Jonathan Rausch, writing for the Atlantic, in February, claimed that, in the work of the German Sociologist, Max Weber, he had found the
One Word (that) Describes Trump
In a previous post, I suggested that word was 'Caesarist'. Trump launches trade-wars and uses 'lawfare'. He has put troops on City streets. He talks of annexation. Might he, if otherwise thwarted, seek a military victory to restore his popularity?
The point about Caesars, or Napoleons, is they don't know when to stop. They suffer hubris. Moreover, they magnify their own past achievements in so megalomaniacal a manner as to become a prisoner to their own mythos. They seek to repeat past triumphs with farcical results. Caesar was stabbed to death by his own chums. Napoleon ended up a caged beast in a small island in the Atlantic. What will happen to Trump if the Markets turn against him and he loses the mid-terms? Impeachment hearings. Like Nixon he will resign to get a Presidential pardon. He will become the scapegoat and pariah of his party. Hopefully, by then, he will be too senile to care.
Rausch takes a different view.
A century ago, a German sociologist explained precisely how the president thinks about the world.
That German Sociologist didn't understand American or British society. More damagingly, he didn't understand his own country.
Britain's 'Political Arithmetic' had turned into a professionalised Statistical methodology endorsed by Parliament in the early Nineteenth Century. It's Sociology was highly empirical. America at a later date developed an empirical Sociological literature. Germany did not lack in Statistics but officials rather than politicians, and academics rather than journalists or popular writers (e.g. Bernard Shaw), compiled and interpreted these numbers. The result was that the Germans could not see the wood for the trees and did stupid things. Consider the 'Schweinmord'- the slaughter of the pigs on the grounds that they were 'co-eaters'. The fact is, it was the price ceiling on potatoes put in when war broke out which caused farmers to feed potatoes to their pigs. The obvious remedy was to buy potatoes at a market clearing price and use a public distribution system to get subsidized potatoes to people in the cities. Instead pigs were deemed 'co-eaters' and slaughtered though the manure they produced was essential to farmers and there were no good substitutes for the fat and protein their meat contained. It is odd that nobody objected to the irrationality of this procedure. Sociological facts- e.g. farmers responding to price signals- were ignored so that statistics could turn the humble pig into a sinister 'co-eater' feasting, so to speak, on the famished corpses of good German people.
What exactly is Donald Trump doing?
He is doing what Ross Perot or Bernie Sanders did when they denounced free trade and demanded protectionist policies. This makes him the Caesar of 'Trade War'. True, he also engages in 'Lawfare' but that tool was used against him quite recently. Indeed, there is a recent enough precedent for everything he does though, it must be said, as the only POTUS, who never held any sort of political or civil service or military office, his style of functioning is sui generis.
Since taking office, he has reduced his administration’s effectiveness by appointing to essential agencies people who lack the skills and temperaments to do their jobs.
Obama appointed Comey to head the FBI. That didn't turn out well. I think, both parties have learnt the same lesson from this. Appoint loyalists. That's the only skill or temperament that counts. What's cool is that if you have a shitty head of the Secret Service, the opposition candidate may eat a bullet. Sadly, the rising generation of crazy snipers lack the training and temperament of Lee Harvey Oswald.
His mass firings have emptied the civil service of many of its most capable employees. He has defied laws that he could just as easily have followed (for instance, refusing to notify Congress 30 days before firing inspectors general). He has disregarded the plain language of statutes, court rulings, and the Constitution, setting up confrontations with the courts that he is likely to lose. Few of his orders have gone through a policy-development process that helps ensure they won’t fail or backfire—thus ensuring that many will.
Sounds like he is an elderly incompetent guy. But that became clear in his first administration. If he was voted back, it was because Biden's administration (which Kamala was capable of continuing) was considered worse.
In foreign affairs, he has antagonized Denmark, Canada, and Panama;
he had to start somewhere. Now he has royally pissed off the Brazilians and Indians and so forth.
renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”; and unveiled a Gaz-a-Lago plan. For good measure, he named himself chair of the Kennedy Center, as if he didn’t have enough to do.
He's an old man. If he doesn't do it now, when will he do it? Still, he seems to have a tight grip on his party. Biden didn't.
Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
It is a return to a triumphal Caesarism. Trump is the 'plebiscitary' President Max Weber wanted for Weimar. He doesn't give a fuck about Legislative gridlock or Judicial or Administrative delays. He 'gets things done'. True, the Markets may crash as the chickens come home to roost but if he knows whom to squeeze there are plenty of Hedge funds and Trust funds and Federal funds- like those of Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae or else money given to specific companies like Intel- which can be mobilized to prop up the market. After all, what matters is the after tax return. If, thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, stocks can climb because of generous depreciation and other such tax loopholes, Trump wins the mid-terms and can enjoy his last two years in a way which neither of his two predecessors could do.
There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism—nor is it autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy. Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.
Nonsense! Even Saudi Arabia or Oman is no longer patrimonial. If Weber didn't consider the American 'spoils system' (whereby the new President appointed his supporters to all Federal positions) to be patrimonial, then, though he might see Trump as 'Caesarist' (more particularly in his deporting migrants and raising tariffs) because he is giving the masses what they want regardless of procedural propriety, he would not label his regime as patrimonial.
Understanding patrimonialism is essential to defeating it.
Trump didn't lose to Biden because of nepotism or cronyism. He lost because, in the debates, Biden, a famously nice guy, looked like Clint Eastwood just about to slap down a fat blow-hard bully. Also Kamala was alive. Pence was clearly dead. There was a fly sitting on his head.
In particular, it has a fatal weakness that Democrats and Trump’s other opponents should make their primary and relentless line of attack.
Get indictments on his family or cronies by all means. It will be a good opportunity to give everybody in his entourage a Presidential pardon. He'd be well advised to take one himself from Vance before quitting office.
Last year, two professors published a book that deserves wide attention. In The Assault on the State: How the Global Attack on Modern Government Endangers Our Future, Stephen E. Hanson, a government professor at the College of William & Mary, and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a political scientist at UC Irvine, resurface a mostly forgotten term whose lineage dates back to Max Weber, the German sociologist best known for his seminal book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
It was shit. The Boers in South Africa were Protestants. They had zero Capitalist spirit. On the other hand, it is true that no Jew has ever run a successful business enterprise.
Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully.
The answer, if they were actually ruling but not otherwise, was and is 'the law'. What is legitimate is what is legal. What doesn't exist may be legal but isn't legitimate because it isn't real. In Salic jurisdictions, the legitimate ruler had to be male. Not so in non-Salic areas. That's why Maria Theresa was never de jure the Holy Roman Empress. Yet, de facto, that is what she was after winning one or two wars.
He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms.
They need not be 'bureaucratic' even if it is ceremonial. Trump's election was not contested. He was sworn in by the usual method and in conformity with the law of the land.
That is the American system we all took for granted until January 20. Presidents, federal officials, and military inductees swear an oath to the Constitution, not to a person.
Whereas, in the UK, allegiance is sworn to a person- King Charles III. So what?
The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—“the default form of rule in the premodern world,” Hanson and Kopstein write. “The state was little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler; it did not exist as a separate entity.”
It did exist as a separate territorial entity. Laying claim to the Crown of that territory did not mean laying claim to the 'household' of the ruler. He and his family and his servants were welcome to fuck off. What mattered was the territory and such taxes or other revenues customarily due to the Crown.
Weber called this system “patrimonialism” because rulers claimed to be the symbolic father of the people—
they might. They might not. King Leopold didn't claim to have fathered millions of black people in Congo.
the state’s personification and protector. Exactly that idea was implied in Trump’s own chilling declaration: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
It is associated with Napoleon Bonaparte- the prime example of Weber's 'plebiscitary' or 'Caesarist' First Consul. His nephew became President before deciding to upgrade his title to Emperor. Neither Bonaparte ruled in a patrimonial manner. Rather they presided over a well organized bureaucracy. Indeed, the present French State owes a lot to Napoleonic Institutions as well as his Legal Code.
In his day, Weber thought that patrimonialism was on its way to history’s scrap heap.
He thought it only existed in some parts of Africa. But he was wrong to think China was patrimonial. It had been bureaucratic for thousands of years.
Its personalized style of rule was too inexpert and capricious to manage the complex economies and military machines that, after Bismarck,
after Bismarck, the young Kaiser screwed things up by meddling in foreign policy and even military matters- e.g. putting in Von Moltke rather than Hindenburg. That's why there was a big War and a big defeat such that he lost his throne.
became the hallmarks of modern statehood. Unfortunately, he was wrong.
Weber was wrong about everything because he was stupid and had studied worthless shite.
Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing.
