The Russian Coup to Overthrow Putin: The Evolutionary Politics of Minimal Winning Coalitions

In an interview with the UK's Sky News, Ukraine's head of military intelligence--Major General Kyrylo Budanov--has predicted that Ukraine will win the war against the Russians, and that the turning point could come as soon as August.  He also says that he has seen evidence that a coup to overthrow Vladimir Putin is already underway.

I have been assuming that this was almost inevitable as soon as it was clear that the Russians were losing the war, because under those conditions Putin would lose his "minimal winning coalition."  A fundamental principle of biopolitical science is that the political survival of leaders depends on their having the support of a minimal winning coalition, and so once Putin loses that, he will fall from power.

No ruler can rule alone.  Even an absolute autocrat needs a small coalition of powerful people who are loyal to him, and to win and maintain that loyalty, the autocrat must buy them off with money and status.  Once an autocrat is abandoned by his loyalists, he loses 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.  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have written about this in various writings such as The Dictator's Handbook (2011).

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.

Frans de Waal has shown that 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 in our natural history as political animals.

There are reasons to believe that the modern natural history of politics shows a movement towards liberal democracy as the best regime--as the rule based on a large minimal coalition.  Bueno de Mesquita and Smith have written: "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."  "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).

Isn't that what we're seeing in Russia now?  The sheer weight of the corruption and inefficiency in Putin's small-coalition rule has eroded the military power of Russia, and now with the defeat of Russia in Ukraine, Putin's loyalists no longer have any self-interest in continuing to support him, and so they will betray him.

If Putin were to order a nuclear strike against Ukraine or a NATO country, and if one or more people in the chain of command refused to obey this order, that would start a coup to overthrow him.

Bueno de Mesquita and Smith are wrong, however, 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 egalitarian hierarchies 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.

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 in the evolutionary history of cultural group selection.

We are seeing that now in the struggle between Ukraine and Russia and the possible overthrow of Putin.

I have elaborated these points in some posts on minimal winning coalitions and the primate model of the chief executive rule of alpha males here and here.

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.

The Chimpanzee Politics of Joe Biden's Betrayal of America

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.

Elon Musk's Takeover of the U.S. Government Fulfills Curtis Yarvin's MAGA Fascism

Over the past two months, I have argued that the victory of Trump's MAGA movement is Janus-faced.  The liberal face of the movement is manifest in the multiracial and multiethnic coalition of Trump voters and in the liberal pluralism of Trump's Inaugural Address.  But the illiberal face of the movement was displayed at the inauguration by the prominence of the billionaires seated behind Trump, which suggested that Trump might be headed towards Curtis Yarvin's fascism of dictatorial rule by a multibillionaire CEO.

Now, in the first two weeks of Trump's presidency, we have seen that the illiberal face of Yarvin's fascism has prevailed, and it's the face of Elon Musk taking over the U.S. Government, which is exactly the multibillionaire oligarchy proposed by Yarvin.  (Doesn't Musk look like the perfect James Bond villain--the world's richest man who wants to take over the Earth and then Mars?  Where's James Bond when we need him most?)

Whether this exercise of fascist power can be stopped will depend upon the actions of the Congress, the courts, and the military.  The Constitution gives the Congress all the power necessary to check the exercise of arbitrary absolute power by the President and those working for him.  But there's no evidence that the congressional Republicans loyal to Trump and Musk are willing to check their assertion of dictatorial power.  

If the Republicans were to lose control of the Congress in the mid-term elections of 2026, the new Congress might try to impeach Trump again.  But in that case, Trump and Musk would overturn the elections by asserting that they were rigged, and they could call out the MAGA militias for another insurrection.

It is also possible that Trump and Musk would declare in 2026 that since the nation is in a permanent state of emergency, elections cannot be held.

The courts can declare the actions of Trump and Musk illegal and unconstitutional.  In fact, they have already violated dozens of laws.  Every time they take over or shut down a federal agency, they are violating the congressional laws that set up and regulate those agencies.  

