How things fall apart

Is it the end of the State as we knew it?

Words like force, momentum and inertia are often used to talk about social and political matters, but with nothing like the precision of Newton’s laws of motion. Explaining how an aircraft takes off and flies, or crashes, and explaining how a government (metaphorically) takes off and flies, or crashes, are not the same. In observing politics, I often think of Newton’s third law: for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. But political actions aren’t precisely measurable, and the reactions may not be equal and may not be opposing on all points.

Historians are fond of rise-and-fall narratives, especially falls, and theories of political order sometimes refer to centrifugal and centripetal forces. But political “motion” is less predictable, and much more wonky, than physical motion. Rather than a pendulum swing, think of the wobbly spiral of a poorly designed paper dart.

If you think that we’re living in a time when things are falling apart or collapsing, you may be on to something. Two of the symptoms are: more people with aspirations to higher positions than there are vacancies, and large numbers of people experiencing misery. Put simply: lots of university graduates who’ll never own their own homes, and lots of people in poverty whose children won’t go beyond high school. Add ecological crises to the cocktail. Then vigorously stir, left and right, accompanied by unrealistic and extreme incantations.

If it’s not natural causes (earthquakes, droughts, floods, plagues) that bring civilisation down, then it’s human actions (wars, civil wars, revolutions), or a combination. It’s happened before. Peaceful and rational ways through these complex situations tend to be the exception, not the rule. It would be good if governments would anticipate and prevent looming catastrophes, but government itself, no matter who runs it, becomes a part of the problem, not the solution, when things get to a critical stage. Perhaps we could put this down to political “inertia”.

The reader may be expecting me to say “what we should do about it”, because that’s what plenty of other writers do. They feel an obligation or urge to persuade people to take what they believe is the path towards salvation. Almost anyone, however, could come up with such suggestions or prescriptions – only to be knocked down with objections, and often quite reasonable ones. Even the most sophisticated commentators will meet their match – and the argument goes on.

People cannot settle on a common set of basic values, let alone an agreed programme of action; “national identity” is empty and needs force to be believed. The danger is that, amid the indecision and debate, uncertainty and despair about the future set in and conspiracy theories thrive.

Can we govern our way out of polycrisis?

Debates about big social problems and their solutions inevitably turn to the question of government. Is “democracy” our best hope, or has it become an empty promise? Is the one-party state even worse, or is the Chinese model proving more effective? So, rather than personalising the matter, I’m referring here to the systems or forms of government, not the particular leaders or parties who may be governing for the time being. The proposed solutions to the problem of government range from anarchism (little or no government) to a total state. The best answer must lie somewhere in between those extremes (although someone will disagree with that too), but the range of “moderate” options is still wide. And, once there’s a system in place, then there’s the question of what we’d expect it to do – and not do.

If the system of government itself is a big part of the problem – and hence needs reform – then let’s be careful what we ask for. Substantial change is disruptive, if not revolutionary, and this entails its own set of problematic consequences. History is full of examples of revolutions that replaced one bad regime with another bad one. Brexit has been enough of a disaster, and that wasn’t a full-on revolution (devolution would be closer).

On the other hand, North Korea and Iran, for example, are overdue for radical changes in their systems of government. The scary thing is that, when those changes do come, there’ll probably be a lot more violence and suffering.

Looking at the “moderate” forms of government, though, they have problems too. Representative government – led by elected people who are served by hired officials – is widely regarded as the best – or the least bad – option. It’s often imprecisely described as “liberal democracy”. But systems of this kind are under a lot of strain, in part because many people don’t experience them as democratic in practice. Political parties undergo realignment and fragmentation, to the point that it gets hard to form governing coalitions. This is accompanied by the rise of more radical parties, notably these days the populists on the right. In some countries, these disruptive parties are taking leading positions. Internal polarisation is driven by disaffection about poverty, inequality, inflation and immigration, while the meaning of political representation has been reshaped by those who’ve been “under-represented”.