Fair point. Orban's regime could be called 'patrimonial'. He is being challenged by a young chap who had benefited from his loyalty to the ruling party. Then he got into a spat with his wife who was the Justice Minister. He taped her secretly and then went public with stories of a Presidential pardon for a guy who covered up sex abuse in a children's home and various other sorts of corruption. His ex-wife hit back by saying he had threatened her into making the said recordings. Sadly, he did not counter this allegation by saying his wife had repeatedly sodomized and decapitated him till she forced him to threaten her to make the recordings.
It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones. Based on individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived), it can be found not just in states but also among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations.
It has a long history in the US. Tammany Hall politics featured in the rise of Obama and Kamala. Nobody holds this against them.
In its governmental guise, patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business.
Like the Kennedys? No. The Bushs.
It can be found in many countries, but its main contemporary exponent—at least until January 20, 2025—has been Vladimir Putin.
He is a KGB ghoul. We don't know much about his family.
In the first portion of his rule,
he was miles better than the drunkard Yeltsin who had brought him in.
he ran the Russian state as a personal racket. State bureaucracies and private companies continued to operate, but the real governing principle was Stay on Vladimir Vladimirovich’s good side … or else.
Equally, Putin had to stay on the good side of various mobsters- like the head of the Wagner Group- till he was in a position to arrange an 'accident' for them.
Seeking to make the world safe for gangsterism,
it was already so
Putin used propaganda, subversion, and other forms of influence to spread the model abroad.
Did you know that everybody who voted for Trump was secretly influenced by Putin's propaganda? That's also the reason they did not undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Over time, the patrimonial model gained ground in states as diverse as Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and India.
India had been 'patrimonial' when it was ruled by a Dynasty. But that ended in 2014 when the Crown Prince refused to become PM. He didn't want to meet the same fate as his daddy or granny. Assassination tempers both autocracy and patrimonialism.
Gradually (as my colleague Anne Applebaum has documented), those states coordinated in something like a syndicate of crime families—“working out problems,” write Hanson and Kopstein in their book, “divvying up the spoils, sometimes quarreling, but helping each other when needed. Putin in this scheme occupied the position of the capo di tutti capi, the boss of bosses.”
The KGB was far scarier than the Mafia. Moreover, its criminal gangs were much tougher probably because prison conditions in Russia were utterly brutal
Until now. Move over, President Putin.
Trump will spend assassins to put some radio-active substance in your soup. That way you will have a slow and very painful death. Sadly, he won't stop there. He will resurrect you and then sodomize and decapitate you. Also you will be required to sign an affidavit stating that Trump has a big and beautiful penis. It isn't tiny at all. Vance, of course, has such a big dick he can only fuck sofas.
To understand the source of Trump’s hold on power, and its main weakness, one needs to understand what patrimonialism is not. It is not the same as classic authoritarianism.
Which can be as patrimonial as fuck. Indira Gandhi's Emergency was highly authoritarian. It was also quite literally patrimonial. Her son reckoned he needed to take over the whole country before he could manufacture a small car.
And it is not necessarily antidemocratic.
Voters may prefer the devil- or dynasty- they know to the one they don't.
Patrimonialism’s antithesis is not democracy; it is bureaucracy, or, more precisely, bureaucratic proceduralism.
Nonsense! Every patrimonialist shithole has a vast bureaucracy. But if you are a chum of the Beloved Leader's nephew and want an import license or unsecured bank loan or whatever, then all the paperwork will be done for you while you sip a cup of tea. For anybody else the process would take at least 8 months. But even after they get clearance, they will stay have to pay a hefty bribe.
Classic authoritarianism—the sort of system seen in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union—is often heavily bureaucratized.
During the War, America & the UK were even more highly bureaucratized because they had more complex economies and could draw on the labour of well educated volunteers- e.g. the people supervising rationing, evacuation of children from cities, managing scrap metal drives, etc.
When authoritarians take power, they consolidate their rule by creating structures such as secret police, propaganda agencies, special military units, and politburos.
They may do. They may not. The new administration takes over existing institutions and may change the personnel. But they may also create new institutions so as to create 'jobs for the boys'. Consider the War Time British Ministry of Information. People suspected that its head, Brendan Bracken, must be Churchill's illegitimate son. Why else were so much resources being lavished on it? England had run a very effective propaganda campaign in the First War on a shoestring budget. The answer was that, in a coalition government, all sorts of journalists and intellectuals had to be accommodated. Evelyn Waugh has described the farcical aspects of this in 'Put out more flags'.
They legitimate their power with legal codes and constitutions.