The Supreme Court could say that Trump and Musk are in violation of the Constitution.  But as I have indicated, the Supreme Court justices loyal to Trump have already ruled--against the original meaning of the Constitution--that the President is a "King Above the Law."  

And even if the Supreme Court were to rule against Trump and Musk, they could simply ignore their ruling.  Indeed, it's likely that Trump and Musk will soon tell their Department of Justice to refuse to obey any court orders that restrict presidential rule by executive decrees.  (The intellectual impetus for what Trump and Musk are doing comes from scholars who argue for a "unitary presidency," which allows for the president to exercise arbitrary and absolute powers during times of emergency.  Much of this reasoning comes from Carl Schmitt, the legal apologist for the Nazis who insisted that the "Leader Principle" transcended the law.)

As I have suggested in the past, when Trump lost the election in 2020, some of the people around him urged him to call out the military to overturn the election, but he was warned by General Mark Milley and others that the military would not obey.  But now, we see that in planting his loyalists in the Defense Department, he could be preparing the military to support his fascist rule.  (Notice that Trump's Defense Department has revoked General Milley's security detail, which exposes him to assassination by one of Trump's militia men.)

So, it all comes down to one question.  Will the military obey the commands of Trump and Musk in support of a fascist oligarchy?  

Whether a dictator has a minimal winning coalition often depends on whether he has sufficient support in the military.

And so we see the end of America's experiment in liberal democracy coming on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026.

A Thousand Posts (4)

2012
In the spring semester, I taught a graduate seminar on Leo Strauss.  Consequently, I wrote many posts on Strauss from January to June.  Much of this writing was incorporated into my chapter on Strauss in Political Questions.

Although I never met Strauss, many of my teachers at the University of Dallas and the University of Chicago had been colleagues and students of Strauss.  Many of my colleagues and students in the political theory program at Northern Illinois University were deeply influenced by Straussian thinking.  I absorbed many of the Straussian ideas about the history of political philosophy that shaped much of my thinking, although I was never an orthodox Straussian. 

I was particularly interested in Strauss's understanding of "natural right."  And from Roger Masters, one of Strauss's students who specialized in the study of Rousseau, I picked up the idea that natural right might be rooted in Aristotelian biology in a way that could be supported by modern Darwinian biology.  This led to my argument for "Darwinian natural right."  The Straussians have been hostile to my argument, mostly because of their hostility to modern natural science generally, and to Darwinian biology in particular. 

In my posts, I pointed out Strauss's silence about how Aristotle's biology supports natural right, and also his silence about Nietzsche's Darwinian liberalism in his middle writings (especially, Human, All Too Human).  Strauss and the Straussians tend to stress Nietzsche's early and late writings, where they can find a Nietzschean attack on Darwinian naturalism.  But they ignore Nietzsche's appeal to Darwinian science in his middle writings.

I also reflected on the similarities between what Strauss identified as the liberalism of Lucretius and Darwinian liberalism.  According to Strauss, the central insight of Lucretius's argument is that "nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal or deathless, or that the eternal is not lovable." Strauss calls this "the most terrible truth," because it denies that the cosmos is ordered to the human good.  Strauss and the Straussians are deeply disturbed by this "terrible truth" that there is no cosmic teleology.  Darwinian liberalism accepts this truth and is satisfied with grounding the human good in the immanent teleology of evolved human nature. 

Strauss's most famous claim is that many of the classic writers of political philosophy have practiced an art of secret writing, by which they could convey an esoteric teaching that is unpopular or heterodox to a few careful readers who are philosophic, while conveying an exoteric teaching that is more popular or orthodox to the many careless readers who are unphilosophic.  This claim--elaborated in Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)--suggests the question of whether Strauss himself was a secret writer with a secret teaching.  If he was, then what's the big secret that would be so disturbing to most readers that it needs to be hidden from their view?

