What follows will explore why democracies are not states, and why it really matters a great deal for classical liberals. I am not interested in discussing anarcho-capitalism in the discussion to follow. Democracies can be spontaneous orders and still be either superior or inferior to anarcho-capitalism. That is a different discussion.

Higgs in his final post below writes of the argument that democracies are spontaneous orders:

“In the last comment of my previous post, I sought to suggest succinctly why no big debate ever seems to break out with regard to diZerega's thesis: namely, because the thesis is incoherent. DiZerega wants to treat democratic states as something other than states; and he wants to treat democratic states, which are the composite of all sorts of deliberate, planned, intended effects, as spontaneous orders, that is, as the results of human action but not of human design. Perhaps, just perhaps, nobody will debate diZerega at length because nobody finds the debate he wants to have worth having.”

If I remember correctly, William F. Buckley once said when some liberal refused to come onto his show, “The baloney doesn't want to go to the meat grinder” or some such thing. I think Higgs has produced enough of a sausage, even if a very small one, that I can begin to grind a bit.

I will also explain why this issue is very important for classical liberal strategy. It is not trivial.

In his earlier post, along with an opaque reference to venn diagrams, Higgs pooh poohed “diZerega's equation of a spontaneous order with a heavily armed (if elected) organized-crime gang that enforces at gunpoint (aided by incessant propaganda) a territorial monopoly to operate a protection racket.” Perhaps he thought this was an argument - taking him at his word, I will also grind away at that.

SPONTANEOUS ORDER DEFINED
A spontaneous order has several key characteristics. First, it emerges unplanned out of many independent actions. Second, the order results from people being free to take whatever actions they wish within a system of procedural rules - rules that describe how to do whatever it is you wish to do, but do not tell you what to do. Contract is the clearest example on this list. Third, the system of procedural rules must be capable of generating feedback enabling people to be assisted in pursuing whenever goals they wish that are compatible with the rules. Finally, the rules must facilitate voluntary cooperation.

I will assume that readers of this blog do not need further explanation of the concept.

Democracies are characterized by a system of procedural rules: one person one vote, regular elections, freedom of organization, press, and speech, and so on. People are free to advocate anything from communism to libertarianism within this framework of rules, seeking the support of others. When they receive support, it comes in the form of votes, either for people claiming to support those ideas, or in initiatives, for legislation purporting to implement those ideas. Feedback comes in the form of public support, especially through votes. While democracies rely on force to enforce the laws that are made, in order to be made the laws rely on voluntary agreement of at least a majority in order to become law. Madison sought to make it so super majorities were needed to reduce the threat of majority tyranny.

Contracts have the same character, by the way. They are voluntary when made, and enforceable once entered upon by people following the correct procedures. This is true even for anarcho-capitalism. The debate there is not about enforcement, but whether one or many competing enforcers is best.

So there is no LOGICAL problem in envisioning a completely voluntary democratic political process resulting in rules that can be enforced once agreed upon, even though in practice that does not happen.

DEMOCRACIES AND STATES
The concept of a state first arose during the Renaissance, though the thing the concept described certainly preceded it. It referred to organized systems of rule. A ruler was on top - a king, oligarchy, clergy, or whatever. Later Louis XIV put it pretty well in saying “I am the state” (in French). In the International Relations theoretical literature, states have interests, plans, goals, and the like. They are anthropomorphized as rational actors in some of those schools of thought.

Much IR literature in the years before the fall of communism worried about democracies in the international arena because they do not seem to behave as the rational actors they “should” be. True, in international law democracies are considered states - but that tells us nothing about what they really are as systems of social life. In American law corporations are persons, but no one would argue they are in practice. The same holds for the use of the term state to include democracies in international law. I am focusing on democracies and states as different systems of order.

Take the old Soviet Union. You had a specifiable and concrete group that controlled the administrative and other functions of the Russian government in order to serve their interests. All was very concrete. Opposition was illegal. Totalitarianism and autocracy are the ultimate expressions of the logic of the state - hierarchies of near absolute power vis-à-vis all else in society. Structurally, in many ways it resembled a criminal corporation or organized crime. Here I agree 100% with Higgs' point about gangs. But it does not apply to democracies.

One quick way to get a sense of my distinction is to compare democracies in peace time and in times of serious war. In peacetime there is no real national purpose, no clear set of goals, no hierarchy of ends. There is what seems at first glance to be simply a mess. A democracy does not become more or less democratic by passing a law so long as procedures are followed and the law does not undermine the further applicability of those procedures. It is not more or less successful by doing so.