Only if they obey them. Churchill scrupulously obeyed what existed. That's why his coalition partners were comfortable with him.
Orwell understood the bureaucratic aspect of classic authoritarianism;
he understood shit. Still, he had been in the Imperial Police and thus was assumed to be some sort of double or triple or quadruple agent. This wasn't the case. He was simply stupid. Great writer. Stupid man.
in 1984, Oceania’s ministries of Truth (propaganda),
based on Churchill's Ministry of Information which occupied the rather sinister looking London University Senate House. But it was a harmless place, full of wackos just like the Beeb. Instead of propaganda, they were broadcasting Max Beerbohm reminiscing about great Music Hall stars from the 1890s. This turned out to be far more effective than Goebbels screaming his fucking lungs out.
Peace (war), and Love (state security) are the regime’s most characteristic (and terrifying) features.
Fuck off. It's the notion that your TV might be watching you that was terrifying. Then I bought one of the new TVs with a built in camera. I no longer care if it sees me nude and if this voids the warranty.
By contrast, patrimonialism is suspicious of bureaucracies;
Nonsense! It is nice to give out jobs to those of your second cousins who are mentally retarded though you might also help a bright kid who is the nephew of your barber.
after all, to exactly whom are they loyal?
Guys who can promote them or give them an extension of service. Thus the idiot second cousin is promoted because you have married him off to a discarded mistress of yours. But you might also promote the nephew of the barber because he is hella smart.
Still, the point about a bureaucracy is 'rent extraction'. The Department heads have to make regular cash deliveries to your bagman. Otherwise they are transferred to some shithole.
They might acquire powers of their own, and their rules and processes might prove obstructive.
Bureaucracy is meant to be obstructive.
People with expertise, experience, and distinguished résumés are likewise suspect because they bring independent standing and authority.
Fuck off! They are apple polishing sycophants with zero intelligence or enterprise. If they weren't, they'd be making big money in the private sector.
So patrimonialism stocks the government with nonentities and hacks, or, when possible, it bypasses bureaucratic procedures altogether.
It may do. It may not. Lee Kuan Yew wanted an efficient civil service and that is what he got. His son resigned as PM, though stayed on as 'Senior Minister', last year because of a family feud. His brother had taken refugee asylum in the UK by alleging government persecution. Singapore is authoritarian in one sense. Is it patrimonial? One might say, it is highly efficient, and has become very rich, because that is what Lee Kuan Yew wanted. That is patrimony he handed down. Most would agree that he really was a very good father to his people.
When security officials at USAID tried to protect classified information from Elon Musk’s uncleared DOGE team, they were simply put on leave.
Musk was a wimp. Had Trump been in charge those 'security officials' would have woken up to find the decapitated head of their prize race horse in bed with them. Vance, of course, would be fucking the sofa greatly to its distress.
Patrimonial governance’s aversion to formalism makes it capricious and even whimsical—such as when the leader announces, out of nowhere, the renaming of international bodies of water or the U.S. occupation of Gaza.
This sounds more like amateurism than patrimonialism.
Also unlike classic authoritarianism, patrimonialism can coexist with democracy,
You can have an authoritarian, patrimonial, democracy- like India under the Dynasty
at least for a while. As Hanson and Kopstein write, “A leader may be democratically elected but still seek to legitimate his or her rule patrimonially.
In a traditional society, there may be the expectation that the spoils of office are shared in some particular way- e.g. nephews get more than cousins and so forth.
Increasingly, elected leaders have sought to demolish bureaucratic administrative states (‘deep states,’ they sometimes call them) built up over decades in favor of rule by family and friends.” India’s Narendra Modi,
was the alternative to rule by the Dynasty which has plenty of long time sycophants.
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán,
a mainstream politician who entrenched himself in a manner familiar to Italians, Greeks and so forth. But there are plenty of American Counties where you might observe something similar.
and Trump himself are examples of elected patrimonial leaders—and ones who have achieved substantial popular support and democratic legitimacy.
None are. Modi comes from a cadre based party. The RSS- his parent organization- is not considered patrimonial. There is little point attending the 'shakha' if what you want is a government contract.
Still, I don't doubt that wherever it is in office, it gets money which previously went to the previous CM. Interestingly they introduced a scheme which permitted the donor to be sure all his money was getting through. It wasn't being siphoned off by the middle-man.