If Strauss had a big secret, I think, it's to be found in that "most terrible truth."  When a writer has a deeply disturbing message that he wants to transmit to his philosophic readers, while hiding it from his vulgar readers, Strauss suggested, there are various techniques available to him.  A writer can convey his own views through writing interpretive commentaries on the texts of other writers, so that only careful readers will notice his implicit endorsement of ideas attributed to others.  A writer can also hide his most unpopular views by putting them at the center of his text, because careless readers tend to pay more attention to the beginning and ending of what they read than to the middle.  In Strauss's Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), the central chapter--and the longest chapter--is a commentary on Lucretius's On the Nature of Things.  The exact center of the book is page 135, where Strauss concludes his study of Lucretius by explaining "the most terrible truth."  Strauss hints that he agrees with this teaching of Lucretius. "Lucretius' poetry makes bright and sweet the obscure and sad findings of the Greeks, that is, of the philosophers" (83).

Since the world is not the product of an ordering mind, the world is not teleological, although it contains intelligent species--particularly, human beings--that have evolved to be teleological in their natural striving to satisfy their natural desires.  Since the world is not intelligently designed by a divinely providential mind, the world is indifferent to human beings and thus provides no cosmic support for human purposes.  Moreover, while the world is enduring, it is not eternal.  The world and everything in it--including the human species and all other species of life--will eventually collapse into the ceaseless motion of atoms that will then produce another world.

In one post in June, I have argued that the temporality of life is indicated by the dependence of life on photosynthesis as the evolved process by which the energy of the Sun is captured for sustaining life on Earth.  Once photosynthesis ceases, as it must in a billion years or so, there will be no life on Earth.  Many people worry about the degrading effects of teaching evolution to our school children.  Perhaps they should also worry about teaching them about photosynthesis, because this will teach them the "most terrible truth."

If the idea of natural right depends on the cosmic teleology of the universe, as Strauss says, then the "most terrible truth" that the cosmos is not teleologically ordered means that the idea of natural right is an illusion.  If Strauss agreed with Lucretius that the universe is neither eternal nor purposeful, then natural right cannot be defended, unless it is rooted in the immanent teleology of evolved human nature as an enduring but not eternal product of a natural evolutionary process, which is my argument.

Shadia Drury has argued that Strauss's core teaching was the natural superiority of the philosophic life of the few human beings capable of such a life, as the only life that was good by nature, and thus the inferiority of the nonphilosophic life of the great multitude of human beings who were incapable of living this naturally good life.  She criticized this teaching as both false and dangerous.  It was false because this absolute separation of all of humanity into two groups--the philosophic few and the vulgar many--was a pure fantasy rather than an accurate account of what human beings are like.  It was dangerous because it promoted a tyranny of the philosophers, in which the moral, religious, and political life of the vulgar many was seen as governed by lies--even if noble lies supported by philosophers for the good of philosophy.  In my posts, I have suggested that Strauss's defenders have not properly answered Drury's criticisms

Similarly, Strauss's defenders have not answered William Altman's charge that Strauss's secret teaching was his promotion of a Heideggerian Nazi attack on liberalism.  I point to some weaknesses in Altman's reasoning.

Altman identifies Strauss's secret teaching as an affirmation of Darwinian evolution and his public teaching as an affirmation of Platonic eternity.  That public teaching of Strauss is what Altman embraces as true.  By contrast, I find the Platonic teaching of eternal cosmic standards implausible, and I embrace Darwinian natural right: even if the world that we care about is neither eternal nor purposeful, and even if the cosmos does not care for us, natural right can still be rooted in the immanent teleology of evolved human nature as an enduring but not eternal product of a natural evolutionary process.

Other than Strauss, perhaps the single greatest influence on my thinking about Darwinian natural right has been Edward O. Wilson, particularly through his books Sociobiology (1975) and Consilience (1998).  In May, I wrote about his new book The Social Conquest of Earth, and I saw seven major themes related to Darwinian natural right: (1) consilience, (2) emergence, (3) genetic plasticity, (4) the two peaks of social evolution, (5) the iron rule of moral evolution, (6) religion and science, and (7) the rejection of kin selection theory.

