Chapter
11
Political
Culture
The
strongest is never strong enough
to be
always the master, unless
he
transforms strength into right.
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
The crucial fact of
man's
capacity to exploit human and natural energy led us to inquire about
the
socio-political nature of energy. Power emerged as the raw material
giving
cultures their impulse and propelling their socio-political flux. The
closing
words of our preceding chapter on power converged toward and
complemented the
concluding notes of Chapter Eight, suggesting that the combinations and
conflicts of power complexes, each with its particular identity,
interests and
rationales, do not necessarily follow any predetermined direction. The
implication is that if there is a sense of organization or course for a
social
flux, it depends on the consciousness of the power complexes involved
and their
tendencies.
You may also recall
that in our
studies of value systems and norms we saw that the heterogeneity of
value
systems within a social context could reduce the efficacy of their
particular
moral norms and lead them, if they were to coexist, to patterns of
ethical
norms, and beyond them to the institution of legal norms backed by
coercive
sanctions. You will notice that this normative evolution also converges
towards
our present discussion of power and the consciousness of power
complexes as a
prerequisite for social organization. For when value systems upholding
particular interests compete and conflict, the power they generate may
be
drained. To avoid that possibility, they have to compromise and
cooperate in
establishing rules, processes and institutions, providing norms of
orderly
conduct and a course of action in their coexistence, interactions and
transactions.
In other words, while
power, if
not properly integrated, can cause social and political disruptions,
when
harnessed it can be the source of social order and organization. The
harnessing
of power provides direction for the sociopolitical flux. But it takes
power to
harness power, giving rise to the question as to which is power--that
which is
harnessed or that which harnesses? Political culture is precisely that
aspect
of a social flux which permits the circumvention of this paradox and,
by
transforming one dimension of power into authority,
makes it possible for powers to cohabit.[1]
Interaction
and Interpenetration of Power complexes
Within the social
flux, the
combination of different dimensions of a culture creates power
complexes with
different emphases and characteristics. For example, such powers as an
industrial corporation, a church, or a military organization may
coexist. The
industrial corporation's basis of power is mainly its possession of
means.
Industry involves an interaction between human endeavor and the natural
environment, i.e., manipulating matter and producing means as one of
the
components of power. The church has spiritual power which it maintains
mainly
by persuasion and influence. The army's power may be broadly identified
as
force and coercive potentials. Such schematizations are obviously
incomplete
and could be misleading, for these power structures, while separately
identifiable, fade and shade into each other and into many others. Both
the
church and the army run on the means that, in the form of wealth and
production,
the industrial corporation provides. The church and the corporation
employ
disciplinary and organizational methods similar to those of the army,
and they
also depend on the latter for their security, while the army and the
corporation depend on the faith inculcated by the church for their
cohesion and
moral and ethical standards.
Besides these
interdependencies
and interpenetrations, the powers in our example compete or cooperate
in
overlapping spheres. The farmer, a supplier to all three, is a
potential client
or worker for the industrial corporation, a believer for the church, a
recruit
for the army. If he fell overwhelmingly or exclusively within one
sphere, he
would, to that extent, become a potential instrument for that power.
For
example, the individual who becomes a devout and fanatic believer in a
religion
or an ideology, although he may still provide labor for industry or
serve in an
army, is a more potent instrument in the hands of his church or
ideological
organization which can dictate his behavior in the industry or the
army. A man
who allies his interests primarily with his corporation may overlook
the
religious precepts he is supposed to uphold, or may use the army to
advance his
corporation. And a soldier properly disciplined by the army may take
over or
wreck both the church and industry to win a battle.
The above instances
suggest
that, as power complexes which interdepend and interpenetrate also
clash and
compete, there must be some understanding, laws, patterns of
relationship and norms
of conduct to which they could subscribe for more or less orderly
interactions.
Such understandings will not come about until the contesting powers
become
conscious of not only their own power but also that of their contenders
and its
nature. That is, they must first realize that they cannot overrun the
adversaries or that if they did, their natures would be so incompatible
that
the chunk they had swallowed would be indigestible, might obstruct
their own
system and cause their demise. Or they may see that the existence of
other
power complexes distinct from theirs can complement and balance to
their
advantage.
In a way, politics is
the
reality of this interplay of powers and eloquently portrays the not
always
systematic, not always organic, not always spiritual, and not always
historically determined nature of the adjustments and maladjustments of
power
complexes; for, in their relativity and subjectivity, poker complexes
would not
continue with any identifiable autonomy in the human sense if, once and
for
all, they could systematically and rationally fit and be fitted
together,
making them part of a whole, functioning according to instinctive
reflexes or
mechanical laws. The move toward balance and equilibrium by contending
powers
is not always an end in itself but a subjective and reluctant
compromise.
I.
Conversion of Power into Authority
We can trace to the
earliest
known social context the dynamics and fermentations which, in the
course of
power interactions and interpenetrations, have resulted in the
understandings,
norms of conduct and structures identified as authority. We are using
the term
"authority" broadly at this stage to mean the recognition by the
parties involved of the validity of certain norms and their binding
effects on
their mutual relations. The earliest human associations had rules of
conduct
which evolved not only from the basic human similitude attraction and
gregariousness, but also from their accompanying inhibitions, fears and
expectations. "If I do it to him he will do it to me" or "if I
do it today he may do it tomorrow": such conclusions drawn from
accumulated observations and experiences can lead to mutually
understood
standards of conduct, from moral and ethical norms to legal norms. But,
as we
have seen, the antagonists may also be inclined to do what they can
today
before their antagonists do it tomorrow. Thus, there will soon arise a
need to
define what is supposed to be the standard of action among the power
complexes
involved.
Where powers have
autonomous
spheres with comparatively little overlapping and interpenetration and
little
inclination to bind and commit their destinies to each other, the
arrangements
may remain simply as mutual guarantees, depending on the precarious
balance of
power, as has often been the case with international relations among
sovereign
states. When the powers involved have fluid, interpenetrating spheres
and
interwoven, interdependent activities--and this includes almost all
social
relations, from interpersonal and intergroup to some international
relations
(those between closely related sovereign states, such as the European
Common
Market)--the arrangements include not only norms of conduct but also
responsible bodies--persons and institutions--vested with the authority
to
enforce orderly interaction. There will thus evolve, superimposed
(figuratively
speaking), a power capping the interacting powers, recognized by them
as having
the prerogative to arbitrate, moderate, administer or supervise
(depending on
the nature of their relations) their intercourse.[2]
It is, of course,
likely that
the ensuing arrangements will be concomitant with the power magnitude
of the
different complexes involved, reflecting a hierarchy.[3] So, while establishing standards of
recognition for the respective spheres and competences, the
authoritative
arrangements will also tend to regulate and limit power fluctuations,
at least
in the areas where the powers overlap. This implies that the
established
authority tends to perpetuate the prevailing order of magnitude of the
powers
involved--a fact which in itself, depending on how flexible or rigid
the
arrangements are, can inhibit certain powers. It can also cause
friction among
the powers if provisions for adjustments commensurate with their future
dynamics and expansion are not incorporated into the arrangements.
Thus, with
some lag-because the established order may continue beyond the point of
change
in the magnitude of the powers--some of the powers may challenge the
established authority. If the authority is maintained only by the
mutual
agreement of balancing powers, once some of those powers have ceased to
recognize that authority, it will need to be readapted to the new
balance. It
will, most probably, be upheld by the powers with vested interests in
it, and
if they are strong enough to make it prevail over the challengers, or
if the
authority itself has means of imposing itself (which amounts to the
same
thing), it will prevail. But that authority would be on the verge of
turning
into power.
Herein lies the
distinction
between power and authority, hinging on the degree to which a hierarchy
of
rights, competences, obligations and obediences is imposed by imminent
and
constant external pressure (power), or is recognized, adhered to and
internalized as a matter of course (authority) by the components of the
hierarchy. In the extreme authority is a power that is not challenged
and does
not need to use coercion. Its subjects follow its directions because
what it
directs is right--not only in the legal sense of "a right," but also
in the valuational sense. The doctor who tells you to take two aspirins
to cure
your headache is an authority on the subject and is "right" because
you believe that if you follow his instructions, your headache will be
cured.
But even at this stage
the
doctor's authority is not without power. His authority is based on the
reputation that a physician knows about matters of health. You remember
that,
as we noted in the last chapter, reputation is a source of power. In a
way,
however, the society has bestowed this authority upon the doctor,
either by
permitting him and giving him grounds to build his reputation, and/or
by
creating institutions and procedures by virtue of which he gets his
diploma to
practice medicine--his "right" in the legal sense. This is probably
the nearest we can get to an authority with camouflaged power and an
absence
of pressures and coercive measures. Your acceptance of the doctor's
prescription is, of course, evidence of your conditioning toward his
authority.
You have come to recognize the value of experience and knowledge and,
on the
basis of that recognition, consider the doctor competent.
This essentially has
been the
premise for the recognition of the primus
inter pares (the first among equals) ever since the primeval stages
of
social organization. When the Eskimo tribe assigns the leadership of a
hunting
expedition to the hunter who, according to tribal standards, is most
qualified,
it recognizes him as an authority. His authority, however, is due not
simply to
the fact that he is the best hunter, but that the tribe has assigned
him the leadership. Authority has an attributive character.
In other words, it has one dimension over power. The patient follows
the
doctor's prescription not in a simple, bilateral channel, but within a
triangular pattern of which one side is the patient, the second the
doctor, and
the third the social context which has made medical advice desirable
for the
patient and has recognized the doctor as the holder of medical
knowledge.
We call this third
dimension
the legitimization of power into
authority. If the leader of the hunting expedition is not appointed by
the
tribe but imposes his leadership by force and others follow him for
fear of
reprisals, he is exerting power, not exercising authority. As the third
dimension, legitimization is the element that stabilizes the
power/authority
configuration, giving it a social rationale in the minds of its
subjects, and
thus, with their acquiescence and support, making it more resistant to
internal
or external threats. The third dimension legitimizing authority does
not need
to come from an outside source (although, as we shall see later, that
is
convenient) such as the tribe, but can be generated by the two
dimensions (the
domineering and the dominated) within the power complex. The hunting
expedition
can itself elect a leader whose commands the members of the group
follow not
because they are coerced but because they accept the instituted
authority. Even
those who may not otherwise accept the command of the leader will now
abide by
it, despite their own inclinations, because the group recognizes
leadership. Of
course, the group may also choose the leader because he threatens
usurpation if
he is not elected. By electing him, the group may thus connive to
condition the
powerful and inhibit his arbitrary exercise of power, setting, at the
same
time, a precedent for certain behavior.
Essentially, we are
presented
with an authority/power spectrum where at one end the process of
legitimization
greatly subdues the power characteristics of the authority, as in the
case of
the doctor's authority, while at the other extreme legitimization
barely
disguises power as authority. Within that spectrum, legitimization is
the feat
by which different political cultures transform the power fibers of the
social
flux into authority. And it is indeed a feat: Consider for a moment
that man
has a domination drive, but also the social drives for order and
justice. These
latter are sought by men and by power complexes--men in the social
context--to
secure a reasonable degree of predictability for their freedom of
action and
attainment of their goals. To bring about order and justice, there must
be
norms: moral, ethical and legal (laws, in the general sense). To have
laws we
need authority. But to have authority, we need to legitimize
power--through
laws! (See Fig. 11-01.)
Fig.
11-01
To comprehend the tour de force of legitimization of power
into authority and its variations within different social contexts, we
need to
look again at some of the social phenomena examined. First, we have to
recognize that the basic ingredients remain power and the general
tendency of
power complexes, in their coexistence and interaction, toward some
arrangements
for order. Of course, in particular circumstances during the passage
from one
order to another, certain power complexes may instead seek chaos and
confusion.
We then have to look for the concoctions of powers bringing about the
third
dimension of the triangle that converts power into authority. This may
take
place either through a separate power acting as the third side of the
triangle,
such as the church legitimizing a ruler's power, or by the development
within
a power complex of a third dimension of recognition and acceptance
between the
submitting and dominating hierarchies. A constitution exemplifies the
latter
case.
Some power complexes,
because
of the composition of their sources, are more apt to act as
legitimizing agents
than others. The church, for instance, with its emphasis on belief, can
more
efficiently inculcate its followers to consider a secular power
legitimate,
than a military power controlling a population can impose the authority
of a
given belief--although the possibility of the latter case should not
be
excluded. It is simply a question of degrees. The early Mohammedan
armies did
convert the conquered people by the force of arms and heavy taxation of
the
unbelievers; and although the early non-Arab Moslems probably adhered
to that
religion for financial convenience and fear for their lives, eventually
the
continuation of Arab domination perpetuated the Islamic faith in many
of the
conquered lands and established it as an authority.