Once in power, patrimonialists love to clothe themselves in the rhetoric of democracy,
only if that's how they got power. A guy who became the ruler of an Emirate because the Tribal Council chose him because of his piety doesn't talk about democracy. He talks about Islamic piety. If he was chosen because of his business acumen and modern ideas. That is what he talks about.
like Elon Musk justifying his team’s extralegal actions as making the “unelected fourth unconstitutional branch of government” be “responsive to the people.”
Trump & Musk fell out. Perhaps they have patched things up again. Get a room- you two!
Nonetheless, as patrimonialism snips the government’s procedural tendons,
it may create bureaucratic institutions to give ' jobs for the boys' or to ensure people from one's own clan are able to keep tabs on everything. One may say that 'petticoat government', or the ruler's clique, snips procedural tendons by demanding things in the name of the ruler from officials who comply out of fear without getting proper authorization. This becomes a sword of Damocles dangling over their heads. Also it demoralizes the cadre.
it weakens and eventually cripples the state.
It may do. It may not. The Saudis and Omanis and Emiratis seem to be doing very well.
Over time, as it seeks to embed itself, many leaders attempt the transition to full-blown authoritarianism.
Where? Only in countries where authoritarianism was the norm. People may feel that's the only way the place can be governed. Weber, after the War, wanted a Caesarist President to replace the departed Kaiser.
“Electoral processes and constitutional norms cannot survive long when patrimonial legitimacy begins to dominate the political arena,” write Hanson and Kopstein.
In the Nineteenth Century, the converse was true. You become independent. You have some sort of election so as to decide which faction gets to rule. Then everybody suggests importing some German Princeling to be the Constitutional Monarch. He will act as an umpire and prevent internecine warfare.
The Hashemite King of Jordan is an example. His ancestor was the Sharif of Mecca and was supposed to get the Hejaz. But Ibn Saud drove him out. One son was given Syria but was pushed out by the French. So the Brits gave him Iraq where he did a good enough job. Sadly, there was a Revolution after Iraq joined CENTO (i.e. an American alliance) back in the Fifties. Another son was given Trans-Jordan. His descendants were smart and were able to push out the PLO during Black September. Still, they have to be very careful because of the instability of their part of the world. The Assads have had to flee. No one can be sure what will happen next in Syria.
Even if authoritarianism is averted, the damage that patrimonialism does to state capacity is severe.
Only if it does stupid shit. Plenty of patrimonial regimes don't do stupid shit. In the case of the Assads, it was the death of the elder son which caused the installation of the younger chap who didn't understand the politics of his own country. The regime had previously helped farmers during droughts and thus secured the loyalty of the soldiers. The new boy didn't get this. He and his wife- like the sons of Mubarak in Egypt- thought they should be making billions out of Telecom or some such enterprise when what they needed to be doing was ensuring that the Army had a reason to stay loyal. This meant ensuring the farmers, who were the Daddies or Uncles of the soldiers, were getting enough water or were being given drought relief payments etc. It is noticeable that the Moroccan King is spending vast sums on de-salinification.
Governments’ best people leave or are driven out.
They might contribute more in the private sector.
Agencies’ missions are distorted and their practices corrupted.
Shut them down. They may be useless. Even if they aren't, there may be a cheaper way to do things.
Procedures and norms are abandoned and forgotten.
Why aren't we still observing the procedures and norms of the Middle Ages?
Civil servants, contractors, grantees, corporations, and the public are corrupted by the habit of currying favor.
This is an argument for small government.
To say, then, that Trump lacks the temperament or attention span to be a dictator offers little comfort.
What offers no comfort at all is that only utter cretins attack Trump. This makes people think there are no good arguments against his policies.
He is patrimonialism’s perfect organism.
Because he is protectionist. Tariffs are known to create rents and to exacerbate rent-seeking activity. This Yale educated idiot, now with the Brookings Institute, could easily link protectionism to patrimonialsm and expanded rent-seeking. But he won't do it. Is it because the Biden administration could then be attacked on the same charge?
He recognizes no distinction between what is public and private, legal and illegal, formal and informal, national and personal.
Which is why he doesn't put on his trousers when receiving guests.
“He can’t tell the difference between his own personal interest and the national interest, if he even understands what the national interest is,” John Bolton, who served as national security adviser in Trump’s first term, told The Bulwark.
Trump saw it was in his and the nation's interest to pump and dump Bolton.
As one prominent Republican politician recently told me, understanding Trump is simple: “If you’re his friend, he’s your friend. If you’re not his friend, he’s not your friend.”
