There is a set of good reasons why nations have government. Such reasons are as varied as the limitless needs and wants of nations. Imagining what one’s country would look like without a government conjures in one’s mind an image of a failed state. Human history is replete with examples of failed states. What has eluded many scholars is the point separates failed nations and those that have not. Researchers have created failed states indices. The interesting feature of indices is that they keep evolving, which makes tracking them a daunting task. Longitudinal studies that deal with changing combinations of variables requires that data be normalized to make between period comparisons possible. That leaves inquiring minds with one reasonable option; to find out if governments are performing according to expectations. If not, what are they doing instead.
It is important to understand why people opt to organize governments in the first place, it is important to go back in time to when societies began to notice their own inadequacies and therefore the need to have a small group of people to act as a governing body. How this body has taken shape in different societies is not the focus of this paper but whether the shapes they have taken has helped them perform according to expectations.
The Origin of the Concept of Government
For many thousands of centuries when people were hunter-gatherers and small scale farmers, humans lived in very small communities. The development of agriculture resulted in ever increasing population densities. David Christian explains how this helped result in states with laws and governments:
As farming populations gathered in denser and larger communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in a striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field.
The exact moment and place that the erectional phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time. However, history does record the formations of very early governments. About 5,000 years ago, the first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: Sumer, Ancient Egypt, the Indus Valley Civilization, and the Yellow River Civilization.
As in David Christian’s analogy of star formation, there must have been a force or forces that made it necessary for people to congregate and organize government. David Christian further suggests that:
States formed as the results of a positive feedback loop where population growth results in increased information exchange which results in innovation which results in increased resources which results in further population growth. The role of cities in the feedback loop is important. Cities became the primary conduits for the dramatic increases in information exchange that allowed for large and densely packed populations to form, and because cities concentrated knowledge, they also ended up concentrating power. "Increasing population density in farming regions provided the demographic and physical raw materials used to construct the first cities and states, and increasing congestion provided much of the motivation for creating states.
It is fair to have expected David Christian to be specific about the incentives people perceived to cede power and control to a small group of people called government. Thomas Hobbes began to fill in for him with a somewhat specific reason when he stated:
...the fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order...people were rational animals and thus saw submission to a government dominated by a sovereign as preferable to anarchy...people in a community create and submit to government for the purpose of establishing for themselves, safety and public order.
Hobbes, seems to be suggesting that safety and public order in the absence of a government would be difficult to maintain. What this means is that individuals in society are unable to maintain order and safety by themselves. Stated differently, there is a set of services that people cannot provide to themselves and public order and safety are among them.
In view of the foregoing, it is within reason to conclude that societies chose to form government to do for them what individuals could not do for themselves. On that basis, one would expect to see identical forms of government in every society. But that was not what happened. There were as many forms of government as there were societies. The known forms include:
• Anarchism - a political philosophy which considers the state to be unnecessary, harmful, or otherwise undesirable, and favors instead a stateless society
• Authoritarian – Authoritarian governments are characterized by an emphasis on the authority of the state in a republic or union. It is a political system controlled by nonelected rulers who usually permit some degree of individual freedom.
• Communism - Communism is a sociopolitical structure that aims for a classless and stateless society with the communal ownership of property.
• Constitutional monarchy – A government that has a monarch, but one whose powers are limited by law or by a formal constitution. Example: United Kingdom
• Constitutional republic – A government whose powers are limited by law or a formal constitution, and which is chosen by a vote amongst at least some sections of the populace (Ancient Sparta was in its own terms a republic, though most inhabitants were disenfranchised; The early United States was a republic, but the large numbers of slaves did not have the vote). Republics which exclude sections of the populace from participation will typically claim to represent all citizens (by defining people without the vote as "non-citizens").
• Democracy – Rule by a government (usually a Constitutional Republic or Constitutional Monarchy) chosen by election where most of the populace are enfranchised. The key distinction between a democracy and other forms of constitutional government is usually taken to be that the right to vote is not limited by a person's wealth or race (the main qualification for enfranchisement is usually having reached a certain age). A Democratic government is therefore one supported (at least at the time of the election) by a majority of the populace (provided the election was held fairly). A "majority" may be defined in different ways. There are many "power-sharing" (usually in countries where people mainly identify themselves by race or religion) or "electoral-college" or "constituency" systems where the government is not chosen by a simple one-vote-per-person headcount.