In general terms, the
sources
of power that are efficacious and instrumental in legitimization are
those that
find their way to the "inside" of man: his brain, his heart, his
glands and his stomach. It is difficult to identify the specific
appeals to
each particular sector. That is why in Chapter Three we elaborated our
affectional/functional spectrum. When within a power complex the
domineering
hierarchy appeals to the individual's feelings (his heart, in the
popular
sense), these feelings arouse him (by glandular secretions?) through
evocation
of certain established internal patterns (in his brain)--patterns which
may not
be rational--remember our discussion of values and symbolic systems. A
rationale--an appeal to man's rationality (his brain)--supporting the
prevailing order should also have a functional base such as the
satisfaction of
material needs (keeping his stomach full) and some comforts (glandular,
either.
in the positive sense of feeling pleasure or the negative sense of
fearing and
avoiding pain).
Thus, the range of
appeals to
man's "inside" has a gradation from "deep inside" to
"nearly outside"; from the man who believes--or is made to
believe--by persuasion and inculcation, or rationally accepts and
participates
in a social order, to the man who goes along because he is materially
rewarded
to do so or fears the consequences of noncompliance. At the extreme
"outside," the domineering factor in a power complex imposes itself
by sheer force, means and position, and in so far as it does not
penetrate, it
is constantly resisted without even developing a continuous and
predictable
fear pattern within those it dominates. The dominated may sometimes
fear a
clash with its superior but may not internalize it as a pattern of
behavior
towards that power. The Yugoslav partisan in World War II did not
accept the
authority of the German occupation and challenged its power. The German
occupation forces had not managed to appeal to any sector of the
partisan's
"inside."
We may, in summary,
retain
three main interrelated dimensions in the conversion of power into
authority;
namely, 1) the relative non-coerced
recognition factor; 2) the "third" attributive dimension in the
triangle of legitimization, either
provided by a separate power or developed within the power complex
between the
domineering and dominated factors; and 3) the complementary condition
for the
above two of some penetration of the
authoritative pattern either through affectional and belief
dispositions or
functional rationales. Considering the legitimization process in the
light of
penetration and noncoerced recognition we may envision two broad--and
obviously
interpenetrating--patterns for the conversion of power into authority,
which we
shall identify as consecration and constitutionalization.[4]
Consecration
Consecration is the
more
nonrational, valuational and affectional pattern. Within it are two
further
interacting dimensions we may identify as the spiritual
and the traditional.
The spiritual has been the most recurrent and most persistent of the
legitimizing factors of authority. In the words of Machiavelli:
In
truth, there never was any remarkable lawgiver amongst any people who
did not
resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been
accepted
by the people; for there are many good laws, the importance of which is
known
to the sagacious lawgiver, but the reasons for which are not
sufficiently
evident to enable him to persuade others to submit to them; and
therefore do
wise men, for the purpose of removing this difficulty, resort to divine
authority.[5]
Hobbes put it this way:
And
therefore the first Founders, and Legislators of Common-wealths amongst
the
Gentiles, whose ends were only to keep the people in obedience, and
peace, have
in all places taken care; First, to imprint in their minds a beliefe,
that
those precepts which they gave concerning Religion, might not be
thought to
proceed from their own device, but from the dictates of some God, or
other
Spirit; or else that they themselves were of a higher nature than mere
mortalls
that their Lawes might the more easily be received: So Numa
Pompilius pretended to receive the
Ceremonies he instituted amongst the Romans, from the Nymph Egeria: and
the
first King and founder of the Kingdome of Peru, pretended himselfe and
his wife
to be the children of the Sunne: and Mahomet, to set
up his new Religion, pretended to have conferences with the
Holy Ghost, in forme of a Dove. Secondly, they have had a care, to make
it
believed, that the same things were displeasing to the Gods, which were
forbidden by the Lawes. Thirdly, to prescribe Ceremonies,
Supplications,
Sacrifices, and Festivalls, by which
This power of the
holders of
faith to consecrate authority becomes more evident when we realize that
the
pivotal premise for legitimizing power into authority is valuational.
Power
remains "power" as long as its doings are identified as
selfinterest-oriented.
Recognition of power by holders of faith sublimates it into authority. An authority is
presumed not to
act only for its own good but for the good of those it is ordering and
administering.
The belief system, of course, as long as it exists, is the supreme
consecration. Authority is so much the more authority when the good it
administers is ordained by a supreme author whose dictates are the
standard for
both the ruler and the ruled. However, the good of the ruler and that
of the
ruled may have been standardized differently, sometimes drastically so,
so that
according to the supreme author the ruler gets nearly everything, while
the
ruled barely subsist.
From the mana
of the chief in the primeval society to "so help me
God" in the presidential pledge of the United States, authority is
accompanied by the consecration of the supernatural. The call of the U.
S.
President for help is, of course, a much attenuated case of
consecration and,
as we shall see later, can better be identified as
constitutionalization.[7] But the belief institution is a potent and
efficacious value-forming agency, and secular social and political
powers seek
its support and collusion. As of the fourth millenium B. C., the
pharaohs of
Egypt were identified as the living reincarnations of the gods. In
Sumer the
gods ruled through their representations on earth by the corporation of
priests
and the secular rulers. We said that the third side of the triangle of
legitimization
could be contained in the nature of the relationship between the
dominating and
dominated, and a good instance of this occurs when the spiritual power
is also
vested with the secular authority in the theocratic sense, as was the
case in
Sumer, in Tibet until recently, and still is in the Vatican State.
These are
clear examples of theocracy or rule by god, with his spiritual servants
fulfilling the secular duties on his behalf.
Studying the
pre-Columbian
cultures of the Andes and Mexico, Julian Steward speculated that
...the
increasing population and the growing need for political integration
very
probably would have created small states in each area, and these states
would
almost certainly have been strongly theocratic, because the
supernatural aspects
of farming -- for example, fertility concepts, the need to reckon
seasons and to
forecast the rise and fall of rivers, and the like -- would have placed
power in
the hands of religious leaders.[8]
By empirical
standards,
Steward's statement may sound too deterministic. Not every reliance of
authority on spiritual and supernatural premises turns into theocracy.
The
early political structures of Egypt and China, which developed under
similar
conditions, were not strictly theocratic, although they were strongly
dependent
on the supernatural for the legitimization of their authority.
In legitimizing power
into
authority, consecration may also draw on tradition. What qualifies the
spiritual and the traditional as consecrating factors is their
affectional,
nonrational dimension. This common characteristic may sometimes make
the
identification of one or the other source of consecration difficult,
because
they intermingle. In China and Japan we find cases where the
legitimizing
dimension for converting power into authority was developed within the
traditional rather than the spiritual context. Although not strictly
theocratic, this development was based on the concept of the unity of
religion
and the state. The earliest native Japanese chronicles, Records
of Ancient Matters (Kojiki) and Chronicles of Japan
(Nihongi), written in 712 and 720 A. D.
respectively, were apparently compiled with a view to substantiating
the
political claims of the Japanese ruling dynasty, formulating the
history of
Japan along the Chinese traditional patterns. As Tsunoda, de Bary and
Keene put
it:
As for
the assumption of absolute powers, which made the Japanese king a
divine
emperor (Tenno), it plainly derives from the already fully developed
autocracy
of China, justified by the Mandate of Heaven. The successive steps
taken toward
the establishment of a strong central government reflect Japanese
adherence to
the Chinese concept of the sovereign as the possessor of the Mandate of
Heaven.
Prince Sholoku's Constitution, the Taika Reforms, the adoption of
Chinese legal
and bureaucratic institutions, were all intended to strengthen the
claims of
the emperor to being a true Son of Heaven, a polar star about whom the
Lesser
celestial Luminaries turned.[9]
Traditional
consecration
implies continuity, an element used to justify hereditary monarchies.
Traditional continuity, however, is more than a hereditary claim to
authority.
It may englobe monarchy but supersede heredity. When in 1924 the
Persian Prime
Minister, Reza Khan, tried to establish a republic to overthrow the
reigning
dynasty, his attempt was frustrated by strong religious and traditional
opposition.[10] Yet a year later he ousted that dynasty and
was enthroned as Reza Shah, beginning the Pahlevi dynasty. In 1971 his
son,
Mohammed Reza Shah, celebrated the 2,500th anniversary of monarchy in
Iran
(despite the numerous vicissitudes of different dynasties of domestic
and
foreign origins since the monarchy was formed in that country), to
emphasize
the traditional continuity of rule in Iran.
Although they
intermingle, the
distinction between the spiritual and traditional aspects of
consecration are
helpful for analyzing the evolutions of certain political cultures,
notably
those where a power tries to maintain itself without a traditional
foothold. It
is not possible to become part of a tradition without the temporal
dimension
but the recognition of the spiritual dimensions of a traditional
culture can
provide a back door for legitimizing a power into authority over an
alien
culture. Cyrus, the Persian Emperor, in his charter of 539 B. C., paid
tribute
to the Babylonian god Marduk, which was his way of claiming succession
from the
Babylonian kings.
Inversely, where no
well-established spiritual doctrine upholds a ruler's authority and
provides
predictable patterns of behavior for the subjects, the secular powers
may seek
to have one developed. In 990, Vladimir, King of the Russians,
converted his
people en masse to Christianity.
Legend says Vladimir reviewed several religions and finally chose the
Greek
Orthodox. He discarded Judaism and Islam because they prohibited eating
pork
and drinking wine--conditions difficult to fulfill in Russia. He chose
Greek
Orthodoxy so the Russian church would fall under the canonical
authority of the
Patriarch of Constantinople rather than the Church of Rome, which he
considered
too strong and too meddlesome in the political affairs of secular
powers.
This last point leads
us to the
underlying political complexities of consecration by a separate power
in the
legitimization of authority. Although Vladimir would probably have
opted for
the Greek church anyway because Russians had a closer knowledge of it,
his
alleged political considerations reveal the rivalry between the
spiritual and
temporal powers. The pages of history are full of church and state
conflicts,
competitions, combinations and cooperations. The high priests of Amon
finally
sat on the throne of Egypt (1090-945 B. C.), while the Libyan princes
became
the high priests of Amon (ca. 850 B. C.). Speaking of the Brahmins of
India,
Thapar says:
The
priests were not slow to realize the significance of-the supreme
authority
which could be invested in the highest caste: They not only managed to
usurp
position by claiming that they alone could bestow divinity on the king,
but
they also gave religious sanctions to caste divisions.[11]
Where the spiritual
and
traditional dimensions of the society develop patterns independent of
each
other, the triangularity of consecration becomes more apparent, and the
combination of the three components of the power/ authority complex,
i.e., the
domineering and dominated dimensions of power and the legitimizing
factor, can
give rise to different political cultures. It is understandable that
the power
serving as the legitimizing dimension can itself develop claims to
authority,
which raises the possibility of rivalries and the tendency of the
powers to
seek legitimizing processes not dependent on other powers which can
unduly
hamper them. The partnership of church and state in Western Europe is
not only
a plastic illustration of the spiritual and traditional dimensions of
consecration, and the struggles of church and state for supremacy, but
its
historical evolution leads us to the other aspect of legitimization of
power
into authority, namely, constitutionalization. The history of Europe,
from the
decline of the Roman Empire to the emergence of the Holy Roman Empire,
was a
tapestry woven with threads of two traditions--the Roman and the
Germanic--and
one belief, Christianity. In that canvas the spiritual served as a
carrier
between the two traditions; and the three in their conflicts,
compromises and
accommodations shaped Western culture. We can trace most of our modern
laws,
customs, institutions and ideologies to that tapestry. Let us, then,
make an
incursion into that history and the political thoughts and realities it
begot.
*
* *
In 312, in a Roman
Empire that
had persecuted Christians for centuries and had nearly developed a
belief that
its emperors were gods, one of those emperors became a Christian.
Constantine
was converted, it is said, after having a vision of the cross before a
battle.
The fact that ever greater numbers of the Roman population were
embracing
Christianity, and that claiming the same faith as his subjects was good
statesmanship, may not have been totally outside Constantine's vision.
In the
manner of earlier Roman emperors asserting themselves as the embodiment
of the
cults of their times, he claimed to oversee the affairs of the church.