That was February. Now, in September, we realize Trump has no permanent friends or enemies. He has a particular theory of what will make America Great Again. To attack him, you must attack that theory even if it was endorsed 20 years ago by Bernie Sanders.
This official chose to be Trump’s friend. Otherwise, he said, his job would be nearly impossible for the next four years.
It may become so, regardless. If, as a German Economic Institute's report suggests, Trump's trade war results in 5 percent cost push inflation and 17 percent shrinkage in exports, then markets will turn against him and he will lose the next mid-terms. Since the guy is business-savvy he is reinsuring against this in various ways- e.g. privatizing Freddie Mac & Fannie May which has monetary consequences. There is also a 'Cantillon effect' associated with Crypto. That's the kind of thing you need to keep track to prove 'patrimonialism' though this is nothing but straightforward Political Economy 101.
Patrimonialism explains what might otherwise be puzzling. Every policy the president cares about is his personal property. Trump dropped the federal prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams because a pliant big-city mayor is a useful thing to have.
Or because he thought Adams might split the Democratic vote. The one type of politics Trump understands is New York politics. There is opaque stuff about which guy, irrespective of party affiliation, will push through which real estate development, which Trump made it his business to know.
He broke with 50 years of practice by treating the Justice Department as “his personal law firm.”
Rather than the attack dog of the Dems.
He treats the enforcement of duly enacted statutes as optional—and, what’s more, claims the authority to indemnify lawbreakers. He halted proceedings against January 6 thugs and rioters because they are on his side. His agencies screen hires for loyalty to him rather than to the Constitution.
My impression is that everybody now does so. Also if the public gets used to your firing innocent nobodies they won't turn a hair if you also fire whistle-blowers or guys who aren't satisfied with their career progression or whatever.
In Trump’s world, federal agencies are shut down on his say-so without so much as a nod to Congress.
Which is cool, so long as his party has a majority. The question is why he has such an iron grip on his party? Patrimonialism? There are Republicans who are way way richer than him. I suppose the simplest answer is best. There is an anti-migrant & protectionist backlash amongst the great unwashed. The Party offers them Trump. Then Trump fucks up. People stop hating the Mexicans or the Chinese or whatever because they remember what happened when Trump made their Chinese trinkets or Mexican gardeners unaffordable.
Henchmen with no statutory authority barge into agencies and take them over. A loyalist who had only ever managed two small nonprofits is chosen for the hardest management job in government.
Ross Vought? He is a carryover from the previous Trump administration. He came in as Deputy in 2017 and ended as acting head.
Conflicts of interest are tolerated if not outright blessed. Prosecutors and inspectors general are fired for doing their job. Thousands of civil servants are converted to employment at the president’s will. Former officials’ security protection is withdrawn because they are disloyal. The presidency itself is treated as a business opportunity.
Why is more not being made out of this? I suppose the Dems are reserving the good stuff for mid-terms. Perhaps they will start bringing this up in the Senate. Trump will need some Democratic votes there quite soon. Maybe get the Republicans to agree to some investigation they think will go nowhere but which actually implicates the First Family. I suppose, some such thing has already been discussed.
Yet when Max Weber saw patrimonialism as obsolete in the era of the modern state, he was not daydreaming.
I don't think he thought it possible that German politics would turn into gangsterism. The Nazis made plenty shaking down Jews and so forth. But then Hindenburg, too, enriched himself unconscionably. But so did SDs caught in the Barmat scandal. I suppose the truth is, Professors like Weber were too innocent- and stupid- to understand how things work in real life.
As Hanson and Kopstein note, “Patrimonial regimes couldn’t compete militarily or economically with states led by expert bureaucracies.”
India had the best bureaucracy in Asia in 1950. South Korea had one of the worst. Why did some Government programs- e.g. education- succeed there but not in India where the Education Ministry had excellent people both at the Centre and in the States? Indeed, why did some Princely States- by definition patrimonial- do better than directly ruled Districts under the charge of Oxbridge graduates belonging to the Indian Education Service? One answer is that the Queen could say 'I will pay poor parents so their kids can attend school'. This was pure patrimonialism. The Queen gained religious merit. The parents felt a special connection with the Divine Queen. The kids felt special and studied hard. The consequence was that Kerala had the most educated unemployed people in the country. When they got a chance to go to the Gulf and work they sent money back to their now Socialist homeland which thus began to rise in affluence.
They still can’t. Patrimonialism suffers from two inherent and in many cases fatal shortcomings.
