This has been a popular topic of research for primatologists and for cognitive scientists generally, although the term "Machiavellian intelligence" is sometimes replaced by "social intelligence" or "social brain" by people like Robin Dunbar.
Michael Jackson and Damian Grace--social science scholars at the University of Sydney (Australia)--have complained that all of these applications of "Machiavellian" thinking to management, social psychology, and primatology show a crude distortion of what Machiavelli actually taught, and that those historians and political theorists who have studied Machiavelli should feel obligated to correct these false views of Machiavelli and his teaching (Jackson and Grace 2012, 2015).
They say that when they examined many of the textbooks on the history of political thought, "we found in them not one single reference to Machiavelli's afterlife in management, social psychology, or primatology" (2015, 68). They did not look at my textbook on the history of political philosophy--Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Pinker. If they had, they would have seen that my chapter on Machiavelli has passages on de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics, Byrne and Whiten's Machiavellian Intelligence, and Christie and Geis's Studies in Machiavellianism (see Arnhart 2015, 145-46, 151). I also refer to Edward O. Wilson and Jane Goodall as biologists who study the power-seeking personality among chimpanzees and other animals. I bring all of this up as I ask the question, Was Machiavelli a Machiavellian? In other words, does Machiavelli's teaching correspond to the popular use of the term "Machiavellian" as denoting the ruthless pursuit of power over others through immoral force and fraud? Jackson and Grace answer no to this question.
I am particularly interested in raising this question as it bears on primatology. Is chimpanzee politics Machiavellian? If it is, does this Machiavellian chimpanzee politics conform to what Machiavelli himself taught? Or does this chimpanzee Machiavellianism depart from Machiavelli's teaching about politics? Although Jackson and Grace are a little obscure on these points, they seem to say that while chimpanzee politics might be "Machiavellian" in the popular sense of that term, this contradicts what Machiavelli himself taught.
I will survey some of what de Waal says about chimpanzee politics. Then I will consider the arguments of Jackson and Grace for denying that chimpanzee politics conforms to what Machiavelli teaches. Finally, I will suggest some ways in which the political life of chimpanzees really does manifest some of what Machiavelli teaches about politics.
When de Waal arrived at the Arnhem zoo in 1975 to study the chimpanzees, Yeroen was the alpha male. Yeroen was dominant over three other adult males--Luit, Nikkie, and Dandy. The social hierarchy is indicated by a special form of greeting. Chimpanzees show a submissive greeting that is a sequence of short panting grunts by the subordinate individual as he looks up at the superior individual, which is usually accompanied by a series of deep bobbing bows by the subordinate. Sometimes the subordinate will stretch out a hand to the superior or kiss the superior's feet, neck, or chest. The superior reacts to this by rising up and making his hair stand on end, so that he looks very large in contrast to the groveling subordinate. The alpha male is the male who is "greeted" by the other males. Generally, the alpha male is also "greeted" by the females and the children in a group.
The male on the left is dominant. The male on the right is subordinate. Although they are actually the same size, the dominant male makes himself look bigger.
People often assume that among animals the dominance hierarchy must be determined by fighting in which the biggest and strongest animal wins and becomes the alpha. But de Waal insists that this is false. Among chimpanzees and other animals, physical strength is only one of many traits required for becoming the dominant alpha leader. To become the alpha, one needs supporters. So one must form coalitions with partners, and to win the support of the females and the children, one needs to act as a mediator in intervening in disputes to enforce peace and unity either through impartial intervention or by supporting the weaker party against the stronger. One must know how to reconcile after disputes. And one must know how to achieve mutual cooperation through reciprocity by returning favors and by punishing those who are not cooperative. So a chimpanzee community is not governed by "the law of the jungle" or the "rule of the stronger."
There is a female hierarchy as well as a male hierarchy. In fact, before de Waal arrived at the Arnhem Zoo, the alpha female--Mama--was the dominant chimp over the whole group beginning in 1972. Then, on November 5th of 1973, three adult males--Yeroen, Luit, and Nikkie--were added to the group. Mama refused to accept them. With her friend, Gorilla, she attacked the males--biting their feet and pulling their hair. Their fear of her was expressed in their screaming, diarrhea, and vomiting. After two weeks of this, the zoo managers decided to remove Mama and Gorilla from the group, because these females were inflicting too many injuries through their uncontrolled aggression. Males seem to be better at controlling their aggression. And since it is known that in the wild adult males are dominant, it was thought that they should have a chance to become dominant without the interference of Mama.