In 325,
he summoned and presided over the first ecumenical council. But the
early
Christian beliefs and the imperial traditions did not marry easily. In
380;
Emperor Theodosius prohibited all public religious professions except
Christianity, but later he was excommunicated until he repented for
having
ordered the massacre of some 7,000 citizens of Thessalonica in reprisal
for a
riot. He did repent, but the question as to whether the emperor was in
the
church of Christ and therefore subject to it or was instead above it
remained unsettled.
In his City
of God (413-427) St. Augustine propounded the theory of
spiritual and temporal dualism. The spiritual world was represented by
the
heavenly city, the Christian church, which was concerned with the
salvation of
man's soul. The earthly city, represented by Rome, was the frame of
man's
mortal life. In his earthly city man, driven by passion, egoism and
self-love,
had to submit to law and government to maintain peace:
The
earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace, and
the
end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and
rule, is
the combination of men's wills to attain the things which are helpful
to this
life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on
earth and
lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until
this mortal
condition which necessitates it shall pass away.[12]
When, in 476 at
Ravenna,
Odoacer of the Germanic Herul tribes deposed Romulus Augustulus
(traditionally
the last of the Western Roman Emperors), he asked Emperor Zeno of the
Eastern
Roman Empire for the title of patrician. He sought a traditional rather
than a
spiritual consecration. The role of the church as a sovereign
legitimizing body
was still debatable. Zeno's claim in his Henoticon
(482 A. D.) that the emperor (of the Eastern Roman Empire) had the
right to
define theological doctrine prompted Pope Gelasius to proclaim his
independence
from the secular power and to assert that "two swords" rule the
Christian world, the sacerdotium and
the imperium. "Christian
emperors need bishops for the sake of eternal life, and bishops make
use of
imperial regulations to order the course of temporal affairs."[13]
In the centuries that
followed,
as the Western Roman Empire petered out, with disruptive barbarian
invasions
and settlements in Italy (passing some Christian bishoprics into
barbarian
territory) the Church of Rome with its bishop-the Pope--became more
involved in
secular affairs. By the sixth century, Gregory the Great (Pope,
590-604) assumed
the role of emperor in the West, took care of the civil works, received
pay
from Constantinople for the army, appointed governors and directed
generals.
His missionary campaigns to convert the German people started the turn
from the
Greco-Roman tradition to the medieval Romano-German combination. Yet,
although
the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople had little effective power
on-the
Italian peninsula, his authority lingered as the continuation of the
traditional Roman Empire of which the church was considered a part.
In the eighth century
when
Pepin, the Carolingian, wanted to usurp the declining Frankish kingdom
of the
Merovingians, he faced a problem of legitimacy which was partly
related to
this traditional structure of the Roman Empire. The founder of the
dynasty he
wanted to overthrow, Clovis (481-511), had received his title as
patrician from
the Roman Emperor. The legitimists considered Pepin a usurper when, on
the
advice of Pope Stephen II, and drawing on Frankish (German) tradition,
he
presented himself at the traditional electoral rites of the Franks and
was
proclaimed King in 752. The Pope, needing an ally to free himself from
the
authority of the Eastern Roman Empire and to cope with the threatening
expansion of the Lombards in Italy, anointed Pepin Christian King of
the Franks
and Roman Patrician. (a title which could be legally bestowed only by
the
Emperor in Constantinople). By doing so, the Pope solidified his
position as
the temporal heir to the Roman Empire in Italy, thus claiming both
spiritual
and traditional prerogatives to legitimize Pepin's secular authority.
But in that alliance
the
traditional pattern of the old Germanic tribes was present. Its
combination,
cooperation and competition with the papal authority in Rome eventually
developed
a new political pattern in Europe.
Pepin's son
Charlemagne further
expanded the Frankish kingdom. In 795, the newly elected Pope Leo III
sent
Charlemagne the notification of his election with the key to St.
Peter's and
the banner of Rome. The notification, previously addressed only to the
Byzantine emperors, assimilated Charlemagne to them, while the
accompanying
banner implied his recognition as a commander of the church and supreme
judge
of Rome. In 800, Charlemagne presided over a solemn tribunal in Rome to
have
Pope Leo III cleared of charges of perjury and adultery. At the
Christmas
prayers that year, Leo placed a crown on Charlemagne's head and
proclaimed him
Emperor. By so doing, Leo was providing Rome with a new authority and
himself
with a new source of support, reviving the Western Roman Empire with
its dual
temporal and spiritual authorities--except that the traditional
background of
its temporal power shifted from Greco-Roman to Germanic.
While Charlemagne's
conquests
brought new flocks under the Pope's spiritual authority, he was also
making it
clear that the Pope was a vicar in his kingdom who was to "pray to God
for
the benediction of the Christian people," while the prince was "to
govern the church of God and defend it from the wicked." He chose his
title: "Charles, serenisime August, crowned by God, great and pacific
emperor governing the Roman Empire, by God's misericord King of the
Franks and
the Lombards." Notice "crowned by God," suggesting that the Pope
who crowned him was only an accessory of divine providence. Therein lay
the
ingredients which provided a basis for the concept that the temporal
ruler was
god's vice-regent by divine providence and, later, by divine right of
kings. In
the following centuries many popes claimed supremacy because of their
spiritual position and many kings denied it because of their secular
authority,
whose actuality was proof that divine providence rather than papal act
was
their essential legitimizing source. Thus, both the temporal and
spiritual powers
invoked divine consecration of their political authority to rule. The
conflict
had, of course, concrete political and economic aims such as the choice
of
bishops and their prerogatives, the ecclesiastical land holdings which
increased through donations to the church and their taxation by the
king of the
land. But the challenge between church and state was often fought on
legal and
philosophical grounds.
By the thirteenth
century, the
legitimacy of the secular power on the basis of the divine right of
kings began
to have strong supporters. Dante (12651321), in his De
Monarchia, concluded that "the authority of temporal
monarchy descends, without mediation, from the fountain of universal
authority."[14] In other words, it comes directly from
"divine providence," without need of the church's intermission. John
of Paris used Aristotelian logic to show that the King of France is not
bound
by the Pope or the Emperor for his action on behalf of his kingdom.
The heated debate over
the
legitimacy of the spiritual and secular powers continued through the
Renaissance and the Reformation, partly as cause and partly as
consequence of
those historical phenomena. As the disastrous religious conflicts
dragged on
and the powers of the Pope and the Emperor as the dual authorities of
the
faltering Holy Roman Empire lost effectiveness in maintaining peace and
order,
the divine right of kings received new impetus as the legitimizing
source of
monarchical power in the emerging political entities. The results were
new
clashes and conflicts, but also new power complexes and combinations
culminating in the concept of sovereignty, to which we shall turn
later. As for
the protagonists of the divine right of kings, let us quote James I's
speech of
1609:
Kings
are justly called Gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance
of
divine power upon earth: ...they have power of raising, and casting
down: of
life, and of death: Judges over all their subjects, and in all causes,
and yet
accountable to none but God only ....And to the King is due both the
affection
of the soul, and the service of the body of his subjects.
The third legitimizing
dimension of royal authority thus did not require consecration by the
church
but emanated directly from the abstract divine power. The categoric
tone of
James' statement, however, implied that his divine right was being
contested.
The contestant was the Parliament which will be a central figure in our
coming
study of constitutionalization.
In the last analysis,
consecration stems from the ever-present affectional, nonrational and
valuational dimensions of man which prime his recognition and
acceptance of
many aspects of political institutions, behavior and processes. The
present
Shah of Iran has, on many occasions, asserted having supernatural
protection,[15]
which can be understood only in the light of the political culture of
that
country. At the turn of the century McKinley invoked the power of
prayer and
God's guidance in his decision to keep the Philippines under American
rule, and
in the heated debates on the impeachment of Richard Nixon a number of
Americans
(not a majority, according to the polls, but still some) were indignant
at the
thought of disrespect for the awesome office of the presidency which
had God's
protection. Because of its affectional and valuational potentials,
consecration
remains a potential legitimizing process. Our examination of the
evolution from
consecration to constitutionalization in the context of Western
political
culture should not lead to the conclusion that one inevitably follows
the
other. Indeed, if we look further into European history we find that a
reverse
process did take place in antiquity where the early Roman Republic
eventually
turned into an empire (with hereditary and adoptive processes of
legitimization).
Some of this also took place among the German people whose earlier
elective
monarchies became more hereditary during the middle ages. To continue
our
present inquiry, we should above all keep in mind the traditional
aspects,
which are pervasive social phenomena and in fact constitute a common
ground for
consecration and constitutionalization.
Constitutionalization
Our discussion has
implied that
consecration was by and large the way of the past in Western culture,
with only
a few remnants traceable in modern times. We may also have suggested
that
constitutionalization is the modern way of legitimizing power into
authority.
While it is relatively easy (by following the development of
rationalism and
individualism, of communications and education) to demonstrate the
advent of
constitutionalization as the legitimizing process in modern Europe, we
may
distort the picture if we do not scrutinize its origins and traces
within the
European historical evolution we have used to illustrate the conversion
of
power into authority.
Constitutionalization, as we
have implied, is the process by which legitimization of power into
authority
develops mainly within and among the components of a power complex,
with little
or no intervention by or resort to an outside factor--in particular the
supernatural. Constitutionalization legitimizes authority with the
direct or
indirect participation of those who will submit and will possibly be
represented. This does not imply, however, that legitimization takes
place
uniformly between the authority and all those subject to it, nor that
it takes
place on a purely functional and systematic contractual basis. The
Magna Carta
(1215), often mentioned as the first document of modern democracy, was
neither
a proviso for popular participation in government nor a contract
between two
parties setting down brand-new functional and systematic rules of
conduct. It
was an understanding between King John and the feudal lords (the
weightier part
of those submitting to the king's authority) to set down their
understanding of
traditional patterns which had evolved within the kingdom. It reflected
the
barons' consciousness of their power and their claim to a share in the
king's
authority. More concretely, King John's loss of his vassals in France
north of the
Loire to Philip in 1204 reduced his support outside England, increasing
the
power of the English barons in the kingdom. Simultaneously, the
increase in the
king's demands on the barons to carry on his campaigns on the continent
caused
conflict, notably over "scutage" (taxes paid by the barons to the
king), the recruitment of soldiers, and for the king's adventures on
the
continent. These factors put the barons in a bargaining position for
more say
in the affairs of the kingdom. The functional, systematic and
contractual
dimensions were framed in the context of the cultural dynamics and
fermentations which were traditional.
You may notice that
our
discussion, while emphasizing the traditional aspect of
constitutionalization,
adds two further patterns -- the contractual
and the representational. By
"contractual" we do not necessarily mean an incipient social contract
in the Lockean sense, but rather the evolution of understanding as to
the
extent and nature of authority between the authority and those who
submit, like
that defined in the Magna Carta. The distinction between the
contractual and
representational implies that by participating in
constitutionalization, those
who submit will not necessarily participate in exercising the authority
nor be
represented within it.
Looking again at our
European
model, we find that when the Carolingian Empire began, some of the
Germans had
already mingled their culture with that of the Romans. But that had
happened
mostly in the areas of overlapping populations such as northern Italy
and parts
of the Frankish kingdom. Otherwise, the German traditions had remained
mainly
tribal and customary. Tribal patterns varied among different German
peoples,
but in legitimizing power into authority they generally combined
supernatural, territorial,
hereditary and electoral dimensions. This last implies a
constitutionalizing
factor. The earliest known forms of government of the German people
were tribal
democracies under kings or grafs elected by tribal assemblies. There
were no
restrictions on the choice of grafs, while the kings had to be elected
from the
royal houses which had some supernatural consecration of their ancestry
and
hereditary rights. That was another reason why, as we noticed earlier,
Pepin,
though elected by the magnates, was still considered a usurper, because
he did
not descend from a traditional kingly house.