In 1963, the year of my birth, people thought a kid born in Egypt- which had a highly educated bureaucracy and a President committed to raising up the peasants- would be better off than a kid born in patrimonial Saudi Arabia or Oman or Kuwait or Bahrain. But not just Egyptians my age but many from oil-rich Iraq or highly civilized Damascus are now quite poor compared to those born under patrimonialism.
The first is incompetence.
If Trump was incompetent yet nevertheless became POTUS there must have been something wrong with American Society. What was the precursor to Patrimonialism? It is that which America should get rid of. Perhaps, Jason Brennan's suggestion of an epistocracy should be implemented. Nobody should be allowed to vote till they have passed an Exam in Weberism or Rawlsism or whatever.
“The arbitrary whims of the ruler and his personal coterie continually interfere with the regular functioning of state agencies,” write Hanson and Kopstein.
I suppose this is why they include the UK as a country where 'the state is under attack'. The idea is that politicians give big contracts to consultancies rather than seek to beef up the civil service. Do they do it on a whim or is there some sort of kick-back?
Patrimonial regimes are “simply awful at managing any complex problem of modern governance,” they write.
Survival is a complex problem. Regimes fitting the above description would quickly go extinct.
“At best they supply poorly functioning institutions, and at worst they actively prey on the economy.”
Do they mean South Africa? Or perhaps it is Nigeria they are thinking off. Yet the only states they mention as being under threat are White or, like India, turning the corner from Dynastic patrimonialism.
Already, the administration seems bent on debilitating as much of the government as it can. Some examples of incompetence, such as the reported firing of staffers who safeguard nuclear weapons and prevent bird flu, would be laughable if they were not so alarming.
Downsizing Government isn't a bad thing in itself. It is likely that new Technology can replace much clerical work.
Eventually, incompetence makes itself evident to the voting public without needing too much help from the opposition. But helping the public understand patrimonialism’s other, even greater vulnerability—corruption—requires relentless messaging.
Not really. Crying wolf merely accustoms people to the idea that there are a lot of wolves about. Crying 'were-wolf' on the other hand is effective if you have cctv footage of a dude turning into a slavering beast. My point is that just saying 'Trump is a Nazi' is not enough. You need to show that he is actively using the Time Travel machine in the basement of the White House not just to go back in time and assassinate Abraham Lincoln, but also to attend Nuremberg rallies.
Would it help the Dems to point to corrupt acts by Trump? Not without proof. People will assume they said the same thing last time round. If nothing stuck, during Biden's years, maybe there really was no dirt on Trump. But if not then, why now?
Even more on point is Newt Gingrich’s successful campaign to bring down Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright—a campaign that ended Wright’s career, launched Gingrich’s, and paved the way for the Republicans’ takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. In the late 1980s, Wright was a congressional titan and Gingrich an eccentric backbencher, but Gingrich had a plan. “I’ll just keep pounding and pounding on his [Wright’s] ethics,” he said in 1987. “There comes a point where it comes together and the media takes off on it, or it dies.”
The problem here is that Biden's people- including ex-prosecutor Kamala- had 4 years to pound at Trump. If they failed it was either because Trump was clean or they were incompetent.
Gingrich used ethics complaints and relentless public messaging (not necessarily fact-based) to brand Wright and, by implication, the Democrats as corrupt.
Wright's authoritarian style as Speaker was alienating fellow Democrats and proving an embarrassment for pork-barrel Republicans. Thus Newt could be seen as standing up for Reaganite small Government in what had once been a Democratic stronghold. When it flipped Newt became the man of the moment.
“In virtually every speech and every interview, he attacked Wright,” John M. Barry wrote in Politico. “He told his audiences to write letters to the editor of their local newspapers, to call in on talk shows, to demand answers from their local members of Congress in public meetings. In his travels, he also sought out local political and investigative reporters or editorial writers, and urged them to look into Wright. And Gingrich routinely repeated, ‘Jim Wright is the most corrupt speaker in the 20th century.’”
He was very effective but he was making enemies. Local papers and radio stations don't attack such an important politician unless influential people from his own party permit it. Wright was being cut from the herd because the herd had started to resent him.
Today, Gingrich’s campaign offers the Democrats a playbook.
It may offer some maverick or new-comer on the Left a playbook. David bringing down Goliath is news-worthy. Trying to do stuff out of office which you had 4 years to do in office, just looks like an old dog doing the same tricks in the vain hope of not being 'sent to live on a nice farm'.
If they want to undermine Trump’s support, this model suggests that they should pursue a relentless, strategic, and thematic campaign branding Trump as America’s most corrupt president.