After three months, Yeroen was dominant over the group. Mama and Gorilla were brought back. Mama attacked the three adult males. But she had no support from the other females, not even Gorilla. Without the solidarity of the females, Mama could not alone intimidate the males. Within a few weeks, Yeroen was dominant again, and he remained dominant from the spring of 1974 to the spring of 1976.
In 1976, de Waal saw the first of two power take-overs, which he understood with the help of Machiavelli, and this is what became the central focus of his book Chimpanzee Politics. In the spring of 1976, Luit stopped "greeting" Yeroen, which initiated months of tense conflict between them as they fought over which would be dominant. Luit formed a coalition with Nikkie, so that Nikkie would help Luit against Yeroen. On June 21st, Yeroen bared his teeth for the first time, which is a sign of fear in chimps. On September 1, Yeroen "greeted" Luit for the first time. Luit began to take on the control role of the alpha male in mediating fights to restore peace in the group. On October 31, Yeroen "greeted" Nikkie for the first time. So, now, Luit was the alpha male, Nikkie was second in command, and Yeroen was ranked third.
But then, in the spring of 1977, Nikkie formed a coalition with Yeroen to challenge Luit, and by December of 1977, Luit was "greeting" Nikkie as his superior. Nikkie had become the alpha male, with Yeroen second in command. The chimpanzees' keeper at the zoo worried, however, that Nikkie was too young and immature to properly control his aggression. De Waal responded by arguing that Nikkie was so dependent on the support of Yeroen, the oldest male, that there was no need to fear "an absolute dictatorship by a snotty-nosed upstart" (1982, 136).
But now that winter had come, and the chimps were confined to their indoor housing, Nikkie's violence did become excessive. Whenever Luit and Yeroen were sitting together, Nikkie fought to separate them and to be close to Yeroen. Nikkie became so violent that de Waal and the keeper agreed that he needed to be removed from the group for the rest of the winter. Once Nikkie was gone, Luit resumed his dominant position. In the spring of 1978, the chimps were released to their outdoor island, Nikkie was reintroduced, and Nikkie soon reclaimed his dominance.
De Waal noticed something strange about Nikkie's alpha male dominance. When Yeroen was the alpha male, he was "greeted" by the other adult males, and he also received almost all of the "greetings" from the females and children. When Luit was the alpha male, he was "greeted" by the other adult males, and he also received over 50% of the "greetings" from the females and children. But when Nikkie was the alpha male, he was "greeted" by the other alpha males, but he received a lower proportion of the "greetings" from the females and children than did Yeroen. Moreover, Yeroen exercised the control role--mediating disputes and restoring peace--that would normally be exercised by the alpha male, and this increased the popular respect for Yeroen as opposed to Nikkie. Echoing Machiavelli's famous remark that "it is better to be feared than loved," de Waal observed that Nikkie was "feared rather than respected" (1982, 149). But de Waal suggests that this lack of popularity made Nikkie weak.
There was another strange feature of Nikkie's alpha male status. Generally, alpha male chimps have the highest number of sexual matings with the females, and they actively disrupt the attempted matings of other males. This makes sense in evolutionary terms, because we assume that the drive for male dominance evolved as an adaptive trait because alpha males have higher reproductive fitness. But during the period of Nikkie's dominance, Yeroen had the highest proportion of matings, and Nikkie was forced to tolerate this in order to keep Yeroen's support.
To explain this, de Waal quotes a passage from Chapter 9 of The Prince entitled "Of the Civil Principate." A civil principate, Machiavelli explains, is when "a private citizen neither by wickedness nor other intolerable violence, but with the favor of his fellow citizens, becomes prince of his fatherland."
"One ascends to this principate either with the favor of the people [populo] or with that of the great [grandi]. For in every city, these two different humors are to be found. Thus it is that the people desire not to be commanded or oppressed by the great, and the great desire to command and to oppress the people. . . ."
"The principate is established either by the people or by the great, according to whether one of the other of these parties has the occasion. For the great, when they see they are not able to resist the people, begin turning to the reputation of one of their own, making him prince, so they may, under his shadow, give vent to their appetite. The people also, when they see that they are not able to resist the great, turn to the reputation of one, and make him a prince, so that he may with authority be their defense. He who comes to the principate with the aid of the great maintains himself with more difficulty than the one who attains to it with the aid of the people--for he finds himself prince with many around him who opine themselves his equals, and because of this he cannot command or manage them in his own mode."