In their moves and
expansions
in Europe, the German tribes developed systems of authority containing
the
germs of the medieval and feudal system of Europe. The tribe, in
settling a
territory, whether to cultivate it or to rule it, made interpersonal
arrangements between those who took charge of the land and the
authoritative
tribal chief, whom they would provide with men and supplies for further
expansion and defense. Thus, the authority structure, while having
traditional--and sometimes supernatural--patterns, also had
contractual,
functional and utilitarian features; i.e., there was a mutual
commitment
understood to be beneficial for both the prince and the person who
received a
fief. Fiefs, while inheritable, were not automatically inherited. When
a vassal
died his fief theoretically reverted to the lord until the heir became
of age
to take an oath of fealty and receive investiture.[16]
These feudal
socio-economic and
military arrangements were made within the customary and traditional
framework
to which the prince himself was a subject. He followed the laws of the
tribe he
ruled, and if he promulgated new laws he first consulted the wise men
of his
kingdom and followed the tribal consensus. These traditional Germanic
patterns
and common law practices evolved with the structurally more developed
Roman
civil law and within the realities of the conversion of the Germans to
Christianity. Yet as late as 864, the edictum
pistense maintained the basic Germanic premise of popular consensus
for the
law: "Quoniam lex consensu populi et
constitutione regis fit," i.e., that law is made of popular consent
and the constitution of the kingdom.
The Germanic monarchy,
particularly after the foundation of the Holy Roman Empire by Frederick
I in
the twelfth century, tended more and more towards aristocratic and
hereditary
arrangements. The electoral pattern of authority evolved, and as the
tribal
entities submerged into bigger political structures, the original
election by
tribal chieftains passed on to tenants-in-chief, then to a group of
them
designated as electors with the provision that their decision be
ratified by
the others. Finally the electors' choice became conclusive. The Golden
Bull of
1356 (which remained in force until 1806) transformed the empire into
an
aristocratic federation and provided for an electoral body (patently
aristocratic) to constitutionalize the emperor's authority over the
German
people according to hereditary traditions.
The ideas of
representation
that developed in the late middle ages and challenged the authorities
of both
popes and monarchs reflected not only the ancient Greco-Roman
democratic and
republican practices but also the old Germanic tribal traditions and
constitutionalization processes. Marsiglio of Padua (1280-1343), while
using
Aristotelian logic and Roman antecedents within the Christian context,
also
based himself on traditional patterns when he advocated that "the
authority to make or institute laws belongs only to the corporation of
citizens, or to its more weighty part," and advocated a representative
legislature to be "the primary cause which effects, institutes and
determines the other offices or parts of the state" while "the
secondary and, as it were, instrumental or executive cause is the
ruler,
through the authority conferred upon him by the legislator and in
accordance
with the form which it has established for him."[17]
The
constitutionalization of
authority developed differently in different countries of Europe,
sometimes in
combination with the consecrated authority of the monarch, other times
in
head-on clashes with it. As we pointed out, the Magna Carta was not a
charter
for rule by the people, but it was a beginning. By 1265, de Montfort's
Parliament, consisting of two knights from each shire and two burgesses
from
each borough, was the first semblance of a representative body in
England.[18] In France in 1302 Philip IV called an
Estates-General, including the nobility, the clergy and the
representatives of
the towns in their feudal capacity, mainly to endorse his struggle with
the
Pope. These representative assemblies, while containing the germ of the
later
legitimization, did not then have the prerogative to constitutionalize
the ruler's
authority. They were the outcome of the new political circumstances
created by
the conflicts between the Pope and the monarchs and the nascent
nation-states,
and were instruments serving the purposes of royal taxation. While the
French
Estates-General gained little control in the kingdom, serving mainly as
an
intermittent royal instrument, the English Parliament evolved as a
political
power gradually challenging the king's authority. By 1470, Sir John
Fortescue,
comparing England with France in his De
Laudibus Legum Anglie distinguished between the regal right of the
king and
the political rights of the people in England, which was not the case
in France
where only the King ruled, regally. He wrote:
The
kynge of England can not alter nor change the lawes of his royalme at
his
pleasure. For why he governeth his people by power not only royal but
also
politique. If his power over them were royall onely then he myght
change the
Lawes of his royalme, and charge his subjects with tallage, and other
burdens
without their consent ....But from this much differeth the power of a
kynge,
whose government over his people is politique, For he can [not] change
Lawes
without the consent of his subjects.[19]
The religious wars
resulted in
the creation of political entities over which princes claimed exclusive
control, independent of the Pope and the Emperor, but they also
produced
counter-currents against abuses by kings who had sway over subjects of
different faiths.[20] Within both Catholic and Protestant camps
voices advocated resistance against the rulers who were using their
authority
tyrannically. Those who spoke against tyrants were, of course, those
who were
prosecuted for their religious differences with the monarch. Thus, the
writings
of Protestants and Calvinists such as John Knox (The First
Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women,
1557) or George Buchanan (De Jure Regni
apud Scotos, 1579) implicated the Catholic monarchs, while those of
the
Jesuits like Mariana (De Rege et Regis
Institutione, 1599) or Suarez (De legibus, ac Deo
legislatore, 1603) were directed against the Protestant
kings. In their plea or militancy for resistance against the monarch's
authority, however, all had to justify their position by demonstrating
that the
people, or their representatives, were entitled to question the doings
of their
ruler. They were able to do so by showing that, in one way or another,
the
people were the premise whence the king received his authority. The
Huguenot Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579) maintained
that while "it is God that does appoint kings-the people establish
kings,
put the sceptre in their hands, and with their suffrages, approve the
election." Thus, the idea of a covenant between the people and the
ruler
was developed.
In England the
conflicts
between the Stuart kings and the Parliament, civil wars and the interim
of
Cromwellian commonwealth, all furthered, by the end of the seventeenth
century,
an understanding of monarchy recognizing the king's authority on the
traditional and "contractual" bases of constitutionalization. The
Convention Parliament of 1689 declared: "That king James II, having
endeavored to subvert the constitution
of the kingdom by breaking the original
contract between king and people ...and having withdrawn himself
out of the
kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is vacant"
(italics mine). The crown was offered to William and Mary with an
accompanying
Declaration of Rights, enumerating the "true, ancient, and indubitable
rights of the people of this realm" which William and Mary accepted to
be
declared King and Queen. That Glorious Revolution moved the
legitimization of
the king's authority from consecration from above (by God) to
constitutionalization from below (by the people of the kingdom--not all
the
people, but the weightier part--the nobles and the gentry).
"The people" thus
emerged as a new pretender claiming to legitimize the authority of the
governments of the new political entities--the nation-states --which
were
reshaping the face of Europe upon the collapse of the Holy Roman
Empire. The
people, however, were as amorphous a source as the divine right. "The
royalist Sir Robert Filmer had great fun demonstrating that the House
of
Commons was elected by less than one-tenth of the people of England."[21] For our present discussion it matters not
whether, then or now, more than ten percent of a population actively
and
effectively participate in the choice of a country's rulers, but how
the
introduction of the people as a participatory factor in legitimization
eventually led to representative forms of government.
While the introduction
of
"the people" has brought us to the core of constitutionalization,
"the people" is a variable which can be viewed and interpreted
differently according to different political cultures and their stages
of
evolution. Using our reference group model discussed in Chapter Eight
as one
possible yardstick to identify "the people," and applying it to one
of the political cultures most closely associated with
constitutionalization,
the United States of America, we find that at its inception "the
people" who could participate in legitimization were restrictively
defined. The electorate was limited on the basis of status (ownership
of
property), age (adulthood), race, sex, and education (ability to pass a
literacy test). Some of these standards prevailed until very recently,
leaving
quite a number of "people" out. An understanding of the nature of
constitutionalization, therefore, requires its dilution into other
legal, economic
and social dimensions of the political culture. This is what we propose
to do
next.
II.
Transitional Period in the West
We will better examine
and
understand the evolution of this period if we remember that the
conversion of
power into authority hinges on law (as illustrated in Fig. 11-1). To
become
authority, power has to be steeped in law. Whoever constitutes the
source of
law can legitimize power into authority and either exercise authority
or
delegate it through legitimization.
Laws:
Natural, Customary, Common and Statutory
The medieval pattern
of
authority, as we have seen, was an intricate complex of
understandings--and
misunderstandings--which held the European societies together under the
supreme
power of God. It was to this nebulous source of authority that rulers
referred
to justify their governments. In other words, their rule and their
laws, in so
far as they contained a change, modification or addition to what was
already
customary or common, were not supposed to be innovations emanating
directly
from the will or whim of the prince, but to be based on laws of the
kingdom of
God which the ruler, ordained by divine providence, could and should
discover
and interpret. This was the natural law which, as St. Thomas put it,
was based
on the understanding "that all the things which the practical reason
naturally apprehends as man's good belong to the precepts of the
natural law
under the form of things to be done or avoided."[22] He implied there were certain laws in nature
corresponding to human nature which man, endowed by reason, could
discover and
apply for the common good. Because this natural law applied to all men,
including those who discovered and interpreted it, the ruler was under
the law,
not above it.
The ruler, as we saw,
was also
expected to respect the customary law of the land. Indeed, the
customary law
and the traditional patterns contained the modalities by which the
ruler was
invested with authority. Further, these patterns and customs provided
the
framework for the administration of justice, which developed into the
common
law.[23]
Thus, authority was
immersed
within the laws it represented. This was the pattern, by and large. It
was not,
of course, exclusive, but subject to human conditions. The ruler, in
his
prerogatives to interpret and discover the natural laws and implement
the
common laws, had an angle of vision conditioned by his particular
interests
and Weltanschauung; and, depending on
circumstances, he enjoyed some leeway for deviation. If the precepts of
religion were strongly upheld by the weightier members of the realm, he
probably had more leeway in secular affairs. For example, while St.
Thomas
condemned unjust human laws that burdened the subjects for the cupidity
or
vainglory of the authority, or those that went beyond the powers
invested in
the authority, or those that were imposed unequally on the community;
and while
he recognized that such laws did not bind in conscience, he qualified
his
argument by adding, "except perhaps in order to avoid scandal or
disturbance,
for which cause a man should even yield in his right, according to Matt. V. 40.41: If a man…take away thy coat,
let go thy cloak also unto him; and whosoever will force thee one mile,
go with
him other two." But he admitted of no leniency for "laws of tyrants
inducing to idolatry, or to anything else contrary to divine law. Laws
of this
kind must in no way be observed, because, as is stated in Acts.
V. 29. we ought to obey God rather than men."[24]
With the Reformation
some
monarchs could claim greater control over the religious affairs in
their land,
and their leeway leaned towards church affairs rather than the common
law of
the land which was, at times, upheld against their arbitrary
encroachments.
.For example, in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
while the
establishment of the Anglican Church was freeing the King from papal
authority,
he was often called to order in respect to the common law. As Sir
Edward Coke
(1552-1634), Attorney General to Elizabeth, later Chief Justice under
James I,
put it, "the common law hath admeasured the King's prerogative."[25]
What was significant
in the
latter evolution was the shift of importance from one source of law,
the
supernatural, to the other, the people. Natural law was made beyond
men, who
were subject to it, and the political authority was to discover,
interpret and
execute it. The common law, on the other hand, evolved from within the
people,
within the traditional texture. Therefore it was supposed to be within
their grasp--not
necessarily their rational but at least their affectional grasp. The
following
dialogue from the trial of William Penn illustrates the point:
PENN: I
affirm I have broken no Law, nor am I guilty of the Indictment, that is
laid to
my charge, and to the end, the Bench, the Jury, and my self, with these
that
hear us, may have a more direct understanding of this procedure, I
desire you
would let me know by what Law it is you prosecute me, and upon what Law
you
ground my indictment.
RECORDER:
Upon the common Law.
PENN:
Where is that common Law?
RECORDER:
You must not think that I am able to run up so many years, and over so
many
adjudged Cases, which we call Common Law to answer your curiosity.
PENN:
This Answer I am sure is very short of my Question, for if it be
Common, it
should not be so hard to produce.[26]
Of course, as long as
law was
customary and traditional, while its fountainhead was the people, they
could
not claim its authorship in any generation or given time. That would
have
allowed them to change the law by simple deliberation. We saw that the
traditional was so qualified because of its temporal affirmation and
continuity. However, the religious wars in the sixteenth and
seventeenth
centuries not only weakened the natural law but also damaged the
traditional
patterns. The transition, then, not only shifted emphasis from one
source of
law to another, but also weakened both. The church as custodian and
overseer of
natural law was challenged, and the traditional ways of life of the
people from
whose bosom had sprung the common law were disrupted. Under these
circumstances, the leeway of the monarchs to manipulate natural and
common law
constituted paradoxically both a source of abuse and a potential for
order. It
provided for transformation of the nature of the law: instead of being there, as given -- by God or by
tradition -- the law could be made, by
the sovereign.
