Does Aristotle’s assertion that a viable political system requires a supportive culture still have relevance today?

 

Some readers may be wondering why anything written about culture and politics over 2000 years ago could possibly have contemporary relevance. Fred D. Miller J.R. makes a strong case that Aristotle’s views remain relevant in his recently published book, Aristotelian Statecraft. In particular, Miller demonstrates that we can still learn a lot from Aristotle about the relationships between moral character, culture and political systems.

In the first part of this essay I will draw upon Miller’s book, particularly Chapter 15, to explain the basis for Aristotle’s assertion that a viable political system requires a supportive culture. In the second part I will outline Miller’s observations about the contemporary relevance of the relationship between culture and political systems. In the third part I will reflect on implications of Miller’s work for the role political entrepreneurship in institutional change, drawing on my recent essays on that topic.

Aristotle’s thesis

At this point I should explain why I think Aristotle was intending to convey the idea that a viable political system requires a supportive culture in the sentence quoted in the epigraph (Pol. V.9.1310a). The quote appears in a context where Aristotle is writing about laws being democratic or oligarchic. Since he is also referring to a constitution as something that might be influenced by education of the young, it seems reasonable to infer that in this context he sees a constitution as being constituted mainly of mores (i.e. informal institutions).

Aristotle observes that the moral character of a polis reflects the moral character of its citizens. His thesis that a viable political system requires a supportive culture can be seen to stem from his moral psychology. The line of argument is summarized in the following points:

• Individuals develop character traits, including social virtues, through their voluntary habitual actions in social settings. Good character has two components: pursuit of virtuous ends; and practical wisdom to choose the best means to those ends.
• Justice and friendship are the most important social virtues. Justice aims at establishing some kind of equality among individuals whereby they all get what properly belongs to them and can cooperate for mutual advantage. Friendship goes beyond justice. Friends choose what is good for each other, and each believes their own good is chosen by the other. Friendship entails trust as well as respect.
• “When a number of individuals cooperate in an association over a period of time, their shared character traits and practical knowledge become an integral part of the culture of the association.” (p. 370)
• Political friendship – a situation where individuals regard fellow citizens as their friends - is closely related to consensus. It is typically found in a society where the rich and the poor (and others with divergent interests) agree about important issues and trust people in authority to act in the common interest.
• However, if people are not careful to treat each other justly, political friendship will be eroded, resulting in civil strife between parties with divergent interests. As the culture is corrupted “individuals will seek to aggrandize themselves at the public expense and the association will become unjust, unstable, and fragile”.

Miller concludes:

“The practical upshot of Aristotle’s thesis is that legislators and policy makers should be concerned about supporting and advancing culture by promoting education and the institutions and practices necessary for the formation of virtuous character traits.” (p. 371)

Miller’s observations about contemporary relevance

The point about emergence of civil strife among those with divergent interests seems to me to be relevant to explaining the link between interest group politics and growth of populism in Western democracies. I will return to that topic later.  

In discussing the contemporary relevance of Aristotle’s thesis, Miller focuses on the role of culture in the political transition of the countries that emerged following the collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s. Miller sets the scene for that discussion by noting that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced similar ideas to Aristotle in Democracy in America.

Tocqueville noted that democratic political institutions suited to common traits of Americans could not easily be transferred to Europe. He suggests that traits such as self-help, mutual beneficence, and active participation in voluntary associations made Americans more self-reliant and less dependent upon government support.

Miller also draws upon Douglas North’s views on the path-dependence of culture. He quotes a passage in which North cites examples of unsuccessful attempts to transplant to other countries the constitutions and laws of the United States and other successful Western countries. Those attempts failed because the formal institutions being transplanted were incompatible with the prevailing cultures of recipient countries.

Miller’s observations about the political transition following communist rule draw initially on the work of Svetozar Pejovich (“The Uneven Results of Institutional Change in Central and Eastern Europe: The Role of Culture”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 2006). Pejovich’s theoretical framework rests on the idea that the transactions costs of integrating new formal rules are higher when members of the community perceive the consequences of those rules to conflict with their prevailing culture. He applies that framework to discuss the great disparity in economic freedom among Central and Eastern European countries in 2004, advancing the hypothesis that countries with a stronger Western cultural influence have been more successful in making the transition than those with a tradition of Eastern Orthodox Christianity or Islam. Pejovich observes that culture in the less free and unfree groups has “a bias toward collectivism, egalitarianism, and shared values that predates communism”.

Miller expands Pejovich’s analysis to cover political and personal freedom and extends the period covered to 2002. Drawing upon a range of sources, he identifies three groups of countries in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for 2020-2022: consolidated democracies; consolidated semi-democracies; and hybrid regimes. The consolidated democracies are Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Czech Republic and Slovakia. The consolidated semi-democracies are Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia. The19 hybrid regimes include Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Serbia, and Hungary.

The author notes that most of the countries that got off to a good start after the fall of communism have continued their trajectories to consolidate democratic capitalism.  He adds: “A notable exception was Hungary, which was demoted to the hybrid zone after a conservative government adopted a new constitution.”

Miller notes that most countries in the hybrid group have made little progress to democratic capitalism. He then adds:

“On the other hand, it is noteworthy that none of these countries have reverted to outright authoritarianism. It is as if they have an inner tendency preventing them from rising above or falling below a certain level. Aristotle’s thesis suggests a plausible explanation of this phenomenon: the parameters of political change are determined to a significant extent by a country’s underlying culture.”