De Waal quotes the last sentence above, and he explains:
"Nikkie's position was not an easy one. Compared to him Yeroen and Luit were almost all-powerful, thanks to the collaboration of the females. The important difference between Nikkie's leadership and the old order was that Nikkie stood on the shoulders of someone who was himself very ambitious. The ensuing problems are familiar enough in the human world. Machiavelli wrote about the relative powerlessness of this kind of leader. In in the following quotation from The Prince, we translate 'nobility' [the 'great'] by 'males of high rank' and 'common people' by 'females and children,' then we see that Nikkie's 'principality' is indeed very different from the 'principality' of his two predecessors" (1982, 153).
De Waal observes:
"Sometimes it seemed that Nikkie was being used as a figurehead, and that Yeroen--experienced as he was and extremely cunning--had him in the palm of his hand. The broad basis for leadership rested not under Nikkie but under Yeroen. The older male had a coalition with the females to pressurize Nikkie and a coalition with Nikkie to keep Luit in check. Seen in these terms the situation appeared to represent a comeback for Yeroen. Luit had deprived him of the support and respect he had hitherto enjoyed, but by pushing a youngster forward, Yeroen seemed to have succeeded in reacquiring both" (1982, 152).
But then, from 1978 to 1980, the proportion of the "greetings" directed from the females and the children towards Nikkie increased until he had the level of respect that normally goes to the alpha male.
In Chimpanzee Politics, de Waal ended the story here. But years later, he admitted that he had left out a brutal act in 1980 of what he called "political murder," because he didn't want to end his book on a "dark note" (de Waal 1986; 1998, 211). In the summer of 1980, Nikkie refused to tolerate Yeroen's copulations with estrus females, and consequently Yeroen withdrew his support of Nikkie. Without the coalition with Yeroen, Nikkie lost his dominance, and Luit became alpha male again for ten weeks.
But then Nikkie and Yeroen renewed their coalition and challenged Luit. One night, while the chimps were in their night cages, Nikkie and Yeroen jointly attacked Luit--bitting off fingers and toes and then ripping out Luit's testicles. Luit died from loss of blood.
The powerful jaws and teeth of adult males are deadly weapons. Their incisors are like knives that can easily kill their victims. But male chimps almost never use these weapons in lethal attacks. There seems to be a rule against lethal fighting. And yet the underlying threat of fighting to kill always creates tension in any severe conflict. On rare occasions, killing does occur. It's more likely to occur in war--in conflicts between chimpanzee groups rather than within a group. Jane Goodall has seen this in Gombe. De Waal could not see this because he was observing only one group.
De Waal's silence about the killing of Luit in the first edition of Chimpanzee Politics was not just to avoid ending the book on a "dark note," I suspect, but to avoid confirming the fears of those who had warned that establishing such a large community of chimps, including adult males, in a zoo without separating them in cages would lead to explosive and even lethal violence. Since it was known that feeding chimps together created violence in fighting over the food, the Arnhem chimps were fed every morning and evening in separate cages so as to eliminate fighting over food. But then being enclosed indoors every night during the warm months and throughout the day in the cold months created tension, because chimps in conflict could not separate. Mama had to be removed in the winter of 1973, and Nikkie was removed in the winter of 1977, because their aggression was leading to serious injuries. The killing of Luit in 1980 was during a night when Luit, Yeroen, and Nikkie were all caged together, and so Luit had no room to escape the attack.
The longest chapter in Machiavelli's The Prince--Chapter 19 on "Of Avoiding Contempt and Hatred"--is about how princes who become hated open themselves up to conspiracies leading to their assassination. The killing of Luit seems to show that political assassination is also part of the Machiavellian politics of chimpanzees.
So why exactly do Jackson and Grace object to identifying chimpanzee politics as Machiavellian? They suggest at least five arguments. First, they object that what is called "Machiavellian" is based on "the more flamboyant passages" in The Prince--such as "it is better to be feared than loved"--without seeing how less flamboyant passages in The Prince moderate what Machiavelli is saying. They write: "The Prince, like his other books, also offers moral judgments, recommendations of caution, emphasis on the importance of stability, advice on treating the populace with respect, and much else that surprises those whose stereotype of Machiavellianism is transposed to Niccolo Machiavelli" (Jackson and Grace 2012).
Second, they object that primatologists like de Waal have read only The Prince, and so they don't see Machiavelli's support for republicanism in The Discourses and other writings.
Third, they object that the popular view of Machiavellianism fails to see how Machiavelli was simply responding to his historical circumstances in Renaissance Italy in which political life was disrupted by domestic violence, warfare, brutality, and deceit. The apparent cynicism of what Machiavelli says is a response to those harsh conditions. They write: "The best analogy for the circumstances in which Machiavelli lived are to be found today in Afghanistan, Iraq, Mexico, or the remoter regions of Pakistan, where power does grow out of the barrel of a gun" (Jackson and Grace 2012).