When a democracy enters into serious war the first casualty is democratic procedures. That is, once we have a firm goal, dissent becomes disloyal, the party in power represents the people, and so on. Democracies never act more undemocratically than during wartime. That is why it is so risky for them to engage in it.

But in peace time there is never such a firm national consensus as to what needs to be done, and so there is no hierarchy in the same sense, nor is dissent considered disloyal. In wartime democracies resemble states - but only because there is a genuine and in some cases at least, uncoerced near consensus. But free societies have to fear times when there is a near consensus because that facilitates those who would be its leaders turning the government into a hierarchy of power and domination. We have all had more than a taste of that crap recently.

It is suggestive that as modern society has grown more complex, democratic governments have proven better able to handle the complexities encountered than have autocratic ones. The fall of communism is evidence of this. Further, as I (and others) have emphasized, democracies behave very differently in the international sphere than do states. For example, there has never been a war between two representative democracies. By comparison, every communist state whose party came to power on its own, and has a neighbor with the same characteristics, has fought a war or major border conflict with that neighbor. The sample is small, but it is 100%. States seem unable to contain conflict even when it is in their interests not to. There are many other such differences - Rummel, who agrees with me that democracies are spontaneous orders, has done the most impressive statistical work in this area.

Nothing I have yet said suggests democracies are desirable, only that they are different in important ways from undemocratic states.

All social spontaneous orders foster organizations within them that make use of their feedback to more effectively pursue organizational goals. At the same time, these organizations exist only so long as they can either adapt to systemic changes they do not control, or seek to control those changes. If they succeed in the latter, they have converted the spontaneous order into an organization in Hayek's sense. The Nazi take over of the Weimar Republic is a case where a democracy was converted into a state, with very different dynamics that followed.

In the US elected representatives have nibbled away at democratic procedural processes, especially through gerrymandering, creating a two party oligopoly, the current attempt to create a national political machine, and so on. In my judgment they are closer to creating a genuine state than perhaps at any time in our history.

The formal governmental structure within a democracy is what would be a state if it were freed from its subordination to democratic procedures. In the US, the democracy is more than simply the branches of government in Washington, it is an incredibly complex network including media, public and private interest groups, parties, and indeed, anyone who seeks to influence politics. Anyone teaching American politics knows that focusing only on formal Constitutional institutions does not come close to doing the subject justice. When I taught Comparative Communism years ago I did not need to do this because the government dominated the society rather than vice versa.

WHY THIS MATTERS PRACTICALLY
My analysis has important practical implications for classical liberalism. Generally it is the “right” with which free market forces are usually allied, that seeks to strengthen the power of the executive to “control the government.” In doing so, the President is facilitated in his efforts to subject the government to his will - that is, if completely successful, turn it into a state. One clear piece of evidence - “conservative” presidents seek to reduce the ability of citizens to challenge government actions in court or in the bureaucracy. If democracies are already states, no big deal, I guess. But if they are not, then seeking to turn them into states in the long run strengthens just those forces classical liberals most fear. That is the true treason that those classical liberals who have supported Bush have committed.

Democracies are supposed to serve public values. In practice democratic governments serve public and private values alike. Their access to coercion encourages organizations to seek to capture their institutions to serve their own ends. Markets cannot serve certain kinds of public values very well in my judgment - but civil society may well be able to do so, leading to a more minimal reliance on formally coercive institutions.

The political task confronting classical liberals, I would argue, is not to try and privatize things which cannot be adequately served within a pure price context, but rather to seek to remove the public values that people want government to perform as much as possible from the governmental sector to that of civil society. My own work on national forest trusts is an example of this.

Back now to Higgs' sausage. Democracies, he writes “are the composite of all sorts of deliberate, planned, intended effects,” True enough. SO ARE MARKETS. What makes a market a spontaneous order is not that it is not filled with organizations, it is. But those organizations exist within a framework of rules and processes they do not control, much as they would like to. Exactly the same point applies to democracies. I can only assume that Higgs does not really understand spontaneous orders, or he would not have made such a basic error.

Incoherent? I do not think so. And if my point is correct, most of the anti-statist right has done a pretty good job of tactically undermining the values they claim to be supporting, with the Bush regime being the clearest expression of their “state fighting” so far - the first American quasi state during peacetime. If they can control the elections, they will have their state. Libertarians, the best of them, have not participated in this - but have been relegated to the sidelines because they lack the needed theoretical tools to really understand what is happening. Hayek provides those tools.

I am aware that I have covered a lot of ground very briefly. But I have had little luck getting my work discussed in libertarian venues where I can explore the issues more in depth because, as Higgs so amply demonstrates, it is ideologically suspect since it does not fit neatly into the little boxes with high walls that ideologues use to understand the world.