It’s funny how Montesquieu never thought that this “division of power” wouldn’t work if those in power all went to the same schools and married each other.
What is required to make “checks and balances” work well? If the major institutions become controlled by people who share an ideology and outlook, does that mean that checks and balances disappear?
Last week, Alex Tabarrok wrote,
For college and university faculty in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont – the liberal to conservative ratio is above 25 to 1!
My guess is that those professors tend to see checks and balances as a bug rather than a feature, at least as long as there is a President in office who shares their world view.
“professors tend to see checks and balances as a bug rather than a feature”
I suspect it’s worse. They use them when convenient, and ignore them when exedient.
Recommended: JT Levy’s Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, on this very subject.
Short response would be: it doesn’t matter how like one another the elite are, so much as whether they are able to effectively divide the loyalties of citizens among themselves, so as to be able to offset one another.
Most colleges have been practicing discrimination against pro-life Christian conservatives for 40+ years, since Roe v Wade.
Secret, dishonest, illegal (?), hypocritical discrimination.
Secret — they don’t say they’re discriminating.
Dishonest – they say they are NOT discriminating, tho they are.
Illegal – “The Civil Rights Act of 1991 expanded the relief available to employees found to be victims of intentional discrimination based on religion, sex, national origin, or physical or mental disability.”
hypocritical – “Harvard University provides equal opportunity in employment for all qualified persons and prohibits discrimination in employment on the basis of race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, age, veteran status, disability unrelated to job requirements, genetic information, military service, or other protected status.”
When it comes to pro-life Christians, and Republicans, most well known colleges are discriminating against them. Despite the law against discriminating based on their “religion, creed”.
I doubt there could be much change, altho a massive Christian based class-action anti-discrimination suit is one of my “pleasant nightmares” that I occassionally fantasize about. Even if it loses, generating the discussion is valuable.
I’ll quickly restate my theory on professors leaning left here:
I think professors tend to lean left, because they believe that they are experts in their fields, and the left wants experts to make centralized decisions for the rest of us.
That New England trend is interesting though.
I respectfully disagree.
I’m not convinced that’s it. It’s not just that they want to be the expert with the power (it fits some professors). Maybe there is some emergent principle (1960s “Save the Cities”) where the left needed experts and the professors volunteered to be those experts. But the tendency is deeper.
Recently a line from a Daniel Pipes interview keeps running through my head:
“I have the simple politics of a truck driver.”
= – = – = – =
I’m thinking it has something to do with intellectuals often becoming professors. Most of them don’t think like truck drivers.
Intellectuals are often bored and they get bored easily.
Many of them tend toward “novelty seeking behavior”
new ideas are interesting–they are endlessly fascinating.
Old ideas, in contrst, can be boring.
Why stick with the lessons of the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” which are old and boring and predictable. There are so many great ideas to sample!!
Robert Coquest said that many intellectuals don’t think long and hard about things. Rather, they are “excited by ideas.” IDK where he said this–probably repeatedly. .
Link to Daniel Pipe’s intereview:
http://www.danielpipes.org/2300/militant-about-islamism
It’s funny how Montesquieu never thought that this “division of power” wouldn’t work if those in power all went to the same schools and married each other.
When wasn’t this true with those in power all went to the same schools and married each other? A reading of most of the founding fathers, is how many of them came from the right schools, right backgrounds and married the right families. The first President born out of the upper classes was Andrew Jackson. Compare today where most Presidents after WW2, were not born in upper classes. Also, most of our economic elite also went to the right schools and married the right people. (I know there were disruptions in the post WW2 and internet years.)
The commenter’s expertise is on Chinese statecraft, and there the concept of checks and balances was slowly developed over centuries of experience with emperors being deposed by their prime ministers. By the 590s they developed the idea of dividing the government in ministries and having several ministers of equal rank report to the emperor.
But that didn’t work by itself: the emperor had to play a proactive game of “lets you and him fight” in order to stop the different ministries from colluding. Which they did all the time as soon as one stupid or frivolous emperor got the throne.
All governments work on patronage networks; and all patronage networks have a big incentive to collude, or often fight each other and eventually fuse into The One Big Patronage Network which commands the larger amount of goodies. Checks and balances just can’t work long-term.
I rather think the Soviets (and Chicoms) had the right idea changing the constitution every couple of decades. The idea that the same system can last for centuries is ludicrous.
The classical reason for having checks and balances — preventing tyranny — has worked pretty well and continues to work. You have to have a very shallow understanding of tyrannies to think we are one. If you expect “Checks and balances” to ensure good or libertarian policy, it never has and never will. No amount of institutions can keep voters from being dumb sometimes.
It isn’t just educational institutions. Revolving door and preservation of options for subsequent employment matter a lot. Few people start and stay in a particular institution for life. Even judges appointed young think about posturing for future, better appointments, and money from side gigs.
They will not, as agents, fully internalize the goals of their principles if being adequately adversarial means cutting off a potential future opportunity with the opponent they are supposed to regulate or check and balance. And that’s just incentives, leaving out the prestige-based social transmission of attitudes which tends to re-mold ones outlook.
The prospect of big future paydays is inherently fraught with the potential for soft corrupting influence that diminishes the exclusive, fiduciary loyalty an agent just posses to be a genuinely vigorous and effective checker and balancer.
Combined with common acculturation and indoctrination and exposed to the same socially high status messages, one ends up with a very ideologically homogeneous and converged elite, who understand themselves as being on the same team and all against their non-elite domestic opponents.
If voters are dumb enough to let them, then I would say check and balances are working perfectly. They don’t exist for the benefit of the uninformed.
Over that short of time frame we also see fewer voters identifying as Republican and more independent, whether leaving the party or life I can’t say.