Fourth, they argue that much of Machiavelli's writing is a factual description of what princes and politically ambitious people do without any endorsement of that behavior.
Fifth, they argue that Machiavelli is clear that the political class of people who strive for dominance over others is very small, and that most human beings do not have such a dominance drive, and they wish only to live their private lives in peace without being exploited by those who wish to dominate them. In a republic, Machiavelli indicates, the desire to be free is for most people a desire to be free to live a secure life; and it is only for a few people--perhaps no more than 40 or 50--that the desire to be free is a desire to be free so as to command others `(Discourses, I, ch. 16).
Oddly, however, Jackson and Grace don't reflect on the fact that much of what de Waal says about Machiavelli and the chimps agrees with some of their arguments. De Waal indicates that he does not like the term "Machiavellian intelligence" insofar as it assumes the crudely distorted popular meaning of "Machiavellian":
"The term Machiavellian implies a cynical, the-ends-justify-the-means exploitation of others. Social cognition covers much more than this. A mother resolving a weaning conflict by cleverly distracting her offspring, or an adult male waiting for the right moment to reconcile with his rival, both intelligently use their experience but are not exactly acting 'Machiavellian' in the usual sense. Sensitivity to others, conflict resolution, and reciprocal exchange all demand a great deal of intelligence but are left out if our terminology one-sidedly emphasizes one-upmanship" (1998, 218).
Thus, de Waal agrees with Jackson and Grace in rejecting the popular sense of "Machiavellian." He also agrees that this Machiavellian idea of "a cynical, the-ends-justify-the-means exploitation of others" cannot explain chimpanzee social life, which requires "sensitivity to others, conflict resolution, and reciprocal exchange." In Chimpanzee Politics, De Waal sees in chimpanzee life the evolutionary roots of morality--a "sense of moral rightness and justice" (1982, 105, 111-12, 176, 200, 204-205, 207, 212-13).
In his writing published after Chimpanzee Politics, which Jackson and Grace ignore, de Waal argues that chimpanzees show the evolutionary foundations of morality--including reciprocity, fairness, empathy, and social cooperation. De Waal has summarized some of the evidence for this in a TED talk:
And while Jackson and Grace accuse the Machiavellian primatologists of ignoring Machiavelli's teaching about the importance of a republican politics that respects the needs of the populace, De Waal sees in chimpanzee politics a democratic or republican structure like that recommended by Machiavelli with a balance of three orders--the one, the few, and the many.
Machiavelli analyzed politics as competition for power and glory organized around three orders of human beings--the "prince," who is number one; the "great ones," who are high-ranking individuals with ambition to rule; and the "people," who are the great majority of individuals in a society with no ambition to rule, but who do not want to be oppressed by the "prince" or the "great ones," because they want to live their private lives in security and peace. A stable and peaceful regime would have to balance these three orders in a manner that would satisfy the ambitions and appetites of all three without anyone having the power to tyrannize over others (The Prince, ch. 9, 57-60; The Discourses, I.2, 10-14).
De Waal saw a similar social structure among the chimpanzees: the alpha male chimp is the "prince"; the high-ranking males are the "great ones"; and the females and children are the "people." The similarities between chimpanzee politics and human politics were so close that Newt Gingrich, when he was Speaker of the House of Representatives of the U.S. Congress, recommended de Waal's book to all freshmen congressmen who might want to understand Washington politics.
Just as Machiavelli saw the balance of three orders in a republic as the fundamental mechanism for maintaining a stable and free political regime that would not be despotic, de Waal saw the same mechanism at work among chimps. Noticing how the alpha male often had to rely on the support of an ally to keep challengers down, de Waal explained this as a "balance of power: the superiority of one party over another depends on the support of a third, so that each party affects the position of the others." De Waal observed that the leader "cannot impose his leadership on the group single-handed. His position is granted him, in part, by the other chimpanzees. The leader, or alpha male, is just as much ensnared in the web as the rest" (1982, 23). So, among chimps, there is something like government by the consent of the governed.
De Waal sees here what some political scientists have called government by the "minimal winning coalition" (de Waal 1982, 187; Bueno de Mesquita and Smith 2011). No one individual can rule without supporters, and so there must always be a ruling coalition supporting the leader, who must satisfy his supporters. A dictatorship is rule by a small coalition. Democracy is rule by a large coalition. The leader must serve the interests of his coalition, and so the larger the coalition, the closer this approximates to serving the common interests of society.