Sovereignty
and the State
When the religious
wars and the
disruption of the Holy Roman Empire made the European monarchs,
particularly
those of emerging nation-states like England, France and Spain,
increasingly
independent of the Pope and the Emperor as God's overseers, the
question of the
nature of their authority and their position in relation to God's laws
as well
as the laws of the land became acute. The problem was not academic.
Religious
wars had caused disastrous and often inconclusive conflicts which,
while
eliminating many feudal kingdoms and principalities, had also
contributed to
the emergence of bigger entities which could no longer be overrun and
absorbed
by simple conquest. A stalemate of powers was creating new social,
economic,
political, legal and cultural dimensions. The post-Reformation
political
realities were rulers with their divine rights, their people and the
territory
they controlled, in whose context new power/authority complexes evolved.
In France a group of
jurists
and political thinkers known as the Politiques,
including Dumoulin, Loyseau, Bodin and William Barclay (the Scottish
lawyer
living in France), were formulating the philosophical concepts for the
new
political realities. Jean Bodin (1530-1596) in The Six
Bookes of a Commonweale (1576) developed the concept of
sovereignty, the absolute and perpetual power vested in a commonwealth.
Considering the man to whom the people gave absolute power during his
natural
life, he noted, "If such absolute power is given him simply and
unconditionally, and not in virtue of some office or commission, nor in
form of
a revocable grant, the recipient certainly is, and should be
acknowledged to
be, a sovereign."[27] While Bodin subscribed to the current of his
time that "the absolute power of princes and sovereign lords does not
extend to the laws of God and of nature," he reverted to classic Roman
legal concepts in maintaining. that so far as the civil law is
concerned, i.e.,
the law made by the sovereign,
The
prince is above the law, for the word law in
Latin implies the command of him who is invested with sovereign
power .... It follows of necessity that the king cannot be subject to
his own laws, [while] it is clear that the principal mark of sovereign
majesty and
absolute power is the right to impose laws generally on all subjects
regardless
of their consent.[28]
This idea of
sovereignty gives
a ruling body, with effective control over a given population within a
given
territory, the authority to make and administer laws and maintain
order. In its
pure form this legitimization of power into authority on the basis of
sovereignty had a very thin layer of legitimacy. According to Bodin:
If a
sovereign magistrate is given office for one year, or for any other
predetermined period, and continues to exercise the authority bestowed
on him
after the conclusion of his term, he does so either by consent or by
force and
violence. If he does so by force it is manifest tyranny. The tyrant is
a true
sovereign for all that. But if the magistrate continues in office by
consent,
he is not a sovereign prince, seeing that he only exercises power on
sufferance. Still less is he a sovereign if the term of his office is
not
fixed, for in that case he has no more than a precarious commission.[29]
The tendency to
justify strong
sovereign power was not only to maintain law and order within the new
post-Reformation political entities (which we shall identify as
states), but
also to stabilize their precarious coexistence. It implied, at its
origin, two
basic political phenomena checking and balancing their relationships
and
testing their political reality and viability: 1) The equality of these
states
in their dealings with each other: Either because of their balance of
powers or
because of stalemated conjunctures, they could not eliminate or
dislocate each
other and thus had to recognize the exclusive jurisdiction of each
within its
own boundaries. 2) Their independence from outside interference in
making their
laws and governments-a consequence of the first characteristic.
The new sovereigns
were equal
in so far as they could survive the blows of their adversaries, avoid
being
overrun and lose their identity, and enter into covenants and
agreements as
equals able to fulfill them.[30] This implied, in the absence of a superior
authority above the sovereign states, contentions and confrontations
that would
eventually weed out those who were not "sovereign" enough, and
establish a perpetual balance of powers among those who remained
sovereign,
creating rules of conduct which those who recognized each other would
abide by.[31] By the time of the Peace of Westphalia
(1648) which officially ended the religious wars, some six hundred
medieval
political entities had been absorbed by bigger units.
At the beginning of
this
chapter we said that powers combined to recognize an authority over the
areas
of their overlappings, interactions and interpenetrations, implying
their
active involvement. The recognition of the sovereignty of one
independent
political entity by the others was passive, an acknowledgment that it
"stood on its own" and was a "state" with exclusive
jurisdiction over its realm. To achieve such recognition, the sovereign
state
had to be personified legally and be presented and represented among
other
states. This implied, on the one hand, some understanding of legality
among the
sovereign states and, on the other, an internal process for
establishing and
legitimizing the authority that represented the state. The real
criterion for
the mutual recognition of sovereign states was, of course, the
sovereign's
effective control over the people and the territory he claimed, as well
as his
capacity to fulfill his international claims and obligations,
buttressed,
preferably, by a legitimization of his prerogatives on the basis of
divine
providence.
We saw that as more
political
entities in Europe became independent of the spiritual and temporal
powers of
the Holy Roman Empire, the consecration of authority of the rulers was
based on
the divine right of kings attributed directly to providence. It must be
remembered that, despite the decline of the Pope's political power,
Catholics
and Protestants alike upheld the basic supernatural values of the
Christian faith
on whose premises both the Anglican James I and the Catholic Louis XIV
claimed
absolute power. Legitimization on the simple assumption that divine
right made
it perpetual and absolute was, however, qualified. For the assertion of
sovereignty and the fulfillment of international pretensions and
responsibilities, the independent states required internal cohesion
permitting
the effective combination of the components of their sovereignty--their
population, territory and social, economic and political structures and
potentials to generate power. The exercise of divine right by the
sovereigns
depended, therefore, on the nature of these components; and in the
transition
of Western political culture from traditional to modern it did not go
unchallenged.
The real challenge, in
the
modern sense, to the concept of consecration of power into authority
through
the supernatural began with the philosophic inquiries of the
Renaissance and
the Reformation and the developments mentioned in our discussion of
value-forming
agencies. When the Thomist supposito quod
mundus divina providentia regatur could be questioned because it
did not
satisfy the rational standards of the Cartesian cogito,
ergo sum, whatever emanated from divine providence could be
doubted. While this did not necessarily imply that the monarch was not
entitled
to his authority, it did mean that authority could not be legitimized
through
consecration alone. Indeed, Hobbes made a classic attempt to legitimize
the
absolute ruler free from supernatural consecration on the contractual
and
representational bases:
A Common-wealth is said to be instituted, when a Multitude
of men do Agree, and Covenant,
every one with every one, that to
whatsoever Man, or Assembly of
Men, shall be given by the major part,
the Right to Present the Person of
them all, (that is to say, to
be their Representative;) every one,
as well he that 'Voted for it, as he
that Voted against it, shall Authorise
all the Actions and Judgements, of that
Man, or Assembly of men, in the same manner, as if they were his own,
to the
end, to live peaceably amongst themselves, and be protected against
other men.
From
this Institution of a Common-wealth are derived all the Rights,
and Facultyes of him, or them, on whom the Soveraigne
Power is conferred by the
consent of the People assembled.[32]
For Hobbes, however,
the end
product was the sovereign, not the multitude which had entered into the
covenant and constituted it. The multitude were subjects. Hobbes' Leviathan was published in 1651, three
years after the Peace of Westphalia and two years after the beheading
of
Charles I in England where, in 1650, after two civil wars, Cromwell in
the name
of the Commonwealth was fighting the kingdom in the person of Charles
II. In
short, they were tumultuous times. It is understandable that Hobbes
like the
French Politiques, was advocating a
sovereignty of strong and absolute rule with the primary goal of order
and
security. While a strong, absolute and unitary sovereign could have
seemed a
desirable authority to maintain order, it did not provide sufficient
guarantees
against arbitrary law and justice.
The
Bourgeoisie
More important,
however, were
the social and economic factors which did not lend themselves to
absolute
monarchical power. Trade patterns resulting from the Crusades and the
Mongolian
conquests in the thirteenth century had farreaching effects. While
Islam had
severed Europe from the ancient tandem of Greco-Roman and Persian
civilizations
and the Crusades had deepened the split between the Christians and the
Arabs,
the emergence of the Mongols in the East opened new prospects for
contact with
the Orient. The movements caused by the Crusades, and the Mongolian
displacement of Arab rule from parts of the Middle East contributed to
the
expansion of trade within Europe as well as with the East. By the
fourteenth
century, Europe had developed extensive trade relations with Asia. The
new
economic patterns influenced the European social structures, leading to
the
development of trade centers and urban areas. With Eastern trade the
cities of
northern Italy prospered while later, with the discovery of sea routes
to Asia
and Africa and the discovery of the Americas in the fifteenth century,
the
ports of Spain and the Atlantic coast expanded and attracted more of
the population.[33] The new movements of people began to alter
the rather slow-paced way of life and the close-knit feudal structures.
The combined efforts
of
economic, political, religious, philosophical and social changes
brought to the
forefront that segment of the population identified as the bourgeoisie.
The
term referred to the social class which inhabited the bourg--or burg or
borough; the town. But it also implied a certain Weltanschauung,
interests and, consequently, value-orientations
particular to the bourgeois social situation. The bourg, in the
medieval and
feudal context, occupied a middle place, so to speak, between the
farmers and
laborers on the one side, and the princes, aristocrats, clergy and men
of arms
on the other. There were, of course, more bourgeois in the market towns
and
commercial centers. Where the feudal system prevailed, many of the
bourgeoisie
remained within the closed unit of the castle/town/field, receiving
protection
from the prince and products from the farmers for their livelihood, in
turn
providing them with goods and services.
The expansion of
commerce, the
loosening of some religious and ethical inhibitions on certain
commercial and
financial practices (such as usury) and the passing away of many feudal
entities left the bourgeoisie with new functional horizons, but also
new
affectional handicaps. In the close-knit feudal arrangement, the
bourgeois was
part of a patrimony and had an affectional relationship with the
prince, his
protector, who was nearby. The walls of his town were not far from the
farmer,
with whom he identified as a compatriot. And his relationships within
his
trade, whether master or an apprentice, bore strong affectional ties of
a
paternal or filial nature. As new, larger post-Reformation political
entities
were consolidated, the bourgeoisie found itself in more impersonal
relations
with the distant monarchical political centers and its clientele. At
the same
time the new economic conditions favored bourgeois growth.
*
* *
Let us recall some of
our
questions in earlier chapters about the fermentations and dynamics
within
heterogeneous groups, the role played by moral, ethical and legal norms
under
different circumstances of social integration, the social attitudes of
the
members of groups according to their interest-value constellations, and
the
broader factors affecting political cultures. Let us also remember the
changing
pattern of the value-forming agencies and the shift towards humanism
and
education in the European high middle ages, particularly the Erasmian
philosophy which fostered individualism. Then let us recall the
religious wars
where rulers, free of the spiritual and temporal authorities of the
Holy Roman
Empire to claim supreme power on the basis of their nebulous divine
right, were
justified by some philosophies in placing themselves above the law.
Consider
also that the new social changes required new laws distinct from
customs and
natural law. The result was more civil and statutory laws adaptable to
changing
social situations. With society radically changing, the lawmaker had to
find
larger latitude to interpret and discover natural law, modify the
customary law
or even make new laws. Under the circumstances, the sovereign ruler
could claim
nearly absolute power unless there was a check within his kingdom.
This absolute power
was
challenged by the ruled in the name of "the people"-in reality the
weightier parts of society; the clergy and aristocracy (who had
survived the
Reformation and were incorporated into the new sovereign kingdoms) and,
of
course, by the emerging bourgeoisie. While the clergy upheld the old
spiritual
and natural law, and aristocracy clung to its prerogatives and
traditions,
presenting them as binding and directing the ruler's authority, the
bourgeoisie
was concerned with establishing a foothold within the constellation of
powers
and influencing the new laws (civil and statutory) to meet the new
circumstances where the bourgeoisie was, to a great extent, the
principal
actor. The more innovative and threatening challenge came from the
bourgeoisie
which, with the new means and relations of production, was destined to
become
the predominant class in Western political culture. The transition in
the
legitimization of power into authority shifted from consecration to
constitutionalization
as the bourgeoisie attempted to control sovereignty. This sums up the
scenario
for our coming discussions, for the passage of the Western political
culture
into modernity is indeed the story of the bourgeoisie's growth, its
struggle for
representation in and control of sovereignty, and its potentials to
make and
implement laws.
While the similar
basic
ingredients of their cultures provided a general pattern of political
development within the Western countries, producing the essential
components of
modern political complexes--such as sovereignty, nation, state or
nation-state
(more or less universal political models up to now)--the scenario had
variations, depending on their particular experiences and environmental
conditions. The transition from traditional to modern was at times
gradual, at
other times abrupt, some changes starting earlier and stretching over a
long
period, others beginning later and compressed into a shorter time span.