Why not do so 6 years ago? Or is it the case that he was clean in his first term but turned dirty in his second? What caused this change? The answer is obvious. Previously Putin gave him golden showers. That kept him on the straight and narrow. Then Putin became too busy with Ukraine. This is the real reason Trump tried to get Zelensky to surrender. Zelensky offered Trump a golden shower, but Trump refused. Only Putin's piss could please him. This is also the reason he embraced patrimonialism.
Almost every development could provide fodder for such attacks, which would connect corruption not with generalities like the rule of law but with kitchen-table issues. Higher prices? Crony capitalism! Cuts to popular programs? Payoffs for Trump’s fat-cat clients! Tax cuts? A greedy raid on Social Security!
The problem here is that people don't think Trump has either friends or clients. He pumps and dumps people. But he is also a heartless bastard. He laughs heartily when he hears of the plight of deported migrants. Tell him his tariff walls or Aid cuts are causing little brown babies to die and he starts stroking himself off. Say this, and people may believe you. But those same people may not really want more darkies on the streets. As for brown babies- there can be too much of a good thing.
The best objection to this approach (perhaps the only objection, at this point) is that the corruption charge won’t stick against Trump.
They may do. There's a Trump family crypto deal with Pakistan which could be linked to evil Muslim terrorists- maybe with suitcase nukes?- something sexy like that.
After all, the public has been hearing about his corruption for years and has priced it in or just doesn’t care. Besides, the public believes that all politicians are corrupt anyway.
Do they believe Trump can win his trade war? Maybe they don't care. They just hate migrants and those lousy foreigners who make half the things we buy.
But driving a strategic, coordinated message against Trump’s corruption is exactly what the opposition has not done. Instead, it has reacted to whatever is in the day’s news. By responding to daily fire drills
did he originally write 'Chinese fire drills'? You can do that now without going to jail because Trump is in the White House.
and running in circles, it has failed to drive any message at all.
What is the Democratic message in Gaza? Does it have anything to do with what Zohran is saying? When you are out of power, you have to focus on who your party will select as its candidate. How do you fire-proof them from the crazies within your own ranks? This was a big problem for the Republicans. That's one reason they had to settle on Trump. It is obvious the man has the morals of an alley cat. The Evangelicals are content if he appoints a couple of Federalist Judges who, as actually did happen, reverse Roe v Wade.
Also, it is not quite true that the public already knows Trump is corrupt and doesn’t care.
actually, they don't know it. They assume he has plenty of money. No doubt, he is gaining investment opportunities of various types. But that isn't the same thing as receiving bribes.
Rather, because he seems so unfiltered, he benefits from a perception that he is authentic in a way that other politicians are not, and because he infuriates elites, he enjoys a reputation for being on the side of the common person. Breaking those perceptions can determine whether his approval rating is above 50 percent or below 40 percent, and politically speaking, that is all the difference in the world.
Not if your party is a circular firing squad.
Do the Democrats need a positive message of their own? Sure, they should do that work.
They need it to recruit the best and brightest to campaign for the mid-term. Is there a 'Tea party' type issue here they could latch on to? I don't know enough about America to say. Still, local issues in key seats will be being identified. I'd imagine fund raising would be easy. A weakened Trump might have to do a U turn on a lot of things while also having to be a lot more obliging to donors.
But right now, when they are out of power and Trump is the capo di tutti capi, the history of patrimonial rule suggests that their most effective approach will be hammering home the message that he is corrupt.
It may well be 'their most effective approach' because the only other approach they can take is to shit themselves and wail loudly for Mummy to come and change their nappy.
One thing is certain: He will give them plenty to work with
Trump is a godsend for cretins who want to dash off an article about how Jean Jacques Rosseau or Confucius or Max Weber predicted that there would be a horrible President named Trump. Diderot often used to say to Jean Jacques 'Monsewer- you worry for notheeeng! Zit is impossible a Donald can become President of America. Poland maybe. You know what them Polacks be like. Zut alors!' This convinced Rousseau he was wrong. Confucius was made of sterner stuff. When Lord Buddha sidled up to him and said 'There is no Reality. There is no Past. There is no Future. Thus there can never be a Donald.' Confucius Kung Fu chopped the shit out of Buddha which is why he was reincarnated as Max Weber. Sadly, he was now as stupid as shit. That's why he wrote nonsense about about 'patrimonialism' and the desirability of a 'Caesarist' President.