Consequently, there was something like a "democratic structure" in this order of chimpanzee society:
"All parties search for social significance and continue to do so until a temporary balance is achieved. This balance determines the new hierarchical positions. Changing relationships reach a point where they become 'frozen' in more or less fixed ranks. When we see how this formalization takes place during reconciliations, we understand that the hierarchy is a cohesive factor, which puts limits on competition and conflict. Child care, playing, sex and cooperation depend on the resultant stability. But underneath the surface, the situation is constantly in a state of flux. The balance of power is tested daily, and if it proves too weak, it is challenged, and a new balance is established" (1982, 176, 212-13; 1998, 172, 208-209).
Although every human society shows an order of dominance like that of a chimpanzee society, a well-balanced society can achieve egalitarian dominance rather than despotic dominance. De Waal has observed that rhesus monkeys manifest despotic dominance, because a dominant rhesus monkey instills unremitting fear in subordinates. But among chimpanzees, the dominant chimp often acts to protect subordinates, and if he becomes a bully, he can provoke an alliance of subordinates to throw him out of power (de Waal 1996, 125-32).
This seems to be what happens in egalitarian human communities. Among hunter-gatherers, leaders who become too proud are attacked with social ridicule, and in extreme cases, leaders can be deposed or even executed by their followers. With the establishment of centralized, bureaucratic states, it became possible for despots to concentrate their power. And yet the natural human desire to be free from despotic exploitation has provoked alliances among subordinates to check the power of dominants, which has promoted political systems for balancing power. In their style of political dominance, human beings are more like chimpanzees than rhesus monkeys (Boehm 1999, 2012; Rubin 2002; Turner and Maryanski 2008).
John Adams agreed with Machiavelli that every society shows three social orders rooted in human nature--the one, the few, and the many--and that a stable and free republic requires a balance of these three orders. Adams saw this balance in the American and British constitutions (Arnhart 2009, 73-84; Ryerson 2016).
Adams believed that human nature is such that every human society must decide the question, Who is the first man? "It is a question that must be decided, in every species of gregarious animals, as well as men." In a savage state, this question is decided by physical combat between contenders. But even in the most civilized societies, "the same nature remains," and the contest for first rank must be decided, whether by peaceful or by violent rivalry. The balance of powers answers this question by providing for a supreme executive office to be filled by one with sufficient ambition to strive for it, while still checking the power of this executive officer with the powers of other offices.
At the top of every society, Adams thought, there will be competition among the "first men" for the highest rank. The people of a society will fix their attention on these men at the top. And if there is division over who should fill the dominant position, the society will be thrown into turmoil and eventually civil war. For this reason, societies should select a single person with executive authority separated from the rest of society and from the legislative body. This chief executive unifies a society and directs its management. This executive can then mediate between the passions of the ambitious few who want to rule and the passions of the deferential many who want to be free from oppression by the ambitious few.
Machiavelli and Adams saw this balance of three orders as a republican form of government best designed in conformity to human nature. De Waal and other primatologists can see the evolutionary precursors of this human nature in the political life of chimpanzees.
And, after all, as de Waal has observed, can't we see a lot of chimpanzee politics in Donald Trump? Trump once told People magazine: "Man is the most vicious of all animals, and life is a series of battles ending in victory or defeat. You just can't let people make a sucker out of you."
Arnhart, Larry. 2015. Political Questions: Political Philosophy from Plato to Pinker. 4th edition. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
Boehm, Christopher. 1999. Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Boehm, Christopher. 2012. Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame. New York: Basic Books.
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Alastair Smith. 2011. The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics. New York: Public Affairs.
Byrne, Richard, and Andrew Whiten, eds. 1988. Machiavellian Intelligence: Social Expertise and the Evolution of Intellect in Monkeys, Apes, and Humans. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Jackson, Michael, and Damian Grace. 2012. "Machiavellian Monkey Business: Machiavellian Intelligence in Primates and Machiavelli." The Montreal Review, December. Available online.
Jackson, Michael, and Damian Grace. 2015. "Machiavelli's Shadows in Management, Social Psychology, and Primatology." Theoria 62: 67-84. Available online.
Jay, Antony. 1967. Management and Machiavelli: An Inquiry into the Politics of Corporate Life. New York: Bantam Books.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1989. The Prince. Trans. Leo Paul de Alvarez. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press.