• Dictatorship – Rule by an individual who has full power over the country. The term may refer to a system where the Dictator came to power, and holds it, purely by force - but it also includes systems where the Dictator first came to power legitimately but then was able to amend the constitution so as to, in effect, gather all power for themselves. See also Autocracy and Stratocracy.
• Monarchy – Rule by an individual who has inherited the role and expects to bequeath it to their heir.
• Oligarchy – Rule by a small group of people who share similar interests or family relations.
• Plutocracy – A government composed of the wealthy class. Any of the forms of government listed here can be plutocracy. For instance, if all of the voted representatives in a republic are wealthy, then it is a republic and a plutocracy.
• Theocracy – Rule by a religious elite.
• Totalitarian – Totalitarian governments regulate nearly every aspect of public and private life.
• Legalism - A legalistic government enforces the law with rewards to those who obey the laws and harsh punishments to people who go against the law.
Some of the types seem more favorable than others. Yet, they are all formed by people from human societies. As reasonable and rational individuals, we would expect the favorable type of government to live up to its expectations; do for individual people in society that which they would be unable to do for themselves. But do they?
The heads of government are human beings, and given the human nature, what constitutes good governance has been a subject written about since the earliest known books. In the western tradition Plato wrote extensively on the question, most notably in The Republic. He (in the voice of Socrates) asked if the purpose of government was to help one's friends and hurt one's enemies, for example. Aristotle, Plato's student picked up the subject in his treatise on Politics. Many centuries later, John Locke addressed the question of abuse of power by writing on the importance of checks and balances to prevent or at least constrain abuse. It is believed that Thomas Jefferson was influenced by John Locke.
Most of the greatest atrocities committed against humans were planned and executed by or under the auspices of government. The most common ones include:
War
In the most basic sense, people of one nation will see the government of another nation as the enemy when the two nations are at war. For example, the people of Carthage saw the Roman government as the enemy during the Punic wars.
Enslavement
In early human history, the outcome of war for the vanquished was often enslavement. The enslaved people would not find it easy to see the conquering government as a friend. However, this is not true in every case.
Religious opposition
People with religious views opposed to the official state religion will have a greater tendency to view that government as their enemy. An example would be the condition of Roman Catholicism in England before the Catholic Emancipation. Protestants—who were politically dominant in England—used political, economic and social means to reduce the size and strength of Catholicism in England over the 16th to 18th centuries, and as a result, Catholics in England felt that their religion was being oppressed. North Korea provides a good contemporary example.
Class oppression
Whereas capitalists in a capitalist country may tend to see that nation's government positively, a class-conscious group of industrial workers—a proletariat—may see things very differently. If the proletariat wishes to take control of the nation's productive resources, and they are blocked in their endeavors by continuing adjustments in the law made by capitalists in the government, then the proletariat will come to see the government as their enemy—especially if the conflicts become violent.
The same situation can occur among peasants. The peasants in a country, e.g. Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great, may revolt against their landlords, only to find that their revolution is put down by government.
These are some of the things individuals in society would like to be protected from by the sophisticated thinking of those in government. Apparently individuals lack the wherewithal to maintain safety and order. Such maintenance of safety and public order should then require society to subscribe to certain values in order for it to produce a group of people who would do for the masses what individual members of society cannot do for themselves.
Common Thread
It is becoming increasingly apparent that people in government have forgotten why nations have adopted the concept government. Before they become part of the governing group, they speak forcefully about the issues that irk the masses. However, shortly after they occupy office, that voice of reason loses energy. It begins to sound like that of those that came before them; peddling empty promises during campaign rallies yet maintaining the status quo once re-elected. One cannot help but wonder what happens between the time speeches are delivered and when winners are handed keys to the office. It seems the planks begin to fall off the campaign platform in rapid succession. It seems also that people have become used to being lied to; they re-elect the same liars over and over. People who promised to solve their most pressing problems but did not deliver. These people are busy promoting the same ills that they are meant to protect the masses from. War, enslavement, religious opposition, class oppression, tribalism, racism, etc., are but a few avenues through which the government keep people veiled while they take for themselves.
Personally, I would not blame the government. Instead, I blame the people. I blame the public. I hip all blame on society. People in society are responsible for the ills they experience. By adopting the concept of government with a loose method of managing it, it has created a self-sustaining self-serving group of people called the government. Government is now perceived as the means to enrich oneself and in doing so, one shields those with whom one has joined hands to fleece the nation. This is not a western phenomenon neither is it eastern. Simply put, it is a human weakness that has rendered government a liability to nations. That being the case, the idea of government needs rethinking.
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