Implications for political entrepreneurship

Miller’s book contains a great deal of information about Aristotle’s view of statecraft which is highly relevant to consideration of political entrepreneurship. In this section of the essay, however, I want to focus on two of my essays discussing the roles of culture and political entrepreneurship as determinants of economic and personal freedom.

The first of these essays is entitled Part II: Can cultural values explain freedom levels? In that essay I observe the existence of a weak positive relationship between economic freedom and an index of facilitating values that I have developed and a strong positive relationship between Christian Welzel’s emancipative values index and personal freedom levels. This research is broadly supportive of the view that culture plays an important role as a determinant of formal institutional settings.

However, my main focus was on outlier countries, whose freedom levels could not be readily explained by culture. I suggested that outlier status can be attributed to the influence of political entrepreneurship. It is relatively easy to identify individual political entrepreneurs who have contributed to institutional outcomes in countries with economic and/or personal freedom ratings substantially lower than might be predicted by underlying cultural values. However, when governments have relatively high regard for individual liberty, political entrepreneurship tends to be more subtle, and less focused on individual national leaders.

Looking at the data base used in this analysis, 24 countries can be identified as belonging to the former Soviet bloc. Of those,10 have both economic and personal freedom levels within a range of plus or minus 1 unit of that predicted by underlying cultural values. Armenia is the only country in which both personal and economic freedom are greater the predicted level; Albania is the only other country where economic freedom is greater than the predicted level. Azerbaijan is the only country with both personal and economic freedom are less than the predicted level and is also the only country with economic freedom less than the predicted level. Apart from Armenia, the countries with personal freedom greater than the predicted level are Bosnia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia and Romania. Apart from Azerbaijan, the countries with personal freedom levels lower than the predicted level are Belarus, Russia and Tajikistan.

This analysis provides some support for the Aristotle/Miller thesis even though it suggests that political entrepreneurship can also play an important role in determining economic and personal freedom levels.

The second of my essays relevant to the role of culture and political entrepreneurship is entitled Part VI: What are the consequences of path dependence? In that essay I argue that the culture of preferment-seeking and plunder currently associated with interest group politics in Western liberal democracies took a long time to reach its current state, but it is now entrenched and will be difficult to overcome. The problem arises from path dependence. Changing the rules of the game to reduce the adverse impact of interest group politics poses a large challenge for reform-minded political entrepreneurs.

The development of my line of argument has features in common with the Aristotle/ Miller thesis outlined above. The most obvious common element is reference to Douglas North’s views on the path dependence of culture.

My line of argument also relies heavily on the views of James M Buchanan about social virtues. Those views have an Aristotelian flavour. Buchanan argues that two norms underpin liberal democracy: that a sufficient proportion of the population can make their own choices and prefer to be autonomous rather than dependent on others; and that a sufficient proportion of the population enter relationships with others based on reciprocity, fair dealing, and mutual respect. My attempt to link Buchanan’s views to Aristotle has led me to John Passmore’s book, The Perfectibility of Man (1970). Buchanan claims that book “remains the definitive work on the history of ideas” related to its title. From the little I have read of Passmore’s book, it is clear that he is influenced by Aristotle (but more critical of Aristotle’s views than I am).

I began my path dependence essay with famous quotes from Frédéric Bastiat about the state being the great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else; and the universal franchise as likely to result in universal plunder. It is now clear to me, however, that Bastiat’s comments should be viewed in the light of Tocqueville’s observation that democratic political institutions suited to common traits of Americans could not easily be transferred to Europe. In that light, at the time they were made Bastiat’s comments seem to have been more pertinent to continental Europe than to the Anglosphere. Over the last 150 years, democratic political institutions do seem to have had greater resilience in the Anglosphere than in other parts of the world.

However, in my view Aristotle’s warning that social trust will be eroded if people are not careful to treat each other justly has now also become highly pertinent to the Anglosphere. We are seeing increasing evidence that as the culture is corrupted “individuals will seek to aggrandize themselves at the public expense”. Our democratic political institutions now seem to be becoming increasingly “unjust, unstable, and fragile”.

Conclusion

 This essay was prompted by my reading of Chapter 15 of Fred Miller’s book, Aristotelian Statecraft. That chapter discusses how Aristotle’s observation that the moral character of a polis reflects the moral character of its citizens supports his view that a viable political system requires a supportive culture.

In that chapter, Miller also discusses the varied political transition of countries following the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s to illustrate that democratic capitalism is only viable if culture is supportive. He demonstrates that the countries that have been most successful in making the transition have had a history of relatively strong Western cultural influence. Cultural influences in many of the other countries seem to hold them back from either advancing strongly toward democratic capitalism or reverting to outright authoritarianism.

I also considered whether the Aristotle/Miller thesis is consistent with the conclusions of two essays in my series on political entrepreneurship. The findings of my essay on the extent to which cultural values explain freedom levels are broadly supportive of the role of cultural values, even though I emphasize that political entrepreneurship can also play an important role.

My essay on the consequences of path dependence offers strong support for the Aristotle/ Miller thesis in the context of considering the gradual erosion of social virtues in Western liberal democracies. I think we are now observing the consequences of failure to heed Aristotle’s warning that social trust will be eroded if people do not treat each other justly.