Goldilocks’ Dilemma of State-Society Relations

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The spirit of the age determines the trajectory of a nation’s politics. While sovereignty is a function of power and not just a legal term, a state won’t be able to sustain itself without getting the balance of societal forces right.

2024-07-24T18:23:00+05:00 Ejaz Haider

Fifteen years before the failed European revolutions of 1848, a small group of German students, artists and workers seeking to unite Germanic states under a liberal constitution, stormed the guard post of a military garrison in Frankfurt. They were supported by a handful of Polish refugees and political activists. There was no strategy involved, no idea of what would come next if the guard house were indeed captured.

Historian John Bew tells us in his remarkably detailed book, Realpolitik: A History, that ‘The army had received forewarning, however, and the attempt was a hopeless failure.” The attempt came to be known as Frankfurter Wachenstrum (the charge of the Frankfurt guard house).

One of those involved in that charge was a 23-year-old radical named August Ludwig von Rochau. Bew says “This was the first stage in what was to be a rude awakening for Rochau about the unforgiving nature of politics and the limits of idealism.”

Rochau was to give the Germanic world the term Realpolitik, a term Bew tells us has travelled far and wide and in the process lost the meaning originally ascribed to it by Rochau who coined the neologism. Worse, Rochau’s name has been lost in the mist of time.

Far from being Machiavellian, “Real Realpolitik” as Bew calls it, was the application of Rochau’s analytical framework. While that framework can be applied to international relations — or “theatre” as Bew says — “the creation of the concept of Realpolitik was an attempt [by Rochau] to answer a domestic political conundrum: how to build a stable and liberal nation-state in an unsteady and rapidly changing environment, without recourse to violent convulsion or repression.”

Ideas do matter in politics but any truth that might inhere in them doesn’t affect politics in and of itself. It must have the power to do so.

Strategic literature has a term: Goldilocks’ Dilemma — is the porridge too hot, too cold or just right; is the bed too hard and big, too soft or just the proper size. Building a stable state while avoiding repression is also about the correct balance.

As Rochau writes:

The Realpolitik does not move in a foggy future, but in the present’s field of vision, it does not consider its task to consist in the realisation of ideals, but in the attainment of concrete ends, and it knows, with reservations, to content itself with partial results, if their complete attainment is not achievable for the time being. Ultimately, the Realpolitik is an enemy of all kinds of self-delusion. (Foundations of Realpolitik, 1868)

But as Bew informs us, while “real Realpolitik eschewed liberal utopianism… it did not jettison liberal idealism in itself.” Rochau came to believe that the law of the strong was the determining factor in politics. But he also argued that the most effective form of government incorporated the powerful forces (ideational and other currents) within the state and channel their energies to create a balance — the porridge that’s just right. Rochau’s other two tenets were that ideas do matter in politics but any truth that might inhere in them doesn’t affect politics in and of itself. It must have the power to do so.

Finally, Zeitgeist. The spirit of the age determines the trajectory of a nation’s politics. In other words, while sovereignty is a function of power and not just a legal term, a state won’t be able to sustain itself without getting the balance of societal forces right and, yes, appreciating the Zeitgeist.

Balance is key. Economists Daren Acemoglu and James Robinson called it the “narrow corridor.” The proposition is as complex as the postulation is simple: liberal-democratic states exist in between the alternatives of lawlessness (Absent Leviathan) and authoritarianism (Despotic Leviathan). Put another way, you need a state to protect the weak from the strong and to avoid chaos (criminal gangs of Nigeria in the 80s, gang control and violence in Haiti, Bolivia and other Central American states); equally, the state can become an instrument of violence and repression.

As Acemoglu put it, The conflict between state and society, where the state is represented by elite institutions and leaders, creates a narrow corridor in which liberty flourishes. You need this conflict to be balanced. An imbalance is detrimental to liberty. If society is too weak, that leads to despotism. But on the other side, if society is too strong, that results in weak states that are unable to protect their citizens.”

Acemoglu and Robinson call it the “Red Queen effect”, a reference to a race in Lewis Carrolls Through the Looking Glass. The race requires balance — constant running to remain in the same spot because it occurs in the narrow corridor” where liberty-supporting states can exist.

The balance results in a Shackled Leviathan — state and society balancing each other’s powers. Acemoglu and Robinson call it the “Red Queen effect”, a reference to a race in Lewis Carrolls Through the Looking Glass. The race requires balance — constant running to remain in the same spot because it occurs in the narrow corridor” where liberty-supporting states can exist. Put another way, state-society relations and capacity must develop in tandem, a process that denotes constant struggle, or running.

As we look around the globe, we see most states and societies, including in the developed world losing this balance. At home we have almost already lost it. That discussion is next on the menu.

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