Machiavelli, Niccolo. 1996. Discourses on Livy. Trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rubin, Paul H. 2002. Darwinian Politics: The Evolutionary Origins of Freedom. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Ryerson, Richard Alan. 2016. John Adams's Republic: The One, the Few, and the Many. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Turner, Jonathan H., and Alexandra Maryanski. 2008. On the Origin of Societies by Natural Selection. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers.
de Waal, Frans. 1982. Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes. New York: Harper & Row.
de Waal, Frans. 1986. "The Brutal Elimination of a Rival Among Captive Male Chimpanzees." Ethology and Sociobiology 7: 89104.
de Waal, Frans. 1996. Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
de Waal, Frans. 1998. Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes. Revised edition. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
de Waal, Frans. 2016. Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Like many people I have been trying to understand why and how the Democratic Party threw the presidential election of 2024 to Donald Trump. I now think the answer to that question will come from reading two books--Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson's Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, It's Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again and Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics.
When Joe Biden announced in 2023 that he would run for a second term, most American voters thought he was too old to serve out a second term. He was already the oldest man to be President of the United States, and by the end of a second term, he would have been 86 years old. Moreover, throughout 2023 and 2024, the voters saw his drastic physical and cognitive decline. At the same time, after inflation peaked at 9.1% in the summer of 2022, the highest in 40 years, many voters thought Biden's economic policies had failed, and they continued to believe that even when inflation rates came down slightly by 2024. Consequently, by early 2024, the polls indicated that Biden was going to lose to Trump. But it was also clear, that most voters were unhappy with the choice between Trump and Biden, and that if the Democrats had nominated a moderate Democrat not identified with Biden and his economic policies, the Democrats would have won because Trump was not the first choice for the majority of voters.
So why did the Democrats allow Biden to run for a second term? Why did they not organize an open presidential primary to identify a good alternative to both Biden and Trump? Why did they wait until the end of July in 2024 to force Biden to withdraw from the race? And why did they then allow Kamala Harris to become the nominee, even though she was even more unpopular than Biden, and she ran as a proponent of "Bidenomics" despite the unpopularity of Biden's inflation?
The answer is that it was all chimpanzee politics. Once Joe Biden and Jill Biden had won political dominance as the alpha male and alpha female ("First Lady"), they didn't want to give it up, even though they had lost their minimum winning coalition by 2024. Other Democrat politicians who could have defeated Trump refused to enter the race because they thought they could not risk being disloyal to the Bidens. Even after Harris replaced Biden as the nominee, she refused to show disloyalty by renouncing Biden's unpopular policies (particularly on inflation). This allowed Trump to win even though he was not the first choice of the voters. Now he's the dominant chimp, who proudly announces his dictatorial rule: "I run the country and the world."
I have written many posts about the chimpanzee politics of dominance hierarchies. People often assume that among animals the dominance hierarchy must be determined by fighting in which the biggest and strongest animal wins and becomes the alpha. But primatologists like de Waal and Jane Goodall have shown that this is false. Among chimpanzees and other animals, physical strength is only one of many traits required for becoming the dominant alpha leader. To become the alpha, one needs supporters. One must form coalitions with partners, and to win the support of the females and the children, one needs to act as a mediator in intervening in disputes to enforce peace and unity either through impartial intervention or by supporting the weaker party against the stronger. One must know how to reconcile after disputes. And one must know how to achieve mutual cooperation through reciprocity by returning favors and by punishing those who are not cooperative.
Males tend to reach their peak in the hierarchy between age twenty and twenty-six years. Goodall explains: "Factors other than age, which determine the position of a male in the dominance hierarchy include physical fitness, aggressiveness, skill at fighting, ability to form coalitions, intelligence, and a number of personality factors such as boldness and determination. . . . At Gombe some males strive with much energy to better their social status over a period of years; others work hard for a short while, but give up if they encounter a serious setback; a few seem remarkably unconcerned about their social rank."
Chimp male canine teeth are powerful weapons for killing. But remarkably, chimp fighting almost never leads to killing, except when male chimps are attacking chimps outside their community. Fighting for dominance within a community is carried out through the bluffing of spectacular, charging displays of intimidation.
Goodall and De Waal have seen among chimpanzees what some political scientists have called government by the "minimal winning coalition." No one individual can rule without supporters, and so there must always be a ruling coalition supporting the leader, who must satisfy his supporters. A dictatorship is rule by a small coalition. Democracy is rule by a large coalition. The leader must serve the interests of his coalition, and so the larger the coalition, the closer this approximates to serving the common interests of society.