Wilson identifies two paths to the social conquest of the earth--the insect path and the human path.  The social insects rule the invertebrate land environment.  Humans rule the vertebrate land environment.  Like the social insects, humans are "eusocial" in the technical sense that multiple generations of individuals live together, caring for dependent offspring and cooperating in a social division of labor.  While the social insects organize their colonies largely through pure instinct, with the insect queen producing robotic offspring guided by instinct, humans must organize the cooperation of individuals through personal relationships based on social intelligence, which requires navigating through a tense social network balanced between the selfish interests of individuals and the social interests of groups.  Wilson explains this tense balance in human social life between selfishness and sociality as a product of the countervailing evolutionary forces of individual selection and group selection.

Some of my writing on Wilson's Social Conquest of Earth went into my review of the book in the Fall 2013 issue of The Claremont Review of Books.

A third person whose writings greatly influenced me was another Wilson at Harvard--James Q. Wilson. In March, I wrote a post on Jim Wilson the day after he died.  He was best known for his work in criminology.  As a young scholar, I admired his book Crime and Human Nature, which I used as a text in some of my classes as a classic of political science.  I detected in this book and some of his other writings an evolutionary view of human nature.  This was confirmed in 1993 by the publication of Wilson's The Moral Sense.  Wilson said that he was most proud of this book.  For me, his pride was warranted.  This book was crucial in shaping my thinking about the evolutionary roots of human nature, and particularly the evolutionary confirmation of the idea of the natural moral sense in Scottish moral philosophy (Hume and Smith).  In many ways, this book pointed me to my book Darwinian Natural Right.

Wilson surveyed the evidence for how the natural and cultural evolution of morality can explain human cooperation as rooted in kinship and reciprocity, or what some evolutionary theorists have called kin selection and reciprocal altruism.  Evolution favors helping those genetically related to us, because this spreads our genes into the future.  Evolution also favors cooperating with those who are not genetically related to us if there is some reciprocal exchange.  I will cooperate with you if you have been cooperative with me in the past (direct reciprocity), or if I know you have a reputation for being cooperative with others (indirect reciprocity).  So it's tit for tat. People are rewarded for their good reputation as trustworthy cooperators and punished for their bad reputation as untrustworthy cheaters.

But does this show genuine altruism or selfless concern for others?  We could see helping our close relatives as genetic selfishness, because we are acting to spread our genes.  And we could see reciprocal cooperation as merely enlightened self-interest, because we're cooperating only as long as we expect some reciprocal benefits for ourselves. 

And yet, some evolutionary theorists--particularly, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--have argued that human beings also show genuine altruism--totally selfless service to others--through what they call strong reciprocity.  This is a propensity to cooperate and share with others, even strangers, and to punish those who don't cooperate and share with others, even when the cooperation, sharing, and punishment are personally costly to the strong reciprocator, and the strong reciprocity requires neither ties of kinship nor expectation of future reciprocation.  Moreover, Bowles and Gintis think that the research in experimental game theory confirms the reality of such strong reciprocity.  They also think this confirms what Adam Smith said in The Theory of Moral Sentiments about those lovers of virtue for its own sake who desire to do what is praiseworthy even without the reward of actually being praised.

In a series of posts in June and July, I challenged the reasoning of Bowles and Gintis and suggested that what they see in experimental games as evidence for strong reciprocity is actually evidence of indirect reciprocity, in which people are generous because they expect (even if only unconsciously) to earn a reputation for generosity that will benefit them in the future.  Under conditions of total anonymity, people tend to express their purely selfish motivations.  Much of this writing went into the new chapter on Adam Smith in the 4th edition of Political Questions.

In September, I wrote some posts on how Jonathan Haidt's evolutionary moral psychology supports fusionist conservatism and Aristotelian liberalism.

In October, I wrote a long post on the evolutionary politics of minimal winning coalitions among both humans and chimpanzees.  Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Alastair Smith have shown how the power of political 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 power.  A democratic leader differs from a dictator in that the democratic leader depends on a larger coalition of supporters.  Frans de Waal found this to be true for chimps as well: success in political competition among chimps depends on the exercise of strategic intelligence in which chimps must form coalitions that will support them as the alpha male in the group's hierarchy.  My writing here was incorporated into my chapter on Machiavelli in Political Questions.