For
example, the eighteenth-century American colonies of the British
Kingdom
adopted the constitutional process for converting power into authority
long
before and in a totally different spirit than did the Russians of the
twentieth
century. The discrepancy between the two examples shows that the
intertwined
development of the bourgeoisie, sovereignty and representative form of
government had such variety that our discussion of Western political
culture
from now on must consider particular experiences, however briefly,
before
depicting general patterns again. We also need-before further
discussing the
different ways the scenario was played--models to encompass the rather
broad
variations in the passage of Western political cultures into the modern
age.
III.
Western Evolution Towards Modernization
In our examination of
the
power/authority conversion at the beginning of this chapter, we noted
that
authority is the area of contact, interaction, transaction and
overlapping of
powers. We also noticed, on one hand, a tendency towards the status quo
of the
powers involved, and, on the other, a drive for change--the latter
produced
when a power grows and is either not recognized at all or not given its
share
in the authority constellation. The degree to which the emerging power
is a
social reality and is or is not recognized by the authority structure
determines whether the transition takes place smoothly or explosively.
Whether
it be the Christians in ancient Rome, the post-Reformation bourgeoisie
in
Europe, the Soviets of 1917 in Russia, or the militant black power
advocates in
the United States, their emergence indicates change. And whether they
cause
the established pattern to disintegrate, are integrated and
accommodated within
it or are frustrated by it, things will not be the same again. Usually
the
power which is not taken into the game of authority is more
adventurous,
militant, vehement and determined. For it has little to lose,
particularly in
terms of prestige (which the established authority needs). Not being
established, it is more mobile and versatile, while what it wants to
overthrow -- the establishment -- is entrenched.
The outcome will
depend on the
flexibility of the established authority and the prevailing social
conditions.
If the authority structure is flexible, it may incorporate the emerging
power
and possibly gain strength from the new blood. On the other hand, new
elements
may contribute to the degeneration and disintegration of the
established order.
The fermenting agent added to milk at the right moment and temperature
will
produce cheese, while at other times it will curdle the milk. As Victor
Hugo advised: "Savoir au juste la quantité d'avenir qu'on
peut introduire dans le
présent, c'est la tout le secret d'un grand gouvernement. Mettez
toujours de
l'avenir dans ce que vous faites, seulement, mesurez la dose."[34]
The
integrative possibilities of the authority structure may also wax
or wane in consecutive power/authority encounters and cleavages,
resulting in
acquiesced conflict resolution patterns. Applying the spectrum of
conformity/revolt developed in Chapter Eight to the social changes
under
consideration here, we can schematize the process with two basic models
for
social change (with variations in between).
In the first model the
established authority and social order are not easily amenable to
social
change. The authority imposes its rule and demands conformity. If the
economic,
political and other social factors call for change and mobility, the
inflexibility of the established order will generate cleavage, and
although the
prevailing structure may, by its inflexibility, maintain itself for
awhile, the
cleavage may eventually lead to revolution. The revolution may effect
changes
in values and norms beyond social tolerance, thus creating new social
frictions, whereupon the new social order established as a consequence
of the
revolution may become authoritarian like the old order. Or, because of
militance, lack of security, and the existence of a traditional
authoritarian
pattern of social behavior, it may demand political conformity even
more
drastically than the old order, as did the Puritans in Cromwellian
England and
the Soviets after the October Revolution in Russia. We thus perceive a
rather
jerky pattern of social change, with political conformity, cleavage and
revolution overshadowing consensual and dissentient processes.[35]
Fig 11-02
The second model is
more likely
to occur after consecutive ups and downs in transitional situations
which, if a
political entity is to recover some harmony and balance under modern
conditions, should develop a more evolutionary process with social
change
taking place within the loop of consensus/cleavage/dissent (and, at the
most,
civil disobedience), overshadowing the extremes of political conformism
of the
traditional and authoritarian patterns at the one end, and
revolutionary
disruptions at the other.
Fig 11-03
In their move towards
modern
times, different Western political cultures[36]
have provided us with different combinations of these two models,
wherein, in
terms of our discussion of radicals and reactionaries in Chapter Eight,
during
their transitional phases the bourgeoisie played, to some extent, the
radical
role.[37]
The
Case of Great Britain
Returning to our
discussion of
the contest for sovereignty and political control in modern European
political
cultures, using the models just developed, we find that in early
seventeenth-century England with the king upholding his divine right to
rule
absolutely, the confrontation between the king and the weightier part
of the
kingdom already had an identifiable battlefield, so to speak, in the
body of
Parliament. The Parliament was not a true reflection of the movements
of
population and the emerging bourgeois power. The electoral system was
basically
unchanged since the middle ages, giving the electoral rights to the old
counties and towns. It was not a popular representative assembly in the
modern
sense, for its members came from the wealthy landed families of the
counties
and from the propertied oligarchies of the towns--in short, the gentry.
The county
electoral franchise was restricted to men owning freehold land worth
forty
shillings a year, which eliminated some eighty to ninety per cent of
the rural
population, while in towns the franchise was vested mostly in
corporations or
freemen. But the Parliament was representing the country's wealth on
which the
king depended for taxation, and was thus the instrument by which the
"weightier part" of the kingdom could challenge the king's absolute
right. While the challenge came from part of the gentry in Parliament,
it was
the bourgeoisie that made possible the civil war of the 1640's against
the
king. Despite the beheading of Charles I in 1649 and the civil war,
England's
bourgois revolution was less dramatic than France's in 1789.
The challenge of the
bourgeoisie
to gain political power was, of course, a class struggle. This element
was not
unconscious, and the contemporaries were aware of its scope and
implications.
For example, the Reverend Richard Baxter in his The Holy
Commonwealth (1659), depicting the civil war, noted that:
A very
great part of the knights and gentlemen...adhered to the King .... Most
of the
tenants of these gentlemen, and also most of the poorest of the people,
whom
the other call the rabble, did follow the gentry and were for the King.
On the
Parliament's side were... the smaller part (as some thought) of the
gentry in
most of the counties, and the greatest part of the tradesmen and
freeholders
and the middle sort of men, especially in those corporations and
counties which
depend on clothing and such manufactures.[38]
We talked about the consciousness factor of power in Chapter
Ten. In seventeenth-century England the bourgeoisie was becoming
conscious of
its power as the country's productive factor. Baxter's mention of
manufacturers, particularly of clothing, is significant. It was the
beginning
of the industrial revolution and the development of the textile
industry. While
the religious and dynastic conflicts continued, a new mercantile
interest
pattern was developing with its own modern value system. The
interactions of
the English kings and the Parliament reflected the conflict of
interests
between the monarchical and the emerging bourgeois powers. Like the
thirteenth-century barons whose challenge of the king's collection of
"scutage"
culminated in the Magna Carta, the bourgeoisie resisted forced loans,
taxations
and the "impositions" (tonnage
and poundage customs duties) which
James I and Charles II had instituted for their wars. The bourgeoisie
was not
against war altogether, but it did oppose wars that did not correspond
to its
own value system, i.e., mercantile prosperity and expansion. Indeed, in
1652,
during the Commonwealth under Cromwell, the British fought the Dutch
for
infringement of the British First Navigation Act of 1651, which
prohibited
importations into England on vessels not belonging either to Britain or
to the
country of origin of the imported goods. The British were trying to
gain
merchant-marine supremacy over the Dutch. The strong economic
implications of
our examples seem to suggest that the contests between the overlapping
and
conflicting powers revolve around the question of who gets what under
what
conditions. There were other parameters, too, but economic factors were
preponderant.
By 1660, in the
compromise
returning a Stuart, Charles II, to the throne, the bourgeoisie had
emerged as
the power which counted, and the parliamentary system had become the
reality of
English politics. The locus of sovereignty had shifted. Although the
king was
the sovereign, he depended heavily on the Parliament, which in turn
depended on
the people--not all of them but their weightier part, still the
aristocrats,
the clergy and, now, the bourgeoisie. The latter were destined to
expand
because they felt the spirit of the times and the new economic
realities. The
bourgeois nature of the events becomes even more obvious when we
consider that
while the conservative extremists upholding the old structures were
losing
ground, the balance of the English society did not move to the other
extreme of
radicalism.[39]
At the radical
extreme, the
Diggers advocated ideas with a communistic flavor and the abolition of
private
ownership. Even the Levellers (of which the Diggers were an issue),
less
radical than the Diggers, were still too far out for bourgeois taste.[40] The Levellers proposed the franchise for all
free Englishmen, including all who could freely dispose of their labor
without
consideration to land and property, but excluding paupers, servants and
those
whose labor was administered by a master, such as apprentices and wage
laborers. They also favored abolition of the monarchy and the House of
Lords,
as well as legal reform by rationalizing common law to a more civil law
form.
In the Levellers and particularly the Diggers we can distinguish the
buds of
early proletarian consciousness and its claim to a share in shaping
political
authority.
The egalitarian
policies
advocated by the Levellers did not materialize then. But they marked a
strain
of social development which in later centuries, as we shall see, became
the
consciousness of the working classes about their power, eventually
influencing
the nature of government and authority. The Levellers favored the small
man,
the husbandman and the artisan, not the big property holders,
corporations and
manufacturers. And these were the people who had already gained
bourgeois class
consciousness. The compromise of 1660 was, therefore, also a compromise
among
the aristocracy, the clergy and the bourgeoisie to keep the lower
classes in
their place. At the same time, it set the tone for the legitimization
of power
into authority under the new circumstances.
The restoration of
1660, then,
did not restore the divine right monarchy but a parliamentarian system.
English
politics at this time was in transition from our jerky model of
political
conformity/cleavage/revolution, to the more harmonious model of
consensus/cleavage/dissent. And the transition took a few centuries.
Charles II
and James II did on many occasions trespass their prerogatives, finally
ending
in the escape of James II to France. In the process, the preponderance
of the
parliamentary regime was confirmed. By offering the crown to William of
Orange
in 1689 on condition that he endorse the Declaration of Rights,
including the
stipulation that to make or suspend law required consent of Parliament,
the
English people were setting the rules for the distribution of sovereign
prerogatives within their commonwealth. It was the values and the Weltanschauung of their weightier part
(more and more identifable as the bourgeoisie) that the political
culture
reflected. The seventeenth-century evolutions in England were thus
preparing
for the modern industrial and capitalist political economy. As Hill
notes, by
the beginning of the eighteenth century, "all but an ineffective group
of
sentimental squires deserted Divine Right monarchy and put their money
in the
Bank of England."[41]
It is in the light of
these
facts that the political philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704) can be
understood. Under the pen of Locke, the social contract, which Hobbes
had
wanted as a carte blanche to the
ruler, sounds more like a business contract. In the prevailing
circumstances,
Locke advocated religious tolerance and harmony between the rulers and
the
ruled. Drawing on the scientific and religious evolutions of his time,
he
developed the philosophic bases for a contractual constitutionalization
of
power into authority. The laws of nature, he noted, implied natural
rights of
men to life, liberty and property. It was by virtue of and for the
preservation
of these rights that men put themselves under a social contract to
constitute a
civil authority. That authority, therefore, could not be an absolute
monarchy.[42] Life, liberty and property are obviously
materialist improvements on the early Christian values of detachment
from
worldly goods for salvation, and they also displace some medieval
aristocratic
values of chivalry and adventure. Locke's philosophy reflected the
economic,
political and social realities of late seventeenth-century England: a
tendency
towards moderation and compromise, "common" sense and avoidance of
excesses -- conditions propitious for the middle class.[43]
These ideas expanded
those of
Hobbes and Spinoza. Man's natural rights depicted by Hobbes were brutal
and had
to be contained by the absolute rule of the Leviathan; and for Spinoza,
"The natural right of the individual man [was]...determined, not by
sound
reason, but by desire and power."[44] The
Lockean natural rights were more
reasonable and therefore more palatable to bourgeois realities and had
lasting
effects in shaping Western political culture.[45] Thus,
for example, the Declaration of
Independence of the United States in 1776, whose authors had been
influenced by
Locke's philosophy, referred to man's unalienable rights: life, liberty
and the
pursuit of happiness, for whose security governments are instituted
among men,
deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The
replacement of
"estate" and "property" by "the pursuit of
happiness'." was due to Thomas Jefferson's high ideals, which did not
altogether correspond to the bourgeois concerns. As American history
later
attested, it was--to the chagrin of the founding fathers and any
Jeffersonian
philosopher--property and estate which were, after all, the real
popular
concern.[46] But the pursuit of happiness as a goal and
the state's creation of appropriate conditions so that as many as
possible
could attain it, had echoed throughout the ages in political thought
and still
resounds today. As we shall see in the next chapter, it inspired such
philosophies as utilitarianism, liberalism and socialism, making the
state
responsible to secure the greatest happiness of the greatest numbers.