One can also see among chimpanzees confirmation for Machiavelli's political psychology of the one, the few, and the many. In every society, there are a few people who are ambitious to rule over others, and out of these ambitious few, one individual will emerge as the dominant ruler over all. Most people do not want to rule, and they will defer to the rule of the few, but the many do not want to be exploited by those ruling few. To avoid an exploitative despotic rule, there needs to be a balance between the one, the few, and the many. The hope of the American founders--perhaps most clearly expressed by John Adams--was that American government would separate and balance these three powers:
Adams believed that human nature is such that every human society must decide the question, Who is the first man? "It is a question that must be decided, in every species of gregarious animals, as well as men." Even in the most civilized societies, "the same nature remains," and the contest for first rank must be decided, whether by peaceful or by violent rivalry. The balance of powers answers this question by providing for a supreme executive office to be filled by one person with sufficient ambition to strive for it, while still checking the power of this executive officer with the powers of other offices--the legislative and judicial offices--filled by the ambitious few, with the ultimate check on power coming from the great multitude of people who defer to their rulers while also resisting exploitative dominance by their rulers.
Consider how this explains the history of American presidential politics over the past two years. Joe Biden has been driven by a life-long ambition to be President of the United States. In 1972, he was elected Senator from Delaware at age 30, which is the minimum age for a Senator set by the Constitution. He failed in his first two runs for the presidency in 1988 and 2008. But he did become Vice-President in 2008 after being selected by Barack Obama as his running mate. In 2016, Biden wanted to run again for the presidency, but Obama supported Hillary Clinton, which created a deep resentment in Biden. He ran again in 2020--without Obama's support in the primaries--and this time he finally won in defeating Trump.
Since his inauguration as President in 2021--the oldest president at 79--fulfilled a lifetime of striving to be Number One, it is not surprising that in the summer of 2023, he announced he would run for reelection, despite the fact that most Americans saw the physical and mental decline that came with his advanced age. It is hard for a man like Biden to give up the power and fame of being President of the United States. As Tapper and Thompson report, four-time California Governor Jerry Brown understood why Biden stubbornly refused to drop out of the race for a second term: "Politics is addictive. It's exciting. It's kind of psychic cocaine. People just don't want to just go back to their former boring lives" (50).
But then why didn't Biden follow the example of Lyndon Johnson in 1968? Johnson was elected to his first full term in a landslide victory in 1964, after becoming president in the wake of JFK's assassination. In 1968, Johnson chose to run for reelection even though he was very unpopular because of his prosecution of the Vietnam War. It was widely assumed that a sitting president could not be denied renomination by his party for a second term if he ran. But after running in some early primaries, and being challenged by the candidacies of Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy--part of a "Dump Johnson" movement--Johnson announced on March 31, 1968, that he would no longer run for the nomination. This allowed his Vice President--Hubert Humphrey--to run as the Democrat candidate, although he was defeated by Richard Nixon in the election.
LBJ was similar to Biden in many ways. Like Biden, LBJ had a life-long ambition to achieve political dominance. In 1937, at age 29, he was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1948, was elected to the U.S. Senate. In 1954, he became Senate Majority Leader. In 1960, he ran for President. But when Kennedy won the party's nomination, he selected Johnson as his Vice-President. Becoming President fulfilled his driving ambition for power. And so he did not want to give up that power in 1968, even though he was unpopular. But unlike Biden, he ended his campaign early--almost four months earlier than did Biden. What explains this difference?
One difference is that Biden was surrounded by a small inner circle of advisors that controlled the information he received and that insulated him from public view. The most important member of this inner circle was Jill Biden who protected Biden from bad news (such as unfavorable polls) and thus protected her own power as First Lady. The rest of the inner circle was known in the White House as "the Politburo": long-time Biden aides Mike Donilon, Steve Ricchetti, Ron Klain, and Bruce Reed. These five people supported Biden's run for reelection because their powerful prominence in government depended on extending Biden's presidency. David Axelrod saw "that Donilon was so blinded by his emotional attachment to Joe Biden--his fate and life inextricably bound up with the president's--that he just couldn't let go" (207). As Democrat congressman Peter Aguilar observed, "folks like Ricchetti and Donilon--they're living the first line of their obituaries right now. People don't give that up" (253).
Another difference from Johnson is that Biden did not face anything like the "Dump Johnson" movement--popular candidates challenging him in the presidential primaries. Beginning as early as 2022, Congressman Dean Phillips, a member of the House Democratic leadership team, began warning that Biden's evident cognitive decline would make it impossible for him to communicate clearly to voters, and so the party would need to find someone else to run for president in 2024. He suggested that the best candidates would be one of the Democrat governors in the Midwest--such as Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Phillips had tried to speak directly with Pritzker and Whitmer, but they refused to even take his calls. Although he admitted that he was not the best candidate, Phillips announced his presidential campaign on October 27, 2023. He said his aim was to force Biden into a debate, in which Biden would show that he lacked the cognitive ability to win another presidential campaign. The Democratic Party obstructed Phillips' efforts. He suspended his campaign after a bad showing on Super Tuesday (March 6, 2024), and he endorsed Joe Biden.
