[I] f we approach political theory from a different angle, then we find that far from solving any fundamental problems, we have merely skipped over them, by assuming that the question ‘Who should rule?’ is fundamental. For even those who share this assumption of Plato’s admit that political rulers are not always sufficiently ‘good’ or ‘wise’ (we need not worry about the precise meaning of these terms), and that it is not at all easy to get a government on whose goodness and wisdom one can implicitly rely. If that is granted, then we must ask whether political thought should not face from the beginning the possibility of bad government; whether we should not prepare for the worst leaders, and hope for the best. But this leads to a new approach to the problem of politics, for it forces us to replace the question: Who should rule? by the new 2 question: How can we so organize political institutions that bad or incompetent rulers can be prevented from doing too much damage?--Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, chapter 7, p. 115 (emphasis in original)
One of the oddities of Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics, is the near-total absence of Popper. It's odd for three reasons: first, Popper's Open Society is explicitly framed as a response to Lippmann's The Good Society. Since Foucault takes the (1938 Paris) Colloquium on the book as a foundational moment for neo-liberalism, the Open Society is part of the larger sweep of events Foucault is interrogating. Second, it is quite clear that for Popper Plato treats medicine as a political art in order to shape and enhance the population (p. 131ff, chapter 8); so lodged in the Open Society is itself a series of critical reflections on biopolitics and its history. Third, as the passage above reveals, Popper explicitly discusses, in a sense, the art of government, which as we have seen is one of the main themes of the The Birth of Biopolitics.
If we go to the (rather long) footnote attached on the new question, we read the following (in part):
Similar ideas have been expressed by J. S. Mill; thus he writes in his Logic (1st edn, p. 557 f.): ‘Although the actions of rulers are by no means wholly determined by their selfish interests, it is as security against those selfish interests that constitutional checks are required.’ Similarly he writes in The Subjection of Women (p. 251 of the Everyman edition; italics mine): ‘Who doubts that there may be great goodness, and great happiness and great affection, under the absolute government of a good man? Meanwhile laws and institutions require to be adapted, not to good men, but to bad.’ Much as I agree with the sentence in italics, I feel that the admission contained in the first part of the sentence is not really called for. (Cp. especially note 25 (3) to this chapter.) A similar admission may be found in an excellent passage of his Representative Government (1861; see especially p. 49) where Mill combats the Platonic ideal of the philosopher king because, especially if his rule should be a benevolent one , it will involve the ‘abdication’ of the ordinary citizen’s will, and ability, to judge a policy.--Open Society, 579-580
I was pleased to see Popper pick up (recall here; and here) on Mill's argument in Representative Government, but surprised he calls it 'new.' For, it seems to me central (recall) to Hume's (and Montesquieu's) argument against (what Quentin Skinner calls) neoroman liberty and the physiocratic tendency toward benevolent despotism. And while I think in Mill's and Hume's hands the intentions is to further a liberal political life, the underlying ideas can be traced back to Livy and Polybius (and, perhaps, the Hebrew Bible (as Mill suggests).
It strikes me there are two insights coupled in this art of government of (to nod ahead (recall) to Shklar [and here; here]) the liberalism of fear. First, this is emphasized by Hume, to ensure there are sufficient countervailing forces against the executive such that the executive can never hope to dominate society, while remaining effective enough to do her job (defend against foreign enemies and govern the state bureaucracy, faithfully execute the laws). It is insufficiently appreciated how important this element is. From this perspective, the American fondness -- despite regurgitating at nauseam separation of powers in civics classes -- for an imperial presidency simply feeds the potential of tyranny. The whole tenor of twentieth century practice has been, in this sense, generating the conditions for the success of the eventual rise of illiberal governance.
Second, how to organize institutions such that the downside risk of incompetent, self-interested, or malicious rulers is minimized. It is one of the more amazing, even perverse features of twentieth century intellectual life that the very idea of an open society has become synonymous with risk taking entrepreneurship. Underneath it is an enormous aversion to certain forms of political risk, the possibility of awful government.
What is new, and I think this is, in fact, Popper's seminal contribution (although there are plenty of Schumpeterian premonitions), is to argue that this second point not just from risk aversion, but to argue it also from an analysis of why all the mechanisms designed to prevent bad leadership from arising, for the purposes of a society capable of adapting to changing needs,* are incapable of being sufficiently failure proof. It is this part of the Open Society that is capable of irritating the instructors of mankind and the peddlers of technologies of management. Because he points out that their whole program of meritocratic leadership education is self-contradictory; it leads to mediocrity and is incapable of generating "the spirit of criticism... intellectual independence" (127; this connects up to the heart of Popper's philosophy of science).
It is an open question how successful Popper's particular argument is against political programs of leadership selection that are illiberal but not meritocratic. But I return to that some other time. Let me wrap up with three observations. First, the two elements of the art of government of the liberalism of fear are not its whole art (see here for a lot more). As Foucault recognizes when he is discussing the ORDOs, one of their key political arguments of embracing market based competition as a permanent process is to help prevent the rise of overbearing powers. So, here markets are designed to secure the existence of such countervailing powers. (There is a thought like this in Milton Friedman, too.) Obviously, this gives rise to new challenges of preventing monopoly and rent-seeking behavior which may require an executive that opens the door toward more malice (and so the cycle continues).
Second, within neoliberalism there is an internal dynamic (which is the theme of Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics) such that a focus on the market and the technologies of generating the right sort of agents (with human capital, entrepreneurial, productive etc.) in it start to predominate over other streams of thought that focus on how to develop such adaptive institutions that simultaneously give us the fruits of decent enough government and do not open the door to the generation of tyranny. Once the market is viewed as the antonym of the state in neoliberal thought, this disastrous forgetting of Popper's key insight seems almost inevitable.
Third, and in some sense entirely unrelated, and in another sense absolutely central, Popper concludes his argument on this point with what he calls a "result of some importance:"
Institutions for the selection of the outstanding can hardly be devised. Institutional selection may work quite well for such purposes as Plato had in mind, namely for arresting change. But it will never work well if we demand more than that, for it will always tend to eliminate initiative and originality, and, more generally, qualities which are unusual and unexpected. This is not a criticism of political institutionalism. It only reaffirms what has been said before, that we should always prepare for the worst leaders, although we should try, of course, to get the best. But it is a criticism of the tendency to burden institutions, especially educational institutions, with the impossible task of selecting the best. This should never be made their task. This tendency transforms our educational system into a race-course, and turns a course of studies into a hurdle-race. Instead of encouraging the student to devote himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in him a real love for his subject and for inquiry, he is encouraged to study for the sake of his personal career; he is led to acquire only such knowledge as is serviceable in getting him over the hurdles which he must clear for the sake of his advancement. In other words, even in the field of science, our methods of selection are based upon an appeal to personal ambition of a somewhat crude form. (It is a natural reaction to this appeal if the eager student is looked upon with suspicion by his colleagues.) The impossible demand for an institutional selection of intellectual leaders endangers the very life not only of science, but of intelligence. Open Society, 128
For those who followed my recent exchange with Zena Hitz (see here for her fascinating twitter response), it will not surprised that I point out that Hitz's concerns are themselves not new. Even if we wince, perhaps, at Popper's gendered way of expressing the point that the very institutions of education are corrupted by worldly advancement (and Popper argues this goes back to Plato).
*Popper grants Plato that a society that resists change may have some hope to educate and select for the right sort of leaders for a time.
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