Meanwhile, there’s pressure for devolution of powers to provinces, if not complete secession, and for indigenous government. And yet, in the opposite direction, there’s an urgent need for states to collaborate on problems of global scale, including international conflict and climate change. The state is pushed and pulled in all directions, and the trend over the last century has been a post-imperial increase in the number of states, as break-ups (for example, the Czech and Slovak republics) are more frequent than unification (for example, East and West Germany).

China and India are returning to their historical positions as world-leading economic powerhouses. The US will retain its military and economic supremacy for the time being, but it’s lost any standing it once had as an exemplar of good government, and its famous Constitution is outdated, but political polarisation and self-interest stand in the way of reform. The EU has work ahead to remain unified, and not to see another country exit, while many of its core values are challenged from within by far-right parties that are gaining support in elections – the latest being Austria.

It’s no surprise that people are looking for alternative forms of state such as the network state, “a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world and eventually gains diplomatic recognition from pre-existing states” – inspired in this case by cryptocurrencies.

The wildcard is AI, which will change the ways in which societies are administered, regulated and monitored. Moreover, AI will alter the form of government itself, creating an unpredictable feedback-loop of radical political change. Outside of sci-fi, never before have humans faced the prospect of machines doing everything better and faster – autonomously changing and learning as they go. Just as no one really realised two decades ago just how toxic social media would turn out to be, no one can tell you what’s coming. The AI experts aren’t very good at political theory, even though many do express genuine concern about the political consequences of their inventions.

People often talk metaphorically about “the machinery of government”. But government and politics don’t follow Newtonian laws. The future trajectory of the state can’t be predicted. In the 1990s, for instance, there were widely-read (and highly over-rated) authors predicting “the demise of the nation-state”. They didn’t see a new wave of nationalist populism coming a mere two decades later. What they could see, in retrospect, was seven decades of catastrophic struggle between three different forms of government: fascist, communist and liberal-representative. People thought that the latter had won. Recently, however, Joe Biden described the world as being locked into a grand Manichean struggle: “Democracies and autocracies are engaged in a contest to show which system of governance can best deliver for their people and the world” – although I’m sure we’ll understand it differently when we look back.

States rise and fall, and they change in form, from time to time, rarely peacefully. But the normative form of the State itself, as defined in international law, may be undergoing transformation. Could that be for the better?

AI-generated, with very poor spelling, on gencraft:

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Focus on Iran

I was happy to be invited to talk with Morteza Sharifi in a podcast on his Focus on Iran channel. The Islamic Republic of Iran is a theocratic state that’s violently oppressive, discriminates systematically against women, and fails to represent the majority of its people. It supports terrorist organisations in the region and supplies drones to Russia for use in Ukraine. To complicate matters, a week after the podcast was recorded Iran launched missiles into Israel in retaliation for assassinations of leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran’s Quds force. Morteza and I discussed the prospects for secular reform of government in Iran. I found his questions difficult to answer – and you’ll hear me fumble a bit – but there are no easy answers. Our Persian friends deserve support, however, as the vast majority do not want authoritarian theocratic government, and it’s hard for them to speak out about it, even at a distance. Everyone should be free to follow openly and without fear the religion of their choice, or none at all. Western Christian nations arrived at the tolerant-secular compromise only after epic levels of unnecessary violence over several centuries, and Christian fundamentalism is still a force. But the short-cut to peace and legitimacy is open and sign-posted now for anyone to see. The Iran–Israel conflict overshadows that, and Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu is predicting (or promising, or warning) that the end of the theocratic regime in Teheran “will come a lot sooner than people think” (Politico).

The final months of Biden’s presidency will be overshadowed by conflict in the Middle East, which he has enabled through aid to Israel. The ally with whom, the White House said, “the American people stand shoulder-to-shoulder” is rushing ahead of him, burning things and killing people. As I write, the world waits to see how Israel will respond to a missile attack from Iran. Escalation towards a wider regional war is looking likely, as numerous actors in this complex situation seem to want the conflict to continue.