One seemingly profound objection to the evolutionary science that I defend on this blog is that this evolutionary science of nature cannot explain the existence of nature itself.  Why does nature exist? Why is there something rather than nothing? And why are things as they are and not different?  When Bill Nye debated evolution with Ken Ham, Nye was asked, What was there before the Big Bang?  Nye's answer was: It's a mystery!  Ham's answer was: God.

Jim Holt has written a book on how philosophers and scientists have tried to answer this question--Why does the world exist?  In October, I wrote a post on this question.  I argued that Why is there something rather than nothing? is a meaningless question, because it rests on two false assumptions.

First, the question falsely assumes the possibility of absolute nothingness.  Since human beings have no experience of absolute nothingness, whereas all of our experience confirms the being of things, there is no empirical evidence for absolute nothingness.  Even the very idea of nothingness as a product of the theological imagination pondering the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is dubious, because in the absence of any empirical evidence, I doubt that people even understand what they are saying when they ask why the world arose out of nothingness.

The second false assumption in the question of why the universe exists is that the principle of sufficient reason can apply to the whole universe.  Our experience of finding reasons or causes to explain things applies to events in the universe as governed by natural laws.  But this makes no sense as applied to the universe as whole.

This question comes up in the chapters on Augustine and on Nietzsche in Political Questions. 

Finally, I shouldn't leave 2012 without noting my posts in March on "genopolitics," because this bears upon one of the most common criticisms of any biological study of politics--the charge of genetic reductionism.

Beginning in the 1970s, a small group of political scientists jointed an intellectual movement that they called "biopolitics" or "politics and the life sciences."  I was one of the early members of that movement.  Although some of these people hoped to turn the mainstream of the discipline of American political science towards a political science rooted in biological science, this did not happen.  By the turn of the century, around 2000, some of these people lamented that the movement had largely failed, because most political scientists still showed little or no interest in the biological study of politics.

But then, sometime around 2004, there seemed to be a growing interest in biological explanations of political behavior.  Two articles were especially prominent.  In 2005, the American Political Science Review published "Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?" by John Alford, Carolyn Funk, and John Hibbing.  Through the methodology of behavior genetics, using the study of twins, they concluded that about 50% of the variance in propensities to "conservative" or "liberal" ideology is explained by genes.  This article gained widespread publicity.  This was followed by more articles advancing what was called "genopolitics."  One article by James Fowler and Christopher Dawes, published in 2008 in the Journal of Politics, claimed in its title that "Two Genes Predict Voter Turnout."  This was the first time that researchers had identified particular genes as linked to some political behavior.

I and others in the biopolitics movement were suspicious about these genetic explanations of political ideology and behavior.  They were too simplistic in thinking that political thought and action could be explained through genetics.  We knew that behavior genetics had a bad record of making strong claims about the genetics of behavior that could not be replicated.  So when Evan Charney began criticizing this research, I agreed with him and wrote posts explaining why he was right to say that the simplistic model of genopolitics cannot capture the emergent complexity of political behavior as the product of many interacting causes and levels of analysis.

In May of 2013, the American Political Science Review published three articles on the debate over genopolitics, which provided empirical confirmation for Charney's critique.  Fowler and Dawes were forced to suggest that their 2008 article should never have been published, because they and others had failed to replicate their results in that article.  They admitted that their simple genetic models cannot fully explain the complexity of what they are studying.

By contrast, the explanatory models for political life proposed by proponents of biopolitics are far more complex than the simple models of genopolitics: genes are there in the biopolitical models, but the genes have no effect on their own, because they interact with other factors at many different levels of analysis.

My post for September 13, 2015, surveys this debate and includes links to my many other posts on this.

Is Chimpanzee Politics Machiavelli's Politics?

                             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."


REFERENCES

Arnhart, Larry. 2009. Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question. Ed. Kenneth Blanchard. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.

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.


Some of my other posts on these themes can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here., here., here, and here.