The rather simplistic
Lockean
notion of an original social contract did not, of course, explain the
realities
of legitimizing power into authority in England. David Hume (1711-1776)
in his
"Of the Original Contract" (1741) noted that if a social contract
ever existed it must have been in some lost primeval time when a group
of men
acquiesced to the rule of a chief--which, given the minimal primeval
communications and semantic development, could hardly be considered a
social
contract but rather the outcome of expediency. In his "Of the First
Principles of Government" (1741) he further observed historical
realities
showing that "upon ...opinions...of public interest,
of right to power,
and of right to property, are all
governments founded and all authority of the few over the many. There
are,
indeed, other principles which add force to these and determine, limit,
or
alter their operation, such as self-interest,
fear, and affection." Hume noted that as history attested, many
governments originated by conquest, rebellion or violence. Yet, he
argued, if a
dynasty which may have achieved power by usurpation succeeded in
maintaining
itself and gained effective control, it could eventually receive the
acquiescence of its subjects and create the habit of obedience. In
other words,
a traditional pattern could develop. Hume was reiterating the
traditional
dimension of legitimization and relating to it the crucial factors of
habituation to an established order and socialization, which we
discussed
earlier.
The eighteenth-century
political culture of Great Britain was a concoction of different
versions of
the philosophies it inspired. Within the traditional pattern, the
consecration
of monarchical authority and the divine right of kings had evolved into
a
constitutional monarchy. Though not created by an original social
contract in
the Lockean sense, it had a contractual undertone, as noted in the
Declaration
of Rights of 1689, in that there was an understanding of the rights and
responsibilities of the rulers. And it provided for the representation
of those
who counted. These contractual and representational aspects well
illustrate
constitutionalization. Further, the British polity was on its way to
achieving
our smoother consensus/cleavage/dissent model which permitted social
evolution
and fluctuations without the disruptive extremes of political
conformity/revolution.
In England, compared
to many
other European countries, authority shifted from the monarch to the
Parliament
rather gradually. When the House of Hanover acceded to the throne in
1714, with
George I's unfamiliarity with British politics and his orientation
toward his
native Germany,[47]
the
executive power exercised by the cabinet (until then an instrument of
the
monarchs) fell more and more under the prime minister. The first
"real" one, Sir Robert Walpole, was appointed to preside over the
cabinet in behalf of the king. The prime minister in turn gradually
became
responsible to the Parliament, which in turn gradually took control of
the
cabinet. The transition was indeed so gradual that in his The
English Constitution (1867), Walter Bagehot appropriately
called it "the efficient secret of the English Constitution," which
he described as
..the
close union, the nearly complete fusion, of the executive and
legislative
powers. No doubt by the traditional theory, as it exists in all books,
the
goodness of our constitution consists in the entire separation of the
legislative and the executive authorities, but in truth its merit
consists in
their singular approximation. The connection link is the
cabinet. By that new word we mean a
committee of the legislative body selected to be the executive body
....A
century ago the Crown had a real choice of ministers, though it had no
longer a
choice in policy. During the long reign of Sir R. Walpole he was
obliged not
only to manage parliament, but also to manage the palace ....[Today] we
have
in England an elective first magistrate as truly as the Americans have
an
elective first magistrate.[48]
The widening of the
base for
popular representation followed a more or less parallel trend. With the
population
moving to industrial centers, and with communications
developing--helping new
value-forming agencies to evolve--the masses were becoming conscious of
the new
economic structures and the bourgeois values were gaining ideological
stature.
If life, liberty and property were good for the high bourgeois, they
were also
good for the little man. At times, competing factions within the
Parliament
further encouraged popular political participation. The political
factions
which had emerged within Parliament in the seventeenth century as
supporters
(Tories) or opponents (Whigs) of the court and royal prerogatives had,
on
different occasions, called on public sentiment to advance their cause.
The
Whigs made such appeals more often. The flirtation with the popular
base became
more limited, however, once the crises of 1640-1660 were over. In the
eighteenth century the members of the Parliament identified themselves
as
representatives of the privileged classes in whose interests it was not
to
overly arouse the lower classes. The two parties, whose concerns had
evolved
from royal prerogatives to more material and economically vital issues,
thus
appealed with moderation for public support of their positions. But
under the
new industrial and social impulses, popular concern for political and
economic
issues grew.
A pattern of
conflicting and
complementing movements thus evolved. On the one hand was the
Parliament,
representing the propertied gentry and bourgeoisie, trying to hold its
privileges yet bearing competing interests for control of the cabinet
and
executive power. On the other hand was the public, becoming more alert
and
asking for a greater voice in political affairs, with the contending
parties
trying to hold it within bounds, but also trying to win it to their
side. The
result was the emergence of workingmen's associations, trade unions and
labor
organizations and a series of popular movements, such as the Chartrist
Agitation of 1839 and the Anti-Corn Law movements of 1845-1846.[49] A century of activism of these various
movements directly or indirectly encouraged, induced and precipitated
the
Parliament into a series of reforms, notably the Reform Bills of 1832,
1867 and
1884, and the Acts of 1918 and 1923, which eventually broadened the
franchise
to all adults.
In attempting to show
how
consecration moved toward constitutionalization, we have been focusing
on
historical and political events. In the spirit of our overall approach,
however, we should remember that these events are not simple
cause/effect
propositions in vacuo, but are
affected by the total environment. Consider the political entity we
have just
reviewed, which passed from the kingdom of England (in
contradistinction to
Scotland, Wales and Ireland) to the British Empire (on which, up to
World War
II, from India to the Indies the sun never set) and ended up as the
United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the latter part being
contended), a member of the European Common Market. These temporal and
spatial
evolutions have had far more than simple political and formal
implications. And
let us not forget that it was run by such statesmen as Palmerston and
Russell,
Gladstone and Disraeli, and inspired by other men: Swift and Pope,
Wordsworth
and Shaw, and many more. Reacting to the Peterloo Massacre of 1819,
Shelley
wrote:
An old,
mad, blind, despised, and dying king ,--
Princes,
the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through
public scorn--mud from a muddy spring ,--
Rulers
who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But
leech-like to their fainting country cling ,
Till
they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,--
A
people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,--
An
army, which liberticide and prey
Makes
as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden
and sanguine laws which tempt and slay,--
Religion
Christless, Godless--a book sealed;
A
Senate--Time's worst stature unrepealed,--
Are
graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst,
to illumine our tempestuous day.[50]
Shelley's words were
read and
reacted to. The history of England
would not have been the same under a different sequence of events, in a
different part of the world with different people composing and
inspiring it.[51]
France
We are studying France
mainly
because what happened there, especially the French Revolution,
influenced other
major political events in Western Europe. The Estates-General, to which
we
referred earlier, had never gained the stature and consciousness of a
national
body as had the British Parliament. The last of the Estates-General
before the
French Revolution of 1789 was summoned in 1614, and despite a weak
monarchy it
did not achieve control.[52] The nobility was asking for the suppression
of the hereditary privileges of the high bourgeoisie (the paulette)
which conferred some hereditary rights on the judges,
while the bourgeoisie was demanding abolition of the pensions paid to
the
nobility. The Estates-General was paralyzed by its own intestinal
malaise.
When Cardinal de
Richelieu in
1624 became head of the Royal Council (16241642) the French central
government
bureaucracy imposed its authority more and more on the aristocracy and
other
segments. The tendency continued under Cardinal Mazarin, who succeeded
Richelieu. The last attempts (the Frondes)
in 1648 and 1653 of the French feudal aristocracy and the high
bourgeoisie (the
French counterpart of the British "gentry"), which controlled the
municipal council of Paris called the parlement,
to oppose the royal tendency towards absolutism failed. France thus
entered a
period of absolute monarchy under Louis XIV, who ascended the throne in
1643 at
the age of five and took full control at his maturity in 1661, ruling
until
1715. Many factors made this absolutism possible, among which was the
fact
that, ever since the fifteenth century, the French monarch, unlike the
British
king, had been provided with two essential instruments of government,
namely, a
standing army and direct income through direct taxation.[53]
The legitimacy of the
absolute
monarchy in France during this period, until the French Revolution, was
based on
divine right. This absolutism, in the context of its time and the
exercise of
its power, had many anachronistic features which by perpetuating
themselves
made French politics correspond to our more disruptive
conformity/cleavage/revolution model. The French absolute monarchy of
the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries imposed political conformity,
just. as the
bourgeoisie, capitalism and industrial revolution were becoming the
post-Reformation realities moving Europe into the modern age. While
Louis XIV
claimed "L'Etat, c'est moi"
(that he was the state) and governed above the aristocracy and the
clergy, the
bourgeoisie was prospering, paying the taxes, buying governmental
positions,
and penetrating the bureaucracy -- but without much voice in running
the state.
The English experience of constitutional monarchy was envied. In other
parts of
the continent, notably the Netherlands and intermittently the
Scandinavian
countries, the bourgeoisie were also participating state affairs. By
the
eighteenth century, the British model of government increasingly
inspired the
political thinkers in France.
Montesquieu
(1689-1755) in his De l'Esprit des Lois, (1748)[54]
used the English model to show the advantage of separating the
legislature, the
executive and the judiciary, and to demonstrate the shortcomings and
dangers of
absolutism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), partly influenced by
Locke's
philosophy of human nature and social contract, in his Social
Contract of 1762 advanced the concept of the General Will as
the source of legitimate authority. Many of his ideas have been claimed
by
political thinkers and activists of different shades and colors, at
times at
opposite poles. He wrote:
Finally,
each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as
there is no
associate over which he does not acquire the same right as he yields
others
over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an
increase
of force for the preservation of what he has ....
"Each of us puts his
person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the
general
will, and in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an
indivisible
part of the whole."
At
once, in the place of the individual personality of each contracting
party,
this act of association creates a moral and collective body, composed
of as
many members as the assembly contains voters, and receiving from this
act its
unity, its common identity, its life, and its will. This public person,
so
formed by the union of all other persons, formerly took the name of city, and
now takes that of Republic or body politic; it is called by its members State when
passive, sovereign when
active, and Power when compared with
others like itself. Those who are associated in it take collectively
the name
of people, and severally are called citizens, as sharing in the sovereign power, and subjects, as being under the laws of the State .
...the
Sovereign, being formed wholly of the individuals who compose it,
neither has
nor can have any interest contrary to theirs ....The Sovereign, merely
by
virtue of what it is, is always what it should be.
What,
then, strictly speaking is an act of sovereignty? It is not a
convention
between a superior and an inferior, but a convention between the body
and each
of its members. It is legitimate, because based on the social contract,
and
equitable, because common to all; useful, because it can have no other
object
than the general good, and stable, because guaranteed by the public
force and
the supreme power.[55]
Rousseau thus
deposited sovereignty
squarely with the people who, all assembled, by strict majority rule,
constitutionalized the authority of their government.
Eighteenth-century
France after
Louis XIV provided a favorable atmosphere for ideas such as those of
Rousseau.
While the king (Louis XV) still ruled by divine right, the absoluteness
of his
monarchy had slipped into the hands of the nobility who coveted a role
in the
affairs of state (which had been kept from them under Louis XIV). At
the
service of the nobility was the bureaucracy developed under Richelieu
and Louis
XIV, which still ran the country and collected the taxes according to
medieval
arrangements. The comparative relaxation of the nobility, the not very
vigorous
policies of Louis XV, and the influence of the king's mistresses,
particularly
the Marquise de Pompadour, contributed to a climate of luxury and
enlightened
despotism which continued under Louis XVI. The ruling class tolerated
the
sometimes satirical (such as Montesquieu's Lettres
Persanes of 1721), other times covert criticisms of the regime and
the
social system. Other currents emerging within the bourgeoisie also
propagated
new ideas. The secret societies, notably the Freemasonry, were
particularly
significant.