So, for two years, from the summer of 2022 to the summer of 2024, the elite politicians of the Democratic Party refused to challenge Biden's decision to run for a second term because having loyally supported him in 2020, they were afraid to show disloyalty to Biden as their party leader. Thus, they lacked the political shrewdness of chimpanzees who understand that politics is all about shifting coalitions, so that the loyal supporters of the dominant chimp will withdraw their support as soon as he manifests any signs of weakness, and then a new coalition forms to support a new alpha male.
For example, when de Waal began studying the chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands in 1975, he saw that Yeroen was dominant over the group, with the support of Luit and Nikkie. The political hierarchy among chimps is indicated by a special form of greeting. Chimpanzees show a submissive greeting that is a sequence of short panting grunts by the subordinate individual as he looks up at the superior individual, which is usually accompanied by a series of deep bobbing bows by the subordinate. Sometimes the subordinate will stretch out a hand to the superior or kiss the superior's feet, neck, or chest. The superior reacts to this by rising up and making his hair stand on end, so that he looks very large in contrast to the groveling subordinate. The alpha male is the male who is "greeted" by the other males. Generally, the alpha male is also "greeted" by the females and the children in a group.
The male on the left is dominant. The male on the right is subordinate. Although they are actually the same size, the dominant male makes himself look bigger.
In 1976, de Waal saw the first of two power take-overs, which he understood with the help of Machiavelli, and this is what became the central focus of his book Chimpanzee Politics. In the spring of 1976, Luit stopped "greeting" Yeroen, which initiated months of tense conflict between them as they fought over which would be dominant. Luit formed a coalition with Nikkie, so that Nikkie would help Luit against Yeroen. On June 21st, Yeroen bared his teeth for the first time, which is a sign of fear in chimps. On September 1, Yeroen "greeted" Luit for the first time. Luit began to take on the control role of the alpha male in mediating fights to restore peace in the group. On October 31, Yeroen "greeted" Nikkie for the first time. So, now, Luit was the alpha male, Nikkie was second in command, and Yeroen was ranked third. But then, in the spring of 1977, Nikkie formed a coalition with Yeroen to challenge Luit, and by December of 1977, Luit was "greeting" Nikkie as his superior. Nikkie had become the alpha male, with Yeroen second in command.
Congressman Phillips saw that there was a similar opportunity for a power take-over among Democratic politicians once Biden showed his vulnerability in 2023 and 2024. But it's hard to understand why ambitious Democratic politicians like Whitmer, Pritzker, Shapiro, and Newsom did not see that this was the time to betray their party leader and put together a new coalition to support a new person in the position of dominance.
It was not until Biden's disastrous debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, that everyone saw what Phillips and a few others had seen much earlier--that Biden's cognitive decline would make it impossible for him to be a competent campaigner for reelection. Even then, however, it took three weeks for party leaders to persuade Biden to withdraw. When that finally happened, they then allowed Kamala Harris to lock up her nomination in only two days of phone calls (July 21-22). They refused to take seriously the suggestion of Obama and others that there should be a short "mini-primary" or an open convention that would allow a few candidates to compete for the nomination.
Strangely, as Harris campaigned she refused the advice of her campaign people to separate herself from Biden and the unpopular policies of the Biden administration (particularly in connection with inflation). Tapper and Thompson report that in one meeting with her campaign staff, Harris asked: "If I were to really distinguish myself, how would that make me look?" She then answered her own question: "Disloyal."
On October 8, Harris went on The View. At one point in the interview, Sunny Hostin asked: "Well, if anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?" Harris answered: "There is not a thing that comes to mind." The Trump campaign people were happy to use this footage in a new Trump TV ad (298).
Because of her fear of being disloyal to Biden, she did not say what she should have said to distance herself from Biden and his unpopular policies: As a Vice-President, I have had to defend my boss. But now I am running my own campaign for president, and I can say that Biden has made many mistakes--such as economic policies that promoted high inflation--and I pledge to avoid those mistakes.
Although Trump won the popular vote by over 2 million. The election was actually very close. If Harris had beat the margins of 1.44 percent in Michigan, 1.73 percent in Pennsylvania, and 0.87 percent in Wisconsin, she would have been elected president. She could have done that by radically separating herself from Biden's policies.
Alternatively, since Harris began the campaign as even less popular than Biden, the Democratic Party could have won the presidential election by a large margin by selecting a moderate Democratic candidate--perhaps one of those Midwestern governors.
That did not happen because the Democratic leaders did not understand how to play the game of chimpanzee politics.
