Abstract
Russell Hardin’s theory of constitutions as conventions implies several conclusions that are striking, deep, important, counterintuitive, and very hard to deny. Nevertheless, they have had little influence on the field of political theory. This chapter seeks to explain that through two theses. (1) The theory embarrasses the prevailing schools of political thought (participatory and/or deliberative democracy, “high” or rationalist liberalism, and Cambridge historicism) not just by denying their doctrines but by suggesting the irrelevance of many of their favorite questions. (2) The theory seems, as Hardin presents it, more pessimistic and quietist than it needs to be. This chapter suggests that the theory contains within it under-stressed resources that make room for constant institutional progress and political reform.
I would like to thank the participants at the Russell Hardin Festschrift conference, New York University, November 6–7, 2015. Special thanks are due to Jerry Gaus, Bernd Lahno, and Bernard Manin.
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Notes
- 1.
The politics in question consisted, roughly, of (democratic) socialism cum participatory democracy.
- 2.
One reason the theory has found it hard to gain purchase might that the relevant volumes embody diverse genres. Hardin (1982) is mostly formal, though non-technical. Hardin (1995) is more or less a work in comparative politics. Hardin (1999) is largely historical. And Hardin (2007) is interpretive. To understand the theory’s full implications and force, one must, alas, read all four.
- 3.
Compare Sabl (2012), Chapters 1 and 4.
- 4.
An anecdote: when I mentioned to a top Yale graduate student that Hardin’s work was underappreciated, he replied, somewhat surprised, that One for All was quite widely assigned in courses on ethnic conflict. When I clarified that I meant the work was underappreciated in political theory, he replied, “Oh, of course it’s not read in political theory.”
- 5.
Norman Rockwell’s Freedom of Speech may be viewed at https://www.nrm.org/2012/01/normanrockwells-four-freedoms/#post/0; Hugo Gellert’s The Four Freedoms, at http://collection.whitney.org/object/43447.
- 6.
The power attaching to leaders who are in a position to solve coordination problems, as well as collectively to a government granted this power by institutions, is noted by Hardin (1999: 102, 107, and esp. 114) and appears as early as Schelling (1960, Chap. 3). For an extended treatment see Calvert (1992). Ian Kershaw’s short book Hitler (2000) could be seen as a primer on how to leverage the coordination power attaching to the extra-constitutional role of leader, or Führer, into vast and terrifying power. One might note that the Nazi term for its totalitarian policy of requiring all civil society and voluntary groups to align themselves with Nazi ideology was Gleichschaltung, whose literal meaning is ensuring that all railways use the same gauge of track. Nazification was conceptualized, in other words, as a coordination problem. Hitler solved it.
- 7.
The cover is available at https://global.oup.com/academic/product/liberalism-constitutionalism-and-democracy-9780199261680?cc=us&lang=en&; it is a detail, in mirror image, of a painting whose provenance I could not establish.
- 8.
- 9.
http://www.bls.gov/soc/soc_2010_alphabetical_index.xls, accessed 21 October 2015; the latest update mentioned there is January 2013.
- 10.
Compare Democracy and Knowledge, 11, where Ober’s account of coordination omits the possibility of biased or impure games: all sink or swim together.
- 11.
Walzer puts forth this idea in many works, notably The Company of Critics (1988).
- 12.
Rawls (1999: 115, 115 n 8) cites David Lewis’ philosophical account of convention as an explication of common knowledge.
- 13.
On this, excellent is Bøyum (2013).
- 14.
It is, however, uncommon in the Anglo-American world to admit to regarding moral philosophy as “one form of political action.” An exception, containing that quotation, is Goodin (1988: ix).
- 15.
An implicit minor premise, at least some of the time, is that political theory is a non-progressive discipline. Unlike science, on this view, it cannot hope to build on past discoveries (perhaps through the use of technical as opposed to everyday language) and document discoveries for use in the future.
- 16.
For the most classic expression see Gutmann (1985).
- 17.
Thus when Chwe (2001: 102) spells out in formal terms what his book has been calling “coordination” problems, the payoffs are those of an assurance game (see the Appendix). Ober cites Chwe at several points and in two places unmistakably describes an assurance game in prose: “If I know you all will fight, then I will too”; “Building common knowledge in public institutions addresses the ‘carry through’ problem faced by people with shared goals, but who will not individually act to achieve them unless each believes that others will act likewise” (Ober 2008: 179, 191; cf. 192, 194f, 199f.). Naturally, common knowledge and social monitoring solve that problem. They do not solve the (“impure,” “bargaining”) problem in which different groups in society share an interest in peace and order but benefit differentially from different forms of order. That requires authority, whether personal or constitutional, which will in turn give rise to disputes over authority.
- 18.
For instance, the framers’ decision to give commerce pride of place in the constitutional system made it unlikely that the system could accommodate large-scale land reform as the compensation for plantation slavery and the culmination of Reconstruction (Du Bois 1935).
- 19.
Thus, Wolin in 1997, two years before Liberalism, Constitutionalism, and Democracy, describes postwar American elites as having produced “corruption, constitutional violations, incalculable death and destruction visited upon hapless populations abroad, steadily worsening racial relations, deepening class divisions, discreditation of the idea of public service (except for convicted felons) and, not least, a political system that large numbers of Americans wish to disown” (Wolin 1997: 154). This is not, to put it mildly, Hardin’s most salient or dominant assessment of American constitutionalism.
- 20.
There is also the possibility of partial disallegiance. In the 1980s in South Los Angeles, the police lost the trust of the local population to such an extent as to be considered merely a particularly well-organized gang. Such disallegiance has substantial costs to the larger community—again, partly expressed through potential or actual civil unrest—even though local residents made no effort towards formal revolution, towards founding a new city government or opting out of governmental institutions that seemed immediately useful, like roads and schools.
- 21.
See, most recently, Tuck (2015).
- 22.
The first of these claims may sound shocking to those who see the Civil Rights movement as broadly accepting American institutions. But I believe the historical case is very strong that Martin Luther King and other Civil Rights leaders endorsed the abstract principles that the Declaration and Constitution professed while denying absolutely that existing American society practiced them even approximately. See Lyons (1998) and Sabl (2001).
- 23.
Thus Chong (1991) explains the decline of the Civil Rights movement after the mid-sixties partly as a consequence of the fact that its economic and social goals were vague, lacking a clear focal point or stopping point, once civil and political rights had been achieved.
- 24.
In Sabl (2002), I call this the “paradox of innovation.”
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Appendix: Two Models of “Coordination”
Appendix: Two Models of “Coordination”
1. Assurance
2. Impure/Biased/Bargaining
“Coordination problem” qua impure/biased/bargaining (Hardin, translated from the ordinal; Schelling (1960))
Due to partly conflicting interests, not solvable through common knowledge plus monitoring because these would yield no determinate solution.
Only personal or constitutional authority solves (temporarily and subject to contestation).
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Sabl, A. (2018). Constitutions as Conventions: A History of Non-reception. In: Christiano, T., Creppell, I., Knight, J. (eds) Morality, Governance, and Social Institutions. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61070-2_6
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