By the end of the
century, the
royal government was still unable to renounce the privileges and luxury
of the
ruling class and unwilling to apply the new ideas for reform--not for
lack of
ideas, for the philosophes and the
physiocrats had made the century the Age of Enlightenment. France's
budgetary
deficit was increasing, partly because of the expense of engaging in
the
American War of Independence on the side of the United States; and the
high
bourgeoisie was no longer prepared to foot the bill. The court finally
chose
the ultimate recourse, calling the Estates-General for the first time
since
1614. Many monarchists and bourgeoisie hoped the occasion would produce
a
constitutional monarchy similar to the British. The conditions,
however, no
longer lent themselves to a mild transition.[56] The
Declaration of the Rights of Man,
adopted by the National Assembly (the body the Estates-General soon
turned
itself into) on August 26, 1789, revealed the basic bourgeois nature of
the
French Revolution by emphasizing life, liberty and property, reflecting
the influence
of British and American political thought as well as that of the French
philosophers of the century, notably Rousseau. It declared that "The
natural, inalienable and sacred Rights of man" are "liberty,
property, security and resistance to oppression" (Art. 2), that "The
principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation" (Art.
3)
and that "The Law is the expression of the general will" (Art. 6).
Rousseau, however, had
also
said:
The
first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of
saying
"This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was
the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars and
murders,
from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved
mankind, by
pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his
fellows:
"Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once
forget
that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to
nobody.[57]
The Diggers in
mid-seventeenth-century England had also condemned private property and
had to
be dealt with to secure the growth of the nascent bourgeois movement.
But the
Diggers had less impact than did the French radicals. The population
explosion
of the eighteenth century and the uneven distribution of wealth in
France made
many more lower class people favorable to egalitarian thought and
disruptive
toward the kind of law and order the bourgeoisie had hoped for (and had
nearly
succeeded in negotiating within the framework of the monarchy). Between
1791
and 1795 things got out of hand, with mob agitations, the Reign of
Terror,
summary executions, and factional rivalries. The social and economic
thrust,
however, was bourgeois, and any authority which did not reflect that
class
seemed condemned to failure. So, by 1795, the chaos of mobs and terror
without
any well-defined ideology of government yielded to the bourgeois
concerns for
law and order.[58]
Interwoven with the
social and
economic realities was the crucial problem of the legitimization of
authority
and the concept of sovereignty -- not only a French national problem
but a
European problem. While the English civil war had also posed a problem
for
Europe, its total environmental conditions were different from those of
the
French Revolution, which had the potentials and pretensions of
upsetting the
whole European political system. In 1792, the French National
Convention had
voted a decree supporting all people who desired liberation from
despotic
rulers. In many European countries, especially in the east, such as
Prussia,
Austria and Russia, the capitalist industrial bourgeoisie was not
adequately
developed to alarm the absolute monarchs. But the French Revolution
claimed a
messianic role beyond the bourgeois revolution. At the 1793 convention,
inspired by Rousseau, Saint-Just accused not Louis XVI but royalty as
an
institution and a concept, declaring it a crime against the people and
a
usurpation of the general will.[59]
By the constitutions
of 1795
and 1799 France was emerging from revolutionary chaos, establishing
more stable
structures[60]
and
instituting an executive to provide greater security for the growth of
the
bourgeoisie. Yet her republican and missionary fervor to change the
face of
Europe remained a cause of concern for the European monarchies. Even
after
1804, when "the government of the Republic was entrusted to an
Emperor" and Napoleon was crowned in the presence of the Pope, the new
French empire was not unconditionally tolerated by the, European
monarchies.
The Napoleonic empire collapsed in 1814, and the new constitutional
charter of
Louis XVIII started with "The Divine Providence." Although an attempt
was again made to create a constitutional monarchy after the British
model, the
temporal and spatial circumstances did not lend themselves to
harmonious
institutions. The writing of a constitution was not enough. The British
political complex had grown over the centuries. Louis XVIII had come
back to
the French throne "in the baggage of the allies," and the royalists,
"having
learned nothing and forgotten nothing" of the past experiences, had
come
for revenge. In the meantime, however, the bourgeoisie, with a more
liberal
approach, had carved itself a good portion of power under the
Napoleonic
regime.
The European monarchs
who had
banded together to efface the vestiges of the French Revolution from
European
political culture pledged each other, in the Holy Alliance of 1815,
mutual aid
in maintaining their absolute and divine kingly rights. The British
monarchy
did not sign that Alliance (it already had too much of a parliamentary
system).
The Holy Alliance served more the monarchs of Austria, Prussia and
Russia to
justify their suppression of democratic movements.[61] France remained the weak link of the
European Concert of Powers regarding monarchical legitimacy. Its
revolutions of
1830, 1848 and 1870-1871 and successive monarchical, republican,
imperial and
finally again republican structures influenced political upheavals in
other
parts of Europe and often served as catalyst for the expansion of the
capitalist and industrial bourgeoisie on the continent. Despite the
French
experience, monarchy remained by and large the legitimate form of
personifying
a sovereign state, and when during the nineteenth century the Balkanic
states
became independent of the Ottoman Empire, they were given monarchical
constitutions. However, by qualifying monarchy as the legitimate form
of
personifying a sovereign state, we distinguish between the exercise of
divine
right by European monarchs on the one hand and bourgeois participation
in state
affairs through constitutional arrangements on the other. The extent of
either
depended on the position of the monarch, the evolution of the
bourgeoisie, and
the stage of industrial capitalism in a given country. Both the British
and the
Russian monarchs personified their respective states, but their
possibilities
for exercising sovereign rights were quite different. Europe of the
past
century thus provides us with a picture of overlapping political
cultures,
lagging institutions, conflicting ideologies and compromising interests.
The nineteenth-century
European
political evolutions and revolutions make better sense if we keep in
mind
European traditions and class structures, which can further explain why
the
bourgeoisie flirted with the aristocracy and the clergy, its
competitors for
political power. Unlike the aristocracy and the clergy, the bourgeoisie
could
not claim authority on traditional and supernatural premises. If the
bases of
legitimization of power into authority and sovereignty were to be
abruptly
transferred from above (divine providence) to below (the people), the
bourgeois
would have to share power with the populace, the lower classes, the
mob, which
would submerge it. Indeed, this happened in the early 1640's in England
when
the Levellers and Diggers became momentarily prominent, and from 1792
to 1795
during the French Revolution. In early nineteenth-century Europe, then,
with
the emerging radical and socialist movements and destitute working
classes, the
bourgeoisie compromised with the clergy and the monarchy to preserve
the social
structure and the class system that advantaged its fortune and
maintained its
kind of law and order: life, liberty (in the sense of liberal economy)
and
property. Thus, the consecration of royal divine rights was combined
with the
constitutionalization of "popular" rights into constitutional
monarchies. The evolutions in Western European political culture seem
more
plastic in contrast with political developments in the United States
and Russia
which had their own particularities and, in a way, represented
different
extremes: in the United States, an attenuated class struggle; in
Russia, the
rigidity and inflexibility of an absolute monarchy.
The
United States and the Soviet Union
The United States, by
its war
of independence, broke from the European and more particularly the
British
traditional patterns of government. Its relative lack of traditional
class
structure--which we discussed in Chapter Eight--the early development
of
bourgeois values among its population (a rather alert population
because of its
pioneering and Puritan characteristics), its immense resources and
prospects
for expansion and, as we pointed our, its natural inclinations for a
social
compact, were among the factors permitting the United States to base
the
legitimacy of its political authority structure on
constitutionalization long
before other Western countries. For divine consecration, it recognized
the
natural rights of men, as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence,
as
distinct from the divine right of kings. The revolt of the colonies in
the
context of the British kingdom corresponded to the political
conformity/cleavage/revolution model.[62]
Except for one major
snag, the
American political structure after the revolution was based on
practical
premises allowing American political culture to evolve towards a
consensus/cleavage/dissent/(civil disobedience) pattern. the snag, of
course,
was the race problem, which had not preoccupied the founding fathers
except for
a few like Jefferson. The African forced-migrants had slave status and
were
not included in the political process. But as we saw in Chapter Eight,
the race
question existed within the total social flux and was subject to its
fluctuations. Not only was emancipation hard to avoid in a dynamic
social
context, but the very nature of social change precipitated it. In a
society
moving rapidly toward industrialization, the value of slave labor as an
extension of northern industrial machines rather than of southern
agricultural
cattle was soon realized. The result was the bloody Civil War of
1861-1865. The
reasons for the Civil War were, of course, not solely economic, and the
Afro-Americans were neither cattle nor machines. Once the Civil War was
over,
within the range of conformity/ consensus/cleavage/dissent/civil
disobedience/revolt, the American culture once again fluctuated toward
the
middle, notably in coping with racial problems, from "Uncle Tom" to
the Black Panthers, with leaders like Booker T. Washington and Martin
Luther
King playing with and within the political structures to absorb and
effect
change.
Russia, on the other
hand,
presented the model most firmly clinging to archaic consecration. But
that
corresponded to Russian political culture, where most of the masses
looked at
the Tsar as the father of Russia, while the absolute monarchy laid a
heavy hand
on movements for emancipation of the serfs and social reforms. Yet in
the total
environment of Europe, the Western European political philosophies were
bound
to seep in. However, with a comparatively underdeveloped industry and
few or no
modern business structures, the Russian bourgeoisie had little
opportunity to
propagate its values among the masses, and had not itself assimilated
the modern
economic processes. The combination of
monarchy/church/aristocracy/bourgeoisie
leading to a constitutional monarchy did not materialize in the
nineteenth and
early twentieth-century Russian attempts. The bourgeoisie lacked a wide
popular
base, while the aristocracy remained selfish and aloof, and the Tsar,
still the
absolute ruler of a basically agrarian economy, was not ready to yield
to any
significant extent to bourgeois demands.
In the English civil
war of the
1640's and the French Revolution of 1789, the radical movements were
finally
controlled when the upper classes (the traditional aristocracy, the
clergy and
the bourgeoisie) sensed the need for compromise and combinations. This
process
eventually developed into a pattern of Western European political
culture. In
the 1917 clashes in Russia, the monarchy, the aristocracy and the
bourgeoisie,
by remaining for the most part dissonant, permitted the radicals to
take over.
The radicals (in this
case
communist in outlook) with their materialistic ideology had, of course,
to do
away with all supernatural premises of consecration of power into
authority.
Authority, accordingly, was to be the constitutionalization of the
people's
power--first that of the working class represented through the party
and, when
the classless society was achieved, direct communal authority. The
realities of
Soviet society, however, did not lend themselves to this ideal. The
political
conformist habits imposed by the Tsar for centuries, which had resulted
in the
cleavages leading to the October Revolution, were hard to break. The
political
culture could not gear overnight to a consensus/cleavage/dissent loop.
Breaking
the value system which had maintained the authority structure on the
basis of
consecration was not enough to initiate popular consciousness of
political
rights and, above all, responsibilities to create a peaceful,
reasonable and
stable process of constitutionalization.[63]
The base did not
understand
constitutionalization of the central authority. If the head was gone
and there
was no supernatural gimmick for replacing it, there would be many
pretenders
and social disruption. The Soviets were quick to realize this and the
danger it
presented, not only as an internal problem but also as foreign
intrigues and
encouragements. They soon elaborated their own "consecration" process
which, having no recourse to the supernatural-which they had
discarded--was
based on ideology. Ideology became the dogma, the party its church,
Marx,
Engels and Lenin its trinity, and Stalin its pope emperor. In the
post-Stalin
era we have witnessed Soviet efforts toward further
constitutionalization. The
1977 U. S.S.R. Constitution, while emphasizing the prerogatives of the
state on
the basis of scientific Marxism, lists an array of citizens' rights,
from
private property to family responsibilities, not without "bourgeois"
characteristics. The implication here is that ideology can, as a
value-crystallizing process, serve as the basis for "consecration" of
authority. The "consecration" we are talking about here is, of
course, different from the consecration process involving the
supernatural.
Retrospectively this process seems to be an interim episode which an
economically, socially and politically underdeveloped country submitting
*
* *
Our brief review of
the
development of Western political culture has unrolled the
legitimization of
power into authority through consecration and constitutionalization
with their
underlying spiritual, traditional, contractual and representational
dimensions.
In the course of our analysis we came across the development of the
crucial
phenomena of the bourgeoisie, sovereignty
and statehood. Our inquiry further affirmed that
authority is not a
simple political product but a reflection of cultural complexities such
as
value systems, class structures and economics. Let us explore these
paradigms
further in the next chapter to see their influence and integration
within the
socio-political flux.