Of laws and demons

The origin of liberal republics, which later, with the progressive adoption of real universal suffrage, became what are now called liberal democracies, was inseparable from the idea that their proper functioning could not depend on the virtue of their rulers.

Spinoza, a connoisseur of human nature in general and of the ruling elite and the ecclesiastical counter-elite of the Dutch Republic led by Johan de Witt in particular, based his political philosophy on the principle that the stability of regimes could not be left to the good faith or honesty of their leaders, a principle that, a century later, was rediscovered in David Hume, who maintained that republican and free governments were absurd if their constitution did not provide barriers and controls to prevent the dishonest and the wicked from acting against the general interest.

Shortly thereafter, James Madison, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, insisted on the need for these barriers and controls in his articles in defense of the new Constitution in The Federalist. In a famous passage, he stated that, since men are not angels, checks and balances must be established, even within the very structure of government, to compensate for the absence of higher motives by countervailing selfish interests and competing ambitions.

A liberal democracy cannot depend on the virtue of its rulers.

Around the same time, in a no less famous passage, Kant added ironically that the problem of establishing and maintaining a republican constitution would have to find a solution even in a “people of demons,” provided that such devils were endowed with the intelligence necessary to calculate the personal harm that would inevitably result from failure to comply with well-conceived rules designed to dissuade them from acting as they would if they did not exist.

Perhaps we shouldn't completely share Kant's optimism regarding the capabilities of constitutional and legislative engineering. But, at this point in the story, it doesn't seem sensible to continue abandoning the old republican pessimism regarding the corruptibility of individuals in positions of power.

Read also

The fraction of the political class that doesn't want to become the gravediggers of liberal democracy should remember what was clear to those who founded or designed the regimes from which it historically derives. As long as there is power and money, and it doesn't seem like either will disappear immediately, corruption will be tempting. But the survival of liberal democracies depends on the will to establish effective and deterrent mechanisms to prevent it as much as possible. Their crisis of legitimacy, which fuels the extreme right, has much to do with the negligence of legislators, who, while scandals erode trust, let years go